Reporter’s notebook: What it’s like witnessing the aftermath of flooding in East Tennessee

Ryan Van Velzer: Both you and I have spent time reporting on floods, and it’s because of that experience and our desire to help people in the wake of Helene that we sent you out to work with a team over WUOT, a partner station of ours in Knoxville, Tennessee. How are they doing?

Justin Hicks: Well, first off, those guys, they’re amazing. Everyone from the manager there at the station to the interns. They know that their listening area is really living through something historic right now.

Some of those guys, they’re putting in 12 hour days just trying to get the best information from folks onto their airwaves. And they were still driving out and talking to people who, of course, are in shock right after these disasters. That’s how it goes. I mean, it’s really just showing the power of public radio in these disasters, just to get information out to people as quick as possible.

Van Velzer: I really appreciate you kind of pulling back the veil a little bit on what we do as reporters each and every day, especially in these difficult situations. Tell me a little bit more about what you did with the reporters at WUOT and what it was like reporting in East Tennessee.

Hicks: I rode along with these two reporters, Pierce Gentry and Jacqui Sieber doing amazing work. We made our way out to Elizabethton, Tennessee, and along the way, you know, there’s so much going on. There’s debris everywhere, there’s bridges washed out… and you know, as journalists, you really want to stop and capture all of that. So it can really be overwhelming, but sometimes you just have to focus, right?

WUOT reporters Pierce Gentry and Jacqui Sieber interview Elizabethton, Tennessee spokesperson Ivan Sanders outside the county emergency operations center.

At one point, though, we did actually get a little distracted, and in a good way, right? There was someone who was on the side of the road staring at this car that was clearly destroyed. I don’t know if it was from the flood or wreck or what, but it seemed very recent, and they’re standing next to the car, and so we thought we should stop and help them out. And of course, we pulled over really, really quickly and actually got our own car stuck, and we had to get out and sort of push the car out.

And at that point too, the person who was sitting next to the car we saw got picked up by somebody else. So it was a moot point, but it all just goes to show: you really have to focus, and you also have to remember that you can’t help anyone else if you’re not being safe yourself.

Van Velzer: Both you and I have reported on disasters…the flip side of those tragedies is that after these disasters, there are also beautiful moments that come out of them, showing the best of humanity, people helping each other. Did you see any moments like that out there?

Hicks: Oh, tons, tons. There’s one that sticks out in my mind. I was in this little town called Hartford. It’s right on the Pigeon River, and it’s full of these sort of, you know, tourist rafting adventure kind of places, the outposts and all these businesses, they were swarmed with volunteers who were shoveling mud and just mucking everything out, gutting buildings to the studs.

Off in the distance, I noticed this guy named Thomas Fraser — who’s actually a journalist himself, by the way, he works for this environmental focused outlet from Knoxville called Hellbender press.

homas Fraser drapes an American flag over a fence clogged with flood debris.

I noticed Fraser off in the distance, he was draping this American flag on a fence, this wooden fence that had been clogged with sticks and logs and all sorts of debris. And I just watched as he sort of paused and leaned over this flag for a moment. I didn’t want to interrupt, but afterwards, I went and talked to him, and he definitely started to get choked up.

“I think I had some half baked flag pole at home and it didn’t work so I put it to the side,” Fraser said. “So on my way out of my house I saw this flag that I’d been meaning to do something with. Burn it whatever. But I figured if ever there is a time to pull together as one, this is it. And as you can see it’s going to be a long road to recovery.”

Van Velzer: That reminds me of a photo that you took while you were out there that I found to be really powerful. What you see is two women holding each other lying on the ground, kind of surrounded by cleaning equipment. It looks like it’s at the entrance of a business. What can you tell me about that photo?

Hicks: That was in the same town, actually inside of the whitewater rafting businesses. I snapped this photo because the light that was coming in just illuminated them perfectly in this dark setting — a literally and figuratively dark setting. It was Raea Hillebrant, and she was hugging Jodie Hall.

Raea Hillebrant crouches to hug Jodie Hall as they work together to gut damaged floors and walls out of a whitewater rafting business in Hartford, Tennessee.

I talked to Jodie afterwards. She said she was okay and her business, an ice cream truck, was saved too. But she said that she was on the phone with one of her grandchildren during the flood and she just heard her grandchild keep saying ‘Meemaw, you know, the water is getting higher and higher.’ They got out safely, but they lost everything.

Van Velzer: You’re from North Carolina and you spent a lot of time living in Boone, North Carolina – which you didn’t even have a chance to get to amid all of your coverage out there. How does it feel for you, seeing all of that destruction in East Tennessee and western North Carolina?

Hicks: It’s really hard. As journalists, a lot of times we sort of distance ourselves, I think, from situations. You know, we have a camera lens or a microphone between us and what’s happening. And you kind of have that sort of thought in your head where you’re thinking, ‘I have a job to do.’ The job is what stands between you and maybe breaking down.

Seeing areas that I have driven through a million times and then seeing them really hurting — it’s really, really hard.

Van Velzer: It’s the quiet moments that are often the toughest after, after you get out of those kinds of scenes. Thanks so much for taking the time to share those insights with us and take us behind the scenes. Thanks, Justin.

Hicks: Yeah of course, it’s important for people to see.