Is there another Walgreens that you can drive to? If so give them a call. The other possibility is mail deliver of prescriptions by Walgreen.
It’s real bad, unprecedented flooding, highways closed permanently like I40 W. Was there a week ago! Just unreal the devastation to TN and NC. Hope help is on the way.
Oh no!
We have family and family property just outside Flatrock and visit there regularly. Ironically, that was one of the places we considered fleeing to! So many good memories.
My heart bleeds for that area! The cute little “downtown” area in Chimney Rock appears to have been completely wiped off the map.
Once we make it back up that way, I’ll let you know. Maybe we can have lunch or something.
Holy shit 
I spent a year living in NC. Beautiful state. My heart bleeds for the folk living there.
Asheville is pretty dire right now, but I and my family are safe. We are stopped outside of a waffle house, on our way to the triangle, where I am desperately looking forward to a hot shower. Will update more later!
I’d pay $100.00 for a hot shower right now.
Nothing is open anywhere for what I can tell in Western North Carolina. I think return of mail service is likely a week or two or more in the future.
Hey, not even kidding, I have relatives in the triangle who have said they’re willing to put people up. If you can afford to be gone, and want to take 26 E., send me a message!
Edit: I just read back through the thread and saw the part about you being an essential worker. The offer stands, even though it sounds like you’re staying in the area for now–and thank you and other essential workers for doing so.
Very kind offer LHoD. But I am staying put.
My house is OK and I can get to work. They need me.
The store I work at is in a tiny island of Asheville where power was somehow restored early Saturday. I don’t know how to clear streets. If I used a chainsaw I’d probably cut of my arm instead of a downed tree. I don’t know how to get the water on. The power grid destruction is beyond my weak mind’s ability. In pretty much every way I am a useless old man to my community in crisis. But I do know how to work in a grocery store. So that’s what I can do to help.
I have had so many people thank us for being here. I think we are the only open grocery in the entire downtown Asheville.
Power still out for the majority here. At the few gas stations that have power to the pumps there are lines miles long that take hours to get through.
It looks like they’re all in one cluster, a living example of Hoteller’s Law by which like businesses tend to congregate together. It makes sense for the businesses since they’re close to the interstate and downtown yet not in the expensive built-up downtown area, even though it means the average person is farther away from a grocery store.
But not only would it seem to make the area more reliant on that particular place not being flooded, it also meant that I couldn’t find one the only time that I’ve been to Asheville. Oddly enough I was there because I was evacuating from another hurricane. Even only 1 convenience store that noticed between the Hilton Garden Inn and the Pinball Museum.
They live in Kissimmee. As long as I95 is fine they will be able to get back without trouble.
I was amazed at how bad the devastation is so far from landfall then I remembered helping my pregnant wife out a second floor window to a boat after Floyd. That hit North Carolina but was devastating to New Jersey.
The Official Word: Tropical Cyclone Names (noaa.gov).
My area had an outage a few storms / years ago. Not widespread, but patchy. So one square mile of dark, 4 of normality, 4 sq mi of dark, 20 of normality, etc. Lather rinse repeat at random all across the Miami metroblob.
One sunny afternoon a couple days after the storm I drove a familiar boulevard to a familiar store. Traffic wasn’t zero, but close to it; cars were 1/8 mile apart or so. Along the way I merrily blew through a dead traffic light at 45mph. Recognized what I was doing just as I was crossing the crosswalk into the intersection at full speed. Fortunately the cross street was a neighborhood entrance so little traffic on average and at that very moment none at all. Thank goodness. That was 100% on me.
Did I know academically that there’s a traffic light at the corner of ABC Boulevard and Happy Acres drive? Sure I did. Did I notice at the time that it was up there but unilluminated? Nope. The lack of a red or green illuminated light overhead just turned those black rectangles up there into more urban/suburban clutter. I literally did not recognize the equipment hanging over the intersection as a traffic light. Until I was about to pass under it.
To be sure, my mistake was facilitated by the 12 (or was it 15?) fully-operative lights I’d driven through on the way there. And the lack of widespread wreckage to cue the fact I was driving in very unusual circumstances. Unlike what was going on that day in your / that lady’s area.
But believe me, I learned something that day: It’s a LOT harder to recognize the absence of a traffic light than you might expect. Reasonable drivers will make innocent errors. And yes, careless or me-first-screw-y’all drivers will do really ignorant shit too.
I’ll venture a guess that the longer the lights remain out after a storm, the greater the error (or don’t give a shit) rate will be.
Been looking at the reports from NC/TN. Having lived through catastrophic damage beyond expectations and preparations, including not knowing of the fate of people, brings back such heartbreak.
What hurricane or other disaster was that?
Maria, Puerto Rico 2017. Did some writing on it here back then.
So far 105 dead–and with a huge number of missing the number will go a lot higher:
Tomorrow I am going to take a day off from work and attempt to walk the 10- mile round trip through Black Mountain and into Montreat to see how (if) our old family home there fared. Montreat is a beautiful little town tucked away in a steep cove with a babbling creek running through the town center. The Town has one store, a small lake with a dam that was breached but held, a church, a post office, a park, an inn, a small Presbyterian college, several B&Bs and a bunch of tiny paved roads up into the mountains leading to homes old and new. Many are summer homes but there are several hundred year-round residents. You can hike to Mount Mitchell and back among the many trails leading to stunning rock outcrops. Before this week the main discussion in Montreat has been what to do about all the bear activity and whether the inn should be allowed to expand.
To me Montreat is the most wonderful place on earth. I go for multiple walks there every week since we moved nearby less than two years ago. Indeed my wife and I relocated here from Virginia to be near Montreat.
I remember my mother once talking about a flood in the 1940’s where the water almost reached Greybeard Trail, the road in front of our Montreat home. I understand that road is now mostly gone. I left a twelve pack of beer in the fridge there at the house last week, so if I make it to Shadynook there may be a reward waiting.
Though now in my sixties, that little house has been a refuge from life’s problems for me since childhood. Built in 1910, Shadynook was first owned by my grandparents and then by my mother and her sister. My wife and I share it with 35 relatives now. It is where our family gets together. It is where we have gathered for weddings ( two inside the house itself) and funerals. The home has no heat, so we close it up in November and then have a family gathering to reopen it Easter weekend the following year. Near the entrance to the town is a Memorial garden where one of my cousin’s ashes (the first family death of my generation) were placed a year and a half ago. The garden is nearby mis-named Flat Creek and I suspect it (the garden) is gone.
Still no water here in Black Mountain and probably not any for weeks. No bathrooms, no laundry, no showers. I feel like everyone has done a good job working together but I what is going to happen to our communities if it takes weeks to restore water and power? Can we maintain that “all in this together” support? Especially in the current political climate?
So I don’t want to be a Debbie downer, but there could be another storm that forms this week which might follow the same general path.
A somewhat less … excitable … take on the situation: