Let's go now to Barrett McGrath.
He is a resident of Asheville.
And thanks.
Thank you, Sir, for being here.
Look, let me begin with how bad has the damage
been for you and how has the recovery been?
Thank you, Ashley, for having me on.
I appreciate the coverage that and attention that you all
are giving to this.
The where where I was, the damage was not where
I resided South of Asheville.
The damage was not terribly bad and we were fortunate.
We were on high ground, lost water, lost power, but
we were in pretty good shape.
We what I've seen out in the outskirts has been
decidedly, decidedly different as I went out to rural areas.
And with regard to the response, we've heard, we've heard
of complaints that there's been nonexistent in some cases and
that it's really just community members helping each other, as
we just saw in that previous report.
I mean, has the administration mishandled this, do you think?
Well, here's here's what I saw, what I saw.
My wife and I tried to engage with county government
here locally to do some things and we found that
to be very frustrating.
We made a decision that we were going to just
take it upon ourself.
I went to Charlotte Tuesday, loaded up a car with
supplies and Wednesday and yesterday I went out to areas
in the far NW reaches of the state to begin
to try to get things to people.
What I found when I got there pleasantly was that
local governments, locals and county governments had in these small
towns had set up supply distribution points that Pete that
people could get things from.
That was all being driven locally.
But the problem is there were people who could not
reach those places.
And so the mission I took upon was to try
to drive to people's houses and to get them things
one, get them things that I had with me and
find out what else they might need.
Well, that's very good of you and we thank you
for that.
Barrett.
We're going to have to move on.
Barrett McGrath.
But another perspective of what's going on.
Can I add one very yes, go ahead.
One thing what's frustrating for I think all of us
here is that the weather forecast actually had this nailed
a week ahead of time.
The the chart showing where the storm was going to
go was was coming straight here.
We had 10 inches of rain in the three days
prior to the storm with more than 20 predicted.
Governor Cooper did not arrive in this town until Monday
and the storm hit Thursday night.
They are were the distribution points that brought all these
supplies were not open.
And to give you a contrasting example of my last
point, we're running Barrett.
We're running out of time.
We've got to get cut off.
We'll have more Varney after this.
But thank you for joining us.