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Louisville — Volunteer groups heading to North Carolina to help residents rebound from Hurricane Helene now have three new options for housing and hospitality.
A trio of churches has opened host sites in cooperation with the Presbytery of Western North Carolina and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance to help with long-term recovery efforts. Those sites are Canton Presbyterian Church in Canton, First Presbyterian Church in Spruce Pine, and New Hope Presbyterian Church in Asheville.
“This really felt like a calling for us,” said the Rev. Kimberleigh Wells, New Hope’s pastor. “There are a number of ways you can contribute to the construction of new housing and to the repair of old (housing) and one is to do the manual labor yourself, and the other is to provide hospitality and encouragement and comfort for those who come to do that work, so we are really excited to be able to be in that role.”
Anne Waple, the presbytery’s new disaster recovery coordinator, said there is strong interest from groups desiring to book the sites, which provide a place for groups of up to 20 people to sleep and shower during work trips.
The volunteers will be traveling “from all over the country,” Waple said. They’re primarily from the East Coast, “but not exclusively. … We’re going to be meeting many people from our neighboring and faraway presbyteries, so I’m looking forward to that.”
And so are the churches.
“When we found out that our first group was coming from Michigan, we were just so delighted a team wanted to come from that far away,” Wells said. “So we can’t wait to hear their stories … and we plan on having a regular means of communication with our congregation so that folks will know who’s staying with us at any given time. We’re going to put a big map on the wall with pins in it indicating where the groups have come from.”
Some groups will be arriving this month, while others are looking to come later.
“We’re mostly focusing on this year, but we’ve already had several groups who want to reserve a spot for next spring and summer as well, which is fantastic,” Waple said. “The recovery will be at least five to 10 years for this region, so we will have many, many years of rebuilding to do.”
North Carolina was one of several states impacted by Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region in September 2024 and “brought catastrophic inland flooding, extreme winds, deadly storm surge, and numerous tornadoes that devastated portions of the southeastern United States and southern Appalachians,” according to a report from the National Hurricane Center. An estimated 250 U.S. deaths resulted, including at least 176 direct deaths, making Helene the deadliest hurricane in the contiguous U.S. since 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, the report states.
“We’re in Mitchell County, which was one of the most adversely affected counties with Helene in terms of the flooding and the number of trees that were knocked down and the mudslides,” said the Rev. Michael Poulos, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Spruce Pine. There are “people who have lost their houses, or their houses are damaged, and they’ve been living in temporary places.”
With dire needs still present, the willingness of volunteers such as the ones coming to the host sites “means everything,” said the Rev. Esta Jarrett, pastor of Canton Presbyterian Church, which collaborates on various relief efforts in the area through the Canton Missional Network.
“In the days and weeks after Hurricane Helene, when the interstates reopened and people could get here, the amount of help, the amount of volunteers and resources that flowed into the mountains was overwhelming, and there were so many tears of gratitude. It kept hope alive, and knowing that, that continues, it really does mean everything,” she said.
Canton Presbyterian has experience with hosting recovery groups in the past and is looking forward to being a new PDA host site. It’s expecting at least two groups in May.
“Being a host site for disaster recovery has become a vital part of our congregation’s mission,” Jarrett said. “We are a smaller membership church, but like many churches that have been around for a while these days, we have this wonderful old building. It’s like a gift to us from the past that now we’re able to use to host these volunteer recovery groups that need a place to stay when they come and do their work.”
Working in partnership with the United Methodist Committee on Relief, First Presbyterian Church is turning classrooms into sleeping quarters and has received a shower unit from the Appalachian Service Project that can accommodate multiple people at a time, Poulos said.
One of the larger sleeping rooms “used to be the women’s parlor (so) you couldn’t touch anything or move anything, and now, that’s going to be having six or seven cots,” he said. “I’m really excited.”
This isn’t the first time that multiple host sites been opened to respond to a disaster, said the Rev. Nell Herring, PDA’s associate for volunteer ministries.
But “this is certainly the first time we’ve done a response this large since” the 2012 hurricane known as Superstorm Sandy, she said. “Part of the decision to open three host sites in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene was because of how many folks were contacting the PDA Call Center to express interest in going on trips there. This is by far the largest volunteer response we’ve seen post-pandemic.”
In addition to providing a place for volunteers to sleep, host sites give people a chance to come together in fellowship, so “there’s a spiritual growth component for the volunteer teams as well,” Waple said. “We’re very hopeful that we can provide an environment that is just a good experience for everyone, and fundamentally, helps the people of western North Carolina recover.”
Jarrett said she’s happy to have the support of Waple as well as the presbytery and the fellow pastors that are involved. “We are not alone in this,” she said. “There is this network of support.”
New Hope has a partnership with the Givens Estates Retirement Community that will allow volunteers to use that neighboring facility’s “whole gym facility, so their showers, their towel service, their pool, their hot tub, their gym, even their cafeteria and terrace,” Wells said. “It’s been really wonderful to experience their generosity and to feel like we’re in this together.”
By Darla Carter, Presbyterian News Service
For general questions about volunteering, contact the PDA Call Center at pda.callcenter@pcusa.org or 866-732-6121. If you have site-specific questions, contact Anne Waple; more details here.
