In Asheville after the storm, the waiting is the hardest part

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Four days after Hurricane Helene ravaged this community, there are lines for groceries, lines for gas, lines to get into shelters and lines at charging stations to juice up cellphones.

Outside the Mellow Mushroom, there was a long line of people Tuesday waiting for something that has also been hard to come by — pizza.

Gerry Mahon, who owns the popular pizzeria on Broadway Street, said he has given out $5,000 worth of pizza to his fellow storm survivors.

“This is for them, knowing what they have been through,” Mahon said. “I mean, we’re going to do this for as long as we can, because these people, so many of them, have seen things that you and I should never wish to see in our lives, ever, and they’ll carry that from here to the end. So that’s why we do this.”

Hurricane Helene killed more than 150 people throughout the Southeast after it made landfall in Florida on Thursday as a Category 4 storm. Dozens were killed in flood-stricken North Carolina, where entire communities in the western part of the state are underwater.

In Buncombe County, which includes Asheville, at least 57 people were killed.

After what so many of them have been through, residents said they were grateful for Mahon’s generosity.

“It’s good,” a delighted Charity Padilla, of Asheville, said after she secured one of the precious pies. “I can eat pizza. It’s been days since I’ve had hot food.”

Padilla said she had to wait 30 minutes, but that was nothing compared to what she has had to endure over the past few days.

“I wish it would just come back to how it was before, when we weren’t struggling for food, for water,” she said.

Alyse Goodman and Sean Morrison, who live in Asheville’s Hillcrest neighborhood, said they waited about an hour for a pizza, “but it was worth it.”

They were downtown “looking for food, and a car with three girls in it stopped and gave us a couple knickknacks and pointed us in this direction,” Goodman said.

She said what the Mellow Mushroom is doing for the city is “phenomenal.”

“I think it’s amazing,” said Goodman, adding that she and Morrison have no water and electricity at home and only sporadic cell service.

So to be able to chow down on a hot pizza gives them “a sense of normalcy and hope,” she said.

Another resident, Jeanisha Williams, said she was hanging out at the YMCA downtown and trying to gain access to the weak Wi-Fi when she heard there was pizza to be had.

“It makes things feel a little bit normal,” Williams said. “We’ve just been snacking on whatever we can, not really having a full meal. Pizza kind of gives you that normalcy or makes it feel that way.”

Williams said she has gotten used to all the waiting. She waited an hour in line to buy groceries, a cooler to store supplies and some insulated bags.

“None of us were truly prepared for this,” she said. “In my 32 years of living in Asheville, this has never happened. We’ve had storms, but never to this magnitude.”

But she said the community “is going to come together and do what we have to do to feed everyone, keep everyone sheltered.”

“That’s all I have to say,” she added. “I’m Christian, so everybody keep your praises and thank God for being alive.”

Andrez Vives, who also lives in Asheville, said he has seen residents “coming together, pulling real tight, becoming more open-minded and open-hearted to people’s situations.”

At the back of the line, which wrapped around the building where the Mellow Mushroom is located, resident Brianna Lee said she hoped there would be some pizza left when she got inside.

“I have three kids, and they’re getting pretty hungry,” Lee said. “We were able to go into Harris Teeter [a grocery story] today, get a few supplies, but it’s still very limited. We want a warm meal.”

Since the storm hit, other eateries in Asheville have been feeding people with whatever food they have left as the state races to repair and reopen storm-damaged mountain roads to enable shipments of food and fuel to start flowing into western North Carolina.

But nothing has been more precious than drinking water. A long line of cars queued up Tuesday at a drive-thru water distribution center at Asheville Middle School.

Sala Menaya-Merritt, who works for the city, said officials thought they were going to get just three truckloads of water but were delighted to discover they were getting six. She said most of the volunteers passing the water out were storm survivors like her.

“This is where I live, this is my community, and I’m going to do whatever I can to make it work and make it happen,” Menaya-Merritt said.

Koral Alexander, who lives near Pisgah National Forest outside Asheville, said she was in town watching a friend’s dog when the storm hit. Alexander, stranded in the city because the roads back to her home are blocked by downed power lines, said she volunteered to help pass out water.

“I just felt like that was the right thing to do, to help out and do what I can,” Alexander said.