WHEELING — Four residents from the Ohio Valley were knee-deep in Hurricane Helene recovery efforts this week during a spur-of-the-moment trip to North Carolina.

Shortly after the Category 4 hurricane swept through the state in late September, the group headed to participate in rapid response efforts organized by Eight Days of Hope, a natural disaster relief mission.

The local representation for relief efforts was Nicole Podobnik from Cameron, Andrea Hicks from Moundsville, Karen Mercer from St. Clairsville and Gretchen Kidd from Glen Easton.

Mercer was the only group member who had assisted in natural disaster relief in the past with Eight Days of Hope. In 2018, she helped rebuild homes in Houston, Texas, after Hurricane Harvey devastated the state.

When Mercer mentioned to the other three she was headed to North Carolina this week as a rapid response team member with Eight Days of Hope, they began checking their schedules.

All three found they could coordinate their work schedules around a three-day trip to North Carolina to participate in disaster relief.

“I was taking items to Karen to donate to the hurricane victims while she was down there this week,” Podobnik recalled. “While I was doing that, I thought, ‘I don’t have to work until Friday, so I’ll just go down, too, and help our neighbors with everything they’re going through.'”

To help out their “neighbors” in the Tar Heel State, the group made the eight-hour trip to Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center in Waynesville, North Carolina, on Tuesday. The resort served as the area’s main base of recovery efforts for Eight Days of Hope.

Though the group was at a resort, Podobnik said their time at the facility felt more like staying at a camp. Eight Days of Hope kept a strict schedule for when disaster relief participants woke up, headed to their clean-up area and returned to Lake Junaluska.

The first day of hurricane relief efforts began at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday with a group breakfast and worship session. After a prayer, the more than 150 clean-up participants were split into groups of 25 and headed to the business or home impacted by the hurricane they would clean.

The group of four from the Ohio Valley spent Wednesday at the Second Season Thrift Store and Neighborhood Pantry in Waynesville, which had been flooded with two feet of water from the hurricane. The food bank, which serves the community seven days a week, had to be shut down during the hurricane.

According to Podobnik, their focus for the day was to clear all items out of the building and “sanitize everything” to ensure the thrift store and pantry could open “as soon as possible. ”

“We helped clear out everything, scrub everything in the building down and sanitize every surface so mold wouldn’t grow,” Podobnik described. “You have to make sure everything is cleaned and sanitized to prevent any mold that will create problems down the road. For the thrift store and pantry, we also had to make sure everything food or clothing item we salvaged was safe to consume or wear.”

After spending Wednesday at the thrift store, the group traveled to Klyde, North Carolina, on Thursday to salvage what was left of a house decimated by flooding from the hurricane. Their mission for the morning was to gut the inside of a house owned by Klyde resident Bob Clark.

When the flooding hit, Clark’s one-story rancher was submerged to the roof, meaning it was a total loss when the flood water subsided, according to Podobnik. Clark was able to escape his house before the flooding and stay with his daughter, who lives nearby on a hill safe from the flood waters.

The group spent Thursday cutting and removing drywall to prevent mold growth inside the house. Volunteers also sorted through and cleaned up items from his garage that had been strewn across his yard during the flooding.

“We had to gut the house, clean up the yard and get everything ready for the house to either rebuild or be demolished and start over,” Podobnik said. “The only thing standing once we were done was the brick exterior. Everything else had to be taken out.”

Though the flood waters had receded in both cities she worked in, Podobnik said the devastation from the hurricane was still “evident.” She noted that many buildings and streets were covered in a layer of dried mud, and yards were filled with debris.

“When we drove past the rivers and creeks, we could see how far the river had eroded from when it was twice as big during the flooding,” Podobnik said. “All the trees were pushed up, and debris was moved into people’s yards.”

Podobnik added the cities where the team worked “could not even match some of the devastation” caused by the hurricane in other parts of North Carolina.

“I didn’t realize how much damage water could do,” Podobnik said on Thursday. “Just one little river displaced so many people. The 90% of the houses on the streets we were on today were totaled. When the water fills these one-story ranchers to the roof, they are totally destroyed.”

The group members worked alongside Clark during their recovery efforts, who had felt the hurricane’s devastation through the destruction of his house. Podobnik said Clark handled the flooding “pretty well,” particularly since he had lived in his house that was destroyed for 60 years and raised four children in it.

“Having 60 years of memories washed away could not have been easy, but he was very grateful for our help,” Podobnik said. “He even helped us move items out by the front of the road to be picked out with his little John Deere tractor.”

The owner of the food pantry and thrift store also felt the devastation of the hurricane. Podobnik recalled the owner being “a little standoffish” when the group arrived to help but noted she could understand why he was initially distant.

“I could not imagine all the stress he had gone through,” Podobnik said. “It was a big food pantry and thrift store with only two employees run by volunteers, so they would not have been able to do the cleanup work on their own. We were able to clean it up in one day with a whole group, so I could not imagine how stressful cleanup was for him before volunteers came.”

The idea that “many hands make light work” rang true for all recovery efforts organized by Eight Days of Hope in the state. Podobnik said it was “amazing” to see volunteers from across the country come together to help out their “neighbor,” no matter how far North Carolina was from their home state.

“We’re put on this earth to help each other, so when you get the opportunity to help someone, I think we should take it because one day that might be us that needs help now,” Podobnik said. “It’s just neighbors helping neighbors.”