Hurricane Helene’s Devastation Through One Photographer’s Eyes
It was surely just a coincidence that the small town of Marshall, N.C. lies less than 20 miles southeast of the even smaller town of Hurricane, N.C. For generations, the Hurricane name didn’t mean much, but all of that changed on Friday, Sept. 27, when an actual hurricane—Hurricane Helene—slammed into North Carolina’s mountain west, pounding 29 counties and a sprawl of communities, including Asheville, Hickory, and Marshall.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Photographer and filmmaker Jack Sorokin was nowhere near Marshall when Helene roared in. He was 735 miles away, at home in Brooklyn, N.Y., but his roots were sunk deep in the Carolina soil. He lived in Marshall from 2016 to 2022 and his mother still lives there, a former partner in the Flow art gallery in Marshall’s downtown and a leaseholder on a studio space on a small island in the French Broad River, which runs through the town. Sorokin was following the storm as it approached, both on the news and by phone with his mother, who sent him a video showing the town beginning to flood and a car being swept down a street.
“I knew this was going to be catastrophic,” he says. “After that, I lost communication with my mom, which made me even more anxious.”
Sorokin set to work, ordering gas cans and other emergency supplies and raising $6,500 for personal protective equipment for the people of Marshall, who were being inundated by mud—some of which, Sorokin worried, could be contaminated by sewage and runoff from upstream. He expected to make a trip as soon as it was safe to travel, setting out for Marshall after the weekend, but by Monday he heard back from his mother who had survived the worst of the storm, easing the urgency a bit. He finally left New York on Wednesday, Oct. 2, beginning a drive to Marshall that took an unusually long 20 hours, partly because he was stopping periodically to pick up the PPE and other supplies. But there was also a three-hour standstill in traffic caused by a tractor trailer that had driven into a ditch on a road that usually does not permit vehicles so big, but made an exception because that was the only way into or out of the area in the wake of the storm. By now Helene had passed and Sorokin describes his approach to Marshall as nothing short of eerie.
“Familiar places looked normal,” he says. “People were mowing their lawns, and the landscape was as beautiful as ever. But there was an endless line of cars where there are usually just a few trucks. There were some trees down, an occasional mudslide, but for the most part, things seemed untouched.”
All that changed when he arrived in Marshall’s little downtown: “The devastation was shocking. Every building’s first floor was completely destroyed. Mud covered everything. Objects were displaced everywhere. Electrical lines were down. The contrast between just a half mile away, where life seemed normal, and downtown, where it looked like the entire town had been ripped apart, was staggering. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
But if there was ruin, there was also hope. Even before Sorokin arrived, six days after the storm hit, the town of 800 people had mobilized. Locals donated machinery, tools, and, most important, their time, to help in the clean-up—shoveling away the potentially toxic sludge, clearing fast-spreading mold, repairing damage to buildings.
“My friend Amos, one of the citizen organizers for downtown, told me how he’ll ask for a couple thousand dollars to buy machinery we need the next day, and within moments, some person he doesn’t know has donated it,” says Sorokin. “The generosity has been incredible.”
A town so small is worth an investment so big. Marshall punches above its weight, drawing in tourists who come to the area for the mountains but visit the community for the arts scene. Even as the Marshall residents struggle to rebuild—getting by on bottled water; placing their orders for drywall, timber, flooring, and more; awaiting FEMA’s assessment and applying to the agency for assistance—they flinch at social media commentary arguing that a town whose principal industry is the arts is not worth the investment.
“It’s upsetting to hear people downplay the importance of cleaning up the artist studios,” Sorokin says. “Artists are a crucial part of this community and of western North Carolina. Saving their spaces and making sure they can continue to create here is vital for the town’s future.”
That will take work the people of Marshall can’t do on their own. North Carolina’s western mountains were once seen as a climate haven—safely inland and elevated—but that idea washed away in the Helene rains. If the town is going to survive it will need levees, sewer upgrades, and other infrastructure improvements that only the government can provide. And the clock is ticking. Sorokin and others worry that an unrestored Marshall could easily be bulldozed into a park or a greenspace. The community may be just a dot on the state map, but it’s a rich and pretty dot—one that the locals are struggling mightily to save. Below are Sorokin’s images of the state of the community and the work to rebuild.