By Esteban Fernandez, Times West Virginian
FAIRMONT, W.Va. — Flying over North Carolina, Fairmont Firefighter Dusty Lambert can see the true scale of Hurricane Helene’s devastation.
“You can see the muddy landscape that scars all the valleys in the area,” Lambert said. “You can spot many, many landslides and slips from the air. It’s quite apparent, even from the sky. You don’t have to be on the ground to see how much damage was done.”
Lambert is one of several Fairmont and Marion County residents pitching in to help victims devasted by Hurricane Helene. The hurricane cut a swath through six states and so far the death toll has risen to more than 200, according to The Associated Press. Entire towns have been swept off the map, as towns not typically affected by hurricanes faced a category four storm for the first time.
Lambert flies for Operation Airdrop, a nonprofit comprised of pilots with airplanes and ground crew with a mission of supplying remote places that don’t have open roadways yet. Lambert departed Thursday for Concord, North Carolina, just outside Charlotte. Once he arrived, the organization dispatched him on supply runs to small airports north of Asheville.
Lambert said the damage is hit and miss. There’s no damage at the Concord Airport, but one of the airports he flew into was underwater four or five days ago.
Judy Twyman, of White Hall, a deli/bakery manager at one of the major chain grocery stores in Marion County, answered an email from her company looking for volunteers for the company’s recovery team. She found herself in Greenville, South Carolina, restocking shelves left empty after the hurricane destroyed all the products in the store.
“We would pull out a whole pallet and people would be there, ‘I need this kind, give me two of these,’” Twyman said. “It’s just amazing. At one store I worked two days straight, we had all this dairy and frozen food stocked. The next day, we came back and they were empty.”