News

Center for Cultural Preservation to air radio documentary on Helene

By Lightning Reports, Published: September 9, 2025

The Center for Cultural Preservation, WNC’s cultural history and documentary film center, will air its newest project, a radio documentary commemorating Hurricane Helene’s impact on WNC on Tuesday, Sept. 23.

The program, From Helene And Back: Nature’s Wakeup Call, will focus on the storm’s impacts, how the community came together to help each other and what we’ve learned about historic storms to help us be better prepared in the future.

The program will air on WNCW 88.7 FM or via livestream at www.wncw.org at 9 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 23. WNCW will also rebroadcast the center’s radio documentary on the 1916 Flood one week earlier, at 9 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 16. 

“Everyone living in Western North Carolina was traumatically impacted by the storm, whether we suffered actual losses ourselves or witnessed the devastation around us,” said David Weintraub, the program’s producer and the center’s director. “It was heartening how neighbors arose from the rubble and stepped up to do what was needed, helping all of us slowly get back on our feet. With a year gone by, this is a good time to ask, what can we learn from Helene and how can we rebuild a more resilient community that can overcome any challenges we face.”

The program will include stories of Helene survivors and what they faced, discussions with emergency managers, resilience experts, landslides experts and those involved in relief work. Of particular interest to listeners might be the seventh-generation natives whose families have been through other major floods before, including the Great Flood of 1916.

“Our culture here in the mountains is stewardship of the mountains and being good neighbors,” said Rick Wooten, a leading expert on landslides who worked for the North Carolina Geologic Survey for decades. “What we do on mountainsides and in floodplains not only affects you but all your neighbors downslope and downstream. Helene brought a comparable amount of rain to WNC as the Great Flood of 1916. What was different this time was all of the infrastructure that was built, some of which made vulnerable areas even more susceptible to flooding and landslides.”