Story by Maya Waid
Photos by Chrissy Wang
MARION, North Carolina — At 9 a.m., water started seeping into the house from all sides. Charlie Gowan, his wife, Pat, and their 15-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, scrambled to clean up the damage, move furniture, and lay out beach towels.
Then, they watched in disbelief as one of their cars was swept away by floodwaters. The water rose higher against the glass door, and they heard the walls begin to crack. They had to get out.
Charlie, a former University of South Carolina offensive lineman, went first, squeezing through the back window despite his 6-foot-4 frame. Elizabeth followed, clutching a bucket holding their two cats.
Pat was the last to escape. As she stepped outside, her short rain boots filled with water, causing her to slip and slide down the side of the house. She clung to a pipe unearthed by the rain.
Even though she was 30 feet away from hitting a main channel of roaring water and being washed away, she was more annoyed that she slipped than she was worried about the danger.
Charlie rushed over to pull her out of the water, and the Gowans scrambled across the road to higher ground.
There, they huddled in the pouring rain for an hour as wind whipped around them and trees crashed to the ground.
From that vantage point, they watched as their house collapsed and their belongings were swept into the rushing river that floodwaters had formed across the property. Their home and family business, Triple C Campground, were gone.
The three of them sat in silence to take it all in, nothing could explain this.
“I had a really good cry, and then I said, ‘Y’all, we’re alive,’” Pat said.
***
Charlie and Pat Gowan met in Columbia, S.C., and were set up by mutual friends. Despite being cautioned to stay away from football players, Pat fell in love with Charlie, and the two got married in 1999.
In 2004, the couple moved to Marion to take over Charlie’s family business, Triple C Campground. The business had been a staple of the Mount Mitchell community since 1975, when it was founded by Charlie’s parents and named for him and his brothers, Carson and Clay.
“Growing up on the campground was a lot of fun,” Charlie said. “As a kid, you have the creek and the woods and stuff so you can run around and play, and it was a lot with my brothers.”
The Gowans welcomed their first child, Gwen, in 2003, followed by their son, Joseph, two years later.
When the floodwaters hit, Gwen was 200 miles away, starting her senior year at UNC. Since losing her home, she cherishes the memories of growing up on the campgrounds even more.
“Looking back, it was a blessing to be able to just be in the moment,” Gwen said. “No Wi-Fi, no cell service — just hanging out. Some campers would bring their grandkids in the summer so we would all go down to the swimming hole together and swim in the summer.”
Like many businesses in the mountain community, Triple C Campground fostered close relationships through the years. When Charlie’s parents ran it, they often invited campers into their home for dinner and got to know them and their stories.
After Charlie and Pat moved back to Marion to help run the campground, Pat saw that it was more than just a business — it was a family.
Tucked high in the mountains near Lake Tahoma, the site is shaded by trees and sits next to a creek and swimming hole. The cooler mountain air — nearly 10 degrees lower than in Marion proper — offers the perfect retreat from daily life.
The Gowans oversee nearly 100 campsites, with campers free to come and go as they please. At any given time, it’s hard to know exactly how many people are staying on the property.
The Gowans never needed a website or advertising to attract visitors. Their reputation kept the campsites in demand.
“We’ve been around so long, and word of mouth travels,” Charlie said. “If I had a site come open, the campers knew somebody that wanted to come in and they would call them and tell them to come see me, so I didn’t have to do any advertising on the web.”
***
On Sept. 25, Tropical Storm Helene developed into a Category 1 hurricane in the Caribbean Sea. In less than a day, it had transformed into a Category 4 hurricane before making landfall in Florida.
As it traveled up the coast and wreaked havoc in Florida and Georgia, Helene left behind a trail of destruction and 224 fatalities as of Oct. 24. The Gowans hadn’t been concerned about Helene, which made landfall nearly 700 miles away from their home.
Once it started to move inland, meteorologists issued warnings of heavy rain and possible flooding, but few anticipated the storm’s severity in the mountainous regions of North Carolina.
Rivers rose beyond their banks, creating flash floods that caught many residents off guard. Locals had assumed the mountains would shield them from the worst effects, but the continuous downpour proved otherwise.
On Sept. 27, several campers were staying on the Gowans’ property. Everyone was able to move to higher ground across the road, and no one was injured in the flood.
After the rain stopped on Friday afternoon, the Gowans walked through the neighborhood, checking on neighbors and assessing the damage.
Trees lay scattered across the road, broken glass from shattered tables caught in the mud, and home decor lay against the trunks of fallen trees. Their cars were trapped beneath what remained of the roof of a former campsite, and the remnants of their home had been dislodged from its foundation.
“When all this is happening, you’re not really scared,” Charlie said. “You’re just doing what you need to do. Then once you sit down, you’re like, ‘oh, what’d we just do?’”
For the rest of the day, Charlie and a resident known as “Hillbilly” worked to clear the roads. Using Hillbilly’s chainsaw, they cut trees wide enough to allow a truck to pass, while Charlie moved the logs off the road.
Every 100 yards, they would stop to cut four or five more trees. Despite working until dusk, they managed to only clear about two miles of road.
That evening, Hillbilly cooked hot dogs using his backup generator. With no cell service, the Gowans had no way to contact their children Gwen in Chapel Hill and Joseph in school at Appalachian State.
Pat felt helpless and was unsure of what she could do in the moment. However, Elizabeth was making the most of their situation. She found their fridge in the rubble and successfully retrieved her leftover Crumbl cookie from the day before.
All they could do was be fully present with others who were trapped on the mountain.
***
In Chapel Hill, Gwen was worried about her parents. She knew there was supposed to be a lot of rain, but she had no idea about the extent of the damage.
All day, she saw photos and videos of Marion and the campground on Facebook. The posts were anything but reassuring — some even claimed that Triple C was a total loss.
Gwen kept checking Snapchat, hoping her younger sister’s activity status would update. She called everyone she knew, asking for information, and even tried the camp’s landline as a last resort, but it didn’t ring.
Late Friday night, she finally heard from her mom after 30 hours of no communication. While Pat didn’t want to share too many details about the house over the phone, she offered Gwen an encouraging message.
“My mom called me and was like, ‘Gwen, this was terrible, but we have hope,’” Gwen said. “She was like, ‘we’re not just looking ahead at darkness, there’s light. At the end of this, people are going to help us. There is hope. We’re not alone.’”
***
Every day since the storm, Gwen and Joseph have checked in with each other by phone.
Even though both of them wanted to rush home to help, local authorities wanted to limit the number of people going up into the mountain so they could conduct a thorough search and rescue effort.
On Saturday, the Gowan family was finally able to get down the mountain. They temporarily moved in with close family friends, the local sheriff, and his wife and daughter.
The next day, Charlie returned to the campground to survey the damage alone, wanting to process it all himself.
Members of their church have offered emotional, financial, and spiritual support to the Gowans in the wake of the hurricane — a gesture that means everything to the family.
“[Religion] has to be the backbone of your existence,” Charlie said. “If it’s not, it really would be a sad place, because you have no hope. It just kind of builds the foundation that you live off of and if you have that foundation, then nothing can shake you, nothing can rock your world.”
On Monday, Gwen and several friends loaded her car with cases of water, her family’s favorite snacks, cat food, clothes, and new shoes for her family.
“I’ve really never hugged them that long in my life,” Gwen said. “I had been so focused on getting donations and cases of water. Once I saw them, I was like who cares about the house or the campground because they’re okay.”
***
After the hurricane, pieces of the Gowan family’s life are scattered throughout the 25-acre property.
Pat has discovered fragments of her blue bottle collection, which had been tucked away in storage for years, hidden under porches and wedged between trees nearly 1,000 feet from where the house once stood.
Living room furniture has been propped vertically against trees, and cherished photos lie torn and soiled in the debris
While some items were broken or went missing, others survived. Old T-shirts, Joseph’s senior-year fishing poster, a special shell necklace Pat’s mother gave her, and decorative plates were all washed in different directions by the flood.
Everything buried in the mud and under rocks represents significant parts of their lives — including Pat’s engagement ring, which she didn’t have the chance to put on the morning of the hurricane.
***
In Marion, the degree of hurricane destruction varied significantly. In some neighborhoods, trees toppled onto power lines, and floodwaters swept away homes, leaving behind a trail of devastation.
Yet, in other areas, homes and businesses appeared almost untouched, with residents experiencing only brief interruptions to their Wi-Fi and power.
Both the local and outside communities have responded in significant ways to the devastation Helene left behind. FEMA has committed to staying and helping rebuild the community for three to five years, and their church, Grace Community, has come together to support the Gowans.
For Pat, who is usually the one assisting others, accepting her new reality has been particularly challenging.
“I’m having a hard time accepting help,” Pat said. “I’m used to helping people, doing for people, and it’s just hard, but we don’t have a choice.”
Seeing the community come together and check on one another in the aftermath of Helene has made Charlie even prouder to be from Marion.
On Oct. 9, 12 days after the flood, Elizabeth returned to high school in an effort to regain some sense of normalcy, while Gwen raised more than $25,000 through a Go Fund Me she organized online.
Triple C was Charlie and Pat’s retirement plan, and with next year slated to be its 50th anniversary, the hurricane has forced them to make major decisions sooner than expected.
In recent weeks, the Gowans have been contacted by longtime campers asking how they can help restore the campground to its former state after Hurricane Helene.
Due to these offers of assistance, the Gowan’s have decided to restore Triple C and hope to have it operational within the next three years.
“We’re just going to try it on our own, and we have a lot of people offering labor and help,” Pat said. “We’re just going to take it very slowly, not open the entire campground, but just start on just the least damaged part, and just see.”
Less than a month after the hurricane, Duke Power restored electricity to parts of Mount Mitchell — an outcome the Gowans initially thought wouldn’t happen until December. They view this as an encouraging sign for moving forward with the rebuild.
In the meantime, the Gowans have found a temporary place to live and will continue to take it day by day and lean on each other even more for the foreseeable future.
“Everybody’s close, in a small town everyone knows everybody,” Charlie said. “It doesn’t matter anybody’s race or political party; everybody’s friends, and we all take care of each other, so that’s what we will do.”
