After Hurricane Helene pummeled western North Carolina, Blue Ridge Public Radio became a vital source of emergency and recovery information.
The station’s newsroom was tested as never before to deliver basic public safety information through live updates and news reporting. Initially, the news team was reporting on-air for 12 hours a day. Some staffers slept on the floor of the newsroom rather than return to homes that had no electricity or running water, said Laura Lee, news director.
“They have just shown tremendous resolve and dedication,” Lee said of her Asheville-based news team. “It’s important to them.”
The storm flooded the landscape of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains with nearly 14 inches of rain between Sept. 25 and Sept. 27. Roads were washed out or covered in mud, homes were irreparably damaged, power grids were knocked out and people lost access to safe drinking water. As of Monday, the state’s Department of Health and Human Services reported that 98 North Carolinians had died because of the storm.
Initially, BPR was the only source of information for people in isolated communities, according to Lee. People used car batteries or crank-powered radios to tune into the station’s daily broadcasts, which provided live coverage of government briefings and updates on road closures and the availability of potable water. Sometimes, entire neighborhoods would gather around a radio to listen to the broadcasts, she said.
In the early days of storm recovery, BPR focused on the needs of those listening via car battery, Lee said, reporting “what really might seem kind of [like] basic or elementary information.”
The water shortage has been the primary focus of the coverage from the beginning. The city of Asheville and governments from surrounding counties have announced specific, scientific information about water quality, said Tim Roesler, interim GM, who arrived at the station Oct. 2. BPR is helping listeners decipher those details. “We’re trying to bridge that … and make these announcements and guidelines practical so people who hear them can actually use them,” he said.
Roesler, a former SVP and GM of Minnesota Public Radio and marketing executive for American Public Media Group, agreed to lead BPR as the board seeks a successor to Jeffrey Pope, who announced plans to step down as GM and CEO in early September. Pope’s last day was Oct. 11.
BPR operates two separate networks of news and classical stations, and was also dealing with damage to its infrastructure. As of Oct. 23, two transmitters were either down or broadcasting on limited power. They’re both in remote locations that are difficult to get to, Roesler said. The music service was knocked out by damage to its server and is simulcasting news programming.
Buoyed by outside support
Like the neighbors and volunteers who came together to clear downed trees, share food and water or rig a car battery to power a radio, help for BPR arrived from many directions.
Other news organizations have provided food, Spanish translations of news coverage and technical support that made BPR’s online coverage more accessible on digital platforms.
The North Carolina Local News Workshop, for example, worked with news publishing software companies BlueLena and Newspack to create a text-only version of BPR’s website. The workshop, founded in 2020 and based at Elon University’s School of Communication, supports access to high quality local news for North Carolina residents. Some of its journalists volunteered to walk the dogs of BPR staffers who were too busy working, Lee said.
Journalists from other stations also pitched in to help edit and review stories, according to Roesler.
As support came in, staff scribbled the names of people who volunteered on a giant sticky note in the station, Lee said. She wants to write thank-you notes to each of them.
Reflecting on how tired the BPR team is, and how much more tired they would be without the help of others, she added, “I don’t think we can ever say thank you enough to them.”
Financial help came from Minnesota Public Radio, which raised funds Oct. 11 for disaster recovery at BPR and stations affected by Hurricane Milton, according to spokesperson Ellie Pierce. Roesler, who worked at MPR and AMPG for 20 years, said the state network allocated a percentage of the funds raised on the final day of its drive.
CPB came through with a $47,500 grant supporting BPR’s recovery during the week of Oct. 14, according to spokesperson Tracey Briggs.
The grant assists with the costs of engineering repairs; fuel for generators that are powering transmitter sites; editors, reporters and translators to work with the news staff; and assistance with accounting and payroll management, Roesler said. Costs of lodging for the temporary contractors working with BPR are also covered.
Roesler credited CPB for responding quickly to its grant proposal. “Their staff was on it immediately once we submitted,” he said. “We had a back and forth and there was never a delay.”
Colleagues from other stations had advised Roesler on how to prioritize and manage coverage of hurricane recovery efforts, he said. Now his advice to others in preparing for natural disasters is to “ask for help when you need it, because people will give it to you.”
In the flood zone
Reporter Gerard Albert III, who covers rural communities for BPR, witnessed the storm’s destruction from Brevard, N.C. The community, located in Transylvania County about 30 miles south of Asheville, is near the entrance of Pisgah National Forest. He volunteered to report from there because the area was “supposed to get it pretty bad,” he said.
Albert arrived Sept. 26 and planned to stay for a day or two, he said. Then, he watched as the storm intensified overnight. “Around 3 a.m., I just saw this shift of rain,” he said. “It was so much harder than it had been coming down [before].”
Albert attended impromptu community meetings, gathered stories and photographed rising flood waters.
“While I was out there, it was mostly being a five senses reporter,” Albert said. “Like what can you see, hear, smell, touch, feel? What is going on?”
When he tried to return to Asheville, officials turned him back. The road was closed due to flooding.
“It was like, ‘Well, okay, … I’m not going back to Asheville today,” he said. He was finally able to return on the morning of Sept. 29. On the trip back, he finally regained access to cell service.
Back at BPR, Albert did a two-way debrief of all that he had observed and reported.
Knowing how much people relied on BPR information has motivated Albert to keep going during the recovery. “There’s a certain obligation you have to your community, and it never shows more than in these moments,” he said.
Katie Myers, BPR’s reporter on the climate beat, has centered her questions on how communities in the region will survive the climate crisis. She’s focused on examining the storm’s impact on roads, houses and utility systems, and how public services can be improved for the next hurricane.
“I hope this is the last time this happens, but we do not have a guarantee of that,” she said. “If this was to happen again, how can our infrastructure withstand it?”