‘They ain’t helped me one bit’: Harris heading for North Carolina defeat over Hurricane Helene

For locals in towns ravaged by storm, Trump’s take on how Fema has let them down rings true

Democrats fear the damage and devastation caused by Hurricane Helene has already swung the key battleground state of North Carolina in Donald Trump’s favour.
Officials close to Kamala Harris blame what they call “rampant misinformation” for their rivals surge in support in an area where 95 people were killed, dozens more are missing and thousands of lives have been turned on their head by the storm.
“Of all of the seven [swing states], that one seems to be a little bit slipping away,” one Harris campaign official told NBC News.
Running water has only just returned to Asheville, crosses mark the doors of abandoned homes and the muddy ground is thick with debris.
While efforts are under way to clear up, the sheer scale of the destruction — and a lack of government help — makes it a slow process, locals say.
A new Telegraph poll has Trump ahead in North Carolina, with 48 per cent of people saying they would back the Republican in the upcoming presidential election.
The Democrats fear he has taken the initiative in the close-fought battle through his attacks on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) for not doing enough to support locals affected by the storm.
On a campaign stop to Swannanoa on Monday, Trump repeated what his critics have branded lies, claiming Fema had been spending its money housing migrants instead of on disaster relief.
“In the wake of this horrible storm, many Americans in this region felt helpless, abandoned and left behind by their government,” he chimed with a mud-covered scene of destruction behind him.
While those claims were not correct, criticisms levied at the agency over its budgets were not without weight. As reported by The Telegraph, it had budgeted 20-times more cash for responding to Covid last month than it spent on Hurricane Helene aid.
Official documents show that Fema set aside $4.9 billion in coronavirus aid in September, although the pandemic was officially declared over more than 12 months ago.
The figure was in contrast to the $210 million initially allocated to support victims of the tropical storm that ripped through North Carolina late last month.
Away from the spreadsheets, on the banks of the Swannanoa River, Joe is picking up the remains of his life after his home and car were sucked in by rising water as the Swannanoa swelled and broke its banks from the heavy rains brought by Helene.
All that remains of his home — which he was months away from paying off when the storm hit — is a rectangular trench in the ground lined with the grey foundation bricks and filled with sheets of twisted metal and broken branches from a nearby tree.
Joe’s small, but spirited, dog Bo was weaving around the wreckage when The Telegraph visited the devastated riverside neighbourhood minutes away from where Trump had given his speech earlier that day.
A heavy layer of silt spews from the river just feet away covering everything. The smell of embers lingers in the air from a fire that Joe and his neighbour have been using to keep warm over the cold nights.
What was once a picturesque location for cook-outs on the riverbank is now a maze of rubble, tents to store his salvaged belongings and a caravan donated by a local charity group.
Where they would once watch the water calmly drift by, a white van lay on its roof having been dragged into the river during the storm.
Joe, a machinist at a local blue-collar firm, agrees with Trump that the government has not done enough to help him.
“They ain’t helped me one bit,” he tells The Telegraph. “They don’t help the average person.”
Pointing to the pit where his home was once, he adds: “This is proof they [Biden-Harris] don’t help the average person.”
Joe says he will be voting for Trump because the Republican candidate is the only president that has “given the citizens a cheque”.
Fema said on Monday it had spent $4.3 million and deployed 4,900 personnel in its response to Helene.
But, according to Joe, all he had received from the agency was a wad of complicated paperwork that he needed to fill out to make a claim on his home and car.
The perceived lack of help from the federal government has been filled by local restaurants providing hot meals in the parking lot of a nearby supermarket and church groups delivering supplies to the few that remain on the banks of the Swannanoa.
Just as The Telegraph was visiting the area, Joe was given a propane heater, camping equipment and a portable shower by two independent aid groups.
Much of the talk is around a $750 emergency handout from Fema to buy food and other supplies if people’s homes have been affected by the storm.
“They ain’t gave me anything. They told me to get all this paperwork together and they would help me with my house 100 per cent,” Joe said.
“I’m hoping… all I’ve got right now is hope.”
His neighbour, Jim, has also not received any financial aid from Fema.
Jim was rinsing the rust-coloured dust from the white walls of his trailer after his water supply was reconnected for the first time since the storm hit.
He was lucky. There was no structural damage to his property, and some local workmen helped him prop his mobile home back up on the bricks it was knocked from.
A neighbour’s home had been picked up and deposited about five metres by the rising waters. Officials had marked it with a bright orange “X” and “0” to notify others it had been searched and no dead bodies were found.
Jim thanks God and the neighbouring property for keeping his own home largely intact.
“Fema said they would help but I haven’t got the $750, so I’m just going to do what I can do, where I can,” he says, hose pipe in one hand and a cigarette in his other.
“Fema have spent so much money overseas helping other countries, when it comes to helping their own country… I just don’t know.”
Defences of the agency made by the Biden-Harris administration have fallen on deaf ears in areas like Swannanoa.
But Trump’s rhetoric is cutting through.
About 10 miles to the west lies the City of Asheville.
Its Left-leaning residents describe the city as an oasis of Democratic blue surrounded by a sea of Republican red.
Over the years it has grown into a hub for musicians, artists, writers, chefs and craft beer brewers, and attracts huge numbers of tourists every year to experience the autumnal transition in the nearby mountains.
Its artists have a memory of natural disasters, with the “Great Flood” of 1916 remembered by painted lines to signify the water levels on some of the warehouses in the art district.
Some 80 per cent of the district’s buildings, which sit with the picturesque backdrop of the French Broad River, were damaged in the latest storm.
The city’s craft beer scene — it has more that 40 breweries that say the water from the local mountains makes the perfect beer — are shut for business.
The bars and restaurants that have managed to open are reduced to serving food on plastic plates with disposable cutlery and drinks in plastic cups because they don’t have access to water to wash their normal table settings.
What water that does run in the city leaves its taps with a brown, rusty tint at first. A lot of it comes from tankers parked on the street to distribute clean, but not drinkable, water.
Many of its service workers, who are reliant on tips from the crowds of expected tourists, have fled the town for employment elsewhere.
Bars and restaurants that have managed to open rely on the goodwill of donations on fundraising websites to support their staff.
The damage and the complaints about Fema weigh heavy on the minds of Democrats as they place their early votes ahead of election day next month.
Joe Biden beat Trump by more than 30,000 votes to win Asheville’s Buncombe County in 2020 but the Republican managed to capture North Carolina, a key battleground state, 49.93 per cent to 48.59 per cent.
The state has been won by the Republicans in 12 of the last 14 presidential races, but, before the storm, there had been hope of a turnaround.
Jonathan Rhoden, who has owned a record shop in the town for 22 years, can see why people might reconsider their vote because of the government’s and Fema’s response to the storm.
He still hasn’t received the $750 hand out, and estimates there is as much as $10,000 in damage around his property in the hills above Asheville.
“But why the hell would I vote for Trump?” he asks.
Mike Hahn, a retired police officer, who was voting early at East Asheville Public Library, said: “Sure, you can go out there and you can find people who have issues. But from what I’ve seen, you couldn’t ask better [from Fema].
“I don’t think after a disaster, people are sitting there thinking 100 per cent straight.”
Karen Campbell, a retiree, also cast her vote for Harris but was resigned to a Trump victory upon leaving the polling station.
“It worries me a lot because I think he’s going to win,” she says of the discourse surrounding Fema.
“This country is completely… I’ve just decided that the people in this country are crazy, stupid and uninformed and I’m extremely frustrated.”
For the Harris supporters, the storm was mostly an inconvenience for them
Back on the Swannanoa River, Joe casts the election as a “them versus us” scenario.
“But that’s just how it is for us,” he says with a resigned sigh.