When prepping for a storm, you may stockpile bottled water and toilet paper. Maybe you dust off your generator and fill up your car with gas. You may set out flashlights, candles, and nonperishable snacks on your kitchen counter.
But how many people withdraw enough cash to last themselves and their families days or weeks?
After Tropical Storm Helene hit Western North Carolina, debit and credit cards were rendered useless in many places.
With card readers unable to connect to the internet, cash was the only currency many businesses could accept. Most ATMs were also down, or had run out of money: if you didn’t have cash when the storm hit, you were unlikely to get any in the days after.
The mountain region of North Carolina already has precarious internet infrastructure, with spotty connectivity and expensive repair protocol.
“In this case, there were power outages and internet outages, and card transactions require both of those things in order to happen,” Brian Haines, spokesperson for North Carolina’s state emergency management, told Carolina Public Press.
“There were a lot of fiber lines that were cut in this event, which made it even more difficult for money transfers to resume.”
Cash reliance reverses trend
If Helene had hit 10 years ago, it would be reasonable to assume that most people would be carrying cash anyway. Since the pandemic, though, credit and debit cards and mobile payment apps have taken over. Some businesses don’t take cash payments at all. Pandemic and post-pandemic trends seemed to indicate that the future might be cashless.
But all the high-tech payment methods in the world couldn’t buy a single thing in some mountain towns of Western North Carolina after Helene. Cash was — and in some places in the mountains still is — king.
“Lines for the working ATMs were as long as the lines for gas stations that still had gas in Asheville,” Rob Tatum, economics professor at UNC Asheville, told CPP. “Cash was the only means of payment for, heck, everything for a while.
“My wife and I are very analytical planners, and still, I only had 80 bucks when the storm hit,” Tatum said. “That was not enough to cover our family of four for gas, food and other things we needed.”
Even in cases where a grocery store or pharmacy had what you were looking for, which was a rarity due to waves of panic-buying, you may not have been able to purchase it if you didn’t have any cash.
“This situation showed that substitution that goes on between a debit card and cash is not as seamless as we might imagine,” Tatum said. “You feel like you have money, but you don’t actually have money.”
One month after Helene, Tatum’s hairdresser is still only taking cash, he said.
Back in the day, credit cards had raised numbers on them to allow businesses to copy the data onto carbon paper, Tatum recalled. You didn’t need direct internet access to take a credit card. Nowadays most cards are flat. Sure, business owners can take down a credit card number, but that involves limited verification ability, lack of encryption and storage risks.
“Even businesses that could capture stripe data couldn’t reconcile it for days, and got beat in some situations,” David Jackson, president of the Boone Chamber of Commerce, told CPP. “A lot of times they couldn’t go back and have somebody rerun that card.
“My grandfather used to keep a shoebox of cash underneath his bed. I always thought he was crazy, but man, he would have done fine with the financial reality of those first few days.”
‘Small town America shows up.’
Thankfully, people were looking out for one another in the mountains.
“Good Samaritans took care of a lot of people,” Jackson said. “I heard stories about people trying to buy essentials in the aftermath of the storm, and they didn’t have the cash to do it. But the person behind them did. When these things happen in small town America, small town America shows up.”
In Boone, the cash-only economy only lasted for a couple days, much shorter than it did in Asheville.
“It was almost a week before grocery stores and gas stations could take credit cards,” Leah Matthews, another professor of economics at UNC Asheville, told CPP.
“But there was a lot of sharing of resources, gifting and bartering, and communities coming together in ways they hadn’t before. Entire apartment buildings were pooling what they had to cook dinner for everyone. People were giving each other fuel. So many creative, community-minded solutions popped up pretty quickly.
“We’re having a moment of collective trauma, but those little bright spots are what a lot of people are clinging to and will remember about this event. We are already a different place, and it will be a different place moving forward.”
As an economist, Matthews took a moment to think about the cash-only predicament in the abstract.
“An economy is actually about the movement and distribution of resources,” she said. “Cash, credit, or Apple Wallet are just ways to facilitate those transactions. A solid neighborhood network where you can barter or go ask somebody for help is another way to facilitate transactions. The situation makes you think about what an economy really is.”
Not first storm where cash mattered
The same situation has occurred in other regions of the state in the immediate aftermath of severe storms.
After Hurricanes Matthew and Florence, Robeson County residents couldn’t use their debit or credit cards for two days due to power outages and bank closures, according to county emergency services director Tammy McLeod.
In Dare County, emergency management planner James Wooten says he recommends cash be a part of residents’ emergency preparedness kits, especially in places like Hatteras, where just one fiber cable provides internet to the whole island.
Preparing responsibly for a storm is essential: no one wants a run on the banks right before a hurricane just as much as no one wants to be met with empty shelves in a supermarket.
“You can build your supplies over time by adding a few items each week or month,” FEMA recommends.
“Gather in advance the necessary supplies and items you will need to stay safe after the hurricane passes and as you start to recover. Stock food items that do not need refrigeration and will last. Regularly replace items like water, food, medications and batteries that go bad over time.”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.