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.
By Friday, government (and volunteer) search-and-rescue teams from all over the region arrived and worked hard to find and rescue people. Asheville activated a state task force right after the storm passed, and many water rescue teams from smaller departments were pre-staged as well. By Saturday afternoon, the NC National Guard was flying Chinook and Apache helicopters to provide essential supplies and perform airlift rescues. The bottom line is that the government did respond quickly and as well as anyone should expect.
The damage and need was so widespread and isolated, there was no way to know how bad it was. Just like everyone else, they were overwhelmed by the size and severity of the disaster.
A lot of assets had been sent to Florida and had to travel back to the area. The hurricane took a path that was much farther east than forecasted, causing greater concern when the center of circulation went right over Haywood County instead of west of Knoxville, TN.
Notice that I didn’t mention anything about federal help? Each state is responsible for its on-the-ground emergency response. The state can then ask for federal help. Usually, that is in the form of a request for an emergency declaration and federal funding. Then, FEMA can come in and help by paying for things.
I don’t know any specifics of how that worked in Helene. I know that some U.S. Army troops arrived to help. I also know that people on social media are trashing FEMA for not helping, and I believe that is wrong. They have the money and they are — and will be — paying for recovery. Just like everyone else, they were overwhelmed by the scope and nature of the storm in its immediate aftermath.
Realizing the impact.
By Saturday morning, we knew that many towns were cut off from the world. Streams turned into raging rivers, which took out bridges and roads, knocked down trees, destroyed power lines, floated houses and people away, and even swept entire towns away — no cell, no internet (except some Starlink customers, which I’ll get to in a bit), and no communication at all from most residents. The small towns of Swannanoa and Chimney Rock were literally gone. The towns of Burnsville, Bakersville, Spruce Pine, and Newland were inaccessible and silent for all but the government. We were in our comfortable homes crying for them as normal citizens couldn’t help.
How did this happen?
In the opinion of my firefighter friend and others, the answer is mudslides.
First of all, people live in valleys because that is where the roads are (and the water sources). In these areas, the grade is steep; that’s why little mountain towns and villages are called “hollers” (hollows).
As the rain came down the mountains, it caused mudslides. These flowed down into the rivers and creeks and created dams. As more water and debris built up behind these dams, they broke and sent powerful torrents downstream. The results were walls of water, mud and debris, overtaking everything. My friend saw 30-40’ tall piles of trees, houses, cars, animals, and a few human bodies all glued into piles by mud.
Who would have ever guessed this could happen? Remember too, that these occurred in places that are likely cut off from help. So when people claim the response was slow, I say “of course.” The situation dictated that.
Contribution and Confusion.
During the day on Saturday, the only people who knew what was going on were in the government. In an information vacuum, here comes Facebook to the rescue (or not). People just outside the worst spots who had internet service posted the need for immediate help. To their great credit, random people and organizations across the state loaded up trucks and trailers with water and supplies and headed up to help. This response was amazingly quick. Other Facebook posts were less helpful, knowingly spreading disinformation about needs, locations, and conditions.
The problem with delivering aid was that since so many roads were closed, there was no easy way up into the mountains. The authorities banned travel in the entire western side of the state. Even our main east-west highway, Interstate 40, was washed away at the Tennessee border, and state troopers closed it many miles east to discourage traffic.
So, everyone wanted to help, but there was no effective way to do so. By Sunday, we heard reports that paths to and from the mountains were pandemonium. Supplies were winding their way up there, but with nobody in charge and no specific directions on where to go, little relief made it promptly to those stuck inside the zone who needed it most.
Way to screw it up.
With so many people trying to help in a situation that was clearly unmanageable, social media again became a mechanism for help and harm. People immediately began trashing the government for a late response (which was false). Posts went back and forth between saying no more supplies were needed and requesting more supplies. Facebook groups became inundated with people asking for information on conditions and the welfare of specific people.
It showed the best and the worst of human nature: pleas for help and gratitude at the same time as outright lies and vitriolic negativity.
Before I get to the main gist of my story (communication), I just want to say that emergencies should never be the time for political agendas. Put down your myopic megaphones and pick up a shovel or your wallet. It shouldn’t matter what we believe in besides the need to help our fellow humans. Give some graceful leeway to those trying to help in a situation that is nearly impossible to address. I’m amazed and grateful for all those who participated in this epic effort; I still cry when I think of the generosity of those heroes.
Government communication.
An important part of the disaster response is communication. Responders want to know the conditions so they can do their job. The NC Emergency Operations Center (EOC) has a well defined setup of internal communications. By “internal,” I mean not accessible by the public (or hams). They used the VIPER system, the private fire/police radio system that uses towers to link radios. Using that system, these departments effectively communicated between agencies and with each county EOC. Their system worked!
But there was one big problem: The government personnel inside the disaster zone could not communicate with all the people affected. There are just too many remote towns and hollers in western North Carolina. That is why the only way to understand the situation on the ground was to go there. Since roads washed out and trees blocked them, the only way to go there was to dig their way in. Again, all this slowed the response.
Notice how I keep saying all this only about North Carolina? That’s because each state has a different emergency setup. I’ve talked with people in Georgia and South Carolina, and those states handled the emergency completely differently, including differences in how they inform the public and how they work with ham radio operators.
The one consumer device that worked.
As far as I know, only one consumer-level communication resource worked: Starlink for the win!
For those that had electric power (generators or batteries), their satellite links mostly stayed up. Without relying on the ground-based cell phone network (that went down hard), remote areas could get text messages out. I believe few people in the worst areas had Starlink service, but it did work. Search and rescue had Starlink “pods” as a backup in case their system went down, but they weren’t needed. Some lower bandwidth satellite providers were also used for emergency communication.
Ham radio infrastructure.
The ham radio community trains and practices for disaster events. We even have a yearly exercise where we operate from a field on a generator for 24 hours to see how many people we can call. Even we were caught off guard! Our national organization, the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) sponsors programs where hams organize to assist in emergency communications. Remote hams volunteer to run a program called ARES/AuxComm to help the state EOC monitor the radio airwaves for emergency assistance by calling out for condition reports.
Starting Friday night and throughout the storm and aftermath, hams on the ARES Tarheel Emergency Net tirelessly called out on their radios to get condition reports in all affected NC counties. Not much was heard because there were so few functional hams in the disaster zone, and the few that did call in were relayed to the state EOC. Many small towns were not heard from for days.
No way in or out, no word in or out!
Conditions and the people.
The government responders and the state EOC were working hard on search and rescue. The public and the hams I heard on the radio had no idea about the specific conditions. All we knew was that people were cut off from help because no infrastructure survived in those spots.
The ARES Tarheel Emergency Net hams continued to call for condition reports, but they weren't allowed to help with people searches. That role is called “Health and Welfare” (H&W) support. Basically, “We haven’t heard from my grandfather since last Thursday and the pills that keep him alive are about to run out. Any word?” Since that net couldn’t help, they told the inquirers to call 211 on the phone in NC and a toll-free number if outside NC. Those phone numbers were a program sponsored by the United Way. When I called 211 on Sunday, I sat on hold listening to music for 15 minutes before I gave up. I believe they were totally overwhelmed.
The result was that there was no centralized support for health and welfare. People outside the event were understandably frustrated to have no way to know about their friends and family.
For some reason, the Tarheel Emergency Net didn’t run on Sunday. In its absence, other efforts popped up. Only one local repeater on top of our tallest mountain, Mt. Mitchell, stayed up and hams used it to relay all kinds of information during the entire event. The repeater could communicate with some areas inside the zone and metro areas as far away as Charlotte and Winston-Salem. They handled many requests for H&W and even streamed their radio on the internet for all to hear.
At the same time on Sunday, several random hams from Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina started their own radio-based support dedicated to Health and Welfare. They took those “Where is grandfather?” requests and chased them down online and by relaying to Mt. Mitchell. They only ended up with 12 missing people to look for, but researched all 12 and reported that they were safe. It was not many in the grand scheme, but the effort was amazing and proved that a service dedicated to Health and Welfare could work.
Thanks to our heroes.
There are many heroes to thank during this mess. I need to call them out:
- The search-and-rescue teams that braved the storm and post-apocalyptic conditions to help save people
- The tough-as-nails mountain residents who helped each other through this
- The government agencies that provided help as soon as they could
- The churches, companies, and individuals who dropped everything to provide supplies from afar
- The NC ARES hams who constantly asked for condition reports
- The Mt. Mitchell repeater crew who helped pass information when most needed
- The pop-up Health and Welfare hams who searched for information on people
Improvements.
We learned a lot through the massive challenges Helene presented. The overall lesson is to be prepared for the unimaginable. We’ll need to provide better coordination of information for the public on what to do, where to go, how to help, and what is happening. Here are some specific ideas on what could help in the future:
Fix: If there could be a better mechanism for them to inform the public, I believe we would all see an impressive organization and, consequently, appreciate them more.
Fix: The government needs to involve hams more without requiring a huge amount of training.
Fix: I’ve just this week started a new organization called HamHAW, providing a dedicated Ham Health and Welfare System. The basic idea is this: The public goes to a website and enters a search for a person. Ham operators in the applicable region use their radio skills to help find and report back, all entered on the web in one spot. If anyone is interested in helping with future emergencies or telling people about the organization, go to hamhaw.org.
Fix: Provide Starlink to everyone! Well, that doesn’t seem possible, but I know the newer iPhones have emergency satellite support. So maybe enable that for everyone? Or provide free phone upgrades to iPhone 14+? In emergencies, we should use satellites whenever/wherever possible.
Fix: Ham radio works better with more help. I have stickers that I hand out that say, “When all else fails, Ham radio works!” All we need is power, a radio, and an antenna to talk nearby and far away. If we had more hams in all areas, we would have more in the disaster zone and more elsewhere to help. That would mean we could get more info about the conditions and the people there.
- Become a ham! I encourage you to find your local club, learn how to be a ham, and be part of the solution to help people in need. Here is a link to Become a Ham on the RARS club website. You can also look at the ARRL website.
- Donate to your local ham radio club so they can improve their public support. Our RARS Donation page allows people to easily help us do better.
Fix: Local ham club improvements.
I’ll be recommending to my club several improvements to help support future events to better fulfill our mission to help the public — local exercises to test equipment, more frequent review of plans, and more training can only help any local club to prepare. A little over a week after Helene, Hurricane Milton came across the state of Florida near Tampa Bay. Damage assessment is still ongoing.
This shows how local clubs everywhere should be prepared.
About the Author.
I’ve been a ham since 1981 and my call sign is NC4FG. I’m a retired computer nerd and business owner. My other hobbies and activities are hiking, ice hockey, greenwood and character carving (finleygold.com), radio tower climbing, disc golf, sailing, kayaking, chasing my two dogs, and… I could go on all day.
My wife and I love the NC mountains. We’ve owned property there and know the area around Boone, NC, very well. Our favorite spot is Newland, NC, in Avery County. Within the last three months, we’ve walked along the beautiful Toe Riverwalk in Spruce Pine, the creek walk in Bakersville, and the Toe Riverwalk in Newland — all areas hit hard by the floods. Our heart goes out to our friends there as they try to recover from this.
All the statements in this article are those of mine and mine alone. Particularly, the views I’ve expressed are not a representation of RARS or its members, nor the ARRL or its members. While I’ve tracked this event closely, my viewpoint comes from listening and discussing with many other hams.
