The western North Carolina area of the Appalachian Mountains had been feeling the effects of Hurricane Helene for days before the brunt of the storm arrived. Heavy rain from what meteorologists call a predecessor rainfall event soaked the ground beyond saturation and made the rivers, creeks, and tributaries surge.

So, by the time Helene made landfall in Florida and began to move north and west, the stage was set for western North Carolina to experience flooding on a staggering scale.

Helene arrived in western North Carolina on Sept. 27, 2024. Winds gusted to 75 mph, blowing some whole trees out of the soggy ground and shattering others.

But the real destruction came from the rain. The rainfall increased to totals the mountains had never recorded, reaching 24 inches in less than 72 hours. In Asheville, the area’s largest city, rain gauges at the airport hit 14 inches.

Rivers overflowed, and large areas of Asheville and many smaller towns flooded. The water sluicing down the mountains into the valleys and hollows brought rocks, mud, trees, and other debris that blew out major roads and bridges, leaving the devastated area isolated from aid.

Helene took a terrible toll on the area. Official records say 107 people were killed; 26 are still missing. Thousands of residential and commercial structures were destroyed or severely damaged.

“We lost two months of the economy,” said Ryan Cole, assistant director of Buncombe County Emergency Management Services.

There are many lessons to learn from Helene’s impact in the North Carolina mountains, or any hurricane that has come through. One is what business owners and managers can expect from local public safety professionals during a disaster and what they can do to help their employees and themselves.

MITIGATION AND PREPAREDNESS

Emergency management agencies say the most important thing businesses can do before a disaster strikes is to have a plan.

Emergency management has four key elements: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Business owners need to work with their risk management advisors and local emergency management to help their businesses weather a natural disaster.

The first step is to identify risks. Cole said you may find surprises when you analyze what could happen in your area. In western North Carolina, flooding from tropical cyclones like Helene is just one possible natural disaster. Heavy snowfall, wildfires, tornadoes, and even earthquakes have occurred.

How quickly a business recovers from a disaster depends on many factors. Of course, the most critical is how badly the business was damaged. One way to mitigate the effects of a disaster on your business is to develop an emergency action plan.

The smartest thing you can do before a disaster strikes is to evacuate and seek shelter. But some disasters, including earthquakes, strike without warning. Some other disasters are slow to develop, and you may not see how bad they will be before they hit, so you mistakenly decide to ride them out.

If you don’t have a chance to evacuate or choose not to, you and your employees could be stuck in your facility waiting for help. You may not even be able to call 911 because communications could be down. So you need provisions, fire suppression tools, and first aid supplies.

After Hurricane Helene, many roads and highways were damaged and flooded, and fallen trees blocked others. The same blocked road and road outages that make it impossible for you and your employees to go home can also prevent responders from being able to reach you.

Even if they can reach you, first responders must prioritize the people most in danger. That means you may not be at the top of the “triage” list with the burning nursing home and the motorist who drove his family into a flooded road. Because of the difficulties first responders may have in coming to your aid, you must prepare to be self-reliant for at least 48 hours if you are trapped in your business.

Of course, you will need to keep your business operating if possible or find a way to restart operations as soon as possible. These concerns should be a part of your emergency action plan.

You should expect to lose power and communication. Cell towers were out of commission all over western North Carolina after Helene. Consider investing in a radio system if you have a large operation.

Your communications plan should include how to contact your employees. First responders arriving at your business to assist you after a disaster will need to know who is in the building, who is missing, and why.

Some businesses are “hardening” their facilities, strengthening structures, and raising buildings above flood levels. Cole said businesses in Asheville’s Biltmore Village commercial zone experienced 6 feet of flood waters, and some are planning to raise their foundations now that they are rebuilding and rehabilitating.

Cole uses the example of a company that needs electrical power to maintain its products. “If the business requires refrigeration, you need a generator,” he said.

You must also have fuel if you rely on a generator to save your inventory. After Helene, getting supplies into western North Carolina was a logistical nightmare. Wrecked road systems made it difficult for trucks to reach the area for days and even weeks.

WHEN A DISASTER HITS

Once a disaster strikes, emergency responders’ primary mission will be preserving life. That includes their own. Emergency personnel have to take precautions, too. During an active natural disaster, such as a hurricane, your local police and firefighters may shelter in place and wait for the worst to pass.

Once they can respond, they’re going to be busy. During Helene, public safety professionals had a variety of roles.

With dangerous flooding imminent in many areas of Buncombe County following the torrential rains from Helene, one of the most prevalent duties of local law enforcement personnel was to get people to evacuate and seek safe shelter.

Buncombe County Sheriff’s Captain Dustan Auldredge was sent to the eastern part of the county and the town of Black Mountain to work with local police on evacuations right before Helene. His advice to anyone, including businesses, was to get out immediately. The window to save your life can close very rapidly.

Closing roads is another critical operation for public safety personnel. And one of the most important things all drivers can do is heed the closures.

When people drive around barricades, first responders will probably come to their rescue. Your wheeled vehicle is not a boat and does not perform well in a raging current. Motorists tend to underestimate how little water it takes for a flood to stall and wash away a car.

“One of our officers saw a woman drive into the flood waters,” said Chief Michael Lamb of the Asheville Police Department. “Her vehicle stalled out. The officer ran into the water, waded out to her vehicle, and convinced her to leave it behind. He saved her life because we found that vehicle later about 500 yards downstream.”

Chief Lamb’s story shows how easy it is for people to get in trouble in a disaster area. Responders have to deal with a lot of emotions as they soon realize they can’t save or even help everybody. It takes a toll on them both physically and emotionally.

Another emotional toll on first responders working in disaster areas is that if you’re dealing with the impact on your home and family, the responders probably are, too. They are out helping the public rather than checking on their own loved ones and property. Bear that in mind when you see them. Have patience and empathy.

THE DAYS AFTER

Your business experience in the aftermath of a disaster is determined by many factors such as injuries to customers and personnel, damage level to your facilities, how widespread the damage in your region was, and to what level critical infrastructure was affected. These factors also determine how much you can aid local response and recovery efforts.

For days after a major disaster, responders will work to reach people in need of aid. These efforts will include clearing debris and rescuing people from damaged, flooded, or blocked structures.

In the aftermath of Helene, western North Carolina responders had to clear trees from homes and building entrances to get inside. Chainsaws and other tools were in high demand. If you have tools to provide local responders, let them know. This is especially true if a volunteer fire department serves your area.

Provisions and basic human necessities for the responders and victims are also critical. The flooding damaged the water treatment plants in the City of Asheville, so there was no potable water supply. Businesses with water purification systems, such as microbreweries, started producing drinking water. Restaurants and food stores also fed responders and the displaced.

“We had several businesses that called response agencies and told us they were opening the doors for responders to come and get what they needed,” Cole said.

Emergency management agencies say the most important thing businesses can do before a disaster strikes is to have a plan.

One business type that was helpful to first responders in the days after Helene was hotels and motels housing responders who lost their homes, and for responders from outside the region.

Chief Lamb said 500 officers from outside law enforcement agencies came to Asheville to aid the city’s police after Helene. “We had a hundred officers that would come in at a time and switch out for another group every seven days. The local hoteliers got together and provided rooms for them,” he said.

With communications down, local and national businesses and government agencies provided key technology. Businesses, residents, and Starlink provided emergency internet capability for responders and victims. AT&T FirstNet, a cellular network for responders developed after 9/11, also brought assets to the area.

And then there were the local radio stations. In the days after Helene, some broadcast stations in western North Carolina replaced their standard music and talk programming with emergency information. They also tried to help people outside the disaster area contact their loved ones.

Unfortunately, not everyone acts in the public’s best interest after a disaster. Looters targeted businesses. Auldredge said the sheriff’s office had deputies patrol area businesses to discourage looters, and they enacted curfews.

“We also had the help of law enforcement officers from outside the area,” he explained. “They were a force multiplier for us and gave us the ability to conduct more preventive patrols.”

Chief Lamb said looting was addressed using surveillance technology and officer response. The police department and some large retailers set up video cameras and license plate recognition (LPR) systems in areas subject to looting to record tags of people coming and going.

Lamb advises business owners concerned about looting to secure valuables before the disaster or immediately afterward, and to board up windows before a disaster hits.

In addition to looting, fraud is another common criminal activity in disaster areas. Lamb warns businesses and homeowners that people will come to a disaster area, pose as contractors, get paid up front, and leave with the money. He recommends that people research contractors before hiring them and be careful with advances.

“We tell people never to give payment up front, at least not the whole payment up front,” he said.

A major disaster in your area will challenge your local public safety professionals in ways that you and they might not expect. Anything you can do to mitigate injury to your employees and yourself, as well as damage to your facilities, will aid in response and recovery.

Remember, should a disaster strike, you may not see help for days, so be ready with basic needs for your people. In the aftermath, do what you can to help your local responders.