Merry Christmas! It took me awhile this time to sit down and write, but today seems an appropriate day to do it. Part of the reason it took so long is because it was the week before Christmas, but the other reason that I was disappointed. I expected that more would have changed since I was in WNC in November. I know that a lot of people have been working very hard, and I know that they are disappointed to not be as far along as they would like to be either. There is a lot of work still left to be done.
Regardless, I caught a Muse right after midnight, and knew then what I want to say today.
First of all, I would like to thank everyone who made these trips to Western North Carolina possible. Your generosity has blown me away. Between the two trips we took almost $4500 of food, toys, and clothing up to Minneapolis. People in my neighborhood, people in the greater area around my home, friends, and family far and wide contributed to this effort. United Church in Apex provided over 60 toys for 20 children in partnership with many local businesses and generous individuals! This does not even include all the people who sent gift cards up to Minneapolis, or ordered Christmas gifts from Blunt Pretzels, or bought things for Blunt Pretzels from their wish list! Moreover, several of you told me that I should contact you again the spring as new needs will surely arise.
Absolutely amazing.
On this last trip, my husband Dave came along. I asked him to because I wanted a fresh perspective about what we would see as we travelled around. Our first two stopes were in Swannanoa and Asheville. Some young friends at Casa Esperanza Montessori and Raleigh Oaks Charter in Raleigh wrote cards to kids at two schools in the area.
We started by stopping at WD Williams Elementary in Swannanoa. At the beginning of December, there were about 1200 students who were homeless as a result of hurricane Helene in Buncombe County. WD Williams is part of the Buncombe school district. Their school has many children that are homeless as a result of losing homes and trailers, and they lost everything. Some children even lost family members.
We hope that the cards we dropped off helped cheer some of those children up, and we are really grateful to the kids at Casa Esperanza who took time to make such beautiful cards for children in a place aways away from Raleigh.
After we dropped the cards from Casa at the school, we took a tour through town. Clean-up does not look like it has progressed much since November 12th, when I saw it for the first time:
(Video from last Tuesday's trip through town)
It was nice to see that most of the tents were gone.
From there we drove into Asheville and dropped off the cards from Raleigh Oaks Charter School to the Asheville Waldorf School. Hopefully the cards will let the children at Asheville Waldorf know that there are children in another Waldorf school on the other side of the state that are thinking about them as they cope with the after effects of the storm.
Asheville Waldorf was flooded during the storm, and many of their parents are currently unemployed. Those parents cannot afford tuition payments that are due at the 1st of the year. All of the children, except those who were displaced, are still welcome to come to the school whether their parents can pay tuition or not. At this point, the school is struggling to stay open.
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Following our two errands around Asheville and our tour of Swannanoa, we headed up to Minneapolis in the heart of Avery County. We saw good sized piles of debris still scattered here and there next to the road as we went along - again, unchanged from November. Saw some new RV encampments also. I’m happy to report that all of the roads we traveled had been repaired and repaved. (NC DOT is wonderful!)
We got to Minneapolis and met Christie who has been my contact there. We were excited to unload the car with the things we had brought, and Dave even wore a special hat for the occasion.
The distribution center in the house where we dropped off our things had been organized in the previous months. A glut of used clothing had been moved to the basement to make way for Christmas things.
Our toys and new clothes were set aside specifically for families that did not have the ability to get to the larger Christmas Store event they were going to have at the Distribution Center. Later that evening, I received feedback from Christie that the things we had brought were “all perfect”. Such a good thing to hear, right?
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As we headed out of Minneapolis and down through Spruce Pines and Burnsville, I asked Dave what he thought about what he had seen. He talked a little bit about what he referred to as “hidden damage“. Minneapolis is a small town. It’s not on any major highway - not a town that you would typically drive through on your way to or from anywhere. But it has significant amounts of damage - damage you might not be aware of unless you specifically looked for it.
The hidden damage is an issue all throughout the 12,000 mi.² area in WNC that was affected by Helene. There are areas that are fine with no damage. But if you were along a stream, a river, or down the bottom of the embankment that had a water source, you were inundated. It was likely the trees came down - some of them even on your house. In some cases, houses AND people were absolutely obliterated; like the family in Minneapolis and the trailers in Swannanoa. But it’s not always obvious unless you look for it.
Which brings up a different kind of hidden damage. Just hidden damage is best. Illustrated by the issue of heating an RV. RVs use propane. They use a lot of propane. Sometimes upwards of $200 a month worth of propane. If you are not working, it’s difficult to afford to buy all the propane that you need. The economic cost to the area is going to be very substantial and very long-term but right now, it has profound implications for people‘s daily lives.
Imagine that your house and your car were damaged beyond repair by the storm. You are now living in an RV and let's also assume that you still have a job. (Many people do not. The unemployment rate in the storm area is hovering at around 8%) How are you going to get to it? What happens if the job isn’t particularly high paying and now your commute has doubled? Are you going to be able to afford the gas? What if you car washed away or was damaged beyond repair? How do you get to work or even go to the grocery store to get food for your family? If you’re up of a long road away from the distribution center how do you even get there to get free food for your family?
These are the questions that our friends in Western North Carolina are asking themselves this Christmas Day and will continue to ask for a very long time. We cannot forget about them. I was so glad when Congress passed the $110B relief act, but government is slow, and it’s gonna take a long time for that money to get there. I’m hoping that’s the North Carolina General Assembly will do their part and get money out to Western North Carolina that they so far have not appropriated. (Just incredible.....<sigh>)
Christie told us they were probably about 50 RVs in and around the Minneapolis area. The $4500 donation I delivered is a lot of money, but consider that the cash equivalent will only keep 50 RVs in propane for about two weeks. The folks in Western North Carolina need more substantial long-term help. There is a limit to what aid organizations and private individuals can do to help in a disaster that it is as large in scope as Helene and is over $58 billion in damage in North Carolina alone.
I hope that you will keep your attention on my friends in Swannanoa and Minneapolis as we follow their story together. I will be doing more after the New Year, but most of it is gonna focus around advocating for my western North Carolina friends with the North Carolina General Assembly. Hopefully they can do things to help out there like pass legislation to modify building codes for temporary structures. Hopefully they can actually send immediate relief money out there in the next month or two.
We shall see.