As North Carolina recovers, debate over how to rebuild for the future

CHARLOTTE — Like much of the country, Kim Wooten said her first response to the images out of western North Carolina was devastation.

As a member of the North Carolina Building Codes Council, her next concern was about if and how that devastation could have been prevented.

“My heart goes out to those families,” she said. “And I’m hoping that the new councils will look at these issues and address them.”

She believes the solution is better building standards, specifically stricter codes about building in flood plains and along steep slopes.

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“If you’re building on the 500-year flood plain, you’re going to have to build these houses higher,” she said. “You’re going to have to put in a lot more work to make them safer for an event that some people think won’t happen again.”

It’s a debate North Carolina’s had before.

After deadly landslides in 2004 from the remnants of Hurricane Ivan, the state launched efforts to map landslide risk in the mountains and the legislature introduced two bills to try to regulate building on steep slopes. Both of those bills died in committee.

Just last year, the legislature passed a law reducing the power the Building Code Council has to update residential codes, freezing standards until 2031.

The move drew criticism from the Insurance Institute for Building and Home Safety which called the legislation “one of the most detrimental steps of any state reducing its building code system of protections.” According to FEMA, North Carolina has some of the weakest building codes in the Southeast.

“Why would they fight building in dangerous areas? Why would they fight building in a floodplain?” Wooten said. “That is something I don’t understand.”

She blamed the North Carolina Home Builders Association (NCHBA), which advocated for parts of that legislation. Tim Minton, the group’s executive vice president, said the organization’s issue with the code council was their updates to the energy code, which they say would have made homes less affordable for buyers. Minton disagrees NCHBA is at all responsible for weaker codes that may have contributed to the destruction wrought by Helene.

“A lot of the houses, unfortunately, that were damaged or destroyed were not even houses that would have been built recently,” he said. “They’re houses that have been in the western part of the state for a long time.”

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In the years since, he said construction codes have improved, making homes more resilient but also costlier to build. When homes in the west are rebuilt, he said they will face those stricter standards as well.

“Some of those houses that were built near the river probably will not be allowed to be built back on the river, or if they’re built back, they’re going to have to be built on stilts,” he said, “I mean, the government has learned each time there’s been an event to make adjustments,”

At this point however, Minton, feels it’s too early to come to any conclusions about future building policy.

“I think it’s appropriate, you know, three or four months from now, when we have more information,” he said.

To Wooten, building to current standards aren’t enough.

According to preliminary attribution research out of California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the massive rainfall fall from Helene was made up to 20 times more likely due to climate change.

Wooten fears if we don’t prepare for future storms like that, it’s homeowners who could pay with their property and their lives.

“Why not build to anticipate that those extreme weather events and billion dollar disasters are going to keep happening?” she said. “We need to be prepared, because people don’t need to lose their lives for a buck.”

VIDEO: Which parts of North Carolina have the highest risk of landslides?