There is now enough credible information related to Western NC on what's going on with the various "organs of government."
I've written about a lot of this in the past; zero of what FEEEBLA (FEMA) has done surprises me. Show up a week late, rent up all the nice places outside of the damage zone at $500/nt for your "people", fuck the locals who have nothing because it was destroyed, walk around with clipboards, clear a tree with a chain of people passing logs around and take photos to post on media which anyone with more than a shoe-sized IQ knows is fucking stupid because anyone with a brain would pull a side-by-side or small pickup in there, toss the logs in and drive it the 200' which is 100x faster and more efficient if the goal was to actually clear the downed trees and then, once you harass people and act like strutting peacocks leave, fuck all the people who got hosed.
Oh by the way we spend billions a year on this horseshit and should ruin them all.
But the latest is much-worse than preening and doing nothing: Its at the county level and is active obstruction imposing misery on top of what nature did and is exactly what you get when you let state and local government have too much power rather than give them a reminder from time to time who actually is in charge (not them.)
Specifically they're forcing people out of temporary structures built by volunteers because "they don't meet code." Among the things the CUNTY cites are lack of insulation and lack of a permanent and permitted foundation. The former is a "who fucking cares, its cold and a wall to stop the cold air is better than none" and the latter, in the present tense, is a physical impossibility because (1) the former foundation at the site is either gone or buried under 6' of mud and unusable, (2) wouldn't align with the temporary structure anyway thus can't be tied to in a code-compliant way and (3) the permitting and soil engineering analysis required to put up a new one is unreasonable under the circumstances.
Yeah, I get it -- if there is severe weather again without that the temporary structure may be destroyed but guess what -- so will be a tent and in the meantime its a hell of a lot warmer and better than a tent.
It appears the only "legal" option other than a tent for these folks is an RV which isn't a structure and thus fuck those government goons but, when it comes to the FEMA ones they won't let the people use them (and yes, FEMA has a couple thousand of them) because most of the sites are in fact in a flood plain as was just proved in spades by the event (duh), that's prohibited use by FEMA and thus fuck you no place to live for you.
Oh and I'm sure there are some assholes in the county who will be around next to tell you that an RV is not a legitimate "living unit" either if used for more than some period of time (e.g. a week or two) on a given piece of property. You know, because a fucking tent beat something with walls?
There are times that one thinks that perhaps the correct answer to "government" is in fact to say no to all of it except for a Navy at the federal level, run them all out of town by whatever means are necessary and accept that (1) this means you have to shoot your own intruders, thieves, rapists and similar and (2) take the risk of food poisoning in a restaurant and such, along with the risk of a fire in a motel or other structure because there are no inspectors and such and thus nobody to police it all.
THIS IS ONE OF THOSE TIMES.