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Suppose you were 17 years old. Somebody listening right now is 17 years old. Good morning to you. Now, if you were 17 years old, imagine you had to live through a natural disaster. How might it change the course of your life? It changed a young man in our next story, a high school senior in Asheville, North Carolina. NPR's Katia Riddle met him while reporting on a series on the mental health impacts of Hurricane Helene.
KATIA RIDDLE, BYLINE: The storm hit on a Thursday evening. When Sebastian Sarellano Paez woke up Friday morning, there were several feet of water outside his house.
SEBASTIAN SARELLANO PAEZ: Half the steps towards our porch were now completely covered in water. It just felt scary. And it felt like I almost wasn't awake, in a sense. I didn't want to believe it was real.
RIDDLE: Sarellano Paez's parents immigrated here years ago from Mexico. They live in a working-class town outside Asheville called Swannanoa. He says his mom and dad were already in a panic that morning when he got up. He tried to stay calm. He got himself a bowl of Cheerios.
SARELLANO PAEZ: And while I'm eating them, I'm thinking to myself, what's the next step? Beginning at that point, my brain put itself into a survival mode where I'm not really thinking about how I'm going to feel or really processing anything emotionally, but just, we need to get out of here. And we need to come up with solutions.
RIDDLE: The family decided to risk walking through the water. It was waist-deep. They wanted to get to a neighbor's house on higher ground. No one was home when they got there. They broke in through a window. That turned out to be a lifesaving decision. They watched their own house, yards away, become almost completely submerged. A powerful river emerged out of nowhere.
SARELLANO PAEZ: As the minutes go by, you can see bigger and bigger pieces of debris just floating down. I'm seeing cars and trailer homes being disintegrated in the water.
RIDDLE: The water kept rising. The family tried to get to the attic, but couldn't. His mom started praying. Sarellano Paez says that's a memory he'll have forever - he and his mom sitting on the couch, surrounded by water, her eyes closed while she chanted.
SARELLANO PAEZ: I was starting to come to a point where I'd have to accept that I might not get to see another day.
RIDDLE: He closed his own eyes. It'll be just like taking a nap, he told himself.
SARELLANO PAEZ: And I just didn't want to, like, be seeing what was outside or what was going on anymore. I start, like, reliving a lot of the good memories that I had.
RIDDLE: He wanted his last minutes to be happy.
SARELLANO PAEZ: And just as I was doing that, my dad notices. And he's like, hey, it looks like the water's stopped going as strong as it was. And so I look outside the window, and it did slow down.
RIDDLE: Miraculously, the water receded. Their family made it out. Their house is now unlivable. They're staying with a friend. When Sarellano Paez thinks about that day, it takes him right back to that feeling - trapped.
SARELLANO PAEZ: It's - it really feels like you're lost.
RIDDLE: Trauma is sneaky and unpredictable. Research shows that Sarellano Paez and everyone else who experienced the floods of Helene are at a critical point right now. They're either going to be able to integrate these experiences and stabilize, or they could become emotionally stuck. That can be a debilitating condition. Sarellano Paez remembers the first few days back at his school.
SARELLANO PAEZ: And, you know, like, I'd walk through the halls and there'd be some kids, like, crying. Just crying. And, you know, like, I'd look at them and I'd be like, you know, I feel that.
RIDDLE: Reaching those students who are not able to process those feelings before they get into a mental health crisis - that is the job the state of North Carolina is facing. Pachovia Lovett works for the North Carolina school system.
PACHOVIA LOVETT: We're no longer in immediate crisis mode. Now we are trying to protect our mental health.
RIDDLE: Lovett says Asheville has learned some valuable lessons in how to handle hurricanes from their neighbors in the coastal part of the state. Twenty to forty percent of their students are vulnerable to developing post-traumatic stress disorder. To mitigate this risk, the schools are now practicing something called psychological first aid, and investing millions to hire mental health support staff and assess needs.
LOVETT: Do we look at, you know, recovering personal belongings or shelter or food? And that's what part of this program does. And then it teaches the skills to promote recovery.
RIDDLE: Sebastian Sarellano Paez says he is feeling OK lately. He's going to turn 18 soon. He now grasps something that many kids his age don't - that life is not a guarantee.
SARELLANO PAEZ: I feel like who I am now is a much better person than who I was just a few weeks ago. And I feel like I'm a lot more mature and a lot more grateful for everything that's happened to me, you know, both good and bad.
RIDDLE: He's busy applying to colleges now. His first choice is UNC-Chapel Hill. He doesn't know what he wants to study or what field he might want to go into, but he's not worried about it. He's got time to decide - a whole lifetime. Katia Riddle, NPR News, Swannanoa, North Carolina. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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