For those of you that don't know us, we are Justin and Lindsey Comer. We have a 7 year old daughter, 2 dogs, 2 cats, and a pet snake. We've lived in Black Mountain, NC for almost 2 years but fell in love with the community long before. Justin works at Pratt and Whitney and Lindsey was a veterinary nurse at Beacon Veterinary Hospital. Many of you know that the we were impacted by Hurricane Helene. While our house that we purchased in January has no major damage, we have 24 trees down on our property with 2 on our house. In addition, Lindsey's clinic that she worked at was destroyed in a flood. She called it her "unicorn clinic" and is devastated that it's gone.

Immediately after the storm, our initial reaction was to help our neighbors and community. I'm not going to lie, that first week was scary. No power, water, and very limited in our ability to communicate and receive information. Something that many people are still going through. Fortunately, our community has received help from many organizations inside and outside the state. We even saw line crew from Canada! We are extremely fortunate to have power at our house and because we are on a well, we have access to running water. However, we don't have internet and our cell service is still hit or miss.

Now that the dust has started to settle, figuratively, not literally because there's dust everywhere, the real impact of what has happened to us is starting to set in. While we are still waiting to hear from insurance, we know there will be upfront costs when hiring a tree company and making repairs on our house. If you know us at all, you know that we are DIYers and would rather have sore backs than a sore wallets. But 24 trees is too much for us to handle.

There's also the fact that Lindsey no longer has a job. We have contacted our mortgage company, but any deference would need to be paid in lump sum after a few months, which we can't do. Disaster Unemployment Assistance is not helpful either and we've had no word from FEMA. While Lindsey does plan on finding a job, it's really had to do with no internet, most places still not having power and water, and Libby being out of school because schools are closed until they have power and water.

We know many of you were kind enough to send money via Venmo so we could bring back supplies for our neighbors and community. We understand completely if you are unable to donate again. It's really hard for us to ask for help for ourselves, but here we are. Any amount will help make sure that we can get repairs done to our house and ensure we're able to pay our bills.