STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Climate change intensifies storms and that adds to destruction, which can sometimes create an opportunity - an opportunity to rebuild better and stronger. But NPR and our partners at the PBS series FRONTLINE found that recovery often gets bogged down. NPR's Laura Sullivan reports on how that keeps Americans vulnerable.
LAURA SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Nothing about surviving a hurricane was ever going to be easy. But in western North Carolina in the months after Helene, we found people struggling to get on the same page. Kit Cramer, the head of the local chamber of commerce, walked along the empty streets of Biltmore Village, a once bustling tourist area in Asheville.
KIT CRAMER: Right now we need the jobs. We need visitors. We need customers.
SULLIVAN: She says the priority is to reopen, even if it means rebuilding the same as before in a place that floods repeatedly.
CRAMER: It can come back better, and I want that to happen over time. But right now we need the jobs.
SULLIVAN: But Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer has been trying to convince people to elevate properties and build them stronger.
ESTHER MANHEIMER: We could lessen the overall disruption to community, the hit on the economy, on the lives of the people, and we would rebound from it quicker. But I think individual property owners would say, well, why do I have to bear the burden of that?
SULLIVAN: That is what some people are saying - people like North Carolina Congressman Chuck Edwards.
CHUCK EDWARDS: What's difficult is the premise that our government would tell a property owner what they can and they can't do on their own property. There are reasonable regulations that we should consider out there, but No. 1, I think we need to consider the rights of the people that own the property.
SULLIVAN: Disaster recovery has always been fraught. Telling people who just survived a catastrophe to rebuild to higher standards often doesn't go over well, and that conflict grinds communities down. That's what New York found after Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012.
CRAIG FUGATE: We put a lot of stuff right back where it was.
SULLIVAN: Craig Fugate was the head of FEMA during the recovery as the state struggled to implement a series of government programs that sent homeowners - even on the same block - in different directions. Some worked to elevate their homes. Some took buyouts and leveled their homes. And some did nothing. I asked Fugate...
What's the plan here?
FUGATE: 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.
SULLIVAN: These competing forces leave many communities stuck halfway through a recovery as disasters become forgotten with time. On Staten Island, after the government spent more than $200 million buying out homeowners' properties, some people now want to see those empty lots redeveloped, like Staten Island borough president Vito Fossella.
VITO FOSSELLA: 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.
BRAD GAIR: Nobody just steps back and says, let's think about how we can really fix this right.
SULLIVAN: Brad Gair helped lead disaster recovery for New York City and FEMA and now works as a consultant for Tidal Basin.
GAIR: That big vision, it runs out of steam. The train runs out of steam because you just get worn down.
SULLIVAN: When Hurricane Harvey left a third of Houston underwater in 2017, the city turned its focus to engineering its way out of the problem, spending millions to shore up its dams, build storage basins and widen drainage canals. But many of them haven't panned out the way people hoped either.
PHIL BEDIENT: So you can see where it's flat here. They widened this all the way out 30 miles.
SULLIVAN: On a recent afternoon, Phil Bedient, a civil engineer who studies flood models at Rice University, stood next to one of the city's enormous man-made concrete canals. It was recently upgraded - mostly since Harvey - at a cost of $480 million.
So how much did it lower the water?
BEDIENT: According to my calculations, it lowered it in the range of a foot or so.
SULLIVAN: But Harvey flooded this neighborhood with 4 to 6 feet of water.
BEDIENT: Yes, it did.
SULLIVAN: Is this what we're doing now...
BEDIENT: Well, that...
SULLIVAN: ...Saving a foot?
BEDIENT: I think they just had no choice but to move forward. They had the money. It had been approved. Remember, these are Army Corps of Engineer projects that take decades to come to fruition.
SULLIVAN: Do we have decades?
BEDIENT: I'm not sure we do. I'm not sure we do.
SULLIVAN: As hurricane season begins this month, the question now is which community will face these tough decisions next?
Laura Sullivan, NPR News.
INSKEEP: For more, listen to NPR's Up First podcast, Unprepared, and watch FRONTLINE's documentary, "Hurricane Helene's Deadly Warning," streaming now. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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