BROKEN GROUND: THE RIVER RISES

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Anchor: Urgent information just in from the National Hurricane Center … 

Host: We all know the destruction hurricanes can bring along the coast. 

Reporter: A powerful hurricane making landfall around 7:45 a.m. 

Host: But as Hurricane Helene just showed us in a brutal way, coastal storms are increasingly wreaking havoc far inland, causing rivers to surge into unsuspecting towns.

Storm Survivor #1: I just didn’t expect this to happen. This is so crazy.

Storm Survivor #2: It’s absolutely insane, to be honest.

Storm Survivor #3: Oh my god.

Storm Survivor #4: This is our life.

Host: As these inland floods become more destructive, they threaten to reshape – or even erase – the smaller, more rural communities in their path. 

Storm Survivor #5: Everything has been washed away, literally.

Host: And time and again, survivors are left wondering: Why did this happen to us? Is it safe to rebuild? Will it happen again? 

Storm Survivor #6: God takes care of old folks and fools and I qualified as both because I stayed in that house. 

Host: To put it another way: for those small southern towns blessed with water in their midst, has this blessing become a curse? And how does a community rebound AFTER the river rises? 

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Host: This is Broken Ground, a podcast from the Southern Environmental Law Center. I’m Leanna First-Arai, your host. Here at Broken Ground, we dig up environmental stories in the South and introduce you to the people at the heart of them.

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Host: ​Today on Broken Ground, we’re talking about flooding – but not the kind that happens along the coast. Of course, seas are rising all along our shoreline, washing away beaches, inundating roads, and causing so-called “sunny day flooding” even in beautiful weather. In fact, we produced a whole podcast season about this, so please do check it out if you haven’t yet. 

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But Southerners living far from the ocean are ALSO feeling the impact of climate change on creeks and rivers across our region.

When we started researching this episode last year, we thought we might need to convince listeners that inland flooding was, in fact, a growing hazard, threatening homes and businesses well outside of any officially designated flood zone. 

Of course, in the wake of Hurricane Helene, the danger has never been more obvious. In small towns like Swannanoa, Bakersville, Bat Cave and Chimney Rock in western North Carolina, and along a path of destruction that spans six states, survivors are facing a years-long recovery process. Wondering: what’ll that even look like?

That question is top of mind for Patrick Hunter, leader of SELC’s Asheville office. 

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Leanna First-Arai: How are you on a personal level?

Patrick Hunter: I’m doing fine. I appreciate you asking.

Host: In the weeks since flash flooding tore through his town, Patrick’s focus has shifted from legal strategy to storm recovery – ensuring his staff’s safety, volunteering in the community, and monitoring updates on basic services like water, sewer, power.

Patrick Hunter: We got internet back just a few hours ago. We still don’t have water in the office, but it’s been really nice to see everybody this morning.

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Host: One month after the storm, a number of SELC staff are not yet back in their houses. Others are home, but still have no clean drinking water. And in every direction, there are torn up roads, washed out bridges, mountains of debris – and people pulling together to figure out a way forward.  

Patrick Hunter: This is going to be a long, long road for everybody. I certainly hope that when we get in to make the decisions about, are we going to rebuild this building in this location? You know, maybe, maybe we are going to rebuild that building in that location, but we’re going to do it differently.  Rather than pretending like we are somehow immune from this kind of thing happening again in the future.   

Leanna First-Arai: Mm-hmm.

Patrick Hunter: Let’s build back smarter. Let’s take this experience into account as we figure out our next steps. 

Host: Those in the path of Helene are just beginning the long process of recovery, but they’re far from alone. While the scale of Helene’s damage was unprecedented, other communities across the South have long been grappling with their own flood recovery challenges. So what does that look like for an inundated town years after the storm? To answer that question, we want to take you to one riverside town that’s well along its path to recovery from the flooding that overwhelmed it … not once, but twice.

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The people who call Fair Bluff, North Carolina home, know the long, painful work of reimagining the future after a disaster. And though they still face some persistent challenges,  there’s growing optimism that the town will once again flourish. 

 

As you’re listening, please keep in mind that these interviews were conducted this summer, before Hurricane Helene.

 

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Host: Fair Bluff, North Carolina is a tiny town – less than 3 square miles. About an hour’s drive to the coast. The Lumber, a blackwater river, runs parallel to Main Street for a stretch.

Al Leonard: I think if you have a picture in your mind, and I think most people do of a lazy, southern river, the Lumber river would fit that picture.

Host: This is Al Leonard. He’s worked for the town of Fair Bluff since 1996, first as town planner, and now, in his semi-retirement, as the redevelopment director. And he’s spent a lot of time near the Lumber River.

Al Leonard: If you enjoy peace and quiet, you would enjoy being around the Lumber River.

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Host: But here in Fair Bluff, the river is not always a tranquil oasis. And that’s why, like any river-side community, the town government has flood maps that show some areas near the river aren’t safe to build in.

Al Leonard: One of my jobs in Fair Bluff was to issue zoning permits. And we issued them after we had interpreted the flood maps. And I would look at the flood maps of Fair Bluff and I would say, ‘This doesn’t seem right. Surely the river couldn’t flood this far from its banks. I, I don’t understand these maps.’ 

Host: Al knew that there hadn’t been a devastating flood in town since 1928. Sure, the Lumber River would overflow sometimes, especially when it rained a few days in a row. But it never did much damage. 

Al Leonard: I remember one time the floodwaters got up to the front door of the city hall, seeped in a little bit, and got the carpet wet on the other side of the door, and we had to cut out some carpet and replace it. We thought, ‘Okay, this is as bad as it could possibly be.’ Until hurricane Matthew. 

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Host: Prior to Hurricane Matthew, it had rained on and off in Fair Bluff for a couple of weeks, and the Lumber River was full. Then the storm dumped more rain – up to 19 inches more. 

Al Leonard: When you put those two things together, you are in for it. And Fair Bluff was. We were in for it.

Host: Hurricane Matthew had brushed the coast on a Saturday, but it was the next morning when Fair Bluff began to flood.

Billy Hammond: Policeman called me about five o’clock in the morning and says, our town is flooding. 

Host: This is Fair Bluff’s mayor Billy Hammond, who’s lived in town since 1959. He watched as four feet of water poured into Main Street, inundating town hall, the post office, and all of the historic storefronts. 

Billy Hammond: It was very devastating to see what was a, a wonderful small town just being inundated with  water and … very stressful.

Host: In addition to destroying the downtown businesses, the river wrecked more than a hundred homes – nearly a quarter of all the housing stock in town. As a TV station out of Wilmington reported …

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WWAY Reporter: This is the most damage the area has seen in decades. When talking about the devastation, Fair Bluffs Mayor Billy Hammond got quite emotional.

Billy Hammond (on TV): It’s been stressful, been long, hard … Take it one day at a time. 

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Host: For many folks in Fair Bluff who felt deeply rooted to this tiny town, the damage was hard to fathom.

Al Leonard: No one had ever seen it get that bad.

Host: In the wake of the deluge, the flood maps that had seemed so puzzling to town planner Al Leonard, suddenly made sense. 

Al Leonard: It was a disaster and the flood maps turned out to be exactly accurate to a tee.

Host: I should say, maps turning out to be accurate is actually pretty rare for communities experiencing flooding today. There are multiple  reasons for this, but a big one is that these maps are based on outdated data. They look at past flooding patterns, not at a future impacted by climate change and more intense storms. 

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Host: So planning development based on these flood maps is, as they say, a bit like driving forward while only looking in the rearview mirror. 

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Host: In the wake of Hurricane Matthew, Fair Bluff’s population dropped significantly. Though it’s virtually impossible to maintain an accurate count while people and their homes are in limbo, Al Leonard believes that about a third of their 900 residents moved away. Those who stayed did the best they could to clean up and get things back to normal. 

Al Leonard: You know, they went back in with their Clorox spray and tried to get all the mold and mildew out and tried to get everything dried out and tried to get moved back in. 

Host: As for the downtown business owners, they’d never needed flood insurance, so none had it. And most simply couldn’t afford the repairs that their century-old buildings would require. But the church closest to the river, Fair Bluff Baptist, was able to collect enough donations to complete more than $400,000 worth of repairs. According to Al, the thinking was, if the last devastating flood occurred in 1928 … 

Al Leonard: We’ve made it about 90 years. So it may be 90 years before it ever happens again. So let’s just jump in and fix things up.

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Host: And … that thought process made sense! Hurricane Matthew had caused a so-called “500-year flood,” which used to mean a flood this destructive had only a 1 in 500 chance of occurring in any given year. So it was BAFFLING to residents when, less than two years later …

Announcer: From ABC News, this is a Hurricane Florence update. 

Host: Hurricane Florence brought an even bigger, ONE-THOUSAND-year flood to town. 

Reporter: The threat of catastrophic flooding is spreading and moving inland … 

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Anchor: Less than two years since Hurricane Matthew hit the town of Fair Bluff leaving behind devastation, the same area hard hit again, this time by Florence. 

Reporter: The timetable of recovery from Matthew looked long. Now it looks indefinite. 

Host: Al Leonard says Florence was a turning point in how he imagined Fair Bluff’s future.

Al Leonard: I remember seeing the Coast Guard going down Main Street in a rescue boat. And it was just, I – the best word I’ve been able to come up with, it was surreal. I think at that point, all of us in town government realized we’re not going to be able to spray some Clorox on this town and it come back the way it was. This place is going to be fundamentally and permanently different. 

Host: After Florence, it also dawned on Al that these ‘rare’ flooding events might not be so rare anymore. 

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Al Leonard: I, I moved here in 1987. From ‘87 to ‘95, I don’t ever remember there being a 10-inch rain, a 15-inch rain, a 20-inch rain. So there’s something going on out there right now that’s producing intense rainfall so rapidly. 

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Alys Campaigne: Climate change can feel overwhelming. It can just feel so big and out there. 

Host: Alys Campaigne is the Climate Initiative Leader at the Southern Environmental Law Center and she sees a clear link between worsening inland flooding and a changing climate.  

Alys Campaigne: Pretty much all weather stations are seeing that we’re super charging the water cycle. 

Host: It’s not necessarily that we’re having more storms, she says …

Alys Campaigne: But they are larger and they’re lingering longer. 

Host: You probably already know this story: climate change is warming our oceans, causing water to evaporate more quickly. That means when a tropical storm like Matthew or Florence forms over the sea, it’s able to pull in more water vapor than it would have before. 

Alys Campaigne: Which is leading to these heavier rainfall extremes that can cause flash flooding. 

Host: Flash flooding that can be very hard to predict … or prepare for.

Alys Campaigne: The delay in time of when a storm hits often lulls people into thinking like, oh, yeah, that rainy weather a couple of days ago, I’m all set. But it’ll be several days down the line when all the water moves thro ugh the system and then suddenly it’s kind of swelling up and overflowing and causing a lot of trouble. 

Host: Especially if local water bodies are already full, like the Lumber River was before Hurricane Matthew. 

Billy Hammond: People says, ‘Why, why did we flood?’ 

Host: Mayor Billy Hammond again.

Billy Hammond: I said, ‘Well,’ I says, ‘I’m going to explain to you the best of my knowledge. It was like taking a gallon jar and trying to pour it into a quart jar. It’s already full.’ 

Host: Here where Fair Bluff is, in the coastal plain of North Carolina, the land is relatively flat. But even a small hill can speed up how fast rain moves. That’s part of the reason why flooding in mountainous regions – like what happened in western North Carolina during Hurricane Helene – can be particularly dangerous.

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Alys Campaigne: It can cause landslides on steep slopes in places that are up in the mountains and having huge volumes of water drop in a short period of time.

Host: And Alys says it’s not just the natural shape of the landscape and the growing strength of our storms that leaves people so vulnerable here in the rural South …

Alys Campaigne: The impacts are layered on top of centuries of political and land use decisions that are shaped in the South by a long history of systemic and structural racial and economic discrimination. And that has lasting an d harmful effects on the preparedness of communities in the Southeast, and particularly rural communities to respond and adapt. 

Host: Just look at the investment in rural infrastructure, for example.

Alys Campaigne: Whether that’s maintaining bridges and roads, whether that’s adequate stormwater/wastewater facilities. There tends to be a real under-investment in infrastructure that’s needed to keep people out of harm’s way. 

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Host: The patterns Alys is talking about also impact who is quite LITERALLY in harm’s way. During epic flashfloods in eastern Kentucky in 2022, and more recently, in communities like Swannanoa in western North Carolina, lower-income families were more likely to live near the low-lying creeks and valleys that were hardest hit. And it’s not just the location of those homes, but the housing itself.

Alys Campaigne: A number of the poorer areas in the rural Appalachian parts of the South have high proportions of manufactured and mobile housing types that are particularly vulnerable when a storm comes.

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Host: And perhaps not surprisingly, these folks are also less likely to have flood insurance. 

Alys Campaigne: A lot of these communities are economically strapped and households have to make a choice between paying for an insurance bill versus paying for groceries. That’s a real problem. 

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Host: Of course without flood insurance, lower-income folks are also more likely to require help from the government in order to get back on their feet. But paradoxically, they may be less likely to receive that help.

Alys Campaigne: Many times risk evaluation and dollars that are paying for compensation after a storm overvalue home value and wealth, like where were the economic impacts of a storm?  And that leads to a, often, a fundamental inequity because it doesn’t matter if you you lost your multi-million dollar home, or you lost your very modest rural home, the idea of where to direct those dollars needs to be rationalized with a much more human picture rather than just focusing on wealth. 

Host: Disasters can obviously compound the economic challenges many small towns already face.

Alys Campaigne: So I feel a lot of compassion for the town managers and others who are having to make some really hard choices in the face of, in many cases, declining populations and a really limited tax base. 

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Al Leonard: I’ve always said a small town manager could manage a metropolis … 

Host: Al Leonard again.

 

Al Leonard: But the manager of a metropolis could not manage a small town because they would not be able to grasp you don’t have any resources. None.

Host: In fact, at one point, Al was working for 5 separate towns, none of which could afford its own full-time planner. When he began working in Fair Bluff in 1996, it was for just one day a week. Back then, Fair Bluff was more prosperous than it is today …

Al Leonard: There were several tobacco warehouses in town, a couple of banks, believe it or not, there was a Ford dealership and a Chevrolet dealership, one o n one side of Main Street and one at the other end of Main Street. And it was a fairly bustling little town.But as the tobacco industry kind of reoriented itself, the local economy really started to nosedive. And it had been a tough 20 years for the local economy prior to Hurricane Matthew.

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Host: The destruction from twin hurricanes meant that Fair Bluff, whose population was already in decline, now had even fewer people contributing to its tax base. By 2019, the town’s annual budget was just $660,000. For perspective, that was less than 1% of that year’s annual budget for the capital city of Raleigh. This tiny town budget has led to a kind of mantra that both Al Leonard and Mayor Hammond repeat often. 

Al Leonard: We’ve said it 10,000 times: Fair Bluff’s recovery will go as far as someone else’s money will take us. 

Host: That’s a situation many small towns would no doubt recognize. In Fair Bluff, it meant applying for grant after grant over the last eight years, lobbying the state legislature, and working hand-in-hand with federal agencies, including FEMA. 

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Al Leonard: FEMA is a much criticized agency. 

Leanna First-Arai: Mm-hmm.

Al Leonard: And some of that criticism is warranted, I will say that. But their program is tried and true. 

Host: Here in Fair  Bluff, FEMA offered homeowners assistance through its so-called “Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.” 

Al Leonard: And you’ll probably here it called the “buyout program.” They will come in and buy out your flood devastated home, they’ll tear your house down and the lot remains in the ownership of the town government perpetually. It can never be built on again. 

Host: In Fair Bluff, about 40 families saw that as their best option and accepted a buyout for what their home would have been worth before the flood. But FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program offers two other options as well. One is elevation – meaning physically lifting an existing house above flood level. Al says a handful of people in Fair Bluff took that option.

Al Leonard: The final category, the one that I was most excited about, we call it “demo rebuild.” if you don’t want to be bought out, if you don’t want to be elevated, FEMA will demolish your flood devastated home and build you a brand new one that’s elevated above the flood level. And those things really, really look nice. 

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Host: If this all sounds too good to be true … well, you wouldn’t exactly be wrong. Federal aid for flood victims is far from perfect. FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, for instance, focuses on property owners, so renters don’t typically qualify for assistance. For folks living in older, more modest houses, or mobile homes – particularly when they don’t own the land beneath them – the pre-flood ‘fair-market value’ that FEMA offers might not even come CLOSE to the cost of a replacement home. 

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Host: Plus, studies show that the average buyout project takes over FIVE YEARS from start to finish. Imagine being in limbo for five solid years after a flood! Of course, most homeowners don’t know that going in, so the offer can be pretty tempting.

Al Leonard: If you’ve just been wiped out, and the property that you’ve been making payments on for years and years and years has been destroyed, if somebody walks into town and says, ‘Hey, I’ll write you a check and I’ll buy you out.’ That’s very, very enticing. And I dare say most people take that option.

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Host: But even successful buyouts can have their downsides. People are taken out of harm’s way, sure, but houses disappear, which means that property tax revenue drops. Competition for the homes that are left may push up sale prices and rents. And in a kind of ironic twist, the city then has to mow and maintain the empty lots, which can be a struggle for a cash-strapped town. Plus, folks who sell their homes may not move locally, so buyouts can lead to even more population loss. Among the 40 buyouts in Fair Bluff, Al says he noticed a pattern that doesn’t exactly bode well for future growth. 

Al Leonard: It appears that the older folks stayed. And the younger folks took the buyout and left. 

Leanna First-Arai: Hmm. Interesting. 

Al Leonard: That’s my observation.

Leanna First-Arai: Yeah.

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Host: Al says he wishes that when FEMA first met with the community they had spent more time explaining the demo-rebuild option, because he thinks at least some of the families that accepted buyouts would have preferred to stay in the town they loved. Still, Al says … 

Al Leonard: You can’t go back, but, uh, you can go forward. And if I could say anything to town managers in other areas that have been devastated by natural disasters, I would say, spend a lot of time trying to talk your people into the demo-rebuild component. 

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Host: Because of Fair Bluff’s population loss, town leaders have focused their grant-writing efforts on projects that they hope will bring people back to town. A grocery store, for instance.

Al Leonard: We’ve been without a grocery store for about five or six years. Our people have been driving 12 to 15 miles in different directions to go grocery shopping. So once again, we took out our tin cup and we went begging and got a grant to purchase the grocery store. And, uh, I think I can say to you, at our last council meeting, we did agree to enter into a lease with a regional independent grocery store in Fair Bluff and we’re hoping that he’ll be open by January 1st. So we’re just really, really happy for our community with that.

Host: As for housing, in addition to some 70 new homes built or elevated after the floods, Fair Bluff will have two new apartment complexes. One opened recently and – good news!

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Al Leonard: Within 45 days of those apartments opening to the public, they were at 100 percent occupancy. 

Leanna First-Arai: Wowww. My goodness. 

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Host: The second set of apartments is more of a bad news/good news situation.

Al Leonard: As you can imagine after as much as two thirds of your population leaves, your school closes cause there’s nobody to go to school. 

Host: Fair Bluff’s only school shuttered after the storms, and the remaining students now attend school in a neighboring town. Rather than demolish the empty building, Al helped convince town leaders to  convert it to apartments.  

Al Leonard: We’ll be taking bids on developing about 24 apartments there for senior citizens. We’re really excited about saving the school from the wrecking ball. But in all honesty, Fair Bluff could certainly use another 40 or 50 people added to our census. We desperately need that. So we’re excited about the school project.

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Host: But Al is arguably even more excited about the town’s most monumental project – building a brand new town center, one that’s fully outside of the flood zone. 

Al Leonard: The town council said, if there’s going to be any commercial activity in this town for the next 20 or 30 years, we’re going to have to do something.

Host: That ‘something’ turned out to be “uptown” … a two-story, L-shaped building with a retro look. It’s a three-minute walk from the old downtown, in a spot that’s never flooded. The six-million dollar complex was funded by the state and federal government, and will include 16 commercial spaces. Ten tenants have signed up so far. 

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Al Leonard: Well, I don’t know if I can list all of them. We do have a beauty salon. We’ve got a bakery. Um, which is not helping out my triglycerides. I can tell you that. (laughing) 

Leanna First-Arai: Yeah, but the joy points are, are high. 

Al Leonard: Joy points are very high. We’ve got a restaurant and catering. We’ve got a furniture refinishing, a seafood market.

Host: Once all these businesses are drawing customers “uptown,” what happens to Fair Bluff’s original shopping district?

Al Leonard: We’ve purchased the old downtown buildings that were underwater twice. And we expect this fall to have them demolished. We bid the project, we’ve signed a contract, and we’ve got one of the largest demolition firms in our area coming in to just take away every last brick there in downtown. 

Host: As for the empty space that will be left? In the town hall, Mayor Hammond  points out a poster labeled  ”Conceptual Park Master Plan.” 

Billy Hammond: We’re hoping within two to three years that we have … that picture right there is what we’re planning on doing is building a park. And, uh, we’re hoping that we can get the state park people to come in and help us maintain it. 

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Host: That park will serve as a flood buffer, absorbing water when the river swells and protecting properties elsewhere in town. But it will also eventually – hopefully – include playgrounds and a dog park, space for outdoor concerts and a farmer’s market, pickleball courts, canoe rentals, plenty of other things too. All amenities that can safely flood with minimal damage. It’s these kinds of innovative land uses that Alys Campaigne says she’s seeing more and more in places where heavy flooding has become a reality.

Alys Campaigne: We’re seeing things like building more intentional open spaces, pocket gardens, rain gardens. We’re beginning to change building materials and design, green roofs or use materials that can absorb water. 

Host: There are tons of other interventions, too, that can help keep riverside towns safe: not developing in the floodplain in the first place, of course, but also maintaining stormwater drainage systems, keeping flood maps up to date, and preserving wetlands, which help absorb water.

Alys Campaigne: We have the tools. We’re seeing it in some places being put into action, but we really need to be accelerating the pace of using the tools that we already have and doing more faster.  

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Billy Hammond: We had people who’ve said, ‘Fair Bluff is history,  it won’t survive.’ And I said, ‘No, you got to think positive. There going to be days you take one step forward and two backwards, but you got to hang in there, take the good with the bad … or the bad with the good.’ 

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Host: As Fair Bluff looks to the future, there are plenty of reminders of why this little town is worth fighting for. In July, the town held its annual Watermelon Festival. One advertisement for the festival reads: “If you grew up, lived in, or just love Fair Bluff, come see downtown one last time before everything is demolished.” 

Gene Martin: The buildings are just too far gone to, to do anything with them and bring ’em back up  to code. You hate to see ’em go, but it’s the best thing for the town. 

Host: This is Gene Martin, who was greeting fe  stival-goers at Fair Bluff’s new Visitor Center. Inside, the walls are covered with art depicting the town and its history as a river-side community. 

Gene Martin: The biggest asset for the town of Fair Bluff right now is the Lumber River, even though it was also our … our, our biggest problem, uh, when it flooded. 

Host: Today, the new visitor center – paid for by a grant – sits several blocks from the river, but Gene says it used to be right downtown.

Gene Martin: The water was about four feet deep inside the building.

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Host: Of course, carpeting and drywall can be torn out and reinstalled,  but when old photographs, historical documents, artwork and other artifacts succumb to the water, they can’t just be replaced. 

Gene Martin: Some of these pictures we were able to save. They all mean a lot to me because of the folks that did them.

Host: Like in many places affected by flooding, cultural loss is a painful reality. Gene says that when he thinks about downtown’s demolition, he feels … 

Gene Martin: Little nostalgic because I know what the buildings meant to so many people and to the people that ran the businesses there. We’re going to miss all of that stuff, but, uh, time goes on. 

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Host: A few minutes later, as we walk toward Fair Bluff’s old downtown for the festivities, Gene’s mix of emotions makes a lot of sense. Many of the storefronts’ windows are smashed in and the spaces rendered unusable. 

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Host: But it’s easy to imagine the bustling businesses that might have operated here. In one store, greeting cards still sit neatly on their rack, a metaphor, perhaps, for the mix of emotions folks in Fair Bluff have felt these last few years in the wake of the floods. I’m sorry for your loss. Get well soon. We’ll miss you. Good luck. 

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Host: Not far from the old businesses, people pack the street, celebrating Fair Bluff. By a stroke of luck, the first person we run into is  the son of one of the festival’s founders. He’s transporting a giant watermelon in his pickup truck. 

Robert Worley: This is a Carolina Cross. 

Host: Robert Worley tells us the festival dates back to 1979, when his father, AJ Worley, and his friend Monroe Enzor challenged one another to a friendly contest.

Robert Worley: Seeing who could grow the biggest, and then it just grew from there. There’s all kind of booths and, you know, food and all that, too. 

Host: This year is special for Robert, because he’ll be entering his giant watermelon under somebody else’s name … his new baby grandson, Hampton. 

Robert Worley: I hope my little grandbaby wins. 

Emcee: Here we go. 89.4.

Host: A bit later, at the “large quality” contest, the melons are weighed one by one …

Emcee: 146 right now, y’all! 

Host: … and the growers are invited to say a word or two.

Emcee: Young farmers is what we need in this county. You gonna say something for me real quick? 

Little Boy: I’m just happy that we get to be here and that, um, we growed this watermelon. 

Host: Finally, it’s time for baby Hampton’s watermelon to be weighed. 

Emcee: Oh, oh, they’re struggling a little bit. They’re grunting. 230 pounds! Y’all give a big round of applause. That is a new record for the largest watermelon grown by the smallest grower here. 

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Host: After spending the morning downtown, we head over to the new building they call “uptown.” None of the businesses that will be leasing a space here are officially open yet, but today a couple are doing pop-ups. 

Felicia Brown: Thank you sir! Make sure you come back to Kousins Kitchen, okay?

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Host: Kousins Kitchen Soul Food has had a line down the block most of the day. 

Felicia Brown: I was totally shocked people that come by here today. I’m totally in awe. I’m selling outta everything. I’m selling outta everything, which I’m glad of, I’m so excited of, because that means we made money.

Host: Felicia Brown is opening Kousins Kitchen with – you guessed it – her cousin, Bonnie. For Felicia and Bonnie, feeding Fair Bluff is a family affair. 

Felicia Brown: Our grandmother, she fed the town a long, long time ago. Well, as you can see, our people have gotten older, died away. I just hated – Bonnie just hated – for all this food and this love and this family to go away and just die.

Host: Felicia has faith that food can be one way to bring people back to Fair Bluff.

Felicia Brown: ‘Oh, we’re going to Fair Bluff to eat.’ ‘Oh, we’re going to Fair Bluff to Kousins Kitchen.’ ‘Oh, we’re going over here to Fair Bluff to go downtown and see what they got.’ I’m ready for the people to come back. I’m ready, honey.

Host: Another business doing a pop-up is “River’s Edge Hair Company.” Owner Kaitlin Cox is in her element as visitors chat in styling chairs, sipping on watermelon mojitos and lemonade. It’s been eight years since Kaitlin lost her salon downtown to Hurricane Matthew.

Kaitlin Cox: I miss the freedom and the flexibility and just the creativity of being behind the chair and working with clients. 

Host: After two floods, the loss of her business, and of course a pandemic, Kaitlin spent 2 years working as a cosmetology instructor at a community college outside of town.

Kaitlin Cox: Every day on my way to work, I would pass this building as they’ve been building it. And I am really excited to see how it changes the town. 

Host: As she prepares to re-open her business, Kaitlin hopes, like Felicia, that the new uptown will bring people back. She says the things that threaten Fair Bluff – its small size, its proximity to the river – also make the town a beautiful, tight-knit place to live. 

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Kaitlin Cox: We’re small, we’re rural. People look at those, I guess, as a hindrance. But the town has a lot of potential to grow and be something really cool and beautiful. I mean, you’re right on the river. I think it’s really kind of a, a secret, you know?

Host: I want to give Al Leonard a last word on Fair Bluff’s recovery.

Al Leonard: We did not know that it would take so much time. Here we are, almost eight years out and we’re still working on some things. But, um, if you want to be a part of natural disaster recovery, don’t bring your watch, bring your calendar. 

Host: That’s a hard piece of advice to hear, for sure. But it’s something Hurricane Helene survivors may have in mind as they begin the work of planning their own long-term recovery. It will be difficult. But here in the tiny town of Fair Bluff, disaster has given folks like Al Leonard the ability to re-imagine a safer, perhaps more prosperous town. One that hopes for the best … prepares for the worst … and once again sees the river running through it, not as a curse, but a blessing. 

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Host: That does it for this episode of Broken Ground. If you’re interested in learning more about inland flooding or Fair Bluff, or if you just want to see some great pictures of the people we interviewed, head to our website at Broken Ground Podcast dot o-r-g. 

Broken Ground is a podcast by the Southern Environmental Law Center, one of the nation’s most powerful defenders of the environment, rooted in the South. It’s produced by Emily Richardson-Lorente, Noa Greenspan, Paige Polk, Jennie Dailey, and me, Leanna First-Arai, with a special thanks to Ko Bragg, Pria Mahadevan and Sam Lenga. Our theme music is by Eric Knutson. If you enjoyed this episode, we’d love it if you’d write us a review on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for listening.