BAKERSVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Helene downed power lines and washed out roads all over North Carolina’s mountains, the constant din of a gas-powered generator was getting to be too much for Bobby Renfro.
It’s difficult to hear the nurses, neighbours, and volunteers flowing through the community resource hub he has set up in a former church for his neighbours in Tipton Hill, a crossroads in the Pisgah National Forest north of Asheville, The Associated Press reports. Much worse is the cost: he spent US$1,200 to buy it and thousands more on fuel that volunteers drive in from Tennessee.
Turning off the community’s only power source isn’t an option. The generator runs a refrigerator holding insulin for neighbours with diabetes and powers the oxygen machines and nebulizers some of them need to breathe.
The retired railroad worker worries that outsiders don’t understand how desperate they are, marooned without power on hilltops and down in “hollers.”
“We have no resources for nothing,” Renfro said. “It’s going to be a long ordeal.”
More than 43,000 of the 1.5 million households that lost power in western North Carolina still lacked electricity more than two weeks later, according to Poweroutage.us. Without it, they can’t keep medicines cold or power medical equipment or pump well water. They can’t recharge their phones or apply for federal disaster aid.
Crews from all over the U.S. and as far as Canada are helping Duke Energy and local electric cooperatives with repairs, but it’s slow going in the dense mountain forests, where some roads and bridges are completely washed away.
“The crews aren’t doing what they typically do, which is a repair effort. They’re rebuilding from the ground up,” said Kristie Aldridge, vice president of communications at North Carolina Electric Cooperatives.
Residents who can get their hands on gas- and diesel-powered generators are depending on them, but it isn’t easy. Fuel is expensive and can be a long drive away. Generator fumes pollute and can be deadly. Small home generators are designed to run for hours or days, not weeks and months.
Now, more help is arriving. Renfro began receiving a new power source, AP writes, one that will be cleaner, quieter, and free to operate. Volunteers with the non-profit Footprint Project and a local solar installation company delivered a solar generator with six 245-watt solar panels, a 24-volt battery, and an AC power inverter. The panels now rest on a grassy hill outside the community building.
Renfro hopes his community can draw some comfort and security, “seeing and knowing that they have a little electricity.”
The Footprint Project is scaling up its response to this disaster with sustainable mobile infrastructure. It has deployed dozens of larger solar microgrids, solar generators, and machines that can pull water from the air to 33 sites so far, along with dozens of smaller portable batteries.
With donations from solar equipment and installation companies as well as equipment purchased through donated funds, the non-profit is sourcing hundreds more small batteries and dozens of other larger systems, and even industrial-scale microgrid known as “Dragon Wings.”
Will Heegaard and Jamie Swezey are the husband-and-wife team behind Project Footprint. Heegaard founded it in 2018 in New Orleans with a mission to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of emergency response. Helene’s destruction is so catastrophic, however, that Swezey said this work is more about supplementing generators than replacing them.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Swezey said as she stared at a whiteboard with scribbled lists of requests, volunteers, and equipment. “It’s all hands on deck with whatever you can use to power whatever you need to power.”
Down near the interstate highway in Mars Hill, a warehouse owner let Swezey and Heegaard set up operations and sleep inside. They rise each morning triaging emails and texts from all over the region. Requests for equipment range from individuals needing to power a home oxygen machine to makeshift clinics and community hubs distributing supplies.
Local volunteers help. Hayden Wilson and Henry Kovacs, glassblowers from Asheville, arrived in a pickup truck and trailer to make deliveries this week. Two installers from Asheville-based solar company Sundance Power Systems followed in a van.
It took them more than an hour on winding roads to reach Bakersville, where the community hub Julie Wiggins runs in her driveway supports about 30 nearby families. It took many of her neighbours days to reach her, cutting their way out through fallen trees. Some were so desperate they stuck their insulin in the creek to keep it cold.
Panels and a battery from Footprint Project now power her small fridge, a water pump, and a Starlink communications system she set up. “This is a game changer,” Wiggins said.
The volunteers then drove to Renfro’s hub in Tipton Hill before their last stop at a Bakersville church that has been running two generators. Other places are much harder to reach. Heegaard and Swezey even tried to figure out how many portable batteries a mule could carry up a mountain and have arranged for some to be lowered by helicopters.
They know the stakes are high after Heegaard volunteered in Puerto Rico, where Hurricane María‘s death toll rose to 3,000 as some mountain communities went without power for 11 months. Duke Energy crews also restored infrastructure in Puerto Rico and are using tactics they learned there, like using helicopters to drop in new electric poles, utility spokesperson Bill Norton said.
The hardest customers to help could be people whose homes and businesses are too damaged to connect, and they are why the Footprint Project will stay in the area for as long as they are needed, Swezey said.
“We know there are people who will need help long after the power comes back,” she said.
The Canadian Press republished this Associated Press story on October 13, 2024.
