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ONLY ON WWAY: Gov. Cooper gives recovery update six months post-Florence
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WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — On the six month anniversary of Hurricane Florence, WWAY spoke exclusively with Governor Roy Cooper. He gave us an update on hurricane recovery efforts and funding.
Gov. Cooper says a lot has happened to help get peoples’ lives back to normal since the hurricane hit our state.
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He believes it was the worst natural disaster North Carolina has ever experienced with more than $17 billion in damage.
He says a little over $1.2 billion has been invested back into North Carolina to work on recovery.
About 700 families are in manufactured housing and travel trailers, and about 3,200 families are working in the STEP program, which helps provide repairs to homes enough for people to get back in them.
“We learned a lot of lessons from Hurricane Matthew in that we did many more evacuations this time with Hurricane Florence and I think it saved dozens and dozens of lives,” Gov. Cooper said. “We always want to get help to people faster, I think we’ve learned that unfortunately, these kinds of storms may be the new normal, so as we rebuild, we have to rebuild in a smarter, stronger way.”
Gov. Cooper says over 2,500 of damaged roads and bridges have been repaired and are back in use.
You can watch the entire interview in the video above.