Helene's winds and floodwaters were only the beginning of the disaster for many in western North Carolina, results from a new survey released shortly before the storm's two-year anniversary show.
More than two-thirds of the 300 people surveyed by the group Extreme Weather Survivors reported they know someone who is still struggling emotionally due to the storm. The result was nearly the same for whether those who answered know someone who is still struggling financially.
"The story of a disaster doesn't end when the water goes down," Amanda Rosa, Extreme Weather Survivors' director of outreach and advocacy, said on a press call this week.
Helene caused nearly $60 billion in damages and killed 107 people in North Carolina. It damaged or destroyed 73,000 homes in the state.
The storm's predecessor event reached western North Carolina on September 25, bringing six to 10 inches of rain by midnight on September 27, according to the National Weather Service. Then the remnants of the tropical storm reached the region that morning, bringing another 12 to 20 inches, with totals going higher in some places.
Recovering feels like full-time job
During a press call this week, Marshall resident Gina Heath expressed her frustration with a disaster relief system that she said never came through.
Of the 27 homes on her street, Heath said, 25 were either damaged or destroyed by floodwaters.
"No one on my street got a FEMA trailer. No one got a significant amount to completely renovate a shell of a home and make it livable again, or to build from scratch as so many neighbors needed to do," Heath said.
Instead, Heath recalled, members of the community rallied in the storm's aftermath, coming together to shovel mud out of homes and rip out drywall.
In the EWS survey, 61% of respondents said that recovering from a disaster feels like a full-time job.
But doing that work carries financial costs, not least of which was that many couldn't claim unemployment because they were so busy helping their neighbors that they weren't actively looking for a new job. That was true for Heath, a trauma support professional.
"It put our regular lives on hold to be doing that for months and months. It put people's ability to make income on hold," Heath said.
In the EWS survey released this week, 65% of respondents said they know someone who had lost a business, job or income due to the storm.
A long-term economic recovery plan released by Gov. Josh Stein and the Governor's Recovery Office for Western North Carolina this week show that the counties impacted by Helene added only 706 jobs between 2023 and 2025. If they'd grown at the same pace as the rest of the North Carolina, the report found, they would have added 15,987 jobs over that same time period.
Lingering trauma
Memories of the storm are still traumatic for many people across the region, and weather events can bring those feelings rushing back.
The EWS poll found that 70% of people in western North Carolina grow anxious or afraid when high winds or heavy rains impact the region now.
Alex Webber moved to western North Carolina after living through Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, hoping she would never have to live through another storm. It was only shortly before Helene struck that she'd thought about watching a documentary or reading a book about the 2005 hurricane.
Webber and her husband own a cafe and bicycle shop in downtown Marshall.
They lost more than $200,000 in inventory during Helene, she said, and were only able to reopen not because of government help or even private insurance. It was due to GoFundMe.
And they still owed roughly $100,000 on the equipment that was lost to the flood, money they are only able to try to recoup by reopening.
Webber said she worries about the future, particularly because she is hoping to retire in about a decade. But that depends on a business that is largely dependent on foot traffic in downtown Marshall, which she describes as struggling to come back to life around her shop.
Buildings that would have once brought foot traffic into downtown were destroyed by the flood, including city hall, the courthouse and the post office, among others.
"I don't know how it's going to work. It's worrisome. It is very worrisome, and yeah, the recovery takes years," Webber said.
Loss of trust in government
The response to Helene was quickly politicized, with the storm coming just as the 2024 election was ramping up. It quickly became caught up in a maelstrom of half-truths and rumors, all of which complicated an already difficult disaster response.
Now, two years later, 60% of western North Carolinians said they felt abandoned by the government during and after the storm. Another 58% said they no longer trust the government to respond to disasters.
Heath's family's story is indicative of where that mistrust comes from.
FEMA initially approved them for rental assistance, so they found a place that would fit their family of five that had been used as a short-term rental before the storm throttled the region's fall tourism season.
"They let us stay there. We assured them we had FEMA money coming. We did the whole process," Heath said.
Then the family was told that someone had lost the paperwork they'd filled out at FEMA's temporary office in Marshall. So they went to an office in Asheville to fill it out again, only to have it lost again.
Then they did it digitally, only to have it lost again. So they filled out the application again.
Then, Heath said, FEMA denied their claim.
"Finally, after about eight months, they said you're denied, and we didn't even feel like appealing anymore at that point," Heath said.
