Louis Cahill thought he’d bought his final house, his getaway in the mountains where he’d be free to fish for trout to his heart’s content. Like everyone else in northwest North Carolina, though, he had no idea of the tragedy that awaited.
“I’ve been in several war zones. They’re not anything like [North Carolina after Hurricane Helene], unless you’re right where some really big munitions have been deployed,” Cahill told me. “Life kinda goes in a war. Life doesn’t go on through this shit.”
Cahill is a photographer, fly angler, bonefish enthusiast, lover of the Bahamas, and the man behind Gink & Gasoline, one of the first fly fishing blogs I ever fell in love with. Cahill is also one of the thousands displaced by the flooding and destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene in September of 2024.
“I saw things I never thought I’d see, and I, by far, didn’t have the worst of it,” Cahill said. “Nobody in my family was killed.”
Cahill and his wife, Kathy, bought an old church in Green Mountain, NC, in 2024. They planned to renovate the church and turn it into their home for retirement. It’s the perfect place for a fly angler. Green Mountain is about 45 minutes north of Asheville, which is the town that received much of the relatively scant media attention after Helene hit.
The church is a two-story building, with nine-foot tall windows in the basement. As you can see in the picture below, the amount of water that hit is almost impossible to comprehend.
“The three days before Helene, we got 17 inches of rain from a separate system,” Cahill said. “Everything was at flood stage already. That Thursday night, we got 31 inches of rain in one night. That’s 48 inches of rain in four days.”
The Flood
Cahill’s house is a quarter-mile from the North Toe River, and about 50 to 60 feet higher in elevation. Even with that distance, 11 feet of water ended up in Cahill’s house, and it happened in a matter of seconds.
On September 27th, at 6:30 in the morning, Cahill woke up and saw the creek that flows through his yard starting to flood. After four feet of rain in four days, that was to be expected. That creek quickly surrounded his house and flooded his basement, but the worst was yet to come.
The small holler where Cahill’s house still stands flooded almost instantly.
One minute, Cahill was assessing the relatively minor flooding in his basement. Then, it was as if someone flipped the lights off. The nine-foot basement windows were completely covered with floodwater before Cahill could comprehend what was happening.
“I made it almost out before a couple of windows broke,” he said. “The river came in with such force it shattered the walls and sheared the water main off inside the wall. It hit it so hard. If you’ve ever taken a spill in a deep, fast river, and felt what that feels like, here I am in my basement, and I can feel those tables and chairs rolling around under my feet as I’m trying to get out.
“I had put my raft in the basement so it wouldn’t wash away. As the room filled up, the raft wedged against the ceiling, and I was able to pull myself along the raft until I got out of the current.”
The Escape
Louis made it upstairs, where he and his wife were making frantic preparations to leave. Luckily, since their home was an old church, there was a wheelchair ramp that led out into the yard, and they’d parked their van on the ramp the night before. The van offered little hope, though, because a few days before the flood, tornadoes had ripped through the area. As Louis told me, the roads weren’t just blocked with some trees—every tree was seemingly in the road.
The only option Louis and Kathy had was a daring drive across a rickety bridge on a dirt road that led to higher ground. They drove to the highest point they could manage and stayed in the van until the floodwaters receded enough for them to return home—but home to what?
Louis and Kathy’s house was the only one in their small holler that was left standing. Dave, a neighbor, had climbed out of his two-story house and into a tree while he watched the floodwaters literally rip his home off the foundation and carry it down the holler.
After the Flood
The one event that didn’t receive as much media attention as the tornadoes and flooding was the landslides.
“(The landslides had) maybe worse of an impact than the flooding,” Cahill said. “Those people who were impacted by the landslides were the ones who were really cut off. They couldn’t get out.”
Photo: Louis Cahill
Louis and Kathy made it out of Green Mountain and went back to Atlanta, where they’d lived before buying the house in North Carolina. Thankfully, they hadn’t sold their home in Atlanta yet, so they had somewhere else to stay.
Louis worked to gather supplies and made it back to Green Mountain a week after the floods, and a day before the Army arrived to begin rescue operations.
“There were really three components to this disaster,” Louis said. “We were hit by the flood, we weren’t directly impacted by the (tornadoes), but I know people who the wind just got their house. Then, the landslides.”
Photo: Louis Cahill
Everyone who was in North Carolina helping after this disaster probably wasn’t prepared to handle the scale of devastation from the tornadoes, floods, and landslides. Then again, we’re rarely ready for disaster; our collective character is forged in how we respond.
“When the Army came with all their helicopters, they had thermal imaging,” Louis told me. “I talked to one of the soldiers, and he told me two things. First, the official death count is the farthest thing from the truth. They have to find your body, and your body has to be identified (to be included in the death count). In a lot of cases, they were just finding parts. They brought 750 body bags with them and filled them on the first day, and ordered 1,000 more.”
The Army worked around the clock to rescue survivors and find bodies. They brought in C130 planes to refuel helicopters mid-flight.
Photo: Louis Cahill
“Those Army guys, they were amazing,” Louis said. “There were so many people trapped.”
Moving On
Life has to move on, even though it feels like the world should stop, and all our efforts should be diverted to helping those still struggling after this disaster. Louis told me that people did, in fact, live in tents through the winter.
“It’s been a brutal winter, we’ve had more snow than any winter in recent memory,” Louis said. “I only know of one family still in a tent, but we had a lot of folks living in tents through the winter.”
Photo: Louis Cahill
People are still out of work, at least in Louis’ area, because many of the businesses are still closed, and may never open again. This part of North Carolina is also home to the largest concentration of artists in the country, a demographic that usually lives hand-to-mouth. Their galleries and studios are gone, and both the insurance companies and the federal government aren’t doing anything to help those who survived.
“The insurance companies screwed everybody,” Louis said. “No one’s getting anything. I quite honestly don’t know if I’ll ever buy homeowner’s insurance again. I think I’m self-insuring from here on out.”
The federal government has seemingly taken the lead from insurance companies on how to react to this disaster, according to Louis.
“The government’s attitude about this is asinine,” he said. “Like the insurance company, they don’t make money standing up to the obligations. I’d say it’s worse than sitting on their hands. They’re just actively looking for ways to not help you, at least FEMA.”
Louis stressed that it’s FEMA, not the first responders and the Army, causing problems. That means recovery is largely left up to the individual. Some, like Louis and Kathy, are receiving donations through GoFundMe (you can donate to Louis and Kathy here).
“(The GoFundMe) has been a real highlight of this,” Louis said. “It’s awfully nice to know there are people out there who care. On a personal level, that’s wonderful, but on a larger level, it’s sad that the people I know who are getting help are coming from stuff like that. GoFundMe campaigns, private donations.”
Of course, it will take years for the area to physically recover, but it will take even longer for the residents to become whole again.
“There’s a tendency to minimize the effects of PTSD that are not combat-related in our society,” Louis said. “Trust me, this is real, serious PTSD. I’ve got neighbors who haven’t had a night’s sleep since that flood. My wife and I didn’t sleep for a month afterward. Still, I’m not a particularly spineless individual, and I’ll still break down over it sometimes. No warning, it gets you in the weirdest ways.”
A Helping Cast
As a fly fishing community, we can donate our time and money to the victims of Helene. We can shed light on their struggles and fight to get them the help they deserve. But we also have the opportunity to help out the area by doing what we do best—fishing.
“It’s absolutely worth coming out to fish in the area to help out the local economy,” Louis told me. “One of the first things I did when the roads were finally open, I went to check out my favorite brook trout stream. I’m happy to report it’s in pretty good shape.”
It’s not only Louis’ brook trout stream that’s doing well. Tripp Nazziola, a social media intern here at Flylords who also works at 828 Flies near Boone, was happy to report the fish seem to be in great shape.
“After the hurricane, we quickly discovered that our fish were just as resilient as the Appalachian people during this recovery process,” Tripp told me. “To be honest, as I sat on the front steps of our fly shop, watching campers float down the river, I didn’t have high hopes of maintaining my job as a fishing guide in the coming months.”
Tripp noted that many of the rivers in the area have shifted course completely, which means this upcoming season will be one of discovery for everybody involved.
Photo: Louis Cahill
“We were surprised to see that the fish were still there, despite most rivers having shifted completely,” Tripp said. “I spoke with a state biologist, who confidently estimated that we’ve only lost 5-10 percent of our wild trout population. Given the sheer devastation caused by Helene, that’s an incredible statistic.”
Tripp just recently had his first guided trip in months, and encourages people to book trips with fly shops in these hard-hit areas.
“Now that most of the immediate recovery needs have been met, we are encouraging people to come and support local businesses in western North Carolina,” he said. “The fishing has been fantastic, and we are urging people to book guided trips with our local fly shops.”
It’s hard to think that fishing has much of a role in the aftermath of something this horrific, but perhaps that’s the silver lining from it all. That despite the loss, the death, and the destruction, we still have the capacity to appreciate the beauty of catching fish on a fly rod.
And in this case, some fishing trips might be just the lifeline the area needs.
Spencer Durrant has worked in fly fishing media for over a decade. He's had bylines in Field & Stream, Gray's Sporting Journal, MidCurrent, Hatch Magazine, and numerous other publications. He's also the host of the weekly podcast Untangled: Fly Fishing for Everyone. Spencer lives in Wyoming with his wife and two papillons.
