00:00yeah
00:16helene was absolutely devastating it's just hard for people to understand the scope of it the
00:23breadth of it from essentially the georgia line to the virginia line in about eight counties wide
00:29the people out west have been nothing short of inspiring the way that they have stepped up for
00:37each other has been moving the non-profits that were immediately on the ground i was in yanceyville
00:44no i was sorry yancey county with baptists on mission helping them very poorly hang sheetrock
00:52and and a teacher's home but the homeowner didn't begrudge me um so the relief has been amazing in
01:01terms of what people have been doing for each other what we have to ensure is that our state
01:05government and federal government rise to the same level of those neighbors helping neighbors
01:11so i consider that my my job i've worked in partnership with the general assembly in fact
01:17uh represent uh johnson is on the um uh hurricane helene advisory council that i formed to make
01:24sure that we are well informed about our priorities as we go to the legislature and the legislature has
01:30made two appropriations totaling in excess of a billion dollars it is not everything that i've
01:34asked for but it's meaningful and so our obligation is to put those funds back into the community as
01:41effectively and quickly as we can and that's what we're doing we just completed the first house
01:48in our hud cdbg dr a lot of acronyms that's a federal program for housing reconstruction after a
01:54storm we were the first state to get our plan submitted the first state to have our plan approved
01:59the first state affected by helene to have finished a home in fact no state has moved faster than north
02:06carolina and more than a decade after a major hurricane so folks are working incredibly hard
02:11this is a marathon the work will not be done in 2025 it will not be done in 2026 i'm sad to say it
02:19probably won't be done in 2027 but what we have to be is committed to the long-term economic recovery
02:26the point i want people of north carolina to know is that western north carolina truly is open for
02:32business that does not mean that every business is open but every community has businesses that are
02:39open and have their doors wide open welcoming in customers many of whom are tourists it's a very
02:45tourist dependent economy and so if folks have the opportunity this fall to go look at some leaves
02:51you'll be encounter incredible beauty but at the same time you will be doing something concrete
02:57that helps western north carolina to get back on its feet so we've got a long way to go
03:02but we're making progress
03:04well i think we are going as fast as you can when you're dealing with a massive federal bureaucracy
03:27we had our plan finished probably in february but the federal government had not even issued
03:33the guidance for what the plan had to include so once that came out we had to modify it we submitted
03:40it as quickly as we possibly could and then it takes some time for the federal government to approve
03:45the plan then we had to negotiate the contract and then they had to give us the first phase of funding
03:53so i completely sympathize that things are not moving as fast as what people want as what people
04:00frankly deserve but we're moving as fast as we possibly can i do want to commend the many non-profit
04:07partners who are out there habitat baptist on mission samaritan's purse there are so many more that i'm not even
04:15including that they have been out there for months doing incredible work and the fact is is they cannot
04:23get all of the work done themselves the non-profit sector is critical neighbors helping neighbors is
04:29critical but when you have a scale of this disaster a disaster of this scale excuse me you need the
04:34federal government to step up and frankly that has been the biggest thing that's lacking not the money that
04:40was previously appropriated we're working with the agencies the department of agriculture the department
04:45of hud the department of uh the epa those monies that were previously appropriated are working its
04:52way through the system and we are getting the monies out into the community but where we are lacking is
04:58a meaningful federal appropriation and so we need congress and we need the administration to do a
05:03supplemental disaster appropriation i have an 11 and a half billion dollar request before them today
05:09we're going to be doing work over the next couple weeks to refine that to seek more federal support
05:14which western north carolina desperately deserves and what we're asking for is not unreasonable what
05:20we want is for the federal government to care as much about western north carolina as they cared about
05:25louisiana as they cared about puerto rico as they cared about new jersey states that experienced massive
05:30storms but where the federal government provided 50 60 70 percent of the damages to help those places
05:36recover so far we're at about eight percent
