App State hosted a Community Resilience Forum on Hurricane Helene, on Monday at the Plemmons Student Union.
The forum focused on resilience, collaborative efforts and the immediate response of Watauga County residents. It also featured the launch of the Hurricane Helene Archive website, aimed at preserving the history of the storm.
Four local leaders, each representing a key area of focus during the storm — food, water, housing and the economy — participated in the forum. The event drew in a large audience of around 250 people in the Parkway Ballroom.
Additionally, Professor Beth Davison’s short film “We Begin At 9:30” premiered. It tells the story of Todd’s destruction and the journey of Kelly McCoy and Renata Dos Santos, owners of RiverGirl Fishing Company, as they worked to restore their hometown. The full documentary will be released on Saturday, Feb. 22, at the Appalachian Theatre.
Professor and Interim Chair of the Sustainable Development Department Laura England opened the event by introducing two recipients of the Attorney General’s Dogwood Award for their dedication to community service by Gov. Josh Stein.
The recipients included Ashley Galleher of ZRC Skate, who converted her skate park business into a donation center, and FizzEd, a restaurant in Boone that provided free meals for anyone in need.
The Executive Director of Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture, Liz Whiteman, spoke first and represented the food focus of the forum.
Following the storm, Whiteman and her staff quickly assessed the damage within the High Country Food Hub, which was unscathed by the storm. She said this was a triumph, as much of their refrigerated storage was dispersed to local farmers and consumers in need.
“This not only meant that the product was safe, but we could open our freezer and refrigerated storage space to producers who stood to lose their inventory,” Whiteman said.
The staff began collecting volunteers and organizing groups that were designed to help with farm cleanup in the region, as well as calling over 100 producers they work with to check on the farm’s statuses. Browns Farm Ridge provided the land and supplies for them to conduct their operations.
Whiteman said the organization is now looking ahead and partnering with Andy Hill, the High Country regional director for MountainTrue and Watauga Riverkeeper, to host repair workshops and restore waterways for the future.
“Our extension office quickly became a disaster relief hub,” Whiteman said. “One local farm, Browns Farm Ridge, donated the use of their land as a resource hub and supply hub for farmers who were coming to pick up fence posts, hay, animal feed, all sorts of things that floated them through this time when there were not markets to attend and restaurants were closed.”
Hill spoke about the water within the High Country as well as his rescue missions after the storm.
Hill said that he was doing his best to shy away from showing, what he called, “disaster messaging.” He took the audience through the destruction of the storm in his lens. During his time helping others, he monitored the water after the storm. But Hill wasn’t the only one, as riverkeepers from across the southeast made their way to the affected counties to help.
“So we riverkeepers across the region collected hundreds of thousands of water samples,” Hill said, explaining that the water samples that they took did not meet the established water quality standard. “We found about a 30 percent failure rate.”
Hill said starting the discussion of policy solutions is a way to make the High Country more resilient. He said the audience can engage with local, state and federal governments on climate policy and gave thanks to Mayor Pro Tem Dalton George for asking for a resolution in support of the Hellbender Salamanders.
After Hill, Executive Director of Watauga Housing Council Kellie Reed Ashcraft began her time by providing background on the housing crisis in Watauga County before Helene made landfall in September, and how the storm will have lasting effects on the housing market for the foreseeable future.
“When you have crises, like a climate event that we just experienced, you’re going to have deteriorating housing stock that is even more vulnerable when it comes to natural disasters,” Ashcraft said.
Ashcraft recognized the help of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for helping over 6,000 residents of the area after the storm. The financial assistance consisted of temporary housing at hotels and other rentals, housing repairs, remediations and replacements in certain cases.
Ashcraft and others on the housing council meet monthly, along with some FEMA recovery staff members, to share information about housing initiatives and coordinate with any kind of housing efforts or issues that arise. The housing partners have set long-term goals for the future of housing in the region.
The final speaker of the event, President and CEO of the Boone Chamber of Commerce David Jackson was emotional at the beginning of his speech. He thanked App State for opening its doors and allowing people to send messages to their loved ones.
“To make contact with people who weren’t here was incredibly important,” Jackson said. “The university opened its doors and said, ‘You can get here, make calls here, come to the student union and get a meal.’ All of those things were important for us as we tried to get a sense of what happened.”
Jackson said he sat down with the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce to discuss ways of helping those affected by the storm. With the work of the chamber, over $600,000 was raised just a short time after the flood. Nearly half of the amount was pumped back into the early childhood systems of Watauga County.
“Our economic initiatives have had childcare and housing as one and one-a for the last several years,” Jackson said. “When presented an opportunity for how to spend some of the initial money that we got, one of the first projects out there was in childcare.”
Jackson said the Boone and Asheville Chambers of Commerce are partnering to continue advocating for resources and determining the scope of the rebuilding of these towns.
“Local decisions matter, how we engage with that process matters,” Jackson said. “We want to continue to keep those conversations moving.”
The forum finished with a standing ovation from the crowd as all of the speakers made their way to the podium to answer questions from the audience.
When asked about how the speakers processed the storm’s aftermath, Dos Santos said she felt it would be difficult to establish a timeline for recovering from Helene’s grim mental grip.
“The rest of the world has moved on and there is just this heaviness still,” said Ashcraft.
