Oct. 2, 2024
LAURA SULLIVAN, Correspondent:
It's like the apocalypse.
We came to North Carolina five days after Hurricane Helene tore through the region. More than 100,000 were still without power, tens of thousands had no water and the death toll was rising. The Riverlink Bridge had become a gathering point for local residents.
Did you see it when the water was here?
HANNAH PRESSLEY:
It was insane. I've never—It was all the way up here.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
So these buildings, could you see them?
HANNAH PRESSLEY:
The tops? Basically the first level was underwater.
MALE BYSTANDER 1:
We always thought that because we was in the mountains, that it wouldn’t happen. It unexplainable, really.
MALE BYSTANDER 2:
We watched whole houses just crumble and go down the river, trucks turned end over end. Nothing, I’ve never seen nothing like it.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Phone service had been down for days, making it hard for families and friends to find one another.
MALE VOICE:
Free water! Free food!
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Hundreds of people were still unaccounted for.
Hi. Good, how are you? Is this the list?
DONNA BRUCE, Volunteer:
Now this isn't a complete list. This is just the ones that we've had people come through.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
And if they're safe. Like this person—
DONNA BRUCE:
The arrow says that they've been found. Yes.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
And then you still have some missing people?
DONNA BRUCE:
Yes. There's probably more than that, but that's the ones we have the names for.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Zubila Shafiq’s husband, Omar, was among the missing. They’d recently separated, and he'd moved to this apartment complex close to a river that had flooded.
ZUBILA SHAFIQ:
I saw some people walking by, and I said, "I'm looking for somebody, I'm looking for somebody. I'm looking for Omar." She said, "I tried to save him. I'm so sorry. I tried to save him."
And then she explained to me, she said, "I saw him, and he was up there. He was panicking." [Cries]
LAURA SULLIVAN:
A neighbor captured what happened on her cellphone.
ZUBILA SHAFIQ:
I'm sorry. I just, I don't understand what these poor people had to go through, to imagine what it's like to be seeing all this water. Everything is leaving, and the fear he must have had.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Omar's building was carried down the river.
ZUBILA SHAFIQ:
Every night I think about it, the fear. [Cries] It's unimaginable. It's unimaginable to think, to see this rushing wave of water, and he can't swim and—nobody, even if you can swim, there's no way. And I don't understand how that must have felt for him. And I can't—I think about it every night, the fear he must have had, how scared he must have been. [Cries]
LAURA SULLIVAN:
People from around the region had come to offer help.
ALLEGRA WEST:
We had a bunch of water and granola bars in our bags just to offer to people and—
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Allegra West had narrowly escaped a landslide in the hills outside of town.
ALLEGRA WEST:
It was incredibly nerve-racking. Yeah. There's no water on that property—we're on the side of the mountain there—and at about 8:00 a.m. I looked out my window and the water started gushing down the side of the mountain.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
She filmed out the window as the water surged down the hillside. Her neighbor’s house was knocked over.
What about the people?
ALLEGRA WEST:
The gentleman was in a tree.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Oh, no.
ALLEGRA WEST:
Clearly had a broken back and other things. He was still alive.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
He was still alive. What did you do?
ALLEGRA WEST:
Well, we held his hand and prayed with him and spoke to him and took down any notes of what he wanted to say, and . . .
LAURA SULLIVAN:
So he died?
ALLEGRA WEST:
Yes. We spent the rest of the day searching the rubble for his wife. They found her at about 12:30, there in the rubble. And they're together now, and—yeah.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
We were hearing that the worst damage was in towns like hers, miles outside of Asheville, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was difficult to get around; many roads were impassable and buried under mud, cutting off survivors from critical aid.
How many people are missing at this point?
ASHLEY KETRON, Volunteer:
Do you know how many were on that missing persons board?
FEMALE VOLUNTEER:
I do not.
ASHLEY KETRON:
We're getting varying ranges of numbers. Anywhere between under a hundred to upwards of 700.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Oh, my God.
We managed to get to the town of Swannanoa, to the same hillside where Allegra’s neighbors were killed.
STEVE GIBSON:
All that water come down that hill, hit that house, shoved it over there and then the rest of it came and hit this house, drug it down there. And that don't look like a house, but it is.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Steve Gibson was still cleaning up.
Did you feel like it was a safe place to live?
STEVE GIBSON:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because when we heard about the flood, we go, "Well, we're up here on the hill. Ain't nothing going to happen to us." Then all this happened. And it's like—We didn't know there was going to be a landslide.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Right. That it would take half the mountain down.
The rains that triggered the landslide caused the Swannanoa River to overflow its banks by more than 26 feet.
Ben Larrabee’s whole neighborhood was inundated.
BEN LARRABEE:
All of a sudden we get a notice that says, “The dam is at critical level. Get to high ground immediately.”
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Oh, my God.
BEN LARRABEE:
[On video] And I've already called 911. And there's nothing they can do.
It was just raising so fast. You couldn't even make decisions.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
What did you see going on next door?
BEN LARRABEE:
Well, I saw him pop out every once in a while on his deck.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
He briefly spotted his next door neighbor.
There he is.
BEN LARRABEE:
See, it's already almost to his knees.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
It's on his feet.
BEN LARRABEE:
Yeah. That's the last time that I've seen him.
[On video] Man, I don't know what to do, guys.
When the water finally subsided and I got out, they were the only ones that weren't here.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
The couple, Nola and Robert Ramsuer, were still unaccounted for.
Their daughter, Shalana Jordan, was there trying to figure out what had happened to her parents.
SHALANA JORDAN:
All the other neighbors have been found. My parents are the only ones that haven't been found yet.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
What are your thoughts?
SHALANA JORDAN:
I don't know.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
If they were to go into the river, maybe try to escape?
SHALANA JORDAN:
Neither one of them can swim.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
They can't swim?
SHALANA JORDAN:
Neither one of them can swim.
This looks like the master bathroom. What's left of it.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
So this is your dad. This is your mom. And you're an only child.
SHALANA JORDAN:
Yeah.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
So you're going through this by yourself.
SHALANA JORDAN:
Yeah.
I just can't imagine what they went through, and if they did get washed away, what if they did by themselves, and they died alone? [Cries]
LAURA SULLIVAN:
I'm so sorry.
SHALANA JORDAN:
The whole community is just destroyed. Everything's gone. [Cries] It looks like a war zone.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
The devastation here was a shock so far inland, in the North Carolina mountains. And it was a vivid sign of how even places like this are now vulnerable to climate-related storms.
But Helene was actually a signal of even more, one of the most striking examples I’d seen in years of reporting on disasters, of how communities are struggling to make themselves safer and prepare for the next storm.
Over the past decade with NPR and FRONTLINE, I’ve been covering the impact and recovery from disasters like Helene, going back to Superstorm Sandy’s destruction in New York and New Jersey.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Major damage along the entire New Jersey coast.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Flooding nearly 20% of the Big Apple.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Hurricane Maria, that plunged Puerto Rico into darkness.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Everywhere, damaged infrastructure, blocked roads and devastated homes.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Irma, that tore through Florida.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Irma’s wrath is visible as far as the eye can see.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
And Harvey, that left much of Houston under water.
MALE NEWSREADER:
That is equivalent to about a trillion gallons of water.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
The federal government spends more than $50 billion a year helping communities recover, including properties that have flooded repeatedly.
You had four floods—
FEMALE HOMEOWNER:
—in three years.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
—in an endless cycle of destruction and rebuilding.
This is Laura Sullivan from NPR and PBS.
For the past eight months, we’ve been investigating the forces fueling this cycle and following how it is continuing to play out in North Carolina.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Residents say they feel like they've been left behind and forgotten, waiting for government funding so they can rebuild their lives.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
We could see that cycle underway as we returned to Asheville repeatedly in the months after Helene.
Most of the missing had been accounted for, but more than 100 people were dead, including Zubila Shafiq’s husband, Omar.
ZUBILA SHAFIQ:
He was found just a little bit back there, right along the bank.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
This is your first time back here?
ZUBILA SHAFIQ:
I haven't really been able to get up here because every time there's—something. This is the first time I feel like it's been pretty clear for me to walk up here.
He was a good, good, good, good person, a good man. And this is not how anybody deserved to go.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
The whole place is elevated.
ZUBILA SHAFIQ:
Exactly. I thought for sure his apartment would be fine. I was like, it's on stilts.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Hey! Do you think they're going to rebuild here?
MALE BUILDING CONTRACTOR:
Yeah, these three. And that one.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
So they're just going to fix them up?
MALE BUILDING CONTRACTOR:
I think these three, I think they is.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Wow. And then rent them out again?
MALE BUILDING CONTRACTOR:
I think so.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
What do you think?
ZUBILA SHAFIQ:
I think that's a terrible idea. [Laughs] I can't see how that could be a good idea.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Do you worry that knowing that the river did come 26 feet up these buildings, that it could do it again?
ZUBILA SHAFIQ:
Sure. We don't know anything anymore. What we thought we knew doesn't exist, so why not? Why couldn't it do it again?
LAURA SULLIVAN:
It’s unclear what the future plans are for the property. But just about everywhere we went around Asheville, people were eager to put homes and businesses back the way they were. Thousands of people were still displaced, unemployment was high and the once-bustling Asheville tourist area of Biltmore Village felt like a ghost town.
Moe's looks about the same.
KIT CRAMER:
Yeah. So does Asaka. Those things are going to have to be completely rebuilt.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Kit Cramer, the head of the Asheville-area Chamber of Commerce, has seen bad flooding before: This was Biltmore Village’s third in 20 years.
KIT CRAMER:
This is a tourist area, and it's one of the most popular places to visit in this whole state.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
What's the most important thing to you right now?
KIT CRAMER:
I want people to be able to work again and support their families.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
It's like get back in here, get our businesses open.
KIT CRAMER:
And we can work on the remediation pieces. We can work on coming back in a better way along the way.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
So if you lose this neighborhood—
KIT CRAMER:
Just can't happen.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Can't.
KIT CRAMER:
Cannot happen. We've got to have it back.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
So you're thinking, "Let's get the businesses open and let's worry about the resiliency—"
KIT CRAMER:
—as we're working on things. I also think it is imperative that we be thinking in those terms the entire time that we're redeveloping.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Yeah.
KIT CRAMER:
But first and foremost, businesses need to reopen and jobs need to be created again.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
I went to City Hall to speak to the mayor, Esther Manheimer, about the rebuilding effort.
MAYOR ESTHER MANHEIMER, (D) Asheville:
When I talk to property owners, they have a great deal of concern about a future event affecting their property regardless, and so they're really debating, "Do I make this kind of investment again, knowing this could happen?"
LAURA SULLIVAN:
So if the city wanted to tell people, look, we want you to build to a higher standard, could you do that?
ESTHER MANHEIMER:
What we can do is we can provide them with an advisory regarding where—what height to build to given this flood event.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
So you can't tell them to do it, but you can ask nicely.
ESTHER MANHEIMER:
We can only enforce the building code. We can't make you exceed the state building code.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
The rules here do have some elevation and storm mitigation requirements, but the mayor told us they don’t account enough for new climate realities. FEMA has said strong building codes are critical, but that the existing ones in most states are outdated and ineffective, with North Carolina’s being among the worst.
ESTHER MANHEIMER:
Look, if we could get everyone to adhere to current code requirements, or even strengthened code requirements, to try to prevent this sort of effect of a disaster on a community, we could lessen the overall disruption to a community, the hit on the economy, on the lives of the people, and we would rebound from it quicker. But I think individual property owners would say, “Well, why do I have to bear the burden of that?”
LAURA SULLIVAN:
We headed to the hills outside Asheville, where some of the worst devastation occurred. Thousands of mudslides left 23 dead.
We met Allegra West back on the hillside where her neighbors were swept away.
ALLEGRA WEST:
This is the house that came down across here. It was upside down across the road.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
It's kind of amazing seeing the yellow house, because when we were here last time, there was a house inside the house.
The area had been mostly cleaned up, but James and Judy Dockery’s belongings were still scattered around.
These are the things that belong to them?
ALLEGRA WEST:
Yeah, definitely. Their ice trays and kitchenwares.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
I mean, you see a whole life here, right? God, you really find everybody's things right here.
ALLEGRA WEST:
Oh, my goodness.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
James Dockery.
ALLEGRA WEST:
James Dockery.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Despite the devastation and the threat of mudslides, neighbors were already making plans to rebuild.
When people are talking about rebuilding, are they talking about safety, mudslides, flooding?
ALLEGRA WEST:
I think not enough. Not enough. There are many people who are thinking about that, but most people kind of just have the blinders on of survival, of just getting basic needs met and getting things rebuilt. There's definitely a grit to this area, where people have been here generations, and families have been on this land, and they're going to continue to stay here.
KIM WOOTEN, Fmr. member, N.C. Building Code Council:
It’s your decision, really, whether you want to take that kind of a risk and say, "Oh, I'm going to build back, and it's not going to be built as it should be built." What's going to happen in 60 years? Are we going to be washing people away again? I don’t know.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Kim Wooten is an engineer who spent a decade working on the state’s building codes.
Do you think that we can build for these storms that are coming?
KIM WOOTEN:
Yes. We can build stronger homes. We make sure that we're not building in not only floodplains current, but projected floodplains. We can make sure that homes are built to withstand winds, increasingly strong winds that they could receive during a hurricane. We can do all kinds of things to build better. That does cost money, but what's the life worth? What are your memories worth? Do you really want to see your children die in a flood? What is that worth? What price do you put on that? I don’t know.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
What do you say to people who say, look, this was 26 feet of water in some places. There's nothing you can build that will protect you against 26 feet of water.
KIM WOOTEN:
That's true. It's absolutely true. You just don't build there.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
The federal government has weighed into this debate. Through FEMA, it runs a flood insurance program and makes maps that delineate the riskiest areas. Those seeking coverage for rebuilding are typically required to take steps to mitigate against future flood damage.
JEREMY PORTER, Head of Climate Implications, First Street:
We have our climate scientists on this side. Our data scientists who take all the climate hazard.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Jeremy Porter is a data scientist who studies flood risk and has analyzed FEMA’s maps.
JEREMY PORTER:
On the map, you can see the FEMA flood zones in Asheville.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
All right.
JEREMY PORTER:
They do a pretty good job of capturing the major rivers that come through Asheville.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Yeah. Here are all the big rivers in Asheville.
JEREMY PORTER:
When you add in the 100-year flood layer from First Street, ultimately what we end up seeing is a tremendous amount of risk on these streams that are sort of offshoots of the major rivers. If you go back and read about the actual flooding that occurred, in these areas are where we saw a lot of the major flooding.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
This is where a lot of the flooding was.
JEREMY PORTER:
In particular we looked at North Carolina after Helene came through, and ultimately we found that only about 2% of the properties that were impacted actually were in a FEMA zone.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
And 98% of the properties were not.
JEREMY PORTER:
Yeah. Anywhere in the Appalachian region the models just aren't developed to pick up heavy precipitation events.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Porter found a similar situation around the country.
When you looked at the picture nationally, how different were your maps from FEMA's?
JEREMY PORTER:
We found about 2.2 times as many properties had one-in-a-hundred-year flood risk.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
More than twice as many people in America have a flood risk that aren't even aware that they have a flood risk.
JEREMY PORTER:
Yeah, it's a huge issue.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
This is an issue that has come up repeatedly during my reporting on disasters. Over the past eight months, I’ve been tracking how rebuilding has worked out in some of those previous storms and whether those places are any safer today.
I went back to Staten Island recently, which was hit hard by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Sandy makes landfall, slamming into the East Coast.
MALE NEWSREADER:
That 12-foot surge came right into these neighborhoods.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
It was one of the worst flooding events in New York’s history, and billions were poured into the rebuilding effort. I headed to a part of Oakwood Beach, a neighborhood that had been touted as a model for how to protect communities from future disasters. It once had a couple hundred homes before it was decimated by Sandy.
JOE TIRONE, Former Oakwood Beach homeowner:
We were very close together, very close-knit, everybody knew each other.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Joe Tirone, who’d owned a house here, took me around.
JOE TIRONE:
Now this is where my house was. See that ridge, that right there? That was my backyard, that little—
LAURA SULLIVAN:
This one?
JOE TIRONE:
Yeah, right here. Right here.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
After the storm, Tirone learned of a federal program meant to help state and local governments offer buyouts to homeowners in high-risk areas. He organized his neighbors to apply for the buyouts.
JOE TIRONE:
This was a multigenerational neighborhood. So the grandmothers, grandparents lived across from the grandchildren. So they’re there forever. But on that block that I had my home, three people had perished. So this is like, they had to get out.
There’s about a hundred yards, and that is where the ocean is.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Within a couple years, most of Tirone’s neighborhood, and some other parts of Staten Island, had taken the buyout.
MALE NEWSREADER:
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo visited Oakwood Beach.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Gov. Andrew Cuomo was promising to return the area to nature, a natural buffer against future storms.
Oct. 29, 2014
GOV. ANDREW CUOMO, (D) New York:
We're now rebuilding oyster beds . . . wetlands and marshlands and grasslands. Why? Because they all had a purpose. They were all part of the balance.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
But after spending $200 million, it hasn’t quite worked out that way.
So why does this have a fence?
JOE TIRONE:
This is the exact area that the Staten Island Soccer League purchased from the state for some nominal amount, and they're going to build their soccer fields here.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
The state allowed the league to purchase six acres of the buyout land, for fields, seating and there’s talk of a clubhouse.
Is this what you thought was going to happen when you sold your property?
JOE TIRONE:
No. I thought that it was just going to be like a big marsh and that I wouldn't even be able to get to my property. I thought the streets would be gone. It'd just be paths. It'd just be natural areas. It would be some real environmentally friendly—That's what I pictured.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Just steps away from the planned soccer complex, Tirone showed me still-existing homes that had flooded during Sandy.
Can you explain this to me? Because I'm seeing empty fields, and then I'm seeing a neighborhood right next to it.
And new homes that had gone up, too.
JOE TIRONE:
That's a semi-attached home right there, which probably was a bungalow or two.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
What do you think when you see this?
JOE TIRONE:
They're definitely vulnerable, without a doubt. This had a 15-foot wave. Not going to say that's going to happen in the next year or two, but the fact that it was a 15-foot wave says that these people are at risk.
VITO FOSSELLA, (R) Borough president, Staten Island:
This area got walloped during the storm.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
I asked the Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella about the patchwork that this area had become since Sandy.
VITO FOSSELLA:
I think the end result was a hodgepodge of things.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
OK.
VITO FOSSELLA:
From a condemnation of homes, people who lived there for generations had to move.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Like this one?
VITO FOSSELLA:
Then here you have people with homes were destroyed. They just decided to move along. I think bureaucracy, for lack of a better word, caused it to go on for years and years and years. Other people who wanted to stay and keep their roots here.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
He told me that he supported redeveloping here, even in buyout areas.
VITO FOSSELLA:
You have some of the best views around and underappreciated of the water. We should welcome people to build near the water when possible and bring life back, as opposed to watching empty lots. So I would be a proponent of that.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
So taxpayers spent a lot of money buying out these properties. Was it all for nothing?
VITO FOSSELLA:
I don't know if it was all for nothing. I think in some cases it was justified. People didn't have a recourse. And there were those that said you can't go back in there, it's just totally unsafe. Sometimes the pendulum swings too far in one direction, and maybe it becomes time to reevaluate some of those decisions and see where it is safe that people can move back in.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
What if those people come back to live and make the most of what they've got, but they end up under 18 feet of water and their homes are destroyed and more people die?
VITO FOSSELLA:
Well, that's what I'm saying. If we have the mechanisms to mitigate against that, then by all means. But if we're just going to live in fear forever, it's probably not the way I want to live, frankly.
CRAIG FUGATE, Administrator, FEMA, 2009-17:
We think about disasters always happening to somebody else or always somewhere else. And to a certain degree, I think it's because we've always priced risk below what it really takes to change behavior.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Craig Fugate was the head of FEMA during Sandy and as the recovery unfolded.
And when you look at Sandy, when you look at how that area recovered from that storm, what do you think?
CRAIG FUGATE:
We put a lot of stuff right back where it was. Mayor Bloomberg was really trying to get to "How do I mitigate against future storms?" But when they started looking at the cost and what it would involve to protect everything, they realized that really wasn't going to be practical. So they went back and they did things like, OK, well, can we at least figure out how to block the subways so they don't get salt water in them? So things like that. Can we make improvements and elevate critical equipment ? I think when you go in these areas, you see the recovery's gone well. There is some mitigation. But it should not lead anybody to the impression that it won't happen again. You put that much water in that area, we're still going to have impacts.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
So you think if Sandy happened again tomorrow—?
CRAIG FUGATE:
We might have done better on protecting the subways, but I think as far as homes go, as far as the small businesses, I think there's this tendency that we think, "Well, it won't happen again." And I'm like, "Yeah, it will." To say it won't be as bad? That's hard to say.
FEMA proposal
LAURA SULLIVAN:
After Sandy, FEMA and the city clashed over updating the flood maps and have so far left them largely unchanged.
JEREMY PORTER:
FEMA goes back and forth with the city of New York on what the actual maps are going to look like, and ultimately we're leaving a lot of residents in an area that have flood risk without flood insurance and without the knowledge that they have that risk.
I think it's a politically wildly unpopular thing to do, to go in and say, "Let's change the flood maps and then your constituents see that you've just increased the flood risk flood insurance requirements by double in your community." And it's just something that no one's wanted to tackle to this point.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Why did New York City fight FEMA in expanding the flood maps?
BRAD LANDER, (D) Comptroller, NYC:
The city's thinking about its tax revenues. It wants that $2 billion, growing to $3 billion, a year in tax revenue and is afraid to discourage growth in the areas that FEMA thinks are going to be at risk, and therefore insurers might not provide insurance for. And now growth is harder.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Brad Lander is comptroller of New York City and candidate for mayor who’s studied the growth in development since Sandy.
BRAD LANDER:
Right now, basically 30% of New Yorkers live in the 100-year floodplain.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Wow.
BRAD LANDER:
The real estate value in the floodplain is $176 billion.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Is that what you thought was going to happen after Sandy?
BRAD LANDER:
I mean, we have these dual crises. We have an affordability crisis and we're desperate for more housing. And we have a climate crisis that when it wallops you, like it did in Sandy, those days, you're really looking at it. And then the sun comes out again and it kind of recedes from memory. And we are not as good as we need to be at putting those things together.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
This tension between development and how to deal with future storm risk always seems to play out in the aftermath of these disasters—and development usually has the upper hand. I saw that vividly in 2017 in a part of Houston I visited in the days after Hurricane Harvey. It was the third major storm in three years here, flooding more than 150,000 structures and killing 36 people.
There's something incredibly surreal about driving a boat down a neighborhood street.
We came across Joseph Hernandez returning to his house for the first time.
Where do you begin?
JOSEPH HERNANDEZ:
I don't know. I'm just going to wait and see. I guess I have to throw away everything. There's no other way. I have to gut the house and redo it, I guess. If possible.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Did you not think it would flood here?
JOSEPH HERNANDEZ:
No, I didn't. When we left, the water was up to the curb, up to the driveway, and I thought, maybe it's going get by the door or something like that.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Do you have flood insurance?
JOSEPH HERNANDEZ:
No, I just have regular insurance.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Just regular?
JOSEPH HERNANDEZ:
Yeah.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
How come not flood?
JOSEPH HERNANDEZ:
Because in the flooding areas they make you buy flood insurance. But here it wasn’t a flood area, so—
LAURA SULLIVAN:
So you were not required to get it.
JOSEPH HERNANDEZ:
Not required. That's right. Many people around here, they don't have it.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
His house was in a neighborhood just behind the Addicks and Barker dams. The Army Corps of Engineers built them to protect Houston from its perpetual problems with flooding. But during Harvey water backed up in the reservoirs behind the dams and flooded thousands of homeowners like him.
We returned to Houston recently and met Charles Irvine, an attorney who represents homeowners still seeking compensation for the flooding.
CHARLES IRVINE, Harvey plaintiffs’ attorney:
This is the highest point to the Barker Dam.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Of the Barker Dam. Oh, wow.
CHARLES IRVINE:
And if you walk over here, you'll see the water that's been collected.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Just a little bit this way, they put houses.
CHARLES IRVINE:
About five miles.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
So if you go this way and there's enough rain, all this water is going to back up into those homes.
CHARLES IRVINE:
It's a big flat pond, and as the water rises, it moves further back. Finally it hits the neighborhoods.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
The neighborhoods he was talking about were the ones we had visited right after the storm. The community’s vulnerability dates back to when Houston was one of the fastest growing cities in the country. Over the years, more than 20,000 homes were built inside the reservoirs.
JIM BLACKBURN, Environmental attorney:
There was private property that would be flooded back behind the dams, kind of at the back end of the dams, if you will, the back end of the reservoirs.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Jim Blackburn is a prominent environmental lawyer in Houston.
JIM BLACKBURN:
And that private property ended up being developed. If you're a private landowner, you could develop that land.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
The Army Corps of Engineers began looking at ways to mitigate the flood risks in the reservoirs. They even considered a dramatic move like in Staten Island: a buyout of properties inside Addicks and Barker. But no one wanted to spend that much money, and the cost of trying to undertake something like that now has skyrocketed to as much as $13 billion.
Did anybody think in these previous decades that maybe it wasn't the best idea to build 20,000 homes in a reservoir meant to hold water during a storm?
CHARLES IRVINE:
Many people did think that. In fact, we have, during the course of the lawsuit, we found that there were some developers whose engineers before the development was built would write to the Corps of Engineers and say, "Hey, is this really in a reservoir?" And they would say, "Yeah, it is."
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Since 2017, the Army Corps and Harris County have tried to do some flood mitigation, including shoring up the dams and improving the drainage and storage systems. The county’s flood control district is led by Tina Peterson.
If Harvey happened again, those homes in the reservoirs would flood again.
TINA PETERSEN, Exec. Dir., Harris County Flood Control District:
Yeah. I think that—I can't say that all of them would. I can't really project, because I know we have done work, but there is some residual flood risk that exists.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Do you worry that the incremental nature of this effort to handle this water, that it's not enough?
TINA PETERSEN:
That's a great question. We talk about this all the time. So the work that we do is very incremental, in we see an opportunity, we do something to address that specific location and we have visions for finding ways to do something transformational.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The Houston metro housing market, it is so hot, with prices soaring.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Meanwhile, since Harvey, the real estate market has been thriving, with nearly 5,000 homes sold in the reservoirs.
FEMALE VOICE:
Right now is a great time to buy.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
One of them was Joseph Hernandez’s house. When we found it again, it had just been sold for a second time. From the real estate listing, it was clear it had been completely renovated. It looked as though it had never flooded at all.
JIM BLACKBURN:
We've always had this view that we could build our way out of problems. Concrete channels, levees— whatever the problem, there was an engineering solution for it, and I think that served us well. I think we were always behind on playing catch-up with development.
The storms that we're looking at in the future are so much larger than what we designed for in the past that I don't think we'll be able to catch up. I think we're going to have to learn to live with water in a way that we've never lived with water. I think what we're going to keep seeing is that the water is going to rise higher than you planned for.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
It's going to keep coming.
JIM BLACKBURN:
It's going to keep coming, and at some point we're just going to determine it makes more sense not to occupy these high-risk areas that keep flooding again and again and again.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
That's a lot of Houston, though.
JIM BLACKBURN:
It's a fair chunk of Houston.
MALE MEMORIAL SPEAKER:
As we start with the program tonight, we first want to remember all of the citizens who we’ve lost here.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
On our trips to North Carolina in the months after Helene, we saw how the community’s sense of safety had been shattered.
FEMALE MEMORIAL SPEAKER:
Mere words cannot match the depth of the sorrow of those left behind.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
A hundred and seven people were ultimately confirmed dead from the storm.
MALE NEWSREADER:
One family in Buncombe County lost 11 people to the storm.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
On this hillside outside Asheville, heavy rain triggered multiple landslides, killing 13 people.
RICK WOOTEN, Sr. Geologist, N.C. Geological Survey, 1990-2021:
This is a catastrophic storm, and this is one of the most catastrophic debris flow events in terms of loss of human life that we've had in North Carolina, for just individual debris flows at one site.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Rick Wooten is a geologist who worked for a decade on a state database that predicts where landslides will most likely occur. This hillside was marked in the database.
Have there been landslides here before?
RICK WOOTEN:
Yes.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
There have.
RICK WOOTEN:
There's been at least one debris flow event that we can see in the older deposits.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
You can see that in the rocks.
RICK WOOTEN:
You can see that in—
LAURA SULLIVAN:
That there was a landslide here before.
RICK WOOTEN:
Yes.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
It's not just a freak thing that happens. This is actually sort of a predictable natural pattern.
RICK WOOTEN:
Right. So it's part of the natural geologic processes that have gone on in the mountains here for over a million years.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Many counties here have restrictions on building in landslide-prone areas, but Wooten said the strength of the rules vary widely. And 10 counties haven’t been mapped in the database at all. Wooten said that’s largely because for several years, the state cut funding, delaying the project.
RICK WOOTEN:
The statement that was made in the Legislature at the time, the argument that won the day to cut the funding, was the landslide hazard mapping is just a backdoor approach to more regulations.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
In 2007, state Rep. Susan Fisher said she began running into similar opposition to bills that would have created statewide safety regulations to protect people from landslides.
So you were worried people were going to build in dangerous places?
SUSAN FISHER, (D) N.C. House of Representatives, 2004-22:
Yeah, and just indiscriminately. What they needed to know more about is how dangerous that could be, not only for their own homes, but for the homes down below.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
What happened to that?
SUSAN FISHER:
Nothing. There was a lot of arguing about how stringent we wanted to make the law around steep slopes.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Who do you think didn't like them?
SUSAN FISHER:
I think that anyone who was representing developers or home builders didn't want that bill.
When you look at what the North Carolina Home Builders Association represents, they want business for their builders. And if the requirements are too stringent, that means they're going to have to spend more money to build. They don't want to have to do that.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
I went to the Home Builders Association headquarters in Raleigh and spoke with one of the group’s chief lobbyists, a former state legislator, Chris Millis.
CHRIS MILLIS, N.C. Home Builders Association:
We're very focused on affordability and also just making sure that individuals can be able to get into a home at some point in their lives.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
He told me statewide steep slope legislation is unnecessary and counterproductive because many local communities have such rules and can establish regulations that reflect their community's needs.
CHRIS MILLIS:
We’re keeping an eye out for all state-level regulations and just making sure that the rules that are being put in place is done so in a way that’s protecting life and safety as it relates to building codes and the development industry, but it’s done so in a way that’s affordable so North Carolina families can afford some type of residential dwelling of their choice.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
The year before Helene, the home builders faced criticism for their role in another bill impacting the state’s building codes, which were scheduled to be updated for the first time since 2018. Critics said the bill left important codes unchanged and out of date and left homes less able to withstand severe storms.
We obtained extensive correspondence that the legislative committee chairman had about the bill. Much of it was with the home builders lobby.
In this email that is sent to you, the lawmaker lists the nine things that they’re putting in the code and he’s asking you, "Let me know if I missed something."
CHRIS MILLIS:
Because we are experts in regard to the chapters that are applied to different aspects of residential construction. So we're providing input to lawmakers that are going to be going through a committee process to make sure that we're answering his question in regard to what detail needs to be addressed. And so I don't understand the concern. Is it, the email that you're referring to, is it an email that I'm on?
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Yes. Are you guys experts or are you advocates for an industry that wants to build in a way that makes them more money?
CHRIS MILLIS:
Oh, absolutely not. We have experts on our staff. We have a director of codes that is most certainly an expert in building codes. He's a former employee at the Department of Insurance and he lives and breathes all thing building code. And so we most certainly are experts in regard to how the code applies to residential construction.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Millis insisted that the codes the bill left unchanged had nothing to do with storm resiliency and that the group will always prioritize public safety.
Since Helene, he said the group is concerned about requiring storm victims to rebuild and elevate older homes to newer, potentially costly standards.
CHRIS MILLIS:
I believe there needs to be a distinction moving forward. I think policymakers should consider this, that when someone's rebuilding after a natural disaster, an existing community, giving them the option to be able to rebuild what they had before I think is needed. But to prohibit individuals to be able to use the free use of their own property, to me is a chilling prospect. And I believe that individuals of western North Carolina are going to come to this reality very soon.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Recently the state Legislature postponed implementing its updates to the state codes in the wake of the storm, and they're even considering letting people rebuild without meeting existing codes, which are based on 10-year-old standards.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Donald Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders—
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Nationally, the Trump administration has also taken steps that stop enforcing some rules for flood-prone areas and end funding to help communities update building codes.
GOV. JOSH STEIN, (D) North Carolina:
The time is now to build a safer, stronger North Carolina.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
North Carolina’s new governor, Democrat Josh Stein, has been pushing to speed up the rebuilding process, but he’s also expressed concerns about how it’s done.
JOSH STEIN:
Whenever you rebuild after a storm, you do not want to be where you were, three years from now, exactly where you are today when the next storm hits, and we will take measures to make sure that does not happen.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
It's very hard to do that politically, is it not?
JOSH STEIN:
We'll see.
The risks are real. There were stories where it was front page national news that Asheville was the climate change safe center in this country, and we now know that is not the case. Even the mountains can experience flooding and hurricanes that we didn't think was possible. And the work it takes to rebuild is years and years and years. And so I would not wish this on anyone. We've got to understand that these things are real and anything we can do now to mitigate those risks, we should do.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
In the spring, we went back to Swannanoa, to the now-empty neighborhood where Nola and Robert Ramsuer had last been seen. Their bodies were eventually found down the river, about a mile apart.
At the time, the land was on the market. The real estate listing touted its “abundant river frontage” and potential use as a mobile home park.
“This versatile property could serve as a number of potential uses . . .”
I showed the ad to Shalana Jordan.
What do you think about them wanting to redevelop that area?
SHALANA JORDAN:
I mean, I don't think they should do it, obviously, because of what happened. There were people who were trapped in their trailers for 12-plus hours because it took so long for the waters to recede and be safe to try to come help them. It's a nightmare. Everyone else is lucky that they even survived from the trailer park. I mean, at this point, I wouldn't live in Asheville again after going through something like that.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
In the town of Hendersonville I met Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards. He represents some of the worst affected areas, including Swannanoa. He cautioned against being too fearful about the future.
What do you think the likelihood is that a storm like that would come again?
REP. CHUCK EDWARDS, (R) North Carolina:
Well, they are describing this as a 1,000-year flood event, and so I think—
LAURA SULLIVAN:
You believe that?
CHUCK EDWARDS:
Yes. None of us have ever seen anything like this. Nobody in my family's past has ever seen anything like—
LAURA SULLIVAN:
Statistically, the storms have gotten more frequent, more severe. Even here in Appalachia, you've had several major storms in the past couple decades. What makes you think a storm like this won't happen again?
CHUCK EDWARDS:
There's no guarantee a storm like this won't happen again, but I think everything is a risk. There's no guarantee. I'd like to see the property owner be able to better assess that risk than some government-mandated agency. Life is a gamble, but property owners should be able to make up their own mind how they want to rebuild.
LAURA SULLIVAN:
I’d seen this area go through the unimaginable, and like so many others, struggle with how to rebuild. But with more devastating storms inevitable, the question now is not just what will happen in North Carolina, but who will face this challenge next, and how will they respond when they do.
