North Carolina Office of the State Auditor (NCOSA) launched a new online dashboard Tuesday that allows users to track Hurricane Helene recovery in western North Carolina.

The Helene Recovery Dashboard tracks data by county, including Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Haywood, McDowell, Transylvania, and Watauga. It also shows how many households are displaced, utilizing FEMA shelter assistance, still seeking assistance, and not utilizing assistance. FEMA data is updated automatically each week. 

“On Day 1 the State Auditor’s Office committed to bringing transparency and accountability to hurricane recovery, and I’m proud of the work our team has done to produce the Helene Recovery Dashboard,” Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek said in a press release. “This is an easy-to-navigate tool that shows how many people are in hotels and how many people are displaced, and I look forward to building it out further as North Carolina continues to recover.”

NCOSA has also included data on State Temporary Housing Units and a Q&A section with common questions asked by the general public about recovery.

Boliek’s office said the data and answers for these sections, including updates on private roads and bridges, depend on data received from Democrat Gov. Josh Stein’s office. NCOSA is working with the Stein Administration on the smooth transfer of real-time data to update the dashboard regularly and hopes to have the information soon.

At last week’s Council of State meeting, Boliek thanked Stein for his collaboration on monitoring the funds expended in western North Carolina for Hurricane Helene recovery.

“So that we can keep a true account and not get in a situation where six years from now we’re asking where did the money go,” he stated.

Stein addressed Boliek at the end of the meeting, expressing his appreciation for the conversations between their respective staffs.

“We are endeavoring to get you all information as quickly as we can in a regular cadence because we want to be accountable to you,” he said. “We want to be accountable to the public. We are going to have a public dashboard every North Carolina resident can see to make sure that we’re doing the job as best as we can. We all want this to be done immediately with perfection, and we’re going to come as close to those goals as we possibly can.”

NCOSA will also have a performance and financial audit on the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR) this summer as required by SB 382 Disaster Relief-3/Budget/Various Law Changes which became law in December.