Q&A about Samaritans’s Purse response to hurricane Helene

Hurricane Helene, a category 4 hurricane that came ashore late on September 26th in the Big Bend region of Florida, became an overwhelming tropical storm once it slowed over the Southeast United States, devastating a large swath of the Appalachian Mountains with torrential rains and wind. The rains soaked the high country of Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee, causing widespread flooding that was beyond many people’s wildest expectations.

Samaritan’s Purse’s backyard is Western North Carolina, so we quickly became both those affected by the storm and those that were responding to the needs among our neighbors and friends. Our GIS groups in both North American Ministries and International Projects were called in to help with analysis of the impacts and  how we could best respond.

This presentation will be a Question and Answer time  that will dig into Samaritan’s Purse’s efforts utilizing GIS to respond to  Hurricane Helene and what we learned to help us respond to other major disasters in the future.