The repairers who helped recover from Hurricane Helene

Dan Hettinger is a repair coach with WNC Repair Cafe located in Asheville, North Carolina. Since 2018, Hettinger has organized repair workshops to teach people how to fix small engines and make welding repairs on farm equipment. At free Repair Cafe events, hosted at local libraries, Dan and other volunteers walk their neighbors through repairs on their equipment, from blenders to laptops to chainsaws — whatever people bring. The events have long been a valuable community resource, but their importance was truly demonstrated after Hurricane Helene. 

Making landfall in late September, Hurricane Helene was a category 4 hurricane that damaged homes and communities from Florida to southern Virginia, with the worst flooding happening in Western North Carolina.  

“We were not prepared,” recalled resident and WNC Cafe repair volunteer coordinator Shelby Treichler. “We could not have been ready for the amount of damage and water that was there. We did not understand what it would mean for us individually or us as a community.” 

Strong winds and historic rainfall flooded streets, destroyed homes, and stranded thousands of residents across the western counties of the state.

“At first, I think a lot of people were self assessing and just waiting – waiting for the grid to come back, the roads to clear, the phone lines to come back on… But we needed a plan,” Triechler said. 

So Triechler loaded her truck, went to the Asheville tool library to get generators and power tools to her neighbors. She started with the immediate needs: directing traffic around fallen trees, getting gas to stranded cars and empty generators, and making sure her neighbors had chainsaws to help clear the roads. 

As communication lines started to come back up, Triechler found that other volunteers wanted to get involved as well, and Dan Hettinger’s WNC Cafe was quick to step in. Triechler was one of the first people to get the call. 

“I was really grateful when Dan messaged me,” she said. “There’s this big emotional toll when your community is hurting, and I was so grateful to have a channel to help.” 

Treichler joined up with Hettinger and the other WNC Cafe volunteers to use their repair skills to help their community. It was only days after the storm that Hettinger, Triechler, and a dozen other volunteers set up their first make-shift repair workshop in tents behind a local bookstore.

At first, some of the main repair needs were fixing backup power generators and sharpening chainsaws so people could clear downed trees and limbs.  “These engines had not been run in years,” recounted Hettinger, noting that, when people really needed them, many were not working. 

But with 8-12 volunteers working from morning to night, the makeshift repair workshop was able to repair about 50 items a day, expediting the recovery process. After seeing the need, the WNC repair crew took their pop-up tents on the road, eager to continue this work in neighboring communities.

The repair crew spread to eight community hubs across five counties, and it became clear that repair was a critical tool to keep the recovery efforts moving.

“Because we were so cut off, it made repair so essential,” said Triechler. “There was no way to get aid to us! All the interstates were gone, we only had what was already in our community. So [neighbors] were digging out grandpa’s old chainsaw that they never thought they would need but now need or they can’t get out of their driveway.” 

The volunteers even repaired a chainsaw with a “Made in West Germany” label. As long as they could make it run, any tool could make a difference.

Cleaning up after a disaster like Helene takes a lot of work — it requires an “all hands” response.

“[Repair] became a good outlet for low-mobility or older volunteers,” Hettinger added. “If you can’t shovel muck or move logs, it doesn’t take much training to sharpen a chainsaw. We had a wave of volunteers – people who were out of work but wanted to plug in somewhere and be useful … And they are hearing our story, maybe for the first time, and thinking, ‘Here’s a new way to help. Repair is something I can do.'” Repair became an outlet for community resilience that was empowering and provided real, tangible relief.

All told, WNC Repair Cafe hosted 11 repair pop-up events in areas with the greatest need in the month after Helene. They recruited dozens of local volunteers and were even joined by out-of-state volunteers to maintain and repair the tools required to clear roads and rebuild damaged infrastructure. Over time, neighborhoods were repaired alongside generators with the same levels of grit and care. As Hettinger put it, “There is no special tool, it’s just tenacity. It’s being willing to turn the whole thing upside down and take it apart piece by piece.”

Repair is essential to community resilience

In the wake of major disasters, but also just day to day, repair is a powerful way for people to help their communities. Repair events allowed North Carolinians to do essential recovery work better and faster.

Hettinger encourages all of us to use the lessons he has learned for our own hometowns. Every community should have trained repair volunteers ready to mobilize in the aftermath of a major storm. To find out more about local repair events, or how to start your own, check out these resources from Fixit Clinic and Repair Cafe.

Repair encapsulates a wide array of values. It eliminates needless waste, preserves important equipment, and empowers creative thinkers and tinkerers. Just as our tools are essential — from what we need to clear the roads, or power communication and medical systems — repairing those tools is just as vital. 

We know we haven’t seen the last natural disaster, as storms are increasing in intensity and frequency. As we look to protect our communities in the wake of new threats, it will be essential to maintain a strong, local repair infrastructure. When travel is impossible it might be the only way our critical tools can keep working. 

“I am really proud about how our volunteers banded together so quickly, and how our story has been able to get outside North Carolina.  I hope that more people hear our story and are thinking about repair in their own communities – not just as a way to respond to disasters but as a way to build sustainable and resilient communities in normal times too,” said Hettinger.