Ep 226: Weathering Hurricane Helene with Chris Salerno

Literally on the strip. So you have the strip of all the restaurants. You had a house right above it. So we walk all to the restaurants at night and we would hang out. He had a patio and then rocks. We climb down the rocks, throw tube in the river and just relax. Yeah, And I remember that. And then when I saw the video, all of that's gone. And his home is gorgeous. All of that's his wife.

Yeah.

I was like, wow.

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Hey guys, Chris Salerno here in our new studio, which we're very excited about and a good friend of mine, Chris, which you have a great name. Chris and Chris. Here we go. The Chris and Chris podcast. This episode, we might have to do this more often. I know the Chris and Chris podcast. I like that we should do that. We are here and we're going to discuss. Chris is originally from Asheville or lives in Asheville, North Carolina. He's been in Charlotte, which that's where we're based out of. And I live is in Charlotte, North Carolina, not too far, depending how you drive, about an hour and 40. I drive pretty quick so I can get there probably an hour and 30. But devastations happened over the past couple of weeks and the great reason why I want to talk to you about this is that I've seen so much stuff on the news and these days you don't know what's gonna happen. We got a crazy election coming up. I know you're very, you and I are very opinionated with that. Thankfully on the same side. But a lot of things have been thrown around, you know, no one truly knows what's going on. They may hear bits and pieces, you know, on what's happening in Asheville, Lake Lure or Blowing Rock, all of the, you know, western North Carolina, and especially with government help too. And I love being your friend. Cause you are a down to earth direct type of person. You're no bullshit. And that's what I like and that's what you need to surround yourself with. But sometimes when you and I are on the phone, I'm like, hey, how are things up there? You're giving me, like, the blunt of it, and I'm like, holy cow.

Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about that. And then we're going to talk about a wonderful GoFundMe that you've created that will have links below to help everyone in the western North Carolina really get the resources they need. Not just food and water and diapers, but. But, you know, wi fi, cell service, you name it. Gasoline. Because we are getting into the winter times and we all know it takes a long time to get our infrastructure of our roads, you know, put back together. So we need to make sure we get them gas, propane, whatever they need to make sure their homes are heated. But let's talk about first, you know, where were you when all this happened? And then right when it happened, talk to us about, you know, all the devastation that you saw firsthand.

Yeah. So, Chris, thanks. Thanks for having me. Thanks for your team, for being supportive. For those of you that are watching on. On my podcast, Chris let me use the studio here to stay on top of my schedule. If I look a little tired, it's because I've been working.

You look good all the time.

I appreciate it. I need some of your tricks, though.

I'm taking after your footsteps.

But no, it's been. It's been a long. It's been a long couple weeks. So. Chris. And for those of you that. That don't. Don't know me necessarily. Yeah, I live in Asheville. We're. We're a mile from downtown. Chris. You've been to my house?

Yeah, I've been to your house. Your house is gorgeous. Your wife did a phenomenal job on it.

My wife's an architect. Yeah. And so we, you know, Helene. Helene was forming in the Gulf and my wife and I were actually flying. Jess and I were flying to Cancun for our anniversary and we flew. We were delayed. Thank you. We were delayed. We flew around the hurricane.

Did you.

And we thought that was really kind of going to be the end of it. Because when you live in the mountains in North Carolina, you really don't think that you're going to get hit.

No.

By a hurricane.

That is the lovely part. And that's why I love Charlotte, North Carolina, is because it's so inlet. You really don't think of it. And that's why you're in Asheville now.

You might get hit by a hurricane, but it's going to be a tropical storm.

You know, rain, water, you know, rain, wind, but nothing like what they saw the past couple weeks.

Yeah, so just kind of starting with that, you know, if you look at the news reports and you look at the magnitude of the storm. So there was a, there was a low pressure area that, that had hit Asheville, that it hit western Carolina before Helene came in and it dumped 8 inches of rain. So already the ground was saturated, the rivers were saturated. For anybody that's been to that area, there's a lot of rivers, there's a lot of mountains. It's a really lush, it's actually a rainforest, it's a temperate rainforest. So a very lush area. But when you get 8 inches of rain and then a storm hits, the storm hit and it was the equivalent of three 1000 year storms in a row, one day after the next after the next. And it dumped 40 trillion gallons of water.

40 trillion gallons.

40 trillion gallons, which is enough to cover the state of North Carolina in three and a half feet. So you and I would be sitting.

In three and a half feet of water right now.

Sitting. Yeah. Chest high in water, you know, for the entire state. So.

And you got to think, I mean, Asheville, you have the Mount Appalachian Mountains, you have. It's basically a bunch of valleys. So that water is going in one direction.

Yeah.

And it's not going slow, that's going fast.

Yeah. So then it's funneling, you know, so these upper areas are acting as a funnel. And the reservoir that sits above Asheville, North Fork Reservoir, that you can look down on when you. I ride up the parkway a lot on my bike. You can see it's beautiful area. It's protected, it's. It's just gorgeous. It had a flow three times of Niagara Falls going over it. That's how much rain was coming.

I've never been in Niagara Falls, but I've seen videos. Like, it's powerful.

We took the boys this summer and it is powerful. You know, you see it? Oh yeah. It's just a massive amount of water. So. And then what happened, Chris, is that, you know, I was having a conversation with one of the parents at lacrosse practice last week and he said, why would like, why would you like settle, like, why would you like live on a river? The thing is, if you know that area, you follow a creek, you follow a river, you build a road on that area, then you build your house and the town evolves. And that's how the country was founded. Right on these ports and inland along rivers. So that's just how our infrastructure is built.

Oh yeah.

But when you have a thousand year storm event, you know, multiple Days in a row. I was watching an engineer and he was showing and he said a thousand year storm event would have produced 12 inches of rain. And we got 20 to 30 inches in the region.

That's rain.

So the engineers don't even have what occurred on their charts.

Wow.

So regardless of, you know, kind of how it happened, it, it created devastation.

Yeah.

And what you're seeing or what people have seen on the news, probably by the time this airs, it'll be a little bit more visible, but you're seeing the tip of the iceberg because Asheville, you know, is populated. But you know, we had the Swano river overflow, the French Broad overflow, which is a mile from my house. We were. Oh yeah, we were relatively unscathed. But it filled Biltmore Village up with. And I know you stayed.

I, I stayed at Biltmore Village. I ate at the Grand Bohemian Restaurant.

12Ft underwater.

Yeah, I mean, I. And that restaurant's below, so I can just imagine. And I, I sent that to my girlfriend because I saw a guy in a little john boat and I was like, we, we. You have to swim under to get to the front door.

Yeah. Like, it was wild. Yeah. So it was, it was really, you know, one. It was devastating from a weather impact. It's been very devastating to the communities. And I, I think I was just talking to, to a, a diver since you and I spoke, and he said the death toll is going to be, you know, much higher than it is currently, unfortunately. But the property damage probably isn't going to be as significant as some of the other hurricanes around the country, from my estimation. But the infrastructure damage and the situation we're facing is we don't know where we're getting water back. It could be two more weeks, four more weeks, 12 more weeks.

You don't know.

We're not sure because there was such devastation to the entire infrastructure.

Wow. In Asheville's. I'm originally from Florida and Florida homes and infrastructures are built with cinder blocks and concrete because it is to withstand what's about to happen, unfortunately, to Tampa and the west coast of Florida. But Asheville's not like that. Asheville is wood beams, you know, Wood beams. That's it.

You don't, you don't think you're gonna get hit with 100 mile an hour winds or.

God, no, you do not. And so it came out, I mean, shocking a lot of people, unfortunately.

Yeah. Well. And even, even if they were like, even if you were. You had a cinder block building. We saw c Block buildings washed away. Because if the ground water was powerful. Yeah. And even if it wasn't, you know, our gym, which is a big cinder block building.

Yeah.

Is filled in 12 inches of toxic mud. Yeah. So, you know, all this being said, Chris, you know, as we watch this unfold, you know, one of, one of the guys on our team, Zach, reached out and last Monday. So we're recording this on Wednesday.

Yeah.

So about, you know, almost 10 days ago, he, he. The bridge to his community washed out. So they had no water, no power. They couldn't get in and out of their neighborhood. He had stayed back with his in laws to make sure that they would be okay. They couldn't leave. So he was powering the community with a generator and he was getting water from the well to supply the neighborhood with water. So we took him in fuel. And then a friend reached out to me and was looking for some resources from Raleigh to help out. So we ultimately built a. A fuel supply chain from farmers. So a woman, Rhonda, who's a wonderful part of our team now put together farmer volunteers that went and picked up, you know, a fuel tank, 50, 150, 305, not quite 500 gallons. Those were brought in on trucks and turned, turn these into mobile fuel stations.

Wow.

So the other problem is with the infrastructure destroyed, you know, just like my friend Zach.

Yeah.

He had to hike out and bring fuel tanks, but we were able to drive in. We've been supporting search and rescue missions.

Yeah.

On ATVs, you know, people that are literally trying to evacuate and ran out of gas on the side of the road. Today, we've supplied about 12,000 gallons of fuel just, just through this grassroots network.

I will say too, one thing I love about you, you have a huge heart. And, you know, I remember we were texting when you were coming back from Mexico and you took action. While you're in Mexico seeing the devastation, you took action before you even got back to the United States to already set up a GoFundMe. You know, all the organizations you've partnered with so far to help everyone who lives in Asheville and everyone who needs it.

Yes. Our group, it's. It's now formally called Western Carolina. I'm sorry, western Carolina emergency network.org so you can go online. Check that out. Western Carolinaemergencynetwork.org you can donate there. We can. It's 501C organization now. And Chris, you know, by just, you know, being blessed with some of the things I've done through my life and the medical World, you know, knowing the communities on my bike, knowing people through, you know, whether it was real estate in Asheville or sports with my kids or schools or doctors, you know, I was able to connect a lot of people through this. So as, as we started sharing with people what we were doing on the logistics side, my friend was working with the Special Forces Charitable Trust.

Yeah.

To help organize these search and rescue missions. So we started supporting them. We were able to coordinate with some great people in the city of Asheville.

Love that.

To supply potable. But also after a week a big issue is non potable water. So if you're sitting in a house and going to the bathroom, you can't flush your toilet, you know, you don't want to waste your water. It becomes unsanitary very quickly. So we've gotten these thousand liter water totes, IBCs, intermediate containers size containers that they use to transport, you know, fluids, food industry type stuff. You do chemicals and stuff like that too. But we're food grade so we've been placing those through our partner organization, Asheville, which is a flush AVL and also some other grassroots organizations to get them these IBCs. We have some great donors. Charles, if you're watching from Texas and Derek, you guys are a big help in that. Yeah. So these communities, starting with low income and those people that couldn't leave, you know, going out in the community. Some of the other stuff we've been doing is also pooling medical resources. My friend has a nationwide telehealth service. So you know, if you're stuck in a shelter or you know, you've been displaced and you have a medication that you left at home, how do you get it? You know, people forget that. You know, somebody said, oh, we need this medication. I said, yeah, but how are we going to get it to the patient? And she said in bottles. And I said, I mean, I'm sorry. I said, well, how are they going to get, how are they going to get the prescription though? Yeah. Right. Because you can't just give somebody something officially without a prescription. Correct. So we're facilitating things like that. We got donations to tablets and then I think you mentioned, you know, Internet access. So Starlink, we've gotten to Elon Musk through some. Yeah, God bless Elon Musk. Great. You know, great, great support. You know, there's been donated. Starlinks. We've also used our, our funds that have been donated to buy some. We've had some individuals specifically earmark funds. Wow. For that. That's gone to our, our frontline special forces or operators that are out there going into these communities. First Starlink I hand delivered up there went to the front lines to program drones for drone reconnaissance. And you know, Chris, you kind of touched on this. The government has a role, but you know, on Monday there was no government.

We think a lot because that was my next question to you is, you know, when we talked on the phone, I'm like, hey, you know, what's going on with the government up there? Because you see mixed things on social media. And social media also persuades and wants you to hear what they want you to hear. And so, you know, that's a big topic that we had is, hey, what's going on with the government is are they even helping out, you know, Sleepy Joe Biden? What's he doing? You know, things like that.

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Yeah.

So we've been able to partner with churches. Churches are set up to accept and distribute donations. They've been a great site. So you know, you've seen, you know, ex military, you see a lot of Individuals like, there's the, the great, the great team that built our retaining wall at our house. Guy Frank lives out near Hot Springs for. I'm sorry, Hot Springs, North Carolina. And he, he can climb a tree and cut stuff down. He can design a bridge. You know, these are people that work with their hands that know how to handle themselves. And the, the interesting thing is the biggest request we get is, hey, can you get us like chainsaws or heavy equipment or these resources? And they say, can you also just get these people out of our way so we can take care of our own community? Yeah. So these are people that know how to do things themselves. But the big thing is, you know, government has its place here and there. But I don't, I, I just want to emphasize that our organization is just private individuals that have come together, donated their time, their money to do these things and we acted very rapidly.

That's one thing I was going to say too is that unfortunately we don't know the exact death toll right now. But I feel that if us as a country and especially North Carolina, we're very tight, close, close knit people, we love to take care of our people here in North Carolina and the Carolinas. If they didn't act as rapidly as western North Carolina did, how Asheville is, you know, Charlotte, I know a lot of people donating over their time, effort know if we didn't act as rapidly as we did, you know, I feel like the death toll would be a lot higher because it's taken the government, what, a week and a half to two weeks to even step foot there.

Yeah, and that's, I think, you know, that's the point. Like people are like, oh, the government's not doing their job. And I think that's, that's the answer is in, in that statement. Yeah, right. The, or the, the solution is in that statement. If you think the government is there to come rescue you, then it may be too late. Whereas if you, if you take it upon yourselves as private citizens to help your neighbor. Yeah. You know, that's, that's hurting or stranded or need, then we can do that. My friend Zach, they saw the National Guard four days after we brought him fuel and they brought him diapers, which, that's helpful, but.

Yeah, thank you.

He needed fuel, you know, for that and we knew his need and we knew where he was.

And in this scenario, four days feels like 10 days. That's, that's a long time. Especially if you have medical condition conditions, you know, where, where you need that generator to, for you know, air or anything, you know, it's, it's, it's huge.

That's right. So let's, let's highlight some of the success stories.

Let's hear it.

And I want to do this for, you know, specifically for our donors that, like yourself. Chris.

Thank you.

Like, like your staff that and your team that's out here.

Thank you.

And the people that have, you know, there's been a lot of anonymous donors that have just been very, very generous and those initial donations, I, I can tell you, like, funded, you know, fuel that was going into, you know, Big John's tank. You know, a lot of that stuff went on my credit card initially because we just didn't have money coming in to an official fundraiser that. But, you know, our, our team of volunteers with fuel cans in the back of their trucks were, you know, we, you know, our donations paid for that fuel. Yeah, that fuel allowed people to get to save those in need. This past weekend, we had nine families we did an airdrop to. They actually didn't want to leave. Everyone from toddlers that got diapers to seniors that got medicine from our airdrop, we saved four people Sunday, two people Monday, another person yesterday. You know, so six people. The one last night was a one year old that needed a gastric tube, a G tube.

Oh, wow.

That couldn't eat. And so they were able to get, get that, which is a very specific need. Yeah, it probably saved that, that young child's life. I love that, you know, oxygen. We've supplied oxygen tanks, filled up oxygen tanks. So we've been very nimble. You know, there's, there's no red tape in our organization, as you can imagine, you know, dealing with me. And I'm not doing. I, I want to highlight that this is, this is a, A, a fairly large organization at this point, made up of a lot of people. This isn't my organization per se, but if a dollar comes in, a dollar goes out. Yeah. So everybody's volunteering. We have a CPA that stepped up as our director of finance.

Love that.

We got a project manager that's stepping in tomorrow to kind of take over. We moving the pieces in place. Every channel has somebody that's, that's really leading the charge to make this stuff happen. And our ultimate goal, Chris, you know, aside from the immediate need of rescuing these people and providing them, you know, these, you know, whether it's food, water, medicine, fuel, an escape to either save or sustain their life at that moment is ultimately going to transition to, to a rescue. And then A rebuilding effort.

Correct.

And our hope is that this organization can continue to bring people together so that as funds come in, they can go to the community, to the volunteers that are helping so they can go right back to the community instead of having to bring in outside contractors to do that. So it, it. Western Carolina has a lot of history, a lot of really strong, amazing people that are self sufficient, very much they're proud and you know, we hope to give them the resources. I've been blessed to be in Asheville, which some people might say, oh, that's not really western Carolina. But you know, our friend, I know her, she's a surgeon, her husband's engineer and was working with Jess redesigning their parents property and chimney rock and it literally was washed away. Wow.

I mean I, I hung out back in the day in Lake Luro.

Yeah.

You know, and that I had a buddy who had a house literally on the strip. So you had the strip of all the restaurants. He had a house right above it. So we'd walk all to the restaurants at night and we would hang out. He had a patio and then rocks. We'd climb down the rocks, throw a tube in the river and just relax.

Yeah.

And I remember that. And then when I saw the video of all of that's gone and his home was gorgeous, all of that's this wiped away, I was like, wow.

Wow. Yeah. So yeah. My point is, you know, we were relatively lucky.

Very much so.

And you know, but I know a lot of those towns. I've spent a lot of time, you know, riding through those and our families visiting and kind of experiencing. And a lot of people in this area know western North Carolina as yourself. Does as yourself.

I go there at least three or four times a year.

I know you're always.

I love it there. I love Asheville.

Asheville's beautiful.

The Grove park in love it.

Yeah. So it'll survive. You know, the community will come back.

It'll come back stronger too. Which is great.

Yeah. You know, but if you want to help, it's Western Carolina emergency network.org Western CarolinaEmergencyNetwork.org and you can check us out online. You can donate online as well.

We'll make sure we have the GoFundMe link below as well. And also tagged in the our bio too. So we can help everyone out in the wonderful organization that, you know, you're a part of, helping all of the individuals in western North Carolina.

Chris, thanks for giving us the time here.

Most definitely.

You know, giving us your studio again. Thanks. Your team for. For everything that they've done.

Yeah.

For your donations and your friendship. Because that's really what I've learned is, you know, our family left, we ran by our house, we grabbed everything, like, grab what's important. We all left with a bag, a backpack, and a carry on. And I thought, you know, what if we lose everything? That's. That's really, you know, that's replaceable.

Yeah.

But friendships and the people aren't most definitely. That's what's most important. So thank you.

Yeah. We are always here for you and your family and anyone else if you need anything, you know, don't hesitate. We're always here and honored to be friends and know you very personally. And thank you very much for the kind words and let's help build back western North Carolina stronger.

Let's do it. All right.

Thanks so much.

Good. Hey, Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to gift you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please, like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple podcasts.