A local counselor traveled to hurricane-ravaged North Carolina and Tennessee recently to help those still recovering from widespread damage and hardship.
Since 2017, private practice counselor Nita Evans has traveled to several communities across multiple states providing crisis counseling to those affected by disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes. Her most recent trip saw her visiting towns in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina including Hendersonville and Asheville.
Although she said she saw the worst of the worst during this trip, Evans said she also saw God’s hand at work, seeing many acts of kindness from organizations and volunteers across the country.
“What made this so different was the size and the total destruction of what it was,” Evans said. “…this one, it was just so massive and so many people that they’ll never know were taken.”
Evans began crisis counseling following Hurricane Harvey and has been to multiple states including Texas, Kentucky and Alabama, visiting the hardest hit areas following a disaster. When she travels to impacted places, she visits with local officials such as the mayor’s office, sheriffs and police officers, as well as pastors, to see what she can do to serve the community.
“So, I not only get a perspective from talking to individuals, just regular family people, but I also get from the police departments, the first responders and all of those, I get the facts on what has happened, what all has been affected, and so I get the full picture of what actually has happened,” Evans said.
On this ninth trip, Evans traveled across the two states visiting impacted communities, seeing the hurricane’s damage and listening to community members’ situations along the way. She planned to stay longer than two weeks, but less people were around as the weather got colder. She stayed in various locations throughout the trip, including a hotel for five nights in Hendersonville. At one point in her trip, Evans found herself staying at a Nazarene camp, as all hotels were full and no rooms were available at churches for her to stay in.
“The day that I got there, the next day, there were Amish there, they had let Amish come and stay,” Evans said. “So, I spent one night with the Amish there, and then when the Amish left, then there wasn’t anyone besides me at this camp.”
As she traveled south, she heard stories from police officers, one who told her they found a body 23 miles away and body parts in trees. One couple who had 51 acres of land said a bordering river was up 40 feet, and Evans said a family of 11 was taken away by a mudslide. Erwin, one town she went through, was like a ghost town, she said.
“I know of one family, the father was a veteran, his wife worked at Biltmore and they had a 14-year-old autistic [child],” Evans said. “And they lost what was on their property, but they moved into 600 square feet of the basement… the rest of the house I think was his parents or some kinfolk, and then that’s where they’re living, they’re living under those conditions. There’s just no place for people to be able to stay.”
Evans also spent a day in Asheville, North Carolina helping in a church distribution center, asking individuals, couples and families that came in how they were doing and listened to their situation. Many who came in also were no longer employed, as major employer Biltmore was also impacted by the hurricane, Evans said. Although people were quiet and not very talkative, she said half of the people who came in filled out a form to pray with her.
”They were walking around dazed,” Evans said. “I mean, these people, they’d lost everything for the most part.”
As part of her crisis counseling, Evans also asked first responders, such as police officers and firefighters, how they were doing. Some first responders who had lost a lot told her they were living in a camper or somewhere else while they were working on getting their homes repaired or rebuilt.
“They always say they’re doing fine, but in reality… I work with the officers here, I know how they are, but in my practice, I see city, county and state police officers and their families, along with pastors and all of that,” Evans said. “So, I understand those officers.”
Other volunteers and organizations helped out the communities Evans visited, such as Samaritan’s Purse. According to their website, they are a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization that provides physical and spiritual need around the world. Evans said they were the first on the ground and in this case, they had moved people before the hurricane even hit. While there, she said they were also advertising that volunteers from across the country could help for two weeks at a time.
Chick-Fil-A also provided more than 100 sandwiches to residents after they reopened from flood damage, and another organization gave campers from around America to those who had lost everything, Evans said. In addition, she said distribution centers and factories sent trucks of supplies like baby formula, and churches from across the country continue to donate money and collect supplies to truck down there.
“So, when there’s a disaster, what happens is the churches become the centers where they can go to get food, they can go to get supplies, to meet their immediate needs,” Evans said. “Water, I couldn’t drink any water down there from a faucet, so all people were washing their hair with bottles of water, they were doing laundry with bottles of water… so, you would see… huge pallets of water so that people could come and get water.”
Evans said officers and community members were appreciative of the work she was doing, and the organizations who were helping. She said her work leaves a positive impact on the communities she visits by letting people know she is there, and she said she makes herself available to congregations to anyone who needs help.
“People were just so appreciative of anything that you did for them or whatever,” Evans said. “But, the campers and Amish and different teams from churches and organizations, going down and helping people… I look all around, in all this devastation, but God is there, working through people and all that, to help as much as these people can be helped.”
Donations to those impacted by Hurricane Helene can be made at ashnaz.org.
