Hurricane Helene and Wild Abundance Disaster Response
On September 29, 2024, Hurricane Helene devastated the Asheville, NC region, leaving entire communities in crisis. Barnardsville, NC, where Wild Abundance’s campuses are, and the surrounding areas were especially hard hit—homes destroyed, trailers swept away, trees fallen on houses, and bridges washed out, cutting off vital access. The destruction has been immense, but the resilience and heart of our community shine brighter than ever.
Wild Abundance staff and campuses were fortunate not to sustain major physical damage, and everyone who works with us is alive and healthy, though some friends and community members have lost everything. The financial impacts of canceled classes are significant, but with the support of our community of students and supporters, we are hopeful of a very successful 2025 that will help us recover.
What Now?
As the dust settles on the disaster, the scale of the damage is sinking in. Local roads have been cleared, grocery store and other store shelves have been stocked, and power and water have been back on since mid-October. We have moved on from clearing roads and getting people water and food to the next phase of relief work.
We have had a lot of folks ask us what is going on on the ground now, and what needs to be done. Following are some of the things that we at Wild Abundance think are major areas where support is currently needed..
- Housing those unhoused by the disaster
- Economic recovery and resilience for local businesses and individuals
- Housing policy change to make it easier to house people in the housing crisis made into a housing emergency by Helene
- Creating community resilience and sharing what we have learned from the disaster
- River and flood-plain clean-up
The picture above is from a Women’s Basic Carpentry Class that we held at the end of October, 2024, a month after the storm. We are very thankful to be able to welcome students back after the storm.
One great way that you can help Wild Abundance and the communities in WNC recover is to come take a class with us.
Most of the class projects from our building classes this year—from the Tiny House Class to our Women’s Basic Carpentry Class—are being donated to flood victims!
Your tuition goes to support the financial recovery of our school and pays flood survivors a living wage to continue to recover their lives and support our economy. If you go out to eat, or choose to stay in a hotel off-campus, you are buoying businesses hard hit by the disaster.
Another way is to contribute to the Wild Abundance Disaster Relief Fund. We have partnered with a non-profit to create this fund, and all donations are tax-deductible. Currently, we are focusing the fund on paying for building materials for tiny houses that we are constructing with volunteers and students during our 2025 tiny house workshops and our 4 month carpentry training program. Read more about the Wild Abundance Disaster Relief Fund or contribute by clicking here.
So far, we have raised over $120K, and are well on our way to reaching our $200K goal. Here are some of the things that Wild Abundance has accomplished with the fund so far:
- Created an effective system for organizing tree work and repair needs in collaboration with Mutual Aid Barnardsville. This system was especially poignant in the days after the disaster, when there was limited access to the internet, and volunteers were flooding in looking for ways to help. This work is still in place and has been taken over and improved by Mutual Aid Barnardsville.
- Filmed and produced a video to demonstrate and share the above system with other relief centers responding to Hurricane Helene, and with others that may use it in future disasters in other places.
- Gave scholarships to local flood survivors to take our Women’s Basic Carpentry Class so they can help with rebuilding efforts.
- Contributed materials and labor to repair houses, including rebuilding the roof of a family home that had been crushed by 8 trees, and rebuilding stairs and a stoop for an elderly community member.
- Pledged $22,500 to Mutual Aid Barnardsville, to help them continue supporting the Barnardsville Community now and into the future.
- Utilized our facilities to produce 12’x24’ small permanent home shells to be donated to locals who lost their housingCreated an application for free tiny house shells and finished tiny houses in english and spanish, and distributed to a variety of communities, through our audience, community centers, community groups, and churches.
- Contributed to the purchase of a sawmill for a local resident to turn downed trees into lumber that’s being offered for free to local rebuilding efforts.
We made this video in the first few days after the disaster. Many of our original goals have been accomplished, and others have been refined, as we continue to work to help the community recover from the disaster.
Building housing and other structures to be donated to flood victims and working on housing advocacy and policy change are where we are seeing that we have the most leverage right now with disaster relief. Wild Abundance staff has also been involved in grassroots river clean-up off the clock.
While houses and businesses like Wild abundance located on high ground were largely physically unaffected by the disaster, the emotional effects of living through a disaster continue to present themselves to our staff and community. Everyday we dive by houses that have been demolished, sheds and barns upended, flood-plain industrial zones abandoned, rivers changed course, and trash piles that used to be peoples’ homes waiting to be picked up by local services…It is all pretty intense.
And we continue to heal.
We are continuing to explore how we can take the experiences that we gained in the flood to help others in the future. We are considering offering classes in disaster preparedness and response and have done some early stage work to create free content around designing for disaster with permaculture.
Thanks for caring about what is happening in Western North Carolina. This disaster rocked our worlds, and continues to do so. We hope that you feel compelled to help by coming to take a class, donating, or spreading the word.
On Facebook
On Instagram