Asheville resident, Emily Ten Eyck finds refuge in Grand Marais and organizes relief effort after Hurricane Helene

Kalli Hawkins | October 23, 2024

Nearly four weeks ago, the United States Southeast region was severely impacted by the floodwaters created by Hurricane Helene, causing widespread destruction and leaving millions without power.

Many residents were forced to evacuate their homes and seek refuge outside the impacted region. Some individuals evacuated to neighboring towns or cities, while others left the state and traveled thousands of miles to find a safe place to stay.

Emily Ten Eyck, an Asheville, N.C., resident, was one of those individuals.

After the flooding and aftermath of Hurricane Helene hit her town of Asheville, she traveled over 1200 miles to Grand Marais, Minn., to stay with friends and family up the Gunflint Trail.

Ten Eyck’s connection to the Gunflint Trail stems from her childhood, she said. She grew up visiting the North Shore and Grand Marais from an early age. Later in her adult life, she served as program director at Camp Menogyn for several years. Her family currently owns a cabin on Poplar Lake and offered her a safe place to stay following the destruction of Hurricane Helene.

Ten Eyck experienced the entirety of the hurricane in Asheville and said the region and its residents were unprepared for the flooding events, which started the Wednesday before the storm officially hit. “So it was quite dramatic because while we knew there was a big storm coming, we were already experiencing the impacts before we were even forecasted to,” she said.

The most disorienting part, she said, was the loss of internet and cell phone connection. “We really only had our neighbors and our eyes and ears to be able to understand what was going on,” she said. “Lots of downed trees, power lines snapped.”

While the experience of living through a major flooding and hurricane event was significant to Ten Eyck and her neighbors, she said, “It was incredible to see the community come out and support each other and make sure that everyone had their needs, just in my little neighborhood.”

While recovery efforts and cleanup have been ongoing for weeks, a significant amount of needed help and support remains for Asheville residents and the surrounding Southeast region. Recognizing that many of her friends and neighbors who stayed in Asheville following the hurricane needed help, Ten Eyck began organizing and collecting donations to take with her when she returned to Asheville in the coming weeks.

She said the motivation to help her neighborhood originated from conversations with her neighbors about how they can support each other. “We have a really strong neighborhood, neighborhood association, and so we wanted to make sure that we were giving back to them in some way.”

“And so my vision for this physical donation drive was really trying to help my friends and family living in Minnesota who wanted to help but didn’t quite know how to find that way into supporting the folks in Asheville and the wider region,” Ten Eyck said.

Ten Eyck began collecting physical items, including warm clothes, hand warmers, five-gallon buckets, hazmat suits, work gloves, tools, gift cards to local Asheville hardware stores, and more. She said she has been overwhelmed by the support she has received from the Grand Marais community so far.

“I just really want to extend a huge thank you to the folks of Grand Marais,” she said. “I should not have been surprised that people in Grand Marais would want to donate. But it just, it meant so much to me that this little, tiny town that I have cared so much for wanted to extend their care and support to the folks of Asheville and western North Carolina.”

WTIP’s Kalli Hawkins spoke with Emily Ten Eyck about her Hurricane Helene experience in Asheville, her time in Grand Marais, and details about her donation drive. The audio from the interview is below.

Information about Emily Ten Eyck’s donation drive and how to support Asheville and North Carolina residents are below.