HHurricane Helene unleashed record rainfall across parts of Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina and Tennessee, becoming one of the deadliest hurricanes in modern times and leaving affected regions with health problems for years.
Some impacts, such as the flooded factory that produces 60% of the nation’s IV supply, will reverberate across the country.
In western North Carolina, the mountains are peeling away. The rain fell on the already soaked clay soil, washing away mud, rocks and houses, sending everything – buildings, cars, roads, water pipes – into raging rivers beyond the imagination of residents.
Jerry McNeely’s home in Swannanoa, North Carolina, miraculously remained standing when five nearby homes were swept away by a 230-foot mudslide.
“I had to do something,” he said. He rushed outside to help. After 45 minutes of digging through mud and rubble in a neighbor’s collapsed house, McNeely spotted a toe, painted purple, shining like a beacon. Other neighbors arrived and performed a heroic rescue of the woman, who was trapped under a beam.
It took 18 hours to evacuate his neighbor due to leg injuries and head trauma, but she is now in stable condition, McNeely said. Another neighbor, a man who was thrown from his mobile home into the slide, suffered a broken back and died from his injuries before medical help arrived; his wife died instantly.
Immediate health concerns in the aftermath of the disaster included complications from injuries, a lack of clean water and safe food, and difficulties in accessing medical supplies And treatments such as insulin, oxygen and dialysisespecially given the power outages and closed roads.
In a crisis like this, “you can’t separate yourself from people,” which puts you at risk of infectious diseases, said Melody Gardner, a former nurse who lives with her mother in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and manages rental properties in Swannanoa.
“I’m very concerned about the flu and Covid,” she said. Covid continues to circulate at high levels across the country, and another winter peak is expected as flu season approaches — yet few people typically get vaccinated against either so early in the respiratory season, she said.
Asthma flare-ups and breathing problems are also likely to increase due to mold and standing water. And in Conyers, Georgia, residents were told to take shelter after a fire at a biolab.
Rescue workers have delivered truckloads of drinking water, but in areas like western North Carolina where water pipes have washed away, McNeely believes it could be months before the region has running water again.
That raises concerns about sanitation, including the spread of viruses such as hepatitis A and stomach flu, especially when people don’t have enough water to wash their hands regularly and don’t have access to functioning toilets.
‘In the mountains we are used to losing our power, but losing the water supply is unusual. It’s really unprecedented,” said McNeely.
In places where Helene was spared the worst of Helene’s wrath, another threat looms: online rumors. Officials in Columbia, South Carolina, have done this repeatedly debunked rumors about the safety of drinking water after rumors spread that water service would soon be shut down due to pollution.
Pharmaceutical company Baxter has closed its Marion, North Carolina facility – the nation’s largest manufacturer of IV and dialysis solutions – after flooding and damaged infrastructure led to nationwide shortages of IV fluids.
In the longer term, the region is likely to suffer from the worst access to medical care and the lingering effects of stress and trauma, new sources said. research published Wednesday in Nature.
“The impact of hurricanes on mortality extends well beyond the immediate aftermath of the storm, and we find that it actually lasts for as long as 15 years,” said Rachel Young, an environmental economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the authors of the study.
The researchers studied 500 hurricanes and tropical storms in the US over the past 60 years and estimated that 7,000 to 11,000 excess deaths occur after storms like these – about 300 times more deaths than official counts.
“Hurricanes and tropical storms are a much bigger public health problem than anyone previously thought,” Young said. These effects even extend to the health of babies born after the crisis, highlighting the need for more prenatal and postpartum support.
And the consequences of these tragedies are often uneven.
“Black populations are much more likely to die — about three times more likely than white populations,” Young said.
Rebuilding lives and homes will eat into people’s savings, if they had any — so if they have a medical problem years later, they may not be able to afford care, she said. State and local governments may also be cash-strapped after rebuilding, meaning they cannot invest as much in public health and health infrastructure. Pollution can also have long-term health consequences.
Everyone who responded to the crisis “did a heroic job,” Young said. “We don’t want these efforts to be in vain, and we must not forget these communities. Repairs and recovery will have to take place over the longer term – much longer than anyone previously thought.”
There is also the enormous stress of surviving these types of events and rebuilding in their wake. Stress can lead to heart attacks and other long-term health problems.
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“During the recovery period, there is an increase in things like stress and depression, and we often see an increase in suicides,” says Samantha Montano, author of Disasterology and assistant professor of emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Still, mental health providers themselves can become displaced, making it harder for them to offer services, she said.
McNeely noted that there will be a need for long-term wellness counseling as there was “an already existing need for comprehensive mental health care in western North Carolina, and this will only put more strain on an already struggling system” .
It’s also difficult for people to access medical care – and that’s made worse in rural areas, where it was already a challenge.
“It appears that hospitals and other medical facilities have been significantly damaged,” Montano said. Fifty patients and staff were rescued from a flooded hospital in Tennessee. Although all hospitals in western North Carolina managed to stay open, the staff has struggled to go to work on washed-out roads.
Few people in the area had flood insurance.
“One of the main causes of increased stress during recovery is the inability to find resources to rebuild your life, and based on flood insurance rates alone, it would not be surprising to see particularly high stress rates in many of these communities to see. ,” said Montano. “We’re easily looking at a recovery here 10, 15, 20 years from now for the communities that have been hardest hit.”
Ensuring that attention remains focused on these communities — and that resources continue to flow in — will be critical to the recovery of the region and the people who live there, Montano said.
As soon as it was safe to do so, McNeely’s wife and son left Swannanoa to stay with family, but he was forced to stay. He formed a group of ‘door knockers’ who went all over the mountain to check on the neighbors. He brought a generator to an elderly neighbor who uses an oxygen machine, and he brought boxes of water, food and supplies to anyone he could.
Now that the first responders have taken over that work, McNeely has to think about the future. “I don’t really know what’s next,” he said.
He is a professional fly fishing guide, but “our rivers, our ecosystems are complete disasters.” They are contaminated with chemicals and debris, and recovery can take years. Tourism is the largest industry in this area and many people will be unemployed until the area is rebuilt.
“I think we’re transitioning from a time where people need food because the grocery stores aren’t open, to a time where people need food because they don’t have an income,” McNeely said.
“It’s a difficult situation, I’m looking forward to it. You don’t know – what is your path now? And a lot of people feel that way,” McNeely said.
“If I had to send a message to everyone, it would be: please don’t give a short, passionate expression of love for our community. Please know that these needs will continue well into the future.”
A few days ago, he stared at the mudslide and “all these broken families and broken lives,” McNeely said. The woman standing next to him, who is from out of state, said, “They’re never going to rebuild this.”
He looked at her and smiled.
“The people of western North Carolina are resilient and we have been hanging on to these mountains like fleas on a dog’s back for more than 200 years,” McNeely said. “If you think a minor flood is going to keep us from rebuilding this community, then you don’t know much about the community.”