Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is visiting Asheville, North Carolina on Saturday to see how the city is recovering from Hurricane Helene's damage and meet with people affected by the storm. She is expected to speak to reporters around 2:50 p.

Before leaving the governor's office, Roy Cooper stated in media interviews that Republican state legislators passed a bill that "actually took money away from western North Carolina." WFAE's Marshall Terry and WRAL's Paul Specht fact-check Cooper's claim.

The U.S. Forest Service has reopened several trails and roads in the Appalachian Ranger District. The U.S. Forest Service has cleared 137 miles of trails, including over 114 miles of the Appalachian Trail. Crews have also surveyed and reopened about 240 miles of roads across the district.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. SWANNANOA—People are living in campers in fields of debris off U.

Helene reshaped much of western North Carolina’s landscape, rerouting rivers and felling large swaths of forests. Aerial timber surveys indicate that Helene damaged over 800,000 acres of North Carolina’s forested land.

The wildfire strikes an inland region of North Carolina that is still recovering from the damage wrought by Hurricane Helene in September.

After Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina last September, tens of thousands of homes were damaged and large swaths of the region were damaged by flooding. In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to speed up recovery,