BARNARDSVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — While Buncombe County slowly heals from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, one rural community is having to find its own remedies.

Barnardsville, N.C. is an outlying Buncombe County community of farmland, bridges and churches 15 minutes Northeast of Weaverville. Barnardsville may feel remote on the outside, but its residents are a powerfully connected people.

Perhaps that is why Barnardsville has endured, despite an absence of government relief efforts.

Construction equipment navigates destroyed terrain around Ivy Creek off of Dillingham Rd. in Barnardsville, N.C.
An unfortunately common site were the destroyed homes in Barnardsville, N.C.
A man dries his laundry on the porch of his home, where a flipped car rested in the nearby lawn.
A road alongside Ivy Creek in Barnardsville, N.C. had completely disintegrated during the storm.
A man uses his farm equipment to move displaced dirt in front of Carson Chapel Baptist Church in Barnardsville, N.C.
This colorful vehicle was surrounded by nothing but brown and grey as it sat with a smashed-in windshield.

“We never heard from them,” said Loretta Ball, a lifelong Barnardsville resident. “FEMA is not here. We have not heard from FEMA. We don’t have anything.”

According to Ball, who was assisting with the distribution of supplies at Barnardsville Elementary School, one of three community-organized relief sites, the only news Barnardsville has received has been from radio briefings. They have not had cell service nor official communication from the City of Asheville or Buncombe County government.

It was left to the Barnardsville residents themselves to pull a relief operation together.

Ball, with the aide of natural disaster response group The Cajun Army and local Brookstone Baptist Church, set up a resource distribution center at the elementary school. It is accompanied by two others at the Barnardsville Fire Department and Big Ivy Community Center.

The three Barnardsville disaster relief sites:

  • Barnardsville Elementary School, 20 State Rd. 2170, Barnardsville, NC 28709
  • Barnardsville Fire Department, 100 Dillingham Rd., Barnardsville, NC 28709
  • Big Ivy Community Center, 540 Dillingham Rd., Barnardsville, NC 28709

Ball managed to make a post to Facebook asking for help. Soon, the school was near-overwhelmed with donations and volunteers from all over. Brookstone Church was a big part of that.

“We established a protocol at church to set up a central location and we identified the communities that people weren’t going to and reaching. One of which was Barnardsville,” said Stephanie Carter, the Community Relations Director at Brookstone. “We were like, ‘Okay, we need to make a plan.’ The fire chief said ‘You seem like you’re logical and you can make it happen. Can you do that?’ Because, you know, they’re doing search-and-rescue.”

Ball and Carter took the responsibility on together. While Carter worked to gather resources at Brookstone, Ball began to gather volunteers at Barnardsville Elementary.

Loretta Ball, left, and Stephanie Carter, right, were two of the volunteer leaders at Barnardsville Elementary School.

Though it was not until Wednesday, Oct. 2 that resources could be distributed at the school, the operation got up and running virtually overnight. By Thursday morning, there was an elaborate drive-thru system in place, complete with organized stations.

Community members seeking aid at the elementary school can receive one of each of the following organized boxes, akin to care packages:

  • Food
  • Hygiene products
  • Cleaning products
  • Toiletries
  • Water

Clothing and pet food were also available at self-serve stations.

Mother and daughter volunteer pair Vanessa Candler, left, and Katlin Dockery, right, had journeyed into Barnardsville from Marshall, N.C. to assist at Barnardsville Elementary School.
Piles of pet food waited outside the front of Barnardsville Elementary School for those who needed them.
A woman sorts through canned goods in the gymnasium of Barnardsville Elementary School.
The organization of supplies at Barnardsville Elementary School went as far as bathroom and toiletry supplies.

Inside the school, volunteers bustled from table to table of the cornucopia of supplies arranged in well-organized sections inside the school gymnasium.

While the volunteers at the supply center worked to help people, other volunteers worked to find them.

With many of the roads in the rural region impassible, rescue volunteers embarked on ATVs and horses to find their stranded neighbors. One of those searchers was Lance Robinson, a teacher at North Buncombe High School.

Lance Robinson and his wife, Teresa Robinson, a kindergarten teacher at Barnardsville Elementary, were a central part of the volunteer committee. In fact, three generations of Robinsons were working at the school.

“You see this army?” Teresa Robinson said, gesturing to volunteers in the gymnasium. “This is an army.”

Mother and daughter volunteer duo Teresa Robinson, left, and Bronté Robinson, right, stand amid the supply piles in Barnardsville Elementary School.

One of the generals was the couple’s daughter, Bronté Robinson, 22, a graduate student at Western Carolina University and a lifelong Barnardsville resident.

Bronté Robinson was responsible for much of the supply organization at the site, as well as running communication between the school and the two other relief centers.

“So many people have called. I have some guy from Canton that called and said he can give us a lot of stuff, so I’m going to all the resource places to see what people need,” Bronté Robinson said. “Lots of people totally lost their homes and everything they have.”

Bronté Robinson and her cousin, Emilee Robinson, took a John Deere Gator UTV to the other sites to arrange food deliveries for stranded Barnardsville residents. As they departed the elementary school, a supply helicopter landed in the meadow beside it.

A helicopter unloaded supplies on Thursday, Oct. 3 in Barnardsville, N.C.

Another member of the Robinson clan, Nyle Robinson, stopped them on the way out. Nyle and Emilee swapped notes about an old woman, Marcia Kummerle, a fiber artist and goat farmer who had lost every animal she owned. Her farmhouse, Good Fibrations, was stranded in the middle of a field of rocks deposited from the flood.

Despite the conditions of her home and lack of supplies, Kummerle was hesitant to leave, Nyle said.

In a video Nyle Robinson took of the scene, Kummerle loosely quoted the 1989 film “Steel Magnolias.”

“What doesn’t destroy us only serves to make us stronger,” Kummerle said, standing among the rocks and wreckage of her farm.

Bronté Robinson and Emilee Robinson received new tasks during their check-in at the fire department. Emilee had a generator loaded into the back of the Gator for delivery. Bronté stood with leaders there and conferred about their next steps and immediate needs. Behind them, a bulletin board was posted with resources. There was everything from water locations and road updates to mental health resources and food preservation parties.

Bronté Robinson warns Emilee Robinson about a felled power line in the road as the volunteers travel to Big Ivy Community Center.
Emilee Robinson, left, and Bronté Robinson, right, were two young volunteers aiding the relief effort in Barnardsville, N.C. They pose here with their John Deere Gator UTV, one of several 4-wheelers used to transport supplies around the region.
Volunteers sit beneath tents at the Big Ivy Community Center distribution site in Barnardsville, N.C.
At the Barnardsville Fire Department, an information bulletin board was set up with carefully documented information, needs and resources.
Volunteers mill outside the donation drop-off site at the Barnardsville Fire Department volunteer site.
One detail of the Barnardsville Fire Department bulletin board offered hay and helicopters.
Volunteers embrace, plan and organize outside Barnardsville Fire Department.
Another detail of the Barnardsville Fire Department allowed people to post their missing persons and missing pets.

At Big Ivy Community Center, leaders were frank about the situation.

“We’re just trying to make sure people have food,” one woman said wearily. There had been a steady flow of traffic in need from 9 a.m. until that very moment, around 4 p.m.

In the background, kids played on the debris-strewn playground. The Big Ivy community pool was filled with murky brown water.

The Big Ivy Community Center pool was filled to the brim with murky water. It was surrounded by debris.

At every volunteer site, the need was clear. While the generosity of the Barnardsville community is impressive and heartening, Barnardsville still needs help.

Barnardsville desperately needs access to a Starlink, as well as pharmacy prescriptions and long-range radios.

The road into Barnardsville may be a straight shot off I-26, but the road ahead is filled with challenge for the tight-knit community.

The sign for Barnardsville Elementary School stands in front of its damaged playground serving as a beacon for the community.