CATAWBA COUNTY, N.C. — FEMA workers were in Catawba County Thursday, speaking with residents who saw damage following Hurricane Helene.
“We had trees down," Mike Caldwell, the operations manager for a housing complex, said to WCNC Charlotte as he showed where the damage was. "That house was destroyed out here. We did have trees down on the main road coming down – they were out of power for around 3 days here. If they were in that house and bedroom they would have died. The tree crushed the house."
Ricky Dellinger is just one of the residents who had to throw everything out and start over. More than a month after the storm, he said he’s excited to get help.
“Some people lost more than what I did. Like that one place – it wiped out everything, the whole town – everything. I feel sorry for those people,” he said.
FEMA representatives went door to door to sit down with residents, discuss options and register them for aid on the spot.
“We have to make sure that people understand in order to get any help from FEMA, they need to register. They may be preoccupied trying to figure out where am I going to be next week, where am I going to stay and they may not realize the registration is a key part of that,” Nate Custer, a media relations specialist with FEMA, said.
Custer said that following the hurricane, FEMA housed over 4,000 families and are now working on housing recovery programs. And still, he said the work is not done.
“The other day we had over 1,000 new registrations. We have had 250,000 registrations. We already have about $210 million out in the hands of these folks for their needs,” Custer said.
FEMA representatives noted they are encouraging anyone who saw immense damage to apply for help. You can click here for more information on how to do that.
Contact Anna King at aking2@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, X, and Instagram.