In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, a battered American flag pulled from the Rocky Broad River has taken on new meaning for a community still working to recover. 

The storm swept through Western North Carolina in September 2024, leaving death and destruction in its wake. 

A prominent Western North Carolina legislator may be gone, but his legacy of commitment to public safety and first responders will live on thanks to a bill filed in the General Assembly a month after his passing. 

House Bill 1019, titled the “Mike Clampitt 1st Responder Tax Fairness Act,” proposes a targeted change to North Carolina’s tax code aimed at reducing financial burdens on certain volunteer emergency service organizations. 

A new EMS base in Haywood County is now operational. 

The base was completed earlier this year. It is part of efforts by Haywood County leaders to improve emergency services coverage and response times. The base, centrally located near the intersection of Russ Avenue and Mauney Cove Road, should do just that with close proximity to Lake Junaluska, Maggie Valley and Jonathan Creek. 

A new fire substation in Franklin years in the making is now operational. 

After lingering in limbo following initial construction, the state came through with funding to complete the project after Sen. Kevin Corbin and Rep. Karl Gillespie, both Macon County natives, were able to procure what was needed. 

Dispatchers are an often overlooked part of a county’s overall emergency response, but their role is as vital as any other. 

This was made clear all across the region during Hurricane Helene, as thousands of 911 calls poured in from people in their most desperate hour. More recently, on Sept. 28, Haywood County Emergency Communicator Kaylin Greene again proved the point by thinking fast with a life on the line to get responders where they needed to go. 

As the sun set behind the Saunook fire station in west Haywood County, members of the community gathered in the bay that would normally house the fire trucks and anxiously took their seats. They were told the news was good, they just didn’t know how good.  

Haywood County commissioners advanced the long-planned Clyde EMS base project Oct. 20 by approving a $2,069,955 construction contract with RYSE Construction. 

The bid represents the second phase of a federally funded initiative to redevelop the Clyde Armory campus into a modern emergency response hub that will serve as both an EMS base and a regional emergency shelter, right in the geographic center of Haywood County. 

For close to four decades, I’ve been an advocate for victims and survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse. It has been quite a journey. 

Along the way, I’ve met so many incredibly strong, wise, brave, and determined women who have faced terrible abuse from the person who, at the beginning of the relationship, claimed to love them. They have learned the hard way that love and abuse do not go together. 

When Jeff Haynes entered the law enforcement academy in 1990, empathy wasn’t a word heard often in the ranks. Officers were trained to enforce, not to understand. But as the decades unfolded, few people would witness — and shape — the transformation of policing toward compassion and victim-centered practice more closely than Haynes himself. 

Hurricane Helene may not have been so devastating for Western North Carolina were it not for the half foot of rain that dumped on the region just ahead of Sept. 27, 2024. Getting ahead of what promised to be a monumental disaster, on the afternoon of Sept. 26, only about 12 hours before flooding began in some WNC communities, the National Weather Service office in upstate South Carolina issued the following statement: