How it unfolded from a radio operator’s perspective.
By Finley Gold
This is a story of incredible tragedy — human resilience and frailty, heroism and kindness, confusion and commitment. I’ll review the Hurricane Helene response from the viewpoint of an amateur radio operator in the state capitol of Raleigh, North Carolina.
We call ourselves ham radio operators (or just “hams”). To become a ham, we have to pass a test to get a license to talk on the radio. Then, we can talk to people around town and around the world (when conditions allow and with the appropriate license class). With around 750,000 of us in the U.S., there are plenty of people to talk with and listen to. I’m the President of the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society (rars.org), a 501(c) nonprofit club of over 450 members. Our club’s mission is to educate and serve the public by providing communication in times of civic need — like during storms!
Unfortunately, one of those times came recently when Hurricane Helene pushed its way into North Carolina.
North Carolina knows hurricanes.
North Carolina, like the entire southeastern U.S., is right in hurricane alley. Time after time, hurricanes have come in on the coast and hit us with winds, tornadoes, and rain. Since I’ve lived here, we’ve seen Hugo go all the way to Charlotte in 1989, Fran go through Raleigh in 1996, Floyd smack the eastern side of the state in 1999, and then Florence hit the coast in 2018. I personally had property damage from Fran and Florence.
When a hurricane comes in, it diminishes as it crosses the land. It moves through quickly and mostly causes wind damage. That damage is usually so localized that, if you are 30 miles away from the eye, you would likely be fine. For example, the eye of Fran came through Raleigh and put trees on houses; we lost power for a week. Towns 30 miles away, however, were completely fine.
That is what North Carolinians are prepared for. Not the rain-dumping behemoth called Helene that spanned 800 miles (twice the size of Katrina) and dropped 14–30” of water on the mountains in a couple days.
Them mountain people.
You might have heard the term “NC Strong.” I’m guessing everywhere disaster strikes, people say that. But the people in the NC mountains have been proving how tough they are for a long time. To live in a remote spot wedged between steep mountains, you have to be self-sufficient. You can depend on your neighbors, but that is it. When things go wrong, these people know how to fix it. They ask for little and work hard for what they have.
When a hurricane comes towards the mountains, it rarely makes it all the way there. The most recent storm that came through was Tropical Storm Fred, which dropped 6 inches of rain on Haywood County in 2021 and caused serious but localized flooding.
Residents there remember Fred and were acutely aware of the danger. After Helene passed, they thought the response by officials and citizens was much better than before and likely saved a lot of lives. For the rest of the region, when warned about a storm, it makes sense to me that they wouldn’t worry about it.
But folks in NC were warned about Helene. I don’t know that most ignored warnings, but I wouldn’t be surprised. As Helene approached and the rain estimates came out, the totals in the mountains were unbelievable. I imagined them calmly stating “We’ll be fine. We’ve been here forever and handled everything so far.” They didn’t know what they were in for!
Let me restate that:
Nobody was prepared for this disaster because everyone underestimated the impact of the rain!
That is not just the mountain residents, but everyone. Helene’s damage was truly unprecedented and historic.
Government response.
Hurricane Helene hit the mountains on Thursday, September 26. The North Carolina state-level Emergency Operations Center (EOC) activated their team on Wednesday morning, September 25, with a team of government and volunteer responders getting to the mountains that afternoon — before the storm hit. They hunkered down in a middle school as the storm came through with torrential rain all through the night and into Thursday. As soon as they could, and for the next entire week, they performed search and rescue and damage assessment. I know this because a friend of mine, who is also a ham and a firefighter, was on that team.