Matt Calabria, director of the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina

It was two years ago this past week that Hurricane-turned-Tropical Storm Helene inundated and devastated large swaths of western North Carolina with unprecedented rainfall and flooding. All tolled the disaster took more than 100 lives, inflicted more than 60 billion dollars in damage and wrecked many significant segments of the region’s economy.

For Gov. Josh Stein, who took office just three months after the storm hit, Helene recovery quickly became the Number One priority for his new administration and a multi-year project that would come to occupy a huge proportion of his time and attention. And with such a huge, unprecedented and unexpected logistical and political challenge suddenly on his lap, Stein quickly found an intelligent and dedicated administrator to serve as, in effect, the state’s recovery czar — former Wake County Board of Commissioners member Matt Calabria. And this past week, Newsline caught up with Calabria for an extended conversation about how things are going.

In Part One of our recent conversation with Calabria, we took stock of how the recovery  is proceeding – the successes, the challenges and the works still to be done — two years after the disaster devastated much of our state’s mountainous western region.

Mountain strong: North Carolina marks the 2-year anniversary of Hurricane Helene

In Part Two of our conversation, we dug deeper into several of these subjects – looking not just at the heroic work that’s been done to clean up the mess and rebuild the private homes and public infrastructure destroyed by the storm, but also the huge challenges that continue to confront the region’s economy and the wellbeing of the people who’ve stayed and are trying to rebuild their lives, as well as the need to better prepare for the inevitable future natural disasters that are sure to impact the state.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Matt Calabria, director of the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina.