Storm chaser returning to North Carolina to help people devastated by Helene

AccuWeather

Aaron Rigsby was among the first to share stories of communities in western North Carolina decimated by Hurricane Helene, and now he's returning to help.

Transcript

00:00The man in transit is Aaron Rigsby, and he's moving through the Bluegrass region,

00:04heading back to western North Carolina to help with those impacted by Hurricane Helene.

00:10So, Aaron, you have a lot of stuff in your car there. What's going on?

00:16Yeah, good evening, Jeff. So, I took some time off visiting family, you know,

00:20spending a lot of time with loved ones after witnessing those back-to-back strong hurricanes,

00:24and I had a lot of people starting to reach out asking how they could help and organizations that

00:27they could donate to, and I decided to take some of that into my own hands, and all these right

00:31here are actually warm clothing, kids clothing, things that people are going to need as the

00:36colder months start to approach. I'm going to be dropping these off in various locations in those

00:40heavily impacted mountain towns, including Asheville, Black Mountain, all the way up into

00:45Burnsville, and this is going to help a lot of those families, you know, at least attempt to

00:48get back off of their feet, because there's actually instances of people living in tents

00:52right now, and especially in those higher elevations, we're going to see those cooler

00:55temperatures approach a lot quicker than we will in the lower elevations, and some of those areas

00:59already received a little bit of snow, so they're going to need all the help that they can get,

01:02and it's going to be nice, because it's really easy to forget, with all the storms we've had

01:06lately, the severe impacts that these left behind, and that there's still a lot of folks suffering

01:10down here. So, we're going to shed some light on some more of those stories, and do our part here

01:14at AccuWeather, and all on the way to be able to help out and give some people some hope.

01:18Aaron, you're doing some great things here. You have a big heart, and I know that you've met a

01:22lot of people along the way. Are you specifically going to connect with certain people who you

01:28spoke with a couple of weeks ago, or are you going to make just general stops in various

01:33towns where you know there's a great need? It's going to be kind of an approach of where I'm going

01:39to, you know, approach different towns, and pretty much kind of either pass these out myself, or

01:44donate to a lot of groups that are already down here, that can use those ATV and four-wheelers

01:48to be able to transit some of this stuff up into the higher elevations, where the roads are still

01:53washed out, and people are still kind of lingering around their homes. A lot of people have had

01:57resources brought up to them, but it's making things really slow and difficult in those higher

02:01elevations. So, it's going to be passed out to them, and then take them up to the mountains,

02:05and hopefully help some families out that are in need up there. You're doing some great things

02:08there, Aaron. Thank you for all of your reporting, and all that you're doing to help others out who

02:13are in a really, really compromised spot right now. Families in tremendous need. Their homes

02:18no longer exist, in some cases, because they've been washed away. Aaron Rigsby, southbound on I-75

02:24there in Lexington, Kentucky, en route to western North Carolina.

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