Support Galen's Survival After Hurricane Helene

I am Beth Fiore Kral, mom to my wonderful 30-year-old son who lives in Asheville, NC. Asheville has been struck a disastrous blow from Hurricane Helene in late September.

Galen, who is on the Autism spectrum, is still in West Asheville. I’m so proud of him for how he’s handling all this considering how scary and utterly disastrous the state his community is in. And I live 800 miles away and want to do more!

I’ve transferred a little money to him, depositing it into his account, because he’s not working for at least another week or two. So there will be at least two weeks without working and without his part-time paycheck. ☹️ He is on disability that helps with rent, thank God, but he has to put $300 toward rent each month.

I’ve ordered a few things through Instacart and they will be delivered when those stores open in a few days - that gives an Instacart shopper some income. A few grocery stores ARE open and some, like Publix in Weaverville, somehow are just about fully stocked, but there are big lines there and it’s kind of far away from where he lives with some roads still closed and iffy, and gasoline hard to find.

I’m thinking of sending him a care package of non-perishable food through the mail because I understand that mail was being delivered yesterday, October 2, to many areas in Asheville. He still has no running water, so I ordered body wipes from Amazon and also sent him info that the Reuter YMCA is open for showers 10-5.

He knows where to pick up freshwater each day and has a couple of 5-gallon buckets to fill at a pond or stream for toilet water. He was able to fill his gas tank two days ago at Sam’s Club, which was allowing even non-members to come and get gas, and they had a lot of gas. And he did pick up his prescriptions finally at the CVS drive-through after 4 1/2 hours total of sitting in a car line.

There will be no running water for weeks.

Even though Galen hasn’t had his home washed away, he still has to buy food, cat litter, and food for his kitty, and has to drive to collect potable water to drink and water to use for the toilet, plus won’t have a paycheck for a while to pay his expenses. I hope Spectrum doesn’t bill him since there is no Spectrum Internet, and won’t be, I understand, for quite a while.

Galen truly needs our help to keep him afloat, pardon my pun. Would you please consider helping him out? If you feel moved to do so, please make a donation to his GoFundMe fundraiser.