After Helene, neighbours stepped up where FEMA fell short

• Kindness of strangers - but where was FEMA?
• Helene ravaged seldom-hit areas
• Resilience of ordinary Americans in face of chaos

DANDRIDGE, Tennessee – Floating piles of garbage. Chaos on the lake. And a beloved pet dog called Chicory, her chest ripped open in the devastating aftermath that followed Hurricane Helene. 

This was the scene that greeted Leslie Purser when she returned to her Dandridge, Tennessee home after the September 2024 hurricane that tore through eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. 

Chicory is all stitched up and better now - but there is plenty more fallout from the storm that is taking far longer to heal, even for a household hardened for combat.

"We're a military family and this is why we settled here," Purser said. "Storms never hit here."

A little more than a year on from Helene, communities in Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia are still picking up the pieces, as the Trump administration faces criticism - even from its own backers - over slow-walking disaster relief.

For all the chaos that Helene wrought, victims of the storm say they found a surprise silver lining in its devastating wake: the resilience of neighbours and kindness of strangers.

Helene led to the deaths of more than 200 people across six states - the deadliest Atlantic hurricane since Maria in 2017. The total costs were at least $78 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Purser asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for help cleaning the beach by her house but was told it sat outside the official disaster zone so was turned down, she said.

"It definitely was a disaster area," she said. "We didn't want money, we just (wanted) help cleaning up this big stuff, getting this barrel out of here, getting these trees out of here."

"I thought that was what FEMA was there to do, but OK," said the retired major general with a laugh.

FEMA says its help ran into the billions and was one of the biggest cleanup operations on record.

But as climate change fuels ever more frequent and intense storms - Hurricane Melissa hit the Caribbean just last month - major disasters in relatively inland areas like Dandridge could become the new normal.

"We just didn't expect storms to hit," she said.

Local resilience

By most accounts, the area in and around Douglas Lake, near to where Purser lives, has been on a path to recovery – though one that took many months and even more goodwill to get there.

Marti Dotson, a local realtor, said the market was now finally starting to rebound – but it's been a long road. 

She remembered seeing gas tanks and all kinds of appliances floating in the water right after the hurricane.

But she also recalls people banding together and coming to help others – even from as far as Kentucky, a journey that can take hours.

"People (whose) lives were just decimated were helping others – that's just what was amazing to me," she said.

"It's a slow system and people have to have help before the government authorities arrive," Dotson said. "Sometimes it takes something like that, I think, for people to band together.

"What turned into disaster has just turned into a blessing."    

Regs that worked

Though the lake was slow to recover, many homes were spared as local regulations prohibit house building close to the water.

The lake water climbed a bank of about 20 feet then stopped five or 10 feet short of the family home, Purser recalled.

"I don't know anybody in our neighbourhood who had flood damage in basements or anything like that - because of the restrictions," she said.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which helped with much of the cleanup, said flood mitigation strategies such as dams helped prevent more than $400 million in potential damages. 

Purser said she called the TVA to remove the piece of uprooted mobile home that she believes had cut her dog and they came out "immediately" – and even came armed with dog cookies.

While water did rise and creep into her yard, Dotson the realtor feels she had a lucky escape.

"We certainly did not get hit with what the people of Cocke County and North Carolina did as far as the devastation of our homes here on the lake," Dotson said.

Trump FEMA cuts

The recovery comes at a time of massive upheaval for FEMA, the federal agency tasked with responding to natural disasters, which has seen big funding cuts and staff departures this year.

Trump has dismissed climate change as a "con job" and his energy department has spread the views of contrarian scientists who challenge widely accepted conclusions on global warming.

FEMA has also routinely denied many states immediate disaster assistance this year – and has faced criticism even from the president's biggest supporters.

U.S. Senator Ted Budd, a Republican ally of Trump, had placed a hold on some of the president's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) nominees in protest of what he described as the agency's slow-walking relief funds for North Carolina.

FEMA announced in September it would release $64 million in money for roughly two dozen projects in the western part of the state as part of the recovery.

Budd thanked the president for the support but said local communities had stepped up to assist in the clean-up in the immediately aftermath.

"These projects incurred significant debts that the federal government pledged to reimburse them for, but for too many communities, funding has lagged," he said.

A FEMA spokesperson said the agency has delivered $510 million in grants and $2 billion for debris removal after Helene, and that more than 160,500 hurricane-hit families had received some $516 million in direct assistance.

"This is one of the largest and most complex debris removal missions in history, with nearly 15 million cubic yards of debris cleared," the spokesperson said.

(Reporting by David Sherfinski; Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths and Anastasia Moloney.)