As Hurricane Milton surges toward Florida this week, hospitals should prepare for a spike in suicide attempts like those seen among victims of Helene.
A nurse told DailyMail.com that Mission Hospital in Ashville, North Carolina saw roughly 300 new patients on September 28, with many displaying signs of an overdose and even a gunshot wound.
The ‘Biblical devastation’ swept away roads and homes, downed trees and power lines, and killed at least 200 people in its wake.
Many residents of Ashville believe their community has been forgotten due to a lack of efforts from officials who have yet to send aid in the last week since Helene made landfall on September 27.
Hurricane Helene has so far claimed the lives of more than 200 people, but hundreds are still missing
Residents of Asheville, North Carolina said they haven’t received aid from FEMA or the Red Cross and the rescue efforts have mostly been made by private people and those within the community
Hurricane Helene has left a trail of devastation and many of the lives stolen have been widely publicized including a 74- and 78-year-old couple who died holding each other in bed and a seven-year-old boy and his grandparents standing on a roof moments before it collapsed, sweeping them away in the floods.
But in Asheville, a city of nearly 94,000 people, no one knew disaster was heading for them until it was too late.
Residents didn’t receive flash flood warnings or orders to evacuate, but when the rain came bucketing down they knew they were in trouble.
‘When we woke up that morning, it felt like just any other morning. We didn’t think that hurricane was going to be that big of deal,’ Mi Truong, a 32-year-old nurse at Mission Hospital, said.
When the power went out and water stopped running, she said hospital staff started to panic about how to treat patients hygienically, but within hours the situation became much more dire.
The hospital has a capacity for about 80 people, but by the end of the day, the number of people had surged to roughly 300.
Mi Truong (right) with her husband Randy Kenner (middle) and stepson (left)
‘There was a lot of mental health issues coming in, a lot of suicide attempts,’ Truong said.
Although she wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital, Truong said other locals woke up on Sunday morning to massive floods and the hurricane’s victims in their backyards.
‘At first, I thought this was just rumor, but it’s been confirmed with our contacts that there are bodies found in trees,’ said Truong.
She explained that her husband, Randy Keener, is a HAM radio operator and received information from local police about ‘one guy who said he just went into his backyard one morning and just saw a deceased person in his tree, so this is real scary stuff.’
More than a week after Hurricane Helene swept through the area, Allison Faust, 33, said she’s still running on a state of disassociation and adrenaline as she tries to help the people who weren’t able to escape Asheville.
‘Obviously the biggest problem is the flooding and death, but there’s no resources, there’s no communication, there’s no news,’ said Faust, who has lived in the area on and off since college.
Faust said she was lucky to escape the ‘Biblical destruction’ unscathed, in part thanks to her friend who she came across when her car broke down while trying to search for gas and other supplies.
The pair hunkered down for the night at Faust’s home and it was during this time that it struck them just how severe the storm would become and said they had to support each other’s mental health to avoid spiraling out of control.
‘We buddied up together, and she stayed the night over at my house because nobody had power. But when she woke up and I wasn’t done sleeping … I gave her my car, and she drove home and, like, cried and journaled and then came back,’ Faust said.
Allison Faust (pictured) said the town needs help as people struggle to escape
‘You kind of just trade back and forth with what the other person needs to feel okay.
‘You know, I think you have like 50 percent of yourself running on adrenaline and kind of disassociating, trying to get stuff done, because you have to do stuff, and then the other 50 percent you’re having a mental breakdown,’ she continued.
‘You just kind of trade back and forth with whoever you’re around and if they’re having a mental breakdown, it’s time for you to be on adrenaline, and if it’s your turn to break down, then they have to.’
She continued: ‘I swear, if there were not cheap beer and cigarettes going around, everyone would just be in the fetal position, rocking back and forth.’
As soon as they were able to leave the house on Sunday, they located a shower station after spending days without any running water to clean themselves.
‘People don’t understand how important that is because there’s so many dehumanizing things happening,’ she said.
‘Like my friend had to change her pad in the middle of the sidewalk. And you’re just dirty and you just want to feel clean.
‘And at that point, the only thing you need is hope and a semblance of reality.’
Faust was finally rescued by her dad around in the early hours on September 30 after he drove 11 hours nonstop from Indiana to rescue her.
But on the way, his transmission blew and as he arrived he shouted for his daughter to get her things and go for fear the car engine would give out before they could escape.
‘I was packing furiously and just whatever I could get in there, in the door, because I still didn’t have power, and threw it in there, grabbed the cat and got in.’
But as they pulled away, the engine died. ‘He was like, ‘This is my worst f****** nightmare. And I’m like, Yeah, same. I’ve been living my worst f****** nightmare for so many days in a row now.’
They drove nonstop through the night to get back to Indiana, ‘and the whole time, [the transmission] was about to die, but we just had to book it,’ Faust said.
‘And we knew if we stopped, we’d get stranded.’
The hurricane destroyed streets, power lines, infrastructure and downed trees, making it difficult for Asheville residents to escape the area
Truong and Faust both admonished that they haven’t seen any government help come to the area, and that most of the supplies, rescue missions and relief they’re getting is from other members of the community and private people driving in to help.
‘There was no one… like, the National Guard kind of showed up, but they were just standing around,’ Faust said.
‘I don’t know what their purpose was. There was only like, two that I saw and then no FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency], no Red Cross, just days and days and days of sh** not getting better.’
Asheville locals need resources and funding to help them rebuild, but Faust said that even filling out a FEMA application is no guarantee that you’ll get aid.
She explained that FEMA applications offer several trick questions, and if you misunderstand just one, it could cost you funds that you desperately need.
So if you answer no to the question ‘Was my house damaged in the hurricane?’ because a tree didn’t fall directly on your home, you’ll be denied but the question actually applies to downed power lines on your property or no access to water.
‘Also, the FEMA calls are displayed as potential spam. So people aren’t answering because it’s doesn’t say FEMA or whatever,’ Faust said.
‘So there’s just a lot of information that people need, like the biggest needs are drinkable water and airlifts, rescues, wellness checks, gasoline and information, because people want to get the hell out of there, and they just can’t.’
Truong said she’s seen a lot of ignorant posts saying people shouldn’t live in or near ‘natural disaster prone areas’ but the Blue Ridge Mountains where Asheville is nestled has rarely seen events like Helene.
Asheville is not used to being a victim of natural disasters and was wholly unprepared, with only a few hours notice of flash flooding heading their way
The area last flooded in 2004, destroying 140 homes and killing 11 people but none was as bad as the catastrophic flood of 1916 when tropical storms caused water levels to reach 17 feet high and resulted in 80 deaths.
In 2016, the City of Asheville questioned if the city was ready for an event of that magnitude, claiming it was.
‘Today FEMA has mapping systems that can predict how much rainfall we are going to get, and which areas are going to be flooded,’ Kelley Klope of the Asheville Fire Department said on The City of Asheville site at the time.
‘The City can help notify people ahead of time through its Everybridge emergency notification system (called Citizens Alert), announcements to local media and messages on our social media channels.’
Yet, when it came down to it and Hurricane Helene tore through the area, destroying everything in its wake, residents didn’t receive enough notification that could have sent them to safety.
Alice Bauman (pictured) said it’s likely that a combination of the state’s lack of acknowledging climate change and poor infrastructure that led to the devastation witnessed in Asheville, North Carolina
Alice Bauman, 31, studies ecology, geology and forestry and is a resident of near Swannanoa River Road, an area that was under a story and a half of flooding at its worst.
She said the severe damage might have been prevented if it weren’t for climate change denial, which she claimed runs rampant throughout the state.
North Carolina proposed House Bill 819 in 2012 which mandated that the scientific models used to predict the rising sea levels must be based on historical data and not on up-to-date models that account for acceleration due to climate change.
After receiving backlash for years, House Bill 819 was updated in 2020 to look ahead a minimum of 30 years to address sea level change.
‘There is a direct correlation between higher sea level and stronger storms which push more water inland,’ Bauman said.
‘Unfortunately, the North Carolina law is just a symptom of a culture of climate change denial among the leaders in the southeast who are in charge of planning the budgets for things like emergency management.’
Infrastructure reportedly hasn’t been updated in years, despite a 2020 report demanding the local government take steps to improve it
As a result of the damage, locals have suffered mental health issues and Mission Hospital saw an uptick in suicide attempts
She added that another likely reason was that the local government hadn’t taken steps to secure the area after filing a report in 2020 that the infrastructure was out of date.
‘Securing those areas and putting in that infrastructure would be an expensive project with no immediately tangible product or results, so it’s a hard sell when funding for public projects is limited,’ Bauman said.
The local government should have been more proactive in taking steps to protect the area, should a major flooding occur, according to Faust, who said the infrastructure has needed to be updated for years.
‘It’s been disappointing, but not surprising, to observe the lack of lifesaving infrastructure that could have been in place if it had been a priority,’ Bauman said.
‘This disaster was geologically inevitable and our infrastructure was absolutely not prepared.’
For those who want to assist in the rescue and supply efforts in Asheville, North Carolina, you can visit the site belovedasheville.com.
