Hurricane Helene Relief

From our friend David Grimsley, on the ground in WNC, 10/03: "Today Bryan Paczynski and I joined a convoy assignment and made our way into an area called Ramseytown and Little Creek. Both areas are extremely rural and we’re cut off from the rest of the world for the last week.

We did wellness checks at every house and all the hollers. We had cadaver dogs, a chainsaw, crew, and 8 four-wheel-drive side-by-sides. The harrowing stories that people told I will never forget. The people I met were so thankful to see the outside world checking on them. They had felt forgotten. Pictures of the destruction will never do it justice.. Entire houses were ripped off their foundations and there was no evidence of them in the river. Roads disappeared. Bridges collapsed. It will be a very long time before there is any kind of normalcy in this tight knit community.

I was impressed with the resiliency of the people that had lived there their whole lives. They had put up plenty of food and had flourishing gardens. The only people who complained were the retirees, the transplants. I walked up on one woman who was pressure canning food from her freezer because it was thawed. She was pressure canning hotdogs. Another woman wanted to show me her spring, which flowed beautifully from a pipe right at her back door. Her cow head calved the night before. She felt blessed.

The Ramseytown volunteer fire department was also badly damaged in the storm. Those working that night had to get on top of the fire trucks inside the fire station when the water rose. When it crusted over the firetrucks, they had to cut a hole in the roof and spent the rest of the storm on the roof, praying that the building would not collapse underneath them. Miraculously it did not.

We were able to make sure people were up-to-date on their medications and had a source of drinking water and food.

I was able to set up a Starlink connection at a church, where they were staging a distribution hub. We were also able to set up a medical clinic there as well. The pews were set up as aisles, with all the goods on the seats. Medical supplies were set up on the altar.

We established a landing site for a helicopter to bring in more supplies as needed. There is worry that the road that was cut in to reconnect Little Creek with Ramseytown will not last past the next rain. Supplies were brought over today to Little Creek to store in a church in the case that happens again. Let me remind you that this is one tiny corner of the county. This mountain community is full of valleys and hollers just like this. They have all been affected one way or the other.

The slow gears of federal aid are starting to pick up. Basic supplies are becoming easier to source, as are medical supplies. This is wonderful news, but it does not mean that everything is taken care of for the people devastated by this storm. There is definitely something to be said for the grassroots effort, and the people who have dropped everything to participate in recovery efforts. I am humbled by the generosity that people have shown by donating to the grassroots cause instead of allowing their money to get tied up in the bureaucracy and careless spending. We are able to see purchases being made that directly affect the people as they should.

Right now, we’re literally just trying to keep everybody alive and every dollar helps with that. Thank you, thank you thank you!"