Aaron Rigsby was among the first to share stories of communities in western North Carolina decimated by Hurricane Helene, and now he's returning to help.
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00:00The man in transit is Aaron Rigsby, and he's moving through the Bluegrass region,
00:04heading back to western North Carolina to help with those impacted by Hurricane Helene.
00:10So, Aaron, you have a lot of stuff in your car there. What's going on?
00:16Yeah, good evening, Jeff. So, I took some time off visiting family, you know,
00:20spending a lot of time with loved ones after witnessing those back-to-back strong hurricanes,
00:24and I had a lot of people starting to reach out asking how they could help and organizations that
00:27they could donate to, and I decided to take some of that into my own hands, and all these right
00:31here are actually warm clothing, kids clothing, things that people are going to need as the
00:36colder months start to approach. I'm going to be dropping these off in various locations in those
00:40heavily impacted mountain towns, including Asheville, Black Mountain, all the way up into
00:45Burnsville, and this is going to help a lot of those families, you know, at least attempt to
00:48get back off of their feet, because there's actually instances of people living in tents
00:52right now, and especially in those higher elevations, we're going to see those cooler
00:55temperatures approach a lot quicker than we will in the lower elevations, and some of those areas
00:59already received a little bit of snow, so they're going to need all the help that they can get,
01:02and it's going to be nice, because it's really easy to forget, with all the storms we've had
01:06lately, the severe impacts that these left behind, and that there's still a lot of folks suffering
01:10down here. So, we're going to shed some light on some more of those stories, and do our part here
01:14at AccuWeather, and all on the way to be able to help out and give some people some hope.
01:18Aaron, you're doing some great things here. You have a big heart, and I know that you've met a
01:22lot of people along the way. Are you specifically going to connect with certain people who you
01:28spoke with a couple of weeks ago, or are you going to make just general stops in various
01:33towns where you know there's a great need? It's going to be kind of an approach of where I'm going
01:39to, you know, approach different towns, and pretty much kind of either pass these out myself, or
01:44donate to a lot of groups that are already down here, that can use those ATV and four-wheelers
01:48to be able to transit some of this stuff up into the higher elevations, where the roads are still
01:53washed out, and people are still kind of lingering around their homes. A lot of people have had
01:57resources brought up to them, but it's making things really slow and difficult in those higher
02:01elevations. So, it's going to be passed out to them, and then take them up to the mountains,
02:05and hopefully help some families out that are in need up there. You're doing some great things
02:08there, Aaron. Thank you for all of your reporting, and all that you're doing to help others out who
02:13are in a really, really compromised spot right now. Families in tremendous need. Their homes
02:18no longer exist, in some cases, because they've been washed away. Aaron Rigsby, southbound on I-75
02:24there in Lexington, Kentucky, en route to western North Carolina.