If you’re reading this from within North Carolina, you already know that western North Carolina is in a world of hurt; you know that Hurricane Helene, after having made landfall in Florida as a major hurricane, traveled north to Appalachia and devastated these communities with flash floods; and, you know that, as more footage emerges from some of the worst hit areas, the “biblical” adjective is perfectly appropriately.
What you don’t know is how these communities, these people, will ever recover. But then, in glimmers, you’ll started to notice something that feels miraculous and familiar all at once — the uplifting human response to overcome.
To be sure, while the rain is no longer falling, this event is hardly over. Many corners of the mountainous region are still yet to be accessed and fully assessed. Without cell access, or road access, the flooding fallout in very many small towns and hamlets, in places like the Swannanoa Valley, has yet to be fully understood. Rumors of second and third hand accounts of what conditions are like in these places verge on being too tragic to truly believe. We must gird ourselves for the worst in the coming days and weeks.
But nothing steadies our stance quite like the men and women who, upon hearing the call for help, respond without hesitation.
There are the official government agencies, of course, filled with men and women of this very constitution; yet, the scale and might of their capabilities is almost always matched by the burden and blunder of the bureaucracy they’re nestled in. Those first responders, swift water rescue crews, police, medical professionals, road workers, guardsmen, et al., are to be roundly commended. Those are not easy jobs, especially under these unprecedented circumstances. God bless them.
The people I’m really referring to, though, are those that aren’t responding to an official chain of command on their org chart, but acting on personal compulsion to answer calls for help. In their own community, in neighboring communities, or in communities far, far away.
While much of western North Carolina remains cut off from the outside world of instant communications, the rest of us are bearing witness to an outpouring of human response that stands to overcome the deluge from Helene. Whether it be donation-drive locations hosted on your small-business owner friend’s Facebook page, or your neighborhood church group filling trailers with supplies headed westbound, or hobbyists with helicopters or handymen with heavy machinery wasting no time in aiming directly for the danger zone in order to get people out.
Private organizations like Samaritan’s Purse, world renowned for their grace and daring in accessing the worst possible disaster zones and offering life-saving assistance to those in need, are now called to serve a dire need for the people in their own back yard.
Military veterans activating on a personal sense of duty to rescue those in danger; Youtube adventurers surveying inaccessible areas and training their audiences attention to GoFundMe pages; or, celebrities and athletes leveraging their fame to drive charity.
It’s the “regular people” that reveal the purest form of this response, though, demonstrating Man’s capacity as a heroic being in story after story of neighbors helping neighbors.
We see it in full relief, mere weeks from one of the most contentious and consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes. Political divisions in America are at an apex. Political violence has gone mainstream. But in western North Carolina, the only things MAGA Republicans, Woke Democrats, and Squishy Independents are saying to each other is: “Do you need help?”…”Take my Hand!” … “I’ve got you!”
As we wait to learn the full extent of the devastation, this uplifting human response from locals is already buoying the spirit of these traumatized communities. They’ll be there to greet and help the government trucks when they show up; and they’ll be there long after the government trucks leave town, too.
Even though we’re online while they’re internet access is cut off, they’re showing us all how much more important it is to have those stronger connections in your community.
It often happens this way: a storm has unleashed hell upon us, but, in overcoming, it reveals that natural human response which comes from somewhere else.
