The extent of damage caused by post-Tropical Storm Helene is becoming more clear as power and communications are restored to Southwest Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin said Friday.
Helene left a path of extensive damage in Southwest Virginia. A Virginia Department of Emergency Management spokesperson said Friday that 519 homes were damaged, 44 were destroyed and 161 sustained major damage. Four businesses were destroyed and 23 had major damage. The storm left 310,000 people without power and knocked 287 cellphone towers out of service.
Youngkin told reporters Friday morning roughly 96% of customers have had their power restored and 95% of cell towers are running again. A VDEM spokesperson said Friday afternoon that 24 water systems are still under boil water advisories, down from a high of 37.
“The magnitude of this is larger than people could have thought, and we are racing to assess every county and gather up that data,” said Youngkin. He said the goal is to have preliminary assessments of all counties completed by Tuesday.
At least two people died in Virginia as a result of the storm, according to U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, the region’s member of Congress. Youngkin said officials believed everyone was accounted for.
As communication and power infrastructure come back online, it will provide more insight into needs for recovery, and enable other recovery efforts, Youngkin said. But challenges still remain.
About 2,000 power customers are on a longer timeline for recovery, with some infrastructure needing to be flown in and placed on hand-dug foundations, according to the governor. Over 50 roadways were still impassable, including a 1.5-mile stretch of U.S. Route 58, the main artery running parallel to Virginia's southern border.
Federal Emergency Management Agency funds through a Major Disaster Declaration are available to seven localities: Grayson, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington, Wise and Wythe counties and the city of Galax.
April Cummins, deputy federal coordinating officer for Helene response, said that the agency anticipates a disaster recovery center to open in Damascus, a hard-hit town in Washington County, on Monday. Another 50 FEMA personnel will soon join the roughly 150 people who are already on the ground, said Youngkin.
People who have lost their jobs due to the storm are able to access unemployment benefits with wider eligibility criteria, the Virginia Employment Commission said on Oct. 2.
The U.S. secretary of homeland security said Thursday that FEMA lacks enough funding to make it through other hurricanes, the Associated Press reported. A FEMA spokesperson told VPM News on Tuesday a temporary funding measure Congress passed at the end of September “provided sufficient funding for Disaster Relief Fund needs.”
Griffith voted against a continuing resolution, which temporarily funds the federal government and included disaster funds, that was signed into law on Sept. 26.
“I do not generally vote for ‘clean’ short-term Continuing Resolutions that lack real policy changes and set up repeated financial cliffs,” Griffith wrote in a statement to VPM News. He did vote for an earlier version of a continuing resolution, which did not pass. It included disaster funding, but also established ID requirements for voting, which Democrats opposed.
“Historically, I have generally voted in favor of allocating money for FEMA and disaster relief in standalone bills,” he wrote. “There have been large spending bills that I have voted against, which put together a hodgepodge of issues as opposed to a focus on aid for disaster relief.”
Youngkin largely avoided questions on what long-term recovery efforts would be or how he and the General Assembly would put together support.
“We've got to get through this period of making sure it's stabilized, and the support systems are in place, and the assessments are complete, and the assessments have to cover everything from personal assistance to public service assistance to infrastructure and the business interruption that has occurred,” he said.
Youngkin also refused to answer a question on whether climate change played a role in increasing the frequency of major storms.
“I just have no time for folks who are trying to politicize this moment, and I'm not answering your question,” an animated Youngkin said.
Climate models say warming temperatures will cause increases in hurricanes' rainfall rate by 2100, according to NASA.
After taking office in 2022, Youngkin directed the State Air Pollution Control Board to remove regulations that kept Virginia in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. RGGI is a carbon market, comprising mostly Northeastern states, that sets a cap on the energy sector's emissions. Companies purchase a shrinking number of carbon allowances during quarterly auctions as they transition away from fossil fuels.
Youngkin has said the program is basically a tax on ratepayers.
While misinformation has affected some of the response efforts to Helene, Youngkin said it hasn’t posed issues in Virginia.
FEMA has launched a rumor response page on its website.
“Now that we've got comms back up in most all areas, we're able to communicate much better about where to go get help,” he said.
