Culture's Edge

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Earthaven Ecovillage suffered severe impacts from Hurricane Helene. With 22+ inches of rainfall in 2-1/2 days, Hurricane Helene is the biggest storm this land has seen in Earthaven’s 30-year lifetime and well beyond it.

Hurricane Helene brought some of the highest rainfall, highest river levels, and most severe flooding ever observed across the region.

The damage in the region is extensive. Lives have been lost. Lots of homes, businesses, farms, and infrastructure are destroyed. Lots of ecological destruction. Lots of suffering. Many in Western North Carolina have lost everything.

The good news for us at Earthaven is, no one in our little mountain village was injured, and all of our residents are safe, fed and housed.

The heartbreaking news is, the creeks overflowed so much, so quickly, and with such force, that they wreaked damage on our ecovillage that will take months or years, and resources we do not have, to recover.

The flooding took out many of our roads and destroyed or severely compromised all three of our bridges. We've had damage to our water systems, off-grid power systems, and agriculture infrastructure. The ground became so saturated that huge trees fell, many of which blocked our roads and pathways, and some of which severely damaged one home and moderately damaged several others. Footbridges washed away, including one connecting a neighborhood to the Village Center, which was battered by rushing water into a pile of sticks and piled against a collapsed cement road bridge. Our Free Store for resource-sharing was displaced from its foundation and will need to be dismantled. Trees and landslides on both of the two roads leading to the ecovillage have limited our access and egress.

As we do, we have come together to organize and mobilize efforts towards restoring access, making sure everyone continues to have what they need to maintain health and safety, and assisting others in the surrounding community.

Admidst the devastation, people throughout the region are coming together around this shared experience, transcending ideological and other divides, to ensure the safety of all. We are seeing extraordinary examples of selfless service, rescue efforts, and strength within our local communities.

We are humbly reaching out to broaden our web of connection and support in this time of great need.

We need funds to help with the restoration efforts of basic access and systems (roads, bridges, and utility systems, agriculture repairs, buildings), as well as emergency response costs for food and supplies, and improvements to secure our access and off-grid utilities in preparation for future weather events. The infrastructure damage is unprecedented, and will take months of work to repair and upgrade for greater stability in future weather events.

While our roads, bridges, and other infrastructure are in disrepair, a primary source of community income — our in person workshops, retreats, tours, and venue rentals — must be canceled. This has major impacts on the ecovillage economy, since our educational events provide employment for a number of our members. Other sources of individual income — lodging rentals for temporary visitors, our plant nursery, and certain agricultural operations — are also interrupted. This limits the ability of our members to finance recovery work from our own resources.

We humbly ask for your support.