[Toshia]

Things on my mind about Lake Lure Dam break damage:
1. Where do the ppl who lost their homes live?
2. For the businesses that are lost, where will the employees find jobs?

3. For all the debris, who removes it? Where does it go?

4. Are schools damaged? How will kids go to school? What about the hospitals? Where does money come from to rebuild them? Is that all insurance?

5. What will happen to insurance rates?

6. Will they be able to rebuild? Will there be any insurance money for it? I’m sure the people in the mountains didn’t have flood insurance.

7. What about crops in the fields? What happens to those farmers? What happens to food prices?

8. Will there be enough materials to rebuild? Will the prices for materials go up tremendously?

9. So many people lost their cars. How will they get to work?

10. What happens to all the business, home, car loans that now people have no way to repay?

And they collateral is gone? Will banks start going out of business?

11. Isn’t there an important semiconductor plant in NC?

[Irma]

We lost our home and our business in Lake Lure. HO insurance will not even pay bc they are saying you have to have Flood Insurance.

Who has flood insurance in the mountains? Ridiculous. We are devastated but we are safe.

To tell you how bad it is – they are pulling dead bodies out of our back yard. IT IS APOCALYPTIC.

And no one has arrived to help yet. No FEMA, no Red cross, no Samaritan’s Purse. If anyone wants to donate, please contact me.

We are taking donations (food, water, gas, venmo too.).

The little green house next to the Flowering Bridge was ours.

You may see it in some videos and pictures.

It was a historic landmark in Lake Lure. Devastating.

[Sarah]

I live in the mountains and have never had flood insurance. This has convinced me to get it. That’s all I know.

[Jennifer]

The need is impossible to describe in Western North Carolina. I live in the center of the state and we are already seeing evacuees coming here.

People who have social capital are getting money raised for them to assist. Many schools are damaged.

I’m sure many will leave and never return because there are parts of the state that will take so long to fix.

[Michael]

The answer to all of these is- “it depends”. Except 11, not semiconductors but quartz mining required by semiconductor manufacturers.

[Nicole]

Are you legitimately asking, or is this just like a “we should consider these things”?

[Marianna]

I live in the piedmont. I don’t think majority of our country understands the scope of the damage that has been done here.

It’s catastrophic and sadly I believe several of these towns will not be able to rebuild at all.

So much of Appalachia was already in poverty and many had a place to live because their parents lived there before them.

It’s horribly tragic and terribly devastating.

[Bryce]

I’m from Asheville and all those questions are on locals minds. It’s overwhelming.

[Amanda]

Answers based on Katrina:
People moved (permanently or temporarily), lived with relatives/friends, or potentially in FEMA issued trailers.

Kids went to school elsewhere for 6m to a year.

There will be plenty of work to go around in rebuilding, depending on how picky you are. Twenty years later plenty of areas have not recovered.

Federal government has debris cleanup missions.

[Peg]

As a survivor of Hurricane Ian, here are my responses to the above:
1. When I lost my home I had to go find an apartment. I was extremely lucky to find one, it was very cutthroat.

I had to have the rest of my house demolished. I still live in that apartment.

2. After the storm many people were left jobless and had to go elsewhere to look for work.

Some businesses were angle to recover; others sold their land to big corporations.

3. There were many companies going around removing debris for months after the storm. Most of them were paid by the local government.

4. Some schools took awhile to reopen and kids went to other schools temporarily.

Hospitals remained functioning during and after the storm; repairs were made as needed.

Usually insurance pays for these things but it can take forever to collect.

[Cheri]

Just a reminder to please not forget about the communities in Northeast TN, Southwest VA, and upstate SC (and likely others) that we’re also devastated by this.

The first of those is home to me, and it is a nightmare.

[Amanda]

I’ve lived through floods, wildfires, tornadoes, and a bombing that wiped out telecommunications services.

It makes you realize just how fragile everything is. We’re so reliant on technology it’s scary.

Not even cash can do much if there’s no phone or Internet service. POS systems go offline and retailers won’t sell you anything at all. It’s even worse when there’s no power because food spoils.

Honestly, you get to safety and then worry about everything else later. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time.

As far as insurance, it’s so frustrating. Usually the large insurance companies set up temporary offices in or near the disaster zone and deploy reps and adjustors to assist their clients. But it’s still messy.

We had roof damage from a storm and could see sunlight from our attic. We fought for 7 months with our insurance company to get them to cover our claim.

They eventually did, but then they jacked up our rate so much it became unaffordable.

We switched companies after all that. And the weird thing is that we have neighbors with the same insurance and the exact same policies that didn’t have problems.

Our homes are all the same age, similar values, etc. But adjustors can be inconsistent.

The areas most affected by Helene in East TN and Western NC aren’t really agricultural areas, so it shouldn’t affect our food supply on a larger scale.

But I’m sure there were some homesteads that lost some crops and that can affect some individual families.

The port strike that started last night will have a much more damaging effect on our food supply.

I work in supply chain and the port strike is actually giving me some worry.

I don’t know if enough people realize how large of an impact that’s going to have on grocery prices.

As far as rebuilding, I’d be willing to bet that most of the affected areas won’t recover.

Many of the hardest hit areas are small mountain towns with sparce infrastructure that will need to be rebuilt before anything else can be done.

And Appalachia in general already wasn’t exactly thriving economically.

Many parts of Appalachia were nearly comparable to second or third world countries.

It’s an incredibly impoverished region. Asheville is the exception because it’s a fairly decent size city with a more diverse economy.

[Ashley]

It’s normal to be curious. Those are reasonable questions to ask. But there are more pressing ones right now. What about people running out of vital medication?

What about babies being born with no care? What about missing spouses, children, parents?

There will be a time to figure out rebuilding but right now the focus isn’t there…

It is so much bigger and more devastating than the current state of the Lake Lure dam.

They are just beginning to retrieve bodies from rivers and trees.

[Cynthia]

My best friend lives in Western NC. I have begged her to come stay at my house or an empty house I have. She told me no, her community and older neighbors need her.

They have 3 school age children.

They spend their days clearing brush/debris/trees, cooking on the propane grill for neighbors, and getting resources for their neighbors.

They have a generator, but limited gas. They have a pool with some water. One neighbor has a starlink.

Her husband drove a dirt bike to deliver some of her daughter’s extra insulin to someone in need.

They are tough and resourceful.

[Brittney]

FEMA will come in and offer lower interest rate loans for those without flood insurance. Typical insurance will not cover these God related/water damage.

If the surrounding area meets a minimum number (FEMA designated) there could be monies available however not promised nor can they give a number in the immediate days/weeks after.

In events like this it is very much community driven support for clean up, support, meeting needs, etc.

It is a really crappy position to be in. Entire lives are impacted in so many ways.

Schools will sit vacant as their condemned & await federal funding for rebuild/next steps.

It is such a cluster of finger pointing of where funding will come from.

[Kristan]

I live in charlotte… seeing lots of people attempting to relocate all over NC/SC (near family or friends or just get settled somewhere within 2-3 hours) and come up with long term plans.

As far as schools and rebuilding… think Katrina level disaster.

Except worse bc the terrain is difficult even in the best of times.

[Echo]

My son goes to college right outside of Hendersonville, NC and they decided to go online only for this quarter (Oct-Jan).

Honestly I don’t even know if they will go back then.

Thank God he was on break and with us instead of there.

[Dee]

If we lived in a society that revolved around meeting the needs of people (instead of capital), our taxes would fund recovery efforts and we’d have trained folks responding (like the national guard) to emergency situations.

Folks would get a stipend in the meantime to survive until rebuilds are finished or help them be established elsewhere.

[Nicole]

1. If they didn’t die, they are displaced in shelters, hotels or staying with friends/family.
2. Wherever they can.

3. Emergency services, contracted land services/remediation companies. Trees are typically mulched in place.

Debris is piled up alongside roadway and contractors or the counties will remove. This typically takes years.

4. Yes. They won’t. Also yes, and depending on the existing infrastructure they may need to rebuild elsewhere. Yes, insurance.

5. They will rise, just like they do in every other hurricane.

6. Too early to tell.

My best friend whose farm has, quite literally, washed away will not be covered under insurance.

FEMA is an avenue they are looking at, but they are still currently stranded on site with few resources.

7. Crop insurance, or it’s a total loss.

8. They will be brought in from other states I’m sure. Probably.

9. There is no work to go to, so there’s that.

10. Insurance.

11. More than a few of them, actually.

[Jennifer]

For people who are not currently trapped (many still are and many are missing) they are dealing with things like: hiking to safety, no credit cards working, shortages of gas, etc.

They don’t have jobs or school to go to at this point.

If they don’t have someone who can pick them up from an outside city and house them, they have a big problem.

People are posting in Charlotte facebook groups asking others to deliver cash to their friends.

We are talking about a big region here, Lake Lure is one small (and amazing) part of it.

It seems like it fared better than Chimney Rock and lots of other places.

[Charlene]

This type of tragedy is why people buy insurance. It’s only with insurance that people can afford to rebuild, buy replacement vehicles, get temporary housing, etc.

Unfortunately without insurance then only the rich can afford to rebuild. And many in NC/TN are unfortunately in this situation.

[Heather]

The Lake Lure dam actually never broke. They were worried it would but the water started receding just in time.

There were however a couple dams in TN that failed.

[Justin]

I worked in Katrina recovery in MS in 2009. Debris was still piled up all over the place. I’m sure it will be similar

[Laura]

Quartz mining. In fact, it is the ONLY place in the entire world that mines THIS quartz. Right now the company have shut down the mines. (Semiconductors)

[Courtney]

I’m a multi generational local to WNC. I’ve never heard of or experienced weather like this. I’m worried insurance will go up and make it even more unaffordable to live in Asheville.

It’s already the most expensive city in the state.

The breakneck development here is straining resources. Our water infrastructure was already old, mismanaged, and fragile.

This simply revealed nationally what we knew locally. Yet they green light dense residential development like anything I’ve ever seen without updating the infrastructure to accommodate the existing population.

Some schools here are closed indefinitely until further notice. A charter elementary school was totally wiped out.

Our house wasn’t damaged, but no power or drinkable water without access to gas or food is not tenable for long.

Our insurance said any expense related to displacement would be covered.

My brain can’t wrap my head around what life will look like moving forward.

[Author]

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