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Hurricane Helene devastated communities throughout Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. The National Weather Service dubbed Helene a “1000-year storm” due to the rarity of the location and the extreme impact it made. 

Entire towns in Western North Carolina were wiped out. Bridges to major cities, like Asheville, were swept away making evacuation and relief efforts impossible. Citizens were trapped in homes without water and electricity, still a scarcity in more remote areas. 

While LaGrange and the mountains of North Carolina are hundreds of miles apart, in times of crisis, they feel like neighbors. And, when neighbors need help, you help. That is exactly what a group of LaGrange and Troup County natives did. 

It started with Damon Watford and Bubba Sticher. Damon had called his friend, Sticher, saying he had friends in Swannanoa Valley, NC who were in need of a hand after the hurricane had swept through. 

This was not an out-of-the-blue call for the duo. Sticher had recruited his friend to help with relief efforts following the devastation of Hurricane Harvey in Texas. Neither worked for non-profits or relief organizations, but both felt a pull to the area. Bubba worked for Jackson Heating and Air at the time and suggested the company take AC units and supplies. Damon had experience kayaking which was needed in the post-Harvey flooding.

“One of the things that we noticed when it comes to these types of storms, when there are evacuation notices is everybody forgets about the elderly,” Damon said. 

He recounted going to an assisted living facility to help a woman trapped on the third floor. When they found her she had only 30 minutes worth of oxygen left in her tank. 

Damon and his father, Jerry, had friends in the areas most affected by Helene. Their plan was to go and help them haul fallen trees, repair fences, etc.. 

“It was just going to be me and my dad. Bubba was not going to be able to make it. And I think it took about 20 minutes, and he was like, ‘There’s no way I’m not going,’” Damon laughed. 

Once they got Bubba involved the party expanded. Cole Freeman and Cooper Norris were added to the trip. 

Then, they put out a request for medical supplies, baby food and formula, hygiene products and other necessities on Facebook. The post blew up resulting in him driving around Auburn picking up donations from total strangers. 

They filled their cars with supplies, and Jerry towed the excavator up North. Despite a midnight arrival, the group got an early morning start, helping Frank Purser access his damaged barn. Once fixed, the group started asking locals and scouring social media to see where they could lend a hand. 

A local volunteer fire department pointed them to a road that led to six houses, which had been washed out, trapping the residents. Damon said it was not unusual to get somewhere and find out that they are unable to help with the equipment they have. 

Purser connected them with the owner of Appalachian Tool and Machine in Swannanoa Valley. The business became their headquarters, with some sleeping in the shop and others camping out in their trucks. 

Sticher said he was hesitant to take volunteers, Freeman and Norris, due to the situation. But they proved instrumental to the team.  

“I’m not real big on taking volunteers, especially to a place like that, because you need to be self-sufficient. If we get split up, or anything you need to be able to fend for yourself.”

The team was directed to an elderly woman who, like many, had their route in and out of their home or neighborhood blocked. 

“I think they started that job at dark, Cooper and Cole and they didn’t stop for 13 hours straight, and they fixed this lady’s driveway,” Damon said. “We came back the next morning, and they were done…It was honestly mind-boggling, the work they were able to accomplish overnight they never went to sleep. They kept working the next day.”

The group worked Friday through Sunday, whether it was on the excavator, with chainsaws or getting supplies where they were needed. 

After a short disbandment, with everyone going back to their day jobs, they again did the long drive to North Carolina the following weekend. This time they left on Thursday, some taking off work to do so. 

“The devastation, you would never think something like that would happen there. And just how beautiful western North Carolina is,” Damon said. “It was kind of surreal seeing it this trip because all the leaves were changing.”

More people were added to the group during the second weekend. 

“[West Fraser] ended up hauling a trailer smoker,” Damon said. “Somebody donated over a dozen Boston Butts…I think they made a couple of 100 meals.”

Other people who made the trip were Tony and Shelby Lopez, Gary Thigpen, Justin and Hunter Webb, Hannah Holcomb, Garrett Kiblinger, Dakota Osborne and Ryan Richardson. All the team members brought skills, from mechanics to operations and logistics. During crises, utility is key. 

“Especially right after the storm, you got folks wanting to go up there and do search and rescue and all that kind of stuff…If you’re not trained and specialized in that, these distribution centers, these churches they need people to help sort, deliver goods, cook for people, there’s folks that do have water and they’re washing people’s clothes for them just all kinds of things that you don’t need special skills for,” Damon said. 

On the second weekend, the team had their mechanics working on tractors and other heavy equipment to get them back on the road, they had fed around 200 people, cleared roadways, and helped efforts to find missing persons. 

Sticher proudly recalled a memory of the mechanics in the group. The owner of a machine they were working on wanted to give them a $200 tip. The first three declined the offer.

“The last one who’s like, ‘All right, fine, give it to me’. They drove to the next Church, which was Broad Creek Baptist Church, and they wouldn’t put it in the offering plate,” he said.

Both Damon and Sticher lauded the volunteers, both local and far-flung, they met while there. 

“There was a volunteer group of miners from West Virginia that came in with a bunch of heavy equipment… they cut a temporary road from Chimney Rock to Bat Cave to restore access to all the displaced families in that area,” Damon said. 

“We were some of the first ones to drive on that new road to Chimney Rock because the West Virginia miners got the road done…we took the side by side down through there,” Sticher recalled. “It was just some devastation I had never seen in my life. You see all the families out there just digging through the trash, picking up pictures and toys and stuff. It got to me.”

Damon recalled being confronted with the enormity of the storm’s destruction at an RV park where the majority of the trailers were washed away. 

“There were a bunch of trees by the lakeshore, and I just happened to notice, while I was talking to somebody,” he said. “I looked across and there’s this about six or seven feet up the trees there was this weird coloration change. And I got to look, and I was like, that’s the water level.”

National relief organizations like Cajun Navy and Savage Freedom and local organizations like BelovedAshville and churches spearheaded the relief efforts in the more rural and hardest-hit communities around the state. 

“We try to hit the little small towns like Lagrange would be kind of a bigger town to where we try to go,” Sticher said. “FEMA, all the government assistance goes to the bigger cities first, and then they branch out to the smaller cities. We try to go first to the smaller cities because we know that they’re not going to get help anytime soon.”

Damon said for those wanting to help the effort, which is still very much ongoing, they can support those groups. Sticher has also set up a Venmo, @Helene-Donations (Helene Donations Sticher) for their small group to buy supplies as they continue to make more trips to the area.