Of all the indelible images left in the wake of Helene, the sight of neighbors helping neighbors and strangers becoming friends may be one of the lasting legacies of this natural disaster.
From Greenville to Glassy Mountain, from Spartanburg to Seneca and every community in between, people have turned to one another to lend helping hands and share information.
For rural communities across the Upstate and in western North Carolina, it has been particularly critical as the storm’s widespread devastation has left hundreds of thousands of residents without power, water or reliable means of communication.
Along the northern rim of Greenville and Spartanburg counties, even in normal times people often feel isolated from their urban neighbors to the south.
Helene exacerbated that feeling and prompted residents to turn to one another in the storm’s immediate aftermath.
Trying to connect
The breakdown in internet and cellular communications for most of the week after Helene roared through the area prompted residents to fall back on face-to-face contact with family, friends and neighbors.
In such conditions, central gathering points for critical supplies also became hubs for sharing information. Fire departments have often filled this role in communities like Landrum near the North Carolina border in northern Spartanburg County or the Glassy Mountain Fire Department along S.C. Highway 11 in northern Greenville County.
A few miles away in Campobello, town officials set up a distribution point downtown where people could collect water and food and connect to the outside world via a portable cellular wi-fi hotspot.
But that cellular hotspot was secured and it took a few more days to get the password so people could connect.
For Campobello Mayor Jason Shamis, that hiccup was emblematic of the wider problem of widespread cellular and internet outages.
“Communications have been impossible,” he said.
By the Thursday after the storm, the mayor was working to get more than a dozen Starlink satellite communications nodes to help with the problem.
Thanks to help from U.S. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), that urgent request paid dividends and the first of the units had arrived by Oct. 5.
Shamis said the experience of his town and its surrounding communities pointed to some important lessons about hardening critical communications infrastructure against similar breakdowns in the future.
“There’s going to be a lot of reflection for the whole of Spartanburg County on what to improve,” he said.
Community connections
Three miles west of Campobello off state Highway 11, Paul Zimmerman lives on a 26-acre horse farm and knows the importance of people pulling together in the face of natural disaster.
Zimmerman grew up in Miami and lived through many hurricanes as a youth. Years later, while working in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, he lived through the historic 1994 Northridge earthquake.
While the widespread destruction of Helene’s path through the Southeast is similar to what he experienced in Florida and California, Zimmerman said what sets this experience apart is how his friends and neighbors have come together to help one another.
He said while people in big cities are just as likely to pull together in a crisis, there’s not quite that sense of connection you find in rural communities.
Related: How you can help: Ways to donate, volunteer after Hurricane Helene
“I think what you see here is a real generosity of ‘we’re going to share everything we’ve got,’” he said. “People were just checking in on everybody … that’s a big deal.”
With no electricity to power his well and with five horses needing 50 to 60 gallons of water a day, Zimmerman was grateful when the Landrum Fire Department offered free water to area residents with horses and livestock.
“People need to know that there are pockets in the world like this,” he said.
While storm recovery is likely to take months, if not years, and the memories of trauma are likely to last far longer, Zimmerman and Shamis are hopeful people will also remember the kindness they found in one another.
“People have been fantastic,” Shamis said. “It’s exactly what you should expect during a crisis with neighbors helping neighbors.”
