Greetings From Heleneistan

Appalachia in the Aftermath #3

If anyone tells you “no one is helping” in Southern Appalachia, don’t believe them. First and foremost, Appalachians are helping. God, are they helping. It seems almost every able-bodied person is stepping up to volunteer with clean-up, supply distribution, or other critical services. The wealthier among us are donating funds and even opening their homes to people displaced by Helene. Utility and road crews are here from 50 states and Canada, helping to get us back on the grid. We are hosting armies of volunteers from around the country. Corporations are reopening and providing needed services and free supplies. And there are some government relief workers here, too.

The state of Asheville

The hardest hit areas in Asheville were those places near the French Broad and Swannanoa Rivers. Property and infrastructure has been destroyed well above the normal flood zones. There are still many, many roads that need rebuilding and many homes and businesses that are a complete loss.

Some neighborhoods—by no means all—in Asheville have had their power restored. But the entire city is still without municipal water supply. No one has water coming out of the tap. From what I understand, the huge pipes that feed water down from the main reservoirs needed to be replaced, but in order to do that, the roads first needed to be cleared and repaired. Once those pipes are fixed, there’s still problems at the street level and the sewage plant. I’ve heard estimates of six weeks to get everything squared away so that Asheville can have water again. We’ll see.

I was in Asheville on Saturday most of the day. Here’s what I saw:

• Pallets and pallets and pallets of bottled drinking water, everywhere I went. It seems every church, every restaurant, every store, every bar is distributing free water.

• Free hot meals. On just one street in West Asheville, I saw two churches, one local restaurant, and a visiting relief charity offering up delicious hot meals for free to anyone passing by. Later on, I passed by a McDonalds that was serving free meals to the community all day.

• Street lights working and businesses open. Somehow they’re struggling on without running water.

• The Flush Brigade—an ad-hoc team of locals gathering water from ponds and swimming pools and hauling it to nursing homes, low-income apartments, and neighborhoods for toilet flushing.

• Mobile showers are set up in the Asheville Mall parking lot courtesy of Samaritan’s Purse. I also heard that both big Walmarts have shower stations set up in their parking lots.

• Every kind of help you could possibly think of: Wifi and charging stations. Canopies set up with mountains of non-perishable food, toiletries, and paper products staged underneath. A group of healing practitioners had a pop-up massage and acupuncture tent going outside a food co-op. Someone was collecting donations of art supplies for the river district artists who lost their studios in the flood. One guy was doing free tech support to help people whose phones and devices still aren’t working.

• Not a single FEMA agent. I’m sure they’re there somewhere but I didn’t see them.

Free massage and acupuncture is a very Asheville type of disaster relief.

Contrary to some of the reports I’ve seen on Substack, Asheville is not dying of dehydration or starvation. Asheville is understandably stressed out and a little smelly. I don’t want to downplay what they are going through because it is absolutely real hardship. They’ve just been through an apocalyptic storm, many had homes and cars damaged or destroyed, they have been inundated with the tragic reports and imagery from across the region, spent the first few days scrambling to get food and water, the next few unable to go anywhere because of the gas shortage or buy anything because the stores weren’t taking cards, and now they’re still without basic modern amenities. Many have lost dear friends and family members. The loss of income from shut-down jobs is the next major hurdle to be overcome. But rest assured that they are not dying in the streets.

Beyond Asheville

I’ve only visited communities within 40 miles north and west of Asheville, so I can’t give firsthand accounts of the wider region. I do have friends living in some other areas, and others who have been delivering supplies to the harder-hit areas east of Asheville. With their help, I’m trying to stay apprised.

Search and rescue efforts have now turned to searching for human remains. And bodies are still being found. We still do not have a reliable total estimate of the death count for western North Carolina.

Supplies have been flooding in to western North Carolina, and some of the outlying communities are inundated, struggling to come up with space to store all the food, water, toiletries, paper products, clothes, blankets, baby formula, diapers, wipes, pet food, livestock feed, hay, cleaning supplies, contractor bags, propane tanks, shovels, rakes, gas cans, etc. that we have received. What’s crazy is I don’t even think it’s too much. No one does. It’s just not all going to be needed at once. Like I’ve been saying the whole time, this is going to be a long, long, looooooonnnnnggg recovery.

So here’s what’s happening to the surplus supplies. The donations are generally collected in a large, open, central location in a town like the supermarket parking lot or the county fairgrounds. Then volunteers from each community pick these goods up and drive them out to community centers and churches, so that every neighborhood has its own disaster distribution hub. The hubs are set up like stores, where anyone can walk in and take whatever they need for free. Many of those walking in and taking items are then bringing them to elderly and infirm neighbors who can’t get out of the house. The system seems to work well because these volunteers have specialized knowledge about what types of things are needed in their neighborhood.

Surpluses beyond what can reasonably go out to the communities are often redirected to areas that have greater need of this or that. For instance, most of my county has the power back on, so teams of volunteers are taking things like flashlights, batteries, propane tanks, charcoal, and other power outage supplies out to other, mostly farther out communities that still haven’t had the electricity restored. This work is entirely unmanaged and undirected by any central authority. The needs go up on social media groups, and volunteers show up to fill them.

And then there’s the clean-up. In my town, the devastated, low-lying downtown area was cleaned up by hundreds of volunteers, organized by the local business owners. The work isn’t done yet, but almost every storefront has been mucked out and the street is now clear for driving.

From reports I’m hearing, it sounds like one of the primary focuses of the farther out mountain communities continues to be fixing private roads and clearing debris from landslides. I’ve seen so many pleas for excavators because people can’t even drive out of their driveways until major restoration work is completed. So when you hear about people still being stranded in western North Carolina, this is probably what’s being referred to.

Fortunately, we have been blessed, in addition to the outpouring of critical food and water donations, with teams of laborers coming into the area with excavators and other heavy equipment to fill this need. Probably not enough of them, but every bit helps.

Sometimes—certainly not always—this type of help can be met with consternation. It’s not universal, but there still is an undercurrent in the deep, backwoods Appalachian culture of radical self-reliance, of distrusting or flat-out disliking outsiders offering help. And there are good historical reasons for that. Perhaps some day I’ll write a post about them. Still, even though I have heard reports of people turning away the volunteer help, I’ve heard many more of volunteers finding much needed work to be done and people happy to accept the help.

Locals not in agreement about FEMA complaints

By now you’ve probably seen about eleventy different reports of FEMA mishandling and/or sabotaging our relief efforts. Not to mention all the conspiracy theories about why they might be doing this, if indeed they are. Some of the stories sound pretty credible, others have a whiff of the rumor mill to them. You might be scratching your head, unsure of what to believe.

Well I am here to tell you that Appalachia is just as unsure what to think about all this as you are, and maybe more so. As with most issues, it seems the “what to think about it” line is drawn neatly down the political left-right divide.

Our left-leaning neighbors are very, very, very certain that there is no weird stuff going on whatsoever, could never happen in a million years, FEMA is here to help and knows exactly what they are doing and how dare anyone suggest otherwise, any stories of FEMA sabotaging the relief efforts, whether through incompetence or malice, are lies and vicious rumors, and this misinformation is all a conspiracy by Republicans intent on destroying our democracy.

Then you’ve got your rural conservative homies, who are 100% convinced that every single story they hear about FEMA sabotage is true without needing to do any vetting, and that the whole failed government response is a grand conspiracy to either suppress the conservative vote or take over Appalachia for its resources, or both.

Okay, I’m hyperbolizing. But only a bit. There are, of course, different shades and flavors of the two above extremes among opinion-havers in Southern Appalachia. It’s a spectrum. But people are definitely talking about it, and there’s no universal agreement.

Perhaps that’s because many of us have seen neither hide nor hair of these alleged FEMA relief workers. I haven’t seen them in any of the towns I’ve been in since Helene the Hellion, including Asheville. I had one buddy tell me he saw a big encampment of them in Black Mountain, which makes sense because that’s one of the areas of greatest devastation. Of the helicopters that’ve been flying over my land at the rate of 30 or more per day, a much larger percentage of them are military-style than in the first few days after the storm. But I can’t say for sure if that’s evidence of FEMA presence.

Most of the stories do not have video receipts to accompany them. I’ve seen one video of helicopter shenanigans with an unmarked military-style craft doing its damndest to scatter a parking lot full of staged relief supplies in a town right down the road from me. But I don’t know if that was a FEMA craft or not.

I’ve also heard credible stories of government agents jumping in, getting their hands dirty, and working with—not against—the locals. These stories have all been about national guardsmen and state government agencies, not FEMA. But like I said, few people I’ve spoken to have even had any encounters with FEMA. The only government people I have personally seen around here have been national guardsmen, mucking out the streets and helping to distribute livestock feed in Marshall.

But let’s not pretend that federal agencies are hyper-efficient, well-oiled machines that always do exactly what they were created to do with minimal error and zero unintended consequences. A federal agency taking charge in a disaster zone means decision-making is going to be in the hands of people who don’t know the terrain or the needs of the community as well as the locals do. Overlords gonna overlord. And when a large, centralized entity makes a mistake, it necessarily has a larger negative impact overall than when a small charity or a private citizen makes a mistake. So no one should be shocked or dismayed if sometimes FEMA royally screws up. America wanted a federal disaster management agency and we got one.

I think the truth, as usual, is somewhere in between the two extremes. In essence, both things can be true at once: that FEMA and other government agencies are providing needed assistance, and that there are instances of them overstepping their bounds and using control tactics that are not conducive to our relief efforts.

To me, the initial response of hundreds of thousands of Appalachians pulling together robust relief efforts in their own communities (starting before the area was even accessible to government agencies or visiting volunteers) proves that local, private, and decentralized relief and recovery works. Yeah, it’s a bit chaotic. But somehow people are rescued. People are fed. People are given showers in the mall parking lot.

As the government agencies get more established and start taking over more responsibility in the region, we’ll see how it all plays out. We’ve realistically got about two or three days before many of our from-out-of-town volunteers pack up and leave for Miltonistan. Hopefully some kindhearted chainsaw, excavator, and shovel operators will stay behind to help with the massive amount of cleanup and rebuilding work we still need to do. And then it’s only a matter of a couple news cycles before America moves on to the next thing. Everyone will forget about Appalachia. Donations will stop rolling in. Then it’ll just be us and FEMA, wading through the wreckage.

Two things I do know:

1. Appalachia doesn’t need to be turning away any real, actual help at the present time. No matter where it comes from—federal, state, local, public or private sector.

2. Appalachians have a right and a responsibility to watchdog our own recovery effort.

So I would ask my neighbors of all political persuasions to be a little less quick to the draw when it comes to sorting out what is actually going on. Don’t dismiss a story just because it doesn’t sit right with you or check off all of your biases. Don’t assume either dastardly evil or angelic perfection of FEMA, but understand that big, centralized agencies can tend toward inefficiency. Don’t be hostile to people—even the ones with jackboots on—unless you verify for sure that they’re not trying to help. Let’s try and tread the middle path here.

Power outages an even bigger problem with nighttime temperatures dropping

This hurricane hit us at a bad time, only two or three weeks before our typical cool weather season begins. Already nighttime temperatures have dropped into the low 40s (low 30s in some higher elevation areas), and as you can see below, many, many people across the region are still without power.

Outage map for French Broad Electric Membership Cooperative, my local energy supplier. (As of 9 pm October 7)

Outage map for Duke Power, the major energy supplier in the region (as of 9 pm October 7)

I have begun a heating initiative to help folks stay warm in these areas. We are collecting donations of new and used propane and kerosene heaters, fuel for the heaters, and seasoned firewood. Then we are delivering these items to distribution hubs serving neighborhoods where power outages are still widespread.

Yesterday, a family member traveling up here from Rockingham, NC, was able to buy out a store’s entire stock of midsized portable propane heaters—15 units in total—through the help of generous donations I received from making a few phone calls and putting out a couple of social media posts. Today we will be delivering those units to Asheville and Swannanoa, along with a truck and trailer of cured firewood.

I have at least two more firewood deliveries scheduled for later in the week and donations keep coming, though some of the wood still needs to be split. I also have a shed that is filling up with used heaters, which I will clean up and test before hauling them out to distribution points.

That’s all I got for this update. I’ll be continuing to report on the Helene recovery twice a week. In addition, I am publishing my Prayer of the Week every Sunday, and I’m working on some new content about spirit-filled and heart-centered responses to the wider dystopia.

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your donations, your prayers, and the love you have shown us southern Appalachians over the past week. If you would like to donate to a trusted relief effort and make sure 100% of your donation goes to the people who need it, consider the organizations on this list.

Here is my most recent Prayer of the Week: Disaster Prayer

And here’s a little interview I did earlier this week with W.D. James of Philosopher’s Holler.

My family and I are safe. We are blessed. We were about as prepared as we could have been, in terms of food storage and the ability to survive without modern conveniences for a few days.

Although we were more fortunate than many of our neighbors in terms of property damage and access to needed supplies, this disaster has impacted my ability to earn income and pay the bills. If you feel so inspired, you can help me get through this by becoming a paid subscriber to this Substack for $5 per month.