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Are FEMA trailers coming? Status of the Blue Ridge Parkway through Asheville? Where is the Concert for Carolina money going? • Asheville Watchdog

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avlwatchdog.org – JOHN BOYLE – 2024-11-08 06:00:00

Today’s round of questions, my smart-aleck replies and the real answers:

Question: Any idea why FEMA trailers are not here, and people are still living in tents?

My answer: I don’t know about you, but I was 100 percent expecting to see hundreds of these trailers being flown in beneath the ubiquitous Chinook helicopters we kept seeing after the flood. Disappointing.

Real answer: The first FEMA trailer was set to arrive in Buncombe this week, according to Buncombe County Manager Avril Pinder, who addressed the topic at the daily Helene briefing on Thursday.

I’ve been checking with FEMA this week, and I can say the tent situation might be more complicated than you think. More on that in a minute, but let’s get to Pinder’s details offered Thursday.

“Right now we’re siting our first one,” Pinder said. “We’re working through the permitting process, and we have a homeowner who has land that is not in the floodway (where) we can place that house. So this is the first one that we’re working on getting placed this week.”

Pinder said FEMA has three more homes that have been manufactured and are on their way to Buncombe.

“So hopefully by the end of the next week, we will total out four homes that are now sited in Buncombe County,” Pinder said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will begin delivering emergency housing trailers to Buncombe County this week. These trailers are being staged in Hickory. // Photo courtesy FEMA

FEMA external affairs officer John Mills told me Wednesday that the FEMA homes are being staged in Hickory and that some would be arriving this week in Buncombe County.

“I think they are trying to begin helping survivors who are eligible for these temporary units to begin moving in this month, and even as soon as, I think, this week,” Mills said Wednesday.

Mills said he expects the number of these homes coming into the mountains to number “in the hundreds rather than the thousands, across western North Carolina.”

In the case of disasters like Helene, FEMA provides funds for families to help with housing, and that can include an array of choices to secure shelter.

“That can mean making repairs,” Mills said. “It can mean renting a new place to live or buying a new place to live with the money that FEMA is providing.”

Mills said the FEMA assistance is “designed to jump start someone’s recovery to give them a hand up to begin the recovery process.”

It will take the whole community, including charities and nonprofits, as well as private donations for people who’ve lost everything, to make sure everyone is housed.

As far as folks living in tents, multiple reasons could come into play. Some people have concerns about the security of their homes and want to be near the property. Some may want to use the FEMA funds for rebuilding and not spend it on hotels or other lodging. 

Mills noted that survivors are not required to apply for FEMA disaster assistance, although the agency certainly encourages them to do so.

“We are committed to working with every household, every survivor, on a case by case basis,” Mills said. “And if someone is living in an unsafe situation, we encourage them to get in touch with us and let us know what their needs are, and we may be able to provide financial assistance so that someone can get the place to live temporarily. And we may also be able to make someone eligible to stay in a hotel at no cost, and we pay the hotel directly.”

Pinder explained that FEMA has a “Mass Care Team” that has been working individually with “every single person in the shelter to help address what specific needs they have.” As far as the people remaining in county shelters — 164 people as of Thursday — Pinder said the majority of them were previously unhoused.

“So they don’t have a home to go back to, or land that FEMA can help them to put a mobile home or travel trailer on that site at the moment,” Pinder said. “So we’re working through, ‘How do we address that population in our community?’”

Question: When we moved to Asheville in 2006, we lived just 1.2 miles off the Blue Ridge Parkway entrance on Old Charlotte Highway. I would drive what is called “The Commuter Route” every day going to work and coming home — going to work to help set my mind for the day and after work as a reward. I miss those days. As we are seeing portions of the BRP opening, what exactly is the damage from Hendersonville Road to Old Charlotte Highway; Old Charlotte Highway to Tunnel Road; and back at Hendersonville Road to Brevard Road? I dare say, these were the three most traveled routes inside Asheville.

My answer: For the life of me, I cannot understand why the nickname, “The BRP,” never caught on for the Parkway. I mean, you could actually say it, or burp it out. Person one: “What are you doing today?” Person two: “I’m just going up and driving the BRRRRRRPPPPP!” It’s genius.

Real answer: As fate would have it, the National Park Service issued a press release Nov. 6 on this very topic, noting that it had restored access to 11 miles of the Parkway within the Asheville corridor. The reopening spans from milepost 382.5, at U.S. 70 near the Folk Art Center, to milepost 393.6, at N.C. Route 191 near the North Carolina Arboretum, including the French Broad Overlook at milepost 393.8.

“With today’s opening, we have now restored access to over 310 miles of the Parkway,” Blue Ridge Parkway Superintendent Tracy Swartout said in the release. “Incident teams and contractors have been working on this section for over a month, with large numbers of damaged trees, vast amounts of tree debris in the roadway, and heavy equipment at work simultaneously throughout the corridor.”

The Parkway spans 469 miles from Virginia through North Carolina.

The Asheville Visitor Center (milepost 384) has resumed year-round operations daily from 9 a.m.  to 4:30 p.m. The Folk Art Center (milepost 382) will resume operations on Saturday, Nov. 9. 

The Park Service said trails in this section of the Parkway are open “but extreme caution is advised for trail users who may experience hazards resulting from landslides, downed or leaning trees, washouts, and other damage.”

Also, don’t park on the roadside in any location other than official, paved parking areas, as heavy equipment is still active in the area.

Helene left an enormous amount of debris and washouts on the parkway, including the Asheville section.

“Since storm recovery began, National Park Service staff and contractors have moved more than 350,000 cubic feet of storm debris from this 11-mile road segment,” the release states. “This volume of woody debris could fill  nearly 150 shipping containers.”

The Park Service does not have projected opening dates for areas of the Parkway immediately north and south of the 11-mile road segment that opened Wednesday.

“Ongoing roadway and roadside damage evaluations, significant debris removal, and miles of technical hazard tree work remain north of U.S. 70 and south of State Route 191,” the release states. “The NPS will provide updates on those sections when additional information is available.”

Question: Like so many people, I am curious about how Explore Asheville will work with organizations that benefited from the Charlotte Concert for Carolina, which raised nearly $25 million. Is there some form of accountability to ensure that money is spent wisely and that it helps businesses, families, and individuals in need in our communities?

My answer: I’m pulling for it to go toward building more hotels.

Real answer: “All proceeds — estimated at more than $24.5 million — from Concert for Carolina are being split 50/50 between Luke Combs and Eric Church to administer to organizations of their choosing in support of relief efforts across the Carolinas and the Southeast,” Ashley Greenstein, spokesperson for Explore Asheville, said via email. “Combs’ portion is being distributed between Samaritan’s Purse, Manna Food Bank and Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC and Eblen Charities.”

Greenstein said Explore Asheville paid its $1 million sponsorship directly to the concert to then be split equally between these four charities.

“Church’s portion will be directed to his Chief Cares Foundation,” Greenstein said. “Church’s Chief Cares is focused on helping established charities and organizations that are well-managed and organized and capable of swiftly delivering aid directly to the families affected by Hurricane Helene. In a video aired during the concert, Church committed to building 100 homes in Avery County.”

Update on the Always Asheville Fund: Last week I fielded a question about the Explore Asheville Always Asheville Fund, which the organization started to help small independent travel and hospitality businesses throughout Asheville and Buncombe County recover from Helene. A reader had asked why it was taking so long for Explore Asheville to field an application for the grants.

Greenstein’s explanation came in after the deadline, so I’m publishing it now.

She said Explore Asheville announced the new fund on Oct. 7, seeding it with $300,000 from their earned revenue budget.

“Through multiple fundraising efforts, we were able to grow the fund to $770,000 and counting within three weeks,” Greenstein said. “The Always Asheville fund application opened 3.5 weeks after it was announced. on Oct. 31, and is one of the few grant programs currently available for small, independent businesses.”

Explore Asheville is also administering the fund “through an abbreviated process, with the goal of beginning award disbursements before Thanksgiving.”

“We know it’s overwhelming for many businesses to navigate recovery, so we also created a list of available financial resources for businesses and individuals, which we shared in our board meeting last week and can be found at https://always.exploreasheville.com/business-resources,” Greenstein said.

Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Got a question? Send it to John Boyle at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org or 828-337-0941. His Answer Man columns appear each Tuesday and Friday. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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At least 3 of 43 fatalities in Buncombe were unhoused people • Asheville Watchdog

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3 hours ago

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November 21, 2024

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avlwatchdog.org – JOHN BOYLE and SALLY KESTIN – 2024-11-21 06:00:00

Asheville Watchdog is bringing you the stories behind the staggering loss of life from Helene, the children, parents, grandparents, multiple generations of a single family, all gone in one of the worst natural disasters to hit the mountains of western North Carolina. This is the seventh installment.

Buncombe County’s homeless advocates feared the worst: Helene would be deadly for the dozens of unhoused people living along the banks of rivers and streams that turned into raging floodwaters.

“We thought that the death toll just in this population was going to be up in the 20s, 30s, just because of how many people camp on the rivers,” said Alanna Kinsella, homeless services director at Homeward Bound.

Read previous installments of The Lives We Lost.

Asheville Watchdog has identified three unhoused people of the 43 who perished in Buncombe from the Sept. 27 tropical storm: Jody Henderson, an Air Force veteran described by his sister as extremely loving, Calvin “Michael” McMahan, who liked to travel and preach to people he met, and Lisa Plemmons, a cook at an Asheville nursing home who was living in her car and had been featured in a previous installment of The Lives We Lost.

About five unhoused people remain unaccounted for, Kinsella said.

“Did they leave town before? Do we have their legal name? It’s really hard to know,” she said. “It could only be one or two people that are really actually missing.”

The toll on Asheville’s homeless community turned out to be lower than feared. The Asheville-Buncombe Homeless Coalition called a Code Purple beginning the morning of Sept. 26, opening shelter space for anyone who needed it and providing free bus transportation.

Teams that included community paramedics and outreach workers visited homeless encampments to warn people near water and urge them to seek shelter. Advocates were also able to spread the word about Code Purple early because of the persistent rains ahead of the storm.

At AHOPE, a day shelter run by Homeward Bound, “so many people were coming in here at that time because people needed to get dry, they needed to get supplies,” Kinsella said. “We were really able to disseminate that information really quickly.”

Many went to shelters, “and a lot of our campers really moved into the core of town,” Kinsella said.

In the weeks after the storm, advocates have been attempting to account for everyone. Asheville’s 2024 Point-In-Time count identified 739 people without housing, most in emergency shelters or transitional housing, but 219 were camping, sleeping in cars or on the street.  

The task has been difficult because some homeless people were known only by aliases or street names.

“It really took an entire community of us to come together and say, ‘Okay, I know that person’s legal name,’ or ‘I only know them by this,’“ Kinsella said. “It was a lot of really having to piece things together.

“It may be a while before we know the full scope of who all from our community, of people experiencing homelessness, have been lost.”

Here are two of their stories.

Jody Henderson

Jody Henderson’s life never was easy, but he “was one of the most loving people you would ever meet,” said his sister, Kathy Henderson Cook.

Her younger brother struggled with bipolar disorder and was often homeless and unable to work. Henderson had a high IQ and was good looking, she said, but the disease kept him hamstrung for most of his adult life.

“He had so much going for him, but he just couldn’t put that grasp on things and just stay with it,” Cook said. “He would float off, and then he would just get kind of loopy.”

Henderson, 63, died Sept. 27, swept away by Helene’s floodwaters, according to his death certificate. 

He had been staying at the Veterans Restoration Quarters on Tunnel Road in East Asheville, but Cook said he’d spent a couple of weeks at the VA hospital for mental health treatment.

On the day before Helene, Henderson was on a “weekend pass” from the VRQ and rented a cabin along the Swannanoa River at the KOA Campground. He needed a space that would accept dogs, as he didn’t want to go somewhere without his beloved mutt and emotional support dog, Bullet.

Cook said that on Sept. 27, as the river breached its banks and the water rose, her brother was standing on top of the cabin. An evacuation team had just arrived. As he often did when his situation was dire, Henderson called his sister.

“He called me at 9:17,” Cook said. 

Their conversation was short.

“He said, ‘Sis, I love you. The evac team just arrived. I’ll call you,’” Cook said. “He hung up, and he was gone.”

A witness at the campground said “it was around 10 o’clock when the building collapsed and everything went crazy,” Cook said.

Jody Nyle Henderson grew up with Cook in Chesnee, South Carolina, and had lived in California, Utah, Nevada, North Carolina and Texas before returning to Chesnee in 2018,  according to his obituary. He attended Chesnee High School and Spartanburg Community College before joining the U.S. Air Force.

He is survived by three children, Cook and another sister, Kristi Henderson Walker. A brother, Michael Kenneth Henderson, died previously.

Jody Henderson’s emotional support dog, Bullet, survived Helene’s flooding and is now living with a friend in Maryland. // Courtesy of Kathy Henderson Cook

“His final days were in a log cabin with his beloved dog Bullet by the Swannanoa River with a view of God’s beautiful creation surrounding him as he made new friends,” his obituary states. “Bullet was adopted by one of those new friends, Chelsea of Maryland, who rescued Bullet from the flooding.”

Cook said her brother easily made friends, including Chelsea, whom he met at the campground. She did not want her last name published. 

“He’d never met her. Didn’t know her, but of course, you know — two hours with Jody — best friends,” Cook said.

Cook, who called her brother “Bo,” said his death has been difficult, and she still has “moments where I tend to struggle with emotional issues.

“But as a whole, I know this was a blessing from God,” Cook said, explaining that she always worried about her brother, especially when he stopped his medications and was unhoused. 

He would end up in need and then call to come stay with her, she said.

“He would do anything for me — he just didn’t have the ability to fight the disease,” Cook said. “And I don’t hold that against him.”

She noted that her brother suffered from “tall tale syndrome,” exaggerating facts or making up stories.

She and her sister take comfort knowing that Henderson went out with a story that would normally be hard to believe, one involving a historic storm that showed immense power and swept away entire buildings. 

They’ve also taken comfort in the outpouring of support from the community, from churches to governmental agencies.

“It was a blessing to have to lose somebody and be as fortunate as we are in a community like we live in, to have people come together,” Cook said.

– John Boyle, Asheville Watchdog

Calvin “Michael” McMahan

Calvin McMahan’s sister feared the worst after Helene when she did not hear from the big brother who never went more than a few weeks without checking in.

Calvin “Michael” McMahan liked traveling to different places and preaching to the people he met. // Courtesy of Pamela Douthit

The last she knew, McMahan, who went by his middle name, Michael, had been in Asheville, said Pamela Douthit of Bryson City. “I was wondering where he was, hoping he was okay, worried to death,” she said.

Douthit said police told the family that McMahan had drowned in the storm. His body was found Sept. 30 on Glendale Avenue along the Swannanoa River in one of the areas hardest hit by flooding.

The official cause of death was “landslide injuries,” according to his death certificate.

McMahan, 63, was the oldest of 10 children and had been unhoused for the past 15 to 20 years, his sister said.

Michael McMahan, far right, was the oldest of 10 children. Eight of the McMahan siblings are pictured in this family photo with their mother, Mildred, front. // Courtesy of Pamela Douthit

“He lived everywhere,” she said. “He had property here in Swain County, but he wanted to travel. He wanted to visit different places, so he decided being homeless was his choice.”

McMahan liked to preach to the people he met. “He testified to people,” Douthit said. “He talked about God and how free we are and how thankful we are.”

McMahan visited his sister and her husband in Bryson City from time to time and would stay for a couple of weeks. “He said he had to do God’s work, so he went on out down the road,” she said.

McMahan had been staying under a bridge near the Swannanoa. His sister said he frequented homeless shelters in bad weather and must not have known about the dangerous flooding predicted in Helene.

Michael McMahan, right, as a child with his sisters, Pamela, middle, and Kathy. // Courtesy of Pamela Douthit

“I guess it just snuck up on him. He was asleep or something,” she said. “I hate that he had to go the way he did.” 

McMahan had a son and a daughter in Florida, she said. He had been a house painter and loved the guitar, though he did not know how to play.

“Like anyone else, he made mistakes, but he tried to do the best he could do for other people,” Douthit said.

McMahan had “some trouble with the law…He changed his life, and he started working for the Lord and doing what the Lord said to do. I was proud of that,” his sister said.

“I loved him. He was a good person,” she said. “He will be missed.”

– Sally Kestin, Asheville Watchdog

Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. Sally Kestin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. Email skestin@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s local reporting during this crisis is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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Worries arise that loan to Saint Augustine's University could threaten school's future

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November 20, 2024

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www.youtube.com – ABC11 – 2024-11-20 17:21:21


SUMMARY: St. Augustine’s University faces significant financial struggles, with millions in debt raising alarms among community members regarding its partnership with Gothic Ventures. Concerns center on the 24% interest loan agreement, which includes a 2% management fee and collateralizes campus properties. Critics fear that failure to repay could lead to the university’s closure. Gothic Ventures, noting the university’s financial challenges, expressed a willingness to discuss modifying the loan terms. Opponents demand changes like lowering the interest rate to 9% or enabling debt transfer to alleviate the strain on the historically Black college and secure its future.

A group of leaders are worried about a $7 million loan given to Saint Augustine’s University. The group includes religious leaders, social justice advocates and SAU alumni. Together, they spent Wednesday raising awareness about the loan and pushing for a solution to the school’s financial challenges.

Story: https://abc11.com/post/saint-augustines-university-despite-financial-accreditation-struggles-leaders-join-forces-push-save-hbcu/15563919/
Watch: https://abc11.com/watch/live/11065013/
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Jurisdiction on 6 complaints split between state, counties | North Carolina

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17 hours ago

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November 20, 2024

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www.thecentersquare.com – By Elyse Apel | The Center Square – 2024-11-20 16:09:00

SUMMARY: The North Carolina State Board of Elections divided six Republican complaints concerning election integrity between itself and county boards. The disputes include issues with voting registration, overseas ballots, and allegations of felons voting, particularly in the close state Supreme Court race between Republican Jefferson Griffin and Democrat Allison Riggs. Griffin initially led by 9,851 votes but trailed by 722 votes post-election. The board reached a compromise to share jurisdiction, aiming to protect election integrity. Additionally, several recount requests from Republican candidates in legislative races are pending, with deadlines for legal briefs approaching.

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The post Jurisdiction on 6 complaints split between state, counties | North Carolina appeared first on www.thecentersquare.com

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