As the Biden administration attempts to swat down misinformation online about the government’s hurricane response, local emergency management officials and aid workers in North Carolina offer a silver lining: The lies haven’t totally permeated the populations they’re working to help.
“In a crisis like this, [mistrust] almost always falls away when it’s human-to-human,” said Alicia Stemper, who is temporarily working as a public information officer in Avery County, North Carolina.
Concerns around misinformation crescendoed last week after FEMA workers in North Carolina temporarily paused activities in response to threatening posts. The Biden administration and FEMA have attempted to correct the misconceptions. Kamala Harris also jumped on the issue, criticizing Donald Trump for elevating false claims.
Stemper emphasized that misinformation can take a toll on storm-impacted residents, but so far, the online rumors don’t appear to have deterred people from accepting aid from FEMA or from support groups local to Avery County, which sustained heavy damages from Hurricane Helene.
Watauga, Polk and Transylvania County officials said the same — in part because many communities in western North Carolina still don’t have reliable access to the internet.
“Most people on the ground didn’t have access to social media for the first few days,” said Eric Ager, a Democratic representative for part of Buncombe County in the North Carolina State House. “I know that conversation happened at the national level, but I certainly didn’t hear about it.”
Rumors promoted by Trump baselessly suggested that FEMA funds were being used to help migrants in other parts of the country and that the Biden administration was diverting or withholding aid because some impacted areas heavily lean Republican.
During a briefing on then-approaching Hurricane Milton on Oct. 9, Biden said that Trump’s claims were “outright lies” and “harmful to those who need help the most.” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said during the same briefing that “false narratives” that assistance workers will seize land from residents affected by Hurricane Helene were “causing individual survivors not to approach the people who are there to help and obtain the relief to which they are entitled and that we have available to them.”
In an interview with ABC in early October, chief of FEMA Deanne Criswell said that a “dangerous narrative” has caused people to be afraid to register for aid from FEMA and that “dangerous rhetoric” has “created fear in our own employees.”
Though FEMA temporarily paused some in-person operations after recent threats of violence against FEMA workers, the agency has since resumed normal operations. One person responsible for threats was arrested. The agency has also created a dedicated site for debunking online rumors.
Misinformation “doesn’t help [FEMA’s] cause,” said Jann Tracey, a FEMA public information officer currently deployed to North Carolina, but is an anticipated challenge.
“There are always rumors in any disaster, some more than others,” Tracey said.
A hurricane relief hotline in McDowell County has fielded calls from residents concerned that FEMA was no longer present in their area or that FEMA was going to deactivate Starlink, a satellite internet service often used in rural areas, according to Adrienne Rivera Jones, a public information officer for the county. Rivera Jones said county employees were able to address residents’ concerns about both issues over the phone and that she was not aware of any cases of McDowell residents turning away aid due to these concerns.
FEMA recently announced that it has approved $100 million in individual assistance for households in North Carolina. According to Tracey, in Yancey County, 3,807 applications were approved for property damage FEMA aid totaling about $2.8 million as of Thursday. Avery County had about 2,651 approved applications and $2.1 million in aid, while McDowell County had around 8,431 approved applications and $5.7 million in aid.
National FEMA headquarters did not respond to request for comment about whether aid requests are lining up with expectations across the state.
“I honestly think that most of that you saw on social media and not on the ground,” said Karim Olaechea, communications director for MountainTrue, a western North Carolina-based organization that has been providing extensive relief and recovery services. “I get a sense a little bit that the national media has been cherry-picking the worst stories, and in general, the broad sentiment here is thankfulness for the federal response.”
“It’s easy to make things the bogeyman, but when someone is there to help you, and you’re looking at them and they look as tired and ragged as you feel because they haven’t slept, you believe it,” said Stemper.
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Margaret Manto is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Anna Kramer is a reporter at NOTUS.