NC is still months away from rebuilding the first homes post-Helene. What officials blame for the holdup

Six months after Hurricane Helene ravaged western North Carolina, government leaders still haven’t started rebuilding any homes — in part because they haven't gotten the money they need from the federal government, they still don’t know how many homes will need to be rebuilt and, in some cases, they don't know if people will be allowed to rebuild at all.

It’ll be at least several more months before the first home rebuilds begin. And it will be years, maybe 2030, before the work is done, state officials told lawmakers Thursday during a legislative oversight hearing.

Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is redoing many of its flood plain maps. Whatever those maps end up showing could determine whether someone is eligible to receive FEMA funds to rebuild their home. If not, they might be forced to decide whether to leave or try rebuilding without the government’s help.

The testimony Thursday — by two of Gov. Josh Stein’s top disaster recovery officials, Stephanie McGarrah and Jonathan Krebs — was met with disappointment from legislators.

The state House’s majority leader, Rep. Brendan Jones, pointed to the ongoing recovery efforts for long-ago storms — Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Florence in 2018. Similar delays will be unacceptable with Helene, he said Thursday.

“I said this in the last meeting, and it offended some people, but this state has pissed away the taxpayers’ money,” said Jones, a Columbus County Republican highly critical of the previous relief efforts. “We're not going to do that again. We're asking you to help us help you. Make this work fast. Make it work quick. We don't have six years to do this.”

‘That’s too long’

McGarrah, a top state Commerce Department official helping lead Helene recovery efforts, told lawmakers the federal government is funding the rebuilding effort, and those grants allow six years to finish rebuilding homes. That could push efforts into 2030 or beyond.

But she also agreed with Jones that six years is a long time to wait for a new home, and she promised to do everything she could to beat that deadline. She noted that it’s personal for her: She grew up in western North Carolina, her parents still live there, and she considers the area home.

“I know that's too long,” she said. “I would like to see it happen faster.”

Complicating everything, however, is the geography of western North Carolina.

The state’s struggles with rebuilding after Florence and Matthew happened despite the relatively flat terrain of eastern North Carolina. The mountainous terrain Helene tore through will make everything harder and slower to do, particularly since there are simply fewer people with the skills and experience to build homes on the sides of mountains. McGarrah said the state plans to have private contractors, rather than state workers, carry out almost all of the work in an attempt to speed it up.

But it’s going to be a task that has rarely been attempted anywhere in the country, she noted.

“Other than West Virginia and Colorado and parts of Kentucky, we haven't seen people try to rebuild houses in the mountains with the terrain that we have — as spread out and far apart as folks are,” McGarrah said.

The nature of how some families live in Appalachia — with homes tucked away in secluded, hard-to-find areas and some properties owned by a whole host of relatives who might have conflicting ideas on how or whether to rebuild — could also complicate the task further.

While some families might be divided over whether to take government help on rebuilding, many more will be incredibly angry if the government tells them they can’t get help at all because the piece of land that’s been in their family for generations happens to be in a flood plain, said Sen. Tim Moffitt, R-Henderson. He suggested simply ignoring the federal regulations, or pushing for them to be changed or repealed by the administration of President Donald Trump.

“I don't want to accept it,” Moffitt said. “I don't want to tell folks back home that your homestead, that's been there for 100 years — that you had raised multiple families in — that the government's telling you, no.”

Future flooding concerns

Rep. Mark Pless, R-Haywood, said he wants to see the Stein administration do as much as it can to push back against FEMA’s efforts to map flood plains in western North Carolina, including his district.

“These people want to go back,” he said. “We need to be advocating, and we need to be fighting, while they're drawing these maps. We need to be pushing them to not change the landscape.”

A large part of the reason why Helene broke records for damage, and killed more than 100 people in western North Carolina, is because so many homes and businesses were built in flood plains that washed away in the landslides brought on by the storm.

Many of the deaths have since been blamed on outdated flood maps that allowed homes to be built where they shouldn't, or without solid enough material to avoid being washed away.

FEMA, as well as private insurance companies, discourage rebuilding in flood plains after a storm to try to avoid a future repeat of the destruction.

Krebs told Pless that in some situations, it will be up to local county government officials to decide if they’ll allow people to rebuild in flood plains but that doing so could “jeopardize their National Flood Insurance Plan participation, and being able to receive future flood insurance.”

Thursday’s hearing also highlighted the tricky political position disaster recovery officials often find themselves in. Krebs and McGarrah said that since some people are likely going to be unable to rebuild, the state is also planning to construct new affordable housing options throughout western North Carolina for displaced residents.

But that angered some lawmakers, who said any money spent on building brand-new housing is money that won’t be able to be spent on rebuilding homes. They feared it might lower the dollar amount that some storm victims, especially with pricier homes, are going to be able to get back.

Many lawmakers expressed a desire to help the work go as smoothly as possible, avoiding the pitfalls of Florence and Matthew relief efforts. But they also pressed for more information, and faster action, in the near future.

“I wish you much success,” Moffitt told Mcgarrah and Krebs. “We need it. But I leave again with an empty feeling that, when I go home, I have no answers for my people.”