Massachusetts bachelorette party gets stranded on North Carolina mountain after Hurricane Helene
BOSTON - A group of 11 friends from Massachusetts were relieved to land back in Boston late Sunday night after a planned bachelorette party in North Carolina turned into a harrowing, life-threatening experience, thanks to Hurricane Helene.
Bride Kayla Donnelly of Walpole and her bridesmaids and friends planned her bachelorette party at a remote mountainside cabin in Asheville, North Carolina back in the summer. It was scheduled for the weekend of September 28.
"We really aren't wilderness girls," Donnelly told WBZ-TV. "We had planned to stay in this beautiful cabin, and then go downtown and do things there."
Hurricane Helene damage
The girls weren't aware of the havoc Hurricane Helene would wreak on their party until it was too late. After the entire crew arrived at the cabin and hosted a pajama party Thursday night, they woke up Friday to a devastating scene.
There was no power. A tree had fallen on the roof, sending pieces of the ceiling onto the floor and rain coming through. The deck was destroyed.
"I have a pit in my stomach thinking about it, because like you got to the top of the driveway and you just looked right and left and it was just like chaos," explained bridesmaid Gina Costa of Bridgewater. "It was so bad. I was like, 'we're never getting out of here,'" she said through tears.
Losing contact with home
Hours later, things got worse. The girls all lost cell service, unable to get a call or text out to family and friends back home.
"That was the worst part, knowing that I'm such a communicative person, and I'm always reaching out to family and friends and my fiancé and so when they stopped hearing from me, I knew they would know something's wrong," Donnelly said.
Family back home did know something was wrong. They started a group chat for any updates and help they could get.
In the meantime, the girls were trapped. Not only did they lack cell service and power, but they started running out of food as their refrigerator stopped working. They had no running water. The road down the mountain, which was designed for cars, had buckled and was covered in trees.
"I don't even know how to explain it, like you couldn't see the tar," Costa said.
The girls hiked 20 minutes around debris to find nearby homes in the daylight - and thanked kind neighbors who live there fulltime for offering water from their hoses, and emotional support.
Stranger appears "out of nowhere"
After nearly two days, patience started to dwindle.
"It got to a point where every girl was like secluding themselves, and crying on their own because it was crazy," Costa said. That's when she heard one of her friends praying out loud.
Moments later, "literally out of nowhere a man at the top of the mountain at 6 o'clock at night was like 'Hello! is anyone down there?'" she said. Her friend "started flipping out screaming... She ran to the top of the hill barefoot," to get his attention.
The kind stranger had hiked the mountain to help people in need. He helped the girls come up with a plan, promising to rescue them Sunday if they could hike to the bottom of the mountain.
The girls left most of their luggage behind, locked in a friend's car inside the garage, for an indeterminate amount of time.
Three-hour hike
They dressed in the comfiest clothes they packed for what was supposed to be a party weekend, and embarked on a three-hour hike down Elk Mountain, around trees, downed wires, and buckled roads.
Several girls got poison ivy, blisters, bruises, and one ended up hospitalized at home with an infected bee sting.
When the girls got to the bottom, they were rescued by kind strangers with a truck, brought to the local Lowe's where a school principal bought them a warm meal in a safety shelter. Later they were once again rescued again by a man named Doug, the same car service driver who had dropped them off and drove three hours to find them and bring them to the Charlotte airport to get home.
"The people were amazing," Costa said. "They were offering if you wanted to go shower at their house, rides, etc."
"I have never met nicer people than the people on that mountain, and in the Asheville area in general," Donnelly added.
"A lot of people who need help"
The girls were a bit traumatized Monday, but wanted to share their harrowing experience in the hopes of getting help for the residents who are still trapped on the mountain in the Pindari Ridge area.
With the devastating flooding on the news, "nobody is really seeing what's going on up there and there's a lot of people who need help," Donnelly said. "A lot of people who have not been able to contact their families, a lot of people who can't make it down that mountain. That was a really, really rough journey down."
The girls saved names, addresses, and numbers, and are trying to stay in touch with the kind people who helped them. They told WBZ they plan to donate to any relief fund to pay back the town that saved them from a disaster.
"Literally when I say, I cannot believe I am standing here today. That is a feeling in my gut that I thought I was not going to make it," Costa said.