Unprepared: There is No Plan
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Build it stronger, build it safer, build it back fast. Welcome back to the Sunday Story and part two of our series on how badly we as a nation do at rebuilding after a big storm knocks us down.

Laura Sullivan and the crew at Frontline have been following along as North Carolina struggles to bounce back after Helene. In Houston, they learned you can't always engineer your way out of danger. Now they're looking for answers in another storm-prone area, New York and New Jersey's seacoast, to see how they've done in the years since Superstorm Sandy. The idea there? Get out of the way of the water.

In 2012, Superstorm Sandy sent more than 12 feet of water over communities along the coast of New York and New Jersey. It was one of the worst flooding events in New York's history. Recently, we headed back to some of the neighborhoods we first visited in the aftermath of Sandy. And even though 13 years had passed since the storm, it almost felt like they were trapped in time, midway through a recovery.

Here on Staten Island's seacoast, the community used to be tight-knit, with families living in little bungalows. Now it feels desolate. After the storm, some residents used recovery money to elevate their homes really high. Others took a buyout from the federal government. Their homes were leveled. And some did nothing. Their houses sit right as they were the night of the storm. It's kind of sad. Resident James Sinagra calls it the jack-o'-lantern effect.

Imagine the teeth, jagged and irregularly spaced. I mean, they should either make it into wetlands like you can see down the road there, that's all wetlands, or they should at least give more of an incentive for a community to be built back up like these houses are built up.

It was hard to find people who thought the recovery had turned out well, even people who decided not to rebuild at all, like Joe Tyrone. He's a local realtor known for organizing one of the nation's first large-scale home buyout programs in Staten Island's Oakwood Beach neighborhood. All they talked about when we were mucking out the houses, how much they loved the neighborhood. So I said, there's no way they're going to want to leave. But the reality is, first there was Isaac. That was bad.

And then Irene came, put him back on their heels, and when Sandy came, that was a knockout punch. They were like, "That's it." People died on the street, and they all knew each other. He took me out to see the old neighborhood. This is where my house was. See that ridge right there? That was my backyard, right here. And the other side of that was another house. Along with the federal government, the state spent more than $200 million buying out more than 500 homes on Staten Island, intending to turn the area back over to nature.

As we drive around, it seems in some ways it worked. Where hundreds of homes once stood, there are long stretches of empty lots punctuated by a few isolated homes. But these holdouts? They mean the roads and the power lines have to stay. And as Tyrone pulls around the corner, he points to several empty lots with a chain-link fence around them. There have been rumors. Why does this have a fence?

Well, this is the exact area that the Staten Island Soccer League purchased from the state for some nominal amount. And they're going to build their soccer fields here. So they're really doing this? Oh, yeah, 100% they're doing it.

This youth soccer league, which has more than 4,000 players, bought six acres of buyout land from the state. They plan to build a soccer complex with bleachers. There's talk of a clubhouse. And everyone's going to need somewhere to park. Is this what you thought was going to happen when you sold your property? No, no. When I sold my property, I thought it was just going to be like a big marsh and that I wouldn't even be able to get to my property. That?

That's the vision then-Governor Andrew Cuomo had promised. Wetlands and oyster beds that would soak up stormwater like a sponge. We're now rebuilding oyster beds, wetlands and marshlands and grasslands.

Why? Because they all had a purpose. They were all part of the balance. Bridget Wiltshire lives across the street from one of the proposed soccer fields. Oh, they lied to us. They said they're going to build a park. Then it was going to be wetlands. What do you think, if you're looking around here in 10, 20 years, what are you going to see? I think you're going to see very high-end homes down here. Really? Next to the water, yeah. State and local officials have always said that would never happen.

But 13 years is a long time. Vito Fussella is the borough president of Staten Island. You have some of the best views around and underappreciated of the water. We should welcome people to build near the water when possible and bring life back as opposed to watching empty lots. So taxpayers spent a lot of money buying out these properties. Was it all for nothing?

I don't know if it was all for nothing. I think in some cases it was justified. Sometimes the pendulum swings too far in one direction and maybe it becomes time to reevaluate some of those decisions and see where it is safe and people can move back in. What if those people come back but they end up under 18 feet of water and their homes are destroyed and more people die?

Well, that's what I'm saying. If we have the mechanisms to mitigate against that, then by all means. But if we're just going to live in fear forever, it's probably not the way I want to live, frankly. Few people in these neighborhoods seem to be living in fear. Homes continue to sell at a brisk pace, and prices keep going up. Many of these houses are elevated, but few are high enough to avoid the massive surge of water that hit parts of this area.

New York City's comptroller, Brad Lander, says 30 percent of New Yorkers now live in the floodplain. How long do you think it took for people to forget? A few weeks, honestly. Really? Yes. Is that what you thought was going to happen after Sandy? I mean, we have an affordability crisis and we're desperate for more housing. And we have a climate crisis that when it wallops you like it did in Sandy, those days you're really looking at it.

And then the sun comes out again, and it kind of recedes from memory, and we are not as good as we need to be. Do you think that New York is ready for the next storm? New York is not ready for the next storm. The person who oversaw New York and New Jersey's recovery from Sandy was Craig Fugate. He ran FEMA as one of its longest-serving administrators.

We put a lot of stuff right back where it was. I told him we had been driving around some of New York's hardest hit areas. There are some neighborhoods that are rebuilt right next to a neighborhood where 70% of the people did take a buyout next to a neighborhood that hasn't changed at all and is hoping for a seawall. I mean, what's the plan here? There is no plan.

People like to think there's a plan, but understand the complexity of one. I got to deal with property rights and property owners.

I also have to understand most of this is economically driven. Developers will come in there and start putting cash on the streets to buy out distressed property. Fugate said FEMA and other federal agencies had to compete with those developers when they would create programs to elevate homes or buy homeowners out. But what was more frustrating, he said, is that often local officials preferred the developers' plans.

just south of Staten Island around the Raritan Bay on the Jersey Shore. I met up with Sean LaTourette. He's the state commissioner of environmental protection and in charge of getting people to build differently. I asked him how it was going. It's tough. Change is hard. We're standing on top of a massive earthen levee as workers complete the final section of a new seawall in Port Monmouth, the kind many communities are hoping for.

But they're expensive and take years. And LaTourette says coastal areas also need to protect themselves by elevating new homes five feet. But he

But he's facing resistance. There are so many pressures that work against building resilience and projecting forward, imagining the world not just as it is today, but as it will be tomorrow in a decade from now, in a decade from then. I asked him where that pressure was coming from. In some instances, leaders of local governments. Really? Mm-hmm.

Because the leaders of local governments didn't want the homes to come up by feet? I think they were misinformed about what the rules did. By whom? By special interests who are worried about their bottom line. Special interests. We were starting to hear a lot more about special interests back in North Carolina. In particular, the development industry and home builders, who it turns out hold a lot of sway.

When we come back, a look at the forces shaping North Carolina's recovery. Stay with us.

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We're back with a Sunday story. Laura Sullivan picks up the story in North Carolina. We returned to Swannanoa early this spring. It had been five months since Helene, and we headed straight to the trailer home park where Shalana Jordan's parents, Nola and Robert Ramsor, had lived, next to the river. The remains of their trailer and all the others were gone. A few piles of debris were ready for pickup, and recently, the property had been put on the market.

Don't miss this high visibility land, the real estate flyer said, with abundant river frontage that, quote, can be rebuilt as a mobile home park.

Nathan Pennington came to meet us. He's Buncombe County's planning director, and he spends his days thinking about flood rules and floodplains. He points across the way, up at those duplexes we'd heard about in episode one that survived the storm. Contractors were almost finished with the cosmetic repairs. These duplexes are built to modern standards. They have flood vents, which prevented the structures from flooding off their foundations. Yes, they still took water. But they still took water.

but they can go right back into emergency repair permitting. Did you see a difference between the houses that were built to modern standards and the ones that weren't during the storm? Absolutely. In fact, there was a manufactured home on the other side of the duplex there. There were structures down here. You see all those structures gone. Now that you know where the water is coming, are the rules going to change?

For what you can do here? No, no. We still have the same flood maps. We still have the same set of standards. I asked him why the community wouldn't want to adopt new standards, new rules to help protect whoever lives here next. Building to higher standards increases cost. So anytime you increase cost on just about anything, you're going to have folks that are not going to necessarily be for it.

One of those folks is Congressman Chuck Edwards, who told us earlier property owners should make most of those decisions for themselves. There's a significant shortage of housing. And a good portion of the reason that we have such a lack of inventory today is that government has overimposed housing.

He says this isn't just affecting housing along the rivers.

Are we going to tell those folks that they can't rebuild because a landslide that was totally unknown, totally unpredictable happened? No, we're not going to tell them. That's why we call these natural disasters. They are not predictable. Twenty-three people died in landslides here during Helene. And some scientists say while it's hard to know when landslides will happen, there's a lot of data to show where they'll happen.

On a recent cold, rainy day, as thick gray fog covered the horizon, I headed into North Carolina's mountains with geologist Rick Wooten. We made our way up a steep path to the site of an enormous landslide that tore the mountain down to the bedrock. A landslide like this is what we call a debris flow. It's like a huge locomotive going down the mountain.

Water trickles down 400 feet of now barren rock. And in the valley below, family homes lay smashed. Eleven people died in this landslide. There's been at least one debris flow event that we can see in the older deposits. You can see that in the rock? We can see that. That's a good indicator of where they could happen in the future.

Wooten has spent two decades mapping landslides, helping to create a database that predicts where they'll occur. This hillside was marked in the database. But he says funding for the project was cut off at one point for seven years. Ten counties still haven't been mapped. The statement that was made in the legislature at the time, the argument that won the day to cut the funding, was the landslide hazard mapping is just a backdoor approach to more regulations.

I went over to see Susan Fisher. She was a lawmaker in the statehouse at the time of the funding gap and co-sponsored a bill to create statewide safety regulations on mountains. Her bill and another similar bill made it through the committee without a problem. And then what happened? It just dies. In the years that you've had to think about why these bills died, who do you think didn't like them?

I think that anyone who was representing developers or home builders didn't want that bill. Why? Because it's money. People are spending money to have houses built on top of ridges. These developers and home builders across the nation, they're often powerfully organized. And I wanted to understand just what kind of influence they have here in North Carolina.

So I headed to the State House in Raleigh, and in a hallway overlooking the Grand Staircase, I met up with Representative Laura Budd. She's opposed bills pushed by the Home Builders Lobby. Do people talk about the Home Builders around here?

I would say they're pretty spicy topics some days, yes. Budd said a lot of individual homebuilders want to make strong, safe homes. She even represents some of them in her law practice. But at the statehouse, as an industry, she says the lobby pushes for less regulation. There are certain actions that they've taken that have whittled down or diluted the efficacy of the building code.

Do you think they've had too much power in this state? Way too much power. You should not have a couple of people that you call to run all your bills.

When they want something done, those are the people that they call. They are the point person for the Home Builders Association when it comes to filing legislation. So you're saying when the home builders want a piece of legislation passed, they know who to call here? They know exactly who to call. In the spring of 2023, more than a year before Helene hit, the state's main building group, the North Carolina Home Builders Association, pushed for legislation called House Bill 488.

The big news this week is House Bill 4A, our annual building code bill and our association's top legislative priority.

The bill made changes to the state's building code that the homebuilders supported, as the group explained on their YouTube channel. It prohibits exterior sheathing inspections, except in wind zones 140 and up, prohibits modifications to various chapters within the residential code, including mechanical, fuel gas, and energy efficiency standards. More than 40 organizations publicly opposed the bill, saying it would leave the state more vulnerable to storms.

Still, some lawmakers took the lead to get it passed. Also a special thanks to Representative Brody, who worked relentlessly on this bill every step of the way. At the time, Mark Brody was a state representative and chair of a committee that oversaw land use.

We read through hundreds of pages obtained through open records laws, including emails between Brody and the Home Builders Association in the run-up to the bill's passage. In one, Brody goes over the draft language of the bill. In another, Brody asked the Home Builders, guys, is this how we want it to look? I asked Representative Budd, why is the legislature doing this?

Money powers politics. It's expensive to run for office. Even in North Carolina, my first race in '22 was over a million dollars. They give tens of thousands of dollars to those candidates that they think will advance their interest in the legislature.

The homebuilders were Brody's top donor in the last campaign cycle, according to state finance records. The group spread half a million more dollars around to other state and local officials.

Brody did not respond to NPR's request for comment, but the homebuilders did give us an interview. Yeah, so our heart and soul in regard to what our mission is, is to provide the American dream of homeownership to as many North Carolinians as possible. Chris Millis is a top lobbyist for the North Carolina Homebuilders Association. So we're keeping an eye out for all state-level regulations. I

I met up with him at the organization's Raleigh headquarters. And just making sure that the rules that are being put in place and the statutes that are being put in place, it's done so in a way that's protecting life and safety as it relates to building codes and the development industry, but it's done so in a way that's affordable. Millis told me the association has never opposed mapping in the mountains, and it believes statewide steep slope legislation is unnecessary and counterproductive.

because they say many local communities already have such rules and that they can best establish regulations that reflect their community's needs. He said the Bill 488, which is now law, will enhance safety while preserving efficiency and that building code enforcement remains robust and fully intact in the state.

He said the bill did not eliminate or diminish any existing inspection authority. In this email that is sent to you, the lawmaker lists the nine things that they're putting in the code and he's asking you, let me know if I missed something. I mean, why is the lawmaker, who's the chairman of this committee, asking you what he's missing when he's changing the codes?

Because we are experts in regard to the chapters that are applied to different aspects of residential construction. So we are providing input to lawmakers that are going to be going through a committee process to make sure that we're answering his question in regard to what detail needs to be addressed. And so I don't understand the concern. Is this email that you're referring to the email that I'm on? Yes. Okay.

Are you guys experts or are you advocates for an industry that wants to build in a way that makes them more money? Oh, absolutely not. We have experts on our staff. We have a director of codes that is most certainly an expert in building codes. He's a former employee at the Department of Insurance, and he lives and breathes all things building code.

And so we most certainly are experts in regard to how the code applies to residential construction. Millis said the group donates to lawmakers who, quote, understand the importance of safe, affordable and attainable housing for all. The North Carolina Home Builders Association, though, is just one state group. The National Association of Home Builders, based in Washington, D.C., spent almost three and a half million dollars last year alone lobbying Congress.

I wanted to understand what exactly the industry has been pushing for. And there was one more person I had heard about. He had been on the board of the National Association for 25 years, but he was hard to track down because he lives in the Colorado mountains and doesn't have a cell phone. Well, hello. Ron Jones built houses for 50 years. He's known for building ambitious homes in difficult places, including one perched 80 feet down a cliff near Albuquerque.

He says he joined the homebuilders because he loved what he did and he hoped he could encourage his colleagues to build in a different way. I asked him what he thought about the homebuilders saying they're just trying to keep homes affordable. What do you think of that? It's bulls**t. Plain and simple. When they say affordability, and I've heard this line ever since I first went to a meeting in 19...

89, what they're meaning is profitability. Affordability to them means being able to close sales, hand the keys and walk away. Jones says three times a year, he would sit in board meetings at fancy hotels around the country, listening to his colleagues reject rules that would make homes safer, last longer, or be better able to withstand the storm. Listen, I saw the association fight for a decade, fall on its sword and twist it,

over a $200 exhaust fan requirement. They spent thousands of dollars and staff hours, you know, just grinding on this issue of a requirement for an exhaust fan. He says he and other board members would accompany the lobbying team to Capitol Hill, and they would tell lawmakers that elevating a home in a floodplain was unnecessary, that building codes did not need to be updated frequently. And

And remember those outdated FEMA flood maps that prevent the federal government from enforcing resilient building more widely?

Jones says the National Association lobbied on those too, because they can drive up the cost of insurance. They don't want those maps updated, because all of a sudden, a lot of areas that were previously developed are off-limits. Or the rates, because of the higher proven risk, go up substantially. Jones says he left the group in 2019, when he felt his opinions were failing to make any difference.

He says he wanted to build safe engineering marvels, the best of what humans are capable of building. And he says that was not what the association was interested in. What was its main goal? Advocacy. Look, trade associations exist for one reason, and that is to help facilitate trade.

the profit-making ability of their members. And it really doesn't owe an apology for that. What it owes an apology for is for pretending there's something that they're not. They pretend that they're an advocate for the American homebuyer, and it's all for show because what it's really about is figuring out how you can warehouse

the American homebuyer for the least amount of cost and the most amount of profit. In a statement to NPR, officials from the National Home Builders said their group, quote, advocates for common sense and cost-effective codes that make homes safer and more energy efficient. They said unnecessary regulations, quote, provide limited protection from natural hazards while driving up the cost of housing for hardworking families at a time when the nation is already suffering through a housing affordability crisis.

The group said new homes built to modern codes are, quote, already energy efficient, safe and resilient, and that communities need to focus on improving older homes and infrastructure, which are less resilient. In recent months, the Trump administration has cut staff and grant programs at FEMA. It's taken steps to stop enforcing some rules for flood prone areas and has ended some funding to help communities update building codes.

Back in North Carolina, for those who died in Helene, it's too late for building codes, programs, and grants anyhow. And it's too late for buyouts or infrastructure projects. For weeks after the storm, Shalana Jordan walked the banks of the Swannanoa River, searching for her parents, Nola and Robert Ramsor, hoping for some kind of a clue. I had to look. Like, it was silly to think that I could do that on my own, but I had to look.

Finally, six weeks after the storm, the state medical examiner's office called to tell her both her parents were dead. They had been found a mile apart down the river. It just, it died in separate places and alone and stuff. So I just, I really wanted to find them because I felt like I need to let their bodies rest, if that makes any sense. Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to let them rest because they went through something horrible.

In those weeks that Jordan spent searching, she always found herself stopping at this one bridge just down the river from the trailer park, lingering next to the pile of debris, the cars and homes and pieces of people's lives. The medical examiner said it was there at the bridge that they found her mother. Laura, thank you so much for your reporting. Thanks so much for having me, Aisha.

For more of Laura Sullivan's reporting from North Carolina, check out the PBS Frontline documentary, Helene's Deadly Warning, streaming now on Frontline's website and YouTube.

This Sunday Story series was produced by Graham Smith and Andrew Mambo. It was edited by Jenny Schmidt and Robert Little. Kwesi Lee mastered the episode. This series was co-reported with our partners at Frontline, Jonathan Scheinberg, Kate McCormick, Dana Irvin, Lauren Izzell Kinlaw, and Raphael Kuberski.

The Sunday Story team includes Justine Yan and Liana Simstrom. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. I'm Aisha Roscoe. Up First is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.

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