After disasters, help can be both spare and abundant in different ways. The influx of volunteer and government aid can relieve many people of poverty for a short time. In disaster, help is also, inevitably, political – with different aims depending on who the helpers are, and why. This talk will cover my experience of covering Appalachian disasters from the Kentucky floods of 2022 into Helene and Helene’s aftermath, and the way these disasters have changed my thinking around the political economy of care, public assistance, poverty, and mutual aid.