Helene: A deadly, destructive hurricane … and wedding crasher (photos)

Here’s the lede of my Oct. 11 column in  The Sun: The wedding had been planned for the 28th day of September at Old Sherrill’s Inn, about 12 miles outside Asheville, in the mountains of North Carolina. Iris Spik and Chris Chu had invited 94 relatives and friends to celebrate their marriage. Guests came from several states, including Maryland, renting hotel rooms and houses for an early-autumn weekend in the Appalachians. It all lined up pretty well – until an uninvited guest arrived, a wedding crasher named Helene. 

There’s a lot to this story: What the family and friends of Iris and Chris faced when Hurricane Helene blasted through the southern Appalachians, causing massive floods in the ravines around Asheville. A cousin of Iris from Houston, Willie Peery, saw a landslide wash his rental car into a river and take the ground beneath the house he rented for his family. Willie, his wife and their two children, plus his sister, had to hike two miles to the volunteer fire department in Bat Cave, N.C. to be airlifted out of the area by helicopter. 

Meanwhile, another cousin – Luke Malone, of Baltimore and Cosima ristorante – had to hunt up wood to build a ramp to get his family across a bridge that had suffered damage in the flooding in Fairview, N.C. Fortunately, all the wedding guests managed to evacuate the area safely. The wedding, of course, did not happen as planned. But Chris and Iris still managed to get married. See my column. If you don’t have a Sun subscription, here’s the link to a gift read.

PHOTOS courtesy of Willie Peery and Luke Malone