While nestled a safe distance away in Towson, Pickett Brewing Company’s self-proclaimed “beertender” Eric Kraai watched his two children narrowly escape the destruction of Hurricane Helene.

Ellen, 21, who still lives in Boone, a town along the Blue Ridge Mountains about an hour and a half drive from her brother, Andrew, 29, in Asheville, made it out of North Carolina shortly after the Category 4 storm hit. They returned to find their communities devastated.

So Kraai and the kids got to work: collecting canned food, blankets and cleaning products to dole out to residents still recovering from the damage.

With a national response to the disaster still underway, the Kraais are responding to Southern Appalachia’s needs one loaded-up Subaru Outback at a time. Next week the family plans on transporting their second convoy of donated goods to Ashe County, North Carolina, where Ellen handed out supplies to families Sunday at a volunteer fire station.

Pickett, Checkerspot Brewing, Wico Street Beer Company and M8 Beer Company — the Baltimore breweries that make up the Sobo Brewery District — are helping the family gather in-demand items, including diapers, baby formula, feminine hygiene products, bottled water and batteries.

“It really boils down to the basics for human dignity,” Kraai said of the list of supplies people can donate.

Friends down south have been left homeless, and businesses — like the Asheville brewery where Andrew worked — have shuttered for good, Kraai said.

Pre-cooked meals, propane, undergarments, baby formula, trash bags, diapers and disinfectant are also among the specific items the Kraais are collecting. Donations dropped off at Checkerspot before Oct. 13 will be shipped to Burial Beer, an Asheville business distributing aid to residents following the storm.

Kraai and his son will pick up donations made to Pickett by Oct. 13. They will pile supplies into one of their cars and likely drive it to another fire station, Kraai said.

The plan to help out North Carolina was all his daughter’s idea. A student at Appalachia State University, Ellen was already volunteering around her community before Helene made landfall last Thursday. Since then she’s worked to connect peers now homeless from Helene with aid and distribute donated items to families at a Fleetwood fire station, one of many mountainous communities formerly stranded by historic levels of flooding.

“It’s damage unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” Kraai said, adding that almost 30 years ago he weathered the fallout of a hurricane in Raleigh, North Carolina, by snagging ice from neighboring hotels. “I wasn’t surprised by the need for necessities.”

In partnership with Checkerspot and Pickett, Heavy Seas Brewing Company and Nepenthe Brewing Company have also promoted the need for donations.

In a social media post, the Sobo Brewery District referred to the North Carolina residents in need as part of the “extended community.” The city of Asheville, whose infrastructure was decimated by river flooding caused by the hurricane, is a hub for craft beer, with more breweries per capita than any other city in the United States, according to the Citizen-Times, its daily newspaper.