On the evening of September 26th, and early morning hours of September 27th, Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida, and began a path of destruction and devastation that the communities that were most impacted could never have prepared for. Entire towns have been wiped away as if they never existed. Parts of Western North Carolina are still in isolation due to highways being washed away by flooding that was so far inland, nobody could have seen it coming.
Homes have been destroyed, livelihoods vanished beneath the waters.
The known death toll has hit 230, and there are still hundreds of people missing.
Cities and communities are still reeling from the category 4 hurricane; and now another category 4 is heading straight for Florida, and is already strong enough that more than one meteorologist has cried on the air because of the devastation that is inevitable.
Hurricane Milton is predicted to break landfall near Tampa as a category 5 hurricane with a deadly storm surge of 8 - 12 feet on Wednesday morning. The state of Florida has been doing what it can to prepare while continuing to struggle in light of Helene.
There is nothing that can be done to stop the storm.
It’s going to do what it’s going to do.
But here’s what you can do once the storm has passed, and it’s time to find friends, and assess the damage.
Share requests for aid from verified organizations that are working in the affected areas.
Donate money to trusted charities and disaster relief funds.
Volunteer as a virtual support, or in post-disaster relief if you have the knowledge and know-how to do so.
Advocate on your social media channels so that people can connect with resources.
Donate blood if you are safely able to do so. Blood banks are already stressed after Hurricane Helene, and that need is going to intensify after Milton. Having national stores available can literally be the difference between life and death for many people.
A week from now, check in on the people you checked on when the storm passed. Do it again the next week. And then the next. Remembering that the need for help doesn’t vanish just because the spotlight has faded can make a very real difference in the lives of those who have been affected by the storms.
There was nothing we could do to stop the storms from coming— short of changing our collective human behavior a few decades back, but that’s a conversation for another day— but we can control how we respond. And we can either sit in our dry homes, safely removed from the situation and say “wow, that looks bad,” or we can say “my countrymen are hurt, how can I help?”
We would like to encourage you to do the latter. At the end of the day, we are one nation. And our countrymen are hurting.
