By David Rogers. BLOWING ROCK, N.C. — By most accounts, Blowing Rock residents and businesses were among the lucky ones during the week of Sept. 27 when the remnants of Hurricane Helene swept through the High Country, wreaking unprecedented havoc and destruction. Compared to the storm’s impact on nearby communities, a couple of days without power and a few more without Internet, phone and TV were livable inconveniences.
But some of our neighbors were not so lucky.
Take retired web designer and SEO specialist Scott Richardson and his wife, Meta Gatschenberger, a registered nurse, for instance. Now both retired and making ends meet on Social Security income, they lost everything when a small utility road just above their house on the outskirts of the Blowing Rock School District and Blowing Rock Fire District became a raging river and waterfall. The torrent of water, mud, boulders and uprooted trees sliced through and around the structure, then what evolved as a mudslide pushed the home off its foundation, shattering windows, shredding walls and scattering treasured personal belongings across the entire acre of land and beyond. Much of the debris slid the roughly 200 feet down the slope and across their driveway to rest on Friendship Church Road, which for a time was closed as a result.
One day we were living an idyliic life, retired in the High Country. The next day we had lost almost everything that is precious to us, lucky to even be alive.
“Fortunately, we weren’t home,” a beleaguered Richardson recalled for Blowing Rock News. “A neighbor called and said we better get back quick. We were visiting friends in Hickory, but came back immediately, even with all of the rain and flooding going on.
“Once here,” Richardson added, “it was a lot to take in. One day we were living an idyllic life, retired in the High Country. The next day we had lost almost everything that is precious to us, lucky to even be alive. I shudder to think what would have happened, had we been home at the time this happened.”
An Uncertain Future
Richardson and Gatschenberger now face an uncertain future. They thought they were protected but the insurance company said their homeowner’s policy offered no protection for landslides — and of course cancelled the policy the very next day because there was nothing left to insure, not even liability insurance should anyone hurt themselves sifting through the rubble.
They still owe $70,000 on a house whose scattered remains of lumber, nails and broken glass no longer have any equity to borrow against. The bank through which they had financed the mortgage was not very helpful, either, offering three months of no payments — but adding that amount to the principal and recalculating the loan at a higher interest rate.
Richardson has been fiercely independent his whole life, not seeking others’ charity and working hard to build his former web design and SEO business, Blue Ridge Media, the old fashioned way, to earn it. A former member of The Rotary Club of Blowing Rock, Richardson and his wife now need help.
The Blue Ridge Media business is now closed, permanently. Not surprisingly, what was their home for 25 years has been condemned by the county. Even Richardson’s mailbox, along with two neighbors’ mailboxes, have been swept away by the raging torrent carrying boulders and dislodged trees, slicing through anything in their path.
In hopes of making at least a small dent in what they owe the bank, Richardson and Gatschenberger have started a GoFundMe account, https://gofund.me/f85f9bfd. As of this writing, 69 friends and well-wishers have donated more than $10,000.
Of course, they are hoping for more. Now displaced to a small, one-bedroom apartment in Hickory, the duo’s reality is having to pay both the mortgage and the apartment rental out of their Social Security income. Most of their savings were in the house, once valued at more than $400,000, but now worth nothing.
“Cleaning things up is problematic,” said Richardson. “There has been a lot of damage in the High Country and contractors are busy.”
This is not the only tragic story in the High Country, but certainly it is one we can get our arms around because the storm’s impact was on one of our neighbors.
The Richardson GoFundMe Account, if you can help: https://gofund.me/f85f9bfd
