The first thing members of the Pansy Collective, based in Asheville, North Carolina, did following the start of Hurricane Helene was reach out to each other, ensuring that everyone was OK, and helping people who needed to evacuate. As soon as they were able to get down from the Blue Ridge Mountains, where Asheville is nestled, they drove more than 200 miles to Durham to gather supplies and bring them back to Asheville.
The Pansy Collective is just one of several mutual-aid disaster-relief organizations that have mobilized across Florida and the Carolinas since Hurricane Helene made landfall on 26 September.
Since the storm hit, growing from a category 1 to a category 4 hurricane in a day, at least 220 people have died, while at least 200 others remain missing. Thousands of others have been displaced. Helene was the strongest documented hurricane to strike Florida’s Big Bend region and the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland US since 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.
While the federal government, state governments and larger non-profits have had a slower – and, say some residents, insufficient response – it is these individuals, largely neighbors helping neighbors, who are filling in the gaps.
Even as people lost their own homes and belongings, they were still out organizing, said Garrett Blaize, executive director of the Appalachian Community Fund.
“In Appalachia, we have a really strong network of both formal and informal mutual-aid groups,” Blaize said. “We saw many of those groups activated immediately after the first impacts of the storm, as well as the kind of more organic and informal mutual aid: church groups, volunteer associations, neighbors. That all happened really quickly.”
Blaize was in Johnson City, Tennessee, when the storm hit, but drove to Wallace county, Virginia, to work with the group Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards as soon as it was possible. From there, Blaize went to Knoxville, Tennessee, where mutual-aid efforts had already started.
“Because of the region’s history, there is a unique tendency to look after our neighbors,” Blaize said. “We come from an area of the country that has oftentimes been defined by scarcity. I think we have a lot of embedded cultural values around taking care of each other that really just make it sort of organic that during times of crisis or times of emergency, that is our go-to response.”
Tai Little, an organizer with SEAC Village in Charlotte, North Carolina, said that his group has mobilized on several fronts, particularly working with those who have been affected in western North Carolina and in the Mountain Island area. Using donations from people who are giving what they can – most contributions, Little said, are $2 or $5 – the group is able to buy and gather supplies including non-perishable foods, generators, menstrual products and baby supplies.
SEAC Village is part of a larger national network made up of other organizations, non-profits, collectives and individuals, so their funding requests have been able to go further. They are working with groups including Charlotte Food Not Bombs, Charlotte Mask Bloc and the Reproductive Rights Coalition to get resources where they’re most needed.
“We specifically believe in collective liberation, where all people are safe and cared for,” Little said. “What we see from the people that are making the donations, both with material goods and with money, is that they are coming from a working-class background and they know what it’s like to suffer. They know what it’s like to be impacted. They know what it’s like to know that they cannot depend on the state or the government to be there as a first responder.”
Little stressed the importance of people who are interested in trying to support donating to mutual-aid funds and directly to those on the ground.
“When you donate to those larger agencies, it takes a long time for that aid to get to the people,” he said. “But when you give directly to mutual-aid efforts that are on the ground, that aid gets to people immediately. We’ve been able to send three truckloads full of items just based off of these small donations.”
Belvin Olasov, co-director and co-founder of the Charleston Climate Coalition (CCC), a “pretty hyperlocal climate activism group”, said that the CCC hadn’t previously participated in mutual-aid work, but when they saw the destruction in western North Carolina, they were “desperate to do something”.
Helene decimated towns in Florida and, in an unprecedented event, flooded Appalachia – including places once thought to be “climate safe havens”. But seeing how people have come together has provided CCC with hope.
“My first reaction is shock, horror, and even as someone who works on climate daily, I’m feeling like: Oh, god, it’s too soon to have this sort of climate disaster that’s not just disruptive, but apocalyptic,” Olasov said. “And then after processing that, the next step is: How can I help? How can I do something? Both because there is incredible need right now and because you feel crazy if you weren’t able to do anything.”
While western North Carolina and Appalachia have justifiably received national and international coverage for the extent and “biblical” nature of the damage there, parts of Florida were also leveled by the storm, which flattened towns and destroyed communities.
Robert Lee, a volunteer with Food Not Bombs Tallahassee, which regularly does mutual-aid work in the city, encourages people to not only donate, but to keep sharing on social media what’s happening.
“If people can’t donate, they can also share that information,” he said. “I always tell people when they say they can’t do anything, it doesn’t seem like much, but every time you share something, not only is it showing it to people in your particular circle, but it also just adds to the algorithm and just means that it’s more likely to pop up in people’s feeds.”