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It's colder than usual in much of the South this week. The freezing weather is especially challenging for people who live in RVs, and hundreds of people near Asheville, North Carolina, have been living in RVs since Hurricane Helene 16 months ago. Gerard Albert III from member station Blue Ridge Public Radio reports on the efforts to help them stay warm.
GERARD ALBERT III, BYLINE: For David Collins, winter is a brutal challenge. Since Hurricane Helene, he's been living in an RV with his wife and two young sons.
DAVID COLLINS: It gets below freezing. The water doesn't work. The floors are freezing 'cause there's nothing underneath. The walls are very thin, so they're much harder to keep warm.
ALBERT: His RV is not insulated, and the water lines that feed it often freeze. The family lives on top of a hill an hour from Asheville where they are working on building a permanent house. They're one of an estimated hundred families still living in an RV or a camper in this county alone. David's parents, brother and in-laws are also living in separate RVs on the property.
COLLINS: That's really been the biggest struggle going into winter is keeping everyone's heat working, keeping everyone's water working. We've had multiple calls to RV repairmen for heater repairs.
ALBERT: One thing that has helped keep the family a little warmer is insulation installed by a nonprofit, The Beacon Network.
(SOUNDBITE OF INSULATION BOARD BEING CUT)
ALBERT: Mike Gucciardo and his crew of six are installing insulation boards along the bottom of another camper a few miles down the road.
MIKE GUCCIARDO: So right now, we're setting up this foam here to block the wind from going underneath the camper.
ALBERT: The crews do their best to make the RVs warmer. They also install heated hoses, so waterlines won't freeze up. Gucciardo had to do this for his own RV after his home was damaged by the hurricane. Besides donations, the state of North Carolina also gave his group $25,000 to help with the effort. Another nonprofit, the United Methodist Disaster Relief, helped Emily Sluder insulate her RV in Asheville, where she lives with her husband and two children. She was skeptical that the foam boards would make much of a difference.
EMILY SLUDER: I was here when they were doing it, and I was like, oh, it's not going to help. Let me tell you - it helps so much because we didn't feel the draft coming through every other time.
ALBERT: Before the RV, Sluder and her family lived in their car. That's after the hurricane knocked a tree through their home. And while the camper isn't perfect, the insulation makes it livable, and Sluder is just happy to have a place her kids can call home.
SLUDER: I know it sounds crazy, or you might think, oh, she's talking. But to be able to sit down and just have a little space for your legs to stretch out was awesome.
ALBERT: Sluder says another thing she has done to keep her family warm is getting her children slippers for the cold floors. For NPR News, I'm Gerard Albert III.
(SOUNDBITE OF POST MALONE SONG, "CHEMICAL") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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