This story was originally aired by Carolina Connection, the UNC student radio newscast from the Hussman School of Journalism and Media, in December 2024 and is submitted for the Hearst Journalism Awards Program.
Sean O’Bryant is bringing her excitable husky Panda inside her home. Right now, that home is a camper.
“You’re definitely gonna have to close it all the way,” she says of the camper’s door as she steps inside, handling the dog. “It’s hard with the rope. Because [Panda] will try to bust out.
“I have two daughters, and my husband, we all live here,” she continues. “It’s been an adjustment, I think, for the kids especially.”
O’Bryant and her family are among thousands of Western North Carolina residents displaced by Helene in September. The state budget office estimates the storm damaged 73,000 homes. After the O’Bryants’ Asheville apartment flooded, FEMA put them up in a hotel for a while, but they got their camper just in time.
“There was a charity there called Operation Rising Sun,” says O’Bryant. “It got us to the camper. Our voucher for the hotels is going to end December 3rd. And then we got this camper November 22nd. So it just… God works in mysterious ways, you know, and we just we kept staying positive.”
Sean O’Bryant and her dog Panda sit outside their camper at Haven on the Hill, a makeshift trailer community for Helene survivors in Waynesville. (Photo via Henry Taylor / Carolina Connection.)
Sherri Hall is one of the organizers of Haven on the Hill, a piece of Waynesville farmland turned into a makeshift community of 40 campers — including O’Bryant’s. The landowners have donated it and set up communal areas like a kitchen tent, a pantry tent, and fire pits. Hall says they’re trying to make people’s lives easier any way they can.
“Our heart is broken for all these people, and we’re doing everything day to day that we can do to help them,” Hall says. “Stay warm, stay, stay fed. Get mental health services that they need. Get hooked up with social service programs that they may need to be hooked up with.
“But,” Hall added, “we need some long term plans for people that don’t have property.”
Across Western North Carolina, the clean white of these campers and trailers stands out against muddy wreckage. Some are provided by FEMA, but many were donated by charities. In Swannanoa, Paul Kauffman of the group Hope for Crisis says they’ve given close to 200 campers to Helene survivors.
“The campers are deeded to them,” he says. “They get the title, they own them clear free. So they now have a camper that could be worth anywhere from 5 to $20,000, and they can actually sell that, and that’ll give them another hand up.”
Kauffman’s group has been trying to help Western North Carolina in a lot of ways — including handing out free food in a shopping center parking lot.
“As the food goes,” he says, “we’ll probably slowly start fading away over the next month. Month and a half. Right now, it’s all about housing. You know, everybody is fighting the cold and still looking for housing.”
Back at Haven on the Hill, Hall says even for people who’ve found trailers to live in, that’s just temporary.
“What’s our long term plan for these people,” she asks. “How can we help these people get their feet back on the ground and get back to what somebody would call some type of a normal life? We’re looking at years of rebuilding Western North Carolina.”
Hall says while the community has been able to do a lot for itself, outside help is still crucial. She says even though there’s less public attention on Western North Carolina, it still needs volunteers, supplies, cash donations…and more campers to get people out of the cold.
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‘Everybody’s Fighting the Cold’: Helene Survivors Struggle To Find Housing for the Winter Chapelboro.com.
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