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History Professor John Martin Reflects on Post-Helene Cleanup Efforts

Like everyone else, ���˲ؾ���History Instructor John Martin thought about leaving town when Helene hit and his home lost power and water. But the 38-year-old, who grew up in Shelby on Lake Lure, couldn’t bring himself to leave town. He was reading a sci-fi book by Jason Pargin about an empire struggling to bounce back after a series of crimes. One line about the idea of trading information for action struck him.

“I remembered during COVID, the illusion of control when we were looking online every day to check the numbers,” he said. “Now I was looking online to check [hurricane] statistics. I wondered what I could do to physically help.”

Having long volunteered in the area doing river cleanup with the nonprofit Asheville GreenWorks, Martin couldn’t sit still. The week after the hurricane, after hearing about River Arts cleanup efforts, he stopped at Lowes to pick up a shovel, gloves, and an ax and drove to Riverview Station, the brick building on Lyman Street that was home to Tyger Tyger Gallery, among many others. There he found about 40 other people, artists, and other Ashevillians who, like him had shown up to help.

The building had experienced 27-foot floods and its first and second floors had both been devastated. For the next three days from 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., Martin worked his way through art studios, digging out artwork and laying it outside in the sun. Entering each individual gallery required pushing through waste-high mud that blocked the doors. Inside, there was another ten feet of mud waiting.

“There were guys in HazMats and guys in shorts working side by side,” he said. Clad only in pants, rubber boots, and a t-shirt, Martin said he was lucky he didn’t get sick. The smell of the mud, he joked, was strangely familiar. Having grown up on a farm he recognized the smell of cow poop, which may have washed down the river from farms upstream. Unfortunately, there was no warm shower at the end of the day for him to wash off. To scrub off head-to-toe muck, Martin filled a five-gallon bucket with pool water from his complex and washed as best he could.

Working in the dark galleries with only a small camping light to guide him had dangers of its own. Martin recalls one day when he’d been unwittingly working directly beneath a 400-pound steel table perched overhead in an exposed beam.

“The storm had jammed it in the rafters, “he said. “Nobody had even noticed it. Someone got a stick and poked at it and it crashed to the ground.”

Though Martin is currently teaching six online courses, he has not halted his cleanup efforts. He points out that the work he’s doing doesn’t feel much different than the work he did before the hurricane. Whereas with GreenWorks he was in the river itself on a kayak, pulling out “heritage trash” like old tires, toys, and street signs, now he is busy on land picking up all the hurricane refuse the river has coughed up.

“Everything we’ve pulled out of the river has washed back into the river,” he said.

A historian at heart, Martin points out the River Arts District’s long and rich history, which includes the flood of 1916 that destroyed many factories at that time. He is hopeful the city’s treasured district will bounce back in the months to come. “We are through the demolition stage and now are moving onto the construction phase,” he said.

In addition to RAD, Martin has worked to clean up other areas of the city including Carrier and French Broad Parks, both places in which he enjoys regularly running. He said that he and fellow members of the Asheville Running Group were the first to arrive at these parks, which were technically closed after the hurricane, to chainsaw fallen trees.

“Though it was technically illegal, people working at the parks would come by and see and let us keep working,” he said.

What has he gotten from his post-hurricane cleanup experience? A self-confessed lover of water, Martin said he’s enjoyed being part of a river-focused relief effort. As a runner who enjoys “fitness nonsense,” he has also relished the physical challenge. And, harkening back to that sci-fi book, he’s also no doubt enjoying being a part of a lasting change, not just sitting back and waiting for it to happen.

“The thing about disasters,” he said, “You see the worst the city has been through and you also see the people who come together to do the best they’ve ever done.”