Alumni Pick Up the Pieces After Storms Helene and Milton Strike

Ellen Greenberger ’82 knew a storm was coming. She lived on Reynolds Mountain in North Asheville, North Carolina. But when the pelting rains of Hurricane Helene arrived at her home, it was something new. She spent six days on one floor of her home, surrounded by flashlights and candles. There was no power, water, or services. “It was very, very dark,” she says.

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Ellen Greenberger '82

When Greenberger finally emerged, she saw the brute force of the storm up close: Trees were downed everywhere, some of them large and old, with giant balls of roots that stood dozens of feet in the air. The trees blocked the road as she tried to make her way down the mountain. Some roads were completely impassable, she says. “It was very frightening, because of the rainfall and then the hurricane strength winds that came through.”

Days later, Greenberger’s condo in Florida would also be seriously damaged, by Hurricane Milton.

Greenberger is one of the many alumni who have been impacted by the recent storms and are now in the process of rebuilding their lives. Experts believe the damages from Helene and Milton will each reach more than $50 billion. In North Carolina, an estimated 126,000 homes were damaged by the Category 4 storm when it made landfall in late September.

Associated Press reporter Jeff Amy ’95, who was sent to cover Helene’s aftermath in North Carolina, could tell this storm was different. Amy is no stranger to storms: He covered Katrina in 2005 and has lived on the Gulf Coast most of his life.

Still, as he toured the areas of western North Carolina, it was a new experience. “I had never really covered flooding in this mountain context before,” he says, “and the damage was different: Down by the rivers in North Carolina, it was like nothing I had ever seen before.” Amy saw crumbled roads, washed-out bridges, and tons of trees down. The effects of massive amounts of rainfall were evident, he says: “Water can peel up asphalt like a banana and toss it aside like a peel.”

He focused his reporting on the efforts to return water services to people in the area. As of early November, residents were still under a boil-water order weeks after the storm. Recovery is often measured in years, he says — and that becomes really stressful, “to the point where I worry about people’s ability to endure that stress and the mental health consequences.”

As Greenberger was reuniting with her husband and finding a safe place to stay while water and services were restored, another hurricane brewed in Florida: Milton. Her family owns a condo on Longboat Key, outside Sarasota, and the storm hit the island, blowing the roof off the building and causing major water damage. The lobby of the building had 4 feet of water in it. In November, she had plans to return to the island to assess the damage. “I don’t think you can feel secure anywhere on that island,” she says, as she wonders: “Will there come a time where the entire island won’t exist anymore?”

A hundred miles south, Scott Crater ’91 prepared his home on Sanibel Island for the storm. His experience with Hurricane Ian in 2022, which brought 11 feet of flooding, had left some lessons.

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The aftermath of Hurricane Milton in Blind Beach, Florida. 

Scott Crater ’91

In a three-story home in an area prone to flooding, he had made his first floor a workout space and storage, while he lived mostly on the second floor. When Milton was coming, he pulled all his belongings — bicycles, tools, storm supplies, and Christmas decorations — up to the second floor.

When the mandatory evacuation order came through, Crater reached out to classmate Jonathon Kahn ’91, who arranged for Crater to ride out the storm at his parents’ condo.

He returned to see the toll of the muddy water on his home and the island overall. Fortunately, only the first story of his home was impacted by the 2½ feet of flooding, but his community has suffered. “The school is closed due to flooding,” he says. “A lot of people have one-story houses and have a lot of damage again, and a lot are elderly and sort of at a crossroads of what to do: Whether it’s 2 feet of water or 7, it starts to not matter because it’s muddy, dirty water that ruins everything.”

Some of his neighbors have started to give away their homes for the value of the land, “because no one is looking for a one-story house on a barrier island in Florida anymore.” Crater is not considering moving, but he says he has become an expert at dealing with flooding. “We are still drying out the affected floor, making provisions to store everything we can off the island, in a storage unit, planting all native landscaping that is salt tolerant — so it will survive future surges and prevent erosion.”

Crater says he believes elevating buildings is a possible solution, but he worries people may not want to live there anymore. “While buildings on barrier islands may still be standing in 50 years, the infrastructure of these island communities may not be able to withstand rising sea levels and repeated violent floods,” he says. “Roads, potable water lines, sewer lines, sewage treatment plants, power substations, and power lines eventually will become irreversibly damaged by repeated flooding, and the cost to continually repair them may be too high.”

The precise impact of climate change and warmer ocean temperatures are having on powerful storms is being examined, but Gabriel Vecchi, a geoscientist at Princeton who has studied the frequency of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean since the late 19^th century, says: “There is relatively strong evidence that hurricanes should get stronger, with larger winds, and rainier as the world continues to warm.”

For Greenberger, she says due to high demand she is facing some challenges in locating help to clean up from storm damages. She needs help replacing some roof shingles, removing felled trees, replacing broken lights, and servicing the generator.

Still, she’s grateful for the kindness of strangers — folks who helped her communicate with her family and helped check in on each other with food and water. “We live in a very divisive society right now, but these two storms have brought everybody together, and it was wonderful to see. Everybody was working together.”