Helene flooded an Appalachian town’s Post Office; residents are fighting to get it reopened.

Swannanoa residents started a mail campaign to reopen
their P.O. (Photo by Anne Vilen, The Daily Yonder)

Residents from flood-torn Swannanoa, N.C., might be down, but they're not out. When Hurricane Helene pummeled western Appalachia in the fall of September 2024, it flooded the town's Post Office, grocery store and hardware shop, reports Anne Vilen for The Daily Yonder. 

More than six months later, all three businesses remain closed, leaving residents driving longer distances for pretty much everything. For many Swannanoans, living without a Post Office is unacceptable, so they're fighting to get it reopened.

In May, the town's brewery, Terra Nova, doubled as an activist meeting room where long-time Swannanoa resident Cynthia Hollar and "more than 50 of her neighbors gathered," Vilen writes. "To write hundreds of postcards to postal officials as well as state, local, and federal representatives who might sway postal service decision makers to bring the Swannanoa Post Office back home."

Dan Slagle, a former post office employee, explained the impact of not having a post office can have on rural residents. He told Vilen, "People have to drive 26 miles round trip to get their mail, their prescriptions, their social security checks, or packages.”

Vilen adds, "The Swannanoa Post Office and its PO boxes served hundreds of folks who live miles up steep mountain roads or on properties where mailboxes, bridges, and access roads went down the river the night of the hurricane."

Swannnanoa residents fear their Post Office won't reopen because the federal government doesn't have to reopen it. Vilen explains, "Under normal circumstances when the U.S. Postal Service decides to close a post office, it must allow for a public comment period and a possible appeal to the Postal Regulatory Commission. However, after a natural disaster, the emergency suspension of service can be extended to a permanent closure."

In Swannanoa, the Post Office was "the starting point for directions to houses without numbers and the water cooler for neighbors eager to swap news," Vilen writes."Town residents claim bureaucracy and red tape are the worst part of disaster recovery."

Slagle told Vilen, "You’re really not a town without a post office. It’s kind of a community hub."