A month after Helene, Fries attributes the recovery to the team performance

FRIES, Va. (WDBJ) – September 27 is a difficult day to forget for everyone affected by Hurricane Helene.

“The river was at a historic level of over 20 feet,” Grayson County Sheriff Richard Vaughan recalled. “The last time we saw flooding of that magnitude was in 1940.”

Drive into town French friesHouses were nearly flooded and power was out for more than a week.

“It was scary because the water got pretty high, almost into the restaurant, and they closed it off,” said Debbie Fields, who works at the Windy River Cafe. “We had no internet, nothing, sat in the dark with candles.”

It wasn’t just the Windy River Café. Most of the city was forced to close, but business is back to normal.

“I’ve noticed that everything is, you know, quite slow. . . I see that it is also gradually improving,” said Fields.

Sheriff Vaughan said it was a team effort to get the city back up and running.

“These people are the help,” he said, referring to the residents. “They just grab their chainsaws and their farm tractors and get to work. . . Everyone just came together and worked as a team to get things done.”

“You really realize how big your team is when something like this happens,” the sheriff added.

“Everyone has just been so good and so friendly and just helped where they were needed,” Fields said.

Sheriff Vaughan said buildings in the city were kept from flooding thanks to a wall built in 1940 after the last major flood.

The bulk of the recovery work involves clearing roads and clearing debris, and all the hard work is paying off.

“I think all the roads are passable so people can reach the homes, but there are still some bridges that are not working, so they have to drive through the creeks to get back to their homes. U.S. Route 21 actually opened yesterday, so that was a big thing that needed to happen here,” said Sheriff Vaughan.

There is still work to be done. But Sheriff Vaughan and residents are confident Fries can do one thing: work together to get things back to normal.