This is Carolina Business Review.

Major support provided by Colonial Life.

Providing benefits to employees to help them protect their families, their finances, and their futures.

High Point University, the premier life skills university focused on preparing students for the world as it is going to be.

Sonoco, a global manufacturer of consumer and industrial packaging products and services with more than 300 operations in 35 countries.

FEMA is careful about comparing storms and disasters.

It may have something to do with the sensitivity of loss, certainly, and the impact of disasters on families and communities.

Welcome again to the most widely watched and the longest running dialog on Carolina business policy and public affairs seen across North and South Carolina.

I am Chris William, and in a moment, we start this week's discussion about what is important to know here in our region, as we do every week and later.

He is the deputy Administrator of FEMA and will join us from Washington, D.C., the former secretary of North Carolina's Department of Public Safety, Eric Hooks, joins us.

We start right now.

Major funding also by Truliant Federal Credit Union, proudly serving the Carolinas since 1952 by focusing on what truly matters our members financial success.

Welcome to brighter banking.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, and Martin Marietta, a leading provider of natural resource based building materials, providing the foundation on which our communities improve and grow.

On this edition of Carolina Business Review, Tony Murcia from the Charlotte Ledger, Doctor Joseph C Van Nessen of the Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, and special guest Eric Hooks, deputy administrator for FEMA.

Hello.

Welcome back to our program.

Joey, Tony, good to have you both back.

Interesting times for sure.

Here we are, three and a half weeks plus after Halloween came barreling through the Carolinas, for sure.

Joey.

Any idea?

And I know there I mean, the delta between all of these estimates on the impact to tourism alone is pretty big.

But any idea how tourism is going to be impact this this season?

Well, we are we've seen a good tourism season overall in South Carolina so far, and it's been one of the one of the best years in South Carolina's history and really one of the best ways that we can measure damage like this is to just look at previous storms.

It's not an apples to apples comparison by any means, but if we look back to the Great flood from 2015, we actually estimated the losses there to be in excess of $2 billion for South Carolina alone.

Not the Carolinas, just South Carolina.

And a lot of that had to do not only with the losses to businesses, but also real wealth losses to individuals and households when they were underinsured or uninsured on properties that they weren't planning on seeing flooded.

And I think we will see something similar here.

Again, we can't compare the numbers, explicitly.

This is a different circumstance, but that gives us some perspective on what we might be looking at.

In North Carolina.

Tony, I know you all have started a newsletter about this.

It's going on up in western North Carolina.

But North Carolina tourism official Whit Tuttle, who has been on this program several times, said that it was close to $2 billion so far of a loss in just tourism in just the fourth quarter.

And probably a big part of that is from Asheville.

But but of course, any any idea the scale and the scope of this and it's still being defined, I'm sure.

But what do you think?

Yeah, it's still, I think a little bit early to know the precise numbers, but this is a region of North Carolina that's very dependent on tourism.

I looked at the numbers from the North Carolina Department of Commerce and the the tourism employment in western North Carolina is about double the state average of about 25% of the workers in counties west of Asheville, for example, are in the tourism sector.

I went up, you know, a few weeks ago, went through Hendersonville, Brevard, Saluda, a lot of these areas, you know, they're pretty much back to normal.

And they want people to know that, they're open for business and they really need the tourism.

October and November, pretty big months for them, you know, leaves changing and all that.

And people aren't showing up because they see all these photos of the of the broken roads, the homes being swept away, all these devastating images coming out of western North Carolina.

But it's important to know it's not evenly dispersed across western North Carolina.

So you have a lot of towns that are still open for business, but nobody's showing up.

So by and large, and I know Governor Cooper, North Carolina specifically came out day after the storm and said, don't come up here.

And we certainly understand that.

Why?

But you think the reverberation of that has kept people from showing up?

Definitely.

I mean, I think, you know, people have a lot of connections to the North Carolina mountains, you know, close to Charlotte.

It's close to Atlanta, it's close to eastern Tennessee.

These there are a lot of folks in those areas that are used to going to the mountains.

And they, you know, they were told initially stay away while we recover.

A lot of these places have recovered.

But obviously, you know, the round Asheville, you know, chimney Rock, Lake lure, you know, those that's still probably shouldn't go as tourists there right now.

But there are a lot of other areas that are open for business and that are very dependent on that tourist economy.

So Joey, I want to ask you this effect, and I'm going to call it the Florida effect.

And so there was stories now coming out of Florida, given the last few storms that they've gone through.

And certainly Milton and it is it is it barreled across that Florida peninsula.

But but now there are several stories in corroborate its stories.

And people are trying to sell their homes and move out of Florida after this huge migration to the Sunshine State beginning in 2021, we are all going to figure out how to work from home permanently.

So now Florida is seeing the other effect do you think is as in, I'm just going to throw this on you as North and South Carolina clearly in migration, has been driving a lot of the growth and more folks who have not been in hurricane belts or storm belts experienced this, that you think this could be a wet blanket on those folks that live here, or maybe want to come here and or at some point do we start to see growth level out?

And it's not just that, but housing prices creep up, things get more expensive, the cost of living rises, etc.

I think there are multiple factors at play that really drive that, and in the short run, I would say the answer is no.

Especially in South Carolina where we've seen, hurricanes come through.

And in Charleston for example, we see rebuilding that takes place oftentimes more expensive properties.

And, they just keep going.

The other factors that the difference in the cost of living between South Carolina, the Carolinas in general, and New England, which is where most people are moving in from, is still quite large.

So there's still an advantage coming in.

People weigh those trade offs.

But the other factor is insurance, the difficulty in getting insurance and the cost of getting insurance.

And when it where is that trade off?

Where does that, where does that cost difference kick in?

Again in South Carolina, we don't see it.

I don't know that we're going to be seeing it in the near term, but I think those are the main factors that individuals are weighing when trying to, to, to make that decision.

But overall, when we look at the cost differences, there's still a major advantage in the Carolinas.

And I think that's the major factor.

And that's not going to change.

Do you think property and casualty insurers will continue to raise premiums at a higher rate than the rest of the nation?

Is this going to exacerbate the.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, I think almost certainly it will.

It's just a question of of what that looks like in terms of specifics.

A couple minutes left, Tony.

So on the Wednesday after the Tuesday election and we finally get past the hundreds of texts and phone calls and door knockings in the Carolinas that have been going on, what do you think emerges as top issue after we get past the election?

Gosh, you know, if we're saying, okay, we're not going to count the election and we're not going to talk about Western North Carolina, what else is there?

I think, you know, there's a big focus.

I think right now a lot of the business community is looking at the interest rates.

And, you know, the fed rate cut, what is that going to do?

What's going to happen there in investment?

You know, but it's it's hard to get past these things that the, you know, the obviously the tragedy in western North Carolina is, is huge, for this for the for the Carolinas, for both states.

And, you know, it sort of remains to be seen what's, what's going to happen.

I mean, these are a lot of rural areas that have been kind of holding their own and defying the the trend towards population loss.

They've been really holding their own.

Asheville obviously has boomed.

But, you know, usually after these natural disasters, you know, you have people leave for a period of time, especially people with the means to be able to leave.

And so what's that going to do long term to the to the western North Carolina economy and the state's economy?

Well, I guess we'll say so.

What bubbles up is, is number one, number two issues after the election, I think I think from a national perspective, inflation is the main concern or the main wild card going into 2025, because with interest rates being a major concern for the business community, that's going to be influenced by whether inflation continues to tick downwards.

And I think there's a real chance we could see it tick back up above 3% in 2025, because there are a lot of factors that are still fighting the fed, everything from strong consumer spending to the ongoing labor shortage to deficit spending from the government that we expect next year, regardless of who's elected.

So we're likely to see continued stimulus on on, on the demand side.

And so again, I think I think there's a lot of uncertainty about where inflation is headed still.

So thank you, gentlemen, stay with us.

We talk so much about what's going on in western North Carolina, up upstate in South Carolina, and then the low country of South Carolina.

As far as disasters, we're going to bring a special guest in, in just a moment to more closely addressed that coming up in the next few weeks on this program.

Peter Hans is the president of the USC system.

He will join us also, the South Carolina Transportation, Secretary of Transportation, Justin Powell will be our guest on this program, as well as Harry Sideris.

Talk about being the point of the spear.

He is the president of Duke Energy.

Harry Sideris is from Duke energy will join us on this program as well.

And all should be very interesting dialogs.

We hope you will, tune in for that.

Just gauging the aftermath of hurricane pales in comparison to the real loss of life.

Certainly property, community and money.

In the wake of this year's storm season.

So far, just the absence of tourism dollars expected to be in the billions, as we just have talked about, and the rebuilding effort after Hurricane Helene tops now 50 plus billion boggling numbers.

Joining us now from his office in DC.

But someone who's been very much on the ground here in the Carolinas, and not just recently, is the Federal Emergency Management Agency's deputy administrator.

We welcome Eric Hooks.

Mr. administrator, welcome to the program.

It's nice to see you.

And thank you for joining us.

Thank you for allowing me to join the discussion today.

Mr. Hooks, let's start with the easy question.

Maybe easy to answer, but but tough to deal with.

And that is, what's the how is the recovery, going along?

What have you seen?

Where are we now?

Based on where we were three and a half weeks ago.

Sure.

But let me first start by saying that, that all our hearts in the federal family grieve with those communities that have lost loved ones, lost their property, but along with our hearts and prayers that are with them, our action is with them.

We have been decisively engaged in this, response and recovery from this massive storm.

And, you know, just taking us back to the beginning.

It started off the shores of Florida and and quickly moved up the coast and engulfed, and impacted six different states.

And we continue to be engaged with a number of states that are in different stages of their recovery as well.

And so overall, we have over, 5000 FEMA staff, in the impacted states, in that, part of the 6000 plus federal family responders that are supporting local and state communities, and diligently working through the impacts of the storms to provide relief, to those survivors that have been impacted across the entire theater.

And I know today we'll talk more specifically about North Carolina and South Carolina.

Mr. hooks, is there something to know, for viewers or others that don't live in western North Carolina, haven't been in western North Carolina for a while, if at all.

That would be important to know versus the boots on the ground.

Sure.

I think the most important thing to know is that, the folks in North Carolina, in South Carolina and across the areas that I have been on the ground visiting, they are grateful.

They are resilient, and they know that we are going to be there for the long term.

North Carolina in particular, was the first state to accept a FEMA integration team.

Back in the times when I served as the secretary of Public Safety.

So we have a team that is from the federal government with FEMA specifically embedded with your state emergency management.

Both North Carolina and South Carolina have very mature emergency management, operations that work collaboratively with the federal government.

And we were all pre postured, before the impacts of the storm ever arrive.

In the long term, the thing to know is that this recovery is going to be daunting, and it's going to take a long time.

And I know firsthand that, recovery never comes fast enough.

However, we are not only inventorying our challenges, but inventorying the assets, that we have, including of the money that is going directly, to survivors.

And I also want to encourage people, not just outside of the, the impacted area, but particularly those in the impacted area.

Please register please go to disaster assistance.gov.

You can also download the FEMA app to register for individual assistance.

And if you allow me I'll give you A18 hundred number to also call because this is really important that we get people registered in the system so we can help them on their, journey back to recovery.

That number is 1-800-621-3362.

That's 1-800-621-3362 Tony.

Question.

Yeah.

My question is, you know, after the storm hit, you saw a huge outpouring of people and resources, people wanting to help.

You had a lot of nonprofits there on the ground manna food Bank, Samaritan's Purse, many many others.

What exactly is the role of FEMA because you saw some people coming out and saying, well, I haven't seen FEMA.

I haven't seen the boots on the ground.

Most of the aid to me has come from, you know, private citizens.

What is the role of FEMA and how does it work with these nonprofits and individuals who want to help has a coordination role with all of our nonprofits.

And this occurs before the storms, occur.

We have a strong community of, nonprofits, volunteer agencies, faith based organizations that come together, particularly the Red cross and many other Samaritan's Purse and others.

As you mentioned, that we work hand in hand with, along with the various states for, disaster support.

Also, you, have seen a number of military, deployments in the area.

FEMA underwrites the calls, for those military deployments, the National Guard, the soldiers that came in from Fort Liberty, we underwrite those costs.

And so we're there.

Whether you see somebody in a FEMA, jacket or not, to support, the community, in the initial response, we also pay in training, for the, urban search and rescue teams that are there on the ground, in those, even before the storm strike, so that as soon as the storm passes, they can get into the fight and engage in that life saving, life sustaining activity again with our state partners.

And so that, hopefully kind of, brings us up to date on some of the things that you don't see that FEMA's in that coordinating posture, along with other federal family members, supporting these communities impacted.

Joey, I'm curious about some of the long term changes that you're seeing because of the changing demographics in the United States with the population aging and, of course, a greater percentage, of of citizens that may not be as, computer literate and with resources available either exclusively online or largely online.

Is there a, an effort that your team is, is using to address that scenario where, you want to be able to provide disaster relief to an aging population effectively, especially for those either that don't have internet access or are less computer literate.

Yes.

Very great question.

We specifically, focus on preparedness, far in advance of storm, and we tailor specific messages to, different populations.

We have had campaigns that we have focused particularly on those that are maybe, older population.

And you're absolutely correct.

There are a lot of number of, older populations that do not use apps or, or go online and so we are intentional about meeting people where they are.

So we have, disaster assistance teams out in the field, that go door to door to meet people where they are.

We have, in fact, 19 docs, that are set up.

There's these are disaster recovery centers that are set up in North Carolina in particular, to that, that can receive people, get them registered.

And so we have a variety of ways, both the electronic means as described.

But we have people out in the field willing to talk to people in parking lots, in their homes, in shelters, wherever they are, so that they can, avail themselves to the federal assistance that they deserve.

Mr. Director, there's not, there, Mr.

Administrator.

There's not not many things in the wired world that are not known or not not not revealed, so quickly and in the early hours of what happened with Hurricane Helene, there was all kind of that data.

There were all kinds of video.

There was all kind of chatter on social media about what is and what's not being done.

Misinformation and disinformation.

The agency got a lot of criticism about not being on the ground.

So couple of questions.

Was the agency there early and did the agency's early response fit what your responsiveness would like to be in in disasters?

Yes.

We have always had a forward leaning posture, to address the storms.

Again, as I described earlier, there are a lot of activities, that FEMA postures with our search and rescue teams, our military personnel that are deployed in the area and to support those communities.

We have incident management teams, that were placed in each one of the states, to support the planning and response efforts.

And so those are things that people typically don't see.

We certainly have had to fight through the noise of mis and disinformation.

Some of it is just people not knowing.

Some of it has been, directly intentional.

And so we have had to try to step through the noise.

We've established a rumor page on our FEMA dot gov page so that people can understand, the, the impact of the mis and disinformation.

And the sad thing about it is that it will sometimes prevent disaster survivors who are most in need from coming forward because they have heard a narrative out there on social media or have somebody, a spouse, information that's blatantly false, and may discourage them, from coming forward.

Tony, you know, because of your background, you know North Carolina pretty well.

One of the things that was maybe a little bit surprising is that it hit an area that is not really known for hurricanes.

I mean, Florida, you know, every every year there's they're threatened western North Carolina, not so much.

Is there anything in particular that makes this, disaster more challenging, given the, geography of where this hit?

Absolutely.

North Carolina as a whole has been, really mature in its ability to respond to storms.

Most, obviously has been on the East Coast.

I was there in 2018 where at that time, Hurricane Florence was the storm of record.

The major storm that it impacted North Carolina.

But this storm presented some very unique challenges.

The terrain in western North Carolina, you know, mudslides, sides of mountains and hills sloughing off in the impacts to roads, you know, presented different challenges.

And so therefore, we again, were determined to meet people where they are.

And we had already pre-planned, for the challenges that could arise, because we knew that, that prior to killing impact in that western North Carolina had suffered a lot of rain inundation.

So we set up, you know, an air operations that's been unparalleled in previous responses, utilizing the National Guard C-17 to bring millions and millions of pounds of commodities into the area, airlifting, commodities into the area with rotary and fixed wing aircraft into the area.

That, is how we supported, this community with the unique challenges.

We also, certainly engage the entire federal family.

Secretary Buttigieg, from the Department of Transportation, exercise the emergency authorities that he had to, to provide North Carolina, $100 million, and emergency funds, to work with the Department of Transportation to get roads restored.

And they're working through those projects as well.

So.

All right, Joey, so we were talking earlier about how certain communities are building back and typically do build back every time they go through a natural disaster.

Charleston, I was using as an example earlier, but I was curious if when you look around the country, there are any, let's say, predictive factors that you have identified that determines whether or not the population does decide, to move elsewhere or does not necessarily build back.

Are there certain factors that that you've seen that distinguish one community from another in terms of how these storms change the long run?

Growth of these different commun Right.

Repetitive impacts to communities, very, place by place, some communities that are more transient people have moved in.

They may be more willing to move out of those communities.

But you also see a lot of communities, that, people live there, have lived there for generations.

And they have such a close tie to those communities, that they are not in a position and don't want to lose that sense of community, from where they're at.

So there are a lot of economic, social and personal factors and even sometimes religious, ties to the land, that, go into those decisions, made by individual communities.

We at FEMA and across the federal family, we work to serve the unique needs of those communities.

So we don't come in imposing, a solution as to whether or not they should, automatically rebuild or stay.

But we we want to make sure that all communities are educated about the threat environment that they have, and that they also educate the federal government as to what their particular unique needs are so that we can work together, to, solution, real, resources and improvements for their recovery.

Sir, we have less than a minute left.

And just very quickly, I know in stories like, anyone that is going through an infirmity gets, a lot of attention about taking care of a particular person or a family.

But it's usually the caregiver that suffers as much.

And I would hope in these last 30s, sir, that the that the mental health and the behavioral health and the health care of the FEMA workers is also, pretty high on your priority list in about 20s.

Yes.

The administrative Chris.

Well, and I have been extremely focused on the mental health of the our FEMA workforce, as they work in communities, taking all the trauma of those communities, as well as focusing on the, mental health as well as physical health as, for survivors as well.

So this is very much a part of what we do.

Mr. Hooks, I wish I didn't have to cut you off.

Thank you for joining us.

I know you're drinking out of a firehose, sir.

And, our congratulations to all the work.

And thank you for joining us.

Be safe.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Joey.

Good to see you.

Good to see you.

Him.

Thanks, Chris.

Until next week.

First, what thank you all.

Gratefully acknowledging support by Martin Marietta.

Blue cross, blue shield of South Carolina.

Truliant Federal Credit Union, Sonoco, colonial life.

High Point University and by viewers like you.

Thank you.