Northeast Community Credit Union lost its 19E Branch in Elizabethton when the Doe River overflowed its banks a month ago when Hurricane Helene hit the Southern Appalachian Mountains. The storm devastated the communities surrounding the area.
Here’s an update from Teresa Arnold, president and CEO of Northeast Community Credit Union, and Amanda Blair, training and development manager. Amanda grew up in and still lives in Roan Mountain, which is a hard-hit area of Carter County.
Northeast Community Credit Union’s Roan Mountain Branch is serving as an emergency satellite WiFi connection for community members. What has been the community’s response to the credit union serving as an emergency satellite WiFi connection?
The town of Roan Mountain has a population of less than 1,000 people. However, there are over 275 miles of road. With many of these roads being impassable and cellular services down, the community was extremely anxious during and following the flood due to not having the ability to check on family and friends. There were many tears shed those first few days due to the inability to even communicate with loved ones.
With Starlink, the residents gained a renewed sense of peace hearing their voices or reading a text message for the first time in days. Our local Chamber of Commerce had contacted our credit union early in the process to ask if we could provide power to a central hub for community WiFi access, and we readily agreed as we knew firsthand how urgent the need was.
Our credit union branch location and much of the Roan Mountain area are still, as of today, without our normal WiFi service. We’ve been told the continued outage has to do with cabling having to originate and run to us through Boone, N.C., which is about 40 miles from our branch office.
Can you give us an update on the storm’s impact on utility infrastructure? I’m guessing many people are still without power, water, internet or cell service.
As of 10/17/24, there are still over 200 residents without power, water, cell service and/or internet. As noted above, our credit union in Roan Mountain is still waiting for repairs to services.
Thankfully, local churches with the help of many volunteers have provided hot showers, daily meals and even housing to many needing electricity to support their medical devices or to those displaced from their homes.
Road conditions are slowly improving but meanwhile, volunteers have loaded mules periodically with supplies, and have loaded ATVs with hundreds of meals every day, to supply and feed people in areas that still cannot be accessed by car.
We have an employee who still hasn’t been able to reach her home due to roads and bridges being out and downed trees still blocking access.
How are parents faring with school closures until Oct. 28?
Parents have been amazing! Some have not returned to work yet, and some who are working have handled the closure with such grace. Family and friends of those needing childcare have really stepped up to help with that, and many of our local middle schoolers and high school students have stayed busy working hard at relief shelters, as they’ve volunteered their own time and efforts to help provide relief to others affected.
How are road conditions in Carter County? I read that the Forest Service closed access to the Cherokee National Forest in Carter County to road outages.
Road conditions are a challenge and add to everyone’s commute, but each day there are improvements. Seeing the extensive devastation families around us are experiencing seems to give everyone a measure of patience for those inconveniences.
What is one thing that you would like for credit union colleagues to know about the storm?
How grateful we are to everyone that has reached out to our credit union and staff, and all the help our residents and local businesses are giving each other. It is humbling to experience the care and compassion we have seen and received. We hope this storm will always remind us of the gift we have been given to touch our members’ lives not only during this national disaster but every single day we purposely serve our community and our members.
How to Help
We encourage you to consider donating to the Disaster Relief Fund. All contributions benefit Tennessee credit union professionals who have been affected by Helene.
