Jaymie Baxley/NC Health News In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene’s deadly lurch through western North Carolina, the oft-overlooked race for commissioner of insurance is likely to be one of the more closely watched contests in November’s election. An untold number of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed by the storm, with insurance industry estimates […]
Carolina Public Press The rate of recovery and flow of information across Western North Carolina remains uneven nearly a week after Tropical Storm Helene veered to the east of its predicted track and dropped massive amounts of rain across North Carolina mountains and valleys that were already experiencing flooding from earlier rainfall. In many places […]
Liz Bell & Katie Dukes/Education NC Child care in Western North Carolina was hard to come by before Hurricane Helene devastated the region last week, taking lives and leaving communities underwater. Now, child care programs will need even more support to rebuild, recover, and serve families, said Amy Barry, director of Buncombe Partnership for Children. […]
On Monday evening, some random Reddit scrolling amid the second game of the Braves-Mets doubleheader called to my attention that a car-modding YouTuber who calls himself Cleetus McFarland was using his personal helicopter to fly supplies to Hurricane Helene victims near Asheville. By Tuesday, Cleetus — the nom de guerre of Garrett Mitchell — had posted […]
Shawn Musgrave/The Intercept On the evening of January 6, 2021 — as the Capitol Police were doing final sweeps of ransacked buildings and senators were preparing to resume the electoral vote count — former President Donald Trump asked the White House switchboard to get Mark Martin on the phone. A retired North Carolina Supreme Court […]
Brian Burns/WUNC Radio Helene ravaged western North Carolina last weekend, bringing devastation and destruction to homes and businesses throughout the region. This event has caused major harm to the entire area, which of course includes the music scene. Here’s what we know so far: One important casualty from the storm was the live music venue […]
Cory Vaillancourt/Smoky Mountain News A bouquet of flowers, likely on someone’s porch or kitchen table hours earlier, lies on a Maggie Valley sidewalk alongside other debris from Jonathan Creek. Cory Vaillancourt photo A bouquet of flowers, likely on someone’s porch or kitchen table hours earlier, lies on a Maggie Valley sidewalk alongside other debris from […]
Kenneth Lee Jr./WFAE Radio Huntersville-based 23XI Racing — co-owned by Michael Jordan — and Mooresville-based Front Row Motorsports have filed an antitrust lawsuit in North Carolina against NASCAR and its CEO Jim France, alleging that the stock car racing circuit and its leadership have used anti-competitive practices to stifle the sport and unfairly benefit themselves. […]
Peter Castagno/Port City Daily A federal ruling and state law last year removed protections for vast expanses of North Carolina’s wetlands, but appropriate enforcement of regulations remains in controversy. The Biden administration’s 2022 Waters of the United States definition gave federal protection to wetlands adjacent to large waterways — including wetlands with a “relatively permanent” […]
Pat Kimbrough/The High Point Enterprise A large portfolio of High Point real estate has changed hands. EveryAge, a nonprofit operator of senior living facilities, on Tuesday completed its acquisition of the Providence Place retirement center and adjacent commercial properties in the 1700 block of Westchester Drive. It paid a total of $43.3 million for eight […]
Speaker Moore isn’t the only one taking shots at Folwell. The treasurer is having a tough go of things at the Local Government Commission, which he chairs. LGC members on Tuesday voted 6-3, over the treasurer’s dissent, to give Cabarrus County permission to borrow up to $85 million to pay for some new human-services facilities. […]
With just three months remaining in his term, State Treasurer Dale Folwell has let his feelings about House Speaker Tim Moore be known in the wake of Moore’s recent blast at his handling of the State Health Plan. This took two forms: A formal letter to Moore on Monday, and a chunk of Folwell’s monthly […]
The water-system failures are combining with road blockages of various sorts to throw the relief effort probably its biggest curveball, the need to bring in massive loads of supplies and get them distributed. An illustration of that came from the N.C. National Guard, which loaded 100,000 pounds of food and water into a C-17 and […]
Meanwhile, Duke Energy says it expects to have the power back on for “the majority of customers” in western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina by Friday evening. As of the mid-afternoon on Monday the company was reporting about 308,000 customers in western North Carolina were without electricity. Another 438,000 were in the dark in […]
Water supplies and power remained the key deficits in western North Carolina on Monday as the region continues to pick up the pieces from Hurricane Helene. The water situation bears a closer look, given that one of the major logistics problems the state faces is the need to truck bottled water to the west over […]
