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Ģ������Ƶstudents majoring in healthcare fields have to do clinicals, which give them real-world experience in their fields. Hurricane Helene gave many Ģ������Ƶstudents experiences they never thought they would see during college or even in their lifetime.

Ģ������Ƶclinical mental health counseling graduate student Hannah Webber had the same reaction a lot of people in WNC did when they stepped out of their doors a few weeks ago.

“I was like, ‘Oh, this is really bad,’” she said.

Black Mountain, a town just east of Asheville, was devastated by Hurricane Helene. Places, homes and businesses that were adored by its residents were severely damaged, and for those people, a sense of loss and grief lingers.

That’s where Webber stepped in.

“I just started my practicum at Black Mountain Counseling Center. I’ve seen my clients two to three times, and then this hurricane hit, and it’s been so incredibly challenging, beautiful, tragic, just like all the emotions,” she said.

For Webber, the weeks after Helene rolled through have been full of getting folks connected to resources, lending them an ear and even just giving them hugs.

Webber has been one of the few mental health professionals still in-person in Black Mountain, with several others being out of town after evacuating or unable to return home. And she’ll be the first to admit that it’s been challenging, logistically and emotionally.

“It’s kind of been like I’ve been thrown into it,” Webber said. “I’ve been to some community health meetings where therapists are meeting up just to try to start addressing the enormous mental health concerns of our community. Black Mountain and Swannanoa got hit super hard by this hurricane. It’s just like ground zero in a lot of places out there.

“Personally, I’m kind of feeling burnt out,” she said. “My supervisor said this is a marathon, not a sprint. We’re in for the long run. People are going to be needing mental health support for months and years to come because of this.”

But Webber’s clients aren’t the only ones that need help. Her and her fellow colleagues have had to wrestle with this tragedy as well, along with holding the weight of other people’s pain.

However, Webber knows the work she’s doing in Black Mountain is important. She’s lived in the area for over a decade, and the skills she’s learned in class have helped heal the community she loves so dearly.

“I’m not just learning about it in the classroom; I’m doing the work,” Webber said. “I’m trying to figure things out in the real world, and I mean, it’s an incredible experience to be able to say that I’ve survived a natural disaster and helped people cope through that.”

Like almost anyone in Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene, Elizabeth Sexton had a lot on her plate. She had folks to check in on and places to get to all without the luxury of cell service.

But as an assistant professor of nursing inside Ģ������Ƶ’s College of Health and Human Sciences, her instincts to care for others kicked in.

“I remember thinking, what can we do? How can we help? And I thought, ‘What do I do well? I organize nursing students,’” Sexton said.

After rounding up students and weaving through channels of permission, Sexton helped get her students primarily to Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, part of which was turned into a makeshift medical shelter.

Sexton and a number of other Ģ������Ƶnursing faculty had students from the school’s traditional, accelerated, masters and doctoral programs all pitching in in a time of need. And though things looked bleak, her students were a light in darkness.

“Those students gave those patients hope,” Sexton said. “They listened to them and they heard their stories, whether it was their home that was destroyed or the road to their home so they couldn’t get out… The patients, they just kept saying thank you to the students, to us.

“I was so proud of them. I never could’ve been more proud to wear that purple.”

For these nursing students, working in a college lobby amid a natural disaster looked a lot different than working in a hospital. Supplies weren’t as plentiful, the shelter didn’t have running water and nurses often wheeled patients outside to porta potties to use the bathroom.

Inside the lobby, the medical shelter, which was run by the Mountain Area Health Education Center, was broken up into three sections. The first and second didn’t have specific patient types, but the third was reserved for patients needing more respiratory care.

In the back of the shelter, a make-do pharmacy was set up, and in the front was a triage station. Amidst all the irregularities and personal troubles students dealt with, they put others before themselves and did what they knew how to do — take care of others.

“I like to be the one directly making a person’s day better,” said Jackson Newton, a senior nursing student. “I don’t like to be one or two steps removed from the process. I want to be right there helping them, and this was no better way to do that than during this.”

Also for the students, their work at A-B Tech was a learning experience, working closely with physicians and residents from MAHEC.

For Ģ������Ƶaccelerated nursing senior Isabel Magallanes, her time working at the medical shelter reinforced her interest in emergency nursing just weeks before her graduation in December.

“It really helped me build some problem-solving skills, leadership skills and knowing that things like this can happen,” she said. “We never know when something like this can happen, and it’s just absolutely necessary to have a game plan.”

All while students were taking vitals, making sure that their patients were stable and listening to their patients' stories, Ģ������Ƶnursing faculty were helping out, too.

Around 10 faculty members played a big part as well with professors like Sexton and instructors like Laura Plantenburg coordinating shift changes, checking in on their students and even taking on a few shifts as well.

Plantenberg and Sexton also gave Terri Durbin, the director of the Ģ������ƵSchool of Nursing, a lot of praise, too, for her support for the students and faculty.

Together, nursing students and faculty covered around 230 shifts at the A-B Tech medical shelter, a community shelter in Henderson County and Givens Estates and Gerber Park, a pair of retirement communities in Asheville.

“It was really a massive effort, but I think as to how important, for the people we showed up for, we were their lifeline because some of them lost everything,” Sexton said. “I think it really pointed to the need of nursing during a disaster, and really for me, it pointed to the need that nursing students can truly make a difference.”

Ģ������Ƶstudents Chris Hartbarger, Tyler Pritchard, Abby Sullivan, Annabelle Perry and Max Tinkley from the Doctor of Physical Therapy program witnessed the destruction firsthand as they volunteered in Swannanoa.

Pritchard, a second year DPT student from Statesville, organized the volunteer effort, coordinating with Food Lion in Sylva to collect bottled water donations and with WCU students volunteering with Waynesville United Methodist Church to gather food and clothing for families in Swannanoa.

“I have always been about helping my community and pushing them forward. As future healthcare providers, I felt it was our duty to help others when they were in need,” Pritchard said. “We visited many places to assist in wellness checks, help clean up debris, and manage distribution centers throughout the WNC mountains. In Swannanoa specifically, I have a few friends who lost almost everything they owned, which was a major point of me taking my skills and efforts to that area.”

The Ģ������Ƶteam met Pritchard’s friends at a distribution center near Grovemont Park and donated over $400 worth of supplies that Pritchard purchased, using the funds donated to support the area.

“After we unloaded the supplies, we stayed to help with distribution and some logistical topics. Abby, Eryn and I went on a distribution trip to Candler to a Latinx community to provide water, food, baby supplies, and household supplies,” he said. “When we arrived, the whole community was excited and happy to see us. After talking with one individual, we learned that we were the first group to bring them supplies and provide them with information about resources in the area that they otherwise would not have known about.

Once the team returned to Grovemont Park, they helped reorganize the distribution center and move supplies. They also finished with a wellness check on a damaged home, taking pictures and planning what resources would be needed to assist them.

“Overall, I spent about 80 hours over two weeks assisting in multiple counties, with folks from various demographics,” Pritchard said. “The main thing I took away from this experience was that kindness always wins. Helping those in need can make a major difference in their lives and yours.”

Sullivan, a second year DPT student, could not reach her family in the first few days after the storm, knowing they were in a heavily impacted area, but she still wanted to go and help others despite her own situation.

“Upon arrival to the community, the damage was beyond anything I’d ever seen; entire houses had shifted, dirt covered the area, trees and buildings were down and homes were destroyed,” she said. “After our time in Swannanoa, Tyler and other members of my cohort found similar volunteer opportunities. Some classmates even drove three and a half hours north to where my family lives, helping run and clean up a community center destroyed by flooding. I am deeply grateful for my Western Carolina community, my friends, and everyone who volunteered their time to assist those affected by the disaster.”

Hartbarger, a first year DPT student from Sylva, graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Warren Wilson College in 2023 and was heartbroken to see so many familiar places washed away in Swannanoa.

“So many roads that I traveled daily were no longer there. That was hard to see,” he said. “Amid all the sadness, it was heartwarming to see my Ģ������Ƶfamily coming together to support my Swannanoa family and be able to help too.”