Hurricane survivors continue to struggle with anxiety, fear, anger amidst storm season

Caption

Aleah Martin, 8, right, and her cousin Riley Boyd, 12, play in the crown of a pecan tree blown down by Hurricane Helene in Aleah’s yard in Dublin, Ga., in late September 2024.

Credit: Grant Blankenship / GPB News

Hurricane season doesn’t end until after Thanksgiving.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecast 17 to 25 named storms, with heightened activity caused by warm Atlantic waters and a La Niña pattern.

Some people were still without power in parts of Georgia and North Carolina three weeks after Hurricane Helene, one of the most destructive storms in Georgia Power’s 140-year history, tore through the South.

After making landfall as a Category 4 hurricane Sept. 26, Helene killed more than 230 people across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee.

The storm’s destruction also  wreaked havoc on people’s mental health as the death toll climbed among hundreds of missing people who weren’t expecting such destruction.

For many years, Fen Druadìn (they/them) encouraged friends and friends of friends to shelter with them when hurricanes threatened North Carolina.

“My city is surrounded by mountains,” Druadìn said. “We don't have major bodies of water. 'We're good, we're good, we're fine.' And then we weren't.”

The once-in-a-century storm shocked the community and left the prolific writer, temporarily, without words.

“A lot of the time now I feel like I'm just kind of sitting, staring, just sort of waiting for things to percolate through,” Druadìn said. “You can't process all of it at once. There's so much of it. And so, yeah, mental health is a struggle a lot.”

Lura Wolfe, a professional counselor, traveled to Asheville days after Helene hit to check on her sister and offer support to both residents and volunteer workers with the Red Cross and FEMA, many of whom felt burnt out and overwhelmed just days after Helene moved on.

“And then there's people that, you know, are not leaving their house that are having a lot of anxiety and a lot of kind of trauma symptoms,” Wolfe said. “I don't think a lot of it has set in, but, I think, over the coming weeks, it definitely will.”

Wolfe expected to help others get through the immediate crisis and breathe.

“Self-care is so big,” Wolfe said. “Everybody's jumping in, but they're helping to the point of, you know, collapse.”

Druadìn’s Asheville neighborhood comprises about 1,100 homes, with a high population of elderly people and people living with disabilities in group homes and independent living facilities.

“They didn't have the capability to be prepped,” Druadìn said. “People say you should have three days of water, and you should have shelf-stable foods. Those were not things that a lot of these folks had.”

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Immediately after South Georgia sustained damage, the state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities worked with crisis responders from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to have counselors available at a disaster relief center in Valdosta.

These support teams will remain in the area for a few months to monitor mental health, especially for crisis responders dealing with the emotional aftermath of searching for survivors, Commissioner Kevin Tanner said.

“The storm has taken a mental toll on our first responders, so we're keeping a check closely on them,” Tanner said, “making sure they know what resources are available.”

When meteorologists announced Tropical Storm Milton’s formation in the Gulf about a week after Helene hit, Druadìn and many others in their Asheville neighborhood still hadn’t showered.

Broken roofs still needed tarps, power wasn’t restored, and residents barely had enough water to flush their toilets.

Caption

A street was still draining of floodwaters in Dublin, Ga., hours after Hurricane Helene passed through late September 2024.

Credit: Grant Blankenship / GPB News

Milton intensified from a Category 1 to a Category 5 hurricane in 36 hours, one of the fastest on record.

Druadìn checked in with a friend in Tampa, Fla., as Milton became this hurricane season’s 13th named storm.

“There's this very visceral connection with the reality of this that happens when it's happened to you,” they said. “So, yeah. We don't know what's coming next, and that adds to the mental and emotional burden that we're all carrying at the moment.”

Crystal Smith, 43, has lived in Hernando County, Fla., her entire life and has a healthy respect for hurricane threats. She fled to Marietta, Ga., northeast of Atlanta, during Hurricane Irma in 2017, when her house went nine days without electricity and mold grew over all her food.

Her Florida city of Brooksville is about 15 to 20 miles inland and elevated above any flood zones, so Smith’s house wasn’t included in mandatory evacuations with Irma, but Milton moved so fast that meteorologists struggled to keep up.

If she had a place to flee with her pets, Smith said she would go. The hours in traffic and scarcity of gasoline didn’t scare her nearly as much as the idea of leaving her family.

“Honestly, I would [go] if I had a place to take the animals, but I don't — and I will not abandon them,” Smith said. “If it's bad enough to be life-threatening, then we're in it together.”

That was Monday night, Oct. 7, when meteorologists still expected Milton as a Category 3 hurricane.

Anxiety rose across South Georgia and the Valdosta area early because they didn’t have the resources to help evacuees.

Kristin Goin, who leads the Valdosta-based Legacy Behavioral Health Crisis Counseling Planning (CCP) team at the FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency Disaster Recovery Center (DRC) in Lowndes County, said she saw a lot of anxiety and confusion as Milton took aim at Florida.

People didn’t know whether to expect rain or high winds, Goin said, noting that many still had tarps on their homes.

For the most part, Hurricane Milton, which took an eastward turn across Florida, spared the folks struggling in South Georgia, but the need for crisis mental health services continues to grow, Goin said Friday, Oct. 19.

Even with the storms gone, the CCP team expects to be in Valdosta for “the foreseeable future.”

“People are in survival mode,” Goin said, noting an increasing need for emotional support.

Frustration and confusion are also rising, because people don’t know how to prepare or what to believe, she said.

“Especially with it being an election year, there's a lot of misinformation and conspiracies of weather machines,” Goin said. “And we've seen an influx of, actually, anger as a big reaction.”

Some people feel frustrated after speaking to FEMA without getting the answers that they want, Goin said, adding that it takes time to process things like repairing homes and utilities.

“Time is not in our favor with disaster relief,” Goin said.

She said it’s OK to ask for help with mental health as much as it is for disaster relief and home repairs.

“Asking for help is encouraged,” she said.

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the suicide or crisis lifeline.