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Hurricane Helene swept across the Southeast, causing major flooding and destruction throughout North Carolina. The News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer have a collection of stories about Hurricane Helene and the damage it left, particularly in Western North Carolina.

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Cooler temperatures are coming to North Carolina, just as many in the western part of the state are working to rebuild what Helene destroyed.

Organizations, businesses and individuals quickly stepped up, providing monetary help, time, expertise and other supplies.

Some are requesting items such as warm clothing and blankets to prepare for fall weather.

Several readers asked us where they could drop off clothing donations specifically. Here are some places in the Raleigh and Charlotte areas that are collecting clothing donations to send to Western North Carolina.

▪ A group of local volunteers are spearheading a clothing drive for storm victims called Clothed With Care. Through December, you can drop off new or gently-used clothing, shoes and essential items. Location: 3410 St Vardell Lane, Charlotte.

▪ ABODE at Arringdon is collecting donations including clothing, cleaning supplies, non-perishable food and other essentials. Location: 5817 Arringdon Park Dr., Morrisville. Phone: 919-924-0458

▪ Cary VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) is accepting donations for storm victims Western NC. Essential items, including water, non-perishable food, first aid kits and personal hygiene products, can be dropped off Mon-Thur from 4-8 p.m., Fri 4-9 p.m., Sat 3-9 p.m. and Sun 3-7 p.m. Location: 522 Reedy Creek Rd., Cary.

▪ Jessica Dillon with Caul Group Residential publicly posted on Facebook that she is collecting items to drop off in areas affected by Helene. Dropoffs accepted until noon on Wednesday, October 9. She is also taking monetary donations and will purchase supplies. Location: 201 Shannon Oaks Circle, Suite 200, Cary. Venmo: @Jessica-Dillon-29

▪ The athletic booster club for Millbrook High School, The Wildcat Club, is collecting essential items at the varsity football game vs Heritage High School Oct. 4 at 7 p.m. Donations bins will be located near the spiritwear table and main concession stand. Location: 2201 Spring Forest Rd, Raleigh.

▪ Patricia Machillanda, owner of Barbelt Apparel, is collecting clothing, towels, cleaning supplies, blankets, baby formula and other essentials to deliver to Western NC. She will receive items until Saturday, Oct. 5, during hours the Barbelt Academy is open (5-7 p.m. Friday, 9-11 a.m. Saturday). Location: 2900 Spring Forest Road, Suite 106, Raleigh.

▪ Raleigh Tide Cleaners is accepting gently used clothing to be donated to the Red Cross. Those that donate will receive $10 credit for their Tide Cleaners account to be used for a future dry cleaning and laundry order. Location: 111 Seaboard Ave ste 114, Raleigh.

▪ Salt Hair is partnering with Aura Salon to collect items to be dropped off through Monday, Oct. 7. Location: 3325 Rogers Road, Wake Forest.

▪ Savvi Tuxedos and Bridal Gowns will take donations of clothing, blankets, supplies, pet food and nonperishable items, as well as donations. Location: 6220 Glenwood Ave. Raleigh. Phone: 919-783-8911

Did we miss a local clothing drive for storm victims in need around the Charlotte or Raleigh areas? Let us know.

Have a question about your community you’d like answered? Or maybe a tip or story idea you’d like to share? The service journalism teams at The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer want to hear from you.

Like clockwork, one private plane after another taxied Thursday down the runway of a small regional airport in North Carolina to a hangar, where volunteers loaded them up with food, water, medicine and other badly needed basics.

Thirty or so minutes later, those planes were back in the sky and ferrying supplies from Concord-Padgett Regional Airport to communities across the flooded region, many of them almost completely cut off from the world by Hurricane Helene.

“Yesterday, we were moving so fast we were beating the turnaround times at O’Hare,” said coordinator Shaun Carroll, referring to Chicago O’Hare International Airport. “We were moving.”

Carroll is a member of Operation Airdrop, a relief organization founded after Hurricane Harvey in 2017 that enlists pilots with private planes and helicopters to deliver supplies to people stranded in isolated areas due to natural disasters.

In the past two days, 350 supply flights by fixed-winged planes have taken off from the Concord airport, Carroll said. Another 215 supply flights using helicopters have taken off from Hickory Regional Airport, which is about 60 miles northwest of Concord.

Follow live updates on the aftermath of Hurricane Helene

“The amount of supplies that have been donated, the number of pilots who have shown up with their own planes and at their own expense, has been amazing,” said Carroll, 36, of Durham, North Carolina. “Some of the pilots have been flying in with their planes already packed with supplies.”

Pilot Gerald Herbert, 60, who lives outside of New Orleans, said his Cessna 172 four-seater was already packed to the gills Thursday when he landed at Concord.

“I bought everything from baby wipes to underwear to Pop-Tarts and Animal Crackers for the kids,” he said. “I also got flushable sani-wipes, $120-worth of Band-Aids, Benadryl, Advil, you name it.”

A veteran photojournalist who currently works for The Associated Press, Herbert was in Florida last week covering Hurricane Helene when it made landfall and began its march north through Georgia and into the Carolinas.

“I’ve covered at least 20 hurricanes in the last 10 years,” Herbert said. “I had just gotten home and was planning to use this window of time to take a bike trip on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Then this happened.”

Herbert said that as he watched the reports of devastation emerging from western North Carolina, he knew he had to act. He said the region "is dear to my heart," especially Blowing Rock, a town 110 miles north of Concord, where he and his wife are thinking about retiring.

“When I saw how much damage the storm was doing up here, I just couldn’t sit still. I have a plane, I have the time, I have a credit card. I had to do something,” he said.

Shortly after landing in Concord, Herbert was dispatched on his first Operation Airdrop mission to another hard-hit area, Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

“I expect to make two to three runs today,” he said.

Ryan Holt, a 48-year-old anesthesiologist from Niagara, Wisconsin, said he learned of the effort while visiting a website frequented by private pilots.

"Then I started seeing some of the pictures of the devastation in western North Carolina," he said. "It's unimaginable."

Holt, who owns a Cessna 182, said he flew into Concord late Wednesday and was dispatched Thursday to deliver a planeload of supplies to Banner Elk, a remote North Carolina town more than 130 miles north.

"It was some challenging flying," said Holt, who has flown supply missions for other charity groups. "I landed on a private airstrip that was opened to us by the owner."

Holt said volunteer pilots are not allowed to fly missions at night for safety reasons.

"But I have to say, this has been such a positive experience," he said. "The people who organized this operation put their heart and soul into this. It was a total effort on their part. We're doing something good here."

Thursday was the fourth straight day at the airport for Carrie Lee, a volunteer who works as a corporate flight attendant. She spent much of the day in a hangar, sorting through supplies destined for delivery.

"Today what was needed was medical supplies, and we had to scramble when we realized we were short," said Lee, 47, of Cornelius, North Carolina.

Lee said she and two other volunteers got into their cars and raced to the supply drop-off area in in the parking lot of the Concord Walmart. They found what they were looking for, loaded their cars and raced back to the airport to get them onto a plane.

"This can be pretty physical work, so it's pretty tiring," she said. "But it's very satisfying. There's some good people in this world."

Corky Siemaszko

Corky Siemaszko is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital.

Call 704-329-3703 until 7pm tonight

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Neighbors in both North Carolina and South Carolina are in dire need of a hand in the wake of Helene, which hit the Florida coast as a Category 4 hurricane late on Sept. 27 before tearing through the Sunshine State, up through Georgia and into the Carolinas.

WCNC Charlotte is hosting a phone bank Today from 8 a.m. through 7 p.m. alongside the American Red Cross to accept donations. Call 704-329-3703 to make a donation.

Through Friday, the nonprofit Operation Airdrop is collecting donated supplies to fly from Concord to western North Carolina for Hurricane Helene relief. Operation Airdrop has identified multiple destinations, with the largest being Asheville Regional Airport (AVL). They are also working to reach additional locations including Boone that have significant needs, including remote areas.

There are approximately 30 helicopters and more than 50 airplanes transporting supplies, and all pilots are volunteers.

Operation Airdrop has identified multiple destinations, with the largest being Asheville Regional Airport (AVL). They are also working to reach additional locations including Boone that have significant needs, including remote areas. Another location is the App State Hickory campus which is located at 800 17th St NW, Hickory, NC 28601.

Flights began Monday morning from Concord Regional Airport (JQF), transporting supplies to Hickory (HKY) and Statesville (SVH), where they will be further distributed.

On Monday, out of Walmart and the Concord Airport, a total of 85 flights flew 50,000 pounds of supplies for hurricane relief.

WCNC Charlotte partnered with the American Red Cross to help gather donations to go to efforts that will help people impacted by Helene. We've launched a special web page where you can either select a monetary amount or enter your own. You can make donations using a credit card or PayPal account.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE

If you wish to donate by mail, you can print and fill out a donation form and mail it to:

American Red Cross PO Box 37839Boone, IA 50037-0839

Donations can also be made via phone at:

1-800-435-7669TDD Operator: 1-800-220-4095

Samaritan's Purse (Headquartered in Boone)

United Way North Carolina Helene Recovery fundraiser

Salvation Army Hurricane Helene Relief donation page

From above, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, looks almost serene — the hills’ jagged edges in fog, creeks and rivers twisting through the green like capillaries. From there, you wouldn’t know Gatlinburg’s babies don’t have formula.

But there’s been no running water in the area since remnants of Hurricane Helene tore through the mountain community on Thursday. Many residents still don’t have power.

Gatlinburg’s airport reopened Tuesday for the first time since Helene struck, and Jillian Gorrell was there to greet the seventh plane to touch down there that morning – a small CJ2+ from Concord, North Carolina. It was carrying over 1,000 pounds of diapers, baby formula, clothes and first aid supplies with eight more planes expected to follow.

“We desperately need medical supplies, baby supplies, cleaning supplies, trash bags,” said Gorrell, a resident of the area and lecturer in the school of natural resources at the University of Tennessee in nearby Knoxville.

With roads and bridges in the area devoured and mangled in Helene’s wake, it was the first assistance many in the area were able to get, she said.

“Roads are gone, landmarks are gone…,” Gorrell said, teary-eyed, with her voice beginning to break. “Our area is hurting, but we’re pulling together, and we really appreciate everything people are doing for us.”

The pilots making the delivery were volunteers with Operation Airdrop, a disaster relief nonprofit, that has mobilized to deliver thousands of pounds of donated goods to western North Carolina, southern Appalachia, and other hard hit areas. Some, including Byron MacRae and Owen Williams, take off from Concord-Padgett Regional Airport, just northeast of Charlotte.

“We got to Asheville about 2:45 p.m. on Sunday, and they had just gotten power back about 10 minutes before we were landing,” Williams said of the first trip he took after the storm, delivering 1,500 pounds of goods to the hard-hit Buncombe County city. “The mission has evolved with every trip we take as we learn more about what people need, what areas need us the most and how to spread the word to people that can help.”

Operation Airdrop pilots have carried canned food, utensils, cleaning supplies, diapers, bottled water, feminine hygiene products, first aid supplies and more to small airfields in the North Carolina mountains, including Ashe County, Wilkes County and Banner Elk, in addition to parts of Tennessee and South Carolina.

With help from the Experimental Aircraft Association and the Carolina Aviators Network, Operation Airdrop and affiliated volunteers delivered eight tons of supplies from Concord, Statesville and Hickory to western North Carolina on Sunday alone. On Monday, 50,000 pounds of supplies left Concord aboard 75 flights.

Getting crucial supplies to those in storm-battered Western North Carolina remains one of the top Helene-recovery priorities. It’s a massive effort involving federal, state and local governments, along with volunteers with groups like Operation Airdrop.

The organization started in 2017 after Hurricane Harvey dumped over 27 trillion gallons of rain in southeast Texas. Its founders, Doug Jackson and Robert Johnson from Dallas, flew supplies to the greater Houston area.

After Harvey, they launched Operation Airdrop, with the mission of delivering supplies in times of disaster to small communities cut off by storm damage that the Federal Emergency Management Agency couldn’t immediately reach.

“We keep an eye on the weather as soon as hurricane season starts, and when we saw this one coming, we immediately reached out to pilots to see if they could get ready to help,” said Shaun Carroll, a Durham resident who’s been volunteering with Operation Airdrop since 2018.

Carroll weaved through rows of supplies in an airplane hangar in Concord Monday, as around 100 volunteers sorted donations into neat stacks to be weighed and loaded onto waiting planes.

The whole place was humming with purpose. Volunteers loaded supplies onto pallets donated from a Walmart down the street. Pilots from around the country filtered in and announced they had a few hours to spare, as Operation Airdrop organizers huddled around a table in the back of the room, monitoring weather conditions and dispatching pilots to areas they knew they could reach.

“That’s the beautiful thing about Airdrop,” Carroll said. “It’s kind of like what Mr. Rogers used to say: ‘Look for the helpers.’ You’ll find them everywhere.”

On Tuesday, the Concord-Padgett Airport operation had reached its capacity for volunteers by 10 a.m. even as people continued to come in to offer help.

Ben Spells is a local organizer for another airlift effort in Statesville, which a group of local individuals put together in collaboration with Operation Airdrop. Water remains one of the most high-need items in communities impacted by Helene, he said.

“We’ve heard from several people that there’s either no water or there’s a boil advisory or water treatment plants are just completely destroyed,” he said.

However, water can require larger planes to transport it, since it tends to be heavy and planes have a limit on the weight they can move at a time.

“While water is really heavy, we’re trying to make sure we can get water to as many people as possible,” Carroll said. “Water purification is a really big thing we’re trying to get out there: LifeStraws, tablets, filters, that kind of thing, just because there’s a big water issue right now.”

Collecting donations is the easy part, Spells said. They get them from local individuals as well as corporations.

To distribute them, they reach out to organizations in hard-hit areas that can help, and, with communication severely limited in the region, it’s no simple task.

“We try to connect with verified people out there, like churches, nonprofits, food banks, fire departments, just folks that can meet the planes when they get there and tell them where to go. It depends on the location,” Spells said.

“We’ve honestly had a hard time finding people with a lot of people lacking electricity and cell service, but it’s getting easier as more people come back online,” he added.

In Gatlinburg, MacRae and Williams unloaded supplies from the CJ2+ into waiting pickup trucks ready to head to two local churches for distribution. Then, they fueled up, strapped back in and watched the green beneath them turn to white as they rose above clouds.

Time for another delivery.

Operation Airdrop will continue collecting donations of household necessities throughout the week, as long as roads in and out of western North Carolina remain blocked. Supplies can be delivered to the drop-off center in the parking lot of Walmart at 5825 Thunder Road NW in Concord.

This story was originally published October 2, 2024, 5:30 AM.

Follow more of our reporting on Helene in North Carolina

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October 04, 2024 3:38 PM

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Hurricane Milton continues to steadily strengthen as the storm remains over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Milton will pose a significant threat to life and property across parts Florida as it could make landfall as a major hurricane late Wednesday or early Thursday.

As of 5 a.m. CDT, Hurricane Milton was located near latitude 22.1 N, longitude 92.6 W, or about 195 miles west-northwest of Progreso, Mexico, and 750 miles west-southwest of Tampa, Fla. Milton is travelling east-southeast at 8 mph, with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph, making it a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. The storm also has a central pressure of 972 mb or 28.71 inches of mercury.

A Hurricane Warning has been issued for the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico from Celestun to Rio Lagartos. This means that hurricane conditions are expected within the next 36 hours.

A Hurricane Watch is in effect for the Dry Tortugas and the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico from Rio Lagartos to Cabo Catoche. Another Hurricane Watch is in place for the Florida Gulf Coast from Chokoloskee to the mouth of the Suwanee River, which includes Tampa Bay. This means that hurricane conditions are possible within the next 48 hours.

A Storm Surge Watch is in place for the Florida Gulf Coast from Flamingo, Fla., northward towards the Suwanee River, including Charlotte Harbor and Tampa Bay. This means that there is a possibility of life-threatening storm surge within the area with the next 48 hours.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico from Rio Lagartos to Cancun, meaning that tropical storm conditions are expected within the next 36 hours.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for the Florida Gulf Coast from Flamingo, Fla., to south of Chokoloskee, and north of the mouth of the Suwanee River to Indian Pass, as well as the Florida Keys including Florida Bay. This means that tropical storm conditions are possible within the next 48 hours.

With plenty of warm Gulf water ahead of it, the storm is expected to continue to strengthen as it moves northeastward over the next couple of days, and Milton will likely reach major hurricane status later this morning into this afternoon.

For the moment, there is nothing but water ahead of Hurricane Milton, with Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula just south of its track, but it is expected to be on a bee-line toward the Gulf Coast of Florida, where it will make landfall on Wednesday. Given the uncertainty at this point, residents from the Big Bend to the Florida Keys should keep a close eye on Milton’s track.

Regardless of where it makes landfall, impacts will be plentiful. The outer bands of Milton are expected to bring 2 to 4 inches of rain across portions of the northern Yucatan Peninsula and western Cuba. Through the rest of today, heavy rainfall streaming ahead of the storm may begin impacting parts of Florida between the I-4 and I-75 corridors, with more significant rainfall associated with the storm expected from Tuesday into Wednesday. By the time Milton passes, rain gauges could be up to 6 to 10 inches, with isolated totals up to 15 inches possible. This rainfall will likely lead to flash flooding, urban flooding, and moderate to major river flooding.

Flood Watches have been issued for central and southern Florida, including Tampa, Cedar Key, Naples, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Melbourne, Orlando and Daytona Beach.

Swells generated by Milton will begin to affect the southwestern Gulf Coast today and on Tuesday. These swells could lead to life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.

Residents along the Florida Gulf Coast, especially those in low-lying areas, should begin preparing for potential impacts from Milton, including heavy rainfall, life-threatening storm surge, and strong winds. Coming just two weeks after Hurricane Helene ravaged the Cedar Key-Tampa Bay region, be sure to not allow hurricane fatigue to prevent you from taking this system extremely seriously.

WeatherBug meteorologists will continue to monitor Hurricane Milton, so check for the latest information in your app.