Noreen Nickolas
MNJ Correspondent
Six days after Helene tore through the area, Nick Hiteshew, at the urging of his wife, Rachelle, landed in Western North Carolina.
Several weeks later, he was working with members of Liberty Hill Baptist Church in Spruce Pine to set up Camp Unity, a volunteer base camp where volunteers stay for days or weeks while helping survivors recover from the storm’s catastrophic damage.
“The reason I’m here is my wife. I wasn’t going to respond to this one because we really weren’t ready to, and she said, ‘You are,’ so we came,” Hiteshew recalled.
Wilmington Response is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that Hiteshew founded and works under.
“I’ve been doing this since Hurricane Katrina. The organization itself was put together in response to Hurricane Harvey when that hit Texas . . . that was when we started the nonprofit but I have been doing volunteering and nonprofit literally since Hurricane Katrina off and on,” Hiteshew said. “I know that a lot of people are left behind when these situations happen.
Hiteshew’s goal is to “fill in the gaps” left by other organizations.
“I’m pretty much living here,” said Hiteshew, who has four children back home. “I have been here on the ground since Oct. 3, which was the first deployment up here.”
Hiteshew and volunteer Daniel Davio work closely together. Davio, who came down from Detroit, Michigan said he heard about the work being done here and came because “This is where God led me.”
Camp Unity occupies Liberty Hill’s softball field.
“We have got the land until the end of March,” Hiteshew said. “So in March . . . we’ll start putting it all back together. We’ll replant the grass. We’ll get it all nice and green for them as a thank-you for letting us stay for so long.”
Church members Travis and Mitzi Buchanan are coordinating with Wilmington Response. Travis Buchanan, who has been a deacon at Liberty Hill for more than 12 years, shared with other church members the vision that would eventually become Camp Unity.
“I think they are wonderful,” Mitzi Buchanan said. “They have worked really hard. I have not had any complaints at all.”
By November, Hiteshew said, Camp Unity was up and running.
“A lot of people want to come. They don’t know what to do or they don’t know where to stay. They don’t want to pay for a motel. So we made it possible for them to come here. We can help coordinate, help guide them in doing different projects,” Hiteshew said.
For volunteers who stay at Camp Unity tents for sleeping and for cooking have been set up and there is a bathroom on site. To take showers or do laundry volunteers go off-site.
“We usually go out to like the Walmart. They got the showers out there and the Ledger Fire Department also’s got the showers and laundry,” Hiteshew said. “And there is a gas station down the road that’s got a laundry mat in it.”
Hiteshew said that they originally had about 40 to 50 volunteers at a time but that has slowed down.
“It’s definitely coming down. Right now we’re down to 0. It’s myself and Daniel that runs the command,” he said.
While he said there are more volunteers coming soon, it’s still not enough.
“The needs are still here,” he said. “I mean there are still a ton of houses to repair. We’ve got tiny houses now that we are trying to get out to people as well . . . we’ve got a lot of different things going on. But not a lot of volunteers to help do it.”
Most of the volunteers are coming from out of state.
“We do have a few locals,” Hiteshew said. “A couple out of Asheville that come up here stay for a couple of days to a week at a time and then they go home.”
For anyone who wants to volunteer or needs help, Hiteshew said, they can go to its website at WilmingtonResponse.org and sign up.
“They can go on there and they can fill out our request form” Hiteshew explained. “It allows you to fill out our request list and get you on our service list.”
Multi-faceted work
“We’re doing everything. Right now what we’re doing is a lot of late-night calls that come in especially when it gets cold — people needing firewood, and people needing propane. We’ll go out and we’ll deliver it,” he said.
They had been doing a lot of heavy equipment work, Hiteshew said, but that has slowed down. He says he is looking forward to doing more by the end of the month.
“We have built a couple of footbridges, our biggest one being a 70-foot span,” Hiteshew stated.
They have also repaired about four homes to date, including one that was a complete gut and redo, he recalled.
“We anticipate having about 20 to 25 campers delivered by the time we’re done. Some of them are replacing campers that were already donated that just were not habitable at all,” he added.
Camp Unity services many of the surrounding areas.
“We’ve gone all the way up to Tennessee. … Then when we go outside of this area . . . we try to see if there is a better resource that is closer to them. A lot of times people don’t know where their resources are,” Hiteshew said.
Hiteshew said that donations of material, funds, and volunteers that have kept Camp Unity going.
“It has been more than generous,” Hiteshew said. “A lot of our donations that come in we distribute them to the other hubs as well.”
Right now the group is delivering around 20 20-pound propane tanks a week.
They are using gift cards and donated funds to buy building materials, which are in short supply, he said. They are also working on setting up a warehouse that will store donated building supplies.
Volunteers do a variety of projects
“Some people like to work with supplies so we send them down to different warehouses, different hubs,” he said. That’s another big thing that we do is kind of coordinate you know where the volunteers can actually go to.”
When asked if he knew of any storm victims living in tents he responded, “I don’t know of any that are still living in tents. Not in Mitchell County. Would it surprise me, no.”
He says there is a reason for that.
“The mentality of the mountain people is a little bit different,” he noted. “They think that they’ll get by . . . they thought what they were doing was going to get them through the winter but the colder it gets the quicker they realize I do need some help,” Hiteshew explained.
(Mitchell County Building Inspector Dillon Phillips has said that he does not believe there are any Mitchell storm victims currently living in tents.)
“A lot of people aren’t trusting and I don’t blame them,” Hiteshew said. “We’re here to help them,” he affirmed. “Everything we did was given to the people and donated 100 percent. We don’t play any kind of games. All this stuff was purchased by donations or out of pocket.”
Hiteshew said they follow up on those who they have helped.
“We actually contact the folks that we’ve been supporting and check on them when we know there are cold spells getting ready to come in and make sure they’ve got firewood and everything.”
Help is ongoing
The only thing that discourages Hiteshew is the “long nights and cold weather. It is definitely not the easiest mission, especially on this hill. The wind is pretty significant,” he said.
Hiteshew said he wants the community to know that making their lives a little easier is why Camp Unity and Wilmington Response exist.
“We’re here to help,” he said. “If you guys can pass that information around that helps us with our mission. Anybody who has got any free time they can always come down and help us too. Typically, we don’t like to ask the local community though for donations. You guys are the victims, the survivors. The idea is to bring outside support in to help you guys. That’s the reality of it.”