Brianna Sacks & Dan Lamothe/The Washington Post Federal emergency response personnel directed employees operating Saturday in hard-hit Rutherford County, N.C., to stop working and move to a different area because of concerns over “armed militia” threatening government workers in the region, according to an email sent to federal agencies helping with hurricane response in the […]
Victoria A. Ifatusin/Asheville Watchdog Buncombe homeowners hit hardest by flood damage from Hurricane Helene will likely face enormous costs to rebuild with limited options to pay for it. Fewer than one percent of Buncombe structures, including homes and businesses, are covered by flood insurance, according to an Asheville Watchdog analysis of data from the National […]
Grace Vitaglione/NC Health News With the end of pandemic-era federal supports for child care centers earlier this year, many centers across North Carolina faced a funding “cliff” that threatened their stability, and for some, even their survival. State lawmakers extended funding in June, so child care centers across North Carolina are afloat for now. But […]
Liz Schlemmer/WUNC Radio On the day before Helene hit, the last thing McDowell County Schools’ Superintendent Tracy Grit did was visit Old Fort Elementary. He walked the perimeter in the rain and stood outside where it overlooks Mill Creek. The school was built only five years ago, on a berm just beyond the hundred-year flood […]
Steve Harrison/WFAE Radio I watch a lot of football. Which means I have seen — on a seemingly endless loop — Donald Trump’s new commercials that mock Kamala Harris for supporting in 2019 health care and surgeries for inmates who want to transition to a different gender. That includes migrants in federal detention. The ads […]
Becky Johnson/The (Waynesville) Mountaineer The Pigeon River scoured away the mountainside that held up the roadbed. Now that roadbed is gone, collapsing out from under the interstate. Enormous sections of asphalt lie in pieces in the river at the bottom of a near-vertical escarpment. In essence, I-40 is gone. “You are truly between a rock […]
Morgan Casey/CityView “You’re gonna need these,” says a soldier as she tosses a pair of hand warmers to anyone ready to catch them. It’s about 8 a.m. on Thursday, two weeks after Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina. The steam from everyone’s coffee cups is visible. So is their breath. “I was hoping the weather […]
Kelly Kenoyer/WHQR Highlands Village Apartments in New Bern, NC, was developed by Norco Management, but rising interest rates and insurance costs are making this kind of affordable housing complex very difficult to build. Climate change has driven rising insurance rates for all kinds of real estate, but especially in the coastal Southeast where hurricanes are […]
Tyler Davis/The (Henderson) Daily Dispatch Kerr Lake Solar, a nearly 600-acre installation planned for White Farm Lane near Bullocksville, has drawn fierce opposition from homeowners in the area. Over the course of the nearly three-hour Oct. 10 meeting, the Vance County Board of Adjustment heard both sides. The eight-member board, seven of which were present, […]
Would-be state treasurers Brad Briner and Wesley Harris don’t just agree that the state needs to be more aggressive about investing its pension funds. They also aren’t convinced the office’s oversight of local government borrowing is on the right track. That oversight occurs through the Local Government Commission. But in some places, major projects have […]
Harris didn’t attend this month’s review of the Cabarrus applications and so didn’t have anything specific to say about them beyond the general point that “imposing their political will isn’t the role” of the commission. He and Briner agreed that the LGC ought to take a more proactive approach to helping the state’s smaller towns […]
Briner attended the LGC meeting earlier this month that saw it OK $85 million in borrowing by Cabarrus County to buy new quarters for its social services department and help pay for a new behavioral health center. This again was a controversial approval, with Folwell and other members on the short end of a 6-3 […]
Kevin Crowe, Shannon Osaka & John Muyskens/The Washington Post The federal government’s flood maps, which are used nationwide to signal areas vulnerable to inundation, vastly underestimated the flood risk faced by properties in the parts of North Carolina devastated by Hurricane Helene, according to data analyzed by The Washington Post. The analysis of flood risk […]
Carolina Public Press For much of Western North Carolina, there was everything that happened before Sept. 27 when Helene swept through the region. And then there is everything that happened since Helene produced floods, landslides and fallen trees that brought destruction, danger, death and despair. It’s been just over two weeks and much of the […]
Peter Castagno/Port City Daily Rep. David Rouzer and Sen. Thom Tillis are seeking to restructure federal aid for catastrophic storms like Hurricane Helene, but critics argue their voting records on climate change and infrastructure are exacerbating storm costs and risks in North Carolina. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee advanced Rep. David Rouzer’s (R-NC) “Natural […]
