By Grace Vitaglione
Aleta Moody, 71, lives in the small town of Globe in Caldwell County, about 17 miles southeast of Grandfather Mountain. She is blind and lives alone, and she has an aide who helps her with grocery shopping and appointments.
After the remnants of Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina, devastating many tiny communities in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Moody was forced to evacuate.
She hated losing her independence.
“I never have had to leave home before,” she said.
Moody wondered if she should leave on the afternoon of Sept. 27. She tried to call the sheriff’s office, but the phone was dead. The power went out that night.
Two days later, her neighbor took her to a shelter at West Caldwell High School. The shelter began to close on Tuesday, so the county found a place for her to stay at West Lenoir Baptist Church. She spent her nights there and her days at the Satie and J.E. Broyhill Caldwell Senior Center.
Moody said she wasn’t scared, exactly — maybe “traumatized.”
Despite the circumstances, Moody said she enjoyed meeting new people. She only had a couple changes of clothes, so a volunteer at the senior center did her laundry, according to April Austin, executive director of the senior center.
“I’m just wanting to go home,” she said.
After talking with NC Health News, Moody was finally able to return to her home Tuesday evening, Oct. 8. A volunteer helped clean up the storm debris around her home to make it safe for her to return when the power was restored, Austin said.
But not everyone can return home yet. As of Oct. 21, 11 shelters were still open in western N.C. and serving almost 600 people, according to data from the NC Emergency Management website.
Many older adults in western North Carolina weathered the devastation brought by Helene. People 65 and older make up at least 20 percent of the population in some of the hardest-hit counties, such as Buncombe, Henderson, Yancey, Mitchell and Rutherford, according to state demographer estimates from 2022.
Older adults are often on a fixed income, which could make paying for repairs more of a challenge. And the physical demands of an extended cleanup are harder on those with mobility issues or who need special diets.
When it comes to the recovery, “older adults sometimes get left out of the conversation,” said Sarajane Melton, Area Agency on Aging director at the Southwestern Commission Council of Governments. She works on behalf of older adults and their caregivers in Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Jackson, Macon and Swain counties.
Navigating recovery
An older person may rely on hearing aids, a wheelchair or glasses, they may need a special diet or they may experience incontinence — all of which can make it harder to navigate the storm damage.
The Area Agencies on Aging in the region are communicating with older adults to help them find resources. The service providers contracted to the agencies are also working to connect with clients — and if they don’t hear back, they can reach out to county emergency management for a well check visit, a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson wrote over email.
Communication has been an “unprecedented” challenge, said LeeAnne Tucker, director of the Area Agency on Aging at the Land of Sky Regional Council. She serves older adults in Buncombe, Henderson, Madison and Transylvania counties.
It’s been difficult to contact their older adult clients to figure out their needs, she said. It took more than a week after the storm for her to get back into her office to check emails and return calls.
In terms of supplies, seniors need shelf-stable meals that don’t require water or heat, she said. But as the recovery process will be a long haul, people who want to donate supplies may want to hang onto them for a bit, she said. It can be overwhelming for agencies to receive all of these supplies right now, even though they will likely be needed in the future.
To help out, the Dementia Alliance of North Carolina launched a supply drive and donated more than 21,000 older adult products to western N.C., including incontinence briefs and pads, nutritional drinks, wipes, sanitizer and gloves.
Executive Director Heather Hooper said the organization also provided music kits — which are on MP3 players — to people with dementia. Those have proved helpful to distract patients at night who are living without power.
Older adults who don’t have transportation may not be able to get to distribution points for water or supplies, Tucker said. They can’t always wait in a long line or carry the water by themselves. The Area Agency on Aging has been calling for volunteers to deliver water to communities such as housing complexes where a lot of older adults live, she said.
Legal help will also be needed for people who are trying to apply for FEMA assistance. Tucker heard from several older adults whose FEMA applications had been denied and needed to know what their next steps were.
Helene came just as the senior community was beginning to emerge from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Melton of the Southwestern Commission Area Agency on Aging. The storm exacerbated levels of uncertainty and anxiety.
Mental health issues in older adults have “long been under the radar,” and the pandemic lockdown heightened those for many, she said. The storm cutting off means of communication may again lead to feelings of isolation.
And even before the storm damage, the rural mountain terrain was hard for older adults with mobility issues to navigate, she said.
Nursing homes
Long-term care staff are also trying to keep residents socializing so they don’t feel too isolated, said Anna Rogers, regional long-term care ombudsman with the Southwestern Commission Council of Governments. For older adults with dementia, changes in routine can be stressful, so staff are skilled at redirecting them with an activity or a toy, she said.
There are 91 nursing homes and 121 assisted living facilities in western North Carolina, according to a DHHS spokesperson. The department has been in touch with each of them to provide resources.
One nursing home, Black Mountain Neuro-Medical Treatment Center, evacuated; residents were transferred to another facility until water and power utilities were restored.
DHHS supported four facilities and was working with three more long-term care facilities to move patients elsewhere, according to a Facebook update from Rep. Donna White (R-Clayton) early in the storm response.
Rep. Jay Adams (R-Hickory) said the Hickory Regional Airport became a point for helicopters to bring and drop off supplies, and he saw one helicopter bring elderly people who had been evacuated to the airport.
All nursing homes and assisted living facilities now have power, said Adam Sholar, president and CEO of the North Carolina Health Care Facilities Association, but a number of facilities, mostly in the Asheville area, are relying on temporary water supplies.
Givens Highland Farms, a retirement community in Black Mountain, received water by helicopter and is working with FEMA to get additional supplies, according to Geoff Cantrell, director of public relations and communications for the company, which has four facilities in western N.C.
The community is a member of LeadingAge North Carolina, an association for retirement communities across the state. The organization had put out a call for supplies for the 15 member communities affected by Helene, LeadingAge President and CEO Tom Akins said.
In response, The Sharon at SouthPark in Charlotte and Southminster, another senior living community, organized 10-15 supply trips to Asheville between Sept. 30 and Oct. 4, according to The Sharon at SouthPark CEO Angela Rigsbee. Southminster did laundry for facilities that lacked water.
Rigsbee visited four retirement communities near Asheville and Hendersonville to see the situation in person and “hug some of our friends.”
Everyone was tired but trying to make the best of the situation, she said.
Staving off staff burnout
But adrenaline can only take staff so far, Akins said — especially when some employees may have experienced their own losses, from a car, to clothes, and even to homes. Recovery will be a long process, he said, and facilities will need to contend with staff burnout and issues such as child care for employees’ kids who are not yet back in school.
In addition to helping senior residents, LeadingAge gathered supplies like diapers and formula for staff with children. Akins recalled one staff member had run out of diapers for her infant when she saw diapers coming in on the supply truck.
“Just that look of joy on her face, the tears on her face — from something that you would normally just go get more of,” he said.
At Carolina Village, a retirement community in Hendersonville, some staff were there for a week after the storm started to inflict heavy damage on Sept. 27. Kevin Parries, president and CEO, said many were still running on adrenaline but getting tired. Some employees there had lost homes, and facility leaders worked to get them resources and support.
Supporting the direct-care workforce is vital to helping long term care residents through the recovery process, Rogers said. She talked to a director of nursing at one facility who was providing care to residents even though her own home had been flooded.
Senior centers
Senior centers in some areas are open, providing important ways for older adults to connect and get some relief from the isolation of power outages and impassable roads. The Silvermont Senior Center in Transylvania County opened Oct. 7 and started up their congregate meal program the next day, said Brenda Skeffington, program director.
The Rutherford County Senior Center was turned into an emergency operations center, Director Tammy Aldridge said. Staff delivered meals to existing home-delivered meal clients, she said, as well as to those who would normally use public transportation to get to the center.
In Black Mountain, the Lakeview Center for Active Aging’s bottom floor was “devastated” with five inches of water, according to Melinda Polites, senior center administrator. Her team is still assessing the damage, but the priority is to get seniors back together in some way, she said.
“Sadly, we had been making great gains after reopening from the pandemic and had never had so many participants before,” she wrote in an email.
All of the senior centers and senior nutrition programs are back open in Caldwell, Alexander, Burke and Catawba counties, according to Tina Miller, director of the Area Agency on Aging for the Western Piedmont Council of Governments.
The adult day center in Morganton, however, was flooded and isn’t operational.
Melton said she hopes the needs of older adults will be included in planning for the recovery process.
State lawmakers passed $273 million in hurricane relief funds on Oct. 10. Most of that money was to the state match for federal disaster assistance programs. Tucker said funding will be needed for some seniors to make repairs to their homes.
“Our older adults laid the foundation for what we enjoy today,” Melton said. “So let’s do what we can to meet them where they are and not let them be forgotten.”
The post “I want to go home”: Seniors contend with difficulties of recovery after Helene appeared first on North Carolina Health News.
