People have lost their homes and family members. Rebuilding will take time and resources. Yet, the crisis is largely out of the news.
No, it’s not the Los Angeles fires. We’re talking about the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina.
Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina in September, and residents have been picking up the pieces ever since. The death toll is 104 people, more than four times the amount of people killed in the Los Angeles fires, but the effects extend far beyond the death toll. According to a Jan. 13 update from the North Carolina Department of Transportation, there were still 184 roads closed, 55 roads closed to trucks, and 78 roads only allowing partial access. The state has fully reopened 1,250 roads, but progress has slowed. Just four have been reopened in the past week.
The troubles were compounded by winter storms rolling through the area. Some three and a half months after the hurricane, around 5,600 households are still staying in hotels and motels paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Around 3,500 people were notified that their temporary accommodations were about to be revoked right before those winter storms rolled in, with FEMA granting last-minute short extensions at the urging of newly-elected Gov. Josh Stein (D-NC).
FEMA, already spread thin thanks to the incompetence of the Biden administration officials who run it, is being stretched even further now with the Los Angeles wildfires. Just as North Carolina’s natural disaster has taken a backseat in the news to California’s self-inflicted one, so too has FEMA’s disastrous handling of the hurricane. A FEMA employee was fired after telling a team in Florida not to go to houses with Trump signs in their yards. The hardest hit areas in North Carolina were Trump-supporting communities, and that fired employee said she was only following FEMA protocol.
However, that scandal didn’t last long, nor did the national media coverage of the plight of North Carolinians caught up in the hurricane and ensuing winter storms. Swannanoa, North Carolina, is not as sexy a city for disaster coverage as star-studded Los Angeles, where journalists have a new excuse to try and get in touch with celebrities as part of their job. Those sympathetic left-wing celebrities are famous and have the right politics, unlike the no-name Trump supporters in western North Carolina. Just like the no-name Trump supporters in East Palestine, Ohio, who were treated as afterthoughts by the Biden administration and its media allies.
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The story of the next several months is already being written. You will hear all about the damage to Los Angeles homes on the news and NFL playoff broadcasts. Celebrities will send out videos asking for your support and assistance. President Joe Biden, though outgoing, promised that the federal government would fully cover 100% of the disaster response costs for the next six months.
North Carolina, meanwhile, fades into the background despite being nowhere near fully recovering from the damage done 3 1/2 months ago. Not every disaster victim is made equal, evidently, especially when they are wealthier and not as politically inconvenient to the Democratic Party and its golden boy governor.