ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA – A group from The Lighthouse Church in Cape May Court House made a trip to Asheville, North Carolina, to help provide disaster relief after storms spawned by hurricane Helene ravaged the area in September.
Three people from the church – the trip’s organizer, Jerry Hall, along with Nick Crawford and Robin Hetherington – were joined by Patti Gregory and the Herald’s Christopher South for about five days of work in cooperation with Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical Christian humanitarian aid organization.
The trip, Dec. 9 through Dec. 13, started with Hall’s interest in delivering aid supplies to support disaster victims in North Carolina and developed into a trip to help them in person. About 100,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, and around 200,000 people were affected by the storm.
Following is Christopher South’s account of the trip:
The team departed from the church parking lot on Route 9 on Sunday, Dec. 9, at 4:30 a.m. to make the approximately 10.5-hour drive to the Billy Graham Training Center in Asheville, one of the hurricane Helene response bases in North Carolina. The team allowed 12 hours to complete the trip, adding in for breaks and getting gas; as it turned out, they were spot-on.
To get to Asheville we took a route that for a long time had us on I-81, which took us through Virginia, cutting across Tennessee, and into North Carolina. It was in the Tennessee portion of the trip that we started to see what we had anticipated – signs of devastation.
We stopped for gas in this area, and could see where the water pushed debris through drainage ditches and undermined adjacent roadway and light poles. We passed by, and then returned to the area after getting gas, viewing a washed-out area where the banks of the river were eroded 16 feet above the current level. At the Riverview Baptist Church, which obviously had a much-too-close view of the river, there was a worksite with windows boarded up.
As we would see again and again, where there were rivers or streams, there was a lot of devastation at some point. The extent of the rivers’ overflowing their banks was told by either the clearing of land or the amount of debris carried by the rivers and left on their banks.
The Swannanoa River, which passes through Asheville and Black Mountain, another hard-hit area, was a scene of destruction for miles. Frankly, it was often difficult to discern what you were looking at in the twisted piles of debris. Obviously, there were trees and branches, and often root systems where the entire tree had been uprooted by the river. In many areas there were sites where fallen trees had been gathered, ground into mulch and sometimes burned.
In the midst of the debris were all kinds of things, ranging from semi-trailers and automobiles to pieces of lumber and aluminum siding. In some places they were all rolled together in a ball of mud.
The Billy Graham Training Center, which was where we stayed and ate our meals, was not severely damaged, yet you could see a washed-out area that was being repaired. That area was where I saw a flock of turkeys and a herd of about a dozen deer that seemed unperturbed by the presence of automobiles passing by.
Help from all over
At the center, the first thing I noticed were car license plates from all over the United States – Texas, Wisconsin, Illinois and hurricane-stricken states, such as Georgia and Florida. I later spoke with people who came in from California, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
Although they came from different parts of the country, they were all united by their desire to live out their faith, which is a fundamental tenet of Samaritan’s Church: to help your neighbor. As we began to work, it was apparent that the concept of “neighbor” was very strong in that part of North Carolina.
The homeowners we came into contact with expressed their sincere appreciation for the help provided by Samaritan’s Purse, but also expressed their thanks for their neighbors, who came out and helped each other to the extent possible.
Our team, Team 6, was assigned to cut and move fallen trees. We were assigned two team leaders, who drove the disaster relief vehicle, which held all the equipment we needed: chain saws, rakes, hand trucks, wheelbarrows, safety equipment and other items.
Our first job was essentially to cut and move tree trunks where someone had come in and cut just enough to clear the homeowner’s driveway. That was the easier of the two job sites we visited that day. We left there and cleared an area of tree trunks and branches that had landed on the homeowner’s septic field.
The homeowner, who was 92, said the septic company said it could not maintain his septic system unless the timber and brush were removed. Although the scope of work in these cases was not critical to life, health and safety, we did a big favor to these homeowners so they could get about their daily lives.
Both of these homeowners said they never saw a storm like this in their lives. In fact, I was later told that the last time something like this happened was 1916.
On day one, Team 6 finished those two projects, or “orders,” and returned to the center, known as “The Cove.” There, we had hotel rooms with beds and showers and ate our meals in a dining hall. The first time we had a meal there, which was dinner on Monday, Dec. 9, we were asked how many of us were on our first disaster relief mission with Samaritan’s Purse.
After a show of hands, we were advised that we should never expect the same living arrangements. Most times, volunteers slept on cots or air mattresses in a church basement. It just happened that the disaster area was where the center was situated. Another of the three areas identified in North Carolina included Boone, where the Samaritan’s Purse headquarters is located.
Assessing the damage
After primarily moving logs and limbs to areas where they were being piled to wait for FEMA trucks to collect them, I picked up a different job, which lasted the rest of the week. During announcements after breakfast on Tuesday, the volunteer coordinator asked for a male volunteer to ride with a male assessor for the rest of the week.
I raised my hand immediately and was selected. What I learned was that the assessors were tasked with going out to the homes where people had requested help to evaluate the need and whether it met the criteria for help by Samaritan’s Purse.
Essentially, what the organization could do was remove fallen trees from off homes or fallen trees within 100 feet of homes, fasten tarps over damaged roof areas, or remove mud and damaged household goods.
Mucking our houses would include removing damaged drywall up to a certain height, removing wet insulation and treating for mold with an ammonia-based cleaner. In some cases, the work could involve going into a crawl space wearing a Tyvek suit and respirator and removing fallen, wet insulation.
I have to be honest and say that I thank God that I was not asked to do that. Frankly, it was difficult to work on rain-softened ground on 40- to 60-degree inclines, but not damp and moldy.
The assessor, Ben, who was from Arkansas, informed me that as assessors, we were also representatives of Samaritan’s Purse, and would ask what people knew about the organization, which was founded by world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham in 1970.
We would talk to the homeowners, in a sense, acting as accessories to the chaplain staff, asking people about their experiences and concerns. Most of the homeowners had ridden out the storm in their homes.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Jennifer, who has family members in New Jersey. She told us a near neighbor lost five family members due to the flooding. In one case, Ben told me, a person’s brother was swept away by the flood and his body was recovered 19 miles downriver.
Neighbors aiding neighbors
The 92-year-old veteran we helped, Jim, said he sat in his home and watched the trees falling and a mud slide behind his home. He said the storm was extremely loud, with the wind gusting up to 106 mph.
On a particular cul-de-sac, there was more talk of neighbors helping neighbors immediately after the storm. One neighbor, who is a Christian who has served on a mission in Pakistan, has a neighbor on one side who is a Japanese-American man with a Jewish girlfriend. On the other side is a man from Ireland, and two doors from him is a Greek immigrant. Another man was said to be from Moldova.
One man, Ray, who left with his wife before the storm to stay at his son’s home, would have been in bed with his wife when a tree landed on the roof over their bedroom. He said his electricity was out for 19 days. When they returned home, they had to cut fallen trees to get into their driveway.
Other people said they coped without electricity and water. One woman, Kathy, said friends delivered ice to her for her insulin. Another woman said she learned how much water it took to flush a toilet after her water went out and she had to depend on bottled water being delivered to her. She had earlier described watching from her home as torrents of water washed over a golf course, carrying all manner of debris, including cars.
A woman who was the subject of the team’s final work order, another former New Jersey resident, described the time she was looking for a house in North Carolina. An artist, she looked at several homes situated next to a creek, one even straddling a creek. Those homes were lost in the deluge resulting from the storm.
Altogether, they shared the common experience of riding out hurricane Helene, saying they never experienced such a storm, but felt forever changed afterward.
Some felt inspired to get closer to God, as in the case of a 25-year-old woman who said she had been seeking to know God better since the storm.
One volunteer reported on a client who was willing to accept the organization’s help but wanted nothing to do with its offer of prayer.
Everyone, however, was thankful for the crews of orange-shirted Samaritan’s Purse volunteers and added that they saw how much people could care for their neighbors after a natural disaster, perhaps proving “Many waters cannot quench love, Nor can the floods drown it.” – Song of Songs, 8:7.
Contact the reporter, Christopher South, at csouth@cmcherald.com or call 609-886-8600.
