6 | LEHIGH ALUMNI BULLETIN | FROM THE NEST the mountains in her free time, Kreitz felt a deep connection to the state—one that inspired her to take action and help those suffering from devastation caused by the storm. Jumping into Action In early October, Kreitz took to Facebook to raise nearly $10,000 in donations, gathered via Venmo and PayPal, to help those impacted by Hurricane Helene damage. She also recruited dozens of volunteers, including two fellow Lehigh alumni and a Pennsylvania-based construction crew, to aid in her efforts of cleaning out and restoring damaged homes in Barnardsville, North Carolina. Barnardsville is a small mountain town located about 20 minutes north of Asheville, North Carolina, that was particularly impacted by the hurricane. According to Kreitz, the small creek that runs through the town overflowed during the storm and flooded many homes in the area, sweeping some entirely off their foundations. Kreitz and her friend Gerik Bensing ’14 came across Barnardsville while driving through areas surrounding Asheville, searching for people they could help. The duo drove door to door in the town, handing out envelopes of cash collected from Kreitz’s fundraising efforts to families in need to repair their homes. When a neighbor directed Kreitz and Bensing to check on the home of one particular family of four—a mother, father and two teenage daughters—Kreitz was motivated to expand her volunteer efforts to home restoration. “The whole mobile home was lifted off of its foundation by the flood waters and “AS I WAS DRIVING AWAY FROM NORTH CAROLINA, I REALLY JUST KNEW THAT I WAS GOING THE WRONG WAY AND I HAD TO GO BACK AND HELP.” —Ashley Kreitz ’15 Katie Gregory ’15 and Ashley Kreitz ’15 share a hug while working on restoring a home in Barnardsville, North Carolina. COMMUNITY | ALUMNI ʼ15 Alumni Aid in Hurricane Relief Ashley Kreitz ’15 raised nearly $10,000 and recruited fellow alumni to help restore homes in North Carolina that were damaged by Hurricane Helene. Ashley Kreitz ’15 couldn’t bear the sight of the storm-ravaged North Carolina mountains in her rearview mirror as she drove north toward her home state of Pennsylvania and away from the path of Hurricane Helene— a Category 4 storm that devastated parts of the South in September 2024. “As I was driving away from North Carolina, I really just knew that I was going the wrong way and I had to go back and help,” Kreitz recalled. Helene made landfall in North Carolina on September 27, generating record rainfall and causing severe flooding and landslides that damaged thousands of homes. Helene is one of the deadliest U.S. storms in the 21st century, with more than 100 confirmed deaths in North Carolina alone, according to a report from the North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management. It’s disasters like Helene that are at the core of the work being done by researchers in the Center for Catastrophe Modeling and Resilience, Lehigh University’s first University Research Center, established in 2024, as they attempt to assess the risk of these kinds of events and plan for them. Such disasters raise questions about what can be done to ensure communities can withstand catastrophes and quickly rebuild. It is the latter that also became the focus of Kreitz’s volunteer efforts in North Carolina. After spending a few years working as an environmental science instructor in Charlotte, North Carolina, and canoeing and biking through
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