After Hurricane Helene which left untold thousands of western North Carolina (WNC) residents homeless, volunteer Amish carpenters showed up to build temporary shelters, but the heartwarming story has a bitter ending.
There are a couple of stories here that the mainstream media hasn't reported on much. The first is that FEMA, for whatever reason, has not been up to the task after Helen destroyed or damaged approximately 100,000 homes in WNC, impacting more than 200,000 people. People are living in trailers or even tents all these weeks later — and as temperatures drop.
Here's the video aerial video that Matt von Swol took last week.
"Any news organization or network can use this footage," added. "You don't need my permission. Just please get these people out of tents and into something warm."
Well, that's exactly what hundreds of Amish volunteers have been doing.
WNC resident (and X user) Margo reported last month that her area had "56 passenger bus load groups of skilled Amish carpenters coming down from Lancaster PA weekly to help build tiny homes for Cabins for Christ." Margo was doing her bit, looking for help finding room to lodge all of the volunteers. "We are bringing our own supplies and would be 100% self-sufficient," she posted, "Just need a place under [a] roof to sleep and house our volunteers from Monday night through Friday night every week."
And Another Thing: According to another X user, Scott Presler helped make sure all those volunteers voted early in Pennsylvania before they trekked down to North Carolina. Is this a remarkable time for conservatives or what?
That's the kind of spirit that helps make America great. Then there's all the hard work those Amish carpenters accomplished after they arrived.
Teamed up with Cabins 4 Christ, the Amish volunteers have been working five-day shifts before swapping out for the next team of volunteers. Nobody seems to know how many tiny homes have been built. But I used my paid research assistant, ChatGPT, to do some investigating for me. For whatever it's worth, ChatGPT claims that "In disaster relief efforts, such as the recent North Carolina project, Amish carpenters often build small cabins in as little as 5 days."
If a small team can build a home each week, and there are hundreds of volunteers working for almost four weeks, they must have built more than a hundred quality cottages by now. All on their own dime. If you know anything about Amish carpentry, you might safely assume those little cottages are well-built.
We, the people, might always find a way but leave it to a bureaucrat to take it away.
Because a tent in late-autumn weather is safer than an Amish-built cottage, right?
Another X user told readers that David Rittlinger, PEDivision Chief of Codes and Interpretations, "the bureaucrat quoted in the release is living in 2100 heated sq ft in Wake Forest."
Not that I'm officially endorsing this notion but it "would be a shame if people showed up there with their tents."
While I wait for my blood to stop boiling, I'll leave you with this bit of wisdom from Thomas Sowell: "You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats, procedure is everything, and outcomes are nothing."
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