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The Assembly is putting storm coverage outside of our paywall and making it free to republish in any local or regional outlet.
The state legislature last week unanimously passed a $273 million package aimed at providing relief to Western North Carolina after the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene.
Lawmakers said it’s only the first round of disaster spending, with more expected as they determine what’s needed. In addition to funds for state agencies, the legislation gives schools more flexibility over their calendars and allows 25 western counties to adjust polling sites and make other election-related changes.
We recently discussed the relief package with state Sen. Timothy Moffitt, a Republican who represents Polk, Rutherford, and Henderson counties. After he returned to Western North Carolina last week from Raleigh, he visited the community of Bat Cave, where he said the “stench of death was overwhelming.”
“It was great for me to see my colleagues, we delivered something meaningful to our folks back home, and then once we returned back to the scene, it was overwhelming. And these folks were completely cut off for probably 10 days, every major artery into their community was gone,” Moffitt said. “It was really startling, it really was. Now, it doesn’t mean it’s people, but it’s death.”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How did your family and neighbors come through the hurricane?
We all have personal stories to tell, but this story is really about our neighbors and our communities that were really hit pretty hard, especially near me. I live up above Chimney Rock and Lake Lure and, really, Bat Cave. So, I went to Bat Cave last evening, and they really took the brunt of the storm like Chimney Rock and Lake Lure did.
How did this relief package come together so quickly? How did the legislature determine the dollar figures?
I think that this event, which is unlike any event that’s hit our state in a very long time, was something that really drew a lot of attention. And I give full credit to Speaker Tim Moore and President Pro Tem (Phil) Berger for working together to bring us back in session in a very quick manner and, you know, put this many relief packages before us and move it out the door. So as far as the amounts, I’m not sure if there’s really a formula in as much as you do a quick assessment, you look at previous relief packages that have been adopted.
We’re also balancing those numbers with our relationship to the federal government. Because a lot of that is a match to make sure that we draw down an equal number of federal dollars. So, the appropriators, when they put these together, they use a combination of experience and current assessments of how bad, and at least get this number out there first, and then take the next couple of weeks to refine the much broader package.
How long will it take to get the money out the door?
When we woke up the day after the storm, we had no cellular communications, no power, no road infrastructure, no bridge infrastructure, and a lot of our communities had no water and sewer. So I think the most immediate impact that our folks will see is how rapidly we’re at least rebuilding points of access to their communities through the roads. We’re establishing a lot of temporary roads, we’re doing good repairs, temporary repairs, to our bridges just to get people to have the ability to get in and out of their homes and their communities. So that’s going to be the most visible aspect of this.
When it comes to water and sewer, those are challenging, they’re time-consuming, they’re costly, and bit by bit our folks will see those systems come back online too.
As well as get our kids back in school, providing our schools with the calendar flexibility that they need to minimize the adverse impact on our students and our teachers. And that also gets things back to normal. That’s what our goal is, is to get things back to normal as we’re working out the long-term plans for returning us to pre-storm conditions.
What do you expect to be in any later relief packages?
I’m sure it’s going to be a lot more toward infrastructure. Again, we are just now, every day, we get an update from NC DOT (Department of Transportation) as they’re collecting more and more information from their folks as well as those of us that are on the roads, pointing out certain problems, so I would presume that a lot of it’s going to be more infrastructure.
We’re beginning to get the studies in from engineers regarding our water and sewer systems, so there’s probably going to be a little bit of work that’s going to be there. But as far as how comprehensive, it’s too soon to really tell, we’ll really get into that next week. We’re having a conversation today just regarding debris removal. We have so many downed trees and so many landslides. What are we going to do there, what’s our plan there, as well as cleaning out our streams?
Do you think the election changes made so far will be sufficient?
If you look at it from a traditional voting perspective, some polling locations were certainly lost or damaged during this event, and temporary polling locations will be established to replace those, or they may consolidate a couple. We’ve certainly left that up to the local boards to make those decisions because they’re in the best position to do that.
Mail-in ballots there, if people are concerned about that, if they’ve already asked for one and they didn’t receive it, then they can certainly ask for that again. When it comes to Election Day voting, we’re still probably three weeks out, three and a half weeks out, and we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress. So I’m hoping that on Election Day that everyone will have been reached and they’ll be able to get out and exercise their right to vote. But it is an unprecedented situation, and I think the adjustments we made regarding that are sufficient, as not every aspect of every county included in the declaration were affected, but certain parts of those counties were.
What should be getting more attention right now related to the hurricane?
One of the things that is starting to happen to us now up in the mountains is it’s starting to get cold. So last night was the first night that we were in the 30s in a lot of areas. Rebuilding the power grid is going to take a lot of time, so we’re looking at folks that typically heat their homes with electricity having to find alternatives to that. So we’re concerned about keeping sufficient fuel in their hands for those heaters, we’re concerned about carbon monoxide poisoning.
But I think more than anything, we don’t want to be forgotten. This is going to be a very long road to recovery, and although the crisis is mostly behind us, the emergency is still in place and it’s going to be in place for a very long time. So I think that that’s the biggest concern that folks have.
Emily Stephenson was previously the economic policy editor at The Wall Street Journal and has overseen White House and campaign coverage. Before that, she was the news editor at Politico and covered politics and financial regulation at Reuters. She is a Greenville native and a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill.
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