Home Care In Penrose, NC

North Carolina

PENROSE, N.C. — As many homes, businesses and churches lost power and suffered massive destruction when Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina., one church’s lights remained on and its members were quickly able to jump into serving the community.

When Josh Shelton, youth and family minister at Little River Baptist Church in Hendersonville, N.C., arrived to work at 8 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 27, the fire department was there with a couple who lived half a mile from the church. The couple had to be retrieved from their home due to excessive flooding and needed a place to shelter.

Having just started in the role the week before, if Shelton had not been at the church no one would’ve been there to open the church for use.

“God just orchestrated it all,” Shelton said. “I was at the right place at the right time, but it was definitely a God thing.”

Though the rest of the town had lost power earlier that morning, the church’s power remained on, allowing Little River to use what they had to serve the many people who made their way to the church after being displaced due to the storm.

That night, the church was supposed to feed the marching band at Brevard High School before a football game, so they had stocked their kitchen full of ingredients to make Teriyaki chicken. Though the game was canceled due to the storm, the food did not go to waste. Little River served the hot meals intended for the marching band to those sheltering at the church.

The church soon became a place of emergency shelter, providing overnight accommodations to over a dozen people whose homes had been hit especially hard by the storm.

By Saturday, Sept. 28, donations of food and water began pouring in — some even from as far away as Alabama and Mississippi. Local residents who had lost power were able to contribute frozen items they could no longer keep. With these donations, the church was able to feed over 200 people each day, serving meals and offering hospitality to more than 500 individuals who had never stepped through their doors before, said Pastor Marc Reynolds.

“We saw more people in the community than we’ve seen in any outreach event we’ve ever done,” Reynolds said. “Yes, we were able to provide meals and showers, but most importantly, we shared the gospel — the hope of Jesus — so many times.”

The weekend before Hurricane Helene hit, Little River held an evangelism training for members and prayed the Lord would give them an opportunity to reach their neighbors, never anticipating the chances they would have to serve both people’s spiritual and physical needs.

“We want to do more than just meet a basic need,” Reynolds said. “If you’re only meeting that need, you’re missing an opportunity to bring people in. We want to share hope, and we know that’s going to be what lasts.”

Reynolds himself couldn’t get to the church building until Sunday, Sept. 29 due to destruction from the hurricane. Though they did not plan to have a church service that day, Little River had an impromptu service with 90% of attendants not being church members. They were simply people in the community who came into the church for “a place of refuge,” Reynolds said.

The church remained open 24/7 for the entire week after the hurricane. Power was gradually restored to the community and as people were able to find other means of shelter and food, the church pivoted to sending the many donated supplies to other places in need throughout western North Carolina.

As Little River looks to the future of recovery efforts, church members are shifting from reacting to a tragedy to identifying places where they can continue to be the hands and feet of Jesus, Reynolds said.

While their community gradually returns to normalcy, those outside of their community are still in need and Little River plans to partner with other churches so that they can host teams and send them out to rebuild homes, restore properties and walk alongside those who are hurting.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Marc Reynolds serves on the board of directors for the Biblical Recorder.)

SWANNANOA, N.C. — Flattened homes, impassable roads, swamped fields, downed power lines, raw emotions.

Nearly a week after Hurricane Helene pummeled this small mountain town 20 miles east of Asheville, residents and business owners were trickling back Wednesday to see what was left and what could be salvaged.

Beverly and Baxter Eller barely escaped the floodwaters that reached eye level as they fled their home of 37 years and drove off in search of higher ground, uncertain if they would ever return.

When they did, they found their home surrounded by a knee-high moat of muddy water, the garage lifted from its foundation and spun around.

Beverly Eller, 68, who has been staying in shelters the last few days, said she was surprised by the extent of the damage.

“I don’t think anybody, including the government, thought this was what we were gonna get,” she said.

The Ellers retrieved what they could from the now-uninhabitable house, including family photos, mementos and most importantly, Christmas lights and ornaments that been passed down for five generations.

The death toll from Hurricane Helene rose to 176 on Wednesday as President Joe Biden directed the Pentagon to deploy up to 1,000 active-duty soldiers to North Carolina to help deliver food, water and other supplies to isolated communities like Swannanoa.

Biden, who flew into the state for a briefing at the Emergency Operations Center in Raleigh, was expected to survey the widespread damage across western North Carolina from the skies.

“It’s too much for me in terms of interrupting access to help there, to land in Asheville, to survey the damage other through the air,” Biden said. “And then it’s my plan to travel to Georgia and Florida as soon as possible after that.”

In North Carolina alone, at least 90 people were reported dead Wednesday and thousands more were still missing.

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Swannanoa fire chief details Helene response efforts

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Search and rescue teams used bright orange spray paint to mark the structures and cars they had already searched for bodies.

In Swannanoa, the floodwaters were at least 10-feet high in some spots, local law enforcement officials told NBC News.

"We're going to every part of our community, knocking on each door and asking residents if they need anything or want to be evacuated," said Swannanoa Fire Chief Anthony Penland, who has been sleeping on a cot in his office.

"Some parts of our community are inaccessible due to the roads being washed out. The infrastructure is gone," Penland said.

The Whitson Avenue Bridge that crosses the Swannanoa River collapsed when the river swelled with a sudden downpour of 9 inches of rain and overflowed its banks, he said.

Outside, in tiny downtown Swannanoa, hundreds of emergency workers and construction crews were working nonstop to restore the electricity and city services.

Brown mud coated the few buildings still standing. Many other structures were reduced to splinters. And whenever the wind kicked up, the smell of dust and dirt filled the nostrils.

Longtime resident Robert Starks, a 64-year-old disabled Army veteran, shook his head in dismay as he roamed down streets littered with destroyed cars and household items that had been flushed out of flooded homes.

“To see people losing homes and businesses hurts deep inside," he said. "A lot of folks are devastated and crying and bodies are still being recovered.”

Starks said he hasn't dared use the toilet in his apartment because it's the only fresh water he has left since the storm struck.

“People didn’t heed the warning to get out," he said. "We knew there were flash flood warnings but we had no idea this place would get turned upside down.”

Starks said he hopes his brother in Pine Bluff, Arkansas will come get him.

“It’s gonna be a long time before they get the electric back on,” Starks said.

Stewart Cody, who owns a local body repair shop, estimated that it would take at least two months of cleaning and repairing before he would be able to reopen.

Cody said it was going to cost him dearly because he didn't carry insurance on his business. But right now his focus was on helping his community get back on its feet.

“We have to come together for our neighbors,” Cody said.

Like others interviewed in the town, Cody said there was nobody to blame for not better preparing them for this storm. He said Helene came in the wake of several days of rain that was already putting pressure on the dams in the area.

“I don’t think anybody understood the amount of water that was gonna be pushed in,” he said. “We’ve never had that kind of water.”

Deon J. Hampton

Deon J. Hampton is a national reporter for NBC News.

Corky Siemaszko contributed.

Throughout the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene and the unrelenting effects of the aftermath, one church community on the outskirts of Transylvania County has been a centerpiece of relief efforts and support for a battered community weathering the storm.

Anchor Baptist Church and pastor Randy Barton, usually use their resources to provide ministry and charity across the world to those in need. They have a warehouse of food and supplies, a truck for transportation, networks of contacts, a small army of willing volunteers to support their mission, the knowledge and the know-how to stay strong in tough situations and the ability to communicate to the community at large.

Now with their home county in the middle of its own disaster in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Anchor Baptist has stepped up in a litany of ways to support and strengthen their community, emergency management and recovery efforts. Barton said this type of coordination takes time to gain momentum.

“There’s hope,” he said. “In a disaster, we have something called the five-day delay. If there was a disaster in Louisiana by the time I raise the money, buy the product, load the trucks and get there I’ll do good to get there in five days. I’ll be doing really great if I can give out anything on day five. … The five-day disaster delay came true here. As a result of that, it’s just where we are and things have been slow coming.”

Barton said his priorities for his work are two-fold. His main efforts involve in working closely with the emergency management team in the county, helping coordinate a variety of efforts such as communication and housing and feeding emergency personnel. His other work revolves around feeding and coordinating relief efforts for the residents of Transylvania County across the storm-scarred mountains of the area.

The pastor has been asked to head a newly formed task force called Transylvania County Volunteer Organizations Assisting Disaster and will continue to direct relief efforts in a more official capacity.

From their broadcast station, Anchor Broadcasting Network, housed in the upper floors of the church on U.S. Highway 64 in Penrose, the support system has been able to relay vital information and coordinate with local emergency management to ensure constant communication with the community at large through the use of their 50,000 watt AM radio signal.

From another control booth in the church, staff members keep in constant contact with local emergency management and coordinate relief shipments.

Those messages get relayed either out to the relevant agencies or over to the next control room to be broadcast over the AM and FM airwaves.

“We’ve been operating for the first time in years at night,” Barton said. “Emergency managers asked us to stay on Friday night to get mandatory evacuation orders out to Rosman. So we broadcast up until about 10 o’clock that night. We were heard all over the southeast.”

The church has also been the temporary headquarters of a local ham radio club which has been using its primitive radio services to keep constant communication with relief efforts across the county and across the greater area.

“We’re relaying traffic from all over western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina,” said Patrick Keever, one of the ham radio operators from the Blue Ridge Amateur Radio Society.

Barton said he is trying to get ham radio receivers in all of the relief sites across the county to ensure more robust communication.

“We’ve relayed calls for people missing people, transferring them to different places,” Wayne Cusher, another radio operator said. “We got a call for a fallen tree on somebody yesterday.”

Their warehouse, while running low at first, has seen a very strong effort of resupply from a national network of supporters who have worked in the past.

The church has been providing meals and shelter for first responders in Transylvania County and for linemen and rescue workers visiting from afar.

With their proximity to the local airfield, the church has been able to designate Transylvania County Airport as a disaster relief location and flights started coming in Tuesday afternoon bringing even more much-needed supplies.

The church is constantly accepting donations of all kinds. For those willing to transport donations, they ask that trucks stage in their front lot on U.S. Highway 64. For donations coming in by air, the Transylvania County Airport is set up and ready to receive. For more information about the church and continued relief work, tune to AM 720.