Recovery and resilience were prevalent themes at Business North Carolina’s Rural Economic Summit in Hickory Tuesday and Wednesday, where speakers highlighted the economic realities of a post-Helene western North Carolina.
That recovery has been abundant but slow.
“We’ve made progress, but we have a long way to go,” says keynote speaker Patrick Woodie, the president and CEO of the N.C. Rural Center.
Plenty of bright spots were highlighted. Kit Cramer, the CEO of the Asheville Chamber of Commerce, said the city was without running water for 53 days. The day after the storm, though, power was restored to the chamber’s offices. No running water, but Cramer said because the internet was working, they opened as an emergency operations hub. Employees who were able to get fuel for their automobiles were eager to work. Portable toilets and an abundance of power outlets allowed Cramer and her staff to focus on raising funds, communicating needs and advocating where they could.
That included working to help some of the 20,000 farms damaged by the storm — leading her office to bring in animal feed and distribute other supplies to farmers and others in need.
Tom Dempsey, the founder of SylvanSport in Brevard, said his company didn’t lose power, either. But because so many of his employees did, “our building became a gathering point. Even though so many of them had damage at their homes, they wanted to come back to work,” he said.
Over in Boone, David Jackson said seeing water flow under the iconic Doc Watson statue downtown was a stark visual early during flooding. But Jackson, the CEO of Boone’s Chamber of Commerce, said downtown Boone “was one of the least devastated areas.”
“You saw water where you’ve never seen it before,” he said.
Needs changed by the hour. When waters receded and the region’s workforce began to return, the collective focus was on recovery efforts — and businesses allowing staff to join recovery efforts proved an “incredibly valuable” resource.
About 10 days after the storm, though, Jackson said he and his team were temporarily forced to shift efforts: they found themselves spending more time debunking false narratives — largely critical of FEMA’s response, spread primarily on social media — than actual recovery work. It was a political narrative spun mostly by people not in the area and “did awful damage” to the recovery effort.
In Asheville, Cramer said she was delighted to see locals “piling on” in response to false posts. She and others praised FEMA’s work and noted an agency program, Surge Capacity Force, that allowed FEMA and other federal employees to work in recovery efforts as volunteers. She knew of five who made the trip to provide assistance in the Asheville area, including one from Alaska.
As a mother, she likened the region’s Helene experience to childbirth: you’ll never forget the pain, but the memories of that subsides six, seven and eight years later, as the child grows. Western North Carolina, Cramer said, will emerge from the Helene experience “better and stronger.”
Still, business recovery has been unsteady, particularly since Helene wiped the month of October off the revenue calendar, as well as the foliage season — keys to the economic engine driving so much potential. With visitation still down, many businesses are still in dire straits.
“An ill-timed weekend rain could mean the end of some businesses,” Jackson said. “Covid loans aren’t enough, so we continue to beat the drum for western North Carolina.”
Recovering businesses, he said, aren’t looking for a handout, but rather a little grace — and for visitors to come and spend a little money there.
Wit Tuttell of VisitNC said his office still has to fight with the perception of some potential visitors that North Carolina isn’t open for business. In surveys his office conducted, 68% of respondents thought the state’s coast had been severely damaged by Helene; another 78% thought the Piedmont region was adversely affected.
“The brand of the state has been hurt,” he said.
North Carolina has the fifth-most tourism in the country, and in a typical year, only two or three counties will see drops in tourism spending. This year, that number is 31. In Avery County, Grandfather Mountain CEO Jessie Pope said the nonprofit foundation operating the attraction suffered $3.1 million in lost revenue from Helene.
Typically, about 40% to 50% of natural disaster damage is covered through federal program funding. Matt Calabria, the director of the Governor’s Office for Western N.C., said only about 12% of Helene’s $60 billion price tag has been covered so far.
The state, of course, continues to seek additional federal funding, but some damage doesn’t have a clear financial cost. In a session on healthcare workforce challenges, Susan Mims, the CEO of Dogwood Health Trust, emphasized the need for more behavioral health services in the wake of Helene. Services were already limited even before the storm, she said, and after the heroics of that first year of recovery, needs typically spike significantly the following year.
“This will be a challenge for all of us,” she said.
Jackson, of the Boone Chamber, said looking back, 12 months later, “We’re not calling it an anniversary.”
“It’s a year of commemoration,” he said. “We’re ready to take steps toward progress.”
