Happy to Be Alive

But for those affected by Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton — two storms so potent their names will likely be retired in a nod to how powerful their legacies will continue to be — living through those emergencies quickly became a story worth sharing.

UNH Magazine heard from many in our greater Wildcat community affected by the storms — some without basic utilities for weeks and with trees toppled over onto carports, others offering boots-on-the-ground support and at least one with a more bird’s-eye view of storms such as these, but the same compassion for those in their path.

Here are some of the storm stories we collected just before the holidays:

Asheville resident Michelle Tremblay ’12 is used to prepping for big storms — she’s from New England, after all, so she knows the drill: stock up on batteries, charge your phone, buy some bottled water and groceries, and wait it out.

But she had never experienced a hurricane before, so when she and husband Brian Nute ’11 woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning on September 27, they were shocked.

“Winds were whipping, trees were going everywhere, it almost sounded like a tornado,” she recalls. Four hours later, she saw the SOS on her phone: no cell service, no internet connection.

She was frantically trying to get online — as a millennial, she says, “I was raised with technology; it’s always on and always connected. And there we were, no way to contact anyone.”

On Day 3, she says, they found Blue Ridge Public Radio on the AM frequency in their car — a lifeline to learn about the scope of the destruction.

Their house wasn’t drastically damaged; for the first few days, they went back and forth between the house and a hotel in Charlotte.

“There has been so much resource sharing of tangibles — an extra jug of water, people sharing food that they knew would eventually spoil in their freezer, cooking on the grill instead of in the kitchen where there’s no power,” she says.

She and Brian’s house became the site of a water brigade for a while — they found a spring that runs off the side of their driveway. Soon enough, they invited a neighbor to hook up a five-foot-long piece of PVC pipe to it so people could fill up buckets to flush toilets and for other uses. Some residents were running flush brigades: bringing buckets of water to the elderly or homebound who couldn’t get out, so that they could flush their toilets.

She’s heard from fellow Wildcats, too. “A lot of folks from college have been coming out of the woodwork. In big life moments, anything good or bad can bring you closer to the people that maybe you lost touch with; it’s been nice to reconnect with people who I hadn’t talked to in a while.”

When she spoke to UNH Magazine a month after the hurricane, the biggest concern was “mystery water” — reports from city officials were changing day to day about whether or not the water was safe to use for washing, and it was not safe to consume.

They’ve found workarounds, feeling a bit like storm-survivor innovators for coming up with new ways to do things without the benefit of water, electricity or internet.

Maybe that’s the lesson, she says. “When you overcome some of these challenges in a way that makes you feel proud that you’re being innovative, that you had a creative moment; it keeps the adrenaline going. You can feel some sense of happiness when that happens.”

She pauses, then adds: “But at the same time, I really just want to be able to take a shower.”

Joe Barrett ’06 sees the aftermath of Hurricane Helene a bit differently than some others might. Fifteen days after the storm hit, he was seeing his neighbors’ struggles as something akin to disability.

Barrett was a nontraditional student when he came to UNH. He had a mild traumatic brain injury in 2001, “So I returned to school at age 40 to work with what I had left in my brain that was still functionally fit for employment. Presently I’m 63,” he says proudly. He graduated cum laude with his bachelor’s in therapeutic recreation, and since then has been a health and wellness coach with the YMCA of Western North Carolina and a yoga instructor at LNM Yoga, which he runs with his wife, Ellen.

So he knows what it’s like to face challenges — for him, medical and physical — and overcome them.

In Asheville, he and Ellen, who has also dealt with illness and disability of her own, say it’s as if residents there have been disabled by the infrastructure that was destroyed in the storm.

“The trauma and the grieving are relatively similar,” Joe says, as Ellen adds, “You just learn to think, ‘At this very moment, I’m OK. I can’t live in the future or the past, but right in this second, I’m alright.’”

The pair has lived in Asheville for many years and sold their house in its northern section just last year, moving into a community a bit farther south in the city — a move that would seem serendipitous in the wake of Helene.

The community was built on what was previously farmland, and it turns out the farmer who owned Joe and Ellen’s property had a water pump out in his fields to keep his livestock watered — so when the city water wasn’t available, that pump served as a great resource.

Barrett says his time with UNH — and working with Northeast Passage’s Crystal Skahan and Matt Frye — taught him lessons that he’s carried with him throughout his career, as well as a mindset that is proving especially valuable amid Asheville’s recovery phase.

“They both accepted me just as I was,” he says of Skahan and Frye. In his own work with clients, “I learned how to be with a person I’m working with to the best of my ability so they feel I’m really there for them. They understand that I’m trying to help, and that creates a relationship that bridges across obstacles,” he says.

He hints that the lessons learned about community support and kindness are something anyone can appreciate, no matter where they are.

“If we can reach out and come together, to honor and respect what brings us together, we can nurture what makes a community stronger,” he says.

Was Jason Dunion ’92, who’s been a “hurricane hunter” with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for 15 years, surprised by Helene and Milton?

No — there had been plenty of scientific evidence in his world of meteorology in the months and weeks ahead of landfalls that these types of storms were coming.

But was he awed by them, just the same? Yes, absolutely.

Jason is a meteorologist at NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division in Miami, Florida. And during Milton, he was the field program director, pulling together personnel needed, designing the flight tracks that NOAA aviators would take to gather as much data as possible about the storm. All of which is then fed into the modeling system through the National Hurricane Center — “It’s like getting a CAT scan of what the storm looks like — all the winds, all the rain, in 3D,” he says.

In other weather events, he’s up in the air — flying in and out of storms several times during a six-to-eight-hour flight, typically in a butterfly pattern, he explains.

So what, in his expert opinion, made these two storms so remarkable?

“Helene jumped 35 miles an hour in a day; it jumped three categories to a Category 4 storm right before landfall — in just one day. Milton is the third most rapidly intensifying storm on record. That’s huge,” he says.

Secondly, it was the timing: two major storms, both rapidly intensifying, essentially back-to-back, geographically close to each other, was unusual.

He notes that since he started in meteorology in the late ’90s, he appreciates how much improved the forecast models have become — and his work, whether on the ground or in the air, is key to advances that ultimately are meant to lessen damage from storms like Helene and Milton. He sees his meteorology career as closely connected to his early career as a social worker, which he knows might surprise some.

“My work now looks very different from my social worker days, but I do still get that sense of making some small difference, and that’s important to me.”

Jon Cohen Miles and his wife, Christine, live in Fairview, North Carolina, a suburb of Asheville, about 12 miles southwest. He wrote in to his UNH Magazine class correspondent, Julie Colligan Spak ’85, with an update for his classmates.

“Thanks to all the UNHers who have reached out to those of us in Asheville, North Carolina, following Hurricane (later Tropical Storm) Helene. While the impact on our region was brutal, the challenges have been offset by overwhelming support, both within our community and from throughout the country,” he wrote.

His experience in Fairview was much like that of other Wildcats we talked to: neighbors pulling together to help clear trees off roads and properties, sharing food and information in a world without communication and limited transportation on flood-damaged roads strewn with power lines and debris.

“Shortly after, the elementary school by our house became the staging ground for the National Guard to send rescue helicopters and distribute water,” he continued in his correspondence. “Our local high school became the headquarters for the Red Cross and FEMA. Supplies came pouring in at such a rate that distribution centers at churches and businesses were able to store many nonperishable items to give out later, because some families will be in need for months due to the loss of homes, businesses and jobs.”

As Asheville slowly recovers (keep in mind, the area only got water back in mid-November, a full two months after the storm hit), Miles is finding the silver lining.

“It will be a long road to recovery, but each day gets a little better, and the outreach from outside our region has made us all feel so much less alone than we did in those first few days.”

On the day UNH Magazine reached Marcia Ghidina ’90G ’94PhD, volunteer disaster emergency crews were in her yard, removing a tree that had fallen on her house.

With chainsaws buzzing in the background, she told us her story.

She lives in Gerton, North Carolina, about 10 miles east of downtown Asheville, a town hard hit by the storm. In addition to the large oak tree hitting the third story of her house, another leveled her carport and her car inside. “Our neighborhood is a creek right now,” she shares of the water and mudslide damage, with at least two people’s homes being washed away.

“We’ve been processing this very gradually. I tend to think I can handle things pretty well, but at first, it’s just shock. Right after the storm hit, everyone’s just checking on each other, wondering if everyone in our little community is alive and OK.”

After earning both her master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology at UNH, she moved to North Carolina in 1992 and had been a professor, department chair and program director until her recent retirement.

Those first few days were the worst, she recalls — “we were totally on our own, but then help just started flooding in.” She has a propane-powered generator, which has been a help, as has the support from neighbors. “The community aspect of support has just been astounding,” she says.

As for advice on being prepared from what she’s learned from this experience, Marcia says even the most prepared were caught off guard by Helene.

“Ultimately you can only do so much, and one can’t fully prepare for a disaster of this magnitude,” she says. “Beyond having a backup plan for power, water, shelf-stable food and heat when needed, there really isn’t much else to do besides ride it out, help each other and be grateful for what remains — especially being alive.”

When it seems like the worst day of someone’s life, Art Shaw ’79 wants to make sure they know: someone cares about you, and we’re going to figure this out.

That’s why Art, retired professionally from the Red Cross but still a committed volunteer, signs up for two-week stints to be dispatched to disasters and emergencies around the country.

In September, he got the call: he was headed to Tallahassee. But at some point on I-81, he got another call: change of plans, they told him, you’re headed to Asheville.

And so, for two weeks, he and other Red Cross volunteers camped out in a high school shelter on cots — “just me and 150 of my newest friends in a beautiful gymnasium,” he jokes of the volunteer force that served thousands of hot meals to those left with little to nothing after Hurricane Helene decimated the area.

“You meet amazing people, both the residents and your fellow volunteers,” says Art. Asheville was his eighth deployment over the last eight or nine years, he says; he’s been to the scene of floods, hurricanes, big fires like wildfires or more localized emergencies like apartment building fires around the country.

One of those busy days was spent with residents in tiny Spruce Pine, North Carolina, population about 2,100. Hardly any of the residents he handed a meal to had insurance, and many of them were living in tents because their homes had been destroyed.

“You can make a person’s week just by finding them some food, a hot meal, a pair of shoes, or getting them connected to the right people to get their medicine back that they might have lost,” he explains. “I try to give hope to people and let them know somebody’s thinking of them. Actually, what I say to them is: ‘This is from the American people, we’re going to try to help you through,’ because the Red Cross is run on donations and volunteers.”

As a former fundraiser for the organization, Art of course encourages donations to the Red Cross, but says there’s a lot you can do for free — especially donating blood (he donates platelets regularly) or volunteering from home.

He predicts federal agencies like FEMA and organizations like the Red Cross will be in western North Carolina for the next year or more. He thinks of those residents he met in Spruce Pine in those two weeks, and knows that even weeks and months later, many of them will still be living in the tents or hastily constructed 8×8 sheds they are using as temporary shelter.

“For those people, this will go on for years. It just never stops.”