Committed To Our Community

MY EXPERIENCE

On Thursday, as my family sat around the table for our Thanksgiving dinner, I took a moment to reflect on my last 30 days.  Some of you are aware that I took time away from my regular work and signed up to be deployed with FEMA to help hurricane relief efforts. Government employees can volunteer for these deployments and three of my CS colleagues and I did just that.  As someone who lives part time in Florida, hurricanes are a fact of life, and I wanted to be there for others when I might need help myself someday.  And with deep roots in Appalachia and family still in the region, I’ve followed the impacts to those areas of the country from the unimaginable devastation in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Over the last 30 days I spent time in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, talking with survivors.  I can assure you there is way more work to be done.  

 

• I spoke with Crystal, who was recovering from hospitalization for infections.  She was living in her mobile home that was twisted in half by a tornado; with electrical wiring hanging from the ceilings and walls, she had survived with no power for two months.  Her roof was still there but not attached to the walls which meant rain came inside and it was cold.  She still lived in that home because she had nowhere else to go.

 

• And Tim, whose roof was in his neighbor’s yard (eight acres away), was the kindest person you’d ever want to meet. He was grateful just to have someone to listen to his story of riding out the storm and losing everything.  He was waiting for help to come and in the meantime putting tarps over his walls to act as a makeshift roof. Again, he had nowhere else to go so he was making the best of it with four walls and no roof.

 

• And I spoke with a single mom to four kids, one of them severely disabled who relied on special medical equipment that was destroyed in the storm.  Although she received assistance with some of her child’s medical needs, his need for full time care left her unable to work and provide for herself and her children.

 

• Then there was the very first person I spoke with- John, 72 years old, in a wheelchair and living in his car.  Before the storm he had owned a mobile home, but it had been destroyed and he had no place to go. And I spoke to him more than a month after the storm.

 

These people are just a few that I encountered; and my colleagues who deployed with me across the state of Georgia had similar stories of desperate people, living in desperate circumstances that they had never expected.  

 

The long-term impacts of this storm were felt more severely by those who did not have the resources to recover quickly-

• the elderly,

• the poor,

• the disabled, and

• the single parents

They typically are on fixed incomes, often under employed or unable to work.  None of them had insurance; it’s a luxury when you’re on a limited income.  They may have owned a mobile home but without income they can’t replace it.  And if they lived in a subsidized apartment that was destroyed in the only subsidized building in the area, there is literally nowhere for them to go.  They may have had a car that was able to get them to a low paying job, but when the car had a tree fall on it or was damaged by flood waters, they didn’t have the money to fix it or replace it, so then the job is gone because they live in a rural area without public transportation.

 

These things are not happening in far-away places.  These are the people we see in beautiful parts of the United States.  When you’ve driven through the mountains in North Carolina and seen the houses perched on the sides of the roads, the houses where people lived who worked in the restaurants or gas stations you may have stopped at- these are those people.  The people who you meet in the grocery store when you are on the way to that South Carolina or Georgia beach vacation- these are those people.  The folks who work at the hotels, restaurants, and tourist attractions on Florida’s west coast- these are those people.  Or they are people you may never meet, just living their lives, like the people in the background of every community across the country. 

 

UPDATE

Please consider donating to charitable organizations that are helping our fellow citizens, right here in the U.S, recover from the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

 

Back in September, I sent you a message about DEC supported relief resources and wanted to update that list.  We no longer see what is happening in these affected areas on the evening news; the world has moved on.  But the people recovering from these storms are still in desperate circumstances, made worse by the approach of winter.  The North Carolina DEC and Greater Florida DEC put together a list of resources and I have added a few from my experience.

 

These storms left an unimaginable wake of destruction and survivors are greatly supported by private charitable organizations that can move quickly, without the bureaucracy that is inherent with government relief efforts.  

 

The unmet need is tremendous.

 

North Carolina Mountains

 

• Samaritan’s Purse (also helping in Florida): https://www.samaritanspurse.org/disaster/hurricane-helene/?utm_source=Ggl&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=m_YGGT-B24V&utm_content=HurricaneHeleneSitelink&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA0rW6BhAcEiwAQH28IgIu_vfNgeFdOxLu6TPHSVPPzxgPRpH2rkPv21W7oV1g_NWIdpdqIBoCBbQQAvD_BwE

• Brookstone Church, a church with a number of locations: https://www.brookstonechurch.org/mtn-impact

• Operation Airdrop: www.operation-airdrop.com/hurricane-helene

 

Florida Coastal Areas

• Florida Disaster Fund: https://www.volunteerflorida.org/donatefdf/

• Farm Share: https://www.farmshare.org/

• Feeding Tampa Bay: https://feedingtampabay.org/#

• Metropolitan Ministries: https://www.metromin.org/

 

Appalachian Region

• North Carolina Business Recovery: https://www.wncstrongtogether.org/donate

• Appalachian Helene Response Fund- Kentucky:  https://appalachianky.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=4036

• Region AHEAD- Tennessee and SW Virginia Small Business:  https://www.ftdd.org/regionahead

• Appalachia Service Project- home repair and rebuilding:  https://asphome.org/helpafterhelene/#give-volunteer

 

Impacted Southeastern States

• United Way: https://www.unitedway.org/disaster

• American Red Cross: https://www.redcross.org/donate/donation.html/

• Salvation Army: https://salvationarmyusa.org/

• Second Harvest Food Bank: https://www.secondharvestnwnc.org

 

Thank you for your generous consideration.

 

Kind Regards,

Laura

 

Laura Barmby

Office of the U.S. Field 

Phone:  (240) 372-1863

Laura.Barmby@trade.gov