Dolly Parton donates $1 million to relief efforts in Helen

Country music legend Dolly Parton is supporting her neighbors in the wake of Hurricane Helen, announcing a huge donation to relief efforts.

“Islands in the Stream” singer. Announced Friday It has donated a whopping $1 million to help those affected by Hurricane Helen – as people across the region struggle to recover from the storm that claimed more than 200 lives.

Barton He held a press conference At a Walmart in Newport, Tennessee, in the shadow of the area where the singer was born and raised.

Despite the bleak conditions, Volunteer State residents were thrilled to see “Auntie Grandma” and the legendary singer couldn’t leave the audience disappointed. Her artist instincts took over and she delighted the people who came out to see her in a storm-centric version of one of her classic songs.

“Helen, Helen, Helen, Helen / You came here and broke us all up / Helen, Helen, Helen, Helen / But we’re all here to mend these broken hearts,” Parton sang over the tune of her 1973 song “Jolene.”

“I really wish we were all together for another reason,” Dolly continued without singing, “who knew, in the little part of the country here, where I was born and raised all the way, that we would get this kind of devastation. And I look around and I think this is it.” My mountains, these are my valleys, these are my rivers, and they flow like a river. These are my people,” he added in conclusion: “This is my home.”

Parton said this is a time for everyone to “step up” — and she set an example by donating $1 million from her own bank account. But it didn’t stop there.

The mogul said that through her Dollywood Foundation and a few other organizations, she has organized another $1 million donation to the Mountain Ways Foundation.

At the same press conference, Walmart CEO John Furner announced that Walmart, Sam’s Club and the Walmart Foundation had increased their donations to $10 million, up from the previously announced $6 million.

A week after the storm, more than a hundred people are still missing and feared dead. The death toll as of Friday rose to more than 200, making Helen the deadliest hurricane in the United States since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Experts say Hurricane Helen and other storms last week inundated the region with more than 40 trillion gallons of water.

“This is an astronomical amount of rain,” said Ed Clark, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center. He told the TV show“I have never seen anything in 25 years of working in the weather service on this geographic scale and this massive volume of water falling from the sky.”

Storm victims are still struggling to obtain food, water, electricity and cell phone services.

Earlier today, Elon Musk expressed frustration with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), as his company SpaceX tries to deliver relief items including “Starlinks,” local satellite communications the size of an iPad. This public appeal comes on the heels of numerous reports that FEMA needed to respond to the storm.