Friends of West Palm Beach native Ryan Wiebe are turning to WPTV for help after his house and family in North Carolina were ravaged by Hurricane Helene.
Wiebe grew up in West Palm Beach but moved to Burnsville, northeast of Asheville, to start and raise his family.
“It’s like a nightmare every morning when you wake up. It’s just shocking disbelief, sickening to be in it and see what happened,” said Wiebe.
The house is still standing, but the flood waters made it to the ceiling of his first floor of his two story house.
“It’s been about a month, and we haven’t done anything to the home except we started working on it today to clean out the water and the mud and the water and furniture and the insulation,” said Wiebe.
He said he met his wife from Ukraine on Juno Beach, when he asked her out on a date.
They fell in love and the two have 16 and 13-year-old sons.
When the war broke out with Ukraine, his wife’s mother, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew moved into a trailer a quarter mile down the road on their property.