HURRICANE HELENE RELIEF

Click the button below to donate to the Hurricane Helene relief fund. After clicking the link, under "Use this donation for," select "Helene Relief." All proceeds go directly to helping those impacted by Hurricane Helene.

Our team was busy today in the mountains!

Some of our crew went up into the more remote mountain areas to deliver supplies to the residents there then joined the rest of the crew who were busy working on cleaning up fallen trees in Rutherfordton, NC. Thankful for all that was accomplished today.

Bro. Barry speaking with a local resident who lives outside of Spruce Pine and travels into some of the hardest hit areas in North Carolina. He explained that people were trying to live without power in freezing temperatures.

Today we traveled into Johnson City, Tennessee to deliver supplies to Word Of Life church. The members of this church have an outstanding relief operation taking place and have helped so many of their surrounding communities. Your contributions are helping relief work like theirs continue!

We are gathering supplies for another delivery into the mountains this week! Our team is moving focus to clean up operations, search and rescue, wellness checks in the outlying areas, and making sure people are equipped with blankets and coats for the approaching colder temperatures. The needs change daily, so we are working alongside local authorities to stay up to date with how we can best support the people. We can't thank you enough for your donations, each one makes a difference for the people impacted by the storm!

Monetary donations can be made online (click the donate button above) or physical items sent by mail to 5218 S. Oak Cr. Granite Falls, NC 28630.

Our team was busy today clearing trees and brush from homes around the community in Rutherfordton, NC. While the men worked around the community, the women were busy making meals and organizing supplies at the local fire department!

Note From Bro. Barry:

We left HBT yesterday with a larger truck full of pallets of food from MDI Distributors along with donated supplies. We traveled to the affected area of western North Carolina.

Our first stop was the Lake Lure area where some of the worst destruction has occurred. The community there has established a collection/distribution center at a local church for items being donated. We drove down one lane highways over downed power lines and where they were repairing bridges as we drove across them. The distribution center confirmed that bottled water is the primary need. As we were offloading, there were Chinook helicopters flying overhead delivering water and MRE’s to local fire stations in the area, including two deliveries to Shingle Hollow.

We then traveled to the Shingle Hollow fire station where we dropped off more water, food, first aid kits, calamine lotion and Benadryl. (The hornets disturbed by the storm are stinging linemen and workers in the forests, and poison ivy is also causing problems for workers.)

We next traveled to Bro. Joe Green’s church in Ruth, NC where we were able to supply a full pallet of water for the people who still have no power. The destruction there was shocking, and it is amazing how much work needs to be done to clean up power lines along main roads. We were hitting dangling wires in our vehicles as we drove out. Massive trees are still leaning against houses and across driveways in many places.

HBT is rallying men to begin workdays at Shingle Hollow and the surrounding community to help with brush cutting and tree removal. Our first workday will be tomorrow, Oct. 5th. The need for manpower is also great in the area. Our first job will be to cut our way through to a home where a disabled veteran lives.

Thank you for the support that has been given. Even though money is the last thing we want to talk about, it is the thing that gets things moving. We are now partnering with the rescue operations at Word of Life Assembly (Johnson City, TN) to help supply their kitchens and rescue operation.

God bless you all,

Bro. Barry Coffey

Thanks to your donations, we are able to purchase bulk supplies from a wholesaler at a highly discounted rate. This morning our church loaded up the truck for todays delivery! These supplies are being transferred to a local fire department in Western NC, and their team will distribute them to the surrounding communities in need.

Note From Bro. Barry:

God bless you all.

At Hickory Bible Tabernacle (HBT) we are engaged in assisting families who have been adversely affected by Hurricane Helene. I can assure you that there are many untold stories and facts about the destruction that would not be appropriate to share.

I am proud to be working with other local churches and churches outside North Carolina to assist where help is needed. The impact on families and communities is overwhelming and they will be rebuilding their lives for years. Below I have included some pictures to show what is happening. The widespread destruction is beyond description and the pictures and video clips are moving, but they don’t tell the whole story.

Many people ask how they can help with the relief efforts. Let me strongly encourage you to donate here (or some other source you trust) and the funds will go directly to the needs. I have multiple conversations daily with people and authorities we know in the area, and we are supplying things that they tell us they need. It is hard for them to deal with supplies that they do not need! These needs change daily, and so we trying hard to keep up with their requests. Watch our website for updates.

I can personally assure you that as with other disaster relief work our Assembly has done in the US and overseas, every dollar is used to help the people directly in need.

Many people have lost the safety and security that a home provides, and that hopeless feeling affects people in many ways. We know a God who cares about how we suffer and we always need to hold these communities in prayer.

If I can answer questions or assist in any way, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Bro. Barry Coffey

By John Kitsteiner:

Hurricane Helene: A note to friends outside of the South.

We live in Greene County, East Tennessee. Our county’s southern border is the Tennessee-North Carolina state line that runs along the heights of the Appalachian Mountains. We are within the hardest hit region of the U.S.

The questions I have been hearing a lot is why was this so bad, and why weren’t people prepared. I’ll try to answer those questions in the following post.

Hurricane Helene was the strongest hurricane (in recorded history) to hit the Florida panhandle region. It is the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The death toll is over 160 so far. We are still finding bodies, and there are still many, many people missing as I write this today six days after the hurricane hit land.

I work in the emergency department at Greeneville Community Hospital. The hospital itself has been evacuated because we have no water in the majority of the county. We are still running our emergency department as a critical access site for our community. Fortunately, I have a well and didn’t lose electricity for long. I was able to haul water in a 300 gallon tote in the back of my truck to the hospital for the first few days so we could flush toilets and wash hands. It took a few days, but we now have porta-potties and water tanks on trucks to keep the emergency department running.

Under an hour from our hospital to the east, Unicoi County Hospital was flooded requiring patients and providers to be rescued from the roof via helicopter.

Under an hour from our hospital to the south, over the mountains, Asheville, NC has been hit particularly hard.

But why was this region hit so hard?

First, we had a lot of rain before Hurricane Helene even showed up. Depending on the area, we had 7-11 inches of rain in the week before the first storm clouds of the hurricane arrived. This rain saturated the ground and filled ponds and streams.

Then the hurricane arrived. She barreled her way up through the panhandle of Florida, quickly shot through Georgia, and then slowed down and stalled over North Carolina and East Tennessee. And that’s right where we live.

The reason she stalled involves atmospheric pressure conditions that I don’t fully understand, but the result was that this hurricane dropped 20 inches to over 30 inches of rain in some areas… that’s an estimated 40 trillion gallons of rain.

How much is 40 trillion gallons of water?

40 trillion gallons of water is enough to fill the Dallas Cowboy’s stadium 51,000 times.

40 trillion gallons of water is enough to cover the entire state of North Carolina with 3.5 FEET of water.

40 trillion gallons of water is enough to fill 60 MILLION Olympic-sized swimming pools.

40 trillion gallons of water is 619 DAYS of water flowing over Niagara Falls.

So this is an unprecedented amount of rain already falling on an area that had just received ground-saturated rain.

But it wasn’t just the amount of rain, it was the geography of where that rain fell.

The southeastern slopes (of western North Carolina) and the northwestern slopes (of East Tennessee) acted as funnels or rain catchments that directed all this water downhill and concentrated it into streams and rivers running into the valleys. It overflowed these streams and rivers causing massive flooding.

How much flooding?

The French Broad River usually crests at 1.5 feet… but it reached 24.6 feet during the storm.

The Nolichuckey River rose to almost 22 feet. The Nolichuckey River Dam in Greene County, during the peak of the flooding, took on 1.2 MILLION gallons of water per SECOND. Compare that to Niagara Falls which peaks at 700,000 gallons per second. Fortunately, this dam held… but barely, with damage.

Consequences.

The flooding, and all the things the flooding carried with it (large trees, vehicles, buildings, etc.) caused widespread damage. It destroyed homes and businesses. It destroyed roads and bridges. It knocked out power.

This isolated many places for days and days from normal rescue efforts and evacuation plans.

Here in Greene County, the flooding destroyed the intake pump for the county’s primary water supply. We hope they will be able to bring in a temporary pump to bypass the damaged system, but that still may take a couple weeks. In the meantime, most people in the county have no clean water for drinking, washing hands, or bathing, and no water for sanitation.

I have taken care of people in the emergency department who had their homes literally washed away. Everything they own, other than the clothes on their back, has been lost. Many friends have had their homes almost destroyed by flooding and their houses are filled with mud and debris.

And this is just in my immediate area. Other places around us have unfortunately been hit harder.

Why weren’t people prepared?

No one in the mountains of North Carolina or East Tennessee prepares for a hurricane.

It’s kind of like asking why someone in Iowa doesn’t prepare for a tidal wave or why someone in Florida doesn’t prepare for a blizzard. It’s not what happens, like ever.

This was a combination of already rain-saturated ground before the hurricane hit, the hurricane/storm stalling over this region dumping unprecedented amounts of rainfall in a small area, and the geography of mountains channeling and concentrating all this water into the valleys below that created a perfect storm, so to speak, of conditions that caused this disaster.

It couldn’t have been prevented or prepared for.

Please feel free to share this. Hopefully it answers some questions and provides a better understanding of what has happened and why it is so devastating.