‘Heartbreaking’ landslides reshape Cruso, NC, landscape, leaving destruction and doubt

Arlen Heatherly walked up the mountainside, using a walking stick to pick his way through mud and boulders and uprooted trees.

This land, in the unincorporated community of Cruso, North Carolina, had been in his family for 65 years. This past week it was the site of one of the 326 landslides triggered by Tropical Storm Helene that had been detected by the U.S. Geological Survey as of late Saturday. Of those, 231 had impacted homes or infrastructure like roads.

The Cruso landslide carved a 150-foot swath through what had been forest. Full-grown trees were downed and caked in mud as the side of the mountain flowed downhill. Michael Heatherly, Arlen’s son, estimated that the slide had started near the top of the mountain, and had run all the way to the bottom.

“It’s just devastating,” Michael Heatherly said.

As Arlen stood near a huge downed tree, the home he’d grown up in was downhill. Now owned by a Raleigh family, it was partially ringed by a 2-foot-deep layer of mud still settling from squishy to a dry cake.

Mud nearly reached the seat of a rocking chair on the back porch. As the landslide slammed against the building, some of the mud had splattered across its yellow paint. Still, there wasn’t any obvious structural damage.

Uphill from where Arlen stood was largely ruins. An aging silo and barn had been wiped out, crumpled roofs and building materials and sheet metals lying where the mud had taken them.

Saturday, a small mountain stream gurgled down the middle of that path, its gentleness as it flowed through a ravine carved into the hillside a reminder by contrast of how violent the thunderous landslide that reshaped the mountainside must have been.

Many of the landslides associated with Helene took place in Western North Carolina, with clusters east of Asheville near places like Bat Cave, Bear Hollow and Summerhaven. They have taken 11 lives, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.

In Cruso, a pair of landslides fell — one on the north side of a mountain and one on the south. Neither was fatal.

The one on the northern side is the slide that reshaped the Heatherly land.

‘Pretty heartbreaking’ landslide

Arlen Heatherly, now 81 years old, was the first member of the family to see the mudslide that had effectively split their land in half.

“All I could think of was my dad. He worked so hard. And I did, too,” Arlen said.

The Heatherleys had grown potatoes, tobacco and tomatoes on the land. They’d raised livestock.

Michael had also worked on that land. For the last 20 years, he’s been clearing old logging roads that run up the mountain, making it possible for he and his sister to have small cabins in the forest, with a pizza oven at Michael’s.

“I had it looking really good,” Michael said Saturday as he stood in the middle of the landslide’s scar.

The landslide cut many of those logging roads in half. Sections of them are buried under what Michael estimates are 12 to 15 feet of mud. The cabins are now only accessible by hiking up the mountainside

In the days since the landslide, Michael has tried to count how many trees fell in a forest he’s played and worked in since he was a child. He hasn’t come close to an answer.

“To see it like this, it’s pretty heartbreaking,” he said.

He wants to know what to do next.

He’s worried about what will happen if another heavy rain comes — will it trigger another landslide? And in the meantime, will water carry high levels of sediment into the Pigeon River?

When Tropical Storm Fred hit Western North Carolina in August 2021, it killed six people in Cruso. Linda Heatherly, Michael’s mother, said that storm also left debris in the Pigeon River, including a red Chevy Suburban that was clearly visible from the access road to their property.

A private citizen finally got the permits for and finished removing that car from the river, Linda Heatherly said — about two weeks before Helene arrived.

Michael and Linda, who is retired from the U.S. Forest Service, expressed interest in planting grass seed to try to stabilize the landscape.

“I’m just trying to figure out what to to do,” Michael Heatherly said.

Creek becomes a ‘meat grinder’

On the southern side of the Cruso mountain, Roger Largent knew a landslide had happened shortly after 10:30 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 27 — the day the storm arrived.

As he watched the stream that runs past his Cabin Creek Road home rise, Largent heard a roar that sounded like thunder coming from somewhere up the mountain.

Then the rushing water changed color.

What had been a muddy firehose stream became black, almost the color of oil. And the consistency changed, with the water so full of dirt that it almost seemed to become a dangerous, dancing solid.

As the water gushed downstream, Largent filmed on his phone.

In one video, he can be heard shouting that the creek has become “a meat grinder.”

As the thick water rushed down the hill, it took out a five-foot culvert and road that Largent and his neighbor Dale Smith used to access their properties.

Largent nearly froze at the sight.

“It landlocked me,” Largent said. “I couldn’t freaking move.”

He jumped into his Jeep and floored the gas pedal, sluicing across the yard to get away from the raging creek. He leaned on the horn, trying to get the attention of Smith, who had headed up the the creekside road not 10 minutes before.

Unbeknownst to Largent, Smith had come back down after seeing that a normally calm tributary to the creek had turned angry.

“I guess it was just the Lord telling me to get out,” Smith said Saturday as he picked his way through the creek bed, jumping from bolder to boulder and clambering over fallen trees, many of them still coated in the mud that had carried them down the side of the mountain.

Smith has lived in the area for 71 years. During Frances and Ivan, he heard the sound of boulders being carried down the creek. He also rebuilt the culvert to reach his and Largent’s homes after Fred.

“This one was a lot worse because we had the slide up through there,” Smith said.

The mudslide started in Pisgah National Park’s Shining Rock Wilderness, Smith said, rushing downhill before hitting the creek that is part of his property line, carrying the mud and trees with it.

Some of those trees snarled together across the creek, the logs and rootballs creating a dam. When the next storm comes, Smith worries, the heavy flow of water will eat away at the land on the southern edge of the creek. That will imperil the road leading to his property.

He hopes the National Park Service will help remove the logs and chop them up before another storm causes the creek to swell and the gushing water to wear out everything holding the road up.

“The government needs to get up here with something and fix it before that happens,” Smith said.

He walked through his own landslide and crossed the creek via a makeshift bridge he’d made out of two fallen logs, heading to the bottom of the mountain.

There, he jumped on a compact excavator to help the Heatherly family rebuild the culvert they all need to reach their property.

This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider signing up for a digital subscription, which you can do here.

This story was originally published October 6, 2024 at 7:00 AM.

Adam Wagner

The News & Observer

919-829-4669

Adam Wagner covers climate change and other environmental issues in North Carolina. His work is produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. Wagner’s previous work at The News & Observer included coverage of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and North Carolina’s recovery from recent hurricanes. He previously worked at the Wilmington StarNews.