‘Whatever it takes’: Asheville VA medical workers providing care to veterans after Hurricane Helene

The road leading to an 80-year-old military veteran’s mountain home outside Asheville, NC, was still impassable more than two weeks after Hurricane Helene dumped devastating rain on the area, washing out roads, destroying bridges and causing landslides of land.

But Corey Anderson, an intermediate health care technician at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Asheville Medical Center, knew he had to reach out to his patient.

So the 15-year veteran of the Ashville VA’s emergency room parked his van, gathered his medical equipment and a few supplies and set off on foot to get to the veteran — a half-mile trip straight down the road washed full of fallen trees.

“It didn’t seem like a choice. It’s like it wasn’t possible for him to turn around and go back to the VA and say, “I didn’t make it,” Anderson said in a phone interview this week. “That just couldn’t happen.”

At the top of the mountain, Anderson found his patient upbeat and well after the storm.

Neighbors had helped the veteran with supplies and to get a generator going. Neighbors even built a makeshift road after the storm, and Anderson was able to drive his van full of medical supplies to the veteran last week, he said.

For Anderson, it was just one of several home visits he’s made to check on elderly veterans in the weeks since Helene hit the area.

He is used to making such visits to oversee the Asheville VA’s program called Community Outpatient Support, Urgent Care and Telehealth Services, or SCOUTS. The program sends VA medical professionals to visit elderly patients in the days and weeks after an emergency room visit.

Anderson’s journey to reach his patient is an example of the efforts of Western North Carolina VA workers to help veterans in the wake of Helene, said Stephanie Young, who served as director of the Carolinas Health Care System for North West from 2018.

Workers at the Asheville VA, Young said, visited hundreds of veterans in the days and weeks after the storm. On a welfare check, they found a wheelchair-bound veteran in a flooded home in need of medical attention and took him to the emergency room. In another case, VA workers trying to reach a disabled veteran in his 90s who was running out of medication realized the road to his home was impassable, so they called the local fire department to help them get to his house in an SUV and delivered his medicine.

“I witnessed firsthand their unwavering commitment to veterans and support of our (VA) mission even as they struggled with their own personal losses. … So not even a hurricane — not even Hurricane Helene could stop our staff from taking care of our veterans,” she said.

“Whatever It Takes”

When it became clear that Helene could impact the Asheville area, Young sent the health system, which includes Charles George Medical Center in Asheville and three smaller VA clinics in Hickory, Franklin and Forest City, into his plans to prepare for emergency situations. But no one could have predicted the immense damage Helene would unleash on Asheville after crossing about 500 miles from landfall as a Category 4 storm early Sept. 27 in the Big Bend region of northwest Florida , she said.

As the storm tore through Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and North and South Carolina, it left its worst mark on Asheville and its surrounding areas — dumping up to 31 inches of rainfall on the region in three days, including 15 inches in September. 27. It led to record flooding from rivers, including the Swannanoa and French Broad rivers, and completely submerged Asheville’s popular River Arts District.

The storm knocked out power to nearly the entire region, left tens of thousands of people without access to drinking water and knocked out cellphone communications for most of the area. Anderson said he was stuck in his home for days after the storm because of downed trees. His cell phone wasn’t working and he had no idea of ​​the level of devastation in the surrounding community.

When Anderson went to work after the storm, he was shocked by the amount of devastation he saw.

“It looked like a tornado just went through the whole town. It’s wild. Nothing I’ve ever seen before,” he said. “Going down (Interstate) 70 at work, it’s like a foot of mud on the side of the road all the way down, destroyed houses, trees everywhere. I’ve seen entire neighborhoods just disappear. Communities have just been deleted. It’s awful.”

Anderson spent the days after the storm delivering medicine, medical supplies, drinking water, body tissues and food to veterans throughout the city, including an apartment building where several of his patients, including a World War II veteran, lived World aged 99. on high floors and had no electricity or drinking water.

As an Army veteran, Anderson said he drew on his military experiences to push through the devastating circumstances. He served as an engineer equipment mechanic with the 1st Armored Division’s 40th Engineer Battalion, including a yearlong deployment to Iraq from 2005 to 2006. That experience, he said, prepared him to respond to Helene.

“One hundred percent, no doubt, it was helpful through that,” Anderson said. “It’s that frame of mind of having and not needing, versus needing and not having, and really adapting and overcoming and being willing to do whatever it takes.”

Returning after the storm

Young credited his staff with the rapid recovery of VA systems after the storm, which allowed them to get medical professionals quickly to veterans in need. The hospital has largely returned to normal operations since the storm, but has continued to operate on generator power as its normal utility power has not yet been fully restored.

The Western North Carolina VA System serves approximately 49,000 veterans in a 23-county area of ​​western North Carolina and boasts nearly 2,000 employees.

But even with dedicated workers and solid planning, Young said he can’t predict the response that will be needed after Helene.

Losing communications was the most difficult aspect of the storm, she said. With cellphone towers down and landlines down in much of the region, Young had no choice but to send his employees into the devastation to find veterans.

Once the hospital’s phones were working again, she said they began receiving hundreds of calls from family members and caregivers of local veterans asking for their help checking on their condition.

Young sent so-called “tiger teams” — small groups of specialized care professionals — to screen high-risk veterans and see what they might need. Oxygen tanks, bottled water and medicine topped the list. In one case, VA workers found a patient whose glasses had broken during the storm. The patient recently visited the VA for an eye appointment and had a pair of glasses that were ready to be picked up. One of the VA employees went to the eye clinic, rummaged through several drawers and found the man’s new glasses, Young said.

“We’re still doing these runs today,” she said Wednesday, nearly a month after Helene struck. “Not as much as we were originally, but we’re still there. We’re still doing this thing.”

It’s clear, Young said, that it will take years for the Asheville area to fully recover from Helene’s wrath. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said Thursday that it would cost at least $52 billion to deal with storm damage in his state. Helene was blamed for 96 deaths in North Carolina, and the storm damaged or destroyed more than 200,000 homes, state officials said.

More than 600 roads remained closed in the Asheville area on Friday. Among them was a road off Interstate-40 that leads to the Charles George VA Medical Center.

“We’re back to normal,” Young said. “We will definitely get there. Our providers are working so hard to get everything up and running and increase surgical appointments. Our community center has never been closed and our hospital facility has never been closed. It’s truly a testament to the tremendous work of our employees and how much they care about our veterans.”