Healing from Helene: Gillings community helps Western NC recover from historic storm

Assistance from afar

When Hurricane Helene hit the western part of the state Sept. 27, 2024, it left a trail of unprecedented devastation in its wake. Communications were cut off; roads and highways crumbled; and rushing floodwaters swept away people, their possessions, even their cars and homes. In the immediate aftermath, public officials asked people who wanted to help to refrain from traveling to Western N.C. because of washed-away roads and other safety concerns. Gillings faculty and staff began leveraging their public health networks and contacts to find ways the School could help from afar.

Gillings faculty and staff began leveraging their public health networks and contacts to find ways the School could help from afar.

Through these networks, Gillings School faculty and staff found opportunities to lean in. They partnered with the Western N.C. Health Communicators Collaborative on communications about roughly 40 hurricane impact health issues, including drinking water, safe clean up, road safety, advice for pregnant persons, environmental concerns with mold, burning debris and other issues. They also helped support UNC’s Center for Public Service, the main resource for coordinating UNC’s disaster response, and organized volunteers to serve in a call center for the Crisis Cleanup Hotline, which connects disaster survivors who need property cleanup assistance with volunteer organizations.

“These were some things we could help with from a distance,” said John Wiesman, DrPH, MPH, professor of the practice, associate dean for practice and the director of the School’s doctoral program in Public Health Executive Leadership (DrPH).

Safely feeding young families

A few days after the storm, a network of nutritionists, lactation consultants and others – mobilized in large part by former and current leaders of the N.C. Breastfeeding Coalition who live in Western N.C. – gathered in Asheville to assemble and deliver hundreds of infant feeding and cleaning kits for families lacking power, water, critical supplies and shelter. The group also trained volunteers and local organizations on how to keep infants eating safely after a disaster, promoted breastfeeding as a safe practice, and established milk banks in stricken communities.

Assistant Nutrition Professor Heather Wasser, PhD, who volunteered in October with the Coalition’s Support and Advocacy for Infant Feeding in Emergencies Team (SAFE Team), said studies show that in times of disaster, diarrhea and infant morbidity worsen when there are mass distributions of formula, especially when it’s not paired with information about how to safely prepare it. “So what we really wanted to do was not just give out these kits but to really interface with families and pair our deliveries with counseling and try to find any opportunity we could to promote breastfeeding as the safest way to feed,” she said.

Assistant Nutrition Professor Stephanie Martin, PhD, along with nutrition doctoral students Ivonne Headley and Doreen Alumaya, volunteered on the ground in November, as the colder weather posed new challenges. “A lot of distribution sites were storing formula outside, and powdered formula is not supposed to get cold,” Martin said. “We organized their supplies, got rid of expired formula, and spent time educating site staff about safe formula storage and distribution.”

In partnership with the Breastfeeding Coalition, the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute at Gillings (a longtime member organization of the coalition) offered technical assistance and resources, created infant feeding and emergencies online modules and a training manual for SAFE Team leaders, offered continuing education credits for volunteers who completed training, collaborated on grant and presentation submissions, and provided hands-on assistance at Western N.C. distribution sites. Additionally, as part of the Mary Rose Tully Training Initiative, an accredited lactation training program housed in the Department of Maternal and Child Health, students Elizabeth Abt, Katie Hume, and Master of Public Health (MPH) candidate Hannah Larson volunteered alongside CGBI and SAFE Team members, including MPH candidate Linels Higuera Ancidey. CGBI faculty and staff also are working closely with the nutrition department on research studies to evaluate the impact of the SAFE Team response.

Disaster response training at Gillings

Hurricane Helene was a common topic in this year’s Gillings on the Ground, a two-semester training program open to anyone interested in learning more about disaster response and emergency management. One session on crisis response strategies included Appalachian State University students who shared their experiences during the storm and in the days, weeks and months afterward.

“It was eye opening and just scary to think about what they lived through,” said Gillings on the Ground coordinator Ariella Tal, an MPH student from Charlotte. “It also made us realize that we were unprepared and that we don’t want to be unprepared again. So the session was a very approachable way to talk about different aspects of the emergency response cycle and get a base foundation on steps people can take to be more prepared in the future.”

For students in the UNC Asheville-UNC Gillings MPH program, Helene had a more direct impact – and more direct opportunities to help and learn. With their classes at Asheville’s Mountain Area Health Education Center campus either paused or moved online, students contributed to Helene recovery efforts in Buncombe, Henderson and Yancey counties, either as part of their full-time public health jobs or on a volunteer basis. Thanks to their classes, they knew the importance of understanding what people need and using real-time information, said Sarah Thach, MPH, program co-director and Gillings School assistant professor. “Rapid assessment is something we talk about,” Thach said. “Listening to community members and hearing what the needs are. Not coming in assuming that you know what the needs are but, instead, drawing on local expertise.”

Students contributed to recovery efforts in Buncombe, Henderson and Yancey counties, either as part of their full-time public health jobs or on a volunteer basis.

‘You just cannot imagine…’

Bill Gentry, MPH, professor of health policy and management and director of the School’s Community Preparedness and Disaster Management certificate program, has broad expertise in leading relief and recovery efforts from his 15 years at the N.C. Division of Emergency Management. He took two groups of students to Western N.C. to help rural communities rebuild.

“As we drove in, the van got really quiet,” Gentry recalled of the first trip. “Most of them had not seen that type of damage before and just did not relate that landscape to what a natural disaster can do and how it affects people. Sometimes you just cannot imagine that a small stream that you can literally step over now, at some point was a 30-foot raging stream of water that literally swept people’s houses away into the woods.”

In Fairview, a rural area outside of Asheville, Gentry’s group worked with a small community that had lost three houses, along with its main road. On Saturday, they sifted through debris piles looking for personal items that were still in good enough condition to be reunited with their owners. Sunday, they cleaned out a community barn estimated to be about 200 years old, which had been filled with mud as the floodwaters passed through.

“We got there at a pretty good time because it wasn’t hazardous to be there, but there was still a lot of work to be done,” said Parmis Kimia, a senior economics student at UNC who is part of the certificate program. “We got to see these things we were learning about in person – for example, seeing that it’s not easy to stick to a disaster relief plan, and that there is a lot of improvisation and fitting in where you can.”

Addressing community concerns

As director of UNC’s Superfund Research Program (UNC-SRP), Rebecca Fry, PhD, the Carol Remmer Angle Distinguished Professor in Children’s Environmental Health and chair of environmental sciences and engineering, is steering a multi-faceted environmental response to assist communities affected by Helene, working closely with local government officials and community leaders to address urgent needs.

One of UNC-SRP’s key projects is integrating hurricane-related data into NC-ENVIROSCAN, a geospatial mapping tool, to create a comprehensive map of impacted counties and provide crucial information on Superfund sites, landfills, predicted private well usage and known private well contaminants. The UNC-SRP is also mobilizing scientists to assist with private well testing to address community concerns beyond microbial contamination, planning chemical exposure assessments in areas of concern raised by residents, and providing environmental health education resources online to inform and empower communities as they navigate Helene’s aftermath.

One of UNC-SRP’s key projects is integrating hurricane-related data into NC-ENVIROSCAN to provide crucial information on Superfund sites, landfills, and private wells.

“As the UNC-SRP continues its work,” Fry said, “the program remains committed to addressing the pressing environmental and public health needs of communities impacted by Hurricane Helene.”

Long-term lessons

Helene hit N.C. just three days before the Gillings School, in collaboration with the N.C. Institute for Public Health (NCIPH), had planned to launch its Regional Center for Public Health Preparedness. The partners had received a five-year federal grant to establish the Center, one of 10 in the U.S., to study and promote evidence-based strategies that strengthen public health emergency preparedness and response.

The Center is facilitating the School’s role in a major research effort in which, collaborating with the N.C. Division of Public Health and local health departments in counties affected by Helene, researchers from NCIPH, the public health leadership and practice department, and the biostatistics department’s Collaborative Studies Coordinating Center are collecting and analyzing massive amounts of data to develop actionable workplans that will guide future disaster response.

“After any emergency, there are after-action reviews: What went well? What could have been improved?” said John Wallace, PhD, MSPH, senior data advisor for NCIPH, who co-directs the Center with Wiesman. “This will give us a better picture of how operations happened and where there were strengths and where there are areas to improve.”

Longer term, the Center’s mission to improve disaster preparedness and response in southeastern states enables the School to continue supporting Western N.C.’s recovery. “Recovery in some people’s minds is the first couple of weeks after a storm. But from the public health perspective and from a systems level, that’s going to take years,” Wiesman said. “Our hope is that we’re going to be able to coordinate that long-term recovery – and Gillings’ role in it, whatever that might be.”