Can Pisgah go home again? After last year's flood, Bears anxiously await the next storm
Things have not been the same at Pisgah High School since a catastrophic flood tore through the town of Canton, devastating the community, taking lives, destroying homes and businesses, and delivering a serious blow to the athletic facilities at the school.
Tropical Storm Fred never became a hurricane, but it made landfall along the Florida panhandle as a strong tropical storm before moving north into Georgia, South Carolina, and eventually western North Carolina
Aug. 17, 2021, the Pisgah football team was preparing for a non-conference game with Crest High School. With the inclement weather expected that day, head football coach Brett Chappell asked the Haywood County Fairgrounds if the football team could practice inside the enclosed area. The team loaded the bus and headed for the facility.
"We just knew how big that was going to be — playing Crest," Chappell said. "We certainly didn't need to go in the gym for a couple of days of practice trying to get ready for those guys."
The fairgrounds is about 15 minutes from Pisgah High School. It was a quick bus trip. About halfway into the ride, Chappell got a phone call from his athletic director, Heidi Morgan.
"She says, 'Coach, you're gonna have to turn around and bring the kids back. We need to get them back to their homes as quickly as we can,'" Chappell recalled. "I just didn't realize it at the time because we had kind of kept a watch on the river, but we just hadn't seen that much."
With the rain driving and flashes of lightning in the sky, Chappell had the buses turned around. They went back to the school and as they crossed the bridge near the stadium, they could see the problem.
"The softball stadium was under water," he said. "It wasn't extremely high at that point, it was probably a foot underwater ... but you could already tell that it was flooding."
The coaching staff met in the building while the kids changed in the locker room. About 45 minutes later, Chappell got a phone call from the police department.
"They always contact me if we've got some floodwaters coming in — 'Coach, you may want to go to the stadium. If you've got anything out, you may want to bring it back up to the high school,'" Chappell said, noting that the school sits on higher ground than the stadium, which he estimates is about 25 yards away from the Pigeon River.
Chappell drove down the stadium to get a few things to bring back to the school. He noticed the water had begun to recede on the softball field and there wasn't any water in the football stadium at that point.
"I got a couple small things just in case, loaded up in the truck, went back to the school, probably spent another 30 minutes, maybe 40 minutes, flipping some laundry, and I start to get some alerts on my phone," Chappell said.
It was an alert that he had never received before.
"I'll never forget this. The one thing that came across on the alert was 'flood wave.' I've never seen that come across. You know, flood warning, all of those things. But 'flood wave ... need to seek higher ground immediately?'
A wave of water tears through Canton
Pisgah High School and the town of Canton is in Haywood County, just west of Asheville. It sits near the Pisgah National Forest and isn't far from the Blue Ridge Parkway.
On Aug. 17, 2021, heavy rain fell across that area. Doppler radar indicated areas of 10 inches of rain in the Pisgah National Forest. Some of the rain went down the French Broad River, the rest went down the Pigeon River. Logs, branches, and other debris had created obstructions for the water — but as the water continued to pile up, eventually the makeshift dam broke. That sent a flash flood wave down the river, inundating areas like downtown Canton — including Pisgah High School's football stadium, a nextdoor neighbor of the Pigeon River.
"When it came down through here, it was just like what it said — a flood wave," Chappell said.
After he got the first alert on his phone, he drove back towards the stadium to check on things. When he got the bridge, he couldn't get across.
"I think that was the thing that was so shocking to me, was how quickly that water got to and in the stadium," he said.
The evidence of the flood is still there. The watermark from the flood is eight cinder blocks high in the bathrooms and in the concession stand.
Pisgah High School had an artificial turf surface in its stadium. The turf was peeled back and off the ground by the flood waters. There was electrical and plumbing damage too. Engineers were called out to the stadium to check the structural integrity, which check out, but there was plenty of damage. Another football coach told Chappell it looked like a catfish pond.
"You had that muddy water inside of the fences and you had the stadium lights. I don't know if you've ever been to a catfish pond, kind of like a catfish derby, but he was right. That's what it looked like," Chappell said.
The schools athletic facilities weren't the only things impacted by the flood though. Canton was devastated. Six people died in Haywood County as water levels reached three to seven feet higher than their previous records. At the time, the mayor of Canton estimated there had been $300 million worth of damage.
"When you just sit back and you look at everything that kind of transpired and everything that was affected ... you know, so many families lost so much more," Chappell said. "You looked like you were in a third-world country. It looked like you had been in a war zone."
The slow recovery process
It's been more than 13 months since the Pigeon River flood of 2021 swept through Canton, and Pisgah High School's football team is not anywhere close to being able to return to their home field.
The team played every single game on the road last season. That meant coaches and players had to get on a bus for junior varsity games on Thursday, then again for the varsity games on Friday. But the players were resilient.
"Our kids did a really good job with it last year. I really couldn't have been prouder of a team in my coaching career. To overcome the things that they overcame — we had a lot of injuries last year as well — and our kids just persevered," Chappell said. "It just seemed like we were trying to get over something every week through the season, and we ended up winning the conference, which was really special for those boys to overcome so much."
One year later, they're still doing the same. Every game is a road game again this fall.
"Everybody's tired of it," Chappell said.
When a game is classified as a home game for Pisgah, the athletic department has to pack up all their supplies, hang banners for their sponsors, find volunteers to work the gate and concession stands, and all the other tasks that go into hosting a football game — but they have to do it at another school. The setup is never same. It changes every week.
"There's a lot that goes into it, and it's just getting old now," Chappell reiterated.
The new turf is coming along, but it's not yet complete. The Carolina Panthers donated $50,000 to help the school rebuild its stadium, and FEMA has also pitched in to assist. But there have been bigger issues that have slowed progress. At one time, Chappell thought there might be a chance his team could play a game in their home stadium this fall — or at least practice in it — but now he's just hoping they'll be back in time for the 2023 season.
You may have heard of a flood plain — an area that is at risk of flooding. There's also a term called a "flood way" — which is an area where structures could impede the movement of flood water or even make a flood worse. Part of the Pisgah High School stadium sits in a flood way — the home side of the stadium to be specific, where the bleachers, bathrooms, concession stands, and halftime locker room are situated.
"We cannot add any structures in the floodway because that's just adding one more thing that's going to make that water flow faster," Chappell explained. "So what we have to do is we have to move all of the electrical, whether it's the transformer boxes, hot water heaters, light switches — all of those things have to be moved up to 11 feet."
Hot water heaters for the bathrooms and concession stands will have to go on top of buildings. All of the electrical switches and transformer boxes will have to be rewired and replaced.
As it stands right now, contracts have not been signed for the electrical issues to be fixed, and even when they are, it could be another year before work is completed because of supply chain issues.
"I hate to say it like this, but we're not out of the water yet," Chappell said. "We've still got a lot of things going on, trying to get back into that stadium. I would have never thought that we would be looking at a possibility of year three."
But that's the possibility.
There is a chance that Pisgah's football team may go three full seasons without playing a single home game. That would mean two entire classes could go their varsity careers without playing a game in their home stadium.
"It's just one of those things you have to deal with. There's nothing else you can do. There's nothing else that we can do to make it any better," Chappell said. "I think our kids have done as good as they can do with the whole situation ... but we're trying to make the best of it, especially for our seniors. We want them to enjoy it and make as many positive memories as they can, but this is certainly one of those things that has been taken away from them."
The next flood
There was a period of heavy rain in July that caused the Pigeon River to swell. It didn't get to the point where it flooded the Pisgah stadium, but it was enough to get the attention of people in the Canton community.
In a very matter of fact way, Chappell said it's not a matter of if the stadium will flood again, it's a matter of when.
August 2021 was not the first time the stadium flooded. It happened at least one other time in 2004 when another tropical system moved through western North Carolina.
"That was supposed to be the 100-year flood and we weren't even 20 years later and it flooded again," Chappell said. "The flood is going to happen again."
But there were lessons learned in 2021. The repairs being made to the stadium will make a future flood less impactful. With the improvements made to the electrical and plumbing systems in the stadium, those things will not have to be fixed.
There won't be a way to prevent the turf from being damaged, but the turf has its own insurance policy and Chappell says it can be fixed much quicker.
"Had it just been the turf, we would have maybe even had some 7-on-7s on it this past summer," he said.
Knowing that another flood will come one day, Chappell — and many others in Canton — had a feeling of unease when forecasts for Hurricane Ian were delivered. The systems that caused the floods in 2004 and 2021 had one thing in common — they each track just to the west of Canton. Early forecasts for Hurricane Ian took a similar path.
"You just sit here like, 'Man, not again,'" Chappell said.
The forecast has shifted over time though. The storm is now forecasted to stay east of Canton, and the worst weather in a tropical system is typically on the eastern side of the storm. While Canton may get some heavy rain and gusty winds, the track of the storm may prevent a catastrophic flooding event along the Pigeon River.
Knowing the setbacks another flood could cause for Pisgah High School's football stadium and the community as a whole, Chappell and others in the Canton area won't rest easy until Hurricane Ian's remnants are gone.
At least until the next storm forms.
