Guest Editorial
Recently, we passed the second anniversary of when the flooding began after Hurricane Helene’s landfall. Last year, many in my community gathered at the Haywood County Courthouse to listen to remembrances and recognize again what our local governments, neighbors, and loved ones went through to overcome the immediate destruction from Hurricane Helene.
One of the main feelings that went unreported at the time was that many people wanted to move on. It is not that they wanted to forget, it’s that they wanted to know everyone around them, elected officials, appointed czars, emergency responders, everyone was taking actions to be ready for the next great flood. In Haywood County, this was already our third.
Now two years later, it is hard to make the case that our governments have chosen to be proactive, to truly sit with the to-do list needed to both fully recover and get ahead of the next flood. To be sure, some have, yet these are limited to a shockingly low number of brave elected officials who have managed to claw what they can for their communities despite the bleak politics of today.
This low number of persons does not include one very, very important person running for North Carolina’s U.S. Senate seat this year. Michael Whatley was appointed by Donald Trump to lead the recovery effort, to apply necessary criticism of F.E.M.A., and to lead at a time when we really needed to see leadership for North Carolina. It is no surprise to me that this appointment was just a title to put on his resume. Something he could campaign on without having to put any real energy into pressing his accomplices in the U.S. Congress and N.C. General Assembly into delivering consistent aid to our region. To emphasize that fact, I didn’t even know Whatley was our federally appointed recovery leader until this year.
One of the most missed aspects of this recovery process was that the immediate recovery funds our region needed were small business grants, funding, and loans to keep our local businesses running after the storm.
While Mayor Zeb Smathers of Canton and Representatives Lindsey Prather and Eric Ager did champion the dire need for these funds, lest the crucible of WNC’s economy fail, Mr. Whatley seems to have looked at that simple math and said shut up and take what I feed you.
I cannot emphasize enough that the key aspect of Hurricane Helene recovery is understanding that all of Western North Carolina, especially those in district NC-11, is in this recovery together.
How well one county’s recovery does impacts the others around it. It was critical that recovery funding in the immediate months after Hurricane Helene focused on insurance relief and business recovery. Not only because the immediate recovery period was during our biggest tourism time of the year, but also because it was critical that our families in WNC were in a better place to recover during winter.
We knew we’d need to go back to our jobs (if we had them) and look after our immediate family as the news cycle moved onto the other horrid events of our world.
Mr. Whatley, and basically his entire GOP, used the delays in funding to parlay into a better political position and pretend that the strength of our communities helping each other in the immediate aftermath of Helene was all we needed.
Two years later, the economy feels even more on a threadbare thread. Three businesses just closed on Main Street in Waynesville, and families are choosing not to visit each other because it costs too much to drive.
Mr. Whatley had the opportunity to do incredible things for this region, and actually have something to campaign on worth my time. Why should we think he’ll do anything more as a Senator if he’s done little with the incredible opportunity he was given?
