Asheville and Helene: Lessons Learned
Damage from Hurricane Helene
I usually start these articles with something (I think) is witty or makes one think. This isn’t one of those articles, because it’s about serious issues about the recent hurricane and the lessons it taught us.
Asheville, North Carolina and surrounding areas
A community like Asheville, NC, one of America’s small towns/big towns, is NC’s 11th biggest city. Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the city is the meeting point of the French Broad and Swannanoa Rivers. I say ‘is’ because even though many good folks in Asheville and surrounding towns were lost to us, the spirit of such an American town is undefeatable.
NOTE: This article in no way dismisses the trials faced by those in Hurricane Milton’s path; their troubles are just as important. For the purposes of this article’s topic, I speak about the victims of Helene because of the unique settings of the inland site, which is largely inaccessible now and was unprepared for that type of event. Because of general hurricane histories, Florida residents were – by past experience – able to prepare (for the most part) for what transpired while Milton was still turning in the Gulf. I live in upstate South Carolina; there was very little warning as Helene made her way north.
It's important to focus, not on Helene itself, but on impending calamities, namely in the lessons we must learn if we examine Helene’s teachings. We must recognize this teaching moment, one that could prevent future bad decisions. They are sober warnings to avoid – at all costs – fast-tracking alternative energy mandates. We must take time, think these things through, have emergency plans for hurricanes, floods, earthquakes or tornadoes that could unleash upon an unsuspecting community; on how to respond quickly and efficiently to those most affected. Asheville and its surrounding areas are proof we’re not there yet. Learn from people in Oklahoma about tornado recovery; Maine about snowstorm recovery; California about earthquake recovery, before investing in Green Energy ‘Solutions to Nowhere’.
Electric cars: My wife and I lived on Long Island when Hurricane Gloria passed through in 1985; Gloria deprived power to many on the eastern end of The Island for weeks. We coped with seven of southern New Hampshire’s 8-day blizzard blackouts, where the nearest hotel available was south of Hartford, CT. I can sympathize with helplessness. Now that we see first-hand (for those of you who forgot Katrina) what devastation can be had should now be asking the question: What are electric vehicles good for when electricity is non-existent? This isn’t about a power failure, but a zero-power event. Many of these folks won’t see power for weeks, months. They won’t open a refrigerator door; turn on a TV; run a load of laundry; or drive their car. These common things we take for granted are now luxuries. They can’t see, hear, or speak to the outside world.
A solar panel field in Lake Placid, Florida, wiped out by Hurricane Milton.
After witnessing Katrina, Gloria, etc. and now Helene, do we assume emergency vehicles, like linemen trucks, ambulances, 18-wheelers (for supplies), excavation tractors, police, humanitarian aid caravans, the National Guard, not to mention helicopters, will be able to search for survivors, or even rebuild, with an extension cord and a couple of solar-powered generators? Despite the fact solar power of that magnitude isn’t portable, the disaster areas only saw sporadic sunlight in the eight days after Helene tore through. Or, as witnessed in Lake Placid after Milton passed through and leveled a solar panel field. It’s not like you can back an aircraft carrier (which is capable of powering a small city) up to the mountains and running power cords several hundred miles to the site.
National Power Grid: For those in the rural areas, electric vehicles are ridiculous. For those who live in the cities, the subways, taxies, monorails, etc. are or will go electric. How would that work out? Police and emergency response couldn’t act to help the community; professionals, like nurses and doctors, couldn’t get to work; grocery stores and restaurants couldn’t provide food since the refrigeration units lost power. Not to mention the crime as order slowly decays.
Propane Gas: The present administration was trying – may try again – to outlaw gas grills. Without lighting bonfires to cook in a forested area full of dead wood and dry leaves, how do you feed thousands when electric cooking is not possible? Maybe some charcoal briquets were salvaged or a barbeque grill that didn’t float away could be used, but they wouldn’t be enough to feed hundreds, even one meal a day. But then, isn’t the government going after coal as well?
Windmill blades that exceeded their useful life take centuries to break down. These blade’s materials are too toxic for artificial reefs or artificial land shelves.
Some may suggest there’s wind power. Unless windmills become portable, they’re useless. Perhaps the life-limits for windmill blades could provide a means to rebuild landslide areas, bury them in rows to create artificial land shelves. But then windmill blades are made of toxic materials that take centuries – not years, but centuries – to break down. They’ll kill – continue to kill – the environment for hundreds of years. Talk about your inconvenient truth. Therefore, wind power is pathetic as a power source. But then, it has been for decades.
Cash-free Societies: When one considers people in cities unable to buy food because they don’t have cash; they will have no food because their refrigerators went off-line. Day 1 … Day 2 … Day 3 … Week 1 … Week 2. Now what? How do you feed thousands of citizens who can’t use their debit cards?
Think how devastating it is to lose a home and all shelter, then not be able to find food, even a box of raisin bran, because you didn’t consider the possibility that grocery stores committed to abolishing cash won’t accept the debit cards they normally demanded. This isn’t only a warning about electric everything, but a warning against a cash-free society. Unless you have something to barter, a debit card will not save you. Either that or enjoy the taste of furniture.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency
Government Bureaucrats: But more importantly, this natural disaster taught us a lot about our government’s response, particularly our federal government’s response – FEMA – the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the federal government’s answer to the question: “Can this day get any worse?” Anyone who’s worked as a Fed knows that depending on any government agency for help is like driving nails into the hardest known ironwood, Australian Buloke … with your face. The fact these folks don’t come with a warning label is ludicrous.
Putting scandal aside, let us forego the stories about FEMA offering $750 loans to Helene survivors. Is there truth to FEMA not having enough money for Helene’s victims after FEMA squandered aid to illegal aliens and Ukraine? Are FEMA employees blocking assistance from non-governmental charities? While the media won’t report yes or no, they aren’t aggressively denying the allegations either.
Let’s focus on the response. The frontline FEMA people do what their told, which means their upper management tells them what to do – and what not to do. If you, the reader, learn nothing else from my writing, remember one thing: government agencies cannot be relied on … for any help. The worker bees, the people who do the heavy lifting in government might care; but they’re directed by bureaucrats who sign their paychecks.
Since the United States began to October 2024 (though you’d never hear it) churches, good Samaritans, law enforcement, good citizens with special skills, charity groups, military personnel, search teams; these are the providers of good will, of help, of compassion, unselfish aid, untainted by bias. The government, however, has always placed a price tag on actions, taxing people for funds they offer as gifts from … the government.
This event should give common sense persons, no matter how dedicated to their science they are, a chance to pause and rethink our nation’s trajectory when it comes to future changes. Politicians are dead set on pushing us in directions we should never consider; the Asheville tragedy shows us why these directions are bad ideas.
Ronald Reagan once said, “We’ve gotten into the habit over the last [40] years of thinking that government has the answers. There’s very little government can do as efficiently and economically as the people themselves. And if government would shut the door and sneak away for about three weeks, we’d never miss ‘em.”
That’s what is known these days as a mic drop.
Our prayers for all those who found themselves in the way of Helene and Milton. Don’t look to the government for help; your neighbors, friends, and many you never met, will take care of you.