Disaster Compassion is Real in North Carolina

or: yes, we really do keep us safe.

Late last week, a massive rainstorm hit Asheville, North Carolina and the surrounding areas, dumping eight inches of rain in a single day. Then, the next day, Hurricane Helene hit. This was the worst hurricane to hit the city in its recorded history.

I’m writing this from my van in the parking lot between the anarchist bookstore and the punk bar, and all around, people are running around helping each other out. They’re gathering supplies, sorting out where they need to go, and getting them out. I spent most of yesterday and today driving things to and fro with my van, and I’ll be doing that more later I expect, but for now I’m sitting in the air conditioning with my overstimulated dog and catching up on work.

Everything I’m writing, by the way, is, well, in the rumor stage. The crisis is ongoing, and who’s to say what’s true what’s not yet? So take everything with a grain of salt. Or, if you’re reading this in the future, take it with a bit of hindsight.

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It’s hypocritical of me to say this, but the way to help in situations like this isn’t to go there directly. I was pretty torn about going. I know the area, and I have loved ones here, but I also know that Asheville is filled to overflowing with competent, hardworking anarchists and activists. I decided to come because, well, I had a bunch of stuff (I stripped down about half my prepper stash, then spent a bunch of money on more stuff), and my friends needed that stuff, and I own a van, and I am a little connected with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, the grassroots disaster relief network whose praises I sing regularly. 

And I came because… I guess I’m a journalist now? I never really set out to become a journalist, but I’m a podcaster, talking about the end of the world and community disaster response every week, and I wanted to talk to people in person. So that’s why I’m here: to drive supplies around from point A to point B and to talk to people about what they’re doing, what they’re seeing.

I’ll be writing way more about that soon, especially on various podcasts. Tomorrow I’m leaving the area and will go hole up somewhere and write and record about it all. Today, I’m just telling you a bit about my trip, a bit about what I’ve seen.

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Outside a church on Haywood Road (a major commercial strip in West Asheville) a child held a huge posterboard sign that read “FOOD BABY,” smiling and waving at the cars… because there was free baby food being given away at the church. Keep going, and you’ll go past lines outside restaurants where food is being cooked and given away for free. Then another church with another relief site. Then the fire station, more relief. Then the anarchist bookstore, bustling with people self-organizing to get supplies out everywhere across the region. Every day there’s a community meeting out back, with spanish and english translation available. The punk bar across the street set up a portapotty after they cooked and gave away all the food in the walk-out freezer.

Yesterday I waited by the back door of a grocery store with a fireline of people collecting the food that was going to otherwise be thrown out. There wasn’t a line of people waiting to take it home personally, which would have been fine, but instead fifteen cars of people connected to probably half a dozen different mutual aid organizations, constantly discussing which small town’s distribution hub currently needs fresh produce, or water, or insulin.

Mutual aid looks mostly like meetings, spreadsheets, Signal loops (group messages), wellness checks, and deliveries. Deliveries by car, by truck, by ATV, by dirt bike, by pack mule, by helicopter, by foot. Neighbors who don’t even like each other are knocking on each other’s doors and making sure everyone has what they need.

I’m afraid of painting too rosy of a picture: the situation here is fucked. It’s beyond fucked. They haven’t finished counting the bodies, because (as I’ve heard it from a medical friend) every helicopter is prioritizing rescuing live people, so the bodies in some rural areas haven’t been collected yet. There are constant rumors about the government setting up road blockades and interfering with supply shipments, though several of these have turned out to just be, well, rumors.

People are stranded all across the mountains, or even in under-served (generally Black and Latinx) communities here in the city itself. People are physically stranded: the roads have been destroyed by landslide or flooding or are blocked by fallen trees entangled in power lines. As hard as rescuers and relief workers are working, I’m certain they’re not reaching everyone, or not reaching everyone in time. We’ll find out, I suppose.

But there are people going door to door teaching people to bucketflush their toilets and checking to see who needs what meds.

Outside Firestorm (the anarchist bookstore), someone wrote up bilingual instructions for making and using dry toilets using 5 gallon buckets, sawdust, and pipe insulation (for a seat). She expected to give away a couple. Within 2 hours, she’d given away more dry toilets than she’d brought, because people saw what she was doing and went and got her buckets and pipe insulation, and meanwhile, a man who owns a sawmill was driving around looking for people who were going to need sawdust for dry toilets.

There is no overarching coordination. There is, instead, decentralized coordination. It’s working. Most people I’ve talked to have been doing specialized work for days, but they don’t know everything that is going on. No one does. People are just… talking. And coordinating. Constantly. Organically. It’s spontaneous, coordinating decentralized efforts is also a learned and practiced skill. Another friend, used to doing physical labor, is instead spending their days just biking around and introducing people to each other, figuring out who needs what.

It’s working. Disaster compassion is real: we come together in crisis.

If you want to support the people doing that work, you can donate to Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. If you’re within a day’s drive or so from Western North Carolina, you can coordinate locally with drop off locations to gather supplies and then coordinate with people to drive it into town. You don’t need to come here to help, you can help wherever you are.

And if you don’t have enough money to donate, and you live too far away to gather supplies, well, the main way you can help is you can get prepared yourself, with your community. The people who stored water, food, solar panels, and things like that were some of the first people able to get out and help their neighbors.

Anyway, I’ll write more about it all soon.