Dali Dow is sitting inside of her newly installed yurt with a hatchet and a small blow torch. Between sips of Cheerwine and puffs from her cigarette, Dow chops firewood into slim pieces to fit inside the small stove that heats the fortified tent where she slept last night.
The same night that Western North Carolina got its first snowfall of the season. plastic adirondack chair
“The wind was so bad last night it almost rocked the whole stove over. That was scary,” she told BPR during an interview on a chilly Friday evening in late November as she prepared to spend a second night in the tent.
Yurts, like the one Dow is living in, are fortified tents that provide more insulation and space than an average camping tent. Dow’s has a wood-fired stove with a pipe to let the smoke out.
The donated yurt is set up next to Dow’s damaged trailer along the Swannanoa River. Dow and her two young children barely made it out of the trailer before flood waters got in during Helene’s assault on the region in late September. The family drove a few miles up Old US 70 before getting stuck and later rescued.
For a few weeks, they stayed in a hotel paid for by FEMA. When she returned she started to repair her trailer. Then, a volunteer group set up a yurt for her. In the post-storm exhaustion, Dow struggled to remember which group to thank for that.
The small fire that will heat the tent tonight is rolling in the small stove. Dow takes a break from chopping to sit outside with a neighbor. It’s about 41 degrees outside and dropping fast.
The small neighborhood off Old US Highway 70 and Good Loop Road is almost entirely abandoned – save for a few volunteers and residents living in RVs or makeshift shelters, trying to salvage what they can of their former homes. They are among the estimated 900 families in Buncombe County alone whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Helene.
Below-freezing temperatures sweeping the region are just another hurdle for some of these families who are repairing their homes and dealing with the bureaucracy of insurance policies and FEMA – all while working to find food and water and care for children.
For Dow and her family, a small bit of relief was parked in her front yard that evening. Another volunteer group, this time a church from out of state, unloaded an RV complete with a Christmas tree and wrapped presents for her children.
“They literally installed a fifth wheel hitch into their truck just to bring this to us. I filled it up with Christmas presents for my kids and everything. It's awesome,” she said.
She is still working to repair her trailer, pulling out and replacing the flooded floors and drywall, but the work will be easier now that she has a warm place to rest her head at night.
‘They’ve got to have a home’
About an hour north of the Dows, Nick Hiteshew is checking in on yurts that he set up in Barnardsville. He runs Wilmington Response, a disaster response nonprofit.
“You've got a small wood stove in there, a fire mat, we give them a fire extinguisher. As a backup, we give them a big buddy heater and some firewood. We really make sure that they've got everything that they need,” he said. That includes a cot and sleeping bags.
He has set up two yurts in Brenda Lunsford’s backyard, one for Lunsford’s daughter and another for family friend Doris Dickerson.
“Growing up out here, we kind of roughed it a little bit. And I'm thankful for that childhood because I can build a fire outside and cook outside on a fire,” Dickerson said.
She had been living in her car since the storm knocked her trailer off of its foundation. More than a month later she was preparing her yurt with about a dozen blankets.
“I just kind of accumulated things. Cause I don't want to get cold. I really don't. And I know how cold it gets here,” she said.
Lunsford’s home had miraculously escaped the rush of water and debris rushing down Ivy Creek. Her garage and shed didn’t. Flooding also wiped out her driveway and formed a new stream in front of her home. She estimates the damage to be close to $100,000. Still, she didn’t hesitate to help out her friends.
“They're not camping out. That's their home. They've got to have a home…they need help. And that's the story,” Lunsford said. “We've been helping each other get wood. And we've got to help each other in this world.”
About 15 minutes away up a steep mountain road, Hiteshew – who set up the yurts in Lunsford’s yard – also set one up for Dickerson’s brother, Van Dickerson. The trailer he and his sister were living in has belonged to his family for more than 40 years, Van Dickerson said.
The trailer shifted off its foundation and lost water. A tool shed that stood next to the house was also swept away.
Along Anderson Cove Road, in rural Buncombe, on the doorstep of the Pisgah National Forest, Dickerson’s family once owned almost all of the land. Pieces were sold over the years, leaving Van Dickerson, the sole remaining family member.
He plans on fixing his trailer while living in the yurt. He had lived there for years, usually warming it with a wood-fired stove. Still, he said he is “feeling a little apprehensive about the cold weather now.”
He plans on lining the bottom of the tent with foam insulation boards and cover it with a rug.
Temperatures in Western North Carolina are expected to reach lows of 15 degrees this week.
Experts say cold temperature is only part of the danger
Advocates for unhoused people in Western North Carolina are familiar with the dangers that come with people living outside in freezing temperatures. After the storm, that number has grown as people try to rebuild their homes, if they can.
“Our individuals are super resilient. So they've manufactured all types of heating sources out of hand sanitizer or fuels using all these different kinds of things,” Mike DeSerio, a program manager with Homeward Bound WNC said. The group works to end homelessness in the region.
While DeSerio praised the ingenuity of those who choose to stay outside in the cold, he warned that it comes with inherent risk.
“Tents can catch on fire if people are sleep deprived while maybe something that they've made keeps going throughout the night to keep them warm.”
There’s also the risk of hypothermia and the inability to congregate with others who choose to avoid shelters. DeSerio said there are a multitude of reasons people may avoid going to a shelter, even with the lax rules implemented during cold snaps in Buncombe County. Known as Code Purple, the county allows for looser restrictions on shelter capacity and intake when the temperatures are below freezing.
In early November, over 4,500 people across the 25 impacted counties were still using the transitional sheltering assistance provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA announced this week the program is extended through Dec. 12.
FEMA’s Transitional Sheltering Assistance was originally authorized for 60 days. The program pays for families and individuals to stay in hotels across Western North Carolina.
As of last week, there are 500 families that have been approved for temporary residences, which will most likely be mobile homes or travel trailers.
So far only 14 families in Western North Carolina have received a mobile home or travel trailer from FEMA to serve as temporary housing. One challenge, officials have pointed to, is not only the time it takes to approve and deliver such structures but also that federal guidelines prevent FEMA from placing a temporary home in a landslide or flood zone. The homes have been placed in Buncombe, Haywood, McDowell and Henderson counties.
The mental toll for folks living in tents is something DeSerio especially worries about for people living outdoors.
“It's just extra mental stress, extra emotional stress on top of already being in survival mode. And then you take away some of the social structure that some of the folks that we work with are dependent upon, it can be really tough.” he said.
Brian Alexander, a project director at the North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness, also remarked on the resilience of people who are living in tents during the winter. Still, it is not the best place for them, he said.
“The most important thing really is to get people off the street as quickly as possible and to have the options available for them to get into a permanent place to live: temporary housing, shelter or transitional housing,” he said. “We're starting to see tents or RVs or tiny homes. We know that in extreme weather situations… folks who are at risk already because of health conditions are at greater risk of dying on the streets, which none of us want to see.”
Volunteers step in to fill 'a huge need for help'
Further north of the Dickerson’s yurts in Spruce Pine, county officials are urging that residents have a 72-hour contingency plan if they lose power. That includes having extra wood or fuel to heat their homes in the case of a power outage.
People in Mitchell County are no strangers to cold weather, or power outages, which are now more likely because of the amount of trees that are at a higher risk of falling after damage from the storm.
“I feel like we've been preparing for the cold weather, really kind of since the storm,” Stephanie Pitman, who leads Mitchell County’s volunteer resource center. “Within the first couple weeks we were already asking for heaters and cold weather clothing. There's still needs, but it is something that we weren't unprepared for.”
Pitman says that many people who live in the county heat their homes with wood stoves in addition to central gas or electric heating. More residents now have generators in their homes for when they lose power.
“I would say some things that we need would be generators that have a push start just for our senior folks. That would be easier for them to use. That's more user-friendly for our senior population,” she said.
In Madison County, volunteers with Rural Organizing And Resilience (ROAR), say they have delivered about 60 truckloads of firewood since the storm hit.
“With the cold weather setting in, people are really needing help with heating homes,” Matt Wallace, a member of ROAR, told BPR News. “Some people are just in more temporary shelters like little tiny homes and sheds and campers that just don't have good insulation.”
Wallace says along with providing firewood, the group has provided more than $250,000 in financial assistance to people who need help paying bills.
shopping cart “So many people lost work in this, and now what we're really seeing is bills are really coming due," he said. “People are two, three months behind on rent and bills. Utilities are getting shut off. People are getting eviction notices. So there's a huge need for help.”