Expert offers insights on Hurricane Helene’s lingering impacts on Appalachia

It’s been more than three weeks since Hurricane Helene tore across the Southeast, shocking Appalachian communities with the magnitude of its destruction. But recovery is far from over.

Emily Satterwhite, professor and director of the Appalachian studies program in Virginia Tech’s Department of Religion and Culture, is familiar with the phases of flood recovery efforts. In 2022, the program helped launch the Holler to Holler mutual aid initiative in response to severe flooding that devastated parts of Kentucky.

Volunteers reconstituted the initiative in Hurricane Helene’s wake. Satterwhite is also a project lead for Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia. Its networks have helped her gauge the needs of communities across the region, she said.

Satterwhite answered questions about the hurricane’s impact in Appalachia and shared the best ways to help during the current stage of recovery.

Why was this storm so devastating for Appalachia?

This was a one-in-1,000 years chance flood. It wasn’t anticipated. On one hand, we know that climate change is creating more powerful storms and moisture in the hemisphere. On the other hand, it’s not predictable where that’s going to directly cause effects. I was surprised that the impact was as devastating as it was in North Carolina and Virginia. It wasn’t as surprising to me in eastern Kentucky, where there’s been so much mountain top removal coal mining and strip mining that the ground is not absorbent anymore. I had hoped, as we were watching Helene develop, that the ground would be so much more absorbent [in North Carolina and Virginia] than in eastern Kentucky and that it would not have those kinds of catastrophic effects. But the amount of water was just too much too fast.

Will this event spark a broader discussion of climate change in the region?

I think it’s normal with such an unusual event for people to be searching for explanations, and we have explanations from the science of climate change, but powerful interests have  denied those so repeatedly that people are searching for some other explanation. Because our media landscape is so broken, this had meant that people – not just in Appalachia – are vulnerable to misinformation campaigns that would rather tell them it’s a conspiracy than that it’s a consequence of fossil fuels. I do think it’s a wakeup call for people who already understand climate change, that it’s here now and that these kind of cataclysmic disruptions are the new normal. But for people who have been manipulated into believing that climate change isn’t real, I’m not sure that this will help move the conversation in a positive direction.

Have there been any positive developments following the storm?

I think what we’ve seen is an already existing, long-standing neighbors-helping-neighbors ethos that has, in the wake of Helene, managed to scale up beyond the holler, beyond the town, to a region-wide sensibility of the need for mutual aid and support. That’s a beautiful thing. I have seen places like Galax that really didn’t think of themselves as Appalachian, but as Blue Ridge, using the hashtag #AppalachianStrong [in social media]. For me, one of the best outcomes of this is a greater sense of Appalachian identity and solidarity that is happening irrespective of political differences.

What else strikes you about this storm in relation to Appalachia?

It’s really important for people who are upwardly mobile and geographically mobile to understand the public health benefits of long-standing relationships to communities and places. I have heard colleagues say migration is normal, that people should just move to places where there are more jobs or different jobs. And I think that is shortsighted. We know from the research of people like Shannon Bell in our sociology department that people’s social capital helps them weather crisis – whether that is food insecurity or a hurricane. People’s relationships to each other and to particular communities and places are irreplaceable in terms of the protective measures they provide. One of the phrases that is circulating is “we keep us safe.” The “we” in that phrase has grown in a way that hopefully will put us in good stead for the cataclysms that we know are to come. It’s important to recognize that these on-the-ground networks are made stronger by good communication with government agencies. Some of the anti-FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] rhetoric is unfortunate and debilitating;  people need to be able to take advantage of whatever assistance gets to them first and stays with them for the long term.

What are the best ways to continue helping those impacted by the storm?

I think the easiest way for a lot of people, if they are people with resources, is to go in with a couple of other families or individuals and purchase some of the big-ticket items that are needed. Items like solar generators are useful not just for the next three to six months while people are still without power in some of these western North Carolina communities, but can be used in the face of additional outages for years to come. We’re pretty full for the moment on the smaller items, like diapers for example. The other thing I would say is for people to understand this is going to be a really long haul. While bigger ticket items like solar generators might be what are needed most right now, for the long run we might need more boots on the ground, like spring break trips, to help rebuild, or for people to pay attention to what people’s needs are in a month or six months.

One way that people can do that is to follow social media accounts, such as Holler 2 Holler, the Pulaski County Free Store, or the Giles County Christian Service Mission, which has adopted families for the long haul. The Virginia Tech Appalachian Caucus is planning to have a campus-wide community toy drive with drop-off locations. The toy drive will run from Nov. 1 through Dec. 6.

About Satterwhite

Emily Satterwhite is a professor and the director of Appalachian Studies in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech. Her research focus areas include Appalachian culture, horror studies, and the politics of culture. Read more about her here. 

Schedule an interview

To schedule an interview, contact Jenny Boone in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at [email protected], 540-314-7207, or contact Margaret Ashburn in the media relations office at [email protected], 540-529-0814.