Community Reflects on One Year Post-Helene
Ryleigh Johnson & Vivian Bryan | September 16, 2025
Saturday, September 27, will mark the one year anniversary of Hurricane Helene reaching Warren Wilson College (WWC). In the intervening year, WWC students, faculty and staff have worked to facilitate restoration efforts, which have provided both significant challenges and benefits to the college community.
Swannanoa River at Warren Wilson College (WWC) campus on March 23rd, 2025, Swannanoa, NC. (Vivian Bryan)
Swannanoa River at Warren Wilson College (WWC) campus on August 29, 2025, Swannanoa, NC. (Vivian Bryan)
WWC’s ability to access relief funds was a major factor in how reconstruction at the college progressed. David Gliem, special assistant to the president for grants and innovation, worked with a consultant to coordinate FEMA funding. WWC suffered an estimated $12 million in damages from the hurricane. So far, the college has received $9.6 million from FEMA, insurance and private donors, leaving a $2.4 million gap that Gliem hopes will be filled by additional FEMA aid and state funding.
“I think that generally, the folks in FEMA who we've [worked with] have been really good partners,” Gliem said. “They are hamstrung in some ways by their own policies and procedures...[but] they try to do their best to help us move through the system...[It’s] taking time, but it's working out.”
WWC was not granted any aid in the $500 million Hurricane Helene recovery package approved by the North Carolina General Assembly in June, despite nearby colleges, like Montreat and Lees-McCrae, being included.
“We're still working with our legislators to figure out a way that we can get that funding restored, or that [funding] approved for us,” Gliem said. “[It] would be another $1.5 million.”
Gliem also emphasized the amount of work done by faculty and students to help gather information that insurance companies and FEMA needed, along with participating in general recovery efforts.
“I’m very proud of this community, particularly the students and the staff and the faculty who pulled together to make this cleanup effort work,” Gliem said. “In the weeks after the storm, students played a critical role in helping keep things going...making sure everyone was cared for and safe...This place [has] a lot of folks with a lot of grit, a lot of resilience.”
View of Swannanoa River near Big Bottom, March 23, 2025. (Vivian Bryan)
View of Swannanoa River near Big Bottom, August 29, 2025. (Vivian Bryan)
Dave Ellum, WWC’s dean of lands, also highlighted how student involvement in the recovery process made an impact.
“I think we did a great job of cleanup,” Ellum said. “It seems like a simple thing, but you can't see the river. You drive around Asheville, you can see the river everywhere you go, because there's no trees left. That was really important. I'm really optimistic because I think our land and what we did could serve as a model for future disaster relief and hurricane relief. The Farm Crew has kicked butt down there getting [cleanup] going. The Forestry Crews kicked butt in the forest.”
Farm Crew shepherd Zoe Zwerlein emphasized that despite major recovery efforts, the effects of the hurricane on campus land are still felt.
“We have made so much progress, but we're still pulling out our fences from the fields we didn't get to,” Zwerlein said. “We just grazed Test Field for the first time since the hurricane...The fence posts were still two feet underground. It felt crazy that in a landscape that has been altered to look like nothing has happened, I [was] reminded [of the hurricane] by that layer of leaf matter debris that's been found on everything.”
Hattie's Field, Warren Wilson College (WWC) on August 29th, 2025, Swannanoa NC. (Vivian Bryan)
During the “Post-Helene Floodplain Cleanup: FEMA, Army Corps and the Push for Ecological Resilience” panel, held by WWC on September 4, Ellum and other members of the college faculty and staff discussed how rebuilding had progressed at the college, with a particular focus on building ecological resilience. A main focus for the college during restoration, particularly restoration within the Swannanoa River, was preserving the natural systems already in place. Liesl Erb, associate professor of biology and environmental studies and chair of the environmental studies department, explained why this preservation was so important.
“These systems know how to rebuild themselves if we pay attention to them,” Erb said. “That's a big part of why we try to maintain the pieces of these natural systems here and the diversity of habitats and...structures..A huge part of [resilience] is just mimicking natural systems.”
The panel was primarily attended by members of the larger Swannanoa community, many of whom are still dealing with the ecological devastation and property damage caused by the hurricane.
The idea of helping relieve some of this stress felt by the college’s larger community was the spirit that helped to animate the tiny house project dreamed up by Maeve Williams, a junior and leader of the Construction Crew. The idea for the project began before the hurricane, when Williams became a crew leader at the beginning of the fall semester.
“I...had noticed a lot of disparities when it came to how facilities crews worked and functioned,” Williams said. “There was not a lot of organization, and we weren't getting a lot of work done. I wanted to think of some kind of idea to be able to train people, but also bring compassion and purpose back to [our work]-doing that in a way that [let us] work with community partners.”
Williams and Warren Wilson College (WWC) students pose in front of tiny house in Swannanoa, NC. (WWC)
After the campus closed in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Williams decided to stay and help the community rebuild. This time, spent working closely with Doug Bradley, supervisor of the Construction Crew and a Swannanoa resident, pushed them to further consider how a tiny house could help provide housing for those who had lost their homes in the hurricane. Williams and Bradley then worked to fund the project, eventually raising $48,000, along with soliciting donated materials and labor. Construction on the tiny house began in March and was finished in just under four weeks.
Williams cites the hurricane as a deeply transformative experience, especially when they consider how it grounded them in a sense of place.
“If the hurricane taught me anything, it is that we are in Swannanoa,” Williams said. “I'm proud to be in Swannanoa...We are our own community, and it's important, as somebody who takes from this community, to be able to give back to Swannanoa...There are people who live here, who love here, who thrive here. As a student [at WWC], you can’t forget that. We live in Swanna-noa, but we’re in Swanna-somewhere.”
While hurricane recovery has presented a unique set of challenges, staff, faculty and students have risen to meet these demands. As WWC moves forward in the process of rebuilding, the college wants to continue to invest in the “Swanna-somewhere” it calls home.
“People think we're in Asheville,” Ellum said. “We're in Swannanoa. Swannanoa is quite often overlooked. One of the things I'm really excited about is the partnerships we've been developing to help Swannanoa get back on its feet, because it crosses the social, it crosses the economic, and it crosses the ecological.”
Bank of Swannanoa River on August 29, 2025, in Swannanoa NC. (Vivian Bryan)