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Helene recovery: A $53.6 billion question

Gov. Roy Cooper and his aides believe western North Carolina’s recovery from Hurricane Helene will ultimately consume about $53.6 billion from governmental and private sources. Of that, about $41.1 billion is the direct cost of the damage and another $7.6 billion is the prospective indirect cost of mitigating its follow-on...

By Ray Gronberg

October 24, 2024

N.C. Insurance and reinsurance

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...

By Ray Gronberg

October 23, 2024

FEMA’s risk index

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...

By Ray Gronberg

October 23, 2024

A suggestion for the Helene AAR

Andrew Dunn, former comms chief for Dan Forest’s 2020 gubernatorial bid, recently restarted his “Longleaf Politics” Substack and on Monday offered his take on a to-do list for legislators’ future after-action review on Hurricane Helene. These include looks at: The coordination of initial disaster response. The communications playbook officials follow...

By Ray Gronberg

October 22, 2024

Different insurance lines, different pictures

The association’s dataset also offers insight into what corners of the insurance business are most profitable, and which command the largest shares of the economy. In North Carolina, private-car policyholders paid $7.4 billion in premiums in 2022, the largest line by far. Homeowner multi-peril insurance commanded almost $3.5 billion in...

By Ray Gronberg

October 21, 2024

N.C. unemployment benefits expanded

Gov. Roy Cooper has signed an executive order expanding the state’s weekly unemployment benefit by $250, to a maximum of $600 a week. Cooper said the move is a response to Hurricane Helene and the concerns he’s heard about job losses due to temporary storm-related business closures in Western North...

By Ray Gronberg

October 17, 2024

Haas, Toyota and Formula 1 racing

In July we reported on the rumors in Formula 1 racing about a potential tie-up between Toyota and the Kannapolis-based Haas F1 Team. On Oct. 11, the two companies announced a “technical partnership.” The Haas announcement cites a “multi-year agreement” in which “both parties will share expertise and knowledge, as...

By Ray Gronberg

October 17, 2024

Autopsy findings spur debate on regulations

An autopsy found that the laborer who died in September 2023 at a Spring Hope sweet-potato farm owned by state Sen. Lisa Barnes’ family had an undiagnosed tumor on an adrenal gland that likely caused his death. The report says the pheochromocytoma on the right adrenal gland of 30-year-old José...

By Ray Gronberg

October 17, 2024

Wolfspeed signs $750 million deal

Wolfspeed and the Biden administration have signed a tentative deal that will provide the Durham-based chipmaker up to $750 million in federal funds to help pay for its new silicon-carbide wafer factory in Chatham County. The company on Tuesday also announced a parallel $750 million investment from a quartet of...

By Ray Gronberg

October 16, 2024

DOT and Helene

State Transportation Secretary Joey Hopkins says his agency has awarded an $8 million contract to Tennessee-based Wright Brothers Construction to stabilize the hurricane-damaged westbound lanes of Interstate 40 near the Tennessee line. The deal includes incentives to have the work completed by January, Hopkins said He added that the company’s...

By Ray Gronberg

October 16, 2024

Theory meets the real world

There’s more to say about Monday’s item on First Street Technologies’ pre-Helene report on disaster risks and the banking sector, namely that its view is to all appearances an outlier. Its basic point — that major disasters can stress banks financially via loan defaults or the loss of their customer...

By Ray Gronberg

October 16, 2024

Bank Resilience during disasters

Western North Carolina’s banks, like those in disaster areas before it, are resilient and should pass Hurricane Helene’s test with flying colors, the president of the N.C. Bankers Association says. “I understand how it could be hard to understand how the circumstances won’t have a detrimental effect on the banks...

By Ray Gronberg

October 16, 2024

Disasters and banks

The same week that Hurricane Helene ravaged western North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia, a Washington-based climate-risk modeler issued a report that warned of disaster-related risks to the financial sector. First Street Technologies says it’s likely small and community are “potential weak points in the broader financial system” because...

By Ray Gronberg

October 14, 2024

Lumber company on its way to Spindale

Finally, a bit of good news for our friends in the west: A Wisconsin-based lumber distributor is placing a distribution and warehousing facility in the Rutherford County town of Spindale. Cedar Direct has pledged to invest $925,000 in the project and expects to employ 20 people. In return, the state’s...

By Ray Gronberg

October 14, 2024

Post-mortem comes later, legislators say

Another point legislators stressed this week as they rolled out the Helene relief bill is that a deep-dive after-action review of the effectiveness of the relief effort in the mountains is a job for the future, not now. “There’s a time and there is a place for us to figure...

By Ray Gronberg

October 11, 2024