Hurricane Helene impacted millions in North Carolina. For the socially vulnerable, recovery can be a challenge

(ASHEVILLE, NC) — When Angela McGee fled her home in Asheville, North Carolina, on the night of Sept. 27 to escape the ravages of Hurricane Helene, she never imagined the destruction the powerful storm would bring.

McGee and four of her eight children who were with her that night grabbed essential items from their trailer near the Swannanoa River in the western part of the state and, through torrential rain and mudslides, made it to higher elevation.

When the storm passed and McGee returned, she found her home razed to the ground and priceless sentimental items gone forever.

“My kids’ baby pictures…I will never be able to flip through the photo album to be able to show my kids,” McGee, 42, told ABC News. “Not being able to show them their certificates, three of my kids [graduated], and not having their diplomas. I’ve lost a lot of my furniture, stuff I work hard for, I lost, and I can’t get it back. The more I think about it, the more I cry about it.”

McGee is one of hundreds of thousands of socially vulnerable North Carolinians who were the hardest hit by Hurricane Helene — the deadliest hurricane to hit the continental U.S. since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — which claimed more than 200 lives.

Many of the same inequities that contribute to economic and health disparities when natural disasters hit also make it more difficult for some communities to recover and receive aid.

Some communities more socially vulnerable to disasters

According to an October report from the U.S. Census Bureau, more than half a million North Carolinians living under disaster declarations during Hurricane Helene were already highly vulnerable to disasters.

This equates to about 577,000 people across 27 counties in North Carolina living in areas that suffered catastrophic flooding, wind damage, power outages and property destruction after Helene.

The Census Bureau said social vulnerability can include those who suffer from poverty, are in advanced age, have communications barriers or don’t have access to internet.

Other experts who are working in the area say they are other vulnerable communities such as those who are disabled.

Lisa Poteat, interim executive director of The Arc of North Carolina — a statewide nonprofit organization that focuses on advocacy and services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families — said people with disabilities are among those who are hit harder during disasters. She said she’s seen lots of needs from the disabled community as a result of Hurricane Helene.

“Folks with intellectual and developmental disabilities, for instance, often are reliant on their families or others around them for support, so it’s been critical that we get information to those groups,” she told ABC News.

“As you can imagine, many people with intellectual disabilities have trouble reading and sometimes don’t communicate well. So when we’re sending out blast in emails or texts. It’s often not helpful unless there’s someone there who can interpret or read or help them understand what’s going on.”

She added that many North Carolinians in the west live creekside, riverside and high up in the hills in isolated areas, making them very “self-reliant” but also difficult to reach.

FEMA struggles to reach hard-hit areas

Following the destruction of her home, McGee eventually managed to reach a fire station in Black Mountain, east of Asheville.

She said she and her children were forced to live out of her car for four days with not much food and water, no phone signal and no money, surviving with the help of other evacuees.

McGee said she went to the information desk at the fire station every day to ask when assistance was coming, and she was told it would be a while before officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could reach them. McGee was frustrated by the news.

“It took FEMA, like, a whole week to get to us…And I don’t understand that. I’m mad about that,” she said. “‘Oh, FEMA can’t get in here because it’s so damaged, they will have to fly in here to get to us.’ That’s why they say that FEMA took a long time to get to us. There’s no [excuse] for that.”

Craig Levy, deputy federal coordinating officer for FEMA officials in North Carolina, acknowledged that getting to the devastated communities was difficult for aid workers.

Levy told ABC News that FEMA faced several challenges trying to get to people in need, including landslides, roads that were washed out and rough terrain only accessible by helicopter. He said FEMA had Disaster Survivor Assistance Teams partner with the active-duty soldiers to hand out food, water and emergency supplies in isolated areas.

“One of our teams teamed up with those soldiers as they were going into an isolated area in order to reach a community, and that particular community had a very high number of elderly and homebound individuals that needed the assistance, and we were able to get in there,” he said. “We brought with us a portable satellite data terminal so that we could get online, help those folks register and help them also get the word out a little bit if they hadn’t been able to reach loved ones.”

Levy acknowledges the challenges faced in getting help to those who likely faced hardship long before Hurricane Helene made landfall.

He says FEMA has and will continue to try to adapt their services accordingly. For those without internet access, challenges with technology or with language barriers, Levy says FEMA’s Disaster Survivor Assistance Team goes door to door to register residents for assistance and translates resource materials into as many different languages as are spoken in the region being served.

Levy states that FEMA sets up disaster recovery centers in community spaces, such as government office buildings or near grocery stores, to meet residents in need where they are.

FEMA hopes that recent individual assistance reform allows residents to receive money up front a lot sooner, expand access to resources for the uninsured and for accessibility improvements to housing.

As of Nov. 25, McGee is still waiting for FEMA assistance and has been trying to push for updates on her request.

Helping vulnerable communities look forward

As extreme weather events become more frequent, advocates say official emergency response efforts need to account for those most vulnerable and the challenges they face before, during and after a tragedy.

This response, advocates say, should also address the root causes for social vulnerability, as well. Ana Pardo, an activist at the North Carolina Justice Center, says disaster preparedness and economic preparedness go hand-in-hand.

“Allowing families to make enough of a living from their labor to be prepared and to have some economic resilience in the face of a disaster is part of disaster preparedness,” Pardo told ABC News. “We’ve stretched people and put them in a corner for so long that they don’t have anything of their own to rely on right now.”

But when emergency and recovery response falters, some residents hope to step up for their neighbors in need.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), a federally recognized Indian tribe in western North Carolina, say they were spared from much of the devastation, allowing them to create distribution centers and gather donations to deliver supplies to a large swath of the state devastated by Hurricane Helene.

“I have never seen our community come together as a whole and support each other and support our neighbors,” Anthony Sequoyah, the Secretary of Operations for EBCI, told ABC News.

Pardo said she’s emotional just thinking about the volunteers who came to the region to muck out homes filled with mud and to gut wet drywall to prevent mold buildup in flooded buildings.

“We’ve had hundreds of people coming through every week to dig mud off the streets and try to save the businesses that are in our town,” said Pardo. “There’s just been such an outpouring of care and resources and effort.”

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