It wasn’t the first time that floodwaters destroyed homes at that park. In 2004, Hurricane Frances brought torrential rainfall to Western North Carolina. From his home on the park’s hillside, Dave Masters could see his father’s mobile home surrounded by water. Masters forced his then 63-year-old dad to leave, and the two watched as the river pried the home loose and drove it down the street like a car, where it crashed into a telephone pole before getting stuck under a bridge.
When the county sought properties to buy out to reduce the future risk to life and property after the 2004 floods, it bought out a home across the river but not the mobile home park. New residents moved into harm’s way.
Asked why residents are again allowed to live by the river, Haywood County’s current recovery officer told us he “did not know it was even possible” to buy out a mobile home park. Small counties like Haywood often look to the state for direction. North Carolina Emergency Management, which reviews buyout applications, said buying out a park is no different from commercial or residential properties, and put the onus on the property owners to participate in the program and work with the local government. The park’s current owners did not respond to our questions.
Allowing people to continue to live in locations with severe and repeated flooding is one of several weaknesses reporters at ProPublica have identified while investigating deadly floods.
When it comes to updating floodplain maps, government agencies have prioritized coastal areas, as they often have large populations that can experience complex storm surges and sea level rise, said John Dorman, the retired director of North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program.
Many inland areas are still operating with their original flood maps from the 1970s or ’80s. In rural places that have experienced population growth and development since then, the maps don’t account for the way these places have changed. New homes, for example, take up valuable areas where floodwater is supposed to run, displacing water not unlike what happens when adding an ice cube to a glass of water.
In North Carolina, my reporting shows what can happen when cash-strapped local governments adopt the minimum federal floodplain regulations, which allow campers to reside in floodplains and enable recreational vehicles to park in locations where they would never approve homes at ground level.
At the park where the Rogerses lived, five campers now sit on riverfront lots where mobile homes were anchored into the soil until Helene hit.
Weaknesses in flood policy revealed themselves in the Texas Hill Country, too, when floods claimed more than 130 lives over the July 4 weekend in 2025. The majority of the people who died in the 2025 Central Texas floods were in places identified as flood-prone by the federal government, our analysis showed.
The Hill Country floods highlighted issues about missed evacuation orders and the need for robust emergency action plans. In the months that followed, the Association of State Floodplain Managers developed model ordinances that require annual permits for campgrounds in floodplains, updated emergency plans and restrictions on building floodways.
Chad Berginnis, the director of the ASFM, likened the minimum federal requirements to a standard recipe and said states can do more. He told me how the state of Wisconsin requires anyone who seeks to even move dirt in the floodway to have an engineer certify that it won’t raise the flood level.
