Press Release: Appalachian Advocates Release New Report Sharing Policy Lessons Learned from Helene
PRESS RELEASE: March 19, 2026
APPALACHIA — Today, Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center released a new report outlining how lessons learned in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene can help communities and governments be ready for the next major storm. Crafted based on analysis from interviews and extensive listening sessions with local government officials, nonprofit organizations, and volunteer groups, “Preparing for the Next Storm: Lessons Learned from Hurricane Helene” lays out a roadmap of findings recommended by these local leaders related to everything from emergency preparedness to flood insurance to how to best rebuild housing stock.
“The tragedy of Hurricane Helene will be compounded if we don’t learn lessons from it about how to better prepare for future storms,” said Rebecca Shelton, Director of Policy for Appalachian Citizens’ Center. “Dozens of impacted people and organizations contributed to this report so that governments, non-profit organizations, and communities can have a roadmap for how to be more resilient and impactful before, during, and after future disasters.”
Representatives from the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Asheville office and MountainTrue joined a press conference to announce the new report, which documents lessons shared by 44 interviewees from Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina. The topics include emergency preparedness, short-term recovery plans, local governance, floodplain management and flood insurance, housing, and impacts on local economies, land, and water.
“We’ve experienced flooding in the mountains in recent decades, but we haven’t experienced anything on the scale that Helene brought since the Great Flood of 1916. And we as a people had forgotten many of the lessons from that flood,” said Gray Jernigan, Deputy Director and General Counsel for MountainTrue. “We can’t afford to forget the lessons from Helene, because it will happen again, and we have to teach future generations about what we lived through, and how we recovered, and the challenges we experienced. We have to do it better next time, and this report will help us do just that.”
The report contains dozens of findings, many interconnected across topics. On emergency preparedness, interviewees emphasized that accurate weather and flood forecasting and well-maintained river gauges are foundational to keeping communities safe, while noting that warning systems deployed without accompanying public education campaigns risk losing their effectiveness over time. The report also found that when these forecasting and warning measures work, it is also critical that local evacuation options are well-established and pre-identified given the distinct difference between evacuations in mountainous Appalachia and coastal areas.
The report and speakers at the press conference emphasized the importance of enhancing capacity both at local mutual aid and nonprofit organizations and at the government agencies expected to prepare and respond to disasters. In the report, one county official indicated they need 15 staff members to be adequately prepared but currently only have 3.
“For better or for worse, people often turn to the governments to help them when disaster hits, and the last thing anyone wants to hear is that we just don’t have the capacity to come help you, so we need to take those shortcomings seriously and step up to meet them,” said Patrick Hunter, Managing Attorney of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Asheville Office.
The report’s findings on floodplain management, flood insurance, and housing point to significant systemic gaps. Flood maps were found to be inaccurate even in states with strong mapping programs, and local governments face significant barriers to enacting stronger building restrictions due to state-level preemption and lobbying pressure from developers. Flood insurance was identified as prohibitively expensive for many residents.
On housing, the report found that renters were disproportionately impacted, losing units at rates far exceeding their share of local housing stock while also eligible for the fewest recovery resources. Moreover, individual assistance from FEMA was found to be difficult to access, and land buyout programs often move too slowly to provide adequate relief.
When it came to businesses and the physical landscape, the report found that existing loan programs fell short of what small businesses needed: more flexible grants and loan terms. The report also found that pre-positioned debris removal contracts could expedite effective clean-up, especially if overseen by independent scientists and engineers to avoid problematic dredging and vegetation removal.
“Contractors were incentivized to target large woody debris, leaving much of the solid waste behind. There were no clear or enforceable guidelines on the taking of live trees off riverbanks or disturbing the stream beds,” said Jernigan of the situation after Helene. “And when they were done and gone, there was a whole lot of damage to stream banks and river channels, and there was a whole lot of trash left behind.”
Finally, the report flagged wildfire as a growing and underappreciated risk following storms like Helene, as natural firebreaks like creeks are dramatically altered and fuel loads are increased.
Hurricane Helene made landfall in Western North Carolina and East Tennessee on September 27, 2024, delivering 20–30 inches of rain, over 2,000 landslides, record-breaking flooding on more than 60 river gauges, at least 126 deaths across two states, and an estimated $61 billion in damages. However, the groups involved in today’s report roll-out and countless people across impacted communities and the region continue to invest invaluable time and resources in rebuilding, recovery, and preparation for what is next.“One of the things about Helene that really struck me was the way that after the storm, people were really brought together to help each other. The ways in which you differed from your neighbor really didn’t matter in the immediate aftermath of the storm. If you had water and they needed water, you shared your water with them, and I think that was true across the board, and it’s probably something that a lot of people have experienced following natural disasters,” said Hunter. “Helene was a really powerful example showing that we can come together and solve big problems, particularly when the currents in society are encouraging us to do that rather than driving us apart.”
