By Lola Oliverio
It has now been a year and a half since Hurricane Helene tore through North Carolina, leaving over 100 dead and causing over $60 billion in damages.
To an outsider, it may appear that Western N.C. has rebuilt. Headlines read, “Bruised, not broken,” “Asheville is ready for its comeback” and “One year after Helene: Asheville recovers, with scars but resilience.”
In reality, recovery has not been that simple. Downtown Asheville may seem to be back to normal, but the rural, poorer areas — some of which are less than a 15-minute drive away — are still in varying states of disarray.
In general, natural disasters tend to take more of a toll on those living in rural areas or those of lower socioeconomic status. A report from the World Bank in 2017 notes that lower-income residents hold a larger percentage of their assets in their physical property, leaving them incredibly vulnerable.
On top of this, the quality of these assets is often lower — for instance, mobile homes are disproportionately impacted by wind events, as they are made of lighter-weight material and are not built on a foundation like a typical house. North Carolina has twice the percentage of mobile homes compared to the nation’s average, sitting at 11.3% of all housing units in the state.
N.C. Representative Eric Ager, who serves Buncombe County, said that another reason these communities were hit harder is because disadvantaged groups tend to be geographically situated in the lower-lying areas of the mountains, which are more prone to flooding.
“It was a little bit different in this storm — we had quite a few landslides that certainly impacted some communities way back up in the hills, and certainly impacted places like Mitchell County and other places,” he said. “But, you know, I think a lot of these disadvantaged communities get hit harder to start with, so they’re already sort of starting in a more difficult place, trying to recover. They’re starting from a place that’s further behind.”
Damage types and amounts also varied depending on towns’ proximity to the water.
Skyah Rule, a UNC alumna who grew up in Burnsville, a town in Yancey County with a population of around 1,600, said that her community’s experience was different from those in places like Marshall, where much of the town was wiped out due to its bisection by the French Broad River.
She said that in some communities, there was one big visible wound. In others, like Burnsville, there were “one thousand tiny destructions.” She said that part of the reason it was so devastating was because of this rurality and the fractured nature of the damage.
“All of the trauma and devastation and utter destruction [from Helene in Burnsville] happened in little tiny hidden back roads,” Rule said. “Trailers were gone, that no one really noticed unless you lived there, or, like, tiny local gas stations that have been there for years or churches that had generations of people going — they were gone.”
These geographical challenges have also obstructed aid delivery in the aftermath of the storm. Cameron Morgan, project manager for state engagement at Carolina Center for Public Service, a program within the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that in the wake of Helene, some of the most important roads became impassable. He said that the easiest place to get to post-Helene was Asheville proper, which may account for some of the difficulty more rural areas have faced in receiving aid.
Federal relief money and assistance have also been delayed, primarily due to factors like numerous government shutdowns, bureaucratic red tape and recent firings. Money continues to slowly trickle into the state, but not at a rate sufficient to support recovery.
In late April, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced that nearly $260 million would be allocated to Helene recovery in the state, after a 68-day lapse in appropriations, which was the lengthiest in U.S. history. FEMA has provided the state with $5 billion in aid, but that only accounts for around 8% of total damages.
“There were lots of groups that came in and helped people recover. You know, lots of people came from all over the country to help people recover, but in the end, government money is the real money,” Ager said. “It’s kind of the big amount of money that is going to come in to help people recover. And, traditionally, I think a lot of communities that are just struggling to get by don’t have the connections to make sure that they sign up for these programs, or, you know, make sure that they know who to talk to, or have all the documents that you need in order to qualify for different programs, right?”
Ret Boney, disaster relief fund program director at the North Carolina Community Foundation, said that some other reasons disadvantaged communities have had more trouble getting financial help is due to factors like lack of U.S. citizenship or medical issues. She said that, in some cases, even if a household can secure funding to rebuild, they may not have enough money to find somewhere else to live while their house is under construction.
“For folks who are living in poverty or who struggle with food insecurity, suffer from health disparities — those are difficult things, even before disaster,” Boney said. “And once a disaster hits, those really can be a lot worse in the wake of the disaster, and we’re certainly seeing that with Helene. It’s just harder to withstand that kind of financial and emotional shock if you don’t have as many resources.”
Aside from property damage, natural disasters lead to a host of other issues, some of which do not rear their heads for years after the disaster has passed. In the immediate aftermath of Helene, contaminated drinking water and wound infections were some of the biggest public health concerns. In the year and a half since, other health risks, such as whooping cough, Legionnaires disease and vector-borne illnesses like West Nile virus have been observed due to factors such as stagnant water and communal living in shelters, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
Fungal infections also surge in the aftermath of events like floods and tornadoes. After the 2011 Joplin, Missouri, tornado, 13 people suffered from mucormycosis, a flesh-eating fungal infection, due to the aerosolization of spores. This has also been recorded after volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and dust storms, according to an article in the 2014 volume of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.
In the aftermath of Helene, mold growth has proven to be an issue even after decontamination efforts, as discovered by Duke University’s Climate and Fungi scientists.
“If your building survives a flood, the next challenge is making sure it survives the mold growth that follows,” Andrew Jones, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Duke Pratt School of Engineering, said in an article in Duke’s Magnify Magazine.
Again, socioeconomic barriers tend to stand in the way of solving these issues.
“Many people don’t have the financial resources to leave their homes when they’re damaged, right? They don’t have anywhere else to go,” Boney said. “They may not have the family network or the financial resources, and so they may be living in homes that are now compromised. So some folks are living in homes that are mold– infested and causing health problems.”
It can be difficult to envision solutions to these issues, since they are so entrenched in our society, Boney said. Ager said that, when looking forward, members of government must continue to push for change at the state and federal levels.
“I think in government, we often pat ourselves on the back when we appropriate all this money, but then getting it actually into the hands to people that need it takes a lot longer than we would like,” he said. “And so figuring out ways to speed up that process, I think, is the second thing that we really need to focus on.”
He said that the state ran into the same problem in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, which occurred in October of 2016 and made landfall in South Carolina. Ager said that they are still rebuilding houses 10 years later.
In April, FEMA announced they would be closing their disaster housing program, as most of the 234 families involved in it had transitioned back to long-term housing. Still, this only accounts for a small number of homes impacted by the storm.
Besides the massive amount of rebuilding that will continue to occur for years, a key part of recovery is making sure that people are prepared for other natural disasters like Helene. As climate change progresses, disasters will worsen. Weather events like Helene do not typically occur in Western N.C., Boney said, which caused residents to be relatively underprepared.
“What happened in Western N.C. is completely different. The scope and scale is different, and this is not something that the region is used to going through, so they’re building some of these muscles and processes and knowledge in real time,” she said. “So I think that’s been really difficult. I think it’s kind of, I guess, a signal or a warning to all of us that, you know, I’m not sure anywhere is safe from these kinds of disasters, and I think folks need to be thinking about preparedness.”
Driving through the backroads of Western N.C., the “scars” of Helene are more like scabs or, at times, open wounds. Road closures, infrastructure issues and poverty prevail, especially in areas with poorer, smaller populations.
In September of 2025, right around the one– year anniversary of Helene, Western N.C. outlet WLOS reported that Asheville still faces five years of recovery, just in regard to roads and parks.
However, the Southern spirit of community and hospitality has remained strong in spite of the widespread destruction.
“The communities themselves have come together — you know, through mutual aid and resource hubs and resource sharing, have really come up with some amazing solutions that aren’t necessarily long-term solutions that can solve the problem, but seeing how they have taken care of their own has been truly amazing,” Boney said.
Nora Oakes, a UNC senior from Marshall, echoed this sentiment. She said that the total and complete devastation made people realize their love for the town and the area. She said it forced people to come together and drop everything else, like political disagreements or personal differences.
“I feel like that is something that happened because of how rural Marshall is and how they didn’t have resources from outside of the town,” Oakes said. “People came together and brought their own shovels and wheelbarrows and cars and trucks and anything they could and just put it all together in one place and anyone could use it.”
She said that, aside from the destruction, when she thinks of the long-term impact of Helene, she thinks about this sense of community that has formed.
“How the complete and total chaos brought people together is the biggest impact that I think it’s had, a year and a half down the line,” she said. “And it absolutely wasn’t immediate — like, that wasn’t the immediate impact, because it was so devastating, but it was the immediate reaction and the lasting impact.”
