Blue Ridge Public Radio's News Director talks covering Helene and the state of Asheville

After Helene, Blue Ridge Public Radio was one of the first sources of news in Asheville to become operational again. 

In the early days, the station focused on the immediate needs of local listeners — sharing basic information about where to access food, water and shelter. 

BPR News Director Laura Lee spoke with WFDD’s Santiago Ochoa about the newsroom's pivot to cover the storm and how Asheville and surrounding areas are faring weeks later.

Interview Highlights

On how BPR prioritized coverage after Helene:

"You know, it took a little bit to get our bearings, because I don't think we had expected — I don't think anybody in the community expected — the scale and the scope of this disaster."

"So we did have a conversation at the outset, where I said, 'Hey look, (with) public radio, typically we want to give you those driveway moments, right? We want to give you these really in-depth, nuanced stories. And we're storytellers, right? We're looking for like this beautiful narrative.' And I said to the team, in the immediate, and I don't know how long this will go, that's not our work."

"Our work right now is to be conduits of information. And so we did a lot of things that public radio does not typically do, (that) a lot of news outlets don't typically do, like reading off the addresses of places where you could get water, reading off the places you could go to get Wi Fi. You know, that's not creative narrative storytelling in any way, but it was the vital information that we had to have, that the communities had to have.

"So we really did have to kind of have a mind set shift, to being the people who could bring information that was critical for basic needs, which is also not something that we're typically having to report on."

On the return of tourists to Asheville and surrounding areas:

"I think we are certainly seeing businesses who need customers to come back, and that's true in Asheville. We also cover a 14-county area, so lots of places west of Asheville that fortunately were not as damaged by the storm,  they are really suffering, particularly because of the time of year."

"I mean, this is peak tourism season. Fall colors, that is one of the main attractions for this part of the state, and so not having that business has been really damaging, not just in Asheville, where there were still some hindrances to people coming right, like we still don't have drinkable water. But even in places that are that are relatively fine, that suffered very little damage, they are suffering tremendously from an economic perspective, because they're not getting the tourism that they have."

"I think it's a mixed response within Asheville. Certainly we've seen a lot of community engagement when we publish things about tourism and businesses coming back. And that runs the spectrum from people saying, 'Absolutely, we need to be open. We need to welcome visitors. It's critical to our economy this time of year in particular,' and then other people saying, 'Hey, we're still showering in shower trucks. We're still, you know, doing our laundry in laundry trucks. Like, we're not ready for people to come back here yet.'"

On the state of Asheville's municipal water system:

"So things have certainly gotten better. At the outset, we had no water in our pipes because of a break at the North Fork Reservoir, which serves about 80% of the system in the city of Asheville."

"So we didn't have water for flushing, gray water, as we've called it. And that was a huge challenge because even if you were bringing in water, so people were using water from their hot tubs, from pools, from creeks, we were using creek water in the office, you know, that requires some labor."

"If you're in a vulnerable population, or a population with disabilities or an elderly population, moving that water was was tough. There was a really strong band of volunteers called the Flush Brigade, who went around and took water to some of these vulnerable communities to try to just keep things going. But, you know, we're talking about really base sort of sewage needs here."

"And we're just getting into this this week, there are concerns about the levels of lead that may exist in older homes, and there are a lot of those in Asheville. And if you just let the water sit, as many people have, myself included, you know you run the potential of that lead level rising, and that is dangerous for people."

Santiago Ochoa covers healthcare for WFDD in partnership with Report For America. Follow him on X and Instagram: @santi8a98