News

Laurel Park is fed up with pace of FEMA aid

By Bill Moss, Published: July 23, 2025

Throughout the mountains, small towns thrashed by Hurricane Helene have it bad. In Henderson County, none was harder hit than Laurel Park, and the mayor is past losing patience with the pace of federal disaster aid.

The mayor, Carey O’Cain, vented to his peers during a meeting last week of the Local Government Committee for Cooperative Action.

“We have a list of 175 items that are Hurricane Helene related,” he said. “They amount to anywhere from $20,000 to well over a million dollars each. We’re facing about $15 million worth of repair, and we have a $4 million (annual town) budget. So we’re reaching out to whatever avenues that we can to try to get aid.”

Although the town has received $2.5 million in low- or no-interest loans, “we don’t know if they would be forgivable or not,” he said. “We hope so.”

Turning to the elected leaders of the county and its four other towns, O’Cain said: “Laurel Park, in all of our applications, has received zero money from FEMA, and yet I see reports all the time that ‘we’re way ahead’ and ‘this administration has taken care of us.’

“We feel left out, and our citizens are getting more angry about it all the time that we’re not repairing” roads and damaged land, he continued. “We have 25 landslides on our mountain. We have about 25 culverts and washed out roads on our mountain. So we were hit pretty hard, and they’re anxious to get these roads back open.”

Turning to county commission Chair Bill Lapsley, O’Cain asked, “Have you received any money from FEMA?”

“The answer is yes,” he responded. “We’ve probably got $16 million, in that range, mainly for debris removal. But we have four or five projects that we have submitted application for reimbursement.”

“We were actually the first community in Western North Carolina to apply so we are very frustrated with the response,” O’Cain said.

County Manager John Mitchell said he shared O’Cain’s frustration and worries whether the total cost of debris removal alone — expected to exceed $50 million —  will be reimbursed.

“It’s a thing which keeps me awake at night and which we talk about at the county commissioners (meetings) all the time,” he said. “One of the reasons that the county commissioners leaned forward and brought on some additional staff is so that we can get this pipeline moving.”