The day after Hurricane Helene hit our region, Buncombe County’s assistant emergency services director called the devastation “biblical.” The phrase has been repeated by other officials and quoted widely in the media. While it’s understandable that a religious reference would resonate in a place that remains deeply impacted by Christianity, the phrase serves more to conceal than illuminate.
A biblical event is divine, a catastrophic exercise of power over humanity, an act of punishment. Appalachia’s “biblical” destruction echos the US Army Corps of Engineers declaration that Hurricane Katrina—which killed 1,392 people, most of them Black and working class—was an “Act of God.” When people with power attribute the suffering of those without power to God, they’re concealing culpability.
The death and destruction in Buncombe County is a direct result of capitalism, and environmental extractivism—a logical extension of colonialism and Appalachia’s two hundred year status as a national sacrifice zone.
One hundred thousand people in Asheville are not lacking water because of God’s wrath.
We’re without water because corporations and the political class have refused to take action on climate change. We’re without water because the city has systematically under-invested in infrastructure, while pumping money into tourism, for five decades. Water problems didn’t start with Helene, they’ve been a regular fact of life in Asheville for years.
Thousands of people in Buncombe County are not without food because of God’s wrath.
We’re without food because hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland in WNC have been converted into overpriced subdivisions. We’re without food because police departments prioritized protecting grocery stores from looters over wellness checks, while 600+ community members were missing.
Natural disasters bring people together, they bring out our best instincts towards altruism, cooperation, and creativity—they should also make us furious. Our suffering is not biblical, it’s distinctively modern, and these leaders are responsible for it.
(Photo credit: Daniel Barlow)
