Disaster Date:09/27/2024
West Asheville, NC
Hurricanes
What Happened
Thursday September 26, 2024 Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in the Big Bend area of Florida. The storm pushed inland into Georgia, South and North Carolina and southern Virginia. Western North Carolina appears to be especially hard hit. At least 200 people died. Rescue crews battled mudslides, flood waters, and washed out roadways. MDS is renovating a church for future volunteers and then in the fall of 2025 will begin repairing homes.
What MDS Is Doing
MDS Volunteers will work on repair and new builds.
Location
Asheville is a city in western North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s known for a vibrant arts scene and historic architecture, including the dome-topped Basilica of Saint Lawrence. The vast 19th-century Biltmore estate displays artwork by masters like Renoir. The Downtown Art District is filled with galleries and museums, and in the nearby River Arts District, former factory buildings house artists' studios.
Stories from the Field
Weekly Reports
A group of ten young people, six women and four men, arrived from Penn Yan, New York, and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on Sunday evening, November 9, to work on repairing houses. A second group of ten, all men from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,...
Sunday, November 2, we welcomed a group of eighteen men from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Except for one, most of them have served multiple times with Mennonite Disaster Service. Ten of the men worked on the houses, and eight worked on bridges....
On Sunday, October 26, two groups of volunteers arrived at the RSAA (Reparations Stakeholder Authority of Asheville) building—formerly the Presbyterian Church—to work with MDS for the week. One group of seven men arrived from Blooming Glen,...
