Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina Local News
11 days later, some western NC residents still waiting for help after Helene
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Eleven days after Helene devastated western North Carolina, some residents are still waiting for help.
During a call Tuesday morning, WRAL News asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) if they have been able to reach everyone in the mountain communities that were impacted by Helene.
“I can’t say definitively if we have reached everybody,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said.
That’s 11 days without food, water or power for some. Those consequences have already proven to be deadly.
An 84-year-old woman and a 72-year-old woman were recovered on Sept. 29, three days after Helene hit the area. They died not from Helene’s floodwaters, but “as a result of lack of basic necessities,” according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
Residents in some of the most rural mountain communities have no choice but to keep waiting.
Many have been critical of the government’s response. Damaged, washed out roads made it impossible for trucks to deliver supplies to these mountain communities. Residents were told that supplies would be arriving by air, but even that took days to arrive. For some, help arrived too late.
State data shows Helene is responsible for 116 deaths in North Carolina. Nationally, 230 people have died from Helene. It is still unclear how many people are unaccounted for or missing.
Mayor of Chimney Rock says community still waiting for FEMA
While touring Lake Lure, Mayor Carole Pritchett told Governor Cooper they have yet to see FEMA.
She said the community isn’t in need of food or water but needs help with the catastrophic damage caused by Helene.
The lake has become a dumping ground of everything that made its way into the river during the storm. And she said longer-term help is needed from FEMA.
Something Governor Cooper said is on its way – a rhetoric residents have been hearing for more than a week now.
The town was already dealing with aging infrastructure needs. Its 100-year-old pipes stood no chance against Helene.
Restoring this critical infrastructure is essential for the town, a popular tourist destination, to recover.
Cooper explained that various funding streams would be used to address both immediate needs and longer-term rebuilding efforts. Temporary solutions are being implemented, including makeshift water systems and restoring temporary access routes.
“DOT is working hard to rebuild roads and bridges, while ensuring basic necessities can reach people,” he said.
When asked how he plans to keep his promises with only a few months left in office, Cooper responded, “I have nearly three months remaining, and we’re laying the groundwork to ensure the funding streams are open, so this process can begin.”
Despite progress, there’s no clear timeline for when many areas will fully recover, and it’s likely that some solutions will come after Cooper’s term ends.
WRAL News asked him if there’s a timeline for restoring water in western North Carolina.
“It’s going to vary by community, but it will still take some time,” Cooper said. “It’s still going to be a while. There’s progress being made, but we don’t know yet.”
Misinformation leads to confusion in the wake of Helene
A surge of misinformation has bubbled up in the wake of Hurricane Helene. WRAL News fact-checked those claims.
Far-out tales of space lasers, fake snow and weather control technology – sometimes tinged with antisemitism – have spread after recent natural disasters, including a snowstorm in Texas and last year’s wildfire in Maui.
Experts who study conspiracy theories say big events like disasters – or the Sept. 11 attacks or the COVID-19 pandemic – create perfect conditions for conspiracy theories to spread because large numbers of anxious people are eager to find explanations for shocking events.
As rescue work continues and authorities try to separate fact from fiction, the conspiracy theories are not helping. Elected leaders from both parties have had to set the record straight and urge people not to give into fear and rumor.
Many of the conspiracy theories focus on hard-hit North Carolina, a state key to winning the White House. Rumors circulated that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was raiding storm donations and withholding body bags, forcing local hospitals to stack the bodies of victims. One claim suggested federal authorities would condemn the entire town of Chimney Rock and prohibit resettlement in order to commandeer a valuable lithium mine nearby.
Bizarre stories proposing that the government used weather control technology to aim the hurricane at Republican voters quickly racked up millions of views on X and other platforms.
Despite the tradition of Democrats and Republicans putting aside politics for disaster response, many conspiracy theories suggest Democrats such as President Joe Biden or North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper are intentionally withholding aid from Republicans. Trump has pushed the claim, as has North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, the embattled GOP nominee for governor.
State and local officials from both parties have condemned the conspiracy theories as rumors, saying the focus should be on recovery, not political division and hearsay. Responding to the hoaxes is taking up time that should go toward assisting victims, said North Carolina state Sen. Kevin Corbin, a Republican who urged his constituents not to give into hoaxes.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said the spread of misinformation is not unusual after disasters like Helene, but she said it’s never been this bad.
“It’s absolutely the worst that I’ve ever seen,” she said.
Criswell said the reason misinformation is hindering recovery efforts is because it prevents people from getting the help they need.
“It’s creating fear,” she said. “If they don’t have faith in the government, they won’t apply for the assistance they need.”
The American Red Cross is another organization that has been targeted by misinformation.
“Misinformation is hurting Hurricane Helene relief efforts,” the Red Cross said on X. “Spreading misinformation… disrupts our ability to deliver critical aid and affects the disaster workers who have put their own lives on hold to assist those in need.”
How to find truthful information about Helene
The North Carolina Department of Public Services (NCDPS) said there are many false reports and misinformation being shared on social media about the response to Hurricane Helene.
The NCDPS said the public should get information about storm response and impacts from trusted sources like the State Emergency Response Team, National Weather Service and other federal, state, county and local government sites.
“Be aware that Artificial Intelligence or AI-generated images are being circulated on social media that do not depict conditions on the ground,” the state department said.
The NCDPS said you can do your part to the stop the spread of rumors by following these three tips:
- Find trusted sources of information.
- Share information from trusted sources.
- Discourage others from sharing information from unverified sources and question where information is coming from.
Reliable information regarding Helene can be found at ncdps.gov/helene. A list of official county sources can also be found at ncdps.gov.
FEMA has also created a page to dispel rumors; click here for more information. To see the White House’s statement, click here.
State lawmakers to vote on initial Helene relief package this week
North Carolina lawmakers will vote this week on an initial disaster relief package to help western counties impacted by Hurricane Helene, the state’s top legislative Republicans said Friday.
The legislature will meet Wednesday in Raleigh.
“We are still working to determine what needs to be included in that legislation,” House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger said in a joint statement.
The state has $4.75 billion in general savings reserves, often referred to as a “rainy day fund” as well as hundreds of millions more in various targeted savings reserves for emergency response.
Twenty-five counties in western North Carolina have received a major disaster declaration. There have been more than 48,000 registrations for disaster survivors, according to FEMA.
Thousands still without water one week later
More than a week after Hurricane Helene brought devastation to western North Carolina, a shiny stainless steel tanker truck in downtown Asheville attracted residents carrying 5-gallon containers, milk jugs and buckets to fill with what has become a desperately scarce resource — drinking water.
Flooding tore through the city’s water system, destroying so much infrastructure that officials said repairs could take weeks.
The raging floodwaters of Helene destroyed crucial parts of Asheville’s water system, scouring out the pipes that convey water from a reservoir in the mountains above town that is the largest of three water supplies for the system. To reach a second reservoir that was knocked offline, a road had to be rebuilt.
Boosted output from the third source restored water flow in some southern Asheville neighborhoods Friday, but without full repairs schools may not be able to resume in-person classes, hospitals may not restore normal operations, and the city’s hotels and restaurants may not fully reopen.
It’s a situation that becomes more dangerous the longer it lasts. Even in communities fortunate enough to have running water, hundreds of providers have issued boil water notices indicating the water could be contaminated. But boiling water for cooking and drinking is time consuming and small mistakes can cause stomach illness, according to Natalie Exum, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“Every day that goes by, you could be exposed to a pathogen,” Exum said. “These basic services that we take for granted in our everyday lives actually do do a lot to prevent illness.”
Even private well owners aren’t immune. Pumps on private wells may have lost power and overtopping floodwaters can contaminate them.
There’s often a “blind faith” assumption that drinking water won’t fail. In this case, the technology was insufficient, according to Craig Colten. Before retiring to Asheville, he was a professor in Louisiana focused on resilience to extreme weather. He hopes Helene will prompt politicians to spend more to ensure infrastructure withstands destructive storms.
And climate change will only make the problem more severe, said Erik Olson, a health and food expert at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.
“I think states and the federal government really need to step back and start looking at how we’re going to prepare for these extreme weather events that are going to be occurring and recurring every single year,” he said.
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