SWANNANOA, N.C. — Many North Carolinians here are eking out an existence hit hard by the river that washed away their homes four months ago, when Hurricane Helene swept through the area.

Still waiting for aid amid the snow and mud, they are critical — and suspicious — of government promises to help them rebuild their lives as well as their homes.

“We’re supposed to be gettin’ our house rebuilt, but it’s just the timeframe is the problem,” said one Swannanoa resident, a gas station attendant who declined to share his name out of fear of retribution.

He lives with his parents in a donated truck camper in the spot where their mobile home once sat — an endless swath of thick red mud and debris.

“My wife and kids are livin’ in a hotel. I see them once or twice a week,” he said.

Dave “Cowboy” Graham is a roving disaster relief volunteer running point in the hardest-hit areas in Swannanoa. He says the government’s relief efforts are the slowest he’s ever encountered.

“I’ve been to a bunch of these. I’ve never seen it to where the National Guard isn’t here right now, helping out with you,” he said. “There’s no National Guard, there’s no police presence, there’s no nothing. It’s just like a theft. FEMA was out here for a few weeks, but then they packed up and left.”

Helene trampled six states after it made landfall in late September, none harder hit than North Carolina. Of the more than 240 deaths attributed to the hurricane, at least 103 were recorded in North Carolina. Of the total estimated damage of $90 billion, more than $60 billion was tallied in the Tar Heel State.

Remote, mountainous communities in Buncombe and Henderson counties initially were cut off from rescue and recovery efforts. Now they are waiting to see the official aid that has been promised to them.

The vast majority of reconstruction efforts in devastated enclaves like Buncombe’s Swannanoa and Henderson’s Bat Cave appear to be run by volunteers.

“Disaster response is locally executed, state managed and federally supported,” a spokesperson for the Federal Emergency Management Agency told The Washington Times.

At this rate, the rebuilding efforts are going to take years, says Mark Staton, head of disaster relief volunteer efforts in Bat Cave. He said the government’s sloth has left him numb.

And not all volunteers have been helpful.

“We’ve had a lot of people roll in here — had a bunch of trespassers. They would come in, they would either be so high on something, or they would want to be a TikTok self-promoter, spreading misinformation. You know what I’m saying? And we lost a lot of donors because of stuff they’re sayin’ online, tryin’ to get followers,” Mr. Staton said.

Meanwhile, residents are living in donated RVs — some in good shape, others not.

“I lost it all,” said Swannanoa resident Danny Bailey. Before the storm, he’d been getting by on disability checks, living in a trailer alongside his four dogs and one cat. The flood wiped it away, along with his cars, his barn, everything.

He still lives there, but now in a donated truck camper. The car he uses was donated, too.

His neighborhood has been reduced to a campground between the Swannanoa River and Old Highway 70. Smashed car parts and broken household items hang in tree branches and sit in roadside ditches.

Doobie, a Swannanoa man in his 60s, said he can’t remember the name of the church that gave him the camper he lives in with his wife. “They just dropped it off,” he said. “It’s gettin’ us by.”

The donated goods the two are living on can’t fit inside. They sit in the mud, protected by a strapped-down blue tarp. Frozen rain collects nearby in icy puddles around boxes of dried food.

In the makeshift campground, the whir of generators mixes with the sounds of the river, punctuated by barking dogs or saws slicing two-by-fours. Gunshots sometimes join the chorus — to scare off looters making their rounds.

Mr. Bailey and his neighbors have developed a neighborhood watch, keeping an eye on each other’s few, crucial belongings.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Bailey was awakened in the middle of the night by a man with a flashlight, rifling through his things. He told Mr. Bailey that he was “just looking around.”

“I said, ‘Looking at what?’ I said, ‘Are you searching for gold?’” he said, laughing.

“Anyway, I shot at him and then called the law. Sheriff’s [office] said they were understaffed,” Mr. Bailey said. “She told me ‘Well, I can’t help it.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’ll just shoot him in the leg, then I call you, then you can arrest him while he’s still on my property.’ Look, I’d just be helping ’em out!”

Aid: Too little, too late?

Federal aid is expected to cover 90% of the state’s recovery costs. This month, federal officials announced that the state and the city of Asheville (the seat of Buncombe County) will receive more than $1.65 billion in federal Community Development Block Grant funds, part of a $100 billion relief bill approved by Congress last month.

Residents living in crowded campers say the government spending so far hasn’t helped them much. But they’d like to focus on rebuilding their lives, something the government is thwarting, they say.

“I could rebuild [my house], that ain’t no problem,” Doobie said. But navigating bureaucracy and new building codes have slowed his progress. “The county’s making me jump through so much red tape,” he added, frustration in his voice.

He says his wife’s requests for financial aid were denied, adding that they’ve received the initial $750 that was given to victims, but nothing more. Others said the same thing.

FEMA told The Times that it cannot speak about individual cases, but “discrepancies in the information provided” or missing paperwork can delay the process. But residents say that organizing paperwork can be tough to do in their situation.

Mr. Bailey said that after he had been given “the run-around” by FEMA, a friend pleaded his case to the county. He then received aid totaling $42,000 — a sum he calls “nothing” in the face of the costs to rebuild. “If you buy a trailer, just a single 14-by-70, it’s $50,000. Add setup costs, and you’re at $100,000. Forty-two thousand ain’t gonna do nothin’.”

He plans to continue staying in the camper until he can decide whether to move to West Virginia, where land is cheaper.

Before Helene, insurance wasn’t a worthwhile expense for many of the lower-income folks in the Asheville region. It was merely seen as a needless expense, and for those next to the river, flood insurance wasn’t available anyway.

But now, many of them are left without financial options. “My trailer was too old to have insurance on it,” Mr. Bailey said, shrugging.

Under North Carolina real estate law, property owners have mineral rights to the center of the river if it’s a non-commercial waterway.

“And so now that the river is a lot bigger, you can turn it into a commercial waterway, if you want. It’s about four to five feet deeper in a lot of areas, right?” a recovery volunteer said.

Mr. Graham, another disaster relief volunteer, said the government is offering land buyouts to devastated victims. “And now they’ve condemned it and said it’s a floodplain. They’re … grabbing the land or offering ’em some pitiful $2,000 or $3,000 for the lot,” he said.

A Buncombe County spokesperson said in an email that if a property owner “elects to sell, that land cannot be used for housing in the future.” The buyout offers are part of the FEMA-funded Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, managed by North Carolina’s Department of Public Safety’s Division of Emergency Management.

“Residents can receive funding to make their homes more resilient through home projects that reduce the long-term risk and impacts of natural hazards,” the county spokesperson said.

But they can also opt to sell.

It’s tempting for families with nothing left. Mr. Graham says lots of families have sold and shipped out.

“It’s hard for a parent to sit in a tent with a wet dog and rebuild if you know your kids never want to come back,” he said, adding that Helene’s wake is the worst “by five-fold over.”

For those who choose to stay, Mr. Staton offered words of consolation and resignation.

“We’re just trying to get through this, and stay focused on whatever task is at hand, I reckon,” he said, squinting at the river where several collapsed houses stand in the water.

He finished his Marlboro and tossed it on the ground, his voice dropping to a whisper: “It’s like being in a forgotten land.”

• Emma Ayers can be reached at eayers@washingtontimes.com.