When counties across western North Carolina began accepting FEMA Hazard Mitigation properties into the program, many of them started to wonder about the liability associated with the long-term management of what would become public property. Following Helene, many of the buyout properties had landslides on them or were at risk of having a landslide affect them in the future. Of course, landslides are not the only hazard that may impact properties in a buyout program, but this realization lead the NC General Assembly to provide some added protection for local governments. Read more about the changes in this new blog post by Taylor Morris and Rebecca Fisher-Gabbard.