Western NC College Students Are Leading Hurricane Helene Relief

Appalachian State University (App State) junior Joshua Kubie, who serves as the university’s American Red Cross Club president, received a call from a Red Cross administrator last Friday.

They said Kubie needed to set up a shelter on the Boone, North Carolina, campus and get as many people to help as possible in the wake of Hurricane Helene’s destruction.

When he got to campus, he learned that the “real” Red Cross was held up by floodwater.

Firefighters and EMTs were setting up a first aid station, and soon, people began showing up at the disaster shelter in App State’s Holmes Convocation Center. So Kubie and the EMTs found chairs and snacks for evacuees.

Later that evening, he met a woman who lost her house in a landslide. He thought she was holding it together really well. A few hours later, she got a Venmo notification for $50 from a coworker for supplies and broke down crying. Kubie decided to stay through Saturday.

He said that was just a microcosm of the shock Boone experienced.

On Friday, Sept. 27, Helene struck western North Carolina, damaging and destroying houses and roads and flooding land. It’s claimed over 200 lives in the Southeast, with many still reported missing.

App State, the University of North Carolina Asheville, and Western Carolina University in Cullowhee have canceled classes.

Kubie thought he had signed on for a paperwork-heavy role as the Red Cross Club’s president. But after Helene, he has stepped up to organize supply drives, coordinate air rescues, and drive trucks full of necessities from city to city.

“It went from being a minor bureaucratic resume bonus to being a position of real authority in six hours, and it was really crazy to experience that,” Kubie told BestColleges.

“So it’s been a lot of stepping up for me, certainly, because I’ve gone from being a guy who answers emails once every couple of weeks to being a guy who’s coordinating a lot of relief efforts that have a significant amount of logistical weight and have a significant amount of real-world impact.”

App State students also created a new organization called App State Helping Hand to organize relief efforts and inform the community — and App State’s shelter now has more help than it needs.

After App State’s shelter improved following its rocky start, Kubie turned his attention to getting his fellow students and community members the help they need.

Kubie has been coordinating with the National Guard and JAARS, a nonprofit using aircraft for supply drops and to evacuate people trapped by Helene’s damage. He offered his phone number through the club’s Instagram to have people tell him where their family members or friends are.

“The other thing I’ve been having running currently is just getting calls from people who are telling me that their family is trapped at a specific location,” Kubie said. “So I can tell rescue agencies where exactly people are for them to go get.”

Between volunteers, people in need, and evacuation coordination, his phone is always full.

Kubie said it’s been mind-boggling how efficient social media has been in outreach. Kubie and his club members regularly update the club’s Instagram with volunteer opportunities, resources, where to send money and supplies, and places where people can get help and necessities.

App State Helping Hand, a group of students in and outside of Boone, has also been promoting places people can get clean water, food, and shelter and connecting donors and volunteers with opportunities to help.

Lyle Parker created the organization out of the need to get information to Boone’s community after the hurricane.

The first-year student majoring in social work said the first 24 hours of App State Helping Hand were overwhelmed with volunteer questions and supply offerings. That was until students Emma Brown, Caroline Hughes, and Emily Pearl jumped in to help him run the account.

Hughes, a junior psychology major, has been volunteering to distribute supplies across eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.

Students on the other side of the state have even felt the need to help. Pearl is a first-year psychology major and the president of App State’s chapter of Letters of Love, a nonprofit that sends letters to children and other hospital patients.

She’s partnered with Helping Hand to deliver cards to first responders, App State’s mandatory workers, volunteers, donors, and people who lost everything.

“I am in Raleigh, so it feels good to be able to do something while being at home to help the greater good in Boone besides helping run App State Helping Hand,” Pearl told BestColleges. “I felt called on during all of this … to do little acts of kindness while people are grieving a town.”

All four Helping Hand students mentioned how dystopian, disconnected, heavy, and empty campus felt — nothing like the vibrancy, bustle, and nature students choose App State for.

“This time last week, I was worried about classes and friends … Now I’m worried about people’s lives being lost,” Pearl said. “I’m not stressed about school anymore. I’m stressed about people who have lost absolutely everything, and that’s a lot. That’s a huge shock.”

Kubie said he’s uniquely positioned to get supplies and get in touch with charities and town governments. He said that when people see the Red Cross symbol, they automatically associate it as an authority for helping during difficult times.

A big part of Kubie’s job is directing people to where they need to go.

“I’m just the front guy on a lot of this stuff,” Kubie said. “It’s like a river of people that are wanting to volunteer and help, and all I’m doing is channeling that river to specific places.”

Red Cross Club executives Lucia Tidmore, Kaitlin Caruso, and Madeleine Earnest have taken on the social media mantle to repost information from other organizations and answer the dozens of daily DMs about volunteering and donating. That way, Kubie can focus on more specific questions and coordinate with rescue and medical professionals.

Kubie’s community outside the Red Cross Club have supported his relief efforts too. His girlfriend Mallory Hagen has compiled emails to charities in Black Mountain. At the same time, his friend Viktor Fodor has gotten him in contact with charities to send supplies.

Another friend, Tessa Rabideau, supported him by sending him the email addresses of the town governments for relief efforts. His debate team coach, Mark Bentley, has also helped him with truck and trailer logistics.

Even Kubie’s mom, Amanda Sturner, has been integral since his truck was destroyed in a car accident while he was picking up a trailer for a supply drive. She’s driven him to rental companies to rent trucks for food and to different charities to create supply drives.

Kubie said he talked to a woman recently who wanted to use her plane to fly things down into Swannanoa, near Asheville. He’s also talked to nurses and physicians from around the country who want to come help with the shelter’s first aid center.

Parker from Helping Hand said people all over have offered them planes, industrial equipment, chainsaws, and trucks, which they directed to professionals.

“It’s not even just a Boone effort anymore because now that Boone is starting to get its bearings back, it’s turned into a donation and resource hub. And a lot of people, if they can get up here, they’ve come up here to help with the surrounding counties,” Parker told BestColleges.

“Not to sound all corny and stuff, but it’s really cool how it flourished into something so big.”

It might take some time for normalcy to return to App State.

According to the university, some buildings are flooded, landscaping is destroyed, and a sinkhole caved in. The campus is closed through Oct. 11, and classes won’t start until after Oct. 15. Until then, students are committed to helping their community where they can.

Kubie already has a few more drives planned into next week and will continue to organize and direct people toward relief.

“As long as there’s a need to be fulfilled, there is a way to fulfill that need, even if you don’t feel like you’re in a position of authority, as long as there are people that need to be serviced, you can figure something out if you’re willing to be creative.”