Hurricane Irene came and went with little ado here in Orange County, but the havoc it wreaked up and down the East Coast last weekend will not soon be forgotten. From the shellfish beds of Chesapeake Bay to the cotton and tobacco fields of North Carolina, the damage has made Irene one of the costliest hurricanes in the nation’s history. And because much of the damage was done not by winds but by flooding, many of the costs will not be covered by homeowner’s insurance.
With this in mind, Gov. Bev Perdue took the swift action North Carolina needed this week, bringing federal disaster relief assistance to the state in its time of need. She announced Wednesday that seven N.C. counties have been approved for low-interest loans and grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
After asking for disaster relief Monday, Perdue moved quickly to expedite the funding approval process. She showed an immediate understanding that many survivors were uninsured for the damage and had U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack fast-track the approval of seven counties, with the possibility of more to come following damage assessments.
Residents of those counties — Beaufort, Carteret, Craven, Dare, Hyde, Pamlico and Tyrrell — can now begin to piece their lives together, even with insurance covering less than 40 percent of the costs, as Kinetic Analysis Corporation estimates.
The approval underscored an already concerted effort by Perdue to waste no time in responding to Irene. On Aug. 24, she declared a state of emergency in advance of the storm. President Barack Obama then followed suit, approving a federal emergency declaration for 34 counties that helped cover the expense of shelters, search and rescue missions and other emergency measures.
Together, those responses should help redeem Perdue in the eyes of many North Carolinians, who rightly criticized her for a slow reaction to last spring’s tornados.
Furthermore, they should help Perdue and other Democrats make the case for preserving federal spending at a time when some conservatives, like Rep. Ron Paul, call for eliminating agencies like FEMA in the name of deficit cuts.
Perdue has a tough re-election bid awaiting her next year. She can count her response to Irene, so far, as something to show off to N.C. voters.
