The Associated Press The North Carolina county that is home to Asheville overcounted deaths caused by Helene by as many as 30, according to a statement Tuesday from its sheriff’s office and data from the state, significantly reducing the death toll from the historic storm. Buncombe County officials, who previously reported 72 deaths, are now […]
Brian Gordon/The News & Observer Karen Bruggemann of Candler, North Carolina, assured she isn’t missing. “Sometimes I wish I were,” she joked over the phone Tuesday. Bruggemann’s name appears on “Hurricane Helene People Finder,” a Google Doc disseminated online after then-Tropical Storm Helene devastated multiple Western North Carolina communities. The storm disrupted phone and internet […]
Hannah Vinueza McClellan/Education NC As the 14 North Carolina community colleges impacted by Hurricane Helene continue recovery efforts, the N.C. Community College System (NCCCS) is asking state lawmakers for student support funds and stabilization dollars due to enrollment loss, according to information presented at the State Board of Community College’s meeting on Oct. 18. Alex […]
Bradley George/WUNC Radio Union members in the crowd during President Joe Biden’s visit to Wolfspeed in Durham in March 2023. Woflspeed is putting plans to build a semiconductor factory in Germany on hold, according to officials and reports in German media. The Durham-based company announced the project in 2023. It partnered with German auto parts […]
Marshall Terry/WFAE Radio It’s time for a fact-check of North Carolina politics. Election Day is just under two weeks away, but people are already casting ballots in North Carolina. Following Hurricane Helene’s devastation, the state eased some rules in western North Carolina to make it easier for those affected by the storm to cast their […]
Liz McLaughlin/WRAL News As climate change increasingly impacts North Carolina, prospective homebuyers face a daunting new reality: understanding and navigating the risks associated with property ownership. From the Outer Banks, where coastal erosion is a pressing concern, to the mountainous regions scarred by Hurricane Helene, the risks posed by flooding, fire, and extreme weather events […]
George Chidi/The Guardian Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s embattled Republican gubernatorial candidate, suggested that people who can’t take care of their children should be sterilized, according to one of a series of incendiary and racist social media posts from 2014 through 2019. The commentary made in reference to Black families, which used terms a white supremacist […]
The Washington Post It started with hot coffee. Hurricane Helene had just cut off this already isolated foothill town from everything: power, water, information. Paralyzed, the only thing that residents Carin Harris and Hilary Yoxall could think to do was post up outside their Ingles supermarket and hand out something warm. Soon, donations began to […]
High Point Enterprise The senior-living organization that operates River Landing at Sandy Ridge has purchased a pair of adjacent office buildings in northwest Guilford County to serve as its new headquarters. Kintura — which formed on Oct. 1 by the merger of Brightspire, based in Colfax, and Well-Spring Group, based in Greensboro — announced that […]
Ahmed Jallow/NC Newsline Three Republican state senators have accused Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs of “blatantly violating” the state Code of Judicial Conduct in her campaign for election to state’s highest court. Senators, Buck Newton, Amy Galey, and Danny Britt, filed a complaint with the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission on October 14, accusing Justice […]
Monday’s item on insurance-company profitability in North Carolina has drawn reader mail, with the leader of the N.C. Farm Bureau’s insurance arm writing in to say the numbers don’t offer the full picture in one key market. The figures from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners suffer from a “huge reporting flaw” that creates a […]
Researching the reinsurance issue, by the way, took me down a rabbit hole that led to a look at FEMA’s National Risk Index, a handy-dandy all-hazards mapping app that gets down to the census-tract level. Helene has its assessments for North Carolina looking a little frayed around the edges, given that our western counties all […]
John Boyle/Asheville Watchdog Some documents age better than others. And some? They make you cringe – a lot. Take this June 2016 news release from the City of Asheville. The headline alone has to make anyone in western North Carolina shudder: “100 years after the Flood of 1916, the City of Asheville is ready for […]
Gareth McGrath/USA Today Network In Brunswick County, developments that promise to bring hundreds of new homes and apartments to the fast-growing county seem to be springing up faster than ever. Near the South Carolina state line, Sunset Beach officials are looking to add hundreds of new homes to an existing thousand-unit development. Close by in […]
Jane Winik Sartwell/Carolina Public Press Ingles Markets, the Asheville-based grocery mainstay of Western North Carolina, sustained severe damage to its distribution center along the Swannanoa River and several supermarket locations when Tropical Storm Helene hit the mountains just over three weeks ago. The severe damage to Ingles’ Black Mountain distribution center will have a long-term […]
