As Hurricane Milton barrels toward the Tampa area, hot on the heels of the devastation left by Hurricane Helene, Floridians brace for the worst. With back-to-back storms, the sense of urgency is paralyzing in Florida and the entire eastern United States. Helene wreaked havoc across Florida then marched north to the Mid-Atlantic. Areas like western North Carolina, Virginia, and eastern Tennessee were especially hard hit leaving behind destroyed homes and displaced families. In Yorktown, Virginia, I was lucky to be part of a community that rallied. With the help of Pat and Fay Thomas of Thomas Roofing and Supply, Sheriff Ronnie Montgomery and his York Poquoson Sheriffs Office team, Amy Brown of Family Dollar and Dollar Tree, and many generous donors from my Linkedin network like Stacey Gibson, Todd Simo, M.D. of Hireright, Jarrod Carter, and Moshe Moskowitz of #JumpintoFitness, we moved 120,000 pounds of supplies. We raised around $1,000 to deliver much-needed relief to those affected.
This grassroots effort is the kind of neighborly spirit that amplifies during disasters, a contrast to the divisiveness that often seems to haunt daily life, especially on social media. Complaints abound about what the government is or isn’t doing for its own citizens. There’s frustration about spending on foreign aid, immigration, and other programs while many here struggle. Amid the aftermath, none of that mattered. The focus wasn’t on political gripes or blame it was on immediate survival and helping those in need. People who have lost everything aren’t asking for handouts or pointing fingers. They’re offering help, giving what little they have left to others who might need it more. The sense of selflessness in these moments is powerful.
Disasters bring out the best in people because the fragility of our society becomes more apparent than ever. We’re dealing with high interest rates, poorly managed governments, skyrocketing food prices, and an economy that seems more fragile by the day. Complaints about what’s wrong with the system are legitimate, but they miss the point when disaster strikes. What matters most in these moments isn’t policy debates or social issues, it’s survival. It’s rebuilding. Its realizing that, stripped of all the noise, we’re human beings bound by a shared experience of loss and rebuilding bonding over brokenness.
Consider the tension that often surrounds seemingly trivial issues day to day. People argue about everything from gender, politics, social issues, things that fall away in the grand scheme of survival when the stakes are life and death. In the storm-battered regions of western North Carolina, nobody cares about any of that right now. There’s no room for debate about gun control or abortion when you’re trying to survive a storm that has wiped out your home and cut off your power and you have nothing and maybe no insurance.
Look at how people are acting in the lead-up to Hurricane Milton. There’s frustration, fights over fuel at Costco pumps, and frantic last-minute prep. But these scenes of tension reveal something deeper: a reliance on systems that aren’t built to last. What if the power grid were down for a week? What if cell service disappeared and food supplies ran dry? These aren’t far-fetched scenarios. As a society, we’ve grown so dependent on government systems, technology, and consumer goods that we’ve lost the skills and resilience that once defined our communities. In many cases we've lost our community. We don’t grow our own food anymore. We don’t repair our own goods. And when these systems break down, we see just how fragile everything really is.
Our country feels divided because we’ve forgotten how to take care of ourselves and each other. It’s easy to complain, but much harder to do the work of rebuilding. The beauty of disaster, if it can be called that, is that it reminds us of our shared humanity. Nobody cares about your political affiliation when they’re helping you clear debris from your yard. Nobody’s asking who you voted for when they’re delivering supplies to your flooded home. When you’re in the trenches, helping someone survive, all the superficial divisions fall away.
In Yorktown, and especially in Western NC, VA, and Eastern TN, we saw this firsthand. Volunteers, many of whom had lost so much themselves, came together to move mountains literally and figuratively. Within five days, we organized, palletized, and delivered 90,000 pounds of supplies. Nobody asked for recognition. Nobody asked for anything in return. They simply showed up because they knew it was the right thing to do.
When I look around at the broader state of society, I see a nation that’s lost its way. We’ve become fragile not just economically or politically, but socially. We’ve forgotten what it means to be self-reliant, to grow our own food, to help our neighbors without expecting something in return. Our government is poorly managed, our education system is floundering, and our food supply is often tainted with additives and chemicals. Interest rates are high, and good jobs are increasingly hard to come by. These are real problems for everyday people, but focusing solely on them obscures the deep truth that we’ve lost our sense of national pride and community.
What gives me hope is seeing how in the face of disaster, people still show up for each other. When the storm hits, when everything is stripped away, what remains is a community of humans, helping humans. It’s the America we once knew, and it’s the America we could be again if we only remembered these lessons more often.
During Hurricane Helene, and now as Hurricane Milton approaches, I’ve seen firsthand how fragile yet resilient people can be. We don’t have all the answers, and we don’t have the perfect government. But what we do have is each other. In these times, we see that no matter how broken things may seem, the heart of this country still beats strong. It’s in our ability to come together, rebuild, and remind ourselves that we’re all in this together no matter our differences. It’s a lesson we need to carry with us, not just in times of disaster, but every day.
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