- After the storm hit, you know, we had no cell service, we had no power, the water was out.

- This was all the way over there?

- Yes.

Many of those structures were picked up by the water and brought over here and smashed other buildings.

One important cultural institution that has gone, it was a depot.

There was live music there every Friday.

- This tree actually fell on my unit during the hurricane.

And I was on a ladder with the handsaw during the hurricane cutting it.

- Like all you could see was the top of the pavilion.

This was our, probably our most dangerous flood zone was here, for sure.

- Coming up on "Laura Flanders and Friends," the place where the people who say it can't be done, take a back seat to the people who are doing it.

Welcome.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) When Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina in September of 2024, it came as a shock, dumping historic amounts of rain on a mountainous area, unaccustomed to dealing with hurricanes.

The water caused rivers like this one to rise and burst their banks, throwing debris like this pallet up high into the trees.

Asheville, here in Buncombe County was virtually cut off due to lack of power and cell service and landslides.

- [Photographer] Oh my gosh.

- [News Reporter 1] Alarming new images tonight of the catastrophic damage from Helene.

- [News Reporter 2] Flooding will continue over the next several days.

And this is an urgent reminder that it's just not safe to be out there right now.

- In the absence of speedy response by either government or business, other players flooded in.

Some were survivalists with ties to the extreme Right.

- But more were local community organizations, some relatively new, others with very deep roots.

What did they learn?

Hurricane Helene was one of the worst storms ever to hit the US.

But it's not the last crisis headed our way.

As we as a country head into era with fewer services and less help for regular Americans, we wanted to see how the people of Western North Carolina had survived Helene.

So this July we flew to Durham in the center of the state to pick up activist and author Mab Segrest, whom we found at her home looking at rising water dumped by yet another storm there in her own backyard.

- That tree right there is as high as the water ever came, and this is the line of debris that the flood left.

So it's this far higher than it's ever been.

- [Laura] In 2024, soon after Hurricane Helene, Mab traveled into the affected areas and wrote up a report on community relief efforts for the organization she works with, Blueprint North Carolina.

- Everybody in North Carolina knows hurricanes come on the ocean and then they come inland so, and they go five miles an hour.

So you have time to pack everything up and board up your windows and get outta town, you know, and then it hits and you hope you are okay.

But for Hurricane Helene, there was an unprecedented situation of hurricane in the mountains, can you believe it?

You know, like hurricanes aren't supposed to come in the mountains.

And people were surprised and should have been when they woke up in the morning and they looked out and saw a neighbor's house floating down the river, So I went up to Western North Carolina within a month because I wanted to ask friends I knew and friends I would make up there like, "In an unprecedented situation like this, what do we learn?"

- [Laura] Leaving Durham to deal with tropical storm Chantal, we drove three hours west to Asheville, where we met with RT, a member of a queer collective, which in regular times helps its community through throwing benefit parties to buy needed supplies and aid.

When Helene hit, they learned new skills like how to filter water and to distribute it to neighborhoods with none to drink.

- So we're here.

All right, welcome, yeah, we are here.

- Follow the pink ribbon.

- Follow the pink ribbon, you know, if you see that you're in the right place.

So this is one of the remnants of our water distribution system after Helene.

When we lost access to water using these ICB totes or water buffalos was how we were able to get drinkable water into our communities.

- Incredible.

And you all learn how to do the filtering and everything.

- It was a science project for sure, but we did, we did learn how to do all of that.

- [Laura] I met RT in his group's new community center, The West Asheville Community Hub.

- The crux of the storm hit at about 6:00 AM, so naturally I was asleep (RT laughing) until I heard a loud boom outside, which was a tree falling onto another tree over my truck.

So I ran outside of my pajamas and moved my truck out from under this falling tree really quickly.

And I mean, I was very lucky where was on high ground, on my street there is a stream that rose to about 14 feet high.

And so, you know, after the storm hit, you know, we had no cell service, we had no power, the water was out, and so we only, the only clues we could get were by just being able to walk around, trees were down on every direction.

You couldn't drive.

And so talking to our neighbors was really the first sense that we got that it had been more serious than just a regular storm.

- What was your first thought?

- My first thought was about my friends, and my community members, and some of the vulnerable people in our community.

People who live near the river, people who, yeah, my first thought was, are people that I care about okay?

We are a very small group of people, there's under 10 of us who are able to come together.

And in the first week we were able to bring $20,000 of supplies back from Central North Carolina to Asheville.

And this was before self-service was back.

This was long before any government response had happened.

This was just us filling up our truck beds and minivans with whatever we could, and coming back and, you know, not just coming back to Asheville, going back to Spruce Pine, to Swannanoa, to different affected areas.

- There were stories of Right-wing activity in really, in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

Did you see or experience any of that?

- You know, a little bit of it.

You know, anytime there's a strong disaster, hate groups will use it as a reason to mobilize hate.

And so you saw groups like The Proud Boys and the Boogaloos and stuff coming out and spreading looting narratives and spreading narratives that would pit people against each other.

But at the end of the day on the ground, that just wasn't the case.

At the end of the day there's, there's groups that have been practicing serving people beans and rice in large amounts for free for a long time, and there's ones who haven't.

- You sent out a famous tweet.

- Yeah, the way that we went viral after this was from a conversation I had with a group of DJs here in Asheville, and you know, at the time it just felt like a benign statement, but it really rings true now, it's just, "You know our systems are broken when five gay DJs can bring back $10 grand of supplies before the National Guard does."

And you know, no slight to the National Guard for all of the aid they brought in, because they truly brought in, you know, much more resources on a larger scale than we could, eventually, you know.

But when it comes to immediate response, it takes the state a long time to mobilize.

And that might continue to be true as FEMA gets defunded and as so much disaster response, you know, we just are losing it.

And so it's imperative that people fight to keep their disaster response funding, but until then also we need to know how to respond ourselves as well.

- [Laura] One of the areas most affected by the storm was the tiny mountain town of Marshall.

Janet Kent volunteers with ROAR, Rural Organizing And Resilience, which has operated a local mutual aid hub and free store in Marshall since 2017.

- Some things were obvious when the power was out, one shortcoming this event showed us was that a lot of people, even if they have well water, they have a electric pumps- - That's right.

- And so people not having electricity meant they didn't have water, even if they were out in rural areas where you would think they would have water, even if they were not on a city or water system.

- [Laura] Mountainous Marshall was unprepared for a hurricane, but its people were used to looking after their own as Janet Kent explained.

- Western North Carolina itself is a pretty fascinating place in a lot of ways.

It's a place where isolated mountain communities, isolated partially because of the terrain, have grown and developed and have pretty distinct culture ways.

And so a lot of mountain music comes from this region.

Also some pretty special food ways and herbal medicine ways can be found here.

But also this county specifically, Madison County, has an interesting history in that this area during the Civil War was one in which people were resisting the Confederacy and resisting the draft.

So people who, mountain folks who were like, this plantation system stuff has nothing to do with us.

So people resisted the draft here, hid out, hid up in the hollers, and there was actually force, like the Confederacy came in and killed quite a few people to force people to go and join the army.

This was also known as a pro-union county.

It was kind of mixed from the people who did care.

A lot of people didn't care, and that's kind of honestly how it is now.

People have, don't think of the politics on the federal level apply to them here because they think they're usually forgotten or ignored.

No matter who's in office.

That is the general idea We had a lot of skills developed over time by dealing with just the day-to-day emergencies of living in this country, in this era.

And so during the pandemic we were able to have a food distribution system where we collected food, delivered it to people so they didn't have to go to the grocery store, delivered medications to people, and we had all of that coordination already in place.

We also have a really successful firewood aid program where we, volunteers, lots of volunteers chop dozens and dozens and dozens of cords of wood through the winter and we deliver those to people in need.

Anyone, regardless of their beliefs, affiliations, whatever, can call us and we will deliver firewood to your door.

Most of the people in ROAR have been watching the state abandonment that's been happening for decades, and so we aren't surprised when it's happening and we're prepared.

By Monday after the storm came on Friday, we had a meeting at our sister organization, which is Holler Harm Reduction, who provide harm reduction supplies to this community.

And by Tuesday we were up and running with donations because once we put out the call, because have a very established network of people around the country, money and resources just came in very quickly.

- [Laura] As the pictures of devastation spread online, ROAR and their allies raised almost a million dollars in money and supplies, which they were able to distribute fast.

- In general, we were able to very directly, very quickly just get the cash out.

- And show it can be done.

- And show it can be done.

And it doesn't, you don't need a big bureaucracy to do it.

That doesn't mean there's not a need for bureaucracy sometimes.

Now I don't have the resources to completely repair a home when someone doesn't have flood insurance, that is when these state level management systems are helpful and that's what's missing, and that's the big gap here.

- [Laura] Cherokee is a river town in the ancestral homeland of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, a federally recognized tribe in the great Smoky Mountains.

- We are at the Island Park in Cherokee, which was one of the more affected areas of Cherokee during the hurricane.

Like all you could see was the top of the pavilion.

And yeah, this was our, probably our most dangerous flood zone was here, for sure.

One of the major core values of Cherokee Society is called Gadugi.

There's not really an easy translation to English for that, it really just means community togetherness, helping when you can, rallying together when you can.

Gadugi is how we have survived all of these instances in American history where you wouldn't think we would be able to survive.

And it happened again this time around with the hurricane, we rallied together and put together our resources to help neighboring communities.

Cherokee Water and Sewer, they would take trips and do boots on the ground trips in places like Marshall to help with their water infrastructure.

- [Laura] Brooklyn Brown is a reporter for the local paper, "The Cherokee One Feather," which became an important source of news.

- It was very important that local news media in Western North Carolina and particularly "The Cherokee One Feather," was able to tell the human interest story, and not in a way that was sensationalizing what was happening.

We were talking to the people that were staying in hotels because they had just lost everything and didn't know where they were going to get their next meal or their medicine.

Talk to those people, those are the people that their stories need to be told.

- [Laura] "The Cherokee One Feather" collaborated with other media in the region to counter rumors and misinformation.

- The "Smoky Mountain News," "Smoky Mountain Times," "Sylva Herald," "Graham Star," a lot of our local newspapers, we always collaborate when we can, and again, I think it just speaks to that neighborly connection.

And I think that's why even though this tragedy struck Western North Carolina, it was just like almost automatic that all of these communities were coming together to help each other.

It was instantaneous and news media included, it was like everyone was on the same team, and you don't see that a lot in America or in the world anymore.

- [Laura] Hurricanes cause massive displacement, especially among those already living in tenuous circumstances.

In Asheville, the organization La Milpa works with exactly those people, many of whom have roots in other countries.

- I am Alan Luis Ramirez, currently I'm the director of our House of Mutual Aid, La Casa de Apoyo Mutuo, which was born after Hurricane Helene came, and was a response to the crisis of the hurricane through redistributing food, water, medicine.

And now it still exists as we have our weekly market and a lot of ways that we collaborate with the community to bring donations to the neighborhood and actually a lot of areas of Asheville.

- How are your people doing and how would you describe the people that you work with and the people in this community?

- I think we are resilient because we are still doing a lot of the things that the government could never do for us.

We were doing that before and we're still doing it after.

There's so much need that was existing in this neighborhood before our experience with the hurricane and that just kind of leveled it up by a 10.

We didn't have a way to flush our own toilets, we didn't have a way to clean ourselves.

The way it impacted us was horrible.

I've never experienced a hurricane, but I, it is been super rainy lately, and I could tell, and within myself and my community, we're constantly like triggered, and I don't use that word lightly.

But we lost our power for almost two months, we had no water for the same amount of time.

Thank God for our cooperative because we had a space to be in.

- [Laura] For the past 20 years, La Milpa has been building community wealth through a creative ecosystem of cooperative ownership and small business development.

La Milpa's projects currently include a free market, a language co-op, a childcare co-op, and several trailer home cooperatives, as well as a repair co-op that repairs and maintains homes.

- We started with each person giving a thousand dollars, with 30 people, that's $30,000.

And we were able to put a deposit on this building that we're in.

- In Asheville, gentrification is accelerating as landlords use the disruption caused by the hurricane to evict low income tenants, and developers use insurance and disaster recovery money to build higher end homes.

La Milpa's Network is pooling resources to buy affordable mobile home parks and run them as cooperatives.

At present, they have over 60 units, soon to be many more.

So what's this here?

- So this is where our neighborhood's well lives and, you should have seen it during the hurricane, this yard, our neighbors were gracious enough to let us use their yard for our solar generator to be placed, installed, and we were able to pump water from the well into these large totes and started distributing thousands of gallons of water across different mobile home park neighborhoods in Emma.

- How much did it cost for the co-op to purchase this property?

- The landlord was wanting to sell both together or not at all.

So that was a good opportunity for us to buy.

- Sure.

- And this property is around eight acres, has 26 units on it and was around $800,000.

So 800,000 divided by 26 makes it around like a 30, $35,000 membership worth of value.

So that's pretty affordable.

- I mean, that amount of money, we've heard millions passing through relief organizations in the context of Hurricane Helene.

Here, you were able to have that amount of money, stay here and invest for the future.

- Yeah, we- - It's a very different approach to a relief.

- 100%.

I, like, I think that's like one way that we build solidarity in our neighborhood is the same need of housing.

So it's super interesting because there may be totally different beliefs in one neighborhood, so many different types of experiences, backgrounds, class, I think we can all claim that we're working class, but what unites us is this need for housing and this love for where we live.

- [Laura] Towns like Marshall have yet to see any systemic help.

- When you see the facts that here, people's homes are not being rebuilt, no housing has come in for people who lost their homes, very few people are able to access disaster relief money that had been earmarked for this disaster at this point, yet we just saw ICE's budget raised, I actually can't remember the number, it was too big for me to understand.

So there is money, there's no concern over the debt, but the money is being allocated for militarized operations, policing neighbors, and policing all kinds of people who are in these disaster zones as well and need support.

I think in the moments when we actually are able to organize together in the wake of a disaster we see what is possible.

Now, we also burn out over time when we don't rest, but we do see what's possible when we get to actually turn our attention towards community and not towards survival.

- In the past year, it's become very clear that we as a country are less prepared than we were a year ago for unprecedented events.

Because number one, enough people don't believe in climate change, especially people who are in authority to do something about it.

The weather services have been severely cut, who would alert folks on the ground that, oh, by the way, before three in the morning, you need to get your children out so they won't be swept away, or what's going to happen to FEMA?

And I mean this country is just upside down.

- There are stereotypes out there of Appalachian people and Indigenous people that we are helpless, that we depend on the government, that we are not intelligent.

And so this tragedy was a force.

It forced people to see us for who we are, that we're resourceful, intelligent, strong, and that community is what's most important.

We're living in a society and a climate where in capitalistic society, community is not that important.

And when tragedy struck and all we had was each other, that's what we clung to was community.

Recently there was a tornado outbreak in Kentucky, and particularly in London, in Somerset, Kentucky, there was a F4 tornado that came through and was fatal.

And the people that were affected, particularly Don Franklin Auto Group, were people that provided relief to us during the hurricane.

And so Cherokee Indian Police Department took a trailer to Kentucky and sort of returned the favor.

And that was, that showed me that tragedies are still happening and are going to happen, but this time around, especially with that response from us to Kentucky, the reason that I am not as worried is because we have each other.

And I'm not afraid because there's something about this community in particular where we're not going to fall apart.

- You know, it's incredible the kinds of connections that we were able to make with each other, you know.

And I think that there's something really beautiful about the way that people come together after a disaster because our differences are put aside when we all have the same needs that need to get met.

It doesn't matter what kind of person you are, what your gender is, what your hair color is, what your, you know, it is, it's all about us working together to provide for each other.

And so I think that the kind of coalitions and connections that we build in the face of disaster are going to benefit us for a long time.

You might be the most homophobic person in the world, but you can't deny that after the storm, you know, people were standing side by side with each other to provide for each other.

And so, you know, we built, we made a lot of unlikely connections.

And it doesn't matter if you, you know, came from one side of the tracks to the other, what mattered at the end of the day was we need to work together because there's a lady at the top of the mountain who needs her insulin, and you have an ATV and I have a cooler full of insulin, so it doesn't matter who you voted for, we need to work together for this.

- When we returned to Durham, we found out that the waters had kept on rising and that some 80 people that had to be rescued from that Eno River that passes below Mab Segrest's house.

The hurricanes keep on coming, that's one of the lessons from here, be they meteorological or political, we need to be awake, not to say woke to the weaknesses and the fragilities in our community.

The other lesson I'm learning from Western North Carolina is that community doesn't just happen, it has to be built.

In Marshall, every Friday for decades, they held parties and played music and danced at The Railroad Depot.

Now that building welcomed everyone, be they, whoever they loved, whoever they prayed to, even whoever they voted for.

It was a welcoming place that was washed away by Hurricane Helene.

But it'll be rebuilt and the music's already playing elsewhere.

The final lesson I'm learning from here is that those people and places that have been most ignored, most marginalized and forgotten longest, may in fact be the people who know best how to survive.

So check out your community.

For "Laura Flanders & Friends," I'm Laura.

Stay kind, stay curious till the next time.

From Asheville, North Carolina, thanks for joining us.

For more on this episode and other forward-thinking content, subscribe to our free newsletter for updates, my commentaries, and our full uncut conversations.

We also have a podcast.

It's all at lauraflanders.org.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (production music)