MOUNT VERNON, Wash. — Bo McKenzie is barely back from Hurricane Helene, and he's already making plans to return.
"When you see people hurting, you do what you can," he said.
McKenzie owns Full Speed Plumbing in Mount Vernon and learned about the desperate need for hurricane help from a colleague in North Carolina.
He connected with churches and ran search and rescue missions, supplied fuel and coordinated recovery efforts.
"In business, my job isn't to be good at anything. It's to find people who are. That's exactly what I did," McKenzie said.
He used his plumbing skills to bring clean water to an assisted living facility. He recalls a church in a tiny mountain town that lost 13 of its 40 congregants to the storm.
What he remembers most, however, is how people came together in the face of such staggering hardship.
"It was people from all different backgrounds, politics or religions. It's all about helping people survive at that point," McKenzie said. "There are things I can't even verbalize, to be honest with you. It's just the utter devastation."
McKenzie credits the team he and his wife Kimberly have built at their business with affording him the opportunity to spend nearly a month volunteering in Helene's aftermath.
Kimberly said it has made her even more grateful for the blessings in their lives.
"Because it gives us an opportunity to take pause and to really stop and think about the things that are most important to us," she said.
McKenzie said there are still thousands of people who are homeless.
While much of America has moved on from the horrors of Hurricane Helene, McKenzie believes it will be years before North Carolina is fully recovered.
Right now, he's most worried about the immediate future.
"This winter scares me," he said. "There is unbelievable numbers of people living in tents in fields. Winters get cold over there. I am quite concerned. There's no way they could even house all the people in hotels at this point."
McKenzie is planning to return to the disaster zone over the holidays to continue his work. He's looking for donations of materials and for skilled tradesmen who can volunteer their time.
For people who can't help in those ways, McKenzie has one simple request.
"Don't forget about them. We need to back them for quite a while. Just don't forget."