MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
President Biden has announced that up to a thousand active-duty soldiers will deploy to flood-ravaged North Carolina. Today, he said they will speed up delivery of lifesaving food and water and medicine to isolated areas that have been hit by the remnants of Hurricane Helene. Recovery across mountainous areas of North Carolina and Tennessee has been slow, and people are grappling with a disaster many never imagined could happen. NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports that one solace has been the kindness of strangers.
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JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: In Newport, Tenn., across a winding road from the Pigeon River, an entire block of homes stands emptied out.
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LUDDEN: Front yards are mud pits, piled high with ruined furniture, ripped-out flooring, drywall. Don Reeb is now pulling up the subfloor of the one-story home he owns. The day the storm hit, the person he rents to sent videos, but Reeb was still in disbelief.
DON REEB: I just could not visualize, in this house, you know, the furniture and the refrigerator floating up here to the windows.
LUDDEN: He shows the mark on the wall.
REEB: Yeah, the water was, you know, just up here.
LUDDEN: That's above your waist.
Like others, he has no flood insurance. He estimates replacing absolutely everything will cost 50 grand.
REEB: Oh, it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt.
LUDDEN: Reeb is pleased the place has been stripped down so quickly, and he says it happened with a ton of unexpected help. The day before, a group of strangers just showed up. In fact, there is a steady stream of people volunteering their time and labor.
A few houses down, an orange forklift dumps a mattress and wooden dresser into a truck bed and smashes it down.
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LUDDEN: The operator is 22-year-old Tyler Venerable, whose home is safe on the other end of town.
TYLER VENERABLE: I have a business here, have this equipment and, you know, there's people in need, so we're just going to, you know, give back to the community.
LUDDEN: People not hit by Helene are connecting on Facebook and creating an informal network to help their neighbors. Venerable sees others pass out jugs of water so people can flush toilets. He also shares his number at the dump with those lugging one item at a time.
VENERABLE: I just think that's what we're supposed to do. I'd be upset if I was sitting at the house, so...
LUDDEN: The owner of this house is sitting on the front porch, watching every single item of her long-time home get carted away. Trudy Hall is 56, and says the help she's gotten from strangers started the day of the storm.
TRUDY HALL: My friend next door here, Jennifer, had called me, and she said, Trudy, get out, it's in my basement. I said, what? I said, where am I going to go?
LUDDEN: The neighbor gave her the number of a man up on the hill who took her in. Hall has two sisters who were also flooded out. What are the odds? - she says. She's now living with a fourth sister. Her co-workers at a nursing home have also stepped up with support, and even their relatives, including someone's 81-year-old father-in-law, who helped clean out her house.
HALL: How about that? People are good.
LUDDEN: She cannot imagine a future anywhere but right here in Cocke County.
HALL: I'm going to be back in this house, girl. I ain't a quitter. We Cocke County, we tough. We Cocke County tough girls. We got this - not a quitter.
LUDDEN: Of course, it's a big hit financially. And as we talk, a tear slides down her cheek.
HALL: Oh, honey, I've been crying since this happened. Yeah. It's all good. We're alive.
LUDDEN: Still, she's not sure exactly how she'll manage.
HALL: But, you know, you're going to do what you got to do. As my brother said, room by room, we'll get it done, Trudy. We will get it done. We'll fix that room by room, so don't worry about it.
LUDDEN: As we leave, a co-worker brings lunch, and two women from a church show up with bags of wipes, water jugs and cleaning supplies.
Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, Newport, Tenn.
KELLY: And NPR's Marisa Peñaloza produced this story. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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