Hurricane Helene Ravages Western North Carolina
By Wendi Strauch Mahoney
I went to North Carolina on October 6 through the 11th, with Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, to deliver Starlink communication just days after Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina. People ask me why this hurricane was so devastating given there are at least one or two disasters every year that grab national attention. Simplest answer? Terrain and lack of warning.
A woman I met had no ID to vote or way to get a title for the car that was donated to her. Why didn’t she grab her wallet before she escaped, you ask? The best example I can give is the story I heard from an older man in Fairview, North Carolina.
Rain had been pounding the mountainous region for days before the storm, but right before the worst of it, there had been a lull in the weather. Then, on September 26, and the wee hours of September 27, the torrential rain and fierce winds came in with the worst of Helene. Rural mountain towns with wooded slopes and rivers below that were already rushing to the brim were, without warning, buried in mud, and in natural and human debris. A man I met described what he experienced at 6:39 a.m. on September 27.
The man said he was quietly lying on his sofa in the early morning hours of September 27, and at 6:39, half a mountain and a gigantic tree trunk smashed through the side of his home. He told me he had no idea how he survived. This man, pictured in the top right corner under the tent, was a short-order cook with a nationwide chain, but that morning found himself without a home, making three meals a day under a tent for his community at a small rural church. Sadly, his story is far from unusual. Many just like him lost everything in this storm.
Entire families perished in the early hours on September 27 in hollers and gullies in the mountains of North Carolina and East Tennessee. The home below in the Burnsville area slid down the mountain. All inside died.
The photo below was taken in Hungry River south of Hendersonville on Deep Gap Road. Credit: Sean Strain
The terrain in these parts made the aftermath almost impossible to address efficiently, especially at a state and federal level. Aid from the government was delayed. In a blink of an eye, roads, businesses, homes, and souls were swept away. And so the locals began to pitch in.
These are remote areas whose inhabitants are ruggedly independent, often living off the grid to avoid bureaucratic nonsense. Many families have lived in those mountains for generations and want nothing to do with outsiders. And many in this region are very poor, used to living without electricity or luxuries of any kind. Many use springs or wells for their water and some don’t even have a cell phone, or if they do, they don’t feel a need to be connected 24/7. They use devices like that for emergencies only.
It was evident to me that churches quickly became the main lifeline, the gathering places, and collection centers for so many of these small communities. Pastors became true leaders, integral to the well-being of these small rural villages.
Volunteers with every imaginable skill set quickly put their heads together to meet the needs of the communities. Government and private helicopters were also dropping supplies in remote areas the entire time I was there.
Since a small group of people and I were donating and deploying Starlinks to help communities communicate their most urgent needs in a fluid manner, we were able to coordinate with many of these volunteers. Many of the volunteers had also lost everything, including loved ones, but still stepped up to help their neighbors. They are volunteer firefighters, electricians, IT people, homesteaders, tradesmen and women of all stripes, law enforcement officers, and Air Marshals.
One of the biggest challenges of helping people during disasters is to provide and be responsive to the goods and support communities truly need. Many times, well-meaning outsiders donate what they THINK people need and not what they ACTUALLY need.
The Starlinks were a critical first step to helping these communities have a stable internet connection to communicate specific needs to collection centers and hubs. It is important to note that what people might have needed hours after the storm may not be what they need right now.
The weather is now growing cold. Needs are changing rapidly. Now people are beginning to need cars, places to live, propane, and more costly items. The logistics of getting around, delivering goods, and fulfilling needs continues to be difficult.
Some of the Starlinks we donated are strapped to ambulances, ATVS, and EMS vehicles making daily trips to remote locations with medical supplies and nurses on board to provide care.
Churches are at the core of most of the aid.
Pastor Keith leads a congregation of about 30 people at Big Meadows Missionary Baptist Church in the Newland/Burnsville area. Pastor Keith articulated the needs of his congregants poignantly in the following interview. He is a humble man and it was difficult to even get him to tell me what his community most urgently needs. Many are like Pastor Keith in these mountains, humble, plain-speaking men and women, who are above all, used to being self-reliant. Video here from Twitter X below shows Pastor Keith speaking from the heart.
To donate to Pastor Keith. Venmo his church at BigMeadows01.
Pastor Winston at Trinity Baptist Church in Asheville pretty much blew my socks off. He is a logistical genius and a prince of a young man with a huge heart for humanity. In the week I was there, he had dug two wells on his church property.
The National Guard was in residence on Pastor Winston’s property. He had a war room with a huge screen showing all the affected areas. Winston told me in Pensacola alone, 500 structures washed down the mountain.
Pastor Winston’s campus is now a major hub and collection center, one that ministers and supplies to countless smaller churches and communities throughout the Western North Carolina region. He was so busy yet he sat down to talk with us to explain how he was going to serve Asheville and the surrounding counties. Remarkable. To give to Pastor Winston’s operation, please donate HERE.
His family’s disaster relief charity, Hearts with Hands, grew from a conversation between his grandparents at their kitchen table many years ago. They continue to support and minister to communities nationwide during disasters like Helene. To donate to Hearts with Hands, please donate HERE.
In a week’s time, North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) crews had already repaired so many impassable roads. It is not without treachery, though. The roads continue to be unstable. During the time I was there, two volunteers died on one of those roads while helping to rebuild. Just because the asphalt is there, does not mean the structure beneath it is intact.
Following one of the roads to the end in Green River near Saluda, we ended up hiking one of the Starlinks donated by Robby Starlink into a small riverside community there.
One of the volunteers I met who lives in Charlotte, had already done reconnaissance of the Green River location. When he first visited, the entrance to the bridge over the river was washed out. When he first went to the location, locals needed a ladder to hoist goods onto what remained of the bridge, and then would send the items into the community, about a mile and a half hike in. We delivered one of the first Starlinks to a small community of 10 in Green River.
Photo credit: Sean Strain
A week later, NCDOT had connected the road with the bridge.
The people in the Green River community had appointed one of its members to the role of “Mayor.” While they were happy to have the ability to communicate, frankly, they seemed happy to see us leave. Again, these are people who are used to being self-reliant. It would take much more than a donated Starlink to earn their trust, and frankly, I was happy to do what I could and leave them at peace. About 10 were left in their community but on the other side of the river, almost every structure was destroyed and the ones who remained couldn’t tell me how many had survived.
There are so many stories to tell but none of them capture the human toll or destruction. When hurricanes hit coastal areas, the terrain is such that the visual impact is immediately understood. In the case of these mountain areas, it is difficult to access and challenging to provide an accurate picture of the devastation. Some areas looked untouched and many others appeared to be little islands of mass destruction littered all over the hollers and valleys of the misty mountains of Appalachia.
I leave you with a final story, this one from Michelle, a mountain woman, a pioneer homesteader in East Tennessee who renders her own pig lard and neuters her horses by the Farmer’s Almanac. Michelle has lent her land to rescuers and volunteers. Every day since the storm, she has worked tirelessly helping her community from 5:30 a.m. to well into the night.
Michelle told me the story of a call she received. A poor elderly man who had been trapped without electricity or water told a friend of hers that if he didn’t get a generator by day’s end, he would commit suicide. Michelle drove a generator to him, probably saving his life.
The despair is very real not only because so many have lost so much but also because communities know winter is coming. Many have been told they will have no electricity for months. Yes, many were burning wood for heat before the hurricane but many of those now have no homes to warm.
Nevertheless, as hopeless as things seem at times, I always feel the same way when I venture out of my cocoon. I see so many examples of why I love our country.
As I said to Frank the night before my Quite Frankly interview–every time I do something like this, it renews my faith in America and its people. Everyone should take time at least once a year to wander out of their cozy lives and be of service-- meet people, people who are the unsung heroes doing incredible things without recognition or the need to post their efforts on social media.
America is a land full of people who get up every day and venture out, to help people they don't know, even in faraway lands. Many times we help people who will never give us a thing in return.
The stories I have from my trip to North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee are almost too difficult to put into words. Most of what I've seen and encountered will never be shared or written down. But every time I do this kind of thing, I come away feeling the same way. I feel a profound love for the American spirit, the ingenuity, the generosity of our people, and our unparalleled volunteerism. There's no other nation on the planet that does what our people do. It’s in our DNA.
If you would like to donate to Mercury One, please donate HERE. Mercury One has been enormously generous in North Carolina and TN after the storm.