Communities in rural western North Carolina are still reeling weeks after Hurricane Helene brought devastating floods across the Southeast.
Saint Johnsville, New York Village Mayor Dawn White and village trustee Julie Eisele, both registered nurses, traveled to North Carolina with a box truck full of supplies last month to assist in the relief effort.
White says she and Eisele spent ten days assisting storm-affected residents last month at a temporary medical facility in the small town of Swannanoa. She spoke about her experience with WAMC’s Lucas Willard:
The first day, we were at the medical facility at the Baptist Church, which was sponsored by UNC University of North Carolina medical system and another medical system out of Asheville. And we were pretty steady from 1:00 to 5:00, and a lot it was people who couldn't get meds, diabetics who couldn't get insulin, who had lost their testing supplies. There were a few people with cuts and lacerations and sores on their legs from trying to work through the rubble on their properties. We saw a few children just with respiratory issues, but a lot of it was, “I don't have any meds.” Especially the diabetics. “I don't have access to insulin. I don't know what to do.” That was a big part of what we did.
You traveled down there with a box truck full of supplies. But is there anything that you saw that was needed beyond maybe the supplies that you brought down, maybe something that you weren't expecting?
I was really surprised at the lack of, I guess, debris moving equipment. I pictured New York, and I remember when there was a big flood in Fort Plain, and the next day, there were local people with their excavators, and the Amish were there, and everybody was working to clear up the area. And granted, that was just one village, but I was amazed at the lack of, really, working on restoring, clearing these spots where stores used to be and opening up the parking lots of the stores that could still maybe be salvaged, and trying to get power back to them. There was no gas station open there. I was just surprised at four weeks out, how much debris and destruction you still saw. But I've never really been in a situation quite like that. I lived in Florida for quite a while, and I was through quite a few hurricanes, but there it's flat. The water comes in, the water goes out. And yes, maybe the wind blew your house down. But I've never seen anything quite like this, with the amount of destruction that the mud and the trees and all the debris building up on itself as it came down the mountain did. It was otherworldly, I'm gonna say.
Was there any progress on any particular projects, something that you saw over the course of the 10 days that you were there, actually get completed? Did you see, maybe, a noticeable difference from day one when you arrived in day 10 when you left?
There was one road that they did get open on Black Mountain, because we went up and did a couple wellness checks on people. And it was just amazing what they'd done with these roads. You were…everything was pretty much gone. A couple of people, they had actually taken over their lawns to make passage because the entire road was gone. And it was good that they had gotten, you know, as much of that open as you could. And I know we went to the fire station to see if we could get help for one of the people whose houses we stopped at, because we smelled fumes really bad in the house, but the fire department was also buried in mud, and they weren't able to go out and do anything. So, we called back down to the base, and they called 911 for somebody to go check that out. So that was good, but the videos I've been watching still since then are of like Chimney Rock and Bat Cave and Lake Lure, which are still basically without services, pretty much. Winter is coming, and I'm glad we took as many coats as we did, because it gets cold in those mountains and those people have nowhere to live. Their houses are gone. Really, I’ve never seen a situation like that.
So, I have to ask, you know, as an elected official, did this trip maybe change your thinking in a way, about how you approach your job as a public official? What are you taking away from this trip?
Well, as soon as I got back, we have a good flood mitigation plan because we're right on the river, but I was checking into if we have any kind of evacuation plan or disaster plan or anything like that. And, apparently, we don't. So, I have been in contact with Jeff Kaczor, who is the Montgomery County Emergency Management Director. We're going to have a meeting through the Red Cross. The high school is an evacuation point, but if it's just our village, I don't know what it takes to get the Red Cross involved. I'm looking into that, but the county is going to help us figure out how to set up a system, and we're looking at…I don't know what it's called, but it's like the schools all have it where if something's going on at school, they can send out a blanket text to all the parents? We're looking at getting one of those systems for the village so that we can put out emergency notifications to everybody on the phone list. And I think that'll be a good place to start, but we certainly will be looking into, you know, who's in charge. The fire chief is normally the Director of Emergency Events. And I'll get together with Chris Weaver and see what he has. I know he had told one of the other trustees that we should check with the county, which is what I did. But no, I want to have something in place to alert people and let people know where they can go, what services are available, and those kinds of things.
