The building that holds Summit CrossFit and its community is still standing, but the interior is unrecognizable.
- A foot of mud covers the gym floors, walls are ripped down, and bathrooms are destroyed, all in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
Leslie Marie Cardix, who has owned Summit CrossFit in Asheville, NC, since 2018, is slowly starting to pick up the pieces of what was her 10,000-square-foot gym.
The hurricane made landfall last Thursday, September 26, in northwestern Florida and made its way to Georgia and the Carolinas.
- As of October 2, 2024, at least 180 deaths have been attributed to the storm, and countless people are still displaced in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and other states. The rebuilding effort is likely to take several months, if not years.
Cardix started to prepare for the storm on Thursday night by putting out sandbags. Still, she wasn’t expecting damage to this extent.
The gym, located within a concrete warehouse, withstood the storm, but the damage inside was devastating. By Friday afternoon, they had 10 feet of water on the outside of the building.
- “Our street was inaccessible,” Cardix told Morning Chalk Up in an interview. “You could see raging water slowing down shipping containers from the local Walmart. There is a U-Haul store right on the other side of the street at the corner, and their U-Hauls were floating down the street. [By] then, I knew we were not in good shape.”
Unable to access the gym, Cardix managed to take back roads to a hill where she could see the damage from afar.
And from that vantage point, she saw every building around her completely decimated.
- “We are the last remaining building on the block, and it was just raging waters beating against the doors. You kind of just feel your soul get sucked out of you because you’re like, I’m done. I don’t know how we can recover from this,” Cardix said.
- When she went back the next day, she found thick mud covering her gym floors, and everything not bolted to the floor from the front of the building had been smashed into the back.
There was almost nothing left inside the gym that functioned except for her floor scrubber, which she managed to turn on.
It was a small glimmer of hope in what seemed like an unrecoverable situation. Cardix said she was in shock for probably three days and just running on adrenaline.
- “I think I’m finally coming back to myself, and whether my landlords are going to take charge or not, I am going to figure this out,” she said.
Cardix’s plan for the moment is for her and her daughter to head to Florida to be with family and come back to Asheville on Friday, October 4, to begin the cleanup.
She hopes that the community will come together this weekend to start the initial cleanup, and then she will work with her insurance company to assess the damages and see what structural repairs will need to be done.
Though it’s a long road ahead, Cardix is hopeful that her community will stand behind her and that her gym will reopen at some point.
- “We just need to make sure people can breathe in there and not get sick,” she said. “And then once the mud is all gone, we can see the actual damage. Our rig is standing. It’s going to be disgusting, and we’re going to need to pressure wash the heck out of it. But the rig is standing.”
Summit CrossFit is the biggest gym in Asheville and is known to host local competitions because of its size and great location. Cardix adds that the location is so perfect that if she ends up needing to move, she likely won’t continue being the owner.
- “That’s what the community is about, helping each other out in times of need. And I’d like to think we have a very good community, and not just Summit, but the whole Asheville CrossFit community in and of itself,” she said.
- Other prominent voices in the community have shared Cardix’s story, including Director of Sport Dave Castro and on CrossFit LLC’s Instagram page.
How You Can Help Summit CrossFit
While insurance and relief from the government are likely to come through, it won’t be enough to cover the extent of damages or continue to pay her coaching staff.
To that end, a Summit CrossFit member has set up a GoFundMe page. Those interested in helping Cardix and her gym rebuild after this disaster can donate here.
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Featured image: Leslie Marie Cardix
