After category 4 Hurricane Helene devastated much of the southeast, people around the country are looking for ways to help those impacted.
Brandon Walker is from Eagle River, but a few weeks ago, he traveled to the Concord, North Carolina area to help a friend through health issues.
“I was on my way to breakfast, and all of a sudden I just noticed it was kind of flooding a bit here,” he said.
Unbeknownst to Walker, he was in the middle of a category 4 storm, Hurricane Helene, that would wreak havoc to the area.
When he realized the extent of the damage, Walker sprang into action.
“I packed up what I could, whatever fuel I had, whatever gas cans I could. I got a bunch of water, meals ready to eat, some shovels, pickaxes, trash bags, blankets, med kits. Just loaded my Forerunner up with my friend, and we drove down,” he said.
The devastation was hard to comprehend.
“I was just blown away,” he said.
He says in all his years of wildland firefighting and work in the military, he’d never seen anything like this.
He touched base with the army and decided to drive to the harder hit areas to see if he could deliver goods to those in need.
“So we found a family in the mountains there, and we were able to get everybody out from there, but their sense of, you know, it's just lost. Everybody is so, it's a sense of grievance. I don't think that a lot of these people could even fathom. And so, you know, seeing their family photos strewn about over the entire town and their livelihood just literally swept before your eyes,” he explained.
He explained that they need construction workers, welders, framers, and people with experience in hard labor to volunteer.
Walker says if you can be an asset, and not a liability, there are a lot of places in need of help.
He recommends reaching out to local churches.
“It seems like some people are trying to make this a political thing, talking about this FEMA and all this other stuff. You know, I've seen more people with makeshift giveaway things in their front yard saying, ‘hey, neighbor, come get free gas. Hey, come get these waters.’ And I've seen neighbors hiking things in on makeshift gurneys to just these people that they know can't get out,” he explained.
He noted that churches have been integral to the area’s disaster response, since he says they know their congregants best and have been responding to people’s needs around the clock without pay.
KP Whaley is the general manager of Asheville FM, a community radio station.
He used to work in Madison at Wisconsin Public Radio.
Whaley explained that western North Carolina is made up of 16 counties that have all been impacted in some way by Hurricane Helene simultaneously.
“We have whole communities that were isolated and devastated by different creeks swelling to the size of roaring rivers,” he said.
His area received historic levels of flooding, which many people were unprepared for.
“Development pressure in this whole country is a problem that needs to be addressed. New homes that were just built up out of the floodplain in a former field. 16 homes were under three feet of water. Those folks weren't told to get flood insurance,” said Whaley.
He says it has been a season ender in terms of produce for so many farmers.
At Whaley’s farm, Tiny Bridge Farm, he says they’ll need $50,000 or more worth of repairs to get back in action next year.
He said FEMA has done a good job handling the volume of donations and helping to distribute them.
There are also organizations like United Way and the World Central Kitchen that are on the ground volunteering.
Whaley said that he helped support chefs from the World Central Kitchen that were feeding 300 to 400 people a night in his town.
He said that Buncombe County administrators are asking people to hold off on food donations for now, because they have enough supplies.
“Wait three weeks or a month, because that's when we're actually going to be needing it again, once we've used up all these supplies, this recovery is going to take a very long time, and so that will be needed,” he said.
He also recommended donating to groups that are already working with marginalized populations.
“The homeless, the poor, the folks that need Meals on Wheels and can't get around- those organizations are still doing the work that they need to do, and doing it in a much bigger way as well, and those organizations still need support,” he said.
Asheville FM has a list of verified organizations working on the ground that you can support.
In the Northwoods, many quickly jumped into relief mode, organizing aid trucks and donations for hard hit areas like western North Carolina.
Todd Frederick, former president of FreMarq Innovations, organized a fundraiser through St. Stephen’s United Church of Christ in Merrill to support his friend.
Bob Morris lives in Waynesville, North Carolina, in the mountains west of Asheville.
Frederick says they’ve been friends for over 20 years.
“I've been trying to get a hold of him, and he finally, finally got a chance to call me yesterday. He has to walk up a mountain through a cell tower and sit under the cell tower to get a call out. And he and I had a chat about what's going on, what they needed, and their little town and area around it has just been devastated,” explained Frederick.
Morris has a herd of 1,200 cattle, including 250 milkers, that he was left unable to feed after his barn and milking station were destroyed by rain and floodwaters.
All of his crops were ruined.
Frederick asked Morris what he needed, and Morris explained he is in desperate need of hay to feed his herd.
That’s when Frederick organized this hay drive through the church.
He says they’ve received about 15 truckloads of hay so far and that monetary donations will go towards funding transportation costs, which can reach $4000 per truck.
Since putting the call out for hay and donations, Frederick says the community has really stepped up.
“We got folks, like I said, from Iron River all the way to, from Gleason to Wausau and everything in between, calling in to donate hay, which is fantastic,” he said.
Here's a link to donate: https://onrealm.org/SaintStephensUCC/-/form/give/easytogive
