Rather than bouncing back, places hit repeatedly by hurricanes, floods and wildfires are unraveling: residents and employers leave, the tax base shrinks and it becomes even harder to fund basic services. The federal government tried to help, buying the homes of people who wanted to leave, but those buyouts meant even less property tax, tightening the fiscal noose.Īl Leonard, the town planner, who is responsible for its recovery, said his own job may have to be eliminated, and maybe the police department, too.Ĭlimate shocks are pushing small rural communities like Fair Bluff, many of which were already struggling economically, to the brink of insolvency. The population of around 1,000 fell by about half. The town’s only factory, which made vinyl products, closed a few months after Matthew. What started as a physical crisis has become an existential one. When Hurricane Florence submerged the same ground two years later, in 2018, there was little left to destroy. The school and grocery store shut, then didn’t reopen. After two weeks underwater, the roads buckled. The storm submerged Main Street in four feet of water, destroyed the town hall, the police and fire departments, and flooded almost a quarter of its homes. But somehow, the damage keeps getting worse. It’s been almost five years since Hurricane Matthew flooded this small town on the coastal plain of North Carolina.
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