WNC officials meet with governor, FEMA in Morganton

The summit was hosted by the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, the N.C. League of Municipalities, and the five Councils of Governments (COG) in the western region — Foothills, Land of Sky, High Country, Southwestern Commission, and Western Piedmont.

Many Burke County officials and those from the county’s municipalities were in attendance, as were hundreds of their counterparts from the areas of western North Carolina hardest hit by the storm.

Cooper, who will give way to Governor-elect Josh Stein in January, said the recovery won’t be quick, easy, or cheap. The estimated damage of $53 billion is three times the amount inflicted by Hurricane Francis on the North Carolina coast in 2004.

The outgoing governor extended unemployment benefits to $600 a week for 26 weeks in affected counties and requested $3.9 billion from the state legislature. He’s certain the region will rebound and repeatedly stressed the need to rebuild infrastructure to withstand extreme weather events like Helene in the future.

“It’s going to take a Herculean effort from local, state, federal government, insurance companies, private businesses, people of faith, and other nonprofits and volunteers to make sure that western North Carolina not only recovers, but comes back stronger than ever,” Cooper said, “because being the Presbyterian elder that I am, I’m instructed to find good things out of bad.

“And the good things are the opportunities that we have to make things stronger, water systems that needed replacing, roads that needed fixing, infrastructure that we know that we can tackle.”

As for how to tackle those problems, local leaders had plenty of suggestions.

The four regional COGs broke into separate feedback sessions, with Burke, Alexander, Caldwell, and Catawba (WPCOG) in one group that included Burke commissioners Jeff Brittain, Phil Smith, and Randy Burns, as well as Morganton Mayor Ronnie Thompson and Drexel Mayor Dennis Anthony, County Manager Brian Epley, and Morganton City Manager Sally Sandy.

Bobby Outten, county manager in Dare County on the coast, directed the session. He said Helene’s impact was much greater than some of the coastal hurricanes he’s seen because of the rarity of this type of storm in the mountains.

“We have this every three years, so we are ready for it, but the scale of this is so much greater,” Outten said. “As often as we’ve done this, we’ve never been in your shoes.

“This is no slam on you — nobody could possibly have expected what you all saw.”

Outten offered three pieces of advice to his WNC colleagues:

Document everything.

FEMA representatives are your best friends.

“And you will recover.”

Those in the group weren’t shy about voicing their frustrations.

Too much administrative red tape in the funding process, along with a need for more flexibility in spending state funds, topped their list of roadblocks.

The group also identified the need to rebuild infrastructure with more inherent resilience than before; invest in long-term housing to replace homes that were lost; and support small businesses.

Brittain expressed concern over the revenue lost by those businesses.

Sandy mentioned that some people will leave the community permanently.

Thompson brought up the loss of electrical revenue the city will suffer as a result of businesses like Ingle’s supermarket being closed for extended periods.

“I think it’s good for people to talk,” Sandy said after the session. “I think it’s good for us to consider regional things. The challenge is exactly what he (Outten) just said: It’s unlike anything we’ve done.”

Later, when all the breakout groups came back together and shared their results, many of the same problems identified by the WPCOG contingent cropped up again: infrastructure, particularly water and sewer; redundancy in emergency communications; lost revenue to small businesses; and a reduction in red tape.

Criswell said that’s the type of feedback FEMA needs to hear.

“Give us those ideas and let us figure out how we can bring the right people, the right resources, the right parts of the federal family together to support you in that recovery and help you rebuild in a way that’s going to make you more resilient in the future,” Criswell said.

Cooper echoed the idea of the region’s tenacity in his closing comments.

“I believe in western North Carolina,” the governor said. “I believe in their determination, their courage, their stamina, their resilience. Almost everybody I’ve talked to — no matter how much hell they went through — are upbeat, determined, and want to rebuild stronger than ever.”