When Hurricane Helene hit the Appalachia region last week, entire towns flooded in a matter of hours — roads were washed, homes were destroyed, utility infrastructures were destroyed. The death count from the hurricane is more than 200 people, and hundreds of people reportedly remain missing.
While a large swath of the Southeastern United States was harmed, the catastrophic effects of the hurricane have been especially grave in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. And the small town of Erwin, Tennessee has suffered some of the worst damage in the country.
Brother Corey Soignier is a member of the Glenmary Home Missioners, and is assigned to St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Erwin, where he’s been deeply involved in relief efforts. Soignier spoke with The Pillar earlier this week.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Brother, share with us the state of things in Erwin, Tennessee after Hurricane Helene.
On Friday, we had the massive flood here, Most of the town looks ok from pictures, but the flood area was impacted hard, affecting industry and homes.
And the flooding also damaged our infrastructure really bad. So we lost bridges and roads and those types of things.
So what's going on?
The relief effort right now that's taking place here in Erwin is just getting supplies out to folks, getting water, getting food, getting the most basic things … sometimes we forget about the very simple things we depend on, like toothbrushes and toothpaste, even.
Some of these people lost everything.
So a lot of that distribution is going on here [at the parish], and that's what we've been heavily involved in. We're open now as one of the distribution centers. We have coming in with the Ursuline Sisters, they're bringing us high-tech, high-powered water filters for us to get out to people who don't have running water, so they can have clean water.
We have been coordinating with the city, and with what they have going on. We’re all in this together, with the different churches and the different organizations coming in, all of us working together to do what we can in this situation.
At this point, do people come to you, or are you going out to people’s homes to bring them supplies?
Right now, we're not able to get to most flooded locations, still. The roads are out, and unsafe for the public to drive on.
Some of the government agencies — the emergency response agencies — have been able to open little routes to get to some of these places. They’re taking in supplies where they can. And they’’ve airlifted some supplies into places that can’t be reached by any way except for airlifting.
Helicopters have been running the airlift, which has been wonderful.
But for us at St. Michael’s — people have mostly been coming to us, but we have been trying to reach out into the community where we can. If we hear of a need, and we can bring something to someone, we're right on top of it, to get stuff delivered.
Is this a parish-wide effort? Are a lot of parishioners involved in relief efforts?
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, parish-wise, we really started on Saturday morning. We did a donation drive to collect stuff, that was started by some of the members of the parish.
They took the ball, and got that started over in the city next to us — which was far enough in the mountains that they wasn't affected by the flood, but was close enough that we could get to places.
After we started, it's just been one thing after the other with parishioners helping. It’s not just our own parishioners though — not just St. Michael’s people. The entire Erwin community has pulled together to ask: ‘What needs to be done? Let's get this knocked out and get some stuff rolling.’
Brother, I know you lived in Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina hit. I’ve heard the damage to eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina compared to the damage in Louisiana from that storm. Is that a fair comparison, do you think?
That would be very, very fair. And this has brought back some of those Katrina memories for me — especially seeing the infrastructure damage and the house damage with the flooding and what's going on there. So yes, I would say that that is quite accurate.
Tell us about some of the people you’ve been able to help.
There was actually an elderly couple who came up to me on Saturday, and their house was in Johnson City, which is flooded They didn’t know what to do —- they had lost everything.
We were able to get them to the right contacts, and get the paperwork started, to get them housing, getting them food. We were able to take that elderly couple, who just lost everything , and get them started down a path — they ‘re now on a list of getting an elderly housing placement, and other things too.
One of the biggest things that keeps standing out to me is that we're getting help from local people, and help nationwide. Today, I've had deliveries come in from folks in Kentucky driving things down, for example.
It stands out to me to see the number of people saying: What can we do? How can we do it? They're contacting us, asking to help, and just lending that hand.
I know this is probably going to be weeks and weeks of help to come. It's not going to be over next week. We're going to be doing stuff for the next several weeks to months.
The people I have encountered have really high spirits, they’re spirits are still up — even though they just lost everything.
They're thankful for the donations that are coming in from around everywhere, and they're overjoyed with the support that the county has provided at the school for sheltering for them.
I entered Glenmary in 2020; January 2020 was my first day.
Shortly after that, I got to experience what it means to be a missionary during pandemic, and now I get to experience what it means to be a missionary during a big disaster relief effort.
How do these disaster relief efforts fit into the charism of your religious community?
It is our charism. Our charism is to be here for the community.
Not just for Saint Michael's Parish, but for this community as a whole. And to be able to lend a hand, to be able to be a support, to be able to be here so that people know that we’ll be here, to help them get to our sense.
So as far as our charism and who we are, this is what we do — if you will — in the sense of us just being at the right spots at the right time, being present and being totally open to the Holy Spirit and where it's calling us.
Trust me, there's part of me, as I'm waiting on some folks to show up, part of me feeling like I just want to go home and go to sleep.
But at the same time, the work of God is at hand here and the Spirit and has been flowing.
I'm getting phone calls from people that I don't even know, which is wonderful, because they’re asking how they’re able to help, and what they can do.
And that's uplifting — that the wider community is saying to people: "We're here for you. What can we do?"
