He jumped into a river to survive Helene. Sheltering near Charlotte, he looks forward.

Danny Mancini knew it was time to take his chances in the river when Helene’s floodwaters started shaking his home early Saturday.

Between midnight and 8 a.m., the Broad River flooded Mancini’s Subaru WRX to the roof. Then it climbed 18 feet up a slope to the modular home Mancini built in Black Mountain two years ago.

For a few minutes after Mancini woke up, the 41-year-old south Florida transplant thought he could stay in the house.

Then water slowly seeped in and his home began loosening from its concrete foundation.

“That’s when I panicked,” said Mancini, an owner of four Buncombe County smoke shops.

Some days since have been a blur, Mancini said. After he escaped his home, he hiked down a mountain, hitchhiked to Asheville, slept and ate little but eventually made his way to Matthews, where he’s been living in a hotel.

Like many Western North Carolina people whose homes were harmed by Helene, he’s temporarily without an address, living with little more than the clothes he escaped in and the help of family and friends.

“It hasn’t been easy,” Mancini said, of the start of his quest to try to put his Black Mountain life back together. “I’m just grateful to be alive.”

A leap into the river

When Mancini’s one-story home began to move under his water-soaked shoes the morning of Sept. 28, he grabbed his phone and gold necklace and hurried out his front door onto a wooden porch left wobbly by rushing water.

He left the door open so Layla, his corgi, could escape too.

Not far downstream, he saw the top of a then-flooded tree poking out of the swollen river. So he jumped in. Just as Mancini hoped, the water rushed him directly to its branches.

From there, he could hold on, stretch his leg toward the slope and make a push for drier land.

Mancini’s home, with all of his possessions, was teetering on the hill.

One of his cars, with his wallet, was submerged and the other had disappeared to who knows where.

“If I had to guess, Lake Lure,” he said during a recent interview. “A 20-minute drive.”

Now what?, he asked himself.

Alone, Mancini walked in the rain, through mud, around fallen trees and over landslide debris, he said.

Five hours later, around 1 p.m. Saturday, a rescue crew found Mancini on North Carolina Highway 9 and took him to a firehouse in Fairview.

But he didn’t stay long. He wanted to get off the mountain before nightfall to reach a place where there would be electricity and roads leading to family members, he said.

So Mancini walked 10 miles to U.S. 74. There, he hitchhiked to Asheville arriving around 7 p.m., and fell asleep inside one of the smoke shops that he owns.

Challenged but grateful and optimistic

At some point — Mancini doesn’t know when — the Broad River took his home.

He’s seen it since, ripped open and laying on top of the Subaru and halfway down the hill it once sat on. His vegetable greenhouse is gone. Same with his camper and a metal outbuilding that was his office.

Despite losing almost everything, Mancini said he can’t help but to feel lucky.

None of his four Plug Smoke Shops, which he opened in the past two years, were damaged. Layla somehow made it safe to a neighbor.

His 4-year-old daughter, who was supposed to spend the night of the flood with Mancini and had never missed a scheduled night with him, was safe at her mother’s house when Helene hit.

And FEMA inspectors have already visited what’s left of his home. They’ve deposited some $54,000 into his account — certainly not enough to replace everything he lost but more than he ever expected, Mancini said.

Mancini said he’ll likely stay at a hotel in Matthews a few more days. Then he’ll go to his girlfriend’s in Flat Rock, a town with power, water and internet.

After that, Mancini is not sure. But he doesn’t assume the worst.

“This is going to be good for me somehow,” Mancini predicted.

What will he do with his property after he removes the tattered remains of his home?

He might turn it into a campground to pay the mortgage. But he won’t live there.

“I’m pretty traumatized by that river and that property,” he said.

This story was originally published October 9, 2024 at 12:10 PM.

Gavin Off

The Charlotte Observer

704-358-6038

Gavin Off was previously the Charlotte Observer’s data reporter, since 2011. He also worked as a data reporter at the Tulsa World and at Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C. His journalism, including his data analysis and reporting for the investigative series Big Poultry, won multiple national journalism awards.