For most of the student body at Milligan, the effects of Hurricane Helene back in September went unnoticed, but that wasn’t the case across the board.
“I was just down there with no truck and nowhere to go,” said freshman Nicholas Swearingen, who had no idea of the week he would have when he drove to Newport, Tennessee. Preparing to preach at Pigeon Forge Methodist Church the following day, Swearingen drove to Newport on Sept. 27, the day Hurricane Helene hit.
“I was going there to preach on Saturday, and stopped by a high school friend’s football game beforehand,” Swearingen said. “I left my truck at my friend’s parents’ house in Newport, which got hit the worst in that area.”
During the game, there was minimal storming, but by the time he left, many roads had closed.
“Over the course of about four hours, we got absolutely shut down,” Swearingen said. “My parents were out of town. I kept getting texts on my way down, and they tried to tell me the roads near home were flooded and were asking why I was still driving down there. I was like, ‘It’s not that bad. I’ll be fine.’ Then it was that bad, and I wasn’t fine.”
Swearingen was stranded off campus for a total of nine days. Since his parents were out of town, he didn’t have a permanent place to stay, and had to constantly move around.
“I bounced around between a few friends’ houses, really just going wherever a couch was free and available,” Swearingen said.
For the next week and a half after the storm hit, the Newport area was without service and internet. Because of that, Swearingen’s classmates, professors, and parents had no knowledge of his well-being unless he was driving out of the area to get a signal.
“Every once in a while, I could get a connection on my phone whenever we were driving, so I tried to email them,” Swearingen said.
Because he had nowhere else to go, and since the area Swearingen was staying in needed as much help as possible, he assisted in relief efforts.
“We did a lot of hurricane relief. I have a little bit of a background in construction, so once the flood waters subsided for that first week, there was a lot of debris cleanup and basic reconstruction,” Swearingen said.
After some roads were reopened, Swearingen was able to make it back to campus safely, but by then he had already missed multiple days of class.
Swearingen wasn’t the only Milligan student caught up in hurricane relief efforts though.
“Jesus taught us to be servants,” freshman Nick Cymek said in response to helping out on campus. “Serving here taught me to be a servant and not put myself before others.”
“It made me feel good,” freshman Dylan Carr said, who also aided the relief teams on campus. “It restored my faith in humanity.”
All is well with these students now.
text and pictures by Nicholas Caparoso