The following are several dispatches from Firestorm, a radical anarchist community center and cooperative bookstore in Asheville, NC, which in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, has become a growing hub of mutual aid and autonomous disaster relief efforts in the area.

September 29
We’re four days into the most significant natural disaster in the recorded history of our region. Our community is experiencing an ongoing crisis created by infrastructural collapse and the profound failure of capitalism to value and sustain life. No state or federal aid has yet reached Asheville, but all around us we’re seeing regular people acting autonomously to address immediate needs and meet one another with care. We hope to write soon about the beautiful and resourceful things we’ve witnessed.
Our co-op is physically intact and our members are accounted for. Although we’ve fared better than many, we’re experiencing this crisis physically and emotionally. We’re exhausted, largely without power, water, or internet. Cell service is poor, and when we are able to connect, the volume of information is overwhelming. Right now our priority is supporting and facilitating mutual aid efforts and we ask for your patience as we cannot keep up with emails, texts, and DMs.
Firestorm will continue to act as an in-person resource and information hub over the coming days, with staffing from noon to 4pm. A daily meeting at 2pm serves as a space for neighbors to get verified updates and coordinate mutual aid efforts. Other hubs have arisen organically in other parts of town and we’re doing our best to share and connect resources.
If you would like to donate to grassroots recovery efforts, please send funds to our friends at Mutual Aid Disaster Relief or Appalachian Medical Solidarity, who have been caring for our community 365 days/year.

October 2
The day after Hurricane Helene hit our region, Buncombe County’s assistant emergency services director called the devastation “biblical.” The phrase has been repeated by other officials and quoted widely in the media. While it’s understandable that a religious reference would resonate in a place that remains deeply impacted by Christianity, the phrase serves more to conceal than illuminate.
A biblical event is divine, a catastrophic exercise of power over humanity, an act of punishment. Appalachia’s “biblical” destruction echoes the US Army Corps of Engineers declaration that Hurricane Katrina—which killed 1,392 people, most of them Black and working class—was an “Act of God.” When people with power attribute the suffering of those without power to God, they’re concealing culpability.
The death and destruction in Buncombe County is a direct result of capitalism, and environmental extractivism—a logical extension of colonialism and Appalachia’s two hundred year status as a national sacrifice zone.
One hundred thousand people in Asheville are not lacking water because of God’s wrath.
We’re without water because corporations and the political class have refused to take action on climate change. We’re without water because the city has systematically under-invested in infrastructure, while pumping money into tourism, for five decades. Water problems didn’t start with Helene, they’ve been a regular fact of life in Asheville for years.
Thousands of people in Buncombe County are not without food because of God’s wrath.
We’re without food because hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland in WNC have been converted into overpriced subdivisions. We’re without food because police departments prioritized protecting grocery stores from looters over wellness checks, while 600+ community members were missing.
Natural disasters bring people together, they bring out our best instincts towards altruism, cooperation, and creativity—they should also make us furious. Our suffering is not biblical, it’s distinctively modern, and these leaders are responsible for it.

October 5
The morning Hurricane Helene hit Asheville, members of our collective sat in the dark, listening to the howling wind and the crack of huge trees falling all around. When we emerged Friday evening to take stock, a cardboard sign on our co-op’s door read “Community meeting here, Saturday at 2pm. Let’s talk about how we can take care of each other + community.” That first autonomous act by an anonymous neighbor set the stage for the week, with Firestorm becoming a container for other people’s brilliant, beautiful, and generous self-organizing.
About forty people attended the first meeting. Nearly four hundred attended the next one. The gatherings, now a daily anchor, have generated a multitude of connections and volunteer powered projects. Before city officials had finished assessing the damage, community members were sharing supplies, doing wellness checks, and serving hot meals. Over the next few days, things became more organized. Anarchist arborists collected chainsaws and dispatched crews to clear roads for trapped residents; activists mobilized to build long term water distribution systems capable of delivering 6k gallons/day; bike punks offered free repair clinics; a farmer began driving regular water supply loops to Firestorm from a nearby spring; and an enthusiastic DIY-er set up a tent to distribute dry toilets made from affordable materials.
In the midst of this anarchic moment, Firestorm isn’t setting the agenda or directing anyone—we’re offering a space that welcomes independent initiative, we’re supporting the exchange of critical information, and we’re modeling a do-it-ourselves approach that’s responsive, experimental, and human-scale.
Yes, government and NGO aid is now flowing into the region—but the work of caring for one another continues to be done by neighbors, grassroots organizations, small businesses, and activists. It’s done voluntarily, with thousands of autonomous actions synchronized through a shared solidarity. For a brief moment, the logic of the market is suspended, care is given freely, and everyone contributes what they can.
It’s a strange paradox that the utopia we dream of becomes most visible in the dark.

October 6
Among other things, Firestorm has been operating as a distribution hub for relief supplies. With roads impassable, these supplies initially came from our homes and the refrigerators or garages of neighbors. On Sunday, the first deliveries—water, food, sanitary products, and baby supplies—arrived in cars and vans driven by folks from South Carolina. No one called ahead (they couldn’t), but somehow we weren’t surprised.
Within a day, our distro was widely known. Elders evacuating with pets brought dog food and a farmer dropped off crates of fresh veggies. Folks living on our street—some of whom we were meeting for the first time—filled bags and offered one another support. The size of deliveries grew from sedans to U-Hauls and individuals from Deaverview and Pisgah View Apartments, public housing close to our co-op, began running loops to acquire necessities for neighbors. Unlike official distribution sites, no one was limiting what people could take, allowing folks to organically extend the supply lines from Firestorm into communities that were otherwise being overlooked.
Running a distro site requires a lot of human power: folks to unload trucks, to organize inventory, to portion and repackage supplies, to restock tables and manage trash, bilingual folks to answer questions and assist with specific needs, and “runners” to fill requests. We’re fortunate to have an incredible group that’s come back day after day; and each day, our systems have gotten a little better.
After some initial confusion (one person asked if *we* were FEMA!), participants clearly understood the idea of a mutual aid hub. Two women who had picked up food and water the day before returned with big boxes of sándwiches de carne, explaining that they wanted to give back. This pattern has repeated, over and over, with individuals taking what they need and contributing what they can. At the same time, we also rely on the distro to meet our own needs for food, water, and other essentials, subverting the binary of aid recipient and provider.
In the words of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, we’ve found ourselves and our community co-creating “solidarity, not charity.”


Firestorm is a collectively-owned radical bookstore and community event space in Asheville, North Carolina. Since 2008 they’ve supported grassroots movements in Southern Appalachia while developing a workplace on the basis of cooperation, empowerment and equity.
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