John Jefferson
A nonprofit organization that helps communities hit by natural disasters is heading to remote parts of North Carolina this week to ensure residents have access to clean drinking water after Hurricane Helene walloped parts of the state.
Water Mission, based in South Carolina, was given the OK by North Carolina to provide mobile safe water treatment for residents in the hardest-hit areas.
Brock Kreitzburg, head of the Water Mission Disaster Assistance Response Team, spoke to Fox News Digital from on the ground in Boone, North Carolina. He said Hurricane Helene has decimated homes and infrastructure, including bridges, leaving people stranded.
“People are having to hike a day and a half out to another town in order to just get food and water. Most locations have three things: no power, no access to water and food,” Kreitzburg said. “There are communities that are actually sharing food among themselves.”
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A Christian nonprofit, Water Mission, has been responding to natural disasters and humanitarian crises around the world, including East Africa, Turkey, Pakistan, Ukraine and the Caribbean for more than 20 years. In that time, Water Mission has served more than 8 million people, it says.
The organization is partnering with Operation Airdrop, a Texas-based nonprofit that organizes general aviation assets in the aftermath of natural disasters to deliver safe water systems to impacted areas.
As of Tuesday, Oct. 1, Water Mission’s team has distributed six water treatment systems and 175 generators across western North Carolina.
Kreitzburg told Fox News Digital the water treatment systems are pelican suitcases relying on solar power.
“What they’ll do is take it near a water source – more than likely a river – and they’ll put it in the river. And the rivers look like chocolate milk right now … they’re pretty bad,” Kreitzburg said. “And so, it’s going to take that water from the river, run it through this filtration system, this reverse osmosis system. They’re going to pull every contaminant out of the water. The end will be safe water that people can drink.”
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Once the systems are up and running, “they’ll be able to start producing safe water and distributing it among the community.”
With Helene claiming nearly 160 lives, the storm has become one of the deadliest in U.S. history. The devastation was especially bad in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where at least 57 people died in and around Asheville, a tourist haven known for its art galleries, breweries and outdoor activities.
“Communities were wiped off the map,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said at a news conference Tuesday.
Helene blew ashore in Florida late Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane and upended life throughout the Southeast, where deaths were also reported in Florida, Tennessee and Virginia. Officials warned that rebuilding would be long and difficult.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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