People still in the dark almost 3 weeks after Helene are finding power through community and creativity

(CNN) — In the 19 long days since Hurricane Helene cut through the southeastern United States, yanking down electric lines and washing away power poles, millions of people have gradually had their lights restored.

But thousands are still dealing with the intense stress of not having electricity and are having to find sometimes creative ways to get by. Some are turning to neighbors and friends for warm showers or a range to cook on and a washer for clothes.

In North Carolina’s hard-hit Asheville, one man told CNN he was having evening cookouts with others in his apartment complex to share food since the storm pummeled the area in late September. He finally has water, but showers are at his place are cold, so he has an innovative way of washing himself.

In the small Georgia town county of Hazlehurst, a woman told CNN she is spending more than $100 a week to feed the generator that keeps her refrigerator cold. She felt grateful for the neighbor who called and told her to come over to do laundry and have a bite.

Apartment residents have no power to cook so they grill together

Evan Kolosna’s Asheville six-unit apartment went dark when – he believes – a tree crashed down on the line that connected his building to the transmission lines.

On the second night without power, a neighbor started a fire pit, and around the flames neighbors got to know one another as they cooked the meat they had before it spoiled.

“Since then, we kinda have evening gatherings,” he said.

Kolosna tells CNN he is using his car’s power as a charger for his electronic devices. Sometimes he powers them at work, a nonprofit for the homeless where he is a case manager. His water just came back on, so they no longer have to use rainwater to flush toilets or just go out in the woods. But there’s no hot water.

“I actually developed a pretty good system where I can ‘shower’ by filling one bottle with water and a little bit of body wash and shake that up,” Kolosna said. “And then put that on a rag and then lather myself down with that. And then use another one or two just clean bottles of water on another washcloth just to rinse myself off.”

Georgia woman: ‘The goodness of others is what’s gotten us through

In south Georgia, Susie Stevenson is one of thousands of residents who are still without power following Helene, which struck on September 26. There are about 2,000 customers reporting outages where she lives in Jeff Davis County as of Tuesday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us.

Stevenson’s Hazlehurst home is powered by an electric cooperative called Satilla REMC, which is struggling to access hard hit areas in Jeff Davis County, along with Appling, Atkinson and Coffee counties, because of the severity of the damage brought by the storm.

“Helene is without a doubt the most devastating storm to ever impact our region,” the cooperative’s CEO, Romeo Reyes, said in a social media post Tuesday. “It has forced us to rethink and change many of the processes and procedures that we have used to manage storms in the past.”

Stevenson says nobody in Hazlehurst knew they were in the storm’s direct path until the last minute.

In her part of Georgia, about 100 miles west of Savannah, the streets are littered with downed trees, fallen power lines and other debris.

“The goodness of others is what has gotten us through,” Stevenson told CNN on Monday. “Just when I wonder where I’m going to wash clothes, I get a call this morning telling me to come shower, wash clothes, and eat tonight.”

The generator Stevenson uses to power parts of her home is costing her a pretty penny as well.

“I finally got a refrigerator hooked to it, but it costs almost $20 a day just for the generator,” Stevenson said.

Leslie Breedlove also lives in Hazlehurst, and she says she is getting by on food donations and by taking showers and washing her clothes at other people’s houses.

Kolosna said he left for a few days for the comfort of a friend’s place in Greenville, South Carolina – where he also grabbed some supplies – before coming back for his job at the nonprofit, a facility which houses 85 full-time residents.

Kolosna is now accustomed to life without power at home, but he really hopes it comes back in the next day or two.

In Jeff Davis County, where Hazlehurst is the county seat, 1,300 of the 6,400 Satilla customers were without power as of Tuesday evening. Jim Tucker, a spokesperson for the cooperative, said they hope to have everyone’s power back on by Sunday.

“We were so unprepared for this storm,” Stevenson told CNN. “We didn’t get any kind of evacuation warnings or shelter in place.”

Hurricane and tropical storm warnings from the National Weather Service were in place across Georgia when Helene struck the state. Hazlehurst saw the worst impacts on September 27.

“Someone should have done something – the county or city – there should have been a contingency plan in place,” she added.

But officials point to the storm’s extraordinary intensity, which outmatched local resources and preparation efforts.

It was a 100-year storm that was “completely off the grid for us,” said Charles Wasdin, director of the Jeff County Emergency Management Agency.

“We had severe challenges that we did not anticipate,” he said. “Total devastation.”

Wasdin said it will be months before all the storm debris is removed.

CNN also reached out to Jeff Davis County officials for their response.

Power crews battling heavy debris first

As power restoration crews struggle to reach storm-damaged areas, Tucker said, the process has been further slowed.

“In many cases we have had to spend hours clearing fallen trees and other storm-related debris before we can even begin to repair the power lines,” he said.

Breedlove says she is thankful for the line workers, but she told CNN she is worried restoring the power will take even longer than forecast.

“We are a small town, but we’re strong with one another and helping one another,” Breedlove said.

Stevenson said FEMA officials are coming to her property on Tuesday for an inspection, and she hopes they can offer some solutions.

“We need a lot of help in our area,” Stevenson said. “I know other places are having hard times, too. I pray they also get as much help as they can.”

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CNN’s Monica Garrett and Steve Almasy contributed to this report.