Some western North Carolina victims of a storm they’ll always remember can’t help but feel forgotten.
Claudette Childs is a lifelong resident of Pensacola, a tiny unincorporated community in Yancey County. Childs said she can’t help but feel abandoned by the federal and state governments with their response to compile aid packages.
She said Helene turned her green paradise into another planet.
“It’s like Mars. You’re driving down a road that you’ve driven all of your life,” Childs said. “And, and you say, ‘where are we?’ You don’t even know.”
There was the store that had been in her family for four generations … it’s gone. Roads are gone. Homes and friends are gone as well.
“There was so much loss, so many friends that you can’t count on, on, on two hands, uh, that lost either their lives, their homes. I mean, I probably know 20 friends, close friends that lost their homes and several friends that died,” Childs said.
But the thing that truly frustrates her?
The perceived lack of federal and state response, where money that could be back in communities helping people and businesses rebuild their livelihoods, has been delayed.
“I don’t want to go there,” Childs said. “Because it pretty much does not exist, has not existed.”
‘You just fall through the cracks’
Childs said that once the storm passed, as she and her surviving neighbors were struggling to deal with the moonscape left behind, they were also struggling to access government programs to repair damaged property or secure buyouts.
The delays are leaving some homeowners hanging.
“I haven’t followed up with them in months,” Childs said. “And you just fall through the cracks, which most people do and have and will.”
According to FEMA, across the Helene Disaster area, the agency has approved more than 160,000 individual assistance applications, totaling nearly half-a-billion dollars.
Childs said, a full year later, her own application with FEMA is still pending – with no explanation given as to why.
WRAL News took that question to FEMA. We also asked how many applications in Western North Carolina are still pending, when those applications will be processed, and how the agency is determining whose application to approve, and when.
So far, we’ve not heard back.
For those who have been successful in getting aid – like Swannanoa resident Michael Burgin, the process to get federal funds wasn’t quick.
“You do have to stay on FEMA and you know, I would have to call and be on the phone with them for like a long time,” Burgin said. “I’d be on hold for like six hours to have a 20-minute conversation.”
Need for speed
Gov. Josh Stein said his administration has been pushing FEMA to release more money quickly to hard-hit areas
“We need the federal government to speed up,” Stein said.
Instead, the governor said the agency has been adding extra layers of scrutiny
“All of these secondary and tertiary reviews, to my knowledge, haven’t uncovered any problems that weren’t identified in the first level review,” Stein said. “We just need more speed.”
For those left waiting like Childs, it’s just another source of frustration in a year-long struggle.
“It’s not acceptable at all,” Childs said. “It’s not acceptable at all.”