Butler natives part of the hurricane response in Asheville
Workers with McDowell County EMS staffed the station in McDowell County, North Carolina, Thursday night, Sept. 26, ready to assist with emergencies expected to arise from the predicted heavy wind and rainfall brought by Hurricane Helene.
The tributaries filled up Thursday night, then the rain kept coming. And kept coming.
“I started my shift at 7:30 Friday, and by 8:30 the rain was in full force and the wind started picking up. The 911 calls started to really pick up,” said Neal Donnelly, a lieutenant paramedic with McDowell EMS and alumnus of Knoch High School. “I talked to one gentleman who said his rain gauge was 22 inches. I heard an estimate of up to 45 inches of rain.
Although the department had been preparing for the hurricane all week, the level of disaster Hurricane Helene brought to the region was much more than the department had been preparing for.
Donnelly said he worked around the clock when the hurricane made landfall starting Friday morning. He directed calls, went out on ambulances to pick up patients and oversaw dispatches over the past few days, foregoing sleep to keep up with what was needed of him.
The devastation by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina has created a scene that another Butler native living in the area called a “biblical catastrophe” in and around Asheville, which is in the county adjacent to McDowell County.
Tyler Kotch, an alumnus of Butler Area School District, has lived in Asheville for more than seven years, and said the hurricane caused the most damage he has seen in his life. Kotch not only started a GoFundMe campaign to gather donations to help the recovery efforts in the city and surrounding area, he said he has been delivering supplies to people whom he said have no other options.
The city, he said, is in total chaos.
“We’ve seen tons of flooding, the river floods, we’ve never seen every single building in this area underwater and crushed by everything,” Kotch said. “There is no power, no water, everything is tainted because of floods. People’s houses are ‘landslided,’ we got trees down.”
Kotch said Tuesday morning, Oct. 1, he was preparing to get supplies — including water, nonperishable food items and gas — out to people in the area. He said he set up a drop off location at his pizza shop, PIE.ZAA Pizza, where people have been leaving items to help distribute to others.
While some of the flooding that covered Asheville in water has receded, Kotch said people are still trapped, many in buildings and houses that caved in after being passed over by the hurricane. He said people are using chain saws to extract others from buildings.
The whole topography of Western North Carolina has been restructured because of this flood, Kotch said.
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency last week placed a major disaster declaration on North Carolina and the other states affected by Hurricane Helene before its landfall.
The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency deployed agents this weekend to affected areas of North Carolina. A news release from PEMA said 45 members and support personnel from Pennsylvania-Task Force 1 traveled on federal deployment to help with search and rescue efforts. The team includes structural engineers, canines and their handlers, rescue specialists, doctors, and hazardous materials specialists, PEMA said.
Donnelly said federal agencies and emergency personnel from other states arrived in McDowell County on Monday, which included about 20 ambulance teams. The American Red Cross is also assisting.
Even though some help has arrived, Donnelly said there is still no relief or solace in sight for the people whose homes and entire lives have been washed away by the hurricane. He described a situation where he and an ambulance crew traveled up a mountain that had been the subject of a mud slide, only to arrive to find three patients instead of the reported four.
“We took a UTV over there and we had to get a saw crew and we went up this mountain that was 5 miles. We started at about 1:30, we didn't have patient contact until close to 8:30,” Donnelly said.
“They were inside of a house that had collapsed with water. They said one minute it was fine, then the house disappeared. The one female they were with just disappeared. We were able to rescue those missing persons, and the other one became a missing person.”
Donnelly has been staying in the station with his EMS department since the hurricane hit. He said his wife and family were able to get out of the area before Helene made landfall, so they are safe in another location.
Donnelly moved to North Carolina in 2015, and he and his wife relocated to McDowell County in 2022. He said he lived through Hurricane Florence in 2018, which heavily damaged the Outer Banks.
Despite the destruction Hurricane Helene has caused, Donnelly said he is not surprised to experience and live through such catastrophic weather, and his solace now is knowing he is part of the relief effort.
“The solace is we’re all doing the best we can, and it’s difficult because the situation is so dire,” Donnelly said. “When I get to lay down knowing that I am giving this 110%, and when it’s said and done that I gave everything I had to the people of this county.”
Kotch’s GoFundMe can be found online.
