How a local radio station became a lifeline after Helene roared through North Carolina
Asheville, North Carolina — As Florida grapples with the destruction from Hurricane Milton, the people of western North Carolina know that reality all too well. Helene roared through the mountains, leaving more than a million people in the disaster zone without water, power and spotty cell service.
But what they did have was the radio.
For days, WWNC host Mark Starling and producer Tank Spencer were a lifeline, serving as a proxy dispatch service to help coordinate wellness checks and connect the stranded with nearby resources.
"We didn't have any connection to the outside world except our radio stations, and we were the only two here. So we kind of had a mission of like, OK, well, we've got to walk these people through the storm," Starling said.
The Asheville AM radio station was inundated with phone calls, which meant dealing with the widest range of emotions imaginable. One caller was a man on the second floor of his house with his wife and grandchild, Starling said.
"Our entire basement's flooded. Our first floor's flooded up to about four feet and we're upstairs. We're safe, but my Ram truck is underwater," the caller said.
Starling told the man to keep the station's number handy and hoped everything would be OK.
But as Starling tearfully recalls, "Everything wasn't fine."
The caller, his wife and their 7-year-old grandson were all swept away, among the at least 120 people killed by Helene in North Carolina.
"That was a hard one. It's still a hard one. I can hear his phone call in my head," Starling said.
On the other end of the spectrum, there was an emotional, on-air reunion between Starling and his wife, confirming she was OK.
Since Helene hit, Starling and Spencer have been a guiding light on top of the radio tower for so many in the mountains of North Carolina.
"One of the memorable phone calls that we had was, for me, was when a guy called in. He says, 'You know, today's the first day that I've gone and checked on all my neighbors, and I didn't even ask who they voted for first,'" Starling said.
Spencer added, "This is the realest radio has ever been, and we're connecting with people in a way that most people don't ever get to connect with their audience, because this is our family."