On Thursday, Sept. 26, John Noce was in Graham County, just above Cherokee, on the southwestern tip of North Carolina, the part that pokes into Tennessee.
Noce had been helping the county's small local elections office prepare for the start of in-person, early voting, which was just a couple of weeks away. Noce pitched in to set up laptops and electronic poll books to check in voters.
As a Field Specialist for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, Noce covers the state's 17 westernmost counties, the ones hit hardest by Helene, the tropical storm that devastated this part of the state.
Driving back to his home base in West Asheville, which would suffer heavy flooding from Helene, Noce said the rain started to fall more heavily. But it wasn't until the Saturday after the massive storm plowed through that the gravity of its impact started to dawn on him.
"No radio, no TV, no Internet, cell service was basically gone," he recalled.
Without power, Noce's primary concern was getting his wife and stepdaughter to safety.
"My stepdaughter is type 1 diabetic, so it was getting real challenging trying to keep her pump charged, her insulin cold," Noce said.
Once I-26 opened up, Noce's wife and stepdaughter were able to leave West Asheville and go to family in Virginia.
But Noce had to stay and try to start assessing damage to elections operations in his area. And despite personal challenges brought on by Helene, Noce said local elections officials have worked tirelessly to ensure voters in western North Carolina can cast ballots in-person during the early voting period and on Election Day.
"I've got a director that — I don't know that he would want me to mention him by name, but I mean, he lost everything," Noce said. "He lost his house, his workshop, his barn, just everything."
Noce fought back strong emotions as he marveled at his local colleagues' dedication to their work.
"To where you just are able to put all your personal stuff and focus on the bigger picture," he said, his voice catching. "That's admirable."
Noce was my guide on a tour through some of the affected areas in western North Carolina.
Getting off the highway and driving into towns like Old Fort, in McDowell County, Helene's impact became clear.
Mounds of drying mud and splintered wood piled high along the road, the roof of a crushed house at ground level sitting at a slant on top of what used to be the structure's walls.
"Who could ever have imagined that it would be like this?" wondered McDowell County's elections director, Kim Welborn.
Welborn has been the county elections director for 29-and-a -half years. She said she's planning on retiring in April. But right now, her focus is on reassuring McDowell County voters.
"Just want them to know that we're here for them and there's lots of ways that we can help them," she said.
Welborn was standing outside the Old Fort Depot, which was supposed to be one of McDowell's two early voting sites. But flooding from the Catawba River temporary knocked out power, closed roads and made bridges into the town less navigable, so the local elections board decided there should just be one site at the more readily accessible elections office about nine miles away, in Marion.
Welborn said she believed it would be easier for voters in and around Old Fort to drive down the interstate a couple of exits to the elections office in Marion.
"We've also got the McDowell County Transit set up to provide rides for anyone that calls and wants a ride to the polls during early voting and, or Election Day," Welborn added.
Elections officials in the 25-county-wide disaster area managed to set up 76 early voting sites, only four fewer than originally planned. And emergency relief legislation allows displaced voters to drop off their absentee ballots at any early voting site in the state.
From McDowell County, John Noce and I drove to Clyde, in Haywood County. Haywood's three early voting sites survived the storm. But one of its Election Day precincts, the Fire Department, was washed out by flooding from the Pigeon River.
Next door to the flooded firehouse, the Clyde Central United Methodist Church has been providing meals to evacuees and emergency responders since the start of the storm.
"As the river was coming across Carolina Boulevard, some people from up the hill, they started to be able to come down and they were bringing us some food and supplies and, quite honestly, the food has never stopped coming in," recalled Pastor Linda-Arlene Hoxit.
I asked Hoxit whether she thought voting just might not be a high enough priority for people struggling to recover. She said she doesn't think so because "voting is a critically important process."
"And certainly, as we try to return to normalcy, that's part of normal," she added.
In the church kitchen, Denise Teague was helping prepare food for storm victims. She talked with me as she placed donated ground beef into a baking pan to make shepherd's pie.
"We try to get lots of good protein in," Teague said. "And then we've had some local farms that have brought in produce. We have fresh corn on the cob tonight."
Teague is a Waynesville resident and has been volunteering at the church since the Sunday after the storm.
Teague said she thinks it's completely understandable that some people might be too beleaguered by the storm to think about voting. But for her, she said, it's too important.
"I think that it's what allows us to remain a free country," she said.
Teague said she, her 20-year-old daughter, and her daughter's friend plan on going together to an early voting site on Friday.
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