Hurricane Helene Killed His Wife and Destroyed His Mobile Home. New Tenants Are Now Renting the Same Flood-Prone Land.

Hurricane Helene's fury claimed the life of Joe Rogers' wife and obliterated his mobile home, alongside his wife and three canine companions. The Mobile Home Park nestled near Hyder Mountain Road, Clyde, North Carolina, continues to be a hotspot for flooding, with the county retaining authorization for trailers and campers to inhabit the premises.

Dave Masters, son of the deceased resident, could no longer sit idly by as the storm escalated, trees cracking, and the swollen river roaring. As darkness fell, Masters witnessed the Pigeon River, which had once been 100 feet away from his father's house, engulfed in water. Masters hurried to his father's aid, guiding him to safety before the approaching deluge.

Masters' father's house was engulfed in the hurricane's wrath, floating like a buoy on a fishing line and ultimately crashing into a telephone pole before being submerged under a bridge. Just ten days later, Hurricane Ivan intensified the calamity, depositing even more rain in the mountainous region, far from the coast. Realizing the peril of repeated flooding, Haywood County took decisive action, condemning several neighboring mobile homes and a wood-frame house located across the river.

The county subsequently purchased the house to transform the land adjacent to Clyde into permanent open space, thus mitigating the potential loss of lives and property.

Despite federal floodplain maps indicating the park's vulnerability, the county failed to buy out the mobile home park or dissuade its owners from renting out the lots where the destroyed trailers stood. This decision would prove to have dire consequences, as the park was submerged once again during Tropical Storm Fred in 2021, causing significant damage to five out of six trailers, including one on the plot where Masters' father had resided.

In 2024, Hurricane Helene once more wreaked havoc on the Hyder Mountain Road mobile home park, obliterating one of the mobile homes and claiming the lives of a resident and three of her dogs. The recurring losses at the Hyder Mountain Road mobile home park are a testament to the gaps in disaster policy that perpetually place mobile home residents in perilous situations.

While federal programs exist to purchase disaster-prone buildings, they were designed with traditional homeowners in mind and often overlook mobile homes, the largest source of affordable housing in the country. As mobile homes are deemed personal property, akin to motorcycles and boats, eligible for FEMA's buyout program, many park owners remain hesitant to partake in the program, citing insufficient incentives to relocate and unawareness of the buyout process.

Consequently, new trailers are frequently allowed to inhabit the vacant spaces, leading to a cycle of repeated flooding and destruction.