Helene recovery remains unfinished after two years

Nearly two years after Hurricane Helene, Alex Webber is still trying to finish repairs at her Marshall home. 

Water damaged the roof, drywall, and flooring. The storm also carved channels into the steep half-mile gravel driveway connecting her home to the road. Webber said the driveway would cost $7,000 to repair, but her insurance wouldn’t cover it. She applied for assistance only to learn that the demand far exceeded the available funding. 

The gap was just as wide inside the house. 

“We had an estimate of $14,000 for repairs, and we got a check for $700 from our insurance,” said Webber. “So we’re still battling that. We have a $2,500 deductible, so they’re saying it will only cost just over three grand to fix it, but all the drywall on the inside is all peeling off, and there was some water damage on the floor, and I just don’t see how it’s only $3,000.”

In addition to disputing the insurance estimate, finding someone to do the repairs doesn’t come easy in a rural community. 

The problems don’t stop at her property line. Downtown Marshall also lost public buildings and everyday services that help a community function.

“Our post office is gone, our fire department is gone, our police station is gone, our city hall is gone, our courthouse is gone,” Webber said. 

Those overlapping needs in a community can turn disaster recovery into a decades-long process. Alex Campbell, a public policy analyst at the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center, said communities are not simply building homes; they are trying to restore infrastructure and local economies at the same time, often with limited workers, housing, and funding. 

“Full recovery is not something that happens overnight. It’s not something that happens over a year, it’s not something that happens over two years. It is literally a decades-long process. People have to live with that trauma,” Campbell said. 

Hurricane Helene struck North Carolina on Sept. 27, 2024, causing an estimated $59.6 billion in damage and recovery needs, according to the state budget office. About 74,000 homes were damaged. Renew NC, the state’s federally funded home repair and rebuilding program, has rebuilt or made repairs to more than 1,000 homes across western North Carolina. Housing needs totaled $15.4 billion, while transportation and utility needs reached $17.3 billion. 

“Even with all that work they’ve been doing, it’s really just a drop in the bucket. There’s so much more that needs to be done in terms of home rebuilding, and a lot of the issue is just funding,” Campbell said. 

Campbell said there are plenty of challenges that exist even beyond funding too. He explained that people accepted into a rebuilding program can face difficult logistics questions: Where do they live in the meantime, and where do their belongings go while the work is underway? 

The limits of recovery can also be felt even when a house escapes damage. Tony Dunn’s Flat Rock home came through Helene intact, but fallen trees and washed out roads repeatedly blocked him and his wife as they returned from a trip. 

“It took us four hours to find a route that was not blocked or washed out to be able to get to our house,” Dunn said.

Private roads remain a challenge in the mountains as well, where they may provide the only way to reach a home. Before the latest state budget, the private road and bridge repair program had received more than 3,600 applications, but officials said available funding could cover only about 10% of the projects.

More progress has been made with water systems. The state said in July that 98% of the systems damaged by Helene had been restored. Still, more than $758 million in unfunded water infrastructure needs remained.

North Carolina lawmakers approved another $706 million for Helene recovery in July. Gov. Josh Stein has also asked Congress for more than $10 billion, including about $3 billion each for housing and local infrastructure. As of July, Congress had not approved new Helene recovery funding since 2024.