Ignorance must be bliss. You just cherry-pick points. The chart above shows flooding began days before. The hurricane was hitting Flordia and had to go through all of Georiga, part of South Carolina to finally get to North Carolina. Models from scientists both employed by the government but also more importantly NOT employed by the government did not even think about hurricane-force winds 450 miles inland in North Carolina. Even when a Cat 5 comes in and hits the Gulf states hurricane-force winds 450 miles inland are insane even though the land is flat and thus the storm can travel much further inland without issues. Spending my entire life in the Gulf and dealing with hurricanes it is clear that what happened in North Carolina was an anomaly, not the norm.

You keep acting like this area of the country is like the East or West Coast and people can easily move. This is Appalachia mining country, an area that not only tends to be much poorer compared to the rest of the US but also has generation upon generation who have all lived there. These people didn't have a place to go and for the life of me, I cannot understand how you do not see this.

Flooding that has not happened in recorded history isn't the simple "actions have consequences" its like saying oh in Japan they should have known that the tsunami was coming because they have earthquakes and live by water. These people lived in the mountains and knew terrible storms could come but nothing like the ones that hit both Japan and North Carolina.

Empathy shouldn't be this hard to comprehend.