BLACK MOUNTAIN, N.C. (WRAL) – For more than 40 years, Kathy Poole and her husband, Richard Poole, have lived in their Black Mountain home in North Carolina.
The couple is now trying to rebuild their home after it was damaged in Hurricane Helene.
Making things even more challenging is that Kathy Poole, who is battling cancer, hasn’t received the necessary chemotherapy treatments since the storm hit.
Her adrenaline held the door shut at their home, fending off rushing floodwaters in the home they’ve loved for the past four decades.
“I held my foot like that, my knee right there and my head there,” Kathy Poole said, demonstrating how she pressed against the door.
“She really fought it. I’m proud of her,” Richard Poole said.
“That was why I was put on this earth. My husband would have drowned if I hadn’t been here that night,” Kathy Poole said.
Black Creek raged during Helene, striking yards away. Scars remind Richard Poole of that brawl.
“You can see how beat up my legs are. That’s the debris underneath the water rushing,” he said. “I mean, like 10 or 15 miles an hour and hit me and it just kept knocking me down and out.”
But it didn’t knock him out. They won that fight.
“Luckily, I was, you know, was able to get back up and I didn’t drown in my own backyard,” Richard Poole said.
Behind the tears, he knows this isn’t their only battle.
“Her and her daughter and her brother all had cancer at the same time,” Richard Poole said. “And we lost her daughter and lost her brother, but she’s still here. She’s tough.”
“Lord left me here for a reason, to help,” Kathy Poole said.
The strength of that storm can be seen by the damage left behind. Part of the road collapsed by the force of that floodwater, and the water tried to pull a home from its place.
Richard Poole said that many of his neighbors have left seeking shelter in safer places, but he said that they have nowhere to go.
“Mainly what they needed for the moment was packing up things. They didn’t have boxes. So we got boxes and totes and brought those,” said Brooke Helms of the North Carolina Baptist Society.
Meanwhile, damaged water lines make water scarce, and mold makes their home unsafe.
“Just not sure I’m going to be here long enough to see it get fixed back,” Kathy Poole said.
One thing’s for sure, she’ll never stop fighting.
“I don’t know how we’re gonna get through this, but somehow we will,” Kathy Poole said.
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