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The deadly apocalypse unfolding in the mountains of western North Carolina has propelled Hurricane Helene into the history books. Her new title? Costliest hurricane ever.
On Thursday afternoon (October 3, 2024), AccuWeather published its latest estimate on the estimated damages associated with the storm. Our audience will recall the first estimate – published on September 28 – came in at $95-110 billion. Two days later, the service updated the estimate to $145-165 billion.
The latest estimate? A staggering $225-$250 billion… which would make Helene the costliest storm in America history even after adjusting for inflation.
“Helene brought historic devastation and has tragically changed lives forever,” AccuWeather’s chief meteorologist Jon Porter said. “The level of human suffering, the rising death toll and the tremendous damage to people’s homes and businesses, as well as to critical infrastructure, from telecommunications to roads and highways and water supplies has been overwhelming. Helene was a truly historic storm.”
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AccuWeather noted its updated estimate included “the projected costs of repairing or completely rebuilding infrastructure, including power substations and water treatment plants that were destroyed.”
“Interstate 40 is not just impassable in some places, but the highway has been destroyed in some places,” the estimate noted. “Interstate 26 is impassable in some places. The electric grid in some places does not exist anymore. It will take not just months but years to recover, if they ever rebuild.”
The updated estimate also “includes new reports on damage, loss and disruptions caused by storm surge, flooding rainfall and wind damage in Florida and Georgia.”
As stark as these monetary numbers are, they represent but one facet of the unfolding humanitarian crisis.
People are dying in Appalachia… perhaps by the hundreds. Which means Hurricane Helene could soon have a far more ominous designation: Deadliest hurricane ever.
As of this writing, there are 202 confirmed fatalities associated with the storm – most of them in the mountains of North Carolina. That toll is expected to soar, however, in the days, weeks and months to come as rescuers fight to gain – and maintain – access to remote areas decimated by unprecedented mountain flooding.
Helene could conceivably overtake Hurricane Katrina as the deadliest storm in modern American history. Katrina killed more than 1,200 people when it slammed into New Orleans in 2005.
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While damage estimates and the death toll associated with Helene continued to climb, the federal government continued to struggle in responding to the catastrophe. U.S. Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Wednesday the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) lacked sufficient funding to do its job – especially in the event another storm were to make landfall.
One possible reason? The hundreds of millions of dollars Mayorkas’ agency has spent on the influx of illegal aliens pouring across our nation’s unsecured southern border. At least $640 million has been appropriated this year under Homeland Security’s Shelter and Services Program (SSP) to communities which accept illegal aliens. Last year, $780 million was appropriated under the auspices of SSP.
This money is but a fraction of the total tab associated with the immigrant influx. As our media outlet recently noted, a report (.pdf) published by the U.S. House’s homeland security committee last November determined the annual cost of housing and providing for “known got-aways and illegal aliens who have been released into the country (since Biden became president)” is a staggering $451 billion. Per year.
Would be nice to apply those resources to Appalachia right now, wouldn’t it?
“This is easy,” Texas governor Greg Abbott wrote on X. “Mayorkas and FEMA — immediately stop spending money on illegal immigration resettlement and redirect those funds to areas hit by the hurricane. Put Americans first.”
Count on our media outlet to continue tracking these storms, the damage they do, how we respond to them and the politics associated with those responses…
BANNER VIA: YANCEY COUNTY SHERIFF
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Will Folks is the owner and founding editor of FITSNews. Prior to founding his own news outlet, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina, bass guitarist in an alternative rock band and bouncer at a Columbia, S.C. dive bar. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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7 comments
Typical racist fear mongering from Fits “News”. Where is your reporting on republicans including your darling Nancy Mace voting against additional FEMA funding? Or the recent news that Trump had to be convinced by voter maps to provide aid when he was president? The bottom line is Will Folks is a disgusting person, just like the politicians he supports.
Typical racist fear mongering …Will Folks is a disgusting person, just like the politicians he supports.” and yet, here you are reading his stuff.
As a liberal living in a state dominated by conservative politics, I am interested in what their media is feeding them. Thank you for your concern though, we should all be so thoughtful of anyone willing to read this garbage (but hey, at least I don’t pay for it!).
Ah, the old marxist- commie clueless knee-kerk trope: “IT’S RASCIST!!” They pitch that out whenever their shit-for-brains policies or governance fail in epic fashion and shows all the world that they are woefully incompetent and bankrupt of rational, workable, real-world ideas. The Trump campaign needs to wrap this albatross of woke anti-American failure around their neck and tie it up in a bow: life-long and generational American citizens, plus the newly arrived citizens that followed the law to join us, ARE NOT a priority of the Democrat party when compared to the boarder jumping illegals. Just like the US citizens in Maui after the fires got screwed by FEMA and DHS with completely insulting financial support while Ukraine got billions- in not only military support, but funds to prop up their pension systems and rebuild their war-torn communities. This is going to be a repeat of that insult, but only on a much, much larger scale.
We’ve reached the point in the Trump/Vance campaign where literally every problem is being blamed on immigrants. Can’t afford a house? Immigrants took it. FEMA doesn’t have sufficient funding? Immigrants. Your cat went missing? Immigrants.
If Will were serious about FEMA not having enough funding, he would question the politicians he supports who voted against funding it. The reality is, they don’t care. They just want another issue to blame on immigrants. And if it walks like a racist duck and talks like a racist duck, it’s probably a racist duck.
Trump just this afternoon: “A lot of the money that was supposed to go to Georgia and North Carolina and all the others has gone for people that came into the country illegally.” This is a complete lie told for the purpose of demonizing immigrants. What do you call that besides racism? Well, I suppose “white nationalism” fits, too.
Based on the numbers contained in this article, the money FEMA has allegedly spent on immigrants is significantly less than 1% of the money needed to clean up the hurricane.
The “immigrants caused all our problems” is a relatively new theme invented by Republicans losing a grasp on real Americans. I suspect if you did some actual reporting on where money is spent by government and the nuances of how all those dollars are interconnected, you would help to educate a lot of readers. But I also suspect that is neither your goal nor involves your target audience.