Over a year after the devastating and unprecedented Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina, the storm’s effects remain. Making landfall in North Carolina on Sept. 27, 2024, Helene ravaged mountain communities—some of which Guilford College students call home.
Now, these students reflect on their experiences and the state and national responses to the disaster.
Though many were safe on Guilford’s campus, students from affected regions, including Emma Butts, witnessed their hometowns’ devastation in national headlines.
“On The New York Times, one of the pictures they had used was literally a street away from my house,” Butts said. “It was this gaping sinkhole that cut off all the roads because the river runs through there.”
For student Elijah Troop, the first days after the storm brought silence—and fear. “There’s definitely a sense of paranoia that comes with not being able to get in contact with your people,” Troop said. “There were days when we would just go sit out in the woods and say nothing and just wait for calls.”
Despite initial coverage in national headlines, students said the media coverage of Hurricane Helene’s true impact on Western North Carolina was minimal. A limited recognition of Helene’s destruction contributed to a lack of awareness throughout the state and on Guilford’s campus, said Aíxa Araujo.
“I feel like students just didn’t really know,” Araujo said. “If it had been explained better, or if it had been brought up in a better way, a lot more people would have cared and paid attention to what was happening.”
In response, several Guilford students began organizing relief efforts. The Guilford College Helene Relief Program collected donations and supplies from campus and surrounding communities to send back home.
Araujo and Talula Perry gathered donations, loaded them up, and traveled back home to deliver the aid efforts to their communities and lend their hands to help in initial clean-up efforts.
“[Perry] did a lot of volunteering, and I was helping around my neighborhood and helping the people in my neighborhood clean up their yards,” said Araujo.
Appalachia and Western North Carolina specifically had to rely significantly on mutual aid resources such as family-owned businesses and restaurants with food supplies, organizations such as BeLoved Asheville, and the helping hands of neighbors after minimal aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Troop noted.
Contributing to the scarcity of aid, students said, were stereotypes about Appalachia and political divisions that shaped how other regions responded.
Troop said that because of North Carolina’s history of being a red-leaning state, other states hesitated to send aid, putting politics before people.
“I get that it’s a very political time, but why does that matter when people are dying or cannot eat, cannot drink water, and cannot shower, and you’re still not giving them aid?” said Araujo.
Not long after the destruction of Helene, another natural disaster hit across the nation: the Los Angeles wildfires. The fires sparked a new sense of people pitting themselves against each other in the name of uplifting one area more, Troop said.
“People from outside both communities were projecting themselves onto the situation and saying that either L.A. deserved more coverage than Asheville or that Asheville deserved more coverage than L.A.,” said Troop.
Inconsistent and lacking media coverage has impacted and continues to affect the recovery of mountain communities in Western North Carolina, especially in more rural areas.
Butts emphasized that smaller rural areas—such as Yancey County, Avery County, Chimney Rock, and Lake Lure—still struggle to recover. “They’re the places where you still see the most devastation,” Butts said.
In hindsight, the shock of Hurricane Helene remains a reminder of how quickly tragedy can strike—and how easily it can be forgotten.
“I think that people should realize that these things often seem very distant until they touch you,” said Butts. “So we should be helping one another because at some point, it could happen to us again, or here at Guilford.”
Organizations such as BeLoved Asheville and Blunt Pretzels continue working to rebuild and support Western North Carolina communities. Visit belovedasheville.com or bluntkitchen.org for more information on how to help.
