The washed-out, mud-caked roads and bridges of Madison County, N.C., the river-ravaged homes and businesses in county seat Marshall, and the desperation of the Appalachian inhabitants are all testament to the merciless destruction of Hurricane Helene.
That so many remain lost, trapped, hungry, and hopeless a week after the hurricane unleashed historic rains and horrific flooding is testament, some residents and family members say, to the abject incompetence of the Biden-Harris administration and its ill-prepared Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Sarah Parkhurst, of Montgomery, Ala., born and raised in the small-town shadows of Asheville, N.C., tells The Federalist that she thanks God for the private citizens that have lent a helping hand because the federal government hasn’t.
“The government is not there,” she told me in a phone interview Thursday afternoon in between taking and making calls to bring relief to the mud-buried communities in Madison, Buncombe and Yancy counties.
‘We Need Rescue’
Parkhurst said her mother, who runs the nonprofit Hot Springs Health Program in Hot Springs, has been literally begging FEMA officials for critical supplies. They desperately need oxygen for stranded home-bound seniors. They need food, clean water, and shelter.
Sadly, they also need bodybags.
The heart-breaking work of collecting the dead is far from over, Parkhurst and others on the ground say.
“My mom said so many people are still stuck. They’re asking for bodybags,” Parkhurst said.
“This is not a recovery effort yet in a lot of these places. We need rescue,” Parkhurst added. “We do not yet know the body count. We’ve got starving babies and it’s about to get a lot worse when the temperatures drop next week.”
The dead from Helene, as of last Thursday afternoon, numbered more than 200 in six states. That figure was expected to climb as hope that rescue efforts would find more survivors sank. North Carolina has recorded half of the fatalities thus far, with some 60 dead in Buncombe County alone.
It’s awful all over throughout large swaths of the Southeast. In Georgia, Kobe Williams, 27, and her twin babies were found dead after a tree fell through the roof of her home and crushed the mother and her newborns, according to WJTV. In neighboring South Carolina, John Savage told the Associated Press that his grandparents died when the powerful winds felled a massive tree on the property, smashing into the couple’s bedroom and killing them both. They were found holding each other as they had so often in life, Savage told the news outlet. As of Thursday evening, 39 people in the Palmetto State had been killed as the result of the hurricane.
‘Deep Frustration’
While the storm packed a crippling punch that nobody could have entirely prepared for, sources on the ground in North Carolina say federal government relief efforts in the small mountain communities have been lacking.
“There is deep frustration,” one North Carolina official who works with groups in the Hurricane-battered areas told me. He asked not to be identified because he did not want any criticisms of the Biden-Harris administration to affect relief efforts. “It’s definitely not the rosy picture you’re seeing them trying to create.”
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris dropped into hurricane-ravaged areas this week. Biden took an aerial tour of the destruction in and surrounding Asheville, N.C., and said the federal government has to “jump start this recovering process.”
“I’m here to say the United States, the nation, has your back,” Biden said at the Raleigh Emergency Operations Center. “They’re not leaving until you’re back on your feet completely.”
In many cases, sources say, FEMA officials have yet to show up. The absentee president spent last weekend at the beach as the the rains and overflowing rivers deluged Appalachia.
“Asheville is bad but there are so many towns that no one knows what the status is right now,” the North Carolina source said. He added that it appears FEMA was ill-prepared for the storm that hit, and the agency is struggling to get its bearings.
‘Put Politics Aside’
Resources are tight, according to Biden-Harris administration officials. FEMA, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned on Thursday, is running out of money.
“We are expecting another hurricane hitting — we do not have the funds, FEMA does not have the funds, to make it through the season,” Mayorkas said. That might have something to do with the fact that the Biden-Harris administration diverted more than $1 billion in FEMA’s budget to provide services for illegal immigrants as part of a manmade border crisis created by the Biden-Harris administration.
As The Federalist’s Tristan Justice reported this week, FEMA allocated nearly $364 million in fiscal year 2023 and $650 million for the 2024 fiscal year to the “Shelter and Services Program” “to provide humanitarian services to noncitizen migrants following their release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). That’s according to the government’s website.
FEMA officials did not return a call and email from The Federalist seeking comment, but the agency has created a “rumor response” page on its website, its version of confronting what it deems “disinformation.” FEMA urges Americans to do their part to “stop the spread of rumors” by finding “trusted sources of information,” sharing “information from trusted sources,” and “discouraging others from sharing information from unverified sources.” The page includes some clarification to DHS’ clear warning that the government won’t be able to fund the full hurricane season by disputing reports that FEMA doesn’t have enough money for Helene response and recovery needs.
In visiting hurricane-pummelled Florida and Georgia on Thursday, the deeply partisan Biden urged the nation to “put politics aside.” Meanwhile Harris, who replaced Biden following the Democratic National Committee quiet coup that pushed the senile octogenarian off the ballot, campaigned in critical swing state Wisconsin alongside Trump-hating former Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney. Cheney and her friend-shooting father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, have endorsed Harris.
‘It Just Hurts Because It’s Home’
Parkhurst and others say accessing the mud-covered and flooded roads in western North Carolina has been a trial over the past week. The mountain lanes offer their share of challenges on a good day, they acknowledge. But volunteers from multi-state church groups to Indiana civilian crisis response teams to Wisconsin firefighters have found their way into the devastated region.
Edward Graham, chief operating officer of Samaritan’s Purse, told WRAL in Raleigh that the nondenominational evangelical Christian relief organization has been flying in basic supplies — food, water, medial equipment — via helicopter. It’s set up a tier 1 hospital, brought oxygen tanks, and provided assistance to seniors stranded in nursing and retirement facilities. Graham said this relief mission especially hits home; Samaritan’s Purse is based in Boone, N.C.
“This one’s hard. We’ve got a lot of staff that lost homes, but we’re responding to our own staff and also getting out there with our volunteers,” he told the news outlet. “We had hundreds report to Boone to go out and start serving today, and also in Asheville … We’re working, it just hurts because this is home.”
Graham said the U.S. Army National Guard has been a huge help. Governors in a dozen states have activated Guard units and thousands of soldiers to assist. Biden on Wednesday, several days into the chaos, directed the Department of Defense to send 1,000 active duty soldiers to disaster areas.
What didn’t help, sources assert, was Biden’s “photo-op” tour of the damage, a trip that potentially complicated relief efforts. His visit to the Carolinas Wednesday did involve flight restrictions near the Greenville-Spartanburg and Asheville airports from 12:30 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. local time, the Raleigh News&Observer reported.
“There were also flight restrictions near Raleigh. However, the restrictions allowed for Helene relief exceptions if coordinated before departure,” the publication reported. Whether all of the rescue and response pilots got that message is not clear.
“I’ve ensured my travel will not disrupt the ongoing response,” Biden wrote on X earlier in the week.
“The politicians are supposed to help for us. They don’t,” Parkhurst said. “Joe Biden holding up the air space, I think that was really shitty.”
The White House certainly is promoting the Biden-Harris “Life-Saving Response Efforts,” even if those efforts were long delayed or have yet to reach communities in need.
“President Biden and Vice President Harris continue to mobilize an intensive Federal response to the impacts of Hurricane Helene. The Administration is prioritizing life-saving and life-sustaining response efforts in impacted communities, as well as ensuring people displaced from the storm have prompt access to Federal resources that will enable them to both purchase essential items and begin their road to recovery and rebuilding,” the White House boasted in a press release.
‘You Can Always Find Good’
Some in the region have a different opinion of the federal government’s relief efforts thus far.
Susan Gurnee, a local artist and proprietor of Pine Hall and Chestnut Hall in Hot Springs, said the community has come together in the aftermath of the natural disaster and, along with so many volunteers, are leading recovery efforts.
“Not to put down government or any other town or group, but there are very strong groups here who love Hot Springs. So many people have been here for generations,” she told me in a phone interview Thursday afternoon.
Parkhurst said her mother and other Madison County residents who are working around the clock to clean up the mess Helene has left have been blessed by the many private volunteers who have been the “hands and feet of Jesus.”
“You can look for good and you can always find good,” she said. “The people of these United States are helping. It’s the citizens, that’s whose helping.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
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