Amy Cantrell lives in the mountains near Asheville, one of the areas of North Carolina that was hardest hit by Hurricane Helene last week.
She and Ponkho Bermejo co-founded BeLoved Asheville in 2009 and typically work through the nonprofit to create innovative solutions to pressing issues like building affordable housing and feeding the hungry.
But since Helene barreled over the Southeast starting on Sept. 26, they’ve been focused on helping their community simply survive.
Cantrell says she has watched in horror as friends and neighbors in her town of Swannanoa were literally swept away by the floodwaters from the storm, which drowned much of western North Carolina.
“We saw a lot of deaths, so much loss of the life,” Cantrell tells PEOPLE. “We saw people in the river clinging to the trees and they couldn’t hang on. Whole houses were floating down the river. We saw trailers engulfed in water with people still in them.”
Bermejo, Cantrell’s neighbor and coworker adds: “We had two …