I remember when I was very young (don't actually remember I was like 2) when Katrina hit Florida and New Orleans and Bush left our people to starve and die, didn't rebuild shit and allocated like a few million at most for aid.
Chad China response to natural disasters sending out the whole PLA and disaster teams to find every single citizen in sub-zero weather
Your family friends are genuine heroes, and I'd love to ask about them.
Fairly standard for cadres (干部). 为人民服务
A similar thing is shown in this video of a cadre who lived among the people in a rural Xinjiang village for over 4 years as a part of China's poverty alleviation program saying farewell to the villagers.
Eradicating absolute poverty in a country as large as China isn't just throwing money at the problem, but addressing the material needs of the people and building infrastructure and utilities on a case by case basis, and that's hard to do without embedding yourself in their communities for months to years at a time.