The Federal Emergency Management Agency is closing four disaster recovery centers in western North Carolina and demolishing an employee housing village west of Asheville, while nearly 5,200 families evacuated by the storm are staying in hotels with no other options for shelter. Still living there.
The exodus of FEMA personnel from the region followed the withdrawal of the National Guard in late November and members of the U.S. Army's 18th Airborne Corps in late October.
Some local residents say they feel abandoned by the federal and state governments. Advocates for storm victims say there is a major crisis as more than 5,000 families are set to lose their FEMA hotel vouchers as Christmas approaches.
Tents dot the devastated landscape, providing the only shelter for some families who must endure nighttime temperatures that have recently dropped into the teens. Some residents are now unable to live in their damaged homes, while others have had their homes and property completely washed away by floods and severe landslides.
“It's scary what's going on there.”
The pace of federal housing assistance far outpaces need. Just 27 FEMA mobile homes and trailers have been delivered to families in western North Carolina whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Helen's devastating flooding in late September. FEMA officials said victims have until Jan. 7 to apply for storm assistance.
FEMA officials told Blaze News that 5,179 households are still using FEMA hotel vouchers and do not have long-term housing. The agency helped 4,950 families find “suitable long-term housing” as part of its Transitional Shelter Assistance Program.
“As of Nov. 25, 5,179 households were still checked into hotels. We will continue to work with these households to help them determine long-term solutions,” FEMA officials told Blaze News. said in an email to. The program is typically offered for 60 days “in the immediate aftermath of a disaster,” officials said.
“Unfortunately, this program cannot continue indefinitely,” FEMA officials said, adding that “partnering hotels typically see reduced availability to the program as business patterns resume.” I will.”
FEMA housing village is full
The news is of little consolation to disaster victims who watched FEMA demolish an employee housing village in Candler, North Carolina, and close four disaster recovery centers in western North Carolina during Thanksgiving week. No.
cotton logistics, Federal contractors based in Katy, Texas, began demolishing the FEMA employee housing village in Candler before Thanksgiving, according to local relief volunteers who visited the site.
According to the company's website, Cotton provides turnkey housing solutions to FEMA staff and contractors responding to disasters across the country. The company provides housing units, laundry trailers, dining facilities, restrooms, showers, and other support services.
In a Nov. 22 news release, FEMA announced the closure of disaster recovery centers in Sparta, Dallas, Sylva, and Old Fort, North Carolina. Storm survivors can visit a FEMA assistance center or
Agency website Sign up for help.
A responder housing village was built in Candler, North Carolina, to house FEMA staff and free up area hotel rooms for use by storm survivors. This site is currently closed and abandoned.Photo by Steve Baker/Blaze News
The Candler “Responder Village” site is one of several facilities constructed in October as single-family homes for FEMA employees and federal contractors. These sites were constructed to provide as much hotel space as possible for storm survivors.
The Candler site provided lodging, showers, medical, food and electrical services, Josh Wirt, director of FEMA's response assistance division, told Blaze News on Oct. 18.
As of mid-October, FEMA had more than 1,400 staff in the region. Blaze News reached out to Wirt for more information about the closure of the Candler site, but did not receive a response by press time.
During Thanksgiving week, local residents found the Candler property abandoned and found pallets of food left behind that had apparently been destined for disposal. Volunteers loaded food onto trailers and distributed it to needy families in Western North Carolina.
In some cases, FEMA employees live in mobile homes on the same property as the disaster recovery center where they work. A bunkhouse trailer is parked near the Asheville Disaster Recovery Center.
Blaze News contacted the FEMA News Desk about the closure of the Candler site, but did not receive a response by press time.
fill the gap
Volunteers and philanthropic organizations are stepping up efforts to try to fill the gaping gap between urgent housing needs and the small dent previously created by FEMA's installation of mobile homes and trailers. Solutions currently in place include donated RVs and tiny homes that allow families to remain on site.
Organizations like Operation Shelter and EmergencyRV.org were busy delivering RVs over the Thanksgiving long weekend to transport some families through the bitter cold in wind-ravaged tents.
Woody Faircloth, founder of EmergencyRV.org, said that as of Dec. 1, his charity had delivered 56 RVs free of charge to families in Western North Carolina. This is more than double the number of units deployed to the field by FEMA.
Sampson Hickox of Operation Shelter loads supplies used to stockpile an RV that will be donated to families in western North Carolina who were left homeless by Hurricane Helen on Nov. 29, 2024.Photo credit: Erin Durham
More than 700 families are still registered.
emergencyRV.org We need shelter, he said.
“I'm really sad,” Faircloth said after spending five days making RV deliveries in western North Carolina over the Thanksgiving holiday. “If all the hotel vouchers expire, things will get worse before they get better.”
“None of the people we talked to had flood insurance, so all of their insurance claims were denied,” Faircloth said. “I mean, it's scary what's going on there.”
Matt Van Swole, an Asheville resident who helps coordinate and communicate the local disaster response, said he doesn't understand why FEMA would scale back when the area is still severely affected.
“We are literally driving our family of six from Utah this week in an RV,” Van Swole told Blaze News. “Why did they [FEMA] Are you leaving? Construction hasn't started yet. ”
Kathy Clark, a North Carolina storm victim advocate who has more than 15,000 followers on X, criticized the government's response to Helen.
“What's happening in Western North Carolina is shameful, and it's on the minds of our federal, state and local governments,” Clark said in a video posted to X. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. ”
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) said in late October that the state was leading an “unprecedented response and recovery effort.” But the overall government response in North Carolina pales in comparison to other storms of the past quarter century.
After Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005, the National Guard sent more than 51,000 Guard members to rescue and relief efforts. It was the largest deployment of the National Guard in U.S. history, according to the National Guard.
Katrina timeline online.
Over a seven-week period in fall 2024, more than 6,200 National Guard, U.S. Army, and U.S. Air Force members were assigned to Hurricane Helen relief in North Carolina. The last of these men left the week before Thanksgiving.
After Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the Department of Defense deployed more than 16,000 personnel. After Hurricanes Maria and Irma later that year, approximately 17,000 troops were deployed to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The US military sent 17,000 troops to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and 15,000 troops to Indonesia after the 2005 tsunami.
“Support from the federal government, and even the state government, is very sparse, and that shouldn't be the case.”
Asheville filmmaker Erin Durham accompanied local contractor Sampson Hickox.
operation shelter They stocked up on donated RVs and delivered them to a mother with a 1-year-old baby and five other children who had been living in a tent for two months.
The RV was donated by members of Crestview Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina, and Operation Shelter stored food, baby supplies, and cleaning supplies before handing it over to the family.
“When we unloaded the last camper tonight, the temperature was below freezing,” Durham posted on X on Nov. 29. The family is sleeping warmly. ”
Durham connects with families in need of shelter and works with Hickox to deliver donated RVs.
On November 29, 2024, Operation Shelter volunteers deliver and set up a donated RV to a family in Western North Carolina.Photo credit: Erin Durham
“He and I deliver RVs together,” Durham told Blaze News. “He's a firefighter and a builder. He's the heart of our team. This Friday, he's going to visit a young family in his RV. Mr. Sampson is heading to Utah to pick up an RV that was donated to him by a close friend. I had him drive me to.”
Operation Shelter is run by
shawn hendricks On December 2nd, he vowed on social media that he would deliver presents to the children at the venue on Christmas Eve. black mountain home “We cannot let this storm take away Christmas from our children,” Hendrix wrote to X in Black Mountain, North Carolina.
Faircloth, who drove a large RV from Colorado to western North Carolina just before Thanksgiving, said it's hard to even describe the devastation caused by the unprecedented rain and high-speed landslides that devastated the region.
“The scope is very wide,” Faircloth said. “Every stream, every river, and everything near it is either completely destroyed or completely submerged in water. I mean, it's unbelievable. It's breathtaking, to be honest. is.”
“We will never forget you.”
Debris still remaining high in the trees attests to the deadly 35- to 40-foot wall of water, mud, and building materials that swept down the mountain during the Hellenic period. Faircloth said he saw a metal plate hanging from a tree 40 feet off the ground. “I've never seen anything like this,” he said.
Van Swole said he shot a video with a drone to prove his point after people on social media criticized the damage and debris situation as being too dramatic.
“I just went out and shot probably 30 minutes worth of video of debris swinging from the trees,” Van Swole said. “An 18-wheeler turned upside down in the Broad River in France.
Debris is scattered across the banks and landscape of the French Broad River near Asheville, North Carolina.Photo credit: Matt Van Swole
“The amount of debris littering the banks of the French Broad River is staggering,” he said. “We've seen the same tank trucks and shipping containers floating at sea for weeks on end.”
Just before the Nov. 5 presidential election, a former assistant secretary of the Army told Blaze News that the military needs to do more to build shelters, provide temporary power in remote areas and rebuild washed-out roads. He said it was. .
Casey Wardynski, who served as assistant secretary of the Army for personnel and reserves under former President Donald J. Trump, called the Biden-Harris administration's botched response “pathetic.”
“I know the reaction that would have been seen in Mr. Trump's case, and I know the sense of urgency that would have been felt in Mr. Trump's case,” Wardynski said.
In 2022, about 142,000 Guard members were mobilized to fight wildfires, and 62,000 troops responded to Hurricane Ivan, Wardynski said. In North Carolina, where Hurricane Helen was occurring, “there has been very little support from the federal government and even the state government, and that shouldn't happen.”
President Trump visited Swannanoa, North Carolina, on October 21 and promised a much more robust humanitarian relief effort than what the Biden-Harris administration had launched.
President Trump vowed, “We will never forget you.” “We're going to work with you for a long time to get it back on track.”
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