The school resource officer at BHS, Officer Kelly Cook, worked from the Sheriff’s Office during and after Helene. Photo and article by Scarlett Vanderlinden

With school closed after Tropical Storm Helene and the need for help growing in the region, School Resource Officer Kelly Cook traded the BHS hallways for the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office after the tropical storm hit Sept. 27.

Local police and fire departments were busy during Helene, Cook said. The storm knocked out all cell phone providers. “That itself was pretty concerning,” he added.

Comporium lines were going out, and some people could receive calls while others couldn’t. Some people would be able to call out to the Sheriff’s Office, while others couldn’t answer.  

Officers at the Sheriff’s Office were checking on people and had to evacuate people from places such as a mobile home park beside the river on Old Highway 64, and other places all the way down to Penrose. 

Cook said he was concerned that people could not call 911 to report incidents such as assault. 

“It was really concerning to me that we deal with one or two domestics (daily), between the county and the city (police),” he said. “There are domestics still happening. Some people could call 911, but most could not.” 

Officers did welfare checks on people and checked on houses that trees had fallen through. There were over 500 welfare checks done. They also had to contact family members of those people to update them. Family members were really scared, Cook said, especially if they lived in a different state and couldn’t get here to check on their loved ones.

Officer Cook worked a total of 130 hours in two weeks, 20 hours at a time. There were deputies going out of the county to assess damage and then trying to get ahold of the Sheriff’s Office with no communication channels other than radios. 

There were deputies who were stuck on mountains where the roads washed away, so they had to stay at the fire department.

Twenty students have lost their homes that we know about, Cook said. Some of the homes weren’t swept away, but are still ruined. 

When mobile homes get wet, they just ruin, he said; it’s harder to renovate mobile homes than it is to build a new house. 

Some people aren’t being allowed to rebuild their homes, while companies have started to come in and renovate others, with the city stopping them and telling them they have to pull permits. Meanwhile, the people who own the homes were being told they weren’t allowed to go back. 

During this time, however, Cook said everyone saw how neighbors and the community came together and helped each other. 

Students work as volunteer firefighters 

Two BHS students – Tinsley Greene and Gracyn Searcy – are junior firefighters who worked with the Brevard Fire Department to help with downed trees and power lines down and electrical fires in Rosman.

The students helped respond to a house that had toppled and slid, with a family of two trapped inside. They also had to get on boats and take people across the river. 

Tinsley Greene, left, and Gracyn Searcy are junior firefighters who helped with Helene response after the tropical storm hit the region on Sept. 27. Photo by Scarlett Vanderlinden

Because people couldn’t make calls, firefighters had to go throughout their district and knock on doors to investigate and see whether people needed help.

Their work took a toll on them when they saw people who were deceased or when they couldn’t find missing people, they said.

Article by Rosa Olivares and Scarlett Vanderlinden