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During Hurricane Helene, the Asheville bookstore and co-op Firestorm Books served as a community hub, where people dropped off and picked up supplies. But for almost a week after the storm, the shop could not provide the disaster relief work the staff really wanted to do. Although Firestorm had solar panels, the shop had no way to store that energy for a long period of time, leaving staff unable to offer critical services like refrigerating food or offering a powered space to the community after sunset.
“A lot of people were contributing and donating perishables, but we weren’t really able to hold those because we didn’t have operational generators,” said Libertie Valance, a Firestorm staff member. “People weren’t able to charge power tools. There were a lot of people coordinating things like tree removal from around our space.”…