BURNSVILLE, N.C. (RNS) — A kerosene heater still sits in the middle of Mack and Lucille Thomason’s living room, a testament to the trauma they and others in their rural Yancey County North Carolina community experienced when Hurricane Helene unleashed its raging waters last fall.

The Thomasons, retired in their 70s, saw 4 feet of water slosh up to the door of their doublewide trailer, destroying the floor, furnace, back porch and most of their kitchen appliances. The hurricane also damaged their well, leaving them without water. For weeks, Mack Thomason had to walk to the creek behind the house to collect water in five-gallon buckets so he and wife could flush the toilet. 

They were nearly despondent and living in a borrowed camper when their daughter told them she found someone who could help with repairs. That someone was Keith Ashe, the site coordinator for Baptists on Mission in Burnsville, a town about 7 miles north of Pensacola, where the Thomasons live.

“He said he’d be back, so I looked for him and, true to his word, they’ve been here,” Thomason, 77, said. 

Hurricane Helene caused unprecedented damage in the mountain region of Western North Carolina, where hurricane-level rainfall is rare and only 4% of residents have flood insurance. The September storm destroyed about 4,400 homes and damaged 185,000.

Gov. Josh Stein estimated the damage at $60 billion, with about $15 billion needed for housing. On Monday (April 14), the Federal Emergency Management Agency denied North Carolina’s request to continue matching 100% of the state’s spending on Hurricane Helene recovery.

Six months later, that recovery has just begun. Securing funding and contractors for home repairs has been a huge challenge for many homeowners, especially those with limited means. The Thomasons — he worked third shift at a textile factory, and she was a housekeeper at a nursing home — were lucky. Baptists on Mission, an auxiliary of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, came to their rescue on Jan. 21.

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Volunteers installed two ductless heating and cooling systems, called mini-splits, rebuilt the back deck, hung two new doors and surrounded the raised trailer home with new vinyl skirting. Best of all, one volunteer, a well drilling specialist from Texas, was able to repair the well.

Samaritan’s Purse, another Christian humanitarian relief organization, provided the couple with a new refrigerator, dishwasher and freezer to replace the ones the flood rusted. 

The two Christian groups are among a slew of faith-based organizations that rushed to help in the wake of the storm. About half a dozen are still there, but Baptists on Mission and Samaritan’s Purse — both based in North Carolina — have made a long-term commitment to remain. The two organizations plan to help homeowners there, cost-free, for as long as it takes — likely another five years.

Samaritan’s Purse is the bigger of the two organizations and has provided 111 campers for people whose homes were uninhabitable, 179 new vehicles, numerous appliances and other household goods, said Luther Harrison, the organization’s vice president of North American ministries.

Based in Boone, it also plans to build new homes from scratch: 36 have been approved and 10 are under construction. The organization has budgeted $523 million — all from private donations — to help with Hurricane Helene recovery. Of that, it has already spent $61 million.

“This hit our backyard, this hit people that we work with, people that we know, and it has really opened the eyes of the community to what Samaritan’s Purse is able to do in these communities and just show them that God loves them,” Harrison said.

But when it comes to home repairs, many have turned to Baptists on Mission. To date, the organization has completed repairs on 203 homes damaged by the hurricane. It’s working on an additional 230 and has 500 more homes on a waiting list.

In Helene’s aftermath, it perfected its rapid repair method, which aims to make a home livable quickly, even if cabinets have yet to be installed or the trim around the doors isn’t complete. The idea is to get people back into homes and then return later to complete the finishing touches.

Baptists on Mission has six rebuild centers in Western North Carolina, where its thousands of volunteers can sleep for a week or a weekend while they work on homes. The organization feeds them three meals a day and provides the tools and materials to work on homes.

Many volunteers are skilled at construction trades; others work alongside a team leader who guides them. The volunteers, young and old, come from Baptist churches, not only in North Carolina but across the country.

“People ask me all the time, why am I a Southern Baptist?” said Stan Jenkins, a pastor from Henderson, North Carolina, about 260 miles away, who brought half a dozen church members to volunteer in Burnsville last month. “Here’s the reason I always give: I don’t know any other denomination that does mission work like we do. I mean, we take mission work seriously.”

Baptists on Mission has proved itself during past disasters. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it rebuilt 720 homes in Gulfport, Mississippi.

After hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018, the North Carolina legislature took notice of their work. In 2023, the North Carolina General Assembly awarded it $5 million for future disasters in the state. This January, the governor announced he was giving the group another $3 million for Hurricane Helene assistance.

And last month, North Carolina’s leaders approved an additional $524 million for Helene recovery. Baptists on Mission might get a small slice of that, too.

The organization is mainly funded by Baptist churches across the state. This year’s budget from church donations is $1.6 million. Government funding pays for construction materials that will help put people back in homes faster.

“We didn’t use any state funds or federal funds to set up and manage our rebuild centers or to pay to coordinate our leadership,” said Richard Brunson, its executive director. “We’re just using federal funds and state funds for building materials.”

To avoid endangering volunteers, Baptists on Mission typically doesn’t repair roofs.  Homeowners who receive money from FEMA must use those funds before Baptists on Mission will help. Typically, money from FEMA is not enough to cover all the necessary repairs, Ashe said. The type of fixes Baptists on Mission undertakes are typically no more than $40,000.

Ashe, the Burnsville site coordinator, had been volunteering for Baptists on Mission for some 15 years. He is a pastor at Coweeta Baptist Church, about 110 miles south of Burnsville near the Georgia state line, and taught vocational trades at a community college for 10 years before moving on to ministry full time.

But when he came up to survey the damage from Helene on Oct. 3, 2024, he decided to join the staff. He now trades off weeks in Burnsville and back home tending to his church.

“Just seeing the people, how humble people were — every one of them would say, ‘Go check on my neighbor, he’s worse off than I am’ — and then to see their faces turned from hopelessness to hope after we offered them assistance, that’s just worth it all,” he said.

Last month, Ashe visited several sites where volunteers were working. At one of the homes, volunteers were laying new vinyl flooring to replace hardwood floors damaged when the hurricane caused a mudslide, shattering windows and causing an electrical surge that killed all their appliances.

Christy Fox, who owns the home with her husband, Jeff, recalled how Baptists on Mission came over one bitterly cold day this past winter. Her husband showed them the house while she stayed in the car.

“My husband came out and he was like, ‘Well, they can’t help with the roof, but they can help with … ’ — and he started naming off all these things that we were trying to do ourselves. And I said, ‘Really?’” Christy Fox said. “’When are they gonna start?’ Because so many places have long waiting lists. And he said, ‘Monday.’ And I said, ‘Are you serious?’”

Jeff Howell, who retired last month as Yancey County emergency management coordinator, said he had a good relationship with Baptists on Mission and was impressed with their operation.

“There were a lot of shady people that came in and some really weird stuff that started happening” after the hurricane, Howell said. “It was not good, but it was very comforting to know that we always had Samaritan’s Purse and Baptists on Mission right there.”

And he added, for homeowners, there’s an extra level of comfort: “Having local people that talk like we do, it just kind of puts people at ease,” Howell said.

For the Fox family, as for the Thomasons, the assistance has been a blessing.

“Just seeing progress in your home, that helps a lot,” Christy Fox said. “They’ve made it a whole lot easier.”

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