Reporting Highlights
- Policy Gap: A federal program meant to reduce the risk of death from natural disasters often excludes mobile homes, the country’s largest source of affordable housing.
asserted
program → mean → housing
- Repeated Flooding: Multiple storms have swept homes out of a North Carolina trailer park, but new residents continue to move to those same flood-prone plots.
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residents → repeat → plots
- Having Little Say: Former residents think no one should live so close to the water.
asserted
one → have → water
A federal buyout could keep homes off the riskiest areas, but that decision is up to the park’s owners.
uncertain
decision → keep → owners
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
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who → write → story
Dave Masters could no longer ignore the storm as trees cracked and the swollen river roared.
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river → ignore → storm
It was dark outside, but through the window he could see his father’s house, usually 100 feet away from the Pigeon River, was surrounded by water.
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house → see → water
Masters, tall and slender, forded the frigid waist-deep water to wake up his father and convince the 63-year-old to evacuate.
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Masters → ford → old
From the son’s trailer on the hillside, the two watched the water rise as Hurricane Frances wreaked havoc on Western North Carolina in early September 2004.
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Frances → watch → September
Within an hour, his father’s home floated up like a bobber on a fishing line and then sailed down the middle of the road before veering into a telephone pole and cracking in half.
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home → float → half
The two pieces finally stopped when they got caught under a bridge downstream.
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they → stop → bridge
Just 10 days later, Hurricane Ivan dumped more rain in an unprecedented double whammy for the mountainous region far from the coast.
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Ivan → dump → coast
Haywood County realized it needed to prevent further harm.
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it → realize → harm
It condemned several neighboring mobile homes along with a wood-frame house across the river.
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It → condemn → river
Recognizing the threat of flooding, the county eventually bought out that house, making the land near the town of Clyde permanent open space under a federally funded program to reduce the risk of future loss of life and property damage.
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land → recognize → life
The state also paid to relocate Masters’ father and another family from the trailer park on Hyder Mountain Road out of the floodplain “to mitigate the possibility of future damage to life and property should subsequent events occur.”
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events → pay → life
But although federal floodplain maps showed that the land where the trailer park sat was at risk, the county didn’t buy out the mobile home park or stop the park’s owners from again renting out the lots where trailers were destroyed, including the one where Masters’ father had lived.
It was a decision that would have great consequence.
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that → show → consequence
In 2021, the Hyder Mountain Road park flooded again during Tropical Storm Fred, damaging five of the six trailers that fronted the river, including one on the plot where Masters’ father had lived.
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father → flood → plot
Despite the damage, all the trailers in that first row remained.
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trailers → remain → row
Then, in 2024, flooding from Hurricane Helene swept one of those mobile homes into the river, driving it into the same bridge and killing a resident and three of her dogs.
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flooding → sweep → dogs
The repeated losses at the Hyder Mountain Road mobile home park are in part the result of a gap in disaster policy that allows mobile home residents to be put in harm’s way again and again.
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residents → repeat → way
The federal government’s programs to buy out disaster-prone buildings are “the cornerstone of the Nation’s system for emergency management,” according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
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programs → buy → Agency
But the program was developed with traditional homeowners in mind, and mobile homes, the country’s largest source of affordable housing, are often left out.
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homes → develop → housing
Trailers, even when they become immovable and lifelong homes, aren’t typically considered real estate but instead personal property, like motorcycles and boats.
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they → become → motorcycles
That still leaves people living on flood-prone land.
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That → leave → land
For the state to actually buy that land, mobile home park owners have to take the buyout, and FEMA’s program offers little incentive for them to do so: They can’t collect from the government for lost rent or for the value of the mobile homes on top of the land.
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They → buy → land
Some park owners say the payouts are not high enough to allow them to relocate; others aren’t even aware of the buyout program.
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others → say → program
So park owners regularly allow new trailers to move into the vacant spots.
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trailers → allow → spots
Art and Lynne Heinmiller, who own the Hyder Mountain Road mobile home park, did not respond to questions — which were emailed, texted and mailed via certified letter — about allowing trailers and campers to move back to where they’d washed away.
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they → own → letter
Renew NC’s manual states that it can help relocate mobile-home owners whose damaged trailers face future flood risks.
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trailers → state → risks
But the program doesn’t keep new families from moving onto lots with a record of flooding.
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program → keep → flooding
At the Hyder Mountain Road park, families now live in recreational campers on plots where mobile homes have twice washed away.
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homes → live → plots
The county knows it’s a problem.
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it → know → ?
The mobile home park is one of the spots Wentfard Henson, chief of the Clyde Volunteer Fire Department, watches during storms.
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Henson → watch → storms
Twice ahead of Helene in 2024, his team visited the community, knocking on doors and telling people to evacuate.
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team → visit → people
“Where they’re at, it’s not if, it’s just when,” Henson said.
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Henson → ’re → Where
“It’s going to flood again, there’s no doubt, because it flooded every time we’ve had a storm.
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we → go → storm
It’s flooded four times.”
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It → flood → ?
Asked why residents are again allowed to live by the river, Cody Grasty, Haywood County’s recovery officer, told The Assembly and ProPublica that until a neighboring county bought out a park decimated by Helene, he “did not know it was even possible” to buy out a mobile home park.
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it → ask → park
Small counties like Haywood, which has 60,000 residents, often look to the state for direction.
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which → have → direction
…and 94 more, not listed.
