As soon as Maria Salgado spotted a pickup truck loaded with supplies pulling into the North Carolina mobile home park where she lives, she sprang into action. She waved it down and began translating for the group of Spanish speakers gathering behind her.

“Quién ocupa agua?” Ms. Salgado called out. “Pañales para los bebés?” (“Who needs water? Diapers for the babies?”)

Inside the truck were a family from Georgia who had raced to North Carolina as soon as they learned of the devastation left by Hurricane Helene. They took their cues from Ms. Salgado, and tried to communicate with the residents in broken Spanish. “Agua, aquí,” one man said, handing out bottled water to eager families.

A close-knit group of immigrants from Mexico and Central America live at the mobile home park, known as Alan Campos. Many residents of the park, on a side road between the hard-hit towns of Black Mountain and Swannanoa, barely escaped with their lives after torrents of water came rushing into their trailers.

A large group of families, many with young children, remain without flushing water or reliable cellphone serviceon Thursday, and electricity remains spotty. Those whose homes are still intact have taken other families in, with one three-bedroom trailer now housing about 12 people.

“We don’t have a lot right now,” Ms. Salgado said, “but we have each other.”

Aid has begun to flow into some of the most ravaged parts of western North Carolina, nearly a week after the region was inundated by Helene. But the challenges of getting assistance to non-English-speaking communities like the one at Alan Campos remain steep.

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