Miracles in the mud: Heroes, helping hands emerge from Hurricane Helene aftermath

A son who journeyed 11 miles into the Blue Ridge Mountains to locate his parents. A pastor and a ragtag group of parishioners navigating collapsed roads to deliver aid to stranded residents. Strangers meeting online and coordinating searches for one another's missing loved ones.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, one of the worst storms the U.S. has seen in the modern era, residents across the devastated Southeast and elsewhere have showcased unshakable resolve, heroism and compassion.

Harrowing stories of rescues and treacherous hikes to find the many missing abound. And hundreds have turned out to assist in the recovery, chopping up tree limbs blocking roadways and delivering food to communities in need.

“We’ve had an amazing response,” said Paul McGinnis, the pastor at Grace Chapel Foursquare Church in Forest City, North Carolina, which has been transformed into a shelter for many who have lost power, homes and loved ones to Helene.

As soon as the storm passed, neighbors, residents in other counties and some who traveled out of state “just began showing up,” McGinnis said. The outpouring has provided crucial aid, but it also has acted as a resilient source of hope and inspiration in the wake of the storm.

Here are stories of those who have rushed to aid those in need:

Churchgoers form relief team, deliver formula to baby

Cameron Bryson, a pastor in Dallas, North Carolina, received a call late Saturday night that Marion, a town about 1,400 feet high in the Appalachian Mountains, had been cut off by floodwaters and cracked roads.

The next morning, he assembled a group of 35 churchgoers, borrowed a parishioner’s pickup, filled it with food, water, gas and other supplies, and headed for Marion, an hour and a half drive from Dallas.

After some maneuvering around downed trees and snapped power lines, the group eventually came upon an impassable road, which forced a handful of them to make the rest of the journey on foot.

As the small group approached the first house, they heard a baby crying. To the door came a mother and father. When Bryson and the others started handing them food for their 5-month-old, the mother’s eyes welled up. They had run out of baby formula the night before.

“We just happened to have exactly what they needed,” Bryson said. “It was incredible.”

Since then, Bryson’s group has grown, and they – along with other church and local aid groups – have made several deliveries across the devastated towns in the southern Appalachians, where many remain stranded. Amid widespread communications blackouts, they have not had contact with the outside world since late last week.

Mountain terrain, monstrous rain:What caused North Carolina's catastrophic flooding

Son hikes 11 miles in the mountains to find his parents

Sam Perkins had only one thing on his mind when he decided to trek through the utter devastation left behind by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina: Make sure his parents were safe. 

Perkins was “drowning in worry” because he hadn’t heard from his parents in 48 hours after the storm’s landfall in Florida and other regions across the Southeast. By Saturday, he couldn't wait any longer.

Perkins hiked 11 miles with 2,200 feet of elevation gain to reach his mother and father's home in the mountains, Perkins shared in a Facebook post. The home, according to Perkins, is nestled between an unincorporated community and a couple of towns halfway between Asheville and Boone. 

“Little did I know that up there, Helene has demolished roads, homes and utility networks,” Perkins said. “This area is completely cut off from resources in every direction.” 

After weaving his way across failing roads, deep mudslides and fallen trees, Perkins found that his parents were “thankfully OK but surrounded by devastation.”

“I have never been so relieved to see anyone OK,” Perkins wrote on Sunday.

'That's what we do':North Carolina town bands together after Helene wreaked havoc

Church becomes a home for the displaced

McGinnis, the pastor in Forest City, planned to feed hot dogs to the guests at his son Knox’s fifth birthday party on Saturday. But instead, he has been feeding them to people whose lives have been upended by Helene. Some have lost homes; others have lost family members.

The church in Rutherford County, about 45 minutes from Asheville, has been home for McGinnis, his wife, Katie, and Knox since downed trees damaged their home. Forest City is one of several surrounding closely knit small communities, largely rural and with “lots of distant neighbors,” said McGinnis, who grew up in Rutherford County.

Most of the damage in the area is from high winds, which toppled trees, knocked out power and cut off streets, trapping people in their homes.

McGinnis said he has been worried about one member of his church in particular, 86-year-old Ray Cole, whose whereabouts are unknown. “We’re hoping and praying he’s been rescued and he’s in one of the shelters,” McGinnis said.

Asked how he comforts people who have lost so much, McGinnis said: “In those moments, there are no words.”

“When you’re dealing with this, in the beginning you just let people talk. They just want to be heard. It’s about being there with them in the presence of the Lord. … It’s not just a day-to-day thing. It’s going to be months.”

Couple find out mother is alive through security camera

Vignette Truett and her husband had tried everything they could think of to reach their family in the mountain suburb of Burnsville, North Carolina. Phone calls, emails and public pleas on social media had gotten them nowhere. After four days, they were beginning to lose hope.

But around 8 p.m. Monday, they received the first sign of life from an unlikely source: a security camera.

While in their hotel room in Boone, a town about 50 miles northeast of Burnsville, Truett received a notification telling her movement was being recorded on a camera installed in their bedroom.

Through the spotty video, Truett could see her mother-in-law sitting on the bed, playing with her dog, Bou, and two cats, Zelda and Mittens.

“When we finally saw her and heard her voice, we started crying,” Truett said. She had worried that her mother-in-law, who has multiple sclerosis, had run out of medicine.

The camera has a chat feature and, after a few attempts, Truett was able to speak with her mother-in-law directly through the speaker.

“We spoke to her for about close to what felt like four hours, just hearing her and seeing her smile, seeing my dog whine,” Truett said. She and her husband planned to drive home through newly cleared roadways Tuesday.

Man ascends mountain to find loved ones and a stranger

Carlton Gardner set out Monday morning to locate an aunt, uncle and his in-law's family, who he hadn't head from since Thursday. His relatives live in Pensacola, North Carolina, a neighborhood in the Blue Ridge Mountains, just south of Burnsville, that was devastated by the flooding.

With bottles of water, some food and a gallon of gas, he drove as far as he could before he got out and started hiking. As he ascended the mountainside, Gardner spotted his mother-in-law on the side of the road. She, along with several of her sons and others, had decided to try to walk down the mountain after four days without rescue.

Gardner pressed on and found several relatives at their Pensacola home – the last people in his family who were unaccounted for. Though he was eager to let his mother know everyone was OK, he made one more stop at a stranger's home.

Since the weekend, Gardner's mother, Dona Gardner, had been active on Facebook pages where people shared the latest whereabouts of their missing loved ones. Scouring the various groups for news about her own family, she came across a woman's post that listed an address just a short walk from Dona Gardner's relatives. Dona Gardner promised the woman her son would stop by the home.

Carlton Gardner did just that and discovered the woman's loved ones were safe. He texted his mother, who then notified the woman.

"Everyone who has connections to those mountains knows, you check on your neighbors," Dona Gardner said. "That's just what everyone does."

On Tuesday, Dona and her husband filled 30 gallons of gasoline to give to their relatives and share with residents throughout Pensacola as people chainsaw through trees blocking roadways and power their ATVs, the vehicle of choice for many in the highlands.

FM radio becomes 'a lifeline' amid mass service outages

FM radio stations have provided residents who have no power or cell service uninterrupted news coverage of the crisis unraveling across the Southeast.

WNCW-FM, an NPR affiliate based in Spindale, North Carolina, is among the stations serving the region. Its signal stretches from parts of Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

“Our employees are everywhere,” said Joe Kendrick, the station’s director of operations and programming. “Communication is rough, travel is dicey,” he said, adding that the conditions have hampered efforts to report on the aftermath of Helene and its impact especially on western North Carolina.

The station, with a limited news staff, has teamed with other radio outlets in the region to send reporters out to the affected areas. It also has worked to be a conduit of information and resources for people, but it also offer some normalcy to those still staggered by the storm, playing music in between news and updates.

“We broadcast throughout the storm, amazingly,” Kendrick said. “We had a handful of people who here over the weekend either live on the air or working on other programming.”

FM radio, he and the team at WNCW know, is vital to communities cut off from other forms of communication, especially when the power is out and internet access, often spotty in rural areas anyway, is severed.

“It’s a lifeline,” he said. “One of our primary duties is to relay information. WNCW was created to give better information and service to this really remote region, and we keep that front and center in our minds all the time."

Contributing: Amaris Encinas