On Thursday evening on September 26th, Helene made landfall as a category 4 hurricane in the big bend area of Florida. After touching land, the storm raced up through Florida, Georgia, and then slowed down through both of the Carolinas. We had stationed a small team with the RV and equipment in Florida on the western side of the storm as it came through. The next morning, our team moved to the town of Perry, FL. We had deployed to this same town for hurricane Ian last year and already had connections. We immediately got connected with the local county officials and started clearing the roads, while assessing the storm damage. We soon realized that this area had damage, but it was not catastrophic. There were several beach towns that had a fair amount of damage from the storm surge. Next, reports of catastrophic flooding in North Carolina started coming through and the team in Florida stated that by the reports, there are bigger needs in North Carolina than on the ground in Florida. By this time, we were also getting connected to homeowners in Taylor County, Florida and had requests come in to have us help with the cleanup.

We decided to pivot our main attention to North Carolina, but keep a few guys in Florida to take care of the work orders and to manage several volunteers. By early Sunday morning we had team from PA headed for North Carolina. They arrived in Spruce Pine, NC on Sunday afternoon, and we found a place to set up a command center. The crew from Florida also headed to North Carolina and arrived in the Black Mountain, NC by Sunday evening and set up a second command center.

While heading in, we were in communications with Chazak Rescue and had a joint operation out of the same command center. During the following days, Chazak Rescue was focused on rescue efforts and wellness checks, while also transporting much needed food and water to the locals. We’ve been assisting with their efforts and coordinating a lot of donated supplies that started coming in, while simultaneously working on clearing the roads and gaining access to areas that were cut off. Over the first few days, a lot of collaboration happened with local fire and EMS departments, and a few local contacts that helped us get connected to the community. We were also working on getting our system and infrastructure ready to handle all the incoming donated items, while also creating space for volunteers to help out.

It has been a tremendous blessing to see the outpouring of resources, whether it is donating items, financial contributions, and volunteers coming to help. One week after we got there, local churches, fire companies, and schools were getting flooded with aid and some of them were turning stuff away. We’ve been discussing how to effectively steward the overflow of donated items until they are needed, since the local population is fairly overwhelmed with it right now. The biggest challenge is to effectively manage all the donated items. We’ve also had many people come alongside us and volunteer their time and resources with the cleanup efforts. There has been a tremendous volunteer response and, regrettably, we’ve also had to postpone some people and resources till a later date. We appreciate your patience with this process, as we navigate through all of this. We didn’t get it all done right, but our goal is to maximize where and how we can best utilize all the hours and resources our volunteers bring.

We have had hundreds of volunteer hours for the first week, with lots of heavy equipment, such as skid loaders, mini excavators, trailers, chain saws, and construction equipment. And we have a continued steady stream of volunteers and equipment planning to come as time goes on. We are working with hundreds of homeowners to get there properties cleaned up and their lives stabilized. There are hundreds of grateful recipients and they are all sending a heartfelt Thank You to all of you. Initially, we were operating in rescue mode, while also helping with the food and water distribution the first four days, while simultaneously transitioning to cleanup and recovery phase.

The emergency phase of the disaster is over and we are now focusing on helping the community and families stabilize and, at least to some extent, get back to some kind of a new normal. One of the ways we do so is by helping owners to clean up their properties, which can come in many different forms. Tree removal, driveway repairs, cleaning out houses, gutting houses that have water damage and more. As we looked at the ongoing needs, we recognized that a fair amount of people will be without power for several months, mainly in the remote mountain areas. 40% of the local community in Spruce Pine, NC is lacking power for an unknown length of time and the next urgent need will be for heat.