Hurricane Helene: The Storm Of The Century

December 9, 2024
Jake Smith

Living in the Appalachian Mountain range, you never think that you will be affected by a hurricane storm in the middle of September. However, this September was the exception when Hurricane Helene hit the mountains of Western North Carolina. We experienced close to 30” of rain in less than 48 hours in some areas, resulting in catastrophic flooding that wiped out entire communities and businesses alike. Damage aside, the entire region was without power, internet, water, and even sewer for weeks.

Swannanoa, NC. Just down the road from Feelfree US Headquarters

As the rivers crested, we experienced a community within and from afar willing to take the shirts off their backs for one another. Numerous people delivered donations from across the nation, saved lives with their personal resources, and locals took care of one another. As a small business that calls this area home, our business operations were directly impacted by the lack of infrastructure, but we are fortunate to say that our staff and store were not harmed in the storm.

This gave us the ability as a team to use our resources to help others through a very challenging time. We are proud to say a lot of our staff were able to volunteer and help their personal communities get back on their feet by cutting trees out of the way, obtaining water for drinking and even for flushing toilets, and helping in various other ways.

To our surprise, fast forward three weeks, another one of our stores in Englewood, FL, was hit by Hurricane Milton. Lucky for us, what looked like a direct hit quickly shifted at the last minute, and the store was spared significant damage from the storm. Still, the community was devastated, and the store was flooded, though not enough to call it a complete loss.

We are fortunate to say that both locations received minimal damage and that our staff members are safe. It’s also a great opportunity to give a shout out to our store managers and staff who did a tremendous job cleaning up the mess, making repairs and ensuring that customers were still taken care of.

Store Manager Jonathan at our Old Fort Store

As the dust settles from both storms, we have resumed our normal business hours and operations in hopes of continuing to support our staff and generate future revenue for our business and community. While we resume some sense of normalcy, we understand it will be a long road to recovery for those in our community.

While we are okay, many in our community are not. To help, we have decided to host a national raffle for a Dorado V2. Please stay tuned as we begin this raffle to generate much-needed funds for our community.