In the immediate aftermath of Tropical Storm Helene, broken roads kept hungry people from accessing the grocery stores that remained open. But two-and-a-half months out, mountain communities are experiencing persistent challenges to food access.
In a region where many have to drive 30 minutes or more to reach a grocery store, dramatic post-storm unemployment rates threaten many families’ ability to afford food. Farms in the area were devastated and have mostly ceased producing food, and some grocery stores still remain closed. The public health implications of widespread hunger could not be more severe.
“We’re now essentially operating a crisis within a crisis: food insecurity, rural poverty, and rural food deserts, in the aftermath of the storm,” Micah Chrisman, spokesperson for MANNA Foodbank, told Carolina Public Press.
Local food banks and other organizations are stepping up to feed Helene survivors and identify long-term solutions to the crisis of food insecurity.
MANNA Foodbank
MANNA Foodbank, a major hunger relief organization that distributes food to 225 partner organizations across 16 counties in Western North Carolina, lost its Asheville facility entirely in Tropical Storm Helene.
“Over 6 feet of water passed through and blew out of walls,” Chrisman told CPP.
“All of our food reserves, all of our equipment, our offices, everything was destroyed. Then the building filled up with mold, and it was essentially a total loss.”
The only thing they were able to save was their fleet of trucks. They had moved them to higher ground as a precautionary measure.
Luckily, when the storm hit in late September, MANNA was already in the process of leasing a new headquarters — a former FedEx warehouse in the Henderson County town of Mills River. The organization had outgrown the capacity of its old facility in Asheville.
As early as 2018, MANNA’s board had actually raised concerns about keeping the essential facility on a flood plain, near the Swannanoa River.
Within three days of the storm on Sept. 27, MANNA was able to bring in reinforcements from Charlotte and start distributing food at the Western North Carolina Farmers’ Market. Operations have now successfully moved to the Mills River warehouse.
Last year, MANNA was feeding a monthly average of 158,000 people a month. Food insecurity was already a huge problem in the mountains before Helene struck.
Now, MANNA is anticipating feeding more than 250,000 people per month in the Western North Carolina mountains.
Some of the families MANNA serves do not have a gas station, grocery store, or pharmacy within a 30-minute drive, according to Chrisman. Many of these people commute one or two hours into Asheville every day, because there are no jobs for them in the region’s more rural areas.
“When the storm hit, there were whole communities that were cut off for weeks, unable to access food and water, because they were up in such steep, mountainous terrain,” Chrisman said. “Those terrain challenges are what have made this so devastating in the mountains.”
MANNA worked with the North Carolina Department of Transportation to identify viable routes for trucks to distribute food into the mountains. Delivery was a very difficult undertaking with no cell service, water, internet, and countless roads destroyed. Still, they delivered 900,000 pounds of food across the region in November.
“Food insecurity is going to be a long-term concern,” Chrisman said.
“It already was before this crisis hit. We’ve been focusing on food for today, but how do we secure food for tomorrow? That might mean partnering with farmers, who themselves have been devastated from Helene, or getting more people enrolled in SNAP benefits.”
Several business organizations have recently stepped up to help with funding for MANNA. Food Lion donated $1 million to MANNA Foodbank on Wednesday. Mission Health, which operates hospitals in Asheville and surrounding counties, donated $85,000 to MANNA earlier this week.
Other food access organizations
While MANNA is a major regional food provider, many smaller organizations help distribute food in other mountain counties, often in conjunction with MANNA.
In Mitchell County, Spruce Pine’s main grocery store, an Ingle’s, has been closed since Helene struck in late September. It sustained major flooding, and is not expected to reopen until May 2025. The only grocery store that remains open in town is Walmart.
Starli McDowell, director of Mitchell County Shepherd’s Staff in Spruce Pine, said the food organization is feeding more people than ever before.
“Every road to Mitchell County was out,” McDowell told CPP.
“We’re now continuing to operate in emergency mode, but people can come in as often as they need. We’re giving out meat, eggs, canned goods, and emergency supplies, and we are absolutely slammed. MANNA brought us a big load of food on Friday, and we’re just giving out as much as we can as fast as we can.”
Cleaning supplies and paper towels have been among the greatest non-food needs of people coming to Shepherd’s Staff, according to McDowell.
In Watauga County, home to Boone, the Hunger and Health Coalition has been addressing gaps in access to food and medicine for 42 years. The coalition saw an increase in the number of people coming to them for help since COVID.
After Helene, those numbers have once again increased dramatically, according to Maura McClaine, spokesperson for Watauga County Hunger and Health Coalition.
Every day since the storm, four or five new households sign up to receive the coalition’s food service. Their mobile delivery has been adapted to a post-Helene terrain: volunteers ride ATVs, mount donkeys or hike out to otherwise inaccessible homes. The coalition called it “vigilante relief.”
“This was something we never expected or anticipated,” McClaine told CPP. “We drive these bridges and roads every day, and never thought about the damage these rivers could inflict. But we know how easy it is for someone to be one paycheck away, one disaster away, or one personal crisis away from needing our help.”
Fresh produce, especially foods that can be eaten fresh without having to be cooked, are the most heavily requested item from the coalition, according to McClaine. The organization has been distributing EpiPens and insulin to those in need, as well as foods for those with conditions like diabetes and celiac disease.
How Helene made food access worse
Rates of food insecurity have always been higher in Western North Carolina than in other parts of the state, according to UNC Asheville health sciences professor Fabrice Julien. Now, Helene has made the situation even more precarious.
“I think about all the folks that have been forced to relocate, folks who have been displaced — these are the individuals who don’t have adequate access to food,” Julien told CPP.
This semester, Julien taught a course called ‘Public Health in Disasters.’ He is also a regular volunteer at MANNA Foodbank.
“There is a great need here, and you can see it by the record number of folks who are coming to MANNA’s parking lot distribution giveaways and other events,” Julien said.
Food insecurity affects physical and mental wellbeing in myriad ways, lowering life expectancy and increasing rates of diabetes, heart failure, mental illness, stroke, kidney disease, anxiety and obesity. Those struggling with food insecurity are often left with only the least healthy options to turn to.
“The national average of food insecurity has risen in the past few years, and that’s due to a number of reasons: inflation, stagnant wages, unemployment and widening income inequality,” Julien said.
“The new challenges to food security after Helene are also economic ones. Folks are unable to go back to work, or have to pivot and find other lines of work because what they were doing no longer exists.”
Julien is concerned about Helene’s devastating impact on farm production, which cuts off an important supply of healthy, fresh food. The increased costs of bringing in food from other counties, states, or regions could make produce more expensive.
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.