Students from the Southeast Reflect on Hurricane Helene’s Destruction

Hurricane Helene made landfall last Thursday, making its way through Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee, leaving 600 people unaccounted for and the death toll at over 200 and increasing. This ranks Helene among the deadliest storms to hit the United States in modern history. 

As images pour through social media of flooded towns and fallen trees, Point Loma Nazarene University students from the Southeast have spent the past week watching their home-states fall into disrepair.

Maddi Hanks, a fourth-year finance major from Charlotte, North Carolina, said her hometown wasn’t in the direct path; however, her family was left without power for a couple days. Helene devastated the western part of the state, in the mountainous regions, a place where Hanks said she knows well.

“I grew up going to the mountains there in Boone and in Asheville for summer camps and my summer camp is in shambles,” Hanks said. “I know a lot of people that live up there that were my camp counselors and stuff and they had to relocate and everyone had to evacuate because there’s no water still and no power for anybody.”

Asheville, North Carolina has encountered the brunt of the storm’s brutality, leaving around 72 dead and over 200 unaccounted for in the town, according to the county sheriff.

“I’ve heard from my friends that go to App State, they all had to evacuate,” Hanks said, referring to Appalachian State University located in Boone, North Carolina. “I’ve seen videos from people’s Instagrams of inside their house and it’s like multiple feet of water high. All around campus, their cars are completely underwater, like their lives are kind of destroyed.”

“It’s almost like it’s not reality to me yet, but what I’ve seen has been devastating, but like, I’m not there,” Gabby Viorel, a fourth-year graphic design major from Wilmington, North Carolina said.

“I don’t think my family lost power, and if they did, it was pretty minor, and a lot of people in the Wilmington area have generators and stuff because they prepare for hurricanes. But I don’t think in the mountains, they are that prepared for that kind of stuff, because it just doesn’t happen,” Viorel said.

Unlike Wilmington or other coastal areas, which have the infrastructure to better withstand tropical storms and aid runoff, the mountainous terrain of towns like Boone and Asheville weren’t built with this in mind, Viorel said. “It’s just gonna collect in the valleys, which is why I think it was so bad.”

Finn Higginbotham, a first-year computer science major and volleyball player from Savannah, Georgia, said tropical storms are common on the coast this time of the year. However she said, it’s the inland regions who don’t expect to get hit, nonetheless harder than the coast.

“I’ve got family up in East Tennessee, and it really destroyed Appalachia,” Higginbotham said. “I’ve got friends who go to App State and the flooding ripped away roads, and I don’t think people realize how bad that was for especially the people in the Appalachian area.”

For these students, they feel there’s a lack of attention surrounding the gravity of this situation.

“I have seen a few New York Times articles posted, which I was happy to see,” Hanks said. “But, I feel like not many people are talking about it, and it’s crazy how big of a deal this is.”

Within the first few days of the storm, Viorel said, she felt that the national coverage of the destruction was particularly sparse for the scale of devastation, leaving those affected to tell the story.

“The media has not been helping whatsoever. And it’s probably because these towns are in the middle of nowhere and they’re small,” Viorel said. “I only heard about it through my friends who go to App State, like reposting things about how the media is not covering it enough. And so that has something to say within itself. That’s how I’m learning about it.”

Viorel said that this feels like an opportunity to reflect on how we not only prepare ourselves for the future but evaluate the path we are on.

“I think it should be an alert for everyone, because hurricanes just don’t hit inland,” she said, noting that this past summer she spent in Wilmington, there were multiple hurricane alerts but each ended up dissipating. 

“I just think it’s scary, because not all the time are they gonna be just a category one,” Viorel said. “I think in the future it’s probably gonna be horrible hurricane after horrible hurricane if the water continues to warm up and stuff, but I don’t know. I think it should be an alert of the environmental issues that are happening with climate change.”

Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimate in a provisional report that “climate change may have caused as much as 50% more rainfall during Hurricane Helene in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas.”

While the devastation of Helene is unprecedented, Higginbotham said she believes her California peers are having a hard time grasping this.

“I think it definitely should have more attention brought to it,” Higginbotham said. “People out here [California] really don’t know what hurricanes [are] like. I think last year you guys had a warning of a hurricane, and my teammates will still talk about that, but they don’t understand. When you actually get hit, it’s very scary, it literally pauses your life. You can’t go to school, work gets shut down. It really just pauses life.”

With the scope of the devastation still being assessed, FEMA is working to mitigate the damage along with local organizations rallying to rebuild. However, Hanks said, from what she’s seen, the road to recovery seems uncertain.

“These communities are definitely suffering right now, and I think they’ll definitely continue to suffer for a long time, because, I mean this, like, literally wiped out towns,” Hanks said.

To donate to the victims of Hurricane Helene:

Mountain Ways Mountain Ways is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to providing immediate assistance to the victims of Hurricane Helene flooding, according to the website.

Cornerstone Summit Church Cornerstone Summit Church is located in Boone, NC. They are currently collecting items and acting as a distribution center, according to the website.