In the days leading up to President Donald Trump’s visit to Appalachian North Carolina, Monica Glowinski said her biggest prayer for the people of Buncombe County, which was devastated by the wrath of Hurricane Helene, was that Trump would not let their plight be forgotten.

“I am optimistic that President Trump is focusing his energies here,” she said, adding that she hopes it is not a false promise. “Because I just don’t think the people could handle that at this point.”

Glowinski, who has been driving six hours each way from her home in Columbia, South Carolina, for four months straight with supplies such as food, water and diapers to those affected in Swannanoa, North Carolina, said she was called to service just days after the images started to emerge from western North Carolina.

“We had a dear friend who lived in the Asheville area reach out to us to see if she could borrow our generator. Her neighborhood was without power, and she had elderly and sick neighbors that she wanted to take care of,” Glowinski explained.

Her friend from Asheville came to pick it up and stopped at a Sam’s Club in South Carolina because nothing was open in her area. “As she shared with us the devastation in the area, we asked what was needed. She said ‘everything,’ so we reached out to friends and neighbors for donations with our intent to take items up to the mountains,” Glowinski recounted.

Through her work in those first few days, Glowinski made her way to a mini-distribution hub at Bell United Methodist Church in Leicester, North Carolina, and was gutted by what she saw there.

“When we got there, I was shocked by the devastation. It was apocalyptic. People who had come to that church made me realize that this wasn’t a one-and-done effort,” she said. “There were people who came out in their pajamas because that was the only thing they had left as they fled their homes. One woman didn’t have her dentures and was asking if she could take baby food. Another woman whispered in my ear, ‘I don’t have a bra.’ These folks had nothing.”

Glowinski wept the entire drive home and knew she had to do something.

“I reached out to a group of ladies in my community who all had different skillsets,” she said. “We started an Amazon wish list. We had a woman in our group who was a social (media) influencer, and she raised gas money for us because we knew that we would be making a lot of runs to the mountains.”

On Friday, Trump made good on his promise. He told me during our interview in Butler on Oct. 5 of last year that he would make sure the people of North Carolina were taken care of if he won.

Trump, joined by first lady Melania Trump, arrived Friday morning on Air Force One at Asheville Regional Airport and was greeted by Gov. Josh Stein (D-N.C.). He then embarked on a tour of areas where many are in dire need.

For months, recovery efforts have slogged along after Helene devastated this area with bands of historic rainfall that began pounding western North Carolina on the morning of Sept. 27, 2024.

During a press briefing, Trump said that after seeing the persistent devastation and talking with some of the victims who have had to rely on each other and their faith, he thinks the Federal Emergency Management Agency is too bureaucratic and slow. He suggested that state governments should be empowered to handle disasters within their borders.

In an emotional moment, Trump invited families who had their lives changed forever by the mudslides to come up to the microphone and discuss their frustrations with the recovery process.

Each story was a gut wrench in understanding what people have been experiencing for months, from losing homes that have been their families for generations to struggling to find shelter.

Trump vowed to surge housing solutions to the area by signing an executive order Friday to lift bureaucratic red tape, fast-tracking construction of roads, bridges and infrastructure.

“The highest responsibility and deepest obligation of the American government is to protect its people, and that has never been truer than in times of emergency like this,” Trump said.

The moment was very similar to when Trump traveled to East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023 after a toxic train derailment left the entire village worried about the long-term impacts on their lives.

The Biden administration took weeks to address the carnage and a year to visit.

During his 2023 visit to East Palestine, Trump said people in places like their Columbiana County village had been “forgotten” by the Biden administration.

“You are not forgotten. We stand with you. We pray for you. And we will stand with you and your fight to help ensure the accountability that you deserve,” Trump told a crowd of local faith and elected leaders, first responders and people in the community gathered at the fire station in town that day.

The 47th president was equally critical of the former president Friday for not making recovery efforts an urgent priority. Both former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris were seen as dismissive and incompetent in their reaction to Helene. When the hurricane made landfall on Sept. 26, 2024, Biden was at his home in Rehoboth Beach. Harris, then the Democratic nominee for president, was attending fundraisers in California.

It took six days after the storm made landfall before the Defense Department announced that it had been authorized to deploy troops to the hurricane response zone.

Trump said unfortunately our government has failed you, “but it wasn’t the Trump government. It was the government run by Biden.”

Much of the help delivered to affected communities came from volunteers like Glowinski. Instead of the federal government, people relied on a network of different faith communities from all over the region.

The damage in Swannanoa is unimaginable, Glowinski explained. “The first time I went there, I was so overwhelmed. The living conditions of these folks is hard to comprehend in a country as great as ours. They were sleeping in tents next to the debris of their house, surrounded by hurricane debris. These people are living amongst garbage,” she said of the third-world conditions. “I have seen the best of people in those mountains. I have met strong, powerful and organized women from across the country whose sole intention is to help these people.”

Glowinski said she would offer up any of them to lead FEMA.

“I have also seen the worst of people. A government who failed to act and lacked empathy. Individuals and organizations, even churches, which took advantage or looked away from the needy,” she said, clearly in despair.

Trump told the press that changes are coming. “We are very disappointed in the Biden administration, but we are going to make up for lost time. I said I would do that. This is about the earliest we could possibly be here,” he said four days after he was sworn into office.

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