10/06/2024
I have been in and through a lot of hurricanes and seen the damage they can cause up close but I have never seen anything like western North Carolina where so many major portions of roads are simply gone, washed away. Interstate 40 normally carries a heavy load of local and other traffic heading to and from Tennessee. Major chunks of the highway are impassable, with the land that the road had been passing over, gone. I-26 is also not functional. In addition, there are dozens of small roads with bridges out and, in the backwoods mountain areas, dirt and rock roads that are washed away or covered in landslides in various places.
People are not going to be able to get to jobs, groceries and medical appointments, in addition to problems with schooling for children. This is a compound, evolving set of problems. FEMA is not equipped to address this load of disaster. In addition to everything else, it is likely going to take some sort of federal effort to get money into the hands of those who can't work and earn a living, just like what happened nationally during the worst of the pandemic. Unemployment benefits are too meager. One can only hope it doesn't take months for officials in Washington, DC, and the state capital to realize the sheer depth of the disaster.
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