ASHEVILLE – Baby Phoenix made an unforgettable debut.
It was 1:51 a.m. Sept. 27 and Helene was starting to slowly tear Western North Carolina apart as Jewelia Crowe, 28, gave birth to her son.
Ten weeks premature, Phoenix weighed just 2 pounds 10 ounces. Crowe told the Citizen Times he cried until he settled into her arms.
Just two minutes later, he was taken away and rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit. Almost immediately, according to Crowe and her fiancé Samuel Dillard, a transformer exploded outside, and a nurse let out what Dillard called “a God-awful scream.”
“You could see the whole NICU light up,” he said.
But Phoenix was safe. The generators inside Asheville’s Mission Hospital had kicked in. The power stayed on, and despite the unfolding disaster and the immense pressure it put on the hospital and its staff in the days that followed, Phoenix has thrived.
‘An evolving situation’
As of Oct. 2, 33 babies had been born at the HCA Healthcare-owned hospital since Helene hit WNC, according to Mission spokesperson Nancy Lindell.