When Hurricane Helene finished passing through North Carolina, the immediate needs of the community were among the first priorities of those in the damaged areas and those witnessing from the outside. Many townships were damaged to varying degrees along the mountain region of the state. Homes had been lost, as well as sources of water and electricity, with food next to go if action wasn’t taken immediately.
A mad dash toward restoration was in play not even a day after the storm, thankfully, and one modern resource was still available to most even after the devastation. If you had a phone signal, chances are you also had some access to the internet, and this train of thought is how a group of people took to Discord to craft a server with the region’s needs in mind.
Roxanne Kelly, a group therapist that lives in Asheville, had already moved herself and her wife to a nearby hotel to avoid getting trapped in their home by the storm, fearing it being flooded. In the early morning hours, as the storm raged, she remembered first seeing the call to action. “I was scrolling Reddit to kind of distract myself while my wife slept, and I saw a call out for folks to join this Discord,” Kelly recalled. “The initial posts had said something like, “We’re just starting this, but if anyone else wants to talk, here’s a place we can do it,” And I thought to myself, You know what, I would actually really enjoy helping work with that. Discord is a lot quicker than Reddit, and this seems like it would be a great experience.”
“We had a lot of folks who just wanted to offer support as well, so we made that space for them. And then there’s also not just [for the] counties, but also [channels for] logistics and medical, and there are also [sections] for anyone who’s just in a specific field. My wife is a pharmacist, so people had questions about their medication, and they were like, “I don’t have access. What do I do?” So, she stepped up, and she would answer questions, and when it came to some of our LGBT members who perhaps are on hormones or trans individuals – my wife is trans – they knew that not only were they talking to a pharmacist who was knowledgeable, they also knew that she was someone who was safe and would not provide misinformation.”
Not only having a background as a mental health professional, Kelly also holds a wealth of experience in ways to craft and utilize servers on Discord. With those talents, she saw this as a way to help out those affected by the storm. From there, she volunteered to be part of the team structuring the Discord hub. The result of the team’s combined work became the WNC Helene Recovery Community, a server that packs in as much information as possible, all in very nuanced and easily navigated channels and threads.
For those who have never used Discord before, the social platform is located at https://discord.com/ and is advertised as an easy-to-use community builder, featuring thousands of servers on its network. Many of the servers on Discord range from being community chat extensions for independent creators to more specific ones, where small communities can create a hub for friends or those within a given area to tap into.
The Helene Recovery Community, which QNotes found through https://disboard.org/server/1289141014573092917, fits more of the latter’s frame. The disaster-specific server uses the platform to allow incoming users to label themselves through the initial entry requirements with details about where they live in the affected areas, it also maintains help-channels that pertain to things going on in those sections of the Appalachian region.
Scrolling down the left side of the server’s channel lists, users can find resources under labels like “Recovery Hub” and “Useful Links,” which themselves also host a substantial number of different channels, tackling everything from health care and mutual aid to logistics and recovery updates. Looking beyond North Carolina – Fall 2024 had multiple disaster areas affected by the year’s hurricane season – there are sections for other states, like Florida and Tennessee. At the bottom of the lists, there’s even a section dedicated to helping with any future hurricane or natural disaster that might strike.
While the identities of many users are left anonymous, locked behind their usernames, it is apparent by reading through the channels that the overall server has helped those on it. In the missing persons channel, a post made by username maddbalz put out information about a friend’s missing mother, describing her and giving possible whereabouts. From where the post was made on Oct. 7, it only took a day after putting out the information on the server for the friend’s mother to be found, with maddbalz putting out a “thank you” post to close the case.
Scrolling up, another user, jubilant_starfish_44882, was able to track down two missing friends that lived in a trailer in Burnsville, N.C. within a day. After a few post replies with other users, a reporter in the server operating under username canto6517 had already tracked down the individuals and reported them as being safe. Similar stories of users within the community helping each other can be found in many of the channels, showing that any type of problem outreach most likely will be met with a helpful voice on the other end willing to pitch in for the cause.
With all of the good the server does, however, what good is it if those joining Discord have little idea of how to navigate or utilize it? Kelly, among the creators and moderators helping manage the server, foresaw this issue could limit many people’s ability to access what they needed in a quick fashion.
“We were not expecting [to see] Discord utilized in such a way it was, it was wild to see,” Kelly explained. “So, we had discord-help placed right up there with the general chat [near the top of the channels]. If you go to Discord-help, you will see that there are pictures and there are arrows, and it’s like, “Hey, this is where you can do this.” Some of our [moderators] took a video. We have amazing people on our team like Madison and Charlie, who helped create some of the instructions. We made sure that at the top of the Discord there was, announcements, and then there were guides.”
One of the other issues that kept coming up was the vetting process, to see who was there to help, and who was potentially netting users in scams. Kelly, one among the many operators with Discord experience, wanted to keep an eye on the situation to prevent taking advantage of those affected by the hurricane. To add as an extra defense outside of vetting users coming in, a tab is available at the top of the channel list named Useful Links, allowing any who have seen or heard of those scamming others to list the information in the channel posts.
If there was anything helping pitch in on the WNC Helene Recovery Community Discord had taught Kelly, it was that in the moments of crisis, the communities in North Carolina’s mountain regions, and especially in Asheville, have each other’s backs.
“What I saw the most, and what I learned the most from this Discord is that even in times of dire crisis, people just want to help. There was no one I saw post only asking for themselves. You hear all these stories about people setting aside differences and coming together for their community, but you don’t expect you’re going to be in a once-in-500-year experience. I’m just a telehealth therapist with a dumb golden retriever. I didn’t think I’d be thrust into this position, and it was just really encouraging to see, especially when I feel like there are a lot of efforts to divide community. That’s my number one takeaway, that it was just fascinating to see that people who had been impacted wanted to help others as well, like they weren’t seeking help.”