Community Groups, Neighbors and Volunteers Mobilize in Aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina

Since Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on September 26, at least 227 people have died, with many still missing and thousands displaced.

Homes and businesses in western North Carolina were destroyed, and some are still living without power, internet and safe drinking water.

Aid sent by governments and larger nonprofits can sometimes take a while to reach those who need it right away. To help fill in the gaps, those in Asheville and the surrounding mountain communities have been organizing and helping each other.

Local volunteers — including some on mules and in helicopters — have been helping get water, food and other supplies to stranded residents, while rescuing others, Reuters reported.

Many of the roads going to and from the remote mountain communities were made impassable due to flooding and mudslides during the storm and remain so a week and a half later. High winds and rain, coupled with downed limbs and trees, caused telecommunications equipment to be damaged or destroyed, leaving residents cut off from the outside world.

With relief efforts by local, state and federal officials made more complicated by the magnitude of the devastation and destruction of roads and communications, area residents have stepped in to help their neighbors.

“It’s been pretty intense,” said real estate agent Ben Miller, as reported by Reuters. “This seemed like it couldn’t happen here.”

Miller, a father of two who lives in the Winston-Salem area, drove supplies — including 27,000 bottles of water — to Marion, near Asheville, over the weekend.

Miller also delivered resources to the remote town of Spruce Pine, where his family has roots.

“I know how hard some of those areas are to get to when it’s 60 degrees outside and totally dry. So as this thing started to unfold, I could really envision that there were a lot of places they were going to have trouble getting to,” Miller said.

Asheville-based Pansy Collective — one of several mutual-aid relief organizations that mobilized across the Carolinas and Florida since Helene’s destructive impact — first checked on everyone to ensure they were alright, then helped those who needed to evacuate, The Guardian reported.

Once they were out of the Blue Ridge Mountains, they drove to Durham — more than 200 miles away — for supplies to bring back to Asheville.

Garrett Blaize, Appalachian Community Fund’s executive director, said even people who had lost their property and homes were organizing relief efforts.

“In Appalachia, we have a really strong network of both formal and informal mutual-aid groups,” Blaize said. “We saw many of those groups activated immediately after the first impacts of the storm, as well as the kind of more organic and informal mutual aid: church groups, volunteer associations, neighbors. That all happened really quickly.”

Founders of nonprofit BeLoved Asheville, Amy Cantrell and Ponkho Bermejo, normally focus on helping with local issues like feeding the hungry and building affordable housing, but since Helene, they have been helping community members survive and recover.

Cantrell said she witnessed friends and neighbors in the small mountain town of Swannanoa get swept away by the storm’s floodwaters.

“We saw a lot of deaths, so much loss of the life,” Cantrell told PEOPLE. “We saw people in the river clinging to the trees and they couldn’t hang on. Whole houses were floating down the river. We saw trailers engulfed in water with people still in them.”

As winter approaches the mountain community, many are still without permanent housing in the aftermath of Helene.

“As winter looms, we are securing warm and safe housing for the displaced,” BeLoved Asheville wrote on its website. “Many individuals and families face homelessness as the cold weather approaches. While national resources become available for those who need shelter, there are many gaps in coverage, especially in underrepresented populations. We are allocating funds for hotels and short-term rentals as we work on more permanent solutions.”

Tai Little, an organizer with Charlotte-based SEAC Village — part of a national network of other organizations, collectives, nonprofits and individuals — said it’s important for people who want to help to donate to mutual-aid funds and those helping in the local area.

“When you donate to those larger agencies, it takes a long time for that aid to get to the people,” Little said, as reported by The Guardian. “But when you give directly to mutual-aid efforts that are on the ground, that aid gets to people immediately. We’ve been able to send three truckloads full of items just based off of these small donations.”

The number of people still unaccounted for in the aftermath of Helene is unknown, but has decreased since communications have slowly been restored.

“Because of the region’s history, there is a unique tendency to look after our neighbors,” Blaize said, as The Guardian reported. “We come from an area of the country that has oftentimes been defined by scarcity. I think we have a lot of embedded cultural values around taking care of each other that really just make it sort of organic that during times of crisis or times of emergency, that is our go-to response.”