A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm A Martínez in Los Angeles, California.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And I'm Steve Inskeep at our member station WABE in Atlanta. Our travels to meet voters in the Southeast included a road trip in North Carolina.
Oh. Just passed some beautiful purple wildflowers by the road here. And we're approaching the area that was devastated by Hurricane Helene in 2024. The federal response became a campaign issue that year, so we're checking to see what has changed two years later, beginning in a town called Spruce Pine.
It's in a mountain valley beside the North Toe River, which flooded two years ago. The first thing we saw there were workers beside a pile of debris.
What's going on over here? Do you know?
LAURA HACKETT, BYLINE: They are tearing down a historic train depot.
INSKEEP: Oh. OK.
That's our local guide, Laura Hackett of Blue Ridge Public Radio. The depot flooded in 2024 and is now gone. Nearby is DT's Blue Ridge Java, a restaurant that also flooded and is restored.
This is a cool place.
HACKETT: Yeah.
INSKEEP: It's got the exposed brick walls. This place...
HACKETT: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...Was completely wiped out in the...
HACKETT: This...
INSKEEP: ...Flood?
HACKETT: So you see over there - there's the flood line.
INSKEEP: Wow. OK
HACKETT: So it was 8 feet. Eight feet...
INSKEEP: I'm not sure...
HACKETT: ...Up here.
INSKEEP: You mean that little sign there? Oh, yeah.
HACKETT: Yeah.
INSKEEP: It says - yeah...
HACKETT: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...2024...
HACKETT: That really...
INSKEEP: ...Hurricane flood line.
HACKETT: ...Puts it into perspective.
INSKEEP: Wow. Way over our heads.
The owners of DT's, D and T, are David and Tricia Niven.
DAVID NIVEN: I mean, things are good. You can see the crowd that's in here today.
INSKEEP: Certainly better than two years ago. The building is on a steep hillside, which allowed them back then to get into an upper floor to look down into their restaurant.
D NIVEN: We walked in the top side of the building and walked over the staircase. And we've got 20 steps, and it made it up to 16 or 17.
INSKEEP: Amazing.
D NIVEN: That's where the water line was.
INSKEEP: Amazing.
I asked if they knew right away they would rebuild.
D NIVEN: No. No. We knew we had to do something.
TRICIA NIVEN: The first three days, I was like, no. I'm done. I can't do this again.
D NIVEN: Yeah. But after that, I mean, no matter what, we had to move forward. And the volunteers showed up immediately.
T NIVEN: Lord told us to rebuild. We rebuilt.
INSKEEP: Volunteers from across this country still come to the valley to help clean up. We visited a Christian group rebuilding homes and drove through the downtown that, like DT's, is mostly back in business. To pay for renovations, David and Tricia cashed in their savings and took out a loan. But one source of aid has come slowly.
D NIVEN: There's a lot to be done, FEMA money still to come in, and things are going to be done in the town. It's just going to take time.
INSKEEP: What does that mean - FEMA money still to come in? Is there...
D NIVEN: Well...
INSKEEP: ...Supposed to be...
D NIVEN: That means - yeah. That means contracts that are out there that are still being funded.
INSKEEP: Authorities are still working to replace a water treatment plant and a pedestrian bridge over the river. Some residents still live in trailers, and the grocery store is closed. In 2024, Republicans criticized President Biden's Federal Emergency Management Agency. Then President Trump took charge and talked of eliminating FEMA. What voters think now depends on which voter you meet. Outside Spruce Pine, we met Alex Glover, who had his grandson in his arms.
How old are you, buddy?
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: [inaudible]
ALEX GLOVER: Yeah? He's about 20 months.
INSKEEP: Glover's yard is on a hilltop with a view of mountains so high the area is named Little Switzerland.
These are so beautiful.
GLOVER: All of those peaks are above 6,000 feet, and Mount Mitchell's right behind this tree at 6,684.
INSKEEP: Glover is a geologist and says the landscape determined the damage from Helene.
I'm thinking you guys were OK at this altitude, but...
GLOVER: Well, no. We weren't.
INSKEEP: Really?
GLOVER: We were hammered because of the wind. We had 100-mile-an-hour-plus winds here.
INSKEEP: Amazing.
GLOVER: And we couldn't leave for two weeks. Every road was blocked. We had some big landslides here, and our whole road down here washed away. What generated the power of this storm is not getting better. It's getting worse.
INSKEEP: Climate change.
GLOVER: Climate change.
INSKEEP: How did people here feel about the federal response to the disaster?
GLOVER: Mostly negatives.
INSKEEP: Have people been any happier with the Trump administration response?
GLOVER: No. You don't really see a difference.
INSKEEP: In the early days, rescuers in helicopters saved lives. But the cleanup and rebuilding came slowly. Glover only recently got debris removed from the end of his driveway.
People are not too happy with Trump, really, in terms of the storm response, or is that broader?
GLOVER: I - well, I think they blame it more on FEMA.
INSKEEP: OK.
GLOVER: This area is conservative and...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
GLOVER: Trump-supporting, but I don't know if they really tune that FEMA relationship to Trump.
INSKEEP: Glover knows the president oversees FEMA, but other issues matter to him too. He's voting for Michael Whatley, the North Carolina Republican Senate candidate who was Trump's recovery czar.
GLOVER: Whatley, I think, is more in tune with the mountains.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: We continued west from Little Switzerland to the tiny town of Marshall, where we heard live music in a dive bar - once flooded, now reopened. Across the street is the local arts center, where we met Brandon Johnson.
BRANDON JOHNSON: We had 6 feet, 3 inches of water in here.
INSKEEP: They've now cleaned the mud off the old hardwood floor. You can smell the fresh finish. This was among the few buildings with flood insurance, and it got a loan from the Federal Small Business Administration. It applied for a FEMA grant that, two years later, has not quite arrived. Johnson says he's been through five or six case managers.
JOHNSON: Our budget for this project - we didn't even include FEMA. It was hard to really know what you could stand on.
INSKEEP: How do you feel about the direction of the country right now?
JOHNSON: (Laughter) I'm hopeful that some things will change over the next month.
INSKEEP: He's a Democrat who favors the Democratic Senate candidate, Roy Cooper. I mentioned to Johnson what we'd heard up the road - that some conservatives blame FEMA for its response, but not Trump.
You're smiling as I say that.
JOHNSON: Well, I know that I was talking with my FEMA case manager as the acting head of FEMA had just been fired and the new one was brought in. I mean, you need consistency when you're working with people who've been through what we've been through here, and that wasn't there.
INSKEEP: People in Western North Carolina want you to know they are back in business and that they've been through a lot. Our road trip ended in the city of Asheville, where Madison Maxwell told us that her home was destroyed in 2024 by a falling tree. She and her husband just moved into a new house.
Oh, congratulations.
MADISON MAXWELL: Thank you. But the cost of my rebuild tripled my mortgage.
INSKEEP: Which she is trying to pay off by continuing her work as a piano teacher.
MAXWELL: Yeah. This piano has survived now three floods in Western North Carolina, starting with Helene.
INSKEEP: So we asked her to play some music that suggested how she feels.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTÍNEZ: So, Steve, you mentioned that Helene happened a little over two years ago. But sounds like it's still a real factor in North Carolina's congressional races. Oh, definitely. The Democrat is ahead for the Senate, Roy Cooper. And there's an open House seat in the North Carolina mountains, which normally would be safely Republican. But the incumbent resigned in a scandal, and it's seen as a toss-up, all of which may explain why Vice President Vance came to North Carolina just yesterday to promise more money for Helene recovery.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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