Letters From Lark: Hurricane Helene & How I Became “The Toilet Lady”

Hi friends – this post is quite different from my usual updates. You may know I live in Asheville, North Carolina, which was hit hard by Hurricane Helene on September 26.

Although I’ve been back to work for about several weeks now, life is far from back to normal. I’m so, so grateful for my business and the work that I do, now more than ever. This storm taught me so much about human resilience, creativity, hard work. And how if we’re gonna get through the bad times, every single one of us is needed.

If we're facebook or instagram friends, you may know that one of the most surprising things of all is that I ended up becoming the "Asheville Toilet Lady" in October.

My grassroots efforts in emergency sanitation were featured in two podcasts, Live Like The World Is Dying and Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.

I was even interviewed in the AP, alongside some incredible folks who I have been continually inspired by throughout this whole thing that have been converting neighborhood wells and getting water to the people!

What was I doing during this time, you ask? I was teaching people how to poop in a bucket. Yep, really.

Now, look. Talking about poop is definitely NOT what I ever expected to be in the national news for. But it reminded me that we all, uh, have our strengths.

And, yep, that’s a photo of me on the toilet. Buckle up, y’all. This here’s a true story.

A Storm Like No Other

Helene was a catastrophic storm. A literal geological event. Here in Asheville, nestled within a temperate rainforest, we’re no strangers to heavy rainfall. But we were no match for the months’ worth of rain that fell in just a few days. I picture it like sloshing an entire gallon of water into a teacup. Welcome to climate changed.

Entire towns were submerged. Roads and interstates disappeared, mountainsides collapsed, rivers changed course. Many lives were lost, and many more were forever changed. I’ve never lived through anything like it – and that’s coming from someone who grew up in wildfire country and weathered a 500-year flood in 2013.

During the storm, cell towers and power were knocked out and two of the reservoirs that service the region were severely damaged. Our main water line was completely destroyed. Without getting into the nitty-gritty details of it, the summary is that roughly 135,000 people were left without water.

At my house here in the city, we went seven days without power or cell service, twelve days without internet, and twenty days without any water at the tap.

The first week or so, we were surrounded by the constant wail of sirens, which was gradually replaced by a constant roar of low-flying helicopters. It took about a month for our neighborhoods to even sound like home again.

As of this writing, it’s been 48 days and we’re still waiting on clean water in our homes. The hope is that potable water will be restored sometime in December.

Our towns and communities are absolutely not back to normal. We aren’t even close to being done with the cleanup, let alone starting to rebuild.

But we’re the lucky ones. My backyard lost one tree - it crushed a neighbors car. I have friends who have lost homes, businesses, cars, pets, everything but their lives.

But still. We’re the lucky ones.

Asheville’s River Arts District near the peak of flooding, cresting around 25’ (Photo: Tim Reaves Photography)

Day One: Triage Mode

Day One. Everything in the world was reduced to, “Am I safe?” and, “Are you safe?” to everyone I could reach before the cell towers went down completely. We were collectively plunged into a communications near-blackout. Even the emergency texts from the city were useless, as critical information was sent as links to online articles, rather than in SMS format which would have at least had a chance of getting through.

Day Two. The questions became, “Do I have what I need?” and “Do you have what you need?” – which soon led to finishing building an outhouse in my backyard that the previous homeowner had started.

The now-famous outhouse.

With five adults, a kid part-time and three pets staying at my house, and only enough water for drinking for a few days, it was immediately apparent that we’d need a workable bathroom solution that didn’t involve water - and fast.

I grew up using outhouses, and believe me when I say that I was more than a little excited about getting our outdoor toilet going. We played board games that night. We drank wine, we feasted on giant meals of all the food from the fridge and freezer before it thawed. We lit a candle, and hoped it would all be okay again soon.

Day Four. I helped some neighbors figure out how to siphon gas from one of their cars to the other so they could evacuate without getting stuck on the only interstate out of town that was driveable. The roads were mayhem. Zero working stoplights, and an entire city hurtling around in panic trying to find necessities and help. Car accidents were rampant.

That’s probably about when it finally started to really, really sink in: this is really happening, and this is really, really bad.

There was no evacuation order, but without clear communication of what to expect, extremely dangerous road conditions, increasing stories of looting and home break-ins, people were leaving in droves.

Should I leave, too? It was at that point that I had my own dark night of the storm/soul.

If I stayed, it had to be for a reason, and I decided I would only stay if I was being helpful to others. I’m pretty handy, but I’m not quite the ‘go join a chainsaw gang’ kind of gal.

So, I had a little panic attack - you know, as a treat - and I gave myself a deadline. If I didn’t find my reason to stay by the end of the day on Wednesday, I’d pack up my dog and cat and head across the country to stay with family for an unknown amount of time.

But by Tuesday, something unexpected happened that changed everything.

Day 5: Finding My Purpose

Version 1 of my Dry Toilet Instructions

Day 5. A neighbor finally got their solar panel working, and a group of us gathered around to watch a daily news briefing. We wrote down the most critical information – like when water tankers and MREs were expected to arrive, and how to report someone missing — and we made copies to distribute around the neighborhood. I included in this DIY news bulletin a note that I had extra supplies and knowledge to share about dry toilets, if anyone wanted to set one up.

As I walked around handing out the bulletin, I met several elderly neighbors who hadn’t flushed their toilets since the storm. They were both getting desperate, and had decided they’d just need to start scooping waste out and tossing it in the yard - a gross, but also incredible unsafe option for women in their 80s with no running water to wash their hands. I took as many jugs as I could find in their homes to a nearby creek and brought them back so they could flush, even just once.

In that moment, I realized I had found my purpose for staying. I could help by providing this essential help with emergency sanitation.

One of my greatest strengths is that I can talk to just about anyone, about just about anything… and I wasn’t too weirded out by the thought of approaching strangers and saying: “Hi - how are you handling your toilet situation? Can I help?”

I could design & distribute a dry toilet solution - a mini version of my beloved outhouse - that was easy to use in a bathroom or on a porch, that was as safe as possible to dispose of (similar to a diaper), cheap, and widely accessible.

I had found my purpose, and I had found where my unique, and uniquely weird skillset could serve others.

So, I decided to stay and weather the storm.

Emergency Sanitation Gets Personal

Day Six. This one’s rough, I’m not gonna lie. But it’s my blog, and I want people to understand why all of this is important. So I’ll just tell it to you like it is.

Me, my cat and my dog all got an explosive stomach illness that day. I mean, glued to the outhouse/yard/litter box, really-wish-you-had-running-water-to-wash-your-pants-and-take-a-shower kind of illness.

After much consideration, I believe we got sick from handling the creek water to help my neighbors flush. I likely forgot to wash my hands after doing so, came home and greeted my pack, grabbed a snack and treats, and the rest is history.

After flood events, sewer systems overflow, animals drown and start decomposing in creeks and ponds, septic tanks are unearthed… I knew this, but I didn’t think about it, and everyone was grabbing flush water from the tiny creek near me, so why shouldn’t I?

Plus, when you don’t have running water, it’s super easy to forget to wash your hands. Something that used to be automatic is now a big mental task.

Luckily, it was only about 6 hours of gastric distress for each of us in the outhouse, yard and litter box, respectively. For a few hours my cat just curled up in a tiny heap in my bathrobe and looked like she had decided to give up on everything - she recovered, thank god.

This illness hit the same day as I was helping neighbors strategize how to handle their waste, and teach them how to set up dry toilets.

It reinforced just how much of a need this was going to be, how dangerous the alternatives were, and how few people had any idea how to handle their bathroom needs without running water- especially with no communication from official sources about what we were supposed to do.

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Social Inequity & Disaster Preparedness

We’re going to take a slight detour…. I want you to imagine that your city suddenly lost water. What would YOU do? Your neighbors? While some would be well resourced enough to manage finding a temporary, safe bathroom solution, many will be left behind… raising the question: Isn’t this what FEMA does?

Water Availability: Bottled water was available at official distribution sites, but flushing water didn’t arrive until many, many days into the crisis. And with only one case of bottled water allotted per household daily, it simply wasn’t enough – flushing alone requires 1-2 gallons per use.

How much water do you use in a day? If you needed to fill a bathtub with water, would the stopper hold?

Barriers to Access: Number one, water is HEAVY. And even once flushing water was available, official distribution sites were extremely limited, buses weren’t running, and many elderly, disabled, and public housing residents couldn’t access them - and there was no door-to-door support provided. Incredible grassroots efforts have been made with delivering water to 500-gallon totes they set up strategically through the city… but that still doesn’t quite get it into your house, and into your toilet.

In one now infamous example, an 11-story public housing building, mostly home to disabled and elderly residents, went nearly two weeks without water, power to the elevators, or help from the Housing Authority tasked with providing them safe, sanitary living conditions. Residents couldn’t leave or flush until an all-volunteer “Flush Brigade” showed up and flushed every toilet in the building. For others in public housing, pressurized toilets meant flushing wasn’t possible - no matter how much water was added to it.

Every city has residents who will be disproportionately affected in a disaster due to barriers in accessing basic necessities. I encourage you to consider who these folks are in your own community and how you might support them - now and in an emergency!

Emergency Sanitation is Chronically Overlooked: Emergency sanitation is, frankly, neglected in disaster planning. While official FEMA guidelines advise things like “don’t flush if sewer lines are damaged” and “keep a trowel,” they fall painfully short of educating and preparing people for sanitation loss, or responding adequately when it happens. They completely ignore the reality that… EVERYBODY POOPS. Most people in urban areas haven’t faced this challenge, and many didn’t know how to handle waste safely, creating hazardous conditions. Poop Crew eventually got our city to provide guidance, but it took weeks, and water was already returning by that point.

And this wasn’t just Asheville – inadequate emergency sanitation planning is widespread. Check if your city has a plan for water and sewage crises.

Amazing Visual Dry Toilet instructions created for Poop Crew by Lori Langdon.
You can view our written instructions for how to make your own Emergency Dry Toilet here!

Lived Experience & Education Many people I spoke to directly were resorting to solutions that make me, an avid outdoorsperson and a degree-holding Biologist-  want to run away screaming. I’m not kidding. We’re talking pooping into a toilet bowl of bleach, standing over kitty litter boxes, tossing waste into neighbors yards, pooping in a Cracker Barrel parking lot (I saw this one with my own eyes, unfortunately), filling containers with poop and pee and leaving them around, ‘just going outside’, and many more……. The chemical, biological and environmental hazards people were subjecting themselves, and their neighbors, to during this time were horrifying.

This was a completely novel situation for so many people. Many urban Americans have never ever gone to the bathroom outside, not even to pee. The minority have been to countries where indoor plumbing isn’t a given. Health literacy about what’s safe and unsafe when it come to human waste is very, very low (even amongst people who think they know!)

But the great news is - people can learn about all of these things BEFORE an emergency, so they are equipped to care for themselves and provide assistance to others! To learn more about public hygiene advocacy, and what to do in an emergency, visit PHLUSH.org

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Poop Crew Is Born

The indomitable Ava.

Okay, back to the main story.

Day Seven. I went to my local anarchist bookstore-turned emergency resource hub. I took all four of my buckets, instruction leaflets, and supplies to make a few more dry toilets.

In a true mutual aid miracle, many more buckets and supplies somehow arrived over the course of the day, and I ended up giving out 24 toilets.

Yes - I handed out 20 MORE toilets than I had brought.

There was a guy who owns a sawmill just driving around with bags of sawdust in case anyone needed them.

Buckets, contractor bags, and other supplies would show up without a trace of who had dropped them off. We were handing out toilets literally as fast as the materials were appearing. 

Mystery Saw Mill Man

Over the course of the next few days, dozens of people from all over the country saw my videos and sent money for toilet supplies.

Around 30 people, most of whom I had never met before, texted or showed up to volunteer their expertise and time. Asheville is the type of town where a stranger can role up and say “Hey, I’ve been pooping in buckets for years - can I help?” and it’s hardly even weird.

Every single person on Poop Crew is an incredible human being who somehow, magically appeared at just the right time their unique skillset was most useful.

We had Spanish and Russian speakers and even a UX designer volunteer their time to translate our instructions so we could communicate with almost anyone in our community. There was a fleet of carpenters from two different states building toilet benches that were easier for folks with mobility issues to use.

We had people with experience in non-profit communications, public health, Rainbow Gatherings, and handling large scale, off-grid sanitation reach out with ideas and advice about our system, and how to make the best, safest dry toilet system possible that kept people safe in their home, neighborhood, and best protected our sanitation workers down the line.

One person even crocheted us adorable little poops so we could best demonstrate how to use the toilets in a way that was fun and approachable for people!

We launched ToiletsofAVL.com to help people find places to go while on-the-go.

We distributed over 100 hygiene kits with 3D printed bottle showers, hand sanitizer and information about how to stay safe at home without running water, and how to get signed up for city water alerts.

We ended up calling ourselves “Poop Crew” - I’m honestly not even really sure how, but the name stuck.

My absolute best estimate is that by the time we started getting running water back in our toilets after 18 days, we had distributed around 1000 dry toilets in our community.. plus many more informational leaflets- and the videos we made about dry toilets went widely around our community (and beyond!)

When most of the city had gotten flush water back, we passed our remaining supplies to another community facing a sewage crisis, and flushed our remaining funds further down the pipes to help people through BeLoved Asheville and Firefly Gathering.

Poop Crew was a complete and total, life-changing whirlwind, and I am so, so proud of the work that our ragtag crew came together to do.

Everybody Poops, But There’s Only One of YOU, You Beautiful Weirdo!

Me (right), age 17, teaching campers about S—T (it comes out of you, and it comes out of me!)

Did I ever think I’d end up as the Toilet Lady? No. But then again… maybe yes.

I’ve used every kind of toilet you can imagine. Growing up rural in Colorado, I was a regular outhouse user and knew how to properly layer waste and dry material from the tender age of 3. My experiences camping, traveling in countries that have poor sanitation systems, and staying with friends who use composting toilets gave me an unusually wide comfort zone for bathroom setups and solid knowledge (sorry about that pun!) of sanitation systems.

I’m a trauma-informed kids’ yoga teacher. I’ve learned how to talk to anyone about anything – even under incredibly difficult circumstances – and how to get on people’s level, especially when it comes to talking about bodies. That came in handy when discussing poop- a topic kids love but adults are terrified of.

I’m also an information-accessibility nerd. This situation was my biggest accessibility challenge ever: distilling everything I know about poop and dry toilet safety into clear, multi-language instructions, produced fast and distributed with almost zero technology. Plus, distributing critical information to a constantly-evolving team of volunteers. My human-centered design skills and all my fancy UX knowledge felt both useless and completely essential to building a functional, safe system and team for those who needed it most during this time.

Then, there’s my ADHD – my brain is wired for “go-mode.” My ability to hyperfocus became my superpower as I tracked people, supplies, and information in those intense weeks. I may have lost my keys a hundred times, but there’s no way I could have managed this without my ADHD brain!

And even with all that. There were moments that being the sudden, de facto Leader of the Poop Crew was so, so hard.

There were people who just really, fundamentally did not understand the importance of the work we were doing, or who offered heavy criticism without even attempting to understand the problem we were trying to solve, and had no empathy for the lives of the people who needed help.

There were moments that I wanted to (or did!) break down and just have a full out cry and rage at the state of, well, everything. The despair that so many people were still falling through the cracks of our, and many other volunteers’, monumental efforts to help. The frustration that the people in charge seemingly didn’t care. The seeming apathy of people who have so much, and lost so little.

I’ve never worked directly in a harm-reduction capacity, or in a grassroots organizing effort before, and… it was A LOT.

But over and over, I was continually reminded that - like it or not - there’s only one of me. And I knew I had to reach deep in my soul and trust that the work I was doing was making a difference.

That I needed to see this thing through, and trust that my intuition was right, and my values and morals here were guiding me towards something way bigger than myself that I was just lucky to be a part of.

My skin got tougher, my heart got softer. I went through the fire, and I emerged… still me, but hopefully a little better.

So, Here’s What I Want YOU to Get From My Story

Yes!  Crocheted poops!

After all this, I’m still a web designer. 

I’m not pivoting my life to go advocate for people to use bucket toilets. I’m not going to be the person who packs up my house and hits the road to go from disaster to disaster. That’s all lovely, and valiant, and brave, and very needed. But it’s not my role.

My role is right here, doing what I’ve been doing all along. Building websites, helping people with “tech stuff”, and making this new, digital world more accessible to all!

This experience was powerful. And I want to share with you the reminder to me that each and every person has unique skills and life experiences that, in unexpected ways, can help others. And if we want the world to become a better place, we need all of us. Yes, that means you!

One of my favorite things about Poop Crew was seeing people step into roles that fit their skills, personalities, and lives perfectly- right when it mattered the most. I can’t tell you how much life-giving hope that brought to my heart.

And that is exactly what I love about what I do with Lark About Design Co. – I get to empower people to make a difference in their world by using their unique strengths- no matter how big, small, niche or unusual.

I want every beautiful weirdo to give their dream its time to shine.

Please- don’t give up on your dreams, you beautiful weirdo!

Therapists, Fear-Free Dog Groomers, Artists, Non-Profits, Consultants, Grassroots Initiatives…

I’ve gotten to work with so many amazing people and organizations this year - all of whom are devoted to creating a better world through the work that they do, and I’m so excited to keep supporting them, and others like them.

Of all the buckets, this was my favorite bucket.

So, while I never, ever could have imagined this career detour into grassroots emergency sanitation, I’m grateful for what it taught me. And I’m excited to bring this new, slightly different version of myself back to work – to help others find their own strengths and paths. Their own Poop Crew, so to speak.

I can’t wait to continue making websites, coaching tiny business owners in their web presence & empowering folks with the tools, skills and encouragement they need to make their dreams come true.

Whether your dreams are big or tiny. They’re Your Fucken Bucket.

I’m here for them, and I’m here for you!

Much love,
Lark

P.S.: I also want you to add an emergency dry toilet to your garage or supply closet like, yesterday – right next to your spare jugs of water, candles, cash, and flashlights. You never know when you’ll need it. I’m serious!!

P.P.S.: If you ever want a partner in your tiny dream / web presence, I would LOVE to meet you. Or, if you just want to chat about bucket toilets. I want to meet you! Seriously, my calendar is open to you. It’s as easy as scheduling an intro chat here!