STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – A recent Penn State University Extension webinar shared ideas and information on how Extension agents and others could best respond to – and then recover from – disasters impacting agriculture.

The goal of Penn State’s Farm Stress series is to learn about what folks are doing and hear about the lessons learned, said Florence Becot, an associate professor in agricultural safety and health at the university, and the webinar’s moderator.

During the Nov. 3 webinar, speakers from the North Carolina Agromedicine Institute and North Carolina’s Extension discussed the immediate and longer-term response to Hurricane Helene. Helene slammed the western part of the state beginning in late September 2024, depositing at least 12-20 inches of rain. More than 100 people were killed, and the estimated impact to agriculture in the state was $4.9 billion. More than 20,400 farms were impacted.

“The work that took place post-Hurricane Helene and in subsequent natural disaster conversations that we’ve been having has come from the communities that we worked in and it’s been driven by what has been reported as being an actual need, not things that we arbitrarily came up with from our own offices,” explained McKayla R. Robinette, the Institute’s farm stress program coordinator.

Abby Whitaker, a livestock and forage crops Extension agent in Buncombe and Henderson counties, said as the hurricane neared, she went to nearby Cleveland County to be with her parents. She was without power for about 10 days.

With limited ways to keep in contact, she said she “didn’t quite have a grip on the severity of the situation or exactly what was going on. We don’t really understand until you’re in the middle of it. It wasn’t that we just had a bad signal, we didn’t have any service. Everything was wiped out. There was no access to information, no access to try to find out if the people you care about were OK.”

Once connectivity was restored, Whitaker said the phone calls started coming in and didn’t stop.

The response on the ground included finding ways to access mountain communities, she recalled. North Carolina Extension staff were mobilized as first responders. Extension helped coordinate such things as hay and fencing supplies for livestock, distribution sites, aircraft landing zones and, later, soil management seminars.

“People would call and say, ‘hey, I need you to find me somewhere to land a helicopter,’” Whitaker said. “Never in my years of life or Extension service have I ever had to figure that out before, nor do I really know what is required other than a large open area that’s somewhat flat. But this is the mountains and that’s kind of hard to find.”

Situations like Helene are where networks and strengths of relationships come in handy, she added.

“There was a lot happening and there was a lot of very personal experiences that people were taking on,” Robinette noted. “Not just from what they were personally living through but then what our folks on the ground were also hearing. As they’re working a distribution line or on the phone with a farmer, hearing the stories that people were going through, we really started to notice signs of occupational stress injury.”

Occupational stress injury is a mental health diagnosis that looks at the combination of people that are experiencing emotional burnout from a personal perspective and witnessing or hearing other people’s trauma, she said. Signs include physical, emotional and behavioral indicators, compassion fatigue, low morale and decreased concentration.

To provide help, the Institute offered crisis debriefing sessions and mental health literacy training, Robinette said. The Institute also offers mental health counseling at no cost for people who live, work and serve in agriculture.

“As we work together through this experience, it really hit home the importance of wraparound community education and that whole mindset of it takes a village,” said Dr. Alyssa Ramsey Spence, the Institute’s interim director. “Our staff at the North Carolina Agromedicine Institute, we’re all very fortunate in that we have some sort of background in agriculture or we have some sort of background in first response. We were bringing these lived experiences into our response. We also had all these connections with the people in the community.”

Robinette said disasters have a ripple effect, and Extension professionals and agricultural leaders often carry hidden stress from the work of recovery.

Support networks are the most valuable resource before, during and after a disaster, Robinette pointed out. “In order to care for others, you also have to care for yourselves.”