We Went to the Worst of Hurricane Helene

In this video, the boys and I are going into some of the worst-hit areas of Hurricane Helene.

Hello!

My friend Whitney has been doing emergency work since the beginning, like Ground zero, like body bags, y'all.

Happy day.

But as you can imagine, after 10 days, Whitney is absolutely exhausted.

Once I gave people tasks, they were all over the place. So I've just been telling— even if I see the National Guard, fire and rescue, if they're not doing something and they need something, I'm like, hey, if you guys can help us out.

Massive lack of leadership.

Yeah, she's passing the baton to a crisis relief organization.

Why are you handing it over to CRR?

Because I can't carry it anymore, and I trust them, and that was the purpose, was me just setting it.

You're checking out, you're tag-teaming. During that meeting, they're talking about like needing four-wheelers. Reverence Farm gave us a four-wheeler to use during this process.

We're shadowing Daniel from CRR. We can help them get into these places to assess biggest needs so that they can do the greatest good. Some mold, there's some mold.

Si and I and Jonah are going to go with Daniel and try to get into Gerton.

They're saying 6 months to a year for them to get power, so some are staying and some are not.

But I wonder what the determining factor is between this place has power and that place is 6 months to a year out.

Oh, hi. Hey, sorry.

Um, I was wondering if you guys had maps. We're kind of drawing out charts for the team.

Yeah, we got a big map you can look at on the left here.

They was hit pretty bad, but I know they're doing their own thing, just from what I understand. I mean, you're more than welcome to check with them.

All right, you got to get out of here.

I feel weird leaving, but yeah, it's okay.

It's okay to feel that.

Can I hug you?

You did good work. I've heard some things that FEMA might take this supplies. How do you feel about that? Um, what's your protocol there?

That's a— you know, I don't really have a protocol for that.

Cross that bridge when we get there.

Okay, all right, uh, have a good conversation with some folks. Treat people like they're humans, and it usually works out pretty good. We did toss water, gas, water, gas. Do you want to toss anything else in before we roll?

Yeah, toilet paper.

Uh, let's see, we may over at the church basement.

Having also gone through this, I'm thinking what I would have wanted and needed right after the crisis. Still water, food, that's a good one. Toilet paper.

We got new shirts.

That comes in handy when you don't have a washing machine. Yes, I have a new shirt.

I got a new shirt.

Yeah, well, scratch that. We do have— we did get our washing machine going on the generator, but we still don't have a— well, we have a solar-powered dryer, but it's a little more work on there. We're happy for a new shirt.

Plan is to go and assess a local area about 10 minutes from here.

They don't have a bridge, road's gone. The only way in is with ATVs. And then we're gonna go over the mountain near us to where it's been hit real hard over in Gerton.

A place once popular with tourists is now dirt and debris. Only a few places are still there. There's a pole.

That's what we like to see. I think we're gonna get to the end of the drivable road right here. That's what we're looking for— inaccessible places. Oh, still here. Stay over on the left.

This is a house.

What do you want to do, Daniel? Try to get over there and Park.

Yeah, let's get over to that and try to go down this road.

Yeah, don't stop unless he stops us. You got it. Put it in low.

So we bring it everywhere we're doing anything. So it's got all of our just, uh, higher level care medical stuff, just in case somebody falls off the machine, gets hit by a tree, any of that. Nice. Tourniquets, blood stop, stop the bleed, all that fun stuff is in here. Other than that, we can load these things to the gills with water and gas.

These are drop-off points for these people.

Awesome.

Hello?

Nobody is home, but it's clean and dry in there.

So what do you do now?

You mark this down as a tree service job?

Mark it down as no one was home, trees down, uh, safe, and, uh, that's it. We'll We'll try to, uh, come back another time.

That's the road we came in on.

Looks like where— that's where the river was, up through there. It's jumped and came this way, destroyed the road. Did not destroy the bridge, just destroyed the road. This doesn't even look like the original spot. Yeah, I think the original spot was there in that hole.

This was a homestead.

Look at their gardens. Oh, breaks my heart in a special way to see a homestead destroyed. This was their home, now it's there. And like a good homesteader, they ain't leaving. They've got a 10 by 10 living area set up here.

Nobody's here.

We don't see any water around. We're going to drop a load of water. Huge truck, like a tow truck.

That's a flatbed.

Looks like the chickens are gone, so the water must have gotten too terribly high up here. But oh, the poultry net. That's a lunatic homesteader like us. Somebody on this road has goats because somebody dropped feed off. Yeah, what was their driveway? Freezer way up in the back. Look how high that is, guys. That's 20, 25 feet. That power— how?

Well, our Ring camera's battery or power?

Well, I mean, they do have a fan going, so they have power. What happens when you lose land? Like, it's gone. You don't get insured for land. Look at beachfront property right now, right where they're a little They had a little Garden of Eden out here. Going to their beautiful oasis here. Raised beds, strawberries, lemon balm, more onions or garlic, cherry tomatoes. Yeah, you can't kill them. Beautiful greenhouse gone.

Guys like you have just been helping us from day one.

Yeah.

And we've, we've got everybody got gas they need.

Yep.

Uh, everybody's got water. We got tons of water. So give it to people who actually need it.

Um, you running a generator? I did. Oh, you got power now?

Oh yeah, came in yesterday.

Oh my gosh.

Oh yeah.

Did this used to be a house? We're standing where a house was. The gentleman told me this was a beautiful, well-built rock house. Had a little pavilion for the community. But just about the ATVs, we have to run back and forth. Yeah, take it for your ATV. Yeah, yeah. Crisis Relief and Recovery.

Thank you, guys.

They're looking for jobs. They're going to have a lot of volunteers coming through. Do y'all know of anybody needing tree work or picking up? I know someone. There's someone—

I'm a pastor of a church, and we have someone in Hendersonville that had a big mudslide that it's really hard to have access with a tractor.

Awesome.

They have a big team in there that wanted to come and just do shovel. It's dirty, dirty.

Daniel, you hearing this?

Yeah, I need to get your contact information. I'm Daniel, by the way. How are you?

That's a good dude.

I don't know what he does.

All right.

Yeah, he saved our lives. He didn't grade this road, he rebuilt this road. This road was gone. We spent a day building a walkboard, and a church saw it on the news, and they said, that's something we can do. And they drove down from Ohio, and in 4 hours had that bridge built.

Wow.

If there's any way to give Paris Farms any praise, they They, they're the ones who got big hungry power.

Wow, you got a tank coming in. The power truck is on tracks.

That's their way out. Walking across that bridge.

I guess they're nervous about driving on that new road. This is their way out right now.

They're gonna need gravel over there. We'll see what we can do about that. They're concerned the propane truck isn't going to come through there. Problem is what we're going to do when it rains. These people need a miracle because this Private road. That's the old bridge. If you know any miracle workers, she'll let them help some people get over their river. I'm gonna leave my assistant's email down in the description. Hey, I'm just, I'm just throwing it out there. I believe in miracles. Y'all believe in miracles?

Road closed.

That's what we're looking for. We're trying to get into these hard-to-reach places. Wow, we got a little homestead. Big Hungry Homestead.

Little honesty stand.

Duck eggs. How did those ducks make it with that stream right there? See you later, bud. See you, man. Good work you're doing. Thank you. We are going to leave them with that donated four-wheeler from Reverend's Farm.

And our trailer.

Home sweet home.

I'm excited. We were able to get CRR some great contacts in the area. Good start. The next day we are on a mission to find Barbara, a local feed distributor.

That's how they're gonna get power into us. The neighbors, it's gonna be gnarly getting in there. Today we are on a mission to find a lady in a feed co-op.

There's this lady named Kelly who organizes a new country organic co-op, and it's trying to be delivered there. That's the hub, and nobody can get through to her. No place to unload our ramps, road closed. We're walking.

You don't know who Barbara Myers is, do you? Yeah, she's my wife. She okay?

She's fine.

Okay, okay. So there's a food co-op with her, uh-huh, and they're trying to get a hold of her and can't, and they're scared.

We don't have any cell service.

Okay, they're just worried to death and I'm just over the mountain. I said I'll come check. So is this your truck?

Yes, we had a— we had a 20, I guess 26-foot, um, portable building with one cell and some animal health stuff in it.

Okay.

And then there was a 38-foot straw trailer, still have a few hundred bags.

All that right there?

Yeah, stormwater washed it all away. This building, this was a heartache. We had just finished this building.

Oh, I see.

Do you have insurance on this flood?

What do you mean flood insurance?

Nobody does here. They said 2/10 of 1% flood here. Came in here, you can see the water line went up about 9 feet.

Whoa, that's the flood line.

You see it's up through the halfway up that cow picture. If I was standing here, I would have been drowned.

This is not a floodplain, y'all. This is not a floodplain. This was a little creek.

Blew this door in. The overhead door, and it filled up. And then when the water rushed out, it blew that whole back wall out.

Wow.

And that whole end wall at the bottom blew out. All this feed— we had about 60 tons sitting in here— it all flushed out or hung up.

Did you have that feed insured?

No, nothing's insured.

It's no flood insurance. How'd you front that to get all this feed back?

Just scrap it up, man. We've got accounts we can bring in feed. A little bit of it was donated. This Nutrena, we're not a Nutrena dealer. This is the composting feed in these piles here. Anything in bags, paper bags, went there.

Wow.

All the plastic bags we tried to cut open and compost, but we hauled about 40 tons of feed that we couldn't do anything with. We had about 40, 40 or 50 tons of bag feed went out of here in roll-offs.

What's the name of your feed business? We'll give it a shout out. Feed— what is it?

Fairview Feed.

Fairview Feed in North Carolina.

There's another one in Alabama.

Livestock feed and hay. Bobby?

Yes.

Also known as Barbara. Justin Rhodes across the mountain in Hoopers Creek.

Oh yeah.

There's folks in the New Country Organic Co-op are getting feed from you. They're worried about you. Can't get a hold of you.

I tried.

I'm just putting eyes on you and saying you're okay. I can get a hold of New Country for you and say they can get through. I talked to your husband, he said trucks can come through.

I was trying to get my delivery from Florida Hardware and they also use RNL and they said there's, uh, he told me there's zip codes on there that they are not delivering to and this is one of them.

Shoot.

So that's probably—

Well, we're gonna help you out somehow. We'll figure out if we have to meet them or something.

That's our bank on that side. We just live right up there.

Yeah.

And I think I told him, I was like, can you maybe just like help us drag your stuff back over? And they were like, that's a lot of cleanup. And I said, yeah.

That was extremely productive. Found Barbara.

We found that trucks can go through, so the feed delivery could come through. The feed is trying to deliver, but I did just hear that R&L is not delivering to certain zip codes, so we might have to go and get this for them.

Oh my gosh, Barbara is safe! And aren't she and John so resilient? Like, totally destroyed, but you would never know it going in there. They just girded up their loins and are just taking care of business themselves.

How'd you front that to get all this feedback?

Just strap it up, man.

Those are the kind of people you really want to help, so I gave air contact, handing them over to CRR. But also, in the meantime, Kelly, the head of that co-op, uh, has been in contact, and she's delivering hay to people in need and people who have donated and things like that. So I'm sorting this hay, getting the moldy stuff out of here, stacking this nice, and we're getting some hay replacement. We lost a lot of hay, and hay is Good hay is not cheap. So America, you are so good. I don't care what anybody says. The people of America, doesn't matter if they have a— in this crisis, didn't matter if they had a Harris sign in the yard or Trump sign. People were rallying together and helping each other, and they still are. I don't care what you're hearing, people are banding together. With that, happy day.