Becoming Helpers in a Hurricane
If Hurricane Helene felt like an ambush, Hurricane Milton felt like a brazen second wave of attack, creeping up opportunistically on a region already reeling from disaster. In times like these, we tend to rightly focus on the devastation, on the human and material cost of the tragedy.
But we as individuals and as a society are always in the process of becoming, and who we become is greatly influenced by what we pay attention to. If all we can see and speak of is tragedy, we become tragic figures ourselves, our joy and personality consumed by a daunting narrative that settles into an inner hopelessness. If on the contrary we ignore tragedy, or speak over it, we become simple and ignorant people over time — blissful perhaps, but blind to reality, and incapable of responding intelligently to disaster when it comes for us.
But if we look tragedy in the eyes and also look beyond it, to its inevitable repair — if we pay attention to what healing looks like — we can become people of hope and generosity.
The frequency and intensity of these hurricanes is not a coincidence. Ocean temperatures are rising at a rate that is surprising even to climate scientists, due at least in part to our inability to adequately reign in our impact on the climate. The damage caused by these and other climate disasters will almost certainly continue to become more frequent and more catastrophic. Whether we will one day find a way to slow — or even reverse — climate change remains to be seen, but one thing is desperately clear: as our environment becomes more volatile, it becomes increasingly urgent that we become a society defined by our ability to care for one another.
So, let’s take a moment to pay attention to the human models of this behavior — those who enter the wake of catastrophe to seek and find ways to give. We often call these people “the best of humanity” for a reason: we understand that their behavior is the pinnacle of human dignity, and that who they are is what we all aspire to become.
Those who feed
“It’s a mix of emotion,” says Ahmad Alaraj, a chef in Florida who partnered with World Central Kitchen last week to feed victims of Hurricane Helene. “It’s joyful and sad at the same time.” World Central Kitchen was founded by celebrity chef Jose Andres in response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and has responded to dozens of emergencies since, partnering with local restaurants and kitchens to provide over 400 million free meals. This video on their site provides a quick but fascinating glance at the logistics of the current WCK effort in Florida.
Alaraj is also well-acquainted with disaster. Last year, after his food truck was destroyed by Hurricane Idalia, he responded by moving his operation into a local community resource center and giving away over 5,000 meals. Even in normal times, he sees his work as an opportunity to give, often giving away extra food at the end of the night, and providing free meals at holidays. You can hear him and others speak about their experiences in the Helene recovery effort in the 2-minute video below. As one of the interviewees in the video puts it, “If it wasn’t for people helping, we wouldn’t exist right now.”
Those who rescue
Over 6,000 members of the National Guard were deployed to the states impacted by Helene, and over 5,000 more were mobilized in response to Milton. We often focus on the death tolls in these disasters, for good reason, but it’s worth remembering that the numbers of those rescued are greater. Guardsmen have rescued hundreds of people, cleared thousands of miles of roads, and delivered over a hundred thousand pounds of food, water, and supplies.
In an interview about the Helene response in North Carolina, the state with the highest Helene death toll, Lt. Col. Jaymes Hines describes his response to being woken up at 6:45am by a call to action from his authorities. “What that meant for me was to hug my kids, hug my wife, tell them that I love them and that I was going to go support local communities in our nation.” This is what it looks like to live a life characterized by the dignity of service, of giving.
Those who shelter
When we hear of emergency evacuations, our focus is usually on who is forced to leave (as well as who cannot) and what they are leaving behind. Less attention is paid to a similarly important question — where do all of these people go?
“When we think about evacuation we often think about these long lines of traffic going out of state, when in reality you may only need to go a few miles,” Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), said Wednesday on CNBC. Our ability to provide emergency shelter in times of crisis is the result of the coordination of hundreds of schools, hotels, churches, and other local organizations, whose owners and employees recognize their relative safety as an opportunity to give. The American Red Cross coordinates dozens of these shelters, pairing volunteers with local organizations and ensuring consistency in their accessibility and offered services.
There are many other types of helpers, who find dignity and meaning through the work of carrying our communities through disaster to the hope that lives on the other side. There are emergency managers who coordinate responses, local news teams who spread reliable information, those who heal, those who bury, those who rebuild. There are also those who help before the fact — the workers at weather and geological agencies who track and warn, those who design safe building codes and those who adhere to them, those who prepare emergency stockpiles, everyone who devotes their time to reducing the impact of climate change.
Finally, there are those who give financially. Although giving our money may be a lesser form of giving than giving our time or our physical presence, it is still giving, and it is a form of giving that is sorely needed. As the 19th-century economist Henry George put it in Progress and Poverty, his popular treatise on the causes of poverty in society: “The real limitation is not the want of capital but the want of its proper distribution.” The resources necessary to heal the damage of these hurricanes do exist — they just might be sitting in our pockets. Those of us who give from home may not be the true heroes, but it is up to us to make sure that “the best of humanity” have what they need to be successful. Many disaster relief organizations, including those linked above, accept donations and will make great use of them.
And if you can give in no other way, then at least give a bit of your attention to these givers, and to those who tend to tragedies that come in other forms. Because in choosing what we see, we choose what we will become. Instead of looking away from the harm, or getting lost within it, try to look beyond it, to those who repair. By doing so, we learn what it looks like to not just be victims of tragedy, but those who overcome it.
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” — Mr. Rogers