By Alan Palmer Director of Sales, The VacDaddy
As everyone knows, Hurricane Helene cut a path across north Florida, eastern Georgia, South Carolina and into the mountains of North Carolina and further north, leaving behind the worst devastation of any storm since Katrina in 2005.
If you haven’t seen the photos, it’s hard to imagine how a storm could do so much damage at 2,0003,500 feet above sea level in the Appalachian mountains. But the incredible amount of water that fell on the region caused tiny streams to swell to 10 times their normal flow. All of that water gathered into larger creeks and eventually rivers simply washed out everything in its wake. It resulted in loss of life as well as the loss of vast amounts of property. I am from that area and found it unbelievable to see photos of places I knew well that are simply no more.
I’m from Asheville, born and raised. I haven’t lived there in many years, but friends and family are still there, and I remember flooding as a kid when dad took us out to see the raging rivers flowing out of their banks … but nothing like the destruction that happened a few weeks ago.
I had planned to get up there and help but was advised that FEMA and other help crews were asking unskilled help to please stay away. There simply weren’t available facilities and services to handle more people. Now that things have settled down just a little, and most services are finally beginning to come back on line, I’m heading up there next weekend to have a look around and see how I might be able to help in person. I wanted to help sooner, but there wasn’t much I could do.
However, our company, The VacDaddy, a powerful portable pool vacuum (the only portable pool vacuum with Vacuum to Waste and Shallow Water Vacuuming) started
Hurricane Helene helping out right from the start. The day after Helene roared through the South, we reached out to our sales partners and customers through various marketing channels to offer a deep discount to purchase The VacDaddy to help with hurricane cleanup.
We understand that getting the pool clean is probably the last thing on most people’s minds. But if you’re a pool pro and taking care of your customers is top of mind, there’s a big need, and we wanted to help out as best we could.
The VacDaddy offered a special promotion with a nearly 50-percent discount to pool professionals living and working in the path of Helene. We were pleased to have several pros take us up on this offer and are looking forward to hearing how the cleanup is going.
We were happy to do our part to support the community, and we urge everyone to take a closer look to understand just how costly (in terms of financial and, of course, the toll on human lives) this natural disaster continues to be for our neighbors in the South.
Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to the folks struggling in this region. VacDaddy was happy to help out to some small degree, and we look forward to hearing more about the recovery that folks are going through and getting life back to normal in the months and years to come.
