“We cannot accept this. This has been way too slow. We have got to do better,” Avery County County Manager Phillip Barrier told WCNC Charlotte.
HICKORY, N.C. — As almost 80 FEMA trailers sit behind a guarded fence in Hickory, at least eight western North Carolina families displaced by Hurricane Helene continue to wonder when their temporary houses will arrive.
“We cannot accept this. This has been way too slow. We have got to do better,” frustrated Avery County County Manager Phillip Barrier told WCNC Charlotte Friday morning. “I hear about them being deployed every day. They’re just not deployed to Avery County.”
Barrier said 10 families in his community need trailers, yet almost four months after the historic hurricane devastated western North Carolina, FEMA has only delivered two to Avery County. Barrier said he and county leaders are doing all they can on their end, but need the federal government to do more.
“We got to get the victim in the home and logistically it, it has been tough. The weather has not cooperated at all, but that can’t be an excuse,” he said. “(It’s) unacceptable. We got to make sure Congress hears this and FEMA hears this. We have got to be better prepared as the United States government. We have got to be better prepared for this emergency housing. “
Barrier said as those families remain temporarily housed in hotels, FEMA has spent two weeks looking at a possible site where the agency could place several trailers. In addition to delays caused by weather and permitting requirements, finding accessible locations continues to prove challenging.
“Logistically, this is a very hard place to come and place a temporary shelter for water and sewer purposes and the layout of the land. We’re in the mountains. We’re not flat,” Barrier said. “We’ve tried to work with area campgrounds and other places, but none of that has worked out yet.”
Barrier said other survivors have remained in donated campers with limited heating capabilities. He said no flood victims in Avery County are living in tents. However, Barrier knows some survivors are living in campers provided by volunteers that don’t have the same heating capabilities and insulation as FEMA’s trailers.
The trailers, an hour-and-a-half away in Hickory, continue to baffle people who live and work near the FEMA staging area.
“Taxes hard at work,” Aydan Lingerfelt, whose mom has delivered supplies to western North Carolina, said. “I wonder why they’re sitting here and not with a family that needs it.”
A viewer emailed WCNC Charlotte a picture of the trailers. She noted they’d remained at the site since November and like Lingerfelt, wondered when FEMA would deliver them to western North Carolina.
Through a spokesperson, FEMA said the federal agency has placed 140 households in temporary units, has 49 trailers in Helene-impacted counties right now the government is in the process of installing and has active work orders for another 18 trailers that FEMA’s scheduling for delivery to a combination of private and commercial sites.
“Challenges such as weather conditions, such as the recent snowfall, can delay our work temporarily, and meeting each county’s permitting requirements can also take time,” FEMA said in a statement. “As we continue to house survivors, we are reviewing additional commercial parks for contracting, as well as inspecting more of our applicants’ private properties for possible unit placements.”
FEMA reports it has partnered with 18 commercial parks for the placement of trailers and is working with 15 others.
A FEMA spokesperson said not every household impacted by Helene will need a trailer in the end, since some survivors are living with family members, are housed in apartments or are temporarily living in short-term rentals. The agency has stocked up at the staging area with trailers brought in from Alabama and Maryland to be over-prepared. As WCNC Charlotte previously reported, FEMA trailers are the most well-known, but not the most common form of housing assistance after a storm.
“The population of households eligible for Direct Temporary Housing Assistance changes daily,” the agency added in its statement. “As such, we have units at the staging yard in North Carolina so that they are readily available as the needs of FEMA’s housing mission requires.”
President Donald Trump, who has remained critical of FEMA’s response to Helene, called the agency “bureaucratic and slow” during his visit to western North Carolina Friday and said he’s considering eliminating FEMA. Trump suggested his administration would pay states directly for their work and cut out the federal agency that “complicates” recovery.
“We’d pay a percentage to the state, but the state should fix this,” Trump said. “If the state did this from the beginning, it would have been a lot better situation.”
Barrier said that while he’s unsure of the solution, the problem exposed by this storm must be addressed.
“We need the boss to say, ‘This is how we’re going to do this,'” Barrier said. “We got to be better and ready for the next storm. I don’t want any county or any victim of any storm to ever go through this; to have to wait four months before you’re in some kind of temporary sheltering so you can put your life back.”
Despite repeated requests for a formal interview throughout the week, FEMA did not provide access to a spokesperson who could answer WCNC Charlotte’s questions on camera.
Contact Nate Morabito at nmorabito@wcnc.com and follow him on Facebook, X and Instagram.
