At the end of September, when Hurricane Helene charged up from the Gulf of Mexico and dropped 14 to 30 in. of rain on Asheville and environs, engorging the French Broad River and generating floodwaters that ripped through western North Carolina, many of those in the way were woodworkers. One of them was Mike Warnock, a longtime maker who had quit his job a month before to go full-time as a solo builder of custom kitchens. His concept was to build kitchen cabinets to the level of fine furniture—frame-and-panel cabinet sides in quartersawn oak, dovetailed drawers in reclaimed heart pine—and he was halfway into his first big job when the rains came.

Mike’s shop was in Asheville’s River Arts District, at Foundation Woodworks, a co-op with a large and very well-equipped machine room shared by 17 woodworkers. Foundation also had an array of private bench rooms and a gallery that represented 65 western North Carolina woodworkers. The River Arts District, a collection of older industrial buildings with lots of space and relatively low rents that provided shops and studios for hundreds of artisans, had seen floods before. But nothing like this one. The worst recent one, in 2004, described as a 100-year flood, had brought an inch or two of water into the Foundation Woodworks building; this year’s storm brought 22 ft., filling the building to just below the ridge beam and creating hydraulic pressure so great it blew out large sections of the concrete block walls and carried away much of what had been inside.

The end wall of Mike’s bench room burst, and in the outflow the room was stripped clean. Like so many other makers in the area, he found that most of his tools, supplies, materials, and workpieces were “somewhere down the river,” along with his plans for the future and his sense of stability. Even the workbench he’d built himself 12 years ago had been ripped from the room. Unlike so much else, the bench was found—several hundred yards from the building on a pile of rubble. Mike carried it a quarter of a mile to his truck with help from two of his sons and two friendly strangers.

The many woodworkers left bereft by Helene will need as much help as others can give them to put their shops and their lives back together.

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Longtime woodworker Mike Warnock had quit his day job and started a solo business building custom kitchens just a few months before Helene hit. The exterior wall of his studio vanished in the flood, along with muck of his woodworking equipment.
You can donate to his GoFundMe here.

Hosted on the website of TREATS Studios, Helene Relief: Aid for Artists is a nerve center for those wanting to help and those in need of help. On its website you can find individual makers and artists in need of help, searching by state and by medium. And those seeking support can post their information so others can find them.

You can help in the recovery of the arts sector by contributing directly to the NC Arts Disaster Relief Fund.

Amanda’s friends Bryan and Erin lost their shop and work vehicle and were denied flood insurance. Here is a link to their GoFundMe.