'It financially annihilated us': Pregnant mother displaced for 2nd time after western NC floods

Losing a home in a natural
disaster once is traumatizing enough.

Twice is something Josie
Borg tells WRAL she’d worried she and her family may not make it through.

“Last time we were really
surprised what 8 inches can do to your house and this time it’s eight feet of
water,” said Borg. “It’s just a whole different scenario.”

Borg is in her third
trimester, carrying her fourth child.

She and her family now
have no place to live after their home flooded in Hurricane Helene.

The family lives along the
Pigeon River in Clyde, about thirty minutes west of Asheville. The
late-September storm forced the family out of their home in the middle of the
night.

“The sirens stared going
off at about 3 a.m. which means the river breaches the bank about two miles
from us, then the evacuation sirens were at 5,” Borg recalled.

Borg and her husband,
three children under the age of 10, and four animals fled to a nearby shelter
when the river crested 19 feet.

“It was just surreal. We
had to put our kids in creates and go in and we were stuck there because the
roads were terrible,” the mother said.

Borg said it was a few
days later when they learned how badly damaged their property was.

“It’s not fixable,” the
mother cried.

The experience for the
family is the worst kind of déjà vu.

Tropical Storm Fred
displaced the family in 2021. The home flooded 12 inches at it’s highest points.

Borg said they had to tear
out all of their drywall and flooring and live in a trailer parked in their
yard for two years.

“The main thing when
you’re in this situation — my situation — and totally displaced, is you have
to keep paying on this and you also have to find some place to live,” said
Borg.

The mother shared the
family was still dealing with the financial toll of Fred when Helene hit.

“It financially
annihilated us last time,” Borg shared.

The family is now asking
for the public’s help in raising funds to save their home. The couple
evacuated temporarily to Tennessee but returned to Clyde the week after the
storm hit to walk through their propery.

Borg told WRAL the
family’s mortgage requires them to have FEMA-approved flood insurance. Still,
she shared they didn’t get a dime of aid in 2021.

“They came to my house and
they just said, ‘No.’ We didn’t get the $750 last time, we got absolutely
nothing,” said Borg.

The
mother says the only aid they received came through the Office of State Budget
and Management.

“We
were paying like $1,200 to live in an apartment in between campers and they
reimbursed us that,” said Borg. “That really saved us. That program alone last
time made it so we could get back into our house.”

Borg
is worried if any aid will come this time around and if it will be enough.

WRAL
asked Governor Roy Cooper about statewide assistance programs.

Cooper shared, “One of the
things we want to make sure we do in this storm is to turn on every spigot of
local, state, federal private and non-profit resources that we can in order to
be able to make sure people in western North Carolina recover.”

He continued, “I’ve been
in Canton since this storm and have talked with them about trying to access
those resources.”

What exactly those state
resources will be and how quickly families like Borg’s could see a payment is
unclear.

WRAL also asked FEMA about
its $750 Serious Needs Assistance Payment. The agency said the purpose of the
funding is to assist those with immediate needs in the wake of a disaster.

FEMA’s top official Deanne
Criswell told WRAL there are several factors that go into determining if
someone is eligible. She also shared the agency just launched a new program
this week to better reach those in impacted areas.

“We’ve started to do auto
dialer out to the people in these impacted communities where we’ve expedited
this that haven’t actually gotten the $750 or our displacement assistance,
where we thought they could’ve gotten displacement assistance and they stayed
with friends and family or so forth,” explained Criswell.

The FEMA administrator
said the purpose of the calls was to walk impacted survivors through available
and double check they are getting everything they are eligible for.

Borg told WRAL her husband
did receive one of these phone calls and was asked about their housing needs.

She also shared they had a
home visit, but haven’t yet been connected with any assistance.

Criswell says aid can hit
a survivor’s bank account within 48 hours so long as they are eligible and
complete the necessary paperwork.

Borg shared simply
applying is another headache she and her neighbors are struggling with.

“It’s a lot of work. All
these people, you’re in the middle of a disaster trying to survive, half these
people don’t have power or internet, but you’ve got to do all these phone calls
and you’ve got to get on the internet and do these appeals,” she shared. “It’s
near impossible to navigate it.”

Borg says she’s trying to
remain hopeful that relief will come. In the meantime, navigating “What’s Next”
remains an emotional – and financial – struggle.

“There’s
definitely a different feel here because we’re just outside that big booming
population. It does make it so that we get kind of left behind,” said Borg.
“People are going to stop talking about Helene and these people will be
struggling.”

Borg
said an adjuster did come to their home but the family hasn’t yet been informed
of a decision.

The mother and her husband
say they’re also trying to determine where they will deliver their new baby and
what bringing the baby home will look like.

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