How do community leaders provide vital updates when the power is down and cellphone service is out? One North Carolina town devastated by Hurricane Helene has brought back a decidedly low-tech solution: the town meeting.
Residents in Black Mountain, N.C., about 12 miles east of Asheville, have pitched in to make signs alerting their neighbors to the daily gatherings, using posters, markers, wooden boards, spray paint and anything else they can get their hands on. It’s working: About 1,000 people are turning out for daily updates in the town square.
Spotty phone service is just one of the many problems facing western North Carolina and the surrounding region, where floods and landslides turned some communities into rubble. Blocked roads have left people isolated and forced them to fend for themselves. In many places, the National Guard has had to use helicopters to get food and water to residents.
But the disrupted lines of communication have compounded those difficulties, making it hard for relief workers to know where people are and what they need. Being cut off from the modern world has also left many residents feeling frustrated and alone. So they’ve turned to methods that have been out of date for a century or more.
The town square in Burnsville, N.C., became an ad hoc communications center for residents, the local ABC affiliate reported. People have scrawled messages in marker on whiteboards to let their neighbors know how they’re doing or what they need. “We are alive, house gone,” read one. “I am safe,” read another.
In Black Mountain, home to about 8,000 people, daily meetings started on Monday, when the town was still struggling to receive much-need resources like food, water and fuel. By Tuesday, the worst blockages had been cleared from Interstate 40 into the town, and helicopters were providing relief supplies.
We were cut off from everybody,” said Josh Harrold, the town manager. “We couldn’t get anything up here.” The town meetings gave local officials a way to provide vital information about supplies, roads, repair estimates and tracking down missing people.
They’re also providing a much-need sense of community amid the widespread destruction, Mr. Harrold said: “We’re going to get through this, but we’re only going to do it if we do it together.”
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