Following the wreck of Hurricane Helene, a father traveled 30 miles through flood and debris to make it to his daughter’s wedding on time.
Speaking to local Tennessee news station WJHL, David Jones shared that he’d initially planned for a two-hour drive to his daughter Elizabeth’s wedding, which was being held in South Carolina. However, his departure from his hometown in Johnson City, Tennessee, did not go as planned due to Hurricane Helene – which touched down in Florida’s Big Bend on September 26.
The Category 4 hurricane then charted a path north through the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Virginia.
According to Jones, his travel plans were initially diverted while he was driving on an interstate in Tennessee at 2am on Friday, September 27 – hours before his daughter’s wedding. Although a state trooper told him that the interstate was being shut down, this didn’t stop him from moving.
“You have to understand. My daughter’s getting married at 11:00 this morning, and I’m going to be there to walk her down the aisle,” he explained to WJHL.
At the time, he estimated that he was only 30 miles away from the wedding venue and decided to walk the rest of the way. However, the task was much harder than Jones anticipated, as he walked through mounds of debris with only the flashlight on his phone to guide him.
“It’s awful,” he explained. “And I can tell you a lot about the mud and the debris fields where I have to climb six, seven-foot-tall piles of debris of old fences and huge trees and it was just a tangled mess and dead-end roads and all kinds of things.”
He recalled one dangerous moment on the walk: nearly getting hit by crews clearing the road with a backhoe. When he almost got hit by the backhoe – which was being operated by someone who couldn’t see him – he was also stuck in the mud that was “up to [his] knees” and he couldn’t move.
“Of course, his cab is facing the other way. Most of the time, he’s swinging this thing around, and I’m ducking. Really, I’m thinking this could be it. There was a lot of prayer at that point,” Jones explained, before sharing how he was luckily able to free himself from the mud.
He then continued his trip – which included walking over the Jackson Love Highway bridge, and through the towns of Erwin and Jones – before getting back onto the interstate in Tennessee.
After five and half hours of walking, a motorist – who Jones knew from a previous job – drove him the last eight miles of his trip. He arrived in South Carolina around 7:30am, making it in time for his daughter’s wedding. However, Elizabeth didn’t discover the extensive and dangerous trip her father took until the wedding reception, and she was immediately in awe of her dad.
“That’s so emotionally moving [to know] that my dad loves me that much, that he’ll come and go through all of that to get to my wedding and be there on time,” she told the Tennessee-based news station.
Jones also shared that after the wedding, he gifted his daughter a reflective stake, which he held during the walk to avoid being hit by cars. “I brought the reflector to the reception and I presented it to Elizabeth, my daughter, and Daniel just for them to remember – to be a protector and a good reflection of each other and a reflection of God,” he emotionally shared.
Elizabeth also emphasized the gratitude she had for her father, while noting that she was “just so thankful” he made it to the wedding after his dangerous journey. “I woke up at 4:30am this morning just wide awake, just spent that whole morning praising God that my dad made it and that my dad’s alive,” she added.
The Independent has contacted Jones for comment.
At least 143 people have been killed after Hurricane Helene. As of Tuesday morning, the death toll in North Carolina’s Buncombe County alone stands at 40, as 600 people remain unaccounted for. Governor Roy Cooper told CNN on Monday that communities there were “wiped off that map”.
Hundreds of roads remain closed with five bridges near the Tennessee-North Carolina border on I-40 “completely gone, while more than 1.6m people are still without power.
