Latest / The SEANC View / Aftermath of Hurricane Helene: A Call to Action and Support for Western North Carolina

Transcript

Aftermath of Hurricane Helene: A Call to Action and Support for Western North Carolina · The SEANC View

0:00
Music.
0:08
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Scenic View podcast.
0:11
This is Jonathan Owens, Communications Director here at Scenic.
0:14
Joined today by Artis Watkins, Executive Director of Scenic.
0:19
And Sam Klein, Digital Communications Specialist here at Scenic.
0:23
And also producer of this fine podcast. How are you gals doing today?
0:27
We're good. And we're kind of a somber podcast this time.
0:32
Not jumping in with the usual energy. Obviously, everyone's thoughts and prayers
0:38
are with the folks in the mountains.
0:41
Yeah, so let's just jump right into that. There's not much else we can really talk about.
0:46
But obviously, the aftermath of Hurricane Helene has really taken its toll on
0:51
the western North Carolina.
0:53
A lot of folks are missing. A lot of folks are without power and water and communications and homes.
1:00
And it's just a devastating situation.
1:02
We're all thinking about you guys up there. Yeah, I think if you happen to hear
1:06
this and you're in the West, and we know from word that's gotten down to us
1:10
that a lot of our members still have no capability of listening to anything at all for a while.
1:16
But if you ever do listen to this, know that you were not forgotten by your
1:19
scenic family down here in the rest of the state,
1:22
and that we are working, and we have been working since Saturday on extensive
1:27
plans to try to help state employees and retirees in all the ways that we can and your communities.
1:33
These state employees, though, the bottom line, they were out there prior to
1:37
the storm preparing for it.
1:38
They were out there in the middle of it, dealing with it.
1:42
And they've been there since then. And they are working. Some of them,
1:47
the essentials, are working around the clock.
1:49
The folks people don't see, though, are working around the clock,
1:53
too. You've got folks who were in some prisons.
1:56
You couldn't change shifts. So if you were in a prison, you had to stay there.
1:59
And you, yes, a lot of these folks are still working and caring for patients
2:05
and prisoners at the same time that their own houses are destroyed,
2:10
that their own family is in turmoil.
2:12
Yeah, we had one of our district chairs who's so dedicated to her job at DHHS said, I am just so proud.
2:21
Well, you know what? I'm going to read exactly what she wrote in a text message
2:25
because I felt like it was that meaningful.
2:27
Her name is Allison. And Allison wrote, my takeaways from being back at work today.
2:32
My amazing coworkers are there with our residents, bathing them without having
2:36
had a shower themselves for days, feeding our residents while they're hungry.
2:41
Working so hard for those we serve while their own lives are compromised.
2:45
What amazing people we have working for North Carolina.
2:49
Yeah. And that's happening all over the place, I'm sure. Right.
2:53
She's at, is that Riddle, I think? Jay Averson Riddle? Yes.
2:57
Yeah. And then we have Black Mountain there, Black Mountain Treatment Center.
3:01
Black Mountain Center, they have moved the folks. I mean, that was so devastated.
3:06
But in Morganton, we have Riddle, Broughton.
3:09
So that's another aspect. But I guess they're having to move people around,
3:12
right? Having to move patients around. Yes.
3:15
Inmates have had to be moved from prisons in the West to other prisons.
3:20
We've had residents, patients at different DHHS facilities who've had to be moved.
3:26
There's been a lot of moving around to keep people safe.
3:29
Yeah. So that in and of itself was a dangerous proposition for the folks who
3:35
were trying to get the folks they serve to a safer place.
3:38
You just don't expect a hurricane to hit the mountains, right?
3:42
Well, I think, you know, we have had that. And I know with our members,
3:48
what's happened is, you know, there's been mudslides. There have been the terrible floods.
3:52
We had a member who lost her home in that Pigeon River flood a couple years
3:55
ago in a very devastating way. But it's usually, it can be just absolutely catastrophic
4:01
damage, but on a limited scale.
4:03
I don't think we've ever seen in this country anything that covered this amount of geography.
4:08
And definitely not this kind of topography, where it's so impossible to get to people.
4:12
Yeah, the last one I can really think about having a huge effect that far west
4:18
was probably Hugo when it hit Charlotte.
4:21
I have a scientist friend, and we were all, we have a group chat,
4:24
and we were talking last night. And we ask him, why is it more,
4:28
you know, why is it the damage so much in the mountains.
4:33
And he said the watershed in the mountains is much more extreme.
4:36
It's like you take a 10 by 10 square napkin and pick it up at the center.
4:41
And the water, you know, covers a lot more land when it comes over. It's science.
4:48
But it makes sense, right? We're surrounded by, there's rivers everywhere.
4:52
And again, these are beautiful places to live, remote places with beautiful
4:57
views. But unlike coastal areas that a lot of us are familiar with and have
5:02
grew up going through hurricanes in, at the coast, it's devastating. It comes across.
5:07
It's devastating. When the water goes back out, it's devastating.
5:11
Might sit for a few days. After that, people can, and during that time, people can come to you.
5:16
When the water's just sitting there, they can get in john boats and they can get to you.
5:20
Nobody can get to these folks because of the unique topography.
5:23
And the water is funneled down rivers, and that's where the people live,
5:27
too, if you think about it. So, just a...
5:31
And DOT, you know, we mentioned DAC briefly, you know, folks working in prisons,
5:35
and we mentioned the DHHS folks.
5:37
We cannot go any further without talking about DOT for a minute.
5:41
Because there was some Twitter controversy this week.
5:44
Because we took great exception with some people, you know, saying that people
5:49
from out of state were coming in and going to rescue us, right?
5:53
Rebuild our roads. Well, first
5:54
of all, thank you to them. And we're always there for them, by the way.
5:58
I don't think sometimes all politicians understand that we do that for our neighbors,
6:02
whether it's a wildfire, it's a hurricane or something.
6:05
We send our state employees and we do that routinely.
6:07
And that's called being a neighbor. And it can be a neighbor to California,
6:11
Arizona, I mean, all over this country.
6:13
And people are neighborly back to us.
6:16
And we're really thankful for that. But the folks that have been on the ground
6:19
before, during, and after, and the folks leading this charge are state employees.
6:24
And those DOT employees are not trained military or law enforcement personnel.
6:29
So when they are recovering bodies from debris, that's not part of the training
6:34
they go through to be equipped for that. I can't imagine that scenario.
6:37
That's the kind of thing they've been dealing with. So that's why it hit such
6:42
a raw nerve to think, knowing from talking to people on the phone what they're
6:46
going through, to think that anybody would say some other state is rebuilding our roads for us.
6:51
And I think if you look at the context of the other tweets surrounding that
6:56
tweet, it seemed like that person was, you know, trying to say that DOT was inept.
7:02
Well, there was no thank you to any of the state employees other than the troopers,
7:07
the highway patrol, which, yeah. The Franklin County Sheriff's Department.
7:11
We should all be thankful to the troopers because they're in there doing crazy
7:14
intense work for which we are thankful.
7:17
But this is public employees at every level and then a bunch of private folks
7:23
who've pitched in, as is always the case in any disaster, because human beings are inherently good.
7:28
But the folks who have had to be there, not because they wanted to and could
7:32
do it for as long as they want and leave, that's where public employees come in.
7:36
And if they weren't there preparing in the days before, it would have been a
7:40
lot worse. I tell you, working on a road in the mountains doesn't seem like
7:44
a relaxing experience to begin with.
7:47
You drive up those roads and zooming through and you're hanging off the road
7:51
off the side and it's already scary.
7:54
And then you add in these roads. It's terrible.
7:56
And then there's the universities and what they're having to deal with,
8:00
the private ones and the public ones.
8:02
Yeah. And the community college put out a tweet today, the system that what,
8:06
6,000 employees and 70,000 students were affected.
8:10
There's just a lot of employees affected right now. The damage to buildings
8:14
is so expensive and it's so extensive.
8:17
I think UNC Asheville was really, really, really hard hit physically.
8:21
Yeah. I have a friend who plays, or my son has a friend who plays baseball for
8:25
them, and he's a freshman this year. And he finally was able to get home.
8:29
I think he stayed up there through it, though, and he came home after.
8:33
And I was worried about, I have a lot of family. I think we talked about this
8:36
in the last episode in the Blowing Rock area, but they weren't.
8:40
My cousin up there said they weren't as affected as some other areas.
8:44
I think the Boone area did have a lot of flooding, but.
8:47
Oh, everything around there. Avery County is so bad. And yeah,
8:51
I was just talking to one of our district chairs who's in the Boone area and
8:55
said, look, everything around Boone is just so bad.
8:58
You know, I know up near Banner Elk, Burnsville. Oh, yeah.
9:02
Chimney Rock is just gone. Yeah, chimney rock, if you go down that way.
9:06
Yeah, I mean, we could list awful places.
9:10
That's the problem. Again, the sheer square miles of devastation is like nothing
9:15
we've ever seen, I think, in this country.
9:18
I mean, Katrina was the worst thing we've ever known, I think,
9:21
natural disaster-wise.
9:23
In terms of loss of life and loss of property and how long it took to get in there and help people.
9:29
Yeah, and the hurricane in Galveston a long time ago was the worst up to then, right?
9:35
And that was, the whole town was pretty much leveled, right? Yeah, it was. Yeah.
9:39
Yeah. But again, you know, those coastal towns, they get leveled and it's actually
9:43
amazing how quickly you'll see everything come back.
9:46
And it's not going to work that way in the mountains. So we can't,
9:50
y'all, we can't forget the folks in the mountains in a month when it's not on
9:55
the news anymore, because this is going to go on.
9:58
Hey, start making plans now for next fall leaf season. Go up there and spend
10:02
some money. I love Asheville.
10:04
Yeah, I'm sorry, Sam. You have thoughts. You were the last person in this room
10:08
to live in the mountains.
10:11
It's absolutely devastating. They just don't have the infrastructure up there
10:14
for the damage that they took. But I know that the communities up there are
10:19
very strong and they're already working together.
10:21
A lot of local residents whose houses and everything got torn apart,
10:26
they're still out there working on fixing things that aren't even necessarily
10:30
public or state employee.
10:31
They're out there clearing roads with their ATVs and chainsaws and just getting
10:36
out there so that they can.
10:38
They're essentially mountain islands right now. They are.
10:41
They are completely separated from everything. Well, one of our members said
10:45
it's like a third world out here.
10:47
And I think that's very true. You know, we're also hearing a lot of a lot of stories about fights.
10:53
Yeah, fights and even people drawing guns on one another because they're just,
10:59
you know, disagreements over gas.
11:01
I think that's how civilization devolves into chaos sometimes but I mean that's
11:07
a high stress area you can expect things like that to happen the quicker the help can get to them.
11:15
I do know that, you know, being here in Raleigh and having the advantage of
11:19
knowing what's happening as opposed to what's being reported as what's happening,
11:22
these agencies, we were talking to all of the agency heads on Saturday,
11:26
trust and believe, they were all, they had their staffs all over this situation
11:30
and were getting there as quick as they could to help. Yeah.
11:34
I think there's a lot of folks who still believe that literally people in Raleigh
11:37
were kind of just sitting around and didn't care or something.
11:39
And that's a disservice to the people from the West, because why would you want
11:45
to hurt people's psyche and make them think that nobody was helping them?
11:50
They really jumped the gun on that whole people aren't helping thing.
11:54
People were saying that on Saturday.
11:56
Like, how can people be, I mean, it's not going to be fixed on the next day.
12:00
Again, unlike the coast, you couldn't take a john boat and get in because that's
12:05
not placid waters at that point. That still was raging.
12:08
You know, you couldn't and you still can't take a john boat and get anywhere.
12:12
You can't even take a four wheeler. They're taking burrows up some of those mountains. Yeah.
12:17
Literally little donkeys or mules.
12:20
And that makes sense. I guess that's about all that can get up that territory right now.
12:23
There's a whole organization of this farm that has a bunch of mules,
12:28
and they just keep loading things up and bringing them up the mountain.
12:31
And they have social media. I believe they're collecting donations.
12:35
It takes a lot of money to do things like that. I was thinking about that.
12:39
Like, these neighbors just out cutting trees and bush hogging.
12:44
And, you know, it takes gas to do that. Well, that's the problem.
12:47
So people are running, they're running out of gas to do these things.
12:51
And a lot of people didn't have, we had a member call and say, we need gas cans.
12:56
Yeah. Because just to go make sure we can pass out enough gas to keep all these chainsaws going.
13:01
And it made total sense. I remember Hurricane Fran. Yeah.
13:05
In this area, it took the communities themselves getting out with chainsaws
13:09
nonstop to get people out because we weren't equipped.
13:12
We were in a major urban area in the center of government, but we weren't equipped for what happened.
13:18
Yeah. With trees absolutely everywhere. It looked like a big bomb had gone off.
13:21
Yeah. So I think what's important right now is so what's happening?
13:25
The people out west, you might wonder, you know, you say you're helpless.
13:28
You say you're making plans. What are you doing?
13:31
We want to lay that out for you a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, so we're planning
13:34
to send out some correspondents today just explaining kind of where we're at
13:39
and what we're going to be working on in the future.
13:42
To scenic members, that is. Yeah, to scenic members. One thing that you can
13:45
do, if you can get to a computer,
13:47
I know that a lot of people can't get connections right now,
13:51
but on our website, we do have a huge running list of resources for you if you're
13:56
affected by the storm and then ways for our members to help.
13:59
Yeah, we're getting a lot of calls and questions about how can we help?
14:03
Who do we write checks to? Things like that.
14:05
So we have that resource on our website. It's the main thing.
14:08
When you go there, you can just click and check out everything that we have going.
14:12
We have everything from how to find emergency shelters to distress helpline
14:18
for folks who are stressed out over the whole situation.
14:21
Disaster unemployment assistance, which I found today, and I thought that was a good one to add.
14:26
FEMA, how to apply for FEMA aid. Lots of things.
14:29
I want to give a shout out to the Blue Ridge Public Radio website and Twitter
14:34
account. They've been doing a great job.
14:35
They've been doing just amazing stuff, especially on X.
14:39
And they made their website text only today so that people in the mountains
14:45
who don't have service can, you know, download.
14:48
And yeah, so it takes a village, as you said in your email Saturday.
14:52
And we're trying. What else was going on in scenics? So, I mean,
14:57
one of the first things that came to mind, and again, going back decades ago to Hurricane Fran.
15:03
Governor Hunt was governor at the time and gave state employees,
15:06
I think it was a week off at the time, and he said, look, if you've got to put
15:10
your life back together, take that week and do that, state employees.
15:13
And if you don't have a mess, go help your community or your neighbor.
15:17
And this is how, with that number of people doing that for a week, it's going to help us.
15:21
And it really moved the dial. So we asked Governor Cooper and OSHR to give state
15:26
employees in those counties affected two weeks if they were non-essential employees
15:32
that they could just fix their own life and their neighbors.
15:35
And if they were essential to bank those two weeks leave because they were going
15:40
to be exhausted and need to recuperate after all of this, whenever after all
15:45
of this is. They actually came out.
15:47
We got a response from the governor's office that night that said,
15:50
look, we're actually going to do this policy, which is different.
15:53
But it does give time off.
15:55
So your HR, if you work for state government, your HR has all of the parameters.
16:00
It's a little complicated to try
16:01
to explain on a podcast. but your HR does have the details, go to them.
16:05
If you have had property damage of your own and you need time off for that,
16:09
if you want to help in your community and you need time off for that,
16:11
go to your HR office or call them or text them or whatever, because they have
16:15
that information of what you will be eligible for.
16:19
We also, as I said earlier, we were immediately jumping in with agency leadership
16:24
to ask them, what do you need for your employees?
16:27
Because the employees are are there to help the public, but we want to make sure they stay.
16:32
We can't make it where they don't have to work the number of hours it's taking,
16:36
but we want to keep them fed and cared for as much as we can to try to help in that way.
16:41
And the agency leaders have been
16:42
wonderful in connecting us with the folks appropriate at the agencies.
16:47
We have had, and we have an initiative called Scenic Cares.
16:51
We started this during COVID, actually, and it was super helpful to getting
16:54
state employees what they needed at the time.
16:56
It's really a direct line to us that we can directly help people.
17:01
And they have an email address. Yes.
17:04
Sceniccares at scenic.org. So it's S-E-A-N-C cares, all one word, right?
17:10
Yeah, two C's. So S-E-A-N-C-C-A-R-E-S.
17:15
Yeah, well, we have someone manning that pretty much 24-7, right? Lynn has it on her phone.
17:20
And if you're a state employee who's still in the, you're not retired,
17:24
you're still in the workplace, place.
17:25
If there's issues in the workplace where you do need something addressed,
17:28
I mean, again, our experience is that the agency leaders want to make everything right.
17:34
Maybe you're a little tentative to speak up about something.
17:36
We can get that word to them.
17:38
So again, that would be through scenic cares. And then the legislature's coming
17:42
back on this coming Wednesday, and they're going to,
17:46
I think they're going to talk about all things disaster related.
17:48
So being that they're coming back, scenic lobbyists have been working on a list
17:52
based on what the input we're getting from out there in the field, y'all.
17:56
And what we're hearing is there is additional emergency leave that is necessary for folks.
18:02
Some flexible work arrangements, we're hearing that. Community support initiatives
18:06
where you can organize those volunteer efforts or support groups.
18:09
Access to resources, utility relief programs, mental health support.
18:14
I think that's going to be huge. Again, we talked about the things people are
18:17
encountering they don't normally that are terrible.
18:20
So mental health. And just the experience in general. It's just going to be traumatic for years.
18:24
Some of the videos I've seen on TikTok are just harrowing. Just traumatic.
18:28
Yeah. Insurance assistance, job security assurance, temporary housing assistance.
18:33
Financial counseling, training and development, and enhanced hazardous duty pay.
18:37
Those are some things we've been hearing from our members and that our scenic
18:40
lobbyists are currently hard at work on compiling information to give to legislators
18:46
so that when they come back on Wednesday,
18:48
they already know what it is we're
18:50
trying to get and that we want and that employees need for our retirees.
18:54
We have our retiree council chair who was on scenic at an emergency board meeting last night.
19:00
And we talked about how, you know, we've got all kinds of ways we can think
19:03
of to try to get to folks who are still in the workplace.
19:05
We've got these retirees that need help as well. So we're working through our
19:09
retiree council on that.
19:10
Scenic does have something called a connections committee that has never been stressed to this level.
19:17
But it really wasn't built for this. I mean, no, it wasn't built for this.
19:21
Nothing really was built for this. But we do have that.
19:25
So if you are a scenic member or know a scenic member who has had some sort
19:29
of devastating damage, they can go onto the scenic website, look for Connections
19:33
Committee and apply for help that way.
19:35
And then we are working with the state employees credit union.
19:40
We've got a great partnership with the credit union and we have multiple initiatives
19:44
that will be coming out with it probably by the end of the week,
19:48
by the end of tomorrow. Yeah, I'm excited about these.
19:51
Not that it's a good thing to be excited about, but I think it's out of the
19:55
box thinking for both of us. There's been a lot of commitment with both teams
20:00
to really, there is a true commitment to state employees there.
20:04
And again, disasters, the silver lining sometimes is finding out just how much
20:09
people really do care and how hard they're willing to work to move a mountain
20:13
in a little bit of time. Bad pun.
20:16
But, yeah, that, I mean— Put a mountain back together in a little bit of time. I love that.
20:20
But anyway, those are the biggest things that we've got going right now.
20:24
And then— Oh, yeah. The ongoing effort.
20:28
If you're a state employee or CNET member, wonderful. If you're not, that's fine, too.
20:33
But the scenic headquarters is here in Raleigh, and it's at 1621 Midtown Place.
20:38
Google us. Google us. And we are accepting all of the necessities that you find
20:43
on every list that people need out there, non-perishable food,
20:47
diapers, hygiene items, things like that.
20:50
We are accepting those at the scenic office, and we're going to rent huge trucks
20:55
when it's appropriate to get to these places.
20:57
And as we can find agencies who say it's a good time and you can come and park
21:01
here and And we'll get that way we can get it to state employees in that area.
21:05
Yeah. Artis is going to drive the truck. You volunteered last night.
21:08
Drive the truck up the mountain.
21:11
Yeah. But we're going to do that as much as we have to. Right. Might take.
21:15
Oh, it might take two trips. Might take 20 trips. It's going to be 200 probably
21:18
for them. Yeah. But we're excited about that.
21:20
There are also things that they need up there that people don't think of.
21:24
They need sting kits. They need Benadryl.
21:27
They need the yellow jackets have been stirred up and they are attacking everyone.
21:32
That's just terrible. Linemen who are trying to get service and power back to
21:35
people are getting attacked by Yellow Jackets residents.
21:39
I stepped in a Yellow Jackets nest when I was like 10 and got stung by like
21:43
300 of them. It's just the worst.
21:45
It was awful. And I can't imagine trying to be a lineman, which,
21:48
by the way, talk about heroes, the linemen. I mean, there's so many heroes.
21:52
The list goes on a mile long after a disaster. or the folks that come in there,
21:58
not just public employees, other people doing their jobs or just being good people.
22:02
And it's awesome. We also got to think about the fact that it's getting cold out there.
22:07
They need warm clothes. A lot of people lost everything they have.
22:10
That's the thing. The clothing.
22:12
John, this morning you were saying, yeah, make sure you add socks to that list
22:16
because socks are pretty, especially if you're trying to get around and your
22:20
socks are getting wet and dirty. Yeah, they're wet.
22:22
That's what I saw on the TikTok. The military will always focus on you.
22:25
Yeah, they always tell you to take care of your socks.
22:28
But again, we are very serious. If you want to bring items, water,
22:34
anything to the scenic offices, we're storing it here until we can get it on
22:38
these trucks and get it up there.
22:40
Working with our members out west, you know, Cliff Johnson, one of our executive
22:44
committee members, is the regional rep up there.
22:46
And he is doing a heroic job himself of figuring out exactly where we can go,
22:50
exactly when, and get it out to people. We couldn't have a better person up
22:54
there for that. He's a former Marine and he's in charge.
22:59
So state employees and retirees in that area are going to get anything you bring
23:04
because Cliff Johnson's going to make sure of it.
23:06
Cliff Johnson will make sure, guarantee that. So one thing, we are getting questions
23:10
about checks, you know, people wanting to donate money.
23:13
We're kind of not at this moment really soliciting that, right?
23:17
We would rather you donate.
23:19
Do financial support for charities that can get help to people quickly, right? Right.
23:24
And the state of North Carolina has one. Yeah, the disaster fund.
23:29
Because we're not set up to be a charity. To be a charity.
23:33
And so there's our CFO is, you know, she does a great job of doing her job,
23:38
which is making sure we don't color outside the lines,
23:41
you know, and dabble into into trying to be a charity in a way that may cross
23:45
some kind of line in terms of what auditors think is OK or anything like that.
23:50
I mean, so she has definitely encouraged us that people want to give money,
23:54
give it to those charities.
23:56
But if they want to bring stuff that we can make sure gets to those public employee
24:00
heroes trying to keep everybody else safe, we'll get it there.
24:03
And one of the big reasons she said that we need to push that angle is,
24:07
well, not a bit, you know, but scenic donations are not tax deductible because
24:11
we're not a charity like those others.
24:13
So just keep that in mind. Yeah. Plus, if you take money, you have to be able
24:17
to show exactly to the penny how that money, if you took money for a purpose,
24:23
it's a lot of record keeping that is doable, but would put an insurmountable
24:30
load back there on the finance department that we're trying to.
24:33
Yeah, especially when these other. We're stressing them a lot right now.
24:36
Yeah. And when these other organizations are built for that and already have
24:40
the infrastructure. structure.
24:41
So Samaritan's Purse, Second Harvest Food Bank, Salvation Army.
24:48
Red Cross, Manna Food Bank, which Cliff said last night that Manna Food Bank
24:53
was pretty heavily damaged, but they're still collecting at a different site right now.
24:59
And the United Way, we have a whole list of these on our, on that website that
25:04
I mentioned, scenic.org. Yeah.
25:06
Those are ways that you can really help with your money if you would like to.
25:10
I mean, it's easy to just, that's how I would probably contribute.
25:14
I'm probably not going to buy socks.
25:17
There are also some counties that are starting to accept local volunteers if people live in the area.
25:22
Please check with your county before you just go out and start doing things
25:27
because you don't want to run into anything that could make things worse for
25:32
you or for anyone who is trying to do the work.
25:35
Don't want you touching power lines and then having to be rescued while you're trying to help people.
25:38
But for example, I know that Jackson County has started accepting local volunteers
25:42
and there are some quite a few students at Western Carolina who are jumping
25:46
on board immediately to help.
25:47
Yeah. And I was seeing the same thing at App State.
25:51
They are, you know, some of the people in the community apparently weren't thrilled
25:54
that the students stayed because they would be churning up resources or whatever.
25:57
But it looks like a lot of these students are doing what students would do in that situation.
26:02
They're young and healthy and like anyone else, they have that human desire
26:05
to help. I would think you probably need to keep in mind that where you are,
26:09
though, if you're going to volunteer in the mountains, the terrain is pretty,
26:13
it's a lot different than it is in Raleigh for volunteering.
26:16
So if you're volunteering on search and rescue missions, don't be out of shape like me, probably.
26:21
We would not go search and rescue. Yeah. So I think those are the highlights
26:27
of what we have to say right now.
26:29
Just stay tuned because we have so much coming for you by next week.
26:34
We'll do another podcast in just a few days because we do have some members
26:38
who are going to check this.
26:39
And so we're going to wrap this
26:42
one up for right now by saying that we're praying for all of you out West.
26:47
We're thankful for all of the rest of you who aren't going to forget your family
26:51
out West because they've always been there when there's a hurricane in the East
26:55
or a storm comes through Raleigh or something.
26:58
Our family in the West has always been there for us and stepped up.
27:01
So we're going to step up big for y'all. We promise. us. We all love the mountains.
27:05
That's one of the greatest things about our state, and they'll be back, I'm sure.
27:09
Thank you for joining us today, and we'll be back in touch shortly.
27:14
Music.