I Learned Five Lessons from Hurricane Helene

How Durable Preparation and High Trust Helped Me Recover After the Storm.

Hello Friends.

By now you know Hurricane Helene brought wide scale destruction to Western North Carolina. Specifically, the areas south and east of Asheville while the city itself suffered the catastrophic loss of the River Arts District and Biltmore Village. Lake Lure to the south is entirely filled with debris creating a toxic long-term issue. Further leaks from other chemical plants will be a persistent issue affecting tourism for years to come.

My Moms family is entirely from North Carolina. I have lived near the Asheville area for 12 years and participated, construction before fermentation, in the explosion of development that came to our region. In 2016 my wife and I created Fermenti.LLC to provide living raw fermented food and we have grown ever since. The Asheville area has more than doubled in population since that personally momentous day.

It’s just been tragic watching business owners I know and care for loose entire buildings now washed down the river like so many other dreams now lost. Please imagine for a moment that this lose of social infrastructure, in “The Paris of the South”, is a catastrophe that has scared the tourist economy of our beautiful mountains for a decade. My home town of Marshall was totally devastated with half the town washing away. I’ve not seen any official reports, but it’s been estimated Western NC has lost an entire years GDP.

But what did I learn from Helene? We are not a month out but some things I learned from past events helped me navigate safely through this event personally and as a business owner. When I ponder this question aspects of the Covid lockdowns taught me about using the system and regulatory status to keep our velocity of sales high. Managing Helene was also influenced by the 2008 housing crisis. That’s a storied amount of detail but I’m opening back up on Monday so the lessons I learned from these life events seeded my resilience during Helene.

Leason: 1

Back in 2007 my wife and I lived next to an Amish community and spent a lot of our time working and interacting with them. I drove for them and would plow large fields with my tractor, tow cattle, and stretch I forget how many miles of wire. When the Joplin Tornado happened, I got my first experience with true grass roots community organization seeing the old church work with the new to send aid. Within twelve hours the Amish Church had organized their workers while we English cleaned out the Walmart of water and got the gas for the drive into the disaster zone. I was younger then and being able to up and do that with real men was a life changing experience. It was so bad when we got there but we did what we could.

The speed by which this community was able to come together made this effort because we all knew our neighbors in a significant way. This level of high trust is important if you want your street to be resilient much less rally to deliver aid.

Leason: 2

Before Joplin I had been using CB radios for some time hunting and driving but hadn’t considered it as a telephone in case of emergency. They do not have a huge range and everyone can hear you but in a pinch entire communities can communicate using the same channel. Amish could communicate very quickly at distance because of that high trust peer to peer relationship but would be limited CB because of their lifestyle choices. A level of preparation somewhere in between this and total lack of foresight is normal for the average American though and your ability to communicate should be scaled to fit those potential unrealized needs. Being able to access emergency comms is a must and the easiest way is to get a real NOAA weather radio with lots of extra batteries. These are very useful and safe lives every year. The next level is to set up your peer to peer CB network with a strong base unit and several handheld units so you and your immediate neighbors can talk. During Helene we lost signal for 5 days and could not call anyone, so this technique does work. There are much better radios, but I think this is the minimum standard.

Leason: 3

Personally, I like self-sufficiency but I understand that’s not for everyone. I value living remotely and appreciate what hazards that may bring. Our mountain holler was totally blocked in for three days until the water receded enough to let us out. Our street was just left to its own self without no power, cell service, or water… but nothing happened. We had the section of road we all could drive cleared up so fast we ran out of trees to clear. Fortunately our valley didn’t get the major damage except down along the river where they did get wiped out.

Why? Its actually not complicated and that’s why it’s a good measure for your own real needs. Yearly we lose, on average, five days of power so in our branch of the electric circuit there is an expected amount of mandatory preparation. Everyone knows to have water, light, and extra heat for the yearly outages. In this disaster though the prolonged lack of power forced our street to come together over water. Most wells run on electric and not many have upgraded to solar yet so people went to fill up jugs at the houses still on spring water. Not everyone has that option so I would recommend you store a weeks’ worth of food and water whatever your situation because in a disaster your next meal is your responsibility.

Leason: 4

But what do I do as an employer for my customers and employees? It’s a tall order but you need to have the same preps you made for yourself but for them. One way I was able to have product for sale immediate to my stores as they open back up was by having redundant cold storage. It’s a more expensive form of storage but losing your entire inventory is also an issue for privately owned corporations because the lag time on replacement is long. Because I store a large portion of our products in a certified diesel generation backed up cooler I have deliveries going out last week. This is a big win because the velocity of a product is critical for the recovery of any unit-based business. So you see that a disaster mindset has those products on shelves right now so people can eat.

Leason: 5

Being honest about your situation in a disaster sounds easy but its really not. The valley over from us was wiped out yet our holler was fine, but we didn’t know that till four days later when we saw it with our own eyes. Not being as young as I once was, I honestly knew I wasn’t going to be one of the workers this time but thankfully Western NC is blessed with an abundance of awesome young people begging to get in there. I’ve driven literally tons of water and food using my delivery vehicles from the central aid distribution site here in Madison County. I honestly gave my business over to the public based on needs because I wasn’t hurt by the storm. Fortunately, I made emergency connections during the Covid lockdowns and was able to get our business designated as an “Essential Business” which allowed me to work, hire, and deliver when most were locked down. That history of honesty was training wheels for when we got the real disaster from Helene.

Finally:

So, these are the big five lessons I learned from the disaster known as Helene. Its up to each and every one of us to have a minimum level of self-responsibility so we can be affective for the victims. The speed by which you move into harms way is what makes the difference in peoples lives.

We never know WHEN but these are several things I’ve learned that helped me help people and that’s always the WIN.

Lars Peterson

FERMENTI.LLC, CMO