By Michael Bitzer
In North Carolina, many western counties are still rebuilding and trying to get their lives back to 'normalcy' following the devastation of the September 2024 path of Hurricane Helene through many of the mountain communities.
On January 24, 2025, just days after being sworn into office, President Trump visited the NC mountains and said “I’ll be taking strong action to get North Carolina the support that you need to quickly recover and rebuild. We’re working on it very hard…” (see 7:48 of this video of the press conference).
However, a federal decision not to fully reimburse the recovery efforts has garnered wide-spread attention. A note: FEMA's decision was not to fully fund recovery efforts by the federal government at 100 percent, but rather continue funding at 90 percent.
Nine months after Helene's impact, the June 2025 Catawba-YouGov survey asked 1,000 North Carolinians the following:
"Do you approve or disapprove of FEMA’s decision to not extend 100%, but instead provide 90%, of federal matching reimbursement for North Carolina’s spending on Hurricane Helene debris removal and emergency protective measures for western North Carolina?"
