WNC relief organization runs out of money. How volunteers are still trying to help
Organizers started Operation Anchor and worked in the mountain communities for months, cleaning up the devastation left by Hurricane Helene. Now, they're out of money.
'I kept pushing us to keep staying and staying and staying and staying because I didn't want to leave,' said Steven Lambert, the vice president of Operation Anchor. 'We needed to be there. We still need to be there.'
For six months, volunteers with Operation Anchor made the western part of the Tar Heel State their home following Helene. They repaired dozens of homes, businesses and churches using monetary and supply donations.
'I would say monetary, we brought in about $450 to $550,000 and then in material donations you probably brought in another $200,000 worth of materials, $300,000 worth of materials,' said Lambert.
Those funds have since dried up, and the organization's president and vice president spent the past couple of months using money out of their own pockets to help.
'The donations that we had seen just had kind of stopped,' said Hannah Stutts, the president. 'People forget. Storms happen and six months later, I think in general people just assume that those communities are fine or they're back to normal.'
But things aren't back to normal yet.
'There's a lot of debris removal still needing done,' said Stutts. 'There's people that still have holes in their roofs from trees that fell, you know, that were denied assistance.'
It's heartbreaking for volunteers to have to leave the area knowing there's work to be done.
'To wake up one morning and tell yourself, you know what, it's time that we have to leave, there's nothing else we can do, it's not the best feeling in the world,' said Lambert.
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While they're not in the area anymore, they want to keep helping and supporting victims of any future Carolina storms.
'Our plan is to regroup, build our supplies back up to be ready for stage one to go onto the next hurricane,' said Lambert.
We are in the midst of hurricane season, and experts predict it could be more active than usual. Some of the supplies Operation Anchor volunteers are collecting to prepare for any potential storms include food, water, blankets, clothes and other essentials.
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