A week after Hurricane Helene tore a historic, deadly path from Florida to Tennessee, an Ocoee River rafting operation owner who is also an expert in logistics has spent the past week in the storm-torn North Carolina mountains hauling donated food, water and resources to storm victims while many of the company’s river guides lend their expertise to the effort in western North Carolina.
Sarah Beth Neal, owner of Outdoor Adventure Rafting in Ocoee, Tennessee, left with a company transport van full of swift water experts and donated items the day after the storm hit.
Neal has spearheaded the effort, but she said she had no idea how much she’d be needed or how many people needed help, as she and her colleagues took up a mission to use their skills to help people who were left with no home, food, transportation or information from outside the storm’s deadly path.
Neal and her team are all experienced swift-water, wilderness first-responders who have emergency medical response training they have put into use for the past week trying to reach communities cut off by storm damage to provide supplies, medical aid, information and transportation when they could.
The storm that roared east of Polk County through North Carolina hit “communities of people who are elderly, often isolated in Appalachia and also people who didn’t expect to be hit by a big storm,” Neal said. “For these communities, it was absolutely devastating.”