SWANNANOA- From clothing to food, medicine and books, a supply center popped up in the front yard of a home along Old U.S. 70, amid rubble of houses and businesses.
On the afternoon of Nov. 15, vehicles and people hustled on the driveway and lawns of the house in the corner of Old U.S. 70 and Vernon-Lois Lane, unloading boxes of food and water, sorting through clothes, filling shopping bags with food and other supplies.
It all started with a backpack of bottled water that Katie McMullen carried to give out to neighbors the day after Tropical Storm Helene had ravaged the town.
“I got really lucky and I’m not taking that for granted. Both sides of me are devastated. It’s a central point and it becomes a community meetup center,” McMullen said.
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A purple backpack
After two days of heavy rain, McMullen woke up on Sept. 27 to a smashing sound. She later found out it was a tree falling on her neighbor’s house.
“Then I realized we were in trouble,” she said.
Immediately she went down to her flooded basement to get her feeding tube formula and moved the rest of the medications upstairs.
“The evacuation order came too late. When they told us to evacuate, there was already 12 feet of water around us, there’s no way out,” McMullen said.
After the rain stopped, she packed her purple backpack with a full case of 32 bottles of water and roamed down the streets.
On her way of checking on neighbors, she saw a devastation — dead fish in the road, houses washed away. She rescued a woman with a rope and life jacket, who had clung to a tree for 14 hours and was on the edge of falling into a coma, but lost another woman who had collapsed to a heart attack — her body floated in a river.
For “four deadly days,” she had been digging through rubble of houses to find bottled water, giving out water to neighbors and bringing their phones to charge in her car.
She finally saw a spark of hope on the fifth day as a truck drove by with bottles of water. “Johnson City. They got around roads from Johnson City,” McMullen said.
Since then, aid distribution centers and helicopters came to her rescue, although she didn’t understand why helicopters weren’t dropping off aid instead of picking up bodies.
She replaced her purple backpack with a beach wagon and a trailer, and went around the five aid distribution centers in town to get supplies and distribute to neighbors.
Donors and supplies
While McMullen was waiting for electricity and water to come back, boxes of food and water started to be dropped off at her curb, vehicles unloaded supplies in her driveway. Among the donors were friends, neighbors, passersby and strangers from all over the country.
After donating some 40 bicycles to a nonprofit in the area, Eric Haggart spotted the supply center as he drove around Swannanoa.
“I was like, let’s go somewhere where we can stop and talk to someone to see what they need. So this is where we ended up,” said Haggart, of Franklin. “I want to connect with people. We want to hand off stuff to people who are going to take it home.”
Cannie Kirl, a Swannanoa resident wearing a purple sweater that reads, “Grand Canyon West,” was looking for a car seat with no luck. She has been hosting two mothers-to-be neighbors since the storm, who are expecting babies in February.
“I’m just helping people out,” Kirl said.
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Before the “chocolate milk” color water came back to McMullen’s faucet on Day 24, her yard had become a full-fledged supply center with anything from food to water, clothing, diapers and books. It opens roughly from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
She also has a small pharmacy of first aid, over-the-counter medications, contact solution, wound care and insulins.
McMullen, a former dog groomer who lost her job since the business closed in the wake of Helene, now spends about eight hours a day sorting through piles of boxes stacked in her two-door garage. She said she is desperately in need of a tent so the center can stay open on rainy days.
“It’s kind of turning into a beacon of hope, a piece of normalcy. Now that it’s not an emergency and they’re no longer grabbing and going. They’re staying and hanging out. Every other day I see the same people because they are just rebuilding their life.”
At the top of her wish list are volunteers, laundry detergent, toilet paper, paper towels, hygiene items, cleaning products, insulins, feeding tubes, over-the-counter medications and “gift cards for people who lost everything.”
“They need everything from soap to clothing and diapers,” said McMullen. “There’s a woman who lost everything and I gave her some stuff. She started crying saying ‘oh my god there’s hope’.”
Want to help?
Katie McMullen asks those who are interested in volunteering and donating supplies to people in need in Swannanoa to text her at 828-273-7135.
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Helu Wangis a journalist with the USA TODAY Network reporting for the Asheville Citizen Times in the wake of Tropical Storm Helene.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Swannanoa woman created pop-up aid center for neighbors after Helene
