In a story that could probably be written about a lot of states, the New York Times reports (gift link) that the damage from Hurricane Helene in North Carolina may have been made worse by Republican state legislators who for decades have refused to adopt robust building codes. The extreme amounts of rain in the western part of the state — from both Helene and an earlier weather system that had already drenched mountainous areas — made flooding and loss of lives and property inevitable, of course. But experts on building standards explained that some of the damage was almost certainly worse due to the Legislature’s decisions to avoid stricter regulations, mostly due to lobbying from the powerful home building industry.
After all, you can’t require every single vacation home to be built like Fort Knox, so any increased safety regulation is burdensome and will kill prosperity. That’s just logic, like how the mayor of the town of Amity needed the beaches to be open on the Fourth of July. (I found myself thinking of that guy a lot whenever the Times quoted various building-industry spokespeople, who no doubt wore sportscoats with a festive anchor pattern too.)
R&I – Obey
Klapaucius
Article URL : https://www.wonkette.com/p/what-nc-republicans-lax-building