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In Washington County, you may have a difficult time finding a case of bottled water in the stores on Monday — better to look at area schools or donation centers, where the support has been overflowing.
Monday afternoon at John S. Battle High School featured a line of cars in the parking lot and students hanging out in and around the gym carrying boxes of concession stand fare and talking about the upcoming football game. At first glance, it could easily be confused for a normal game day afternoon.
Of course, there is nothing normal about the situation in Washington County, or the entire region, which faces a long recovery from the flooding brought to the region over the weekend by the remnants of Hurricane Helene.
Students and their communities are giving it their all to help their neighbors.
“We are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support from our community at our donation supply drop-off locations,” Keith Perrigan, superintendent of Washington County Public Schools, said in a community-wide announcement. “I couldn’t be prouder of our students who led efforts to help our friends and neighbors.”
Donations were taken up to and during the football game between John S. Battle and Patrick Henry high schools Monday evening. “Because of the amazing support that our schools and the United Way has received, we will not take any additional donations after tonight,” Perrigan said. “When this inventory is used, we will consider additional opportunities to collect donations.”
John S. Battle Principal Jimmy King said Monday started with about 60 high school students, along with teachers and students from other area schools, coming in to help organize the effort to collect donations and distribute them to people who need them. By the afternoon, the cases of water along the length of the gym stood several feet high.
“We’ve also had a group of kids that sat in the office and called for us. We still have 150 houses without power so each of them was contacted by phone, mostly by students, asking them if they need anything,” King said. “And then we have some people who are taking supplies out to people and then some are coming here to shower, charge their devices, spend some time in the library.”
He said he wasn’t sure how many people had come in to use the facilities. “It’s mostly people needing to charge their devices, especially teenagers — they can’t live without their phones.” 
Jaedyn Dotson, a junior at John S. Battle, worked all day helping bring in donations from the cars lined up in the parking lot to drop off water, baby wipes and other requested items.
“I got here at about 10:30 this morning and it’s been a steady stream of donations,” Jaedyn said.
Casey Gobble, a senior at John S. Battle, said one person even came from as far away as Clinchco, in Dickenson County, to drop off donations.
“We have friends at Holston [High School in Damascus] and it hurts our hearts that they will be out of school for so long,” Casey said. “It’s been amazing seeing how many people have wanted to help. It’s a miracle.”
Reedy Creek resident Kasey Vance, a mother of three, said after she got her power back she wanted to do something to help others.
“This is our community and we heard they didn’t have any baby formula so I brought some,” said Vance. “We wanted to do everything we could.”
The back end of her car was full of supplies including baby formula, Pedialyte, cleaning supplies, tampons, water and Chef Boyardee meals.
Like a lot of her classmates, Jaedyn said her home has been without electricity since Thursday. Fallen trees have destroyed some friends’ homes. She has a family connection to one of the people rescued from a hospital roof in Unicoi County, Tennessee, that made national news.
“She was up there for a while, but they’re doing OK now,” she said. “It’s a little bit weird. You don’t really expect stuff like this to happen here.”
Isabella Moncibais, a senior at John S. Battle and one of the band’s drum majors, recently moved with her military family back to Glade Spring from Hawaii. She said she was shocked to experience the type of weather events in the Southwest Virginia mountains that she was used to while living in the islands.
“The thing is that with stuff like this, I know personally from experience, is that a lot of people are going to think that after just this week we won’t need donations anymore. But we may still need donations weeks from now,” she said.
“I feel like for me personally, it also helps me know what to do to help people because I can share my experiences and tell them it’s going to be OK. Especially where some people, they’ve lost their houses, they don’t have electricity. I was calling people all day — do you guys need anything? Do you guys need a hot shower? Do you guys need electricity? We have power. If you guys need anything, call us.”
