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Many homes in North Carolina were destroyed or damaged during Hurricane Helene. Much of the devastation could not have been prevented, but some experts think better building codes could have helped. And as reporter David Boraks reports, they blame state officials for rejecting or delaying efforts to modernize the codes.
DAVID BORAKS, BYLINE: Residents near Boone, northeast of Asheville, captured video on Instagram as a muddy landslide crashed into the family home.
(SOUNDBITE OF INSTAGRAM VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I'm OK.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: My car is gone.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I'm OK. It's OK.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: The - everything's gone. It's all gone.
BORAKS: Thousands of houses were damaged or swept away in landslides and flash floods during Helene. Engineers and other building experts think some of the damage could have been avoided with stricter building codes. Kim Wooten is an engineer who sits on the state Building Code Council, which proposes code updates.
KIM WOOTEN: The General Assembly and the North Carolina Home Builders Association have rewritten laws and rewritten the code that affect how a home is built and inspected in North Carolina.
BORAKS: The association is a major campaign donor to state lawmakers and exerts huge influence on both the Code Council and the legislature, where it even helps write bills. In recent years, the industry has blocked or slowed changes, such as efforts to limit home construction on steep slopes and floodplains. It also fought to double the time between code updates. Wooten says modern building standards, especially for energy efficiency, would help address the broader problem of human-caused climate change.
WOOTEN: If we could minimize or begin to minimize the amount of emissions that are contributing to climate change, there's a chance that the world will see some reduction in these extreme weather events.
BORAKS: Another problem - the governor's office estimates that North Carolina's outdated codes have cost it at least $70 million in federal recovery aid. That's before Helene. Wooten says this fight over building codes goes beyond North Carolina.
WOOTEN: The assault on safe, sane building codes is going on around the country. It's an assault by the National Association of Home Builders, and they're working through independent code councils.
BORAKS: The homebuilding industry argues that too much regulation drives up the cost of homes and could price out some buyers. Tim Minton of the North Carolina Home Builders Association says affordability is a major concern for the group, and...
TIM MINTON: If it's a life or safety issue, that is put in its own category by itself.
BORAKS: Minton says it's misinformation to say that North Carolina's building code can't be updated when needed.
MINTON: It's very clear in the statute. Every time the Code Council meet, anyone can go to the council and request a code change.
BORAKS: But Wooten and others say that, in practice, the building industry and its allies often stonewall changes they don't like. Ben Edwards is an Asheville-based consultant who's helped write state and national building standards.
BEN EDWARDS: North Carolina has chosen to decentralize a lot of these decisions about health and life safety. And in reality, that decentralization is a deregulation.
BORAKS: But deregulation isn't solely to blame. Historically, western North Carolina has developed along waterways and hillsides, making much of Helene's damage unavoidable.
ROB YOUNG: We can't blame anyone's failure to strengthen our building codes for the vast majority of the damage that we experienced in western North Carolina.
BORAKS: That's geologist Rob Young of Western Carolina University. The question, he says, is what we do next.
YOUNG: Now, those building codes could and would matter as we rebuild in a floodplain or any area that is exposed to high winds.
BORAKS: Whether building codes are updated or not in the wake of Helene, Young says western North Carolina can't just rebuild everything as it was.
For NPR News, I'm David Boraks in Charlotte.
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