Eye on the Triangle

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Good morning everyone. Hope you're enjoying your day. My name is Emilia Rivadeneira, host of Eye on the Triangle. And with further ado, let's get into some news. You

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Emily, hello and welcome to WKNC eye in the triangle, your source of local news where we dive deep into the pressing issues affecting our communities. I'm your host, Emilia Reina, and here with me today are four of the nine emergency responders from NC State's Division of Academic and Student Affairs that went to UNC Asheville to assist rescue and recovery efforts after Hurricane Helene. Here with me is Justine Hollingshead, Assistant Vice Chancellor at the Office of Student Life and advocacy. Bryan Botts, associate director at university housing, Lisa LaBarbera-Mascote, Senior Director at student success initiatives, and Pete Fracarroli, Director of Facilities and business operations at university housing. Thank you so much for being here today. How are you guys doing

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good? Awesome. Thanks for having us.

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Thank you,

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yeah, for sure. So just can you describe your initial reaction when you were called to assist in Asheville?

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We got the call on Saturday, right after the hurricane, from the UNC system office asking if we could assemble a group of people from student affairs, Academic and Student Affairs for us here at NC State, and to bring folks in particular that had a housing background and maybe a counselor or two, given what UNC Asheville was experiencing. So we were, I was literally at the NC State football game, and reached out to Donna mcall yard, who is the Associate Dean for the Office of Student Life and advocacy, and also over university housing. She was at the football game, and so is Pete fraccaroli, and we, as soon as the game started, we got together and and, I mean, there was no question that we were going to try to send a team, and it was just a matter of what would that look like, and how quickly could we make that happen? And really, Pete Donna and I, we brainstormed a list of people that we thought would be up for the task and might be available to give four to five days to go up to Asheville. And we put together a group of nine, and four of us are here today. It really within 48 hours, similar to what the military or Red Cross or FEMA, when you're deployed, you have 48 hours. And we really, from start to finish, we were almost at the 48 hour mark in Asheville with our team to help.

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Wow, that's amazing. Um, and what kind of were the things that you guys specifically do, like the the team? Like, what were your roles in the team? If you can explain a little bit more trash

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guy you want to talk.

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So we brought a different a group of people to make sure that we had all different type of skill sets right? So we had some people that had Residential Life background and housing experience. We also made sure that we brought people that have facilities experience, and those that experience includes, you know, assessment of buildings and also repair and renovations of any of the damage that they might have. We wanted to make sure we're focused on assembling a group of people that are capable, capable and independent thinkers can make decisions. We wanted to make sure that if they need to do physical labor, that we could make sure that they were well positioned to do that as well. Because in this situation, we were asked to do both of those things throughout our time out there. And

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some of the folks that went on this deployment went to Wilmington after Hurricane Florence, to NC, Wilmington. So we we really did some different work there. It was more physical on the facility side, ripping out dry wall and helping to remove furniture. So we wanted folks that would really, as Pete said, be willing to do whatever was asked of them. Yeah,

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and for you, Lissa and Brian, what were like the specific roles that. You guys had probably

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all of those things that were listed out. I think the thing is, and in any emergency, as Justine will tell you, like things change minute by minute, and the needs change, right? So when we were heading out there, Brian and I have counseling backgrounds and have work in Housing and Residence Life, so we were expecting we're going to be working with students that are being displaced and kind of supporting them through their next steps, but then what you end up doing was a little bit different. So we did a lot of work with the facilities folks, pulling rotting trash out of students rooms and helping to move students to UNC Charlotte and doing some logistical pieces. So we did a variety of things that were very different than what we thought we would be doing as we were heading there. But equally as important, yeah, absolutely.

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At one point in time, we were jokingly calling ourselves Justine's interns, because we did whatever she told us to do in supporting NC Asheville. So our last day, we actually helped set up water distribution operations as well for them. And so that was a really cool experience where Justine was like, hey, we need you to make this happen. Go make it happen. And we work with one of their police officers to set up an operation. What in like, 45 minutes an hour, yeah, so,

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oh my god. So it was just like, fast like, approach to things like, just like, help as much as you can, basically,

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yeah. And we, we did, take a counselor with us, one of the psychiatrists from the NC State Counseling Center, which she was a huge asset for their staff there, and to just help them process through, how are they going to provide support to students? And then she also would pivot to helping pull trash or helping to do other things, but they specifically requested to have a counselor, so to have someone like Heather who was willing to drop everything, which meant rescheduling NC State students who she had appointments with, to be able to go in and provide a service to another school and their staff, and to really help them process through how they were going to then provide long term care and support to students that had just survived this unimaginable situation. Yeah,

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and that's just amazing what you guys did there. And like, you know, we appreciate everything that you did for folks there and UNC Asheville, and like Asheville in general, and once on the ground, what were some things that you guys saw like that impacted you? Maybe like some like personal stories when you were there, helping everyone. I'll

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tell you. One of the first things I noticed when we when we arrived, was their staff, and their staff had been fully engaged in helping students in all the ways that they needed support, right? So there was no power, there was no water on to the buildings, and it was very difficult situation. And their staff had been working around the clock for over 48 hours, 72 hours, right? They had been there since Friday with the hurricane, and we arrived on Monday, so it was really evident when we showed up that their staff needed time away. They needed they needed a break. And that's one of the things that that I thought was the most impactful that we were able to do, is make sure that we could step in and provide that support to them, and they knew that there was somebody that that was there that could do the work, coordinate the work that needed to be done, and actually execute the things that needed to be done. And

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not only had they been working for 72 hours, but their homes also had no electricity, their student their own children couldn't go to school. They might have had trees through their homes, like they were experiencing the same things UNC Asheville students were, but they were on campus, helping the campus as much as they could. So it was giving a break and then realizing they're dealing with traumatic situations at home, also,

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yeah, and in that sense, like you guys, like, just like, brought that relief to them as well, and that's just amazing. And what kind of like were the challenges that you guys faced once you were there? Were there some challenges just in general, like the aftermath of the hurricane. So

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many challenges, well, beat me, no water and no power, but there was also no internet and no cell phones. So, you know, really, the whole infrastructure was just missing. And so to try to do things and communicate or to do things without water. I mean, no water is a deal breaker. And, you know, so it was like every step of the way. It was like a hurdle that you had to try to help overcome and and there was a sense of urgency like that. You know, Lisa and Pete mentioned pulling trash because those rooms, it was getting warm, they didn't have power. Now, this was day four. Things, you know, bugs, it becomes a health hazard. And. So just really, the the hurdles of no infrastructure at all. And, I mean, we had handheld, two way walkie talkies that we bought at Dick's that were more reliable than other things. So to even just try to get communication was a process, and how you would we'd communicate with each other. And one of the first things that Lisa and Brian did was to take a young man, Alex, the student athlete, a tennis player for them, drive him down the mountain, meet up with a UNC Charlotte police officer and drop him off, and they're getting ready to leave. And I was like, Hey, by the way, I need you to find some place that has the internet, use your hot spot, and I need you to activate these four AT and T first net phones, because it came to the to the Emergency Operations Center on campus, but they weren't activated, so you couldn't actually use them. So, because there was no internet, so they, they worked it out, the problem

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solved. We

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did it in a Chick fil A lobby, actually, so that, there you go, but you asked about the question. Like, I think I appreciate Justin talking about the infrastructure, but like, honestly, what personally is I wanted to do more, right? I think the entire time that we were there, we were talking about, we want to do more, and how can we help out? And so we were pulling trash, right? And it was disgusting, and we and their staff kept on thanking us and saying, Thank you for doing this. And we're like, it's trash, like it wasn't fun, but we had fun doing a tight hangout and stuff like that. But I think I wanted to do more. And, you know, I think when we were leaving the city, when we're coming back, when 40 was reopened, that's when we were able to see much more of the damage that happened in Nashville. And I think that's the part where I was like, oh, did we do enough? And I think just hearing from their staff of like, Yes, you did what we needed to do at that point in time was helpful. But I still left thinking, like, is there anything else we could have done to help support and I know there was a couple times when there was just a long time or, like, what can we do? What can we how can we help out? Like, just sitting here is not how we want to spend our time. And so I really appreciate that group, because regularly we were thinking through, how can we help them do this? Can we do that? Are there other things that we can just step up and give their staff a break so they don't have to worry about it? Yeah,

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and a little and how many days were you guys there? I missed kind of like that. How many there's were you in Asheville?

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Four days for their I was like

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at 6am Monday morning, and we got back at 10pm late, nine, 910, 910, Thursday night.

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And usually something like this is a deployment for four to five days, because you really need to be able to, you know, have that time to get some downtime, recuperate, you know, for us, you know, NC State was supporting us to be there doing work, so we weren't taking vacation time to be there. We were there as a part of a university deployment. But you know, we all have families and other activities, so a typical deployment is usually anywhere from four to seven days, right?

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And to provide just like immediate, kind of like short term solutions to all that, and how did the community, well, you kind of like touch on that a little bit, but how did the community respond to just like you guys being there, you talk a little bit about just like the staff, but what about the students, or just like in general, the community that was just like seeing all of the things that you were doing for them.

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I think that so most students, by the time that we got there, there were 150 students that we thought would be there Monday, and by the time we did, most of them had returned home. There was a point in our visit where we interacted with students were being allowed on campus for short periods of time to access their rooms. So I got to interact with a number of students and family members who were just so appreciative that a because they knew we came from another institution to help out. They all were local enough that they could drive in. So they were trying to just get some of the immediate needs of their students. So we helped let them back into buildings that we were securing so that they could get a few items and leaves. I think they were just appreciative of NC State, of the fact that we had volunteered our time and that they were able to get in and get those necessary things that they needed, because everybody kind of left pretty quickly, right? This wasn't this long term planned exit, even when we were removing food from fridges like these were fully stocked fridges. These students had planned to, like, hold out the storm and have food to last, some, no joke, for like, a month. So they were just super grateful that they were able to come back and get what they needed. Yeah,

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and what message? Would you like to just say to our listeners about just like the importance of doing this type of emergency responses and community support when you know some natural disasters like Hurricane Helene happened?

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Well, I can say one of the things that I hope that if, if something like this happens at NC State. It gives me comfort that the UNC system, there's other talent, there's other people throughout the state that would have witnessed what we did, and that would reciprocate and come and help us here at NC State, if anything like that ever happened here, yeah,

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I would say for me, in knowing, most often in higher education, we're not, we're not built for emergencies. I'll just say that. And so to have another school ask for Student Affairs to help, it really gives me hope that they, they really do realize that it's okay in that situation to ask for help like Nobody's expecting that you go days and days without sleep, and you've been personally impacted, and you have to still do these things. You know, they still had to make sure all students were off campus and accounted for, and that the campus was closed and secure. And we help to be able to do that. And you know, we it's called mutual aid in in in public safety and hospitals, you don't ever do, you don't, you know fire company doesn't fight a fire by themself that. So there's multiple fire trucks there. There's multiple ambulances if there's a bad a bad call, and in higher ed, we're just still, we're still learning that it's okay to ask for help. And I, like Pete said, I if something happened here at NC State, I know we could call on any of our colleagues and friends across the state, or even really outside of the state and the region, to say, hey, we need help doing this. And we've had times at NC State, not not with a hurricane, per se, but a few years ago, when, when we had multiple student deaths on campus and we needed help in our counseling center, we asked, and you know, within hours, we had had that support from other schools. So it does. It gives you that sense of hope and being able to help others. I wish we could do more, like Brian was saying, I I think about it a lot, and you know, I know that it's not a great situation still in the mountains, and I wish there's more that we could do. Yeah,

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and is there anything else you would like to add?

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It was honestly just an honor to be able to go to Asheville and serve, and I think Pete said it at the beginning, like this team of nine people were willing to do absolutely anything that we were asked of there wasn't this isn't my job. This isn't what I do here at 100% was like, I am here to meet your needs. How can I help you? So it was an honor to be asked, but it was an honor to to serve with the team that we served with. Yeah,

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there was literally not one complaint from anyone on that team about not having water, not having food. They like, not having a good place to sleep, not being hot. There was no complaints from anyone on that team.

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And one thing I'll say it, it speaks to our work culture and the relationships that we have with each other, and not just in academic and student affairs, but but at NC State, there are many other folks outside of dasa that that made Pete Donna in my short list to reach out to, and you know, to know that people are willing to give of themselves to others. And so it does speak volumes about us as a university, and the support that we received to go, because there was a lot that we had to make happen in a short period of time, 48 hours. In 48 hours, and it was unclear to me if the box truck we were driving,

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it was unclear to all of us, clear

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if that box truck fully loaded at 7000 pounds, maybe it was gonna make it up the mountain. And who is driving? He's

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not here right now. His name is Kevin Sutherland. He drove that truck, and he

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had to put up with Peters. We, you know, these are, I mean, we, when you think about it, we spend more time with people at work, and I don't view what I do as work, like it's just part of who I am. And so you spend more time we're more like family than we're not. And you know, so when you call and ask of someone, and you know, each one of us had. Significant others and children and, you know, responsibilities, but people didn't hesitate and to put that aside and to give in another way, but we had a good time. We laughed a lot, and we hung out together, and we used porta potties together. Well, not together, not together, not together together, but, yeah, we had a good time. It was like a it was like a family. And you know that that's rare. You don't see that a lot, and so that that's not lost on me, yeah,

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and especially like, you know, like creating those memories, while also like helping other people, and like helping this community that was in need, that's remarkable. So thank you guys so much for being here today on the program and I on the triangle. And thank you again. Yeah, thank

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you. Thank you. Go pack if you could only see this,

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it's not how radio works,

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it's not how radio works.

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This has been your host. Emilia Rivadeneira, thanks for listening to Eye on the Triangle for back episodes of the show. Go to WKNC doc or slash podcasts. Music In today's episode is Krakatoa by Noah Stark, licensed under creative commons. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai