ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Tropical Storm Helene was more than torrential rain and deadly flooding. The storm in late September was a wall of noise — howling winds, falling trees, landslides and rushing water. There were cries of disbelief as people watched homes and automobiles wash away. And there were screams as people were swept away in raging rivers and creeks or buried in the rubble of landslides.
When the storm subsided, there was silence — no electricity, no water, no internet, no cell service.
In the hours immediately after the storm, there was an information void — no one really knew what was happening outside their little part of the world.
People scrambled to get batteries or dusted off the old crank radios or used the radios in their vehicles to search for news.
“As cell phones started working again, our banks lit up. If there was ever a question of whether radio was still relevant, the answer was a resounding yes,” Melanie Wilkinson said Friday evening during a meeting with Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr.
During the meeting at the Asheville Fire Department’s Emergency Operations Center, first responders briefed Carr on the challenges they faced in responding to the storm and radio and television representatives discussed how they helped fill the information void.
“Frankly, a lot of the lessons we learned here we can use them nationwide,” North Carolina Association of Broadcasters executive director Lisa Reynolds said.
The storm’s aftermath
Sirens, helicopters, planes and chainsaws soon broke the eerie silence.
First responders were busy with search and rescue. People were using chainsaws to clear houses, driveways and roads. Soon, planes and helicopters joined the efforts.
“Our response didn’t start on Sept. 27. Our response started way before that. This was a culminating event of a lot of training, a lot of preparation and a lot of relationships. It was an all-hands-on-deck operation. No one could sit on the sidelines for this,” Assistant Fire Chief Jeremy Knighton said.
“People flock to two things during really bad times of disaster. They flock to organization and they flock to communication. We had information, we were sharing it with you, and we had organization.”
Knighton said many of the people involved in rescue work hadn’t talked to their families in 96 hours. There were more than 100,000 people without water, 1 million without electricity and 150 rescues by boat.
“We walked 1,067 miles during the search and rescue phase,” Knighton said. “There were 723 hazardous materials incidents that we mitigated. We did calls during this storm, while the storm was going on, they would have been career-defining calls within themselves. Everyone stepped up. It was awesome to see.”
Radio’s response
Carr was in Chimney Rock earlier in the day. “It’s just unbelievable seeing the devastation,” he said.
“What you all have done and have been through is really hard, and I think, frankly, there’s a lot of lessons learned for us that we can take from what you did as best practices and look to build nationwide.”
While Carr listened, local broadcasters touted the importance of radio in sharing information during Helene’s aftermath.
Tank Spencer, of WWNC 570 AM, said the station planned to go through the night that Thursday with wall-to-wall storm coverage as necessary.
“We didn’t really realize how necessary we were going to be,” Spencer said.
In the early hours Friday, all the communications went down, he said.
“Everything went out. Nobody had cell service, nobody had anything. We spent hours on the air that night with no information, no nothing, just talking to each other trying to talk through this thing because we knew everybody was at home in the same situation,” Spencer said.
“When I was brought up in the business, I was always told that radio can save lives. And I knew it was true, but this was the proof. Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina is proof that radio saves lives.”
Broadcasters became lifelines, sharing information about where to get food and water, which stores were open, which took cash and which took cards and they became sounding boards for people who wanted to talk about what they were going through.
“Instead of 6 to 10 (a.m.), we were on the air for hours and hours,” Wilkinson said. “So, what we decided to do as the Asheville Radio Group — all seven stations — is to open up the phone lines and go live. No editing, no nothing. So we can get out information. And that went on for hours and hours a day for weeks at a time.”
The phone calls
Wilkinson, co-host of the Mix 96.5 Morning Show, said it was all about relationships — the relationships broadcasters have with their listeners and the relationships broadcasters have with local, state and federal officials.
“Not a lot of people could talk to me right after the storm because they didn’t have their phones. They had no internet, no anything,” she said. “When they could start calling, those hours when they got cell phone back, it just killed the board. I mean, on, on, on, on. Story after story of people saying we were in our basement with the hand crank radio. I had a little bit of gas. I got my car and you’re the only news I’ve heard for a week.
“I talked to the mayor in every single town. I talked to the fire chief, the chief of police, they were able to call in. And so in those first hours, they could get a hold of me and get out on the air because we were live the entire time.”
That allowed broadcasters to get rescue and recovery information to the public.
It also allowed area residents to call in and ask for help.
“We had one lady on Tuesday. She had no cell phone service, no nothing. She calls and I can hear it in her voice. She’s sobbing, crying, hysterical. And I said, ‘Hey, it’s Melanie. We’re live on the air. Where are you? What can we do?'” Wilkinson recounted. “And she said, ‘This is the only call I can make. I tried to call 911. It wouldn’t go through. I remembered your number. I’m on the top of my car, I haven’t had food or water for four days. My family doesn’t know that I’m alive. Can you tell them that I’m alive? This is my name. This is my address.”
Wilkinson said a friend who is a first responder heard the call.
“He called and said, ‘I’m going to go over there right now.’ And so he went over there and called me later in the day and he rescued her. And we contacted her family.
“I didn’t know we were going to become a missing person’s hub of, ‘Hey, you know I haven’t seen them since Friday when the storm hit. Now, it’s Tuesday and I haven’t heard from them. We were able to save lives and connect people.
“We all get on the air and we all are, you know, just entertainers. We do our news, obviously. But it’s an entertainment kind of thing and at this moment we had to become emergency operators because we were one of the only lifelines that people had.”
But she admits it was tough.
“I was really kind of keeping it together because we’re entertainers, we’re trying to keep it light, keep it calm. But I was breaking up a little bit on a call of a missing person, a woman. She ended up missing her daughter. And she didn’t make it. And, um, I was cracked up a little bit. And one of your guys ( a first responder) called and I said, ‘I really just don’t know what to say.’ And he said, ‘You just became a first responder. That’s who you are right now. You’re doing a great job. It’s OK crying on the air for helping save these people’s lives.’ And that comment stuck with me. It’s not what I wanted on the 27th, but it’s what we became in the weeks after.”
In the first days after the storm, six broadcasters were manning the microphones at Asheville Media Group stations, Operations Manager Steve Richards said.
“We did it in shifts,” he said. “Some of us were here for 12 hours or more each day.”
Because there was no electricity, the stations were using a generator.
“We had a generator running here starting on that Friday,” Richards said. ‘It got hit by a tree and took us off for several hours until we got it back online in the afternoon that day.”
The stations worked on generator power until electricity was restored at the transmitter site almost two weeks later.
“I’m very proud of our entire team and the excellent job they did keeping our community informed during the aftermath of Helene,” Richards said.
Helping radio stations
Terryll Evans, owner of WPTL in Canton, said the town was expecting the Pigeon River to flood.
“This wasn’t our first rodeo. We had Fred come through, and it hurt Canton and Crusoe and Bethel. Our mayor came in prior to that week, that Monday. He said, ‘It’s not if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. And now it’s a time to prepare.’ And the town did prepare, but we didn’t expect what happened.”
The morning of the storm, Evans went to the radio station.
“My morning guy said we’re dead. I had power at the station. But my transmitter was on Chambers Mountain,” she said. “With all the trees and everything, I knew it was a waiting game.”
Evans said a town official arrived in a fire truck.
He said, ‘We found you. We need you. We need to get you back on air. What is it going to take?’ I said, ‘Get me up to Chambers Mountain. I need a generator.'”
Armed with a generator and 250-foot extension cord, “My radio station was back,” she said.
Next, she needed internet to get storm reports and other information.
A Starlink was airlifted from Raleigh to Marion, where it was put in a patrol car and delivered to Canton.
“We were full power by Tuesday and we could talk,” Evans said.
Working together
It truly was a collaborative effort, broadcasters said.
“There is room for everybody in this market,” Reynolds said. “It truly took the village. We all had to lean on each other at some point. And I love that we’ve been able to put aside competition because, at the end of the day, it is as we’ve said, what serves best.”
Asheville Media Group Market President Tom Davis said the storm showed the resilience of radio.
“As an industry, we go more and more toward streaming and pushing toward streaming, but you realize when there’s no internet, there’s no power, there’s no cell service, these broadcast towers are important,” Davis said. “What I got from it is just the realization of the need of the broadcast signal as a backup of anything, for everything that goes on.”
Carr agreed.
“You know, what you guys went through is unbelievable,” the FCC chairman said. “I think this is a situation we need to sort of take what you guys did and build that as the model nationwide.
Carr said it’s a challenging time for broadcasters because of the amount of ad revenue that’s going to Facebook and Google.
“This is an example of why we need to do something at the policy level to make sure the investment still flows to broadcasters. There’s just a lot we need to do to make sure that, you know, these local broadcasters are in power and continue to do it.”