Racing to Rebuild

Old Fort Strong will help rebuild homes lost in Helene. 

On the morning that Hurricane Helene broke, Jason McDougald was alone and stranded, wearing a helmet and a PFD.  

Jason is the director of Camp Grier in Old Fort and he had spent the night at camp. His wife, who had just had surgery, stayed elsewhere. He says, “That morning, I was sitting on the couch without power watching it rain and a tree comes right through the house. It was crazy loud. It pushed down all the sheetrock from the ceiling and it just started raining in the house.” 

For shelter, he sat in his truck with a helmet on. Behind the house, on the gravel road leading uphill into camp, the bridges were underwater. In front of the house, too, water was over the road and rising fast. The clear, shallow Mill Creek that should have been well away from the house—across the road, a field, and the railroad tracks—was now wide as a lake and lapping at the carport. 

Jason figured he needed to get uphill, walking over the flooded bridges, so he put on his PFD.

Then, the water went down as quickly as it rose. Jason thinks a possible reason that the water rose so fast is that a debris dam had formed at a bridge and backed up the flow into a temporary lake. Then, when the debris dam gave way, a lake’s worth of water rushed toward Old Fort.   

After the rain stopped, Jason walked into town with some friends and neighbors. “It’s hard to describe how apocalyptic it was,” he says. There was a strong smell of natural gas from a gas leak. There was a foot or two of mud throughout the whole town. He says, “There were people standing on the street in housecoats with no shoes on.”   

Suddenly, they were homeless. 

Food, Showers, and Laundry

After the storm, Camp Grier had no power, the gravel road had washed out at the bridges, trees were down everywhere, and the director’s house was ruined. 

Still, Jason says, “When I saw how bad Old Fort was, coming back into camp I thought, ‘We did pretty well.’ Our road was in bad shape, but we had all our buildings, besides the house. We had a huge water tank. We had a commercial kitchen and propane for the stoves. We had food for three hundred people because of an event that was cancelled. We felt that we were very resource-high in terms of food, fuel, and water.”   

The Camp Grier staff—still reeling from blows the storm had landed in their own lives—began to turn the camp into a hub of relief for their community. Neighbors and friends stepped up to help. In a single day, they raised funds for a generator that could power the whole camp. People came with chainsaws to clear trees. They rebuilt the gravel road with an excavator.  

After a few days, Camp Grier started to feed people. They propped up a spray-painted sign in town that read:  

Camp Grier
<–1.5 miles
Hot Shower
Laundry
Meals 10-2 and 4-7
Free 

In October alone, the camp staff and volunteers served around 4,500 meals and provided about 2,350 showers and 1,350 loads of laundry. The camp also became a center for supplies like bottled water, food, and diapers.  

But early on, Jason and others started to think beyond those immediate needs. In the small town of Old Fort alone, over 50 homes were badly damaged or destroyed. And because the flood had gone so far beyond what anyone imagined was possible, most people didn’t have flood insurance. 

So how could they rebuild? 

Backyard Ultra

Camp Grier is more than a camp. It is a summer camp with a lake and rustic cabins on the edge of Pisgah National Forest. But it’s also a nonprofit that encompasses a number of bold initiatives. One is the G5 Trail Collective, which is creating over 40 miles of new trails in the national forest. Camp Grier also started the Worx Project, which provides vocational education for Buncombe County public schools. Now, Camp Grier is partnering with Conserving Carolina to create the Fairview Community Forest that will surround the Worx Project campus and offer public hiking and biking trails. In addition, Camp Grier owns Tanawha Adventures, which organizes trail running races, and Pisgah Productions, which organizes mountain bike races. 

For example, with G5, he saw that the national forest could be more of an asset to Old Fort if the area had more trails. “I think it’s just basic community values. You want to see your town be healthier and more vibrant.”   

Brandon Thrower, who runs Tanawa Adventures, came over to camp after the storm to clear trees and they started brainstorming about a race as a fundraiser to rebuild homes. But where would anyone bike or ride? Most of the trails were impassable and the national forest was shut down.  

It was Brandon’s friend Sally McRae, a pro runner in California, who suggested a backyard ultra. You take the trails that you’ve got and have people do laps for six, twelve, or even 24 hours.  

Eric Wever, who runs Pisgah Productions, loved that idea. Twenty-four hour races used to be popular until pro athletes took them to extremes. “At the pro level it’s dangerous,” Eric says, “but on the grassroots level, it is so much fun. The weirdness that happens is just extraordinary—the fantastic things that go on, in the racers’ minds and in reality.” 

Quickly, they put an event together—the Old Fort Strong Endurance Festival, scheduled for Dec. 7-8. There would be one course for runners and one for bikers—plus music and pro athletes like Sally as guest speakers. Eric predicted it would go one of two ways: no one would want to do it, or everyone would.  

In less than a week, the 400 slots filled up.

A Way to Do Something

Every participant has pledged to raise at least $1,500 for the Old Fort Strong Fund, which will help people without flood insurance rebuild their homes and businesses. The overall goal for the event is to raise $2 million.   

Trail runner Aimee Trepanier from Greenville signed up after she was in Damascus, VA, for a race and witnessed flooding from Helene that devastated the town. She says, “This isn’t about running. It’s about rallying around those who’ve lost so much and showing up with every ounce of support I can offer.’ 

Drew Scoggin is a trail runner from Charlotte who spent every summer of his youth at Camp Grier as a camper, counselor, and lifeguard. He’ll be running the 24-hour race on his 40th birthday. He says, “I can’t think of a better way to celebrate my birthday than by running in the woods I know, raising money for a community I was part of for so much of my life.” 

The current top fundraiser is Ryan Thompson, a runner who has raised $13,595 toward his $15,000 goal. A police officer in eastern North Carolina, Ryan was deployed to Hendersonville as a first responder after Helene. His wife grew up near Old Fort and they hold the community close to their hearts. He says his goal is to “raise as much awareness and money as possible for the Old Fort community.” 

To help, you can donate in support of a specific athlete or to the overall fundraiser on the race website. 

Article by Rose Lane.