This coverage is made possible through a partnership between BPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
A year ago, in the immediate aftermath of the storm, Jennifer Rambo, principal of the Spruce Pine Montessori School, was just trying to manage the chaos. Some families hadn’t yet been heard from. Water, power, and internet were out at the school. By mid-October, she could check three things off the list: All the kids were fine, and internet and power came back on. The school still didn‘t have running water, but Rambo received donated water pumps and porta-potties. The school’s water services were finally restored in November, so she put them into a school storage space.
“I don't know how we lived through that,” she said after school one day recently.
Rambo dedicated some time after the storm to modify emergency plans and inclement weather closure policies at the school. Life’s rhythms settled into something like normalcy in the spring. But when a water main burst the week before school let out, Rambo went back into storm mode.
“We were under boil water advisory and I had to reach into all of the water that we had stored,” Rambo said.
Her kids are resilient, though.
“I was wondering, are these kids going to be traumatized when they see these hand sinks?” she said. "And they got really excited. They were like, ‘This is just like after the hurricane, it's so fun.’”
There’s still more work for Rambo to do. She’s looking to get the school a generator. And she sees her closets of hygiene supplies as a resource for the rest of Spruce Pine.
“If somebody else needs it, it's there,” she said.