Asheville is in crisis right now. They're without drinking water, faucets run dry, and it's difficult to flush toilets. As of yesterday, the hospital has water (via tanker trucks), but 80% of the public water system is still without running water.

Things are really bad. Lots of infrastructure has been washed away. Even when water is back, there has been tremendous damage done that will take a long time to recover from and rebuild.

Here's the only national news story my friend from Asheville had seen which covered the water situation specifically. It's hard for me to understand why this is not covered more broadly. And my heart aches for those in and around the Asheville area.

As I'm far away, I can't do a lot to help. But I can donate money, which my friend said is the only donation that would help right now if you aren't in the area. She specifically pointed me to these two ways to donate:

• Beloved Asheville: a respected community organization in Asheville, this is a great place to send money to help. (If you're closer to that area, it does look like they have specific things they're asking for as well, but this feels like an "if you can help this way, you'd already know" situation.)
• Mutual Aid Disaster Relief: there's a local Asheville chapter which is doing work to help. Also an organization to support for broad disaster recovery in general.

I've donated money. I hope you will, too, for this and for the many other crises that affect us. Let's help each other.