Students unsure of wildfire damage in hometowns

Wildfires have been occurring in western North Carolina since Oct. 23 and UNC students from the affected areas don’t know what to expect when they return home for Thanksgiving.

Chris Sharer, a junior from Hayesville, North Carolina, a town in affected Clay County, said the fires have been burning only a mile away from where he lives.

“It’s pretty scary, to say the least, to think about what everybody’s going through back at home,” Sharer said.

He said he is curious to see what his hometown looks like after the fires and how the people in his hometown have been affected.

Jessica Calland, a first-year, said her family has a vacation home in Lake Lure and the resort at which their home is located had to be evacuated two weeks ago.

Calland said the evacuation was lifted yesterday and her family will still be traveling there this weekend for the holiday.

She said her family is nervous to see what kind of smoke damage may be done to their house.

Madi Odom, a senior from Hendersonville, North Carolina, said the fires are burning about 15 minutes away from her home and while her family was lucky enough to live far enough away, some of her hometown friends had to evacuate their homes.

“A friend from high school said firefighters knocked on their door at two in the morning and said they had to be out of their house by five,” Odom said.

“They had three hours’ notice to pack as much as they could in their cars and leave.”

Sharer and Odom both said their families at home have been affected most from the smoke from the fires.

Odom said her parents told her the mountains can’t be seen at all because the air is smoky all of the time and covered in a thick haze.

Sharer said his hometown was instructed to not go outside without a mask last week due to the poor air quality.

First-year Jamey Cross, a staff member at The Daily Tar Heel, is from Asheboro — three hours away from the fires — but said her dad, a forest ranger in Randolph County, has been in Asheville helping to fight the fires for two weeks.

Cross said her father told her the fires were intense and every day more people were coming in to help contain them.

But since the fires are still not completely contained, Cross said her dad won’t be home for Thanksgiving this year.

“I’m sad he isn’t going to be home, but I am so gracious that he is able to do this because there are people out there who could be losing their homes right now, and it’s the holiday season right now and nobody wants to go through that,” she said. “So I think it’s great he’s there and able to help.”

Odom said while she is glad her family wasn’t evacuated from their home for this week, she is nervous to return home.

“It makes me a little bit sad because it’s not like going home is the same — it’s going home to something that is so sad especially because it’s something that is going through places where I grew up and I don’t know the damage done,” she said. “It all happened so fast.”

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