Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

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That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.

This is Lindsay Smith Rogers, producer of Public Health on Call, and today a report from East Tennessee on the front lines of

the devastation from Hurricane Helene. Dr. Robert Acuff and Danny Deal are both commissioners

of Carter County, which is located just east of Johnson City on the border with North Carolina.

They spoke to Dr. Josh Sharfstein from the local airport, which has been

converted into a staging area for relief supplies. What's it like to be responding in the middle

of the worst disaster in the state's history? Let's listen. Commissioner Robert Acuff, Commissioner

Danny D.L., thank you so much for joining me today in public health on call from Harder County, Tennessee.

Could you tell me where you are right now, Dr. Acuff?

Yes.

We're at the Elizabethan Municipal Airport in a community that's called Stony Creek, which is right outside of Elizabeth and Tennessee,

and that the airport has become a hub for sending items out to isolated areas in Carter County.

And Commissioner Deal, what is your role there with the supply chain?

I'm just managing the supply chain, keeping our supplies healthy here so that we can do the drops by the black hawks for the people's needs.

And what's going into the drops? What supplies are there behind you now?

Well, there's water, of course, the basics food.

There's blankets.

It's starting to get cooler here in the mountains.

So people are really requesting heating items.

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