ATHENS, Greece — Climate change that has driven scorching temperatures and dwindling rainfall made massive wildfires in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus this summer burn much more fiercely, said a new study released Thursday.
The study by World Weather Attribution said the fires that killed 20 people, forced 80,000 to evacuate and burned more than 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres) were 22% more intense in 2025, Europe’s worst recorded year of wildfires.
Hundreds of wildfires that broke out in the eastern Mediterranean in June and July were driven by temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (about 104 Fahrenheit), extremely dry conditions and strong winds.
WWA, a group of researchers that examines whether and to what extent extreme weather events are linked to climate change, called its findings “concerning.”
“Our study finds an extremely strong climate change signal towards hotter and drier conditions,” said Theodore Keeping, a researcher at Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College in London.
“Today, with 1.3 degrees C of warming, we are seeing new extremes in wildfire behaviour that has pushed firefighters to their limit. But we are heading for up to 3 degrees C this century unless countries more rapidly transition away from fossil fuels,” Keeping said.
The study found winter rainfall ahead of the wildfires had dropped by about 14% since the pre-industrial era, when a heavy reliance on fossil fuels began. It also determined that because of climate change, weeklong periods of dry, hot air that primes vegetation to burn are now 13 times more likely.
The analysis also found an increase in the intensity of high-pressure systems that strengthened extreme northerly winds, known as Etesian winds, that fanned the wildfires.
Gavriil Xanthopoulos, research director at the Institute of Mediterranean Forest Ecosystems of the Hellenic Agricultural Organization in Greece, said firefighters used to be able to wait for such winds to die down to control fires.
“It seems that they cannot count on this pattern anymore,” Xanthopoulos said. More study is needed to understand how the wind patterns are reaching high velocities more often, he said.
Flavio Lehner, an assistant professor in Earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University who was not involved in the WWA research, said its summary and key figures were consistent with existing literature and his understanding of how climate change is making weather more conducive to wildfire.
Climate change is “loading the dice for more bad wildfire seasons” in the Mediterranean, Lehner said.
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In mid-May, at about ten thousand feet above sea level, a rocky mountainside in the Swiss Alps gave way and tumbled onto a field of ice called the Birch Glacier. Half a mile below, in the Lötschen Valley, lay Blatten, a picturesque village of centuries-old wooden houses. The following night, Blatten’s mayor, Matthias Bellwald, heard crashing noises from the mountain. He quickly arranged for a helicopter to fly him and a local official who monitored natural hazards up to the site. Although the mountain, the Kleine Nesthorn, was still covered with snow, they could tell that something deeply unnatural was happening. “I saw that, on the mountain, cracks had formed,” the Mayor told me. “At first, it was just one, then several more.”
Since the nineties, the Birch Glacier, which covered an area of about fourteen city blocks, had been behaving strangely. Unlike many Alpine glaciers, which have receded as the planet warms, it had advanced down the slope, probably because of periodic rockfalls that weighed it down. As a result, Swiss authorities kept the section under constant surveillance. On Saturday, May 17th, after sensors detected more instability, the village government ordered the evacuation of what is known as the shadow side of the village, which is closest to the Kleine Nesthorn. Lukas Kalbermatten, the owner of a local hotel, told me that some village residents moved from their homes and into his property.
Soon, a crack, which was perhaps several feet wide and a hundred feet deep, was spotted between the Kleine Nesthorn and the mountain range it was a part of—suggesting that the peak itself was unstable. “The whole mountain was moving,” Kalbermatten told me. By Monday morning, experts from the canton of Valais, which encompasses Blatten, estimated that up to three million cubic metres of debris could rush down the mountain, over a nearby dam, and into the village. This time, all of Blatten’s three hundred residents, including Kalbermatten, were required to leave within twenty minutes. Officials counted them individually as they left.
By Monday evening, one flank of the Kleine Nesthorn had collapsed in on itself, sending more debris onto the glacier. Kalbermatten spent this period helping his employees find places to stay; he was optimistic that they’d be back to work soon. On May 28th, having little to do—his hotel was empty and inaccessible—he and a former colleague went up to an observation point just across the valley, where they’d have a good view of the glacier. In the hour and a half that Kalbermatten spent up there, rain started to fall. Then he saw the glacier and the mountainside begin to move. In a video that he shot, what looks like a wave of ice and stone slowly flows down from the snowy peak. A voice briefly cries out with shock, then falls silent. The slurry of glacier and debris picks up speed; by the time it reaches the treeline, farther down the slope, it has billowed into a cloud that resembles a volcanic eruption or an explosive demolition. After that, Kalbermatten stopped filming. He didn’t want to record the moment that his home town was erased. “We all knew,” he said. “It was too late.”
A local farmer, Toni Rieder, witnessed the disaster from his car, about a mile from Blatten. “I heard the crash, the blast wave,” he told me. The wreckage from the village was thrown high into the air, he said; the energy of the landslide appeared to vaporize chunks of ice into a cloud of mist. One of his friends was tending to sheep nearby—outside the evacuation zone, but inside the area that was struck. “The first thing I knew was that he was gone,” Rieder said. “It was impossible for someone to survive.”
The landslide contained an estimated nine million cubic metres of material—three times what officials had expected. It was so large that, after it reached the valley floor, it flowed up the opposite slope before sloshing back down again. The avalanche temporarily dammed the Lonza River, which runs through Blatten, and small lakes, filled with dead trees and detritus from homes, formed on each side of the village. About ninety per cent of Blatten, including Kalbermatten’s hotel, was destroyed. High above the village, the Birch Glacier was gone.
The Lonza River is normally an icy blue, but when I first saw it, on a sunny day in June, it was brown from the debris upstream. I caught a bus to Blatten from the entrance to the Lötschen Valley, where the Lonza flows into the Rhône. We drove up a series of steep switchbacks until Alpine peaks, still decked in snow, towered above us. Then the bus rounded a corner and the landslide came into view. A man in the bus stood up and, with a shocked look on his face, took a photograph with his phone. In the distance, a brown gash stretched from the mountaintops to the valley floor. Where it had cut through forest, no trees remained intact; all had been flattened or buried. Blatten now resembled a pit mine. Several rivulets flowed lazily through the debris.
I got off in Kippel, two villages before Blatten, and made my way to the town hall, which had become a staging area for the emergency response. Even at five thousand feet, the temperature was in the eighties. Upstairs, I met Mayor Bellwald, thin and tan in a red plaid shirt and hiking boots. He had occupied his position for only five months, and he looked drawn. Like everyone I interviewed in Blatten, he referred to the landslide as die Katastrophe.
Bellwald told me that, after the landslide, the first thing he felt was pain. “An entire village—history, tradition, houses, memories—simply gone in thirty seconds,” he said. His deep-set eyes peered at me through large glasses. “Then, straightaway, came the feeling that I am responsible for this community. What needs to be done now?” In the days that followed, scientists studied the slope to gauge the risk of more landslides. The national government called in the Army to secure the area. First responders searched for the missing shepherd; his remains were not recovered until weeks later. Bellwald barely saw his family. He mentioned a recent conversation with his godmother, who is in her nineties and lost a seven-century-old house. “We can’t undo it,” she’d told him. “Just get up once more than you fall down.”
Ultimately, hundreds of news outlets covered the destruction of Blatten. Experts called it unprecedented and warned that Alpine permafrost was thawing. Before-and-after photos went viral online. The media frenzy was so intense that, at one point, journalists were barred from entering the Kippel town hall. Meanwhile, Swiss newspapers debated whether Blatten should be abandoned. Beat Balzli, the editor-in-chief of the Sunday edition of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, cautioned politicians not to fall into an “empathy trap” by promising to rebuild. “The retreat of civilization reduces the potential for damage,” he wrote. “Where there is less, less is destroyed.” His argument was a version of one that Americans encounter every year, whether after hurricanes in Florida or after fires in Southern California.
I expected to hear the same debate among locals. Instead, everyone who spoke to me seemed unified around a shared message. “We have lived here for a thousand years,” Bellwald told me. “A village will be built here again.” Funding began flowing to Blatten soon after the landslide. The Swiss legislature unanimously approved six million dollars in emergency aid; a charitable group, Swiss Solidarity, quickly secured another twenty-one million in donations. But by far the largest source of financing, nearly four hundred million dollars, will come from insurance companies, many of which are headquartered in Switzerland. (Property in all parts of the country—even areas that are at the highest risk of landslides, fire, and flooding—can be insured against disasters.)
Bellwald’s conviction about rebuilding was based in part on principle. “Everyone has the right to live where they live,” he said. He pointed out that cities, too, are increasingly prone to disasters. Yet most people in Miami, Los Angeles, and New York do not seem to be retreating from the hurricanes, fires, and sea-level rise that they face. Bellwald also argued that people from the mountains are best able to weigh the dangers there. “Nature lives in people here,” he said. Locals routinely stockpile supplies because they know that blizzards and avalanches threaten the roads. Each village employs a Naturgefahren-Beobachter, or observer of natural hazards, which was one of the reasons that Blatten was evacuated so swiftly. “The mountains have already made us pretty robust,” he said. He was not downplaying the risks of future disasters but making the case for adapting to them.
When I asked the Mayor about climate change, he seemed reluctant to talk about it. “I don’t think we should politicize these issues,” he told me. The scientists I consulted had a different attitude. None of them said that climate change could fully explain the catastrophe—the Kleine Nesthorn was inherently prone to rockfalls, and the immediate cause was gravity—but all were convinced that climate change had played a key role. Switzerland has warmed at a rate twice the global average. When water soaks into thawing permafrost and refreezes, it expands, causing cracks to spider through the landscape. The Swiss Federal Office for the Environment estimates that six to eight per cent of the country’s territory is unstable. “Ice is considered as the cement of the mountains,” a geoscientist told the news agency AFP shortly after the landslide. “Decreasing the quality of the cement decreases the stability of the mountain.”
“The more critical question is whether climate change was the main factor controlling the timing of the event,” Mylène Jacquemart, a glaciologist at the university ETH Zürich who studies natural hazards, told me, in an e-mail. If climate change sped up the collapse of the mountain, it could be responsible for the scale of the destruction. A decade from now, in a warmer world, “the glacier would likely have been gone, and the whole thing would have been much less catastrophic,” Jacquemart said. Bellwald tried to look at the long-term outlook in a positive light. “Everyone says that glaciers are melting,” he said. “And that glacier is gone now.”
One of the scientists I spoke with was a distant relative of the Mayor—Dr. Benjamin Bellwald, a clean-energy geologist at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, who spent much of his youth in Blatten. During his scientific training, he studied the glaciers of the Lötschen Valley. “Blatten was always like the anchor for me,” he told me. “Even now, when I close my eyes, I can go back there and navigate through all the small roads, through every corner of the village.” He first understood the scale of the destruction when his brother sent him a photograph. He couldn’t figure out which part of Blatten it depicted.
A few weeks ago, Dr. Bellwald made his first trip to Blatten since the landslide. On a hike through the affected area, childhood memories came back to him, and his eyes filled with tears. Still, he was relieved: almost everyone in the village had survived. He felt grateful that he’d grown up “surrounded by these peaks and glaciers, even if they destroyed what I loved most.” His trip ultimately reassured him that the area can be made safe to live in again, at least for those who are patient enough to wait. What is left of the Kleine Nesthorn is still crumbling, but the village could build dams to block small landslides. Although a remnant of the upper Birch Glacier still sits far above Blatten, it’s too high up for large quantities of rock to accumulate there.
At first, Dr. Bellwald couldn’t believe that, of all the places in the world where a disaster could strike, his village, during his lifetime, was destroyed. But over time he sensed that the catastrophe did not make Blatten an outlier. “Climate change will impact everybody,” he told me. Not every country can afford to monitor every glacier or rebuild entire villages. Still, he hoped that this landslide—one of the most closely studied in history—could serve as a case study. He felt a renewed sense of urgency, not only to stop climate change by phasing out fossil fuels but also to prepare for its effects through monitoring and adaptation. “Solidarity is key,” he said, adding that we must “be empathic with all of the people on the planet.”
During my trip, I hiked as close to Blatten as I could without crossing a perimeter that the Swiss Army had established. Whenever I looked up to admire the grandeur of the mountains, my eyes would be drawn back to the scar on the landscape. A faint haze, thrown up by smaller and more recent rockfalls, hung over the site. I kept thinking of the word “sublime,” which eighteenth-century philosophers associated with the might of nature and the feeling of mortal terror.
As Hurricane Erin pelted North Carolina’s barrier islands with strong winds and waves this week, it destroyed many nests of threatened sea turtle, burying the eggs deep in sand or washing them out to sea.
On Topsail Island more than half the 43 loggerhead turtle nests were lost in the storm, according to Terry Meyer, conservation director for the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center.
“I didn’t anticipate the water table being so high and the eggs being just literally sitting in water when we got to them,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve seen that on such a wide scale.”
Erin never made landfall and caused no widespread damage to infrastructure despite being twice the size of an average hurricane. But the turtles were not so lucky.
Loggerheads, which are known for their large head and strong jaw muscles, are threatened in the U.S. due to fishing bycatch, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They are the state’s primary sea turtle and nest every two to three years between May and August, with each nest containing about 100 eggs.
Meyer said that in the big picture, the devastation of dozens of these nests will not have a significant impact on the species. But for the many volunteers who spend every summer helping to monitor each nest on the 26-mile (42-kilometer) beach, it’s heartbreaking.
“When you’re digging up a nest that’s got 100 dead, fully developed, ready-to-go hatchlings — I’m old and jaded, but that can be pretty tough to handle,” she said.
About 33 miles (53 kilometers) to the northeast, the storm likely wiped out eight of the 10 remaining loggerhead turtle nests on Emerald Isle, said Dale Baquer, program coordinator and president of the Emerald Isle Sea Turtle Patrol.
One survived when the turtles managed to hatch Wednesday night, while another one likely made it safely through the storm because of its higher location on the dunes, according to Baquer. But there is little chance for the others, though it will not be known for sure until about 75 days into the incubation cycle.
“They really suffered a lot of damage. A lot of high tides and a lot of sitting water. But we’re just going to remain optimistic,” she said.
Both organizations tried to get ahead of the storm by picking up signs or extra stakes or fencing that could be washed out or cause other problems for the turtles.
But there is little they can do given North Carolina’s strict laws about keeping the sea turtle hatching process natural.
Baquer said the only time the group can obtain state permission to help a nest is if it knows it has already hatched or possibly if the tide hits the nest and the eggs are washing out.
“It’s stressful and of course it’s not something you ever get used to, but I think we all have a science mindset that this is nature and this is what’s going to happen,” she said.
In August 2023, downed power lines on Maui, Hawaii, sparked a wildfire that quickly exploded into multiple, fast-moving blazes fanned by high winds. Over several days, the fires reduced much of the town of Lāhainā to ashes, displacing thousands and killing more than 100 people.
New research published Thursday, August 22, in the journal Frontiers in Climate suggests this disaster also caused a population-wide increase in mortality beyond what the official death count captured. By calculating the all-cause excess fatality rate—how many more deaths took place over a given period than expected—scientists found a 67% increase in the local mortality rate for August 2023. During the deadliest week of the blaze, the local death rate was 367% higher than expected. These findings underscore a need for improved disaster preparedness that incorporates Native Hawaiian ecological knowledge, the researchers concluded.
What excess death rate reveals
Looking at the excess death rate offered a fuller picture of the fire’s impact, co-first author Michelle Nakatsuka, a medical student and researcher at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, told Gizmodo in an email. “The official numbers mostly count direct causes, like burns or smoke inhalation, but excess deaths capture [the] true toll better by telling us how many more people died than would have otherwise been expected in the month of the Lāhainā fires,” she explained.
Disasters like wildfires often cause deaths in indirect ways that affect communities over time. When clinics shut down and roads are blocked off, people can’t refill their prescriptions or get dialysis treatments, Nakatsuka explained. Stress and displacement can worsen chronic conditions, and power or communication failures can delay emergency responses. “These impacts are amplified in under-resourced settings and [are] disproportionately suffered by vulnerable groups, like the elderly or people of color,” she said.
The tragic toll of the Maui fires
Even with this knowledge, Nakatsuka and her colleagues were surprised by the increase in excess mortality during the month of August 2023. Their analysis included all causes of death except covid-19. “While we anticipated an increase in excess deaths, seeing more than 80 additional deaths in the month of the Lāhainā fires was striking,” Nakatsuka said. “It was also surprising to see that the proportion of those deaths occurring outside of medical settings was larger than expected,” she added.
Indeed, the number of deaths that didn’t take place in a medical context—such as the emergency room—rose from 68% in previous months to 80% in August 2023. These people died in homes or public locations, suggesting that many were unable to reach medical care because of the fires.
A path to resilience
While all-cause excess mortality is useful for correlating increased fatalities with natural disasters, it offers little insight into the details of these deaths, Nakatsuka clarified. “The main limitation here is that we can’t say exactly which deaths were caused by the fires or look into Lāhainā-specific excess mortality; we can only measure the overall increase in deaths,” she said, adding that future research should analyze death records alongside medical and toxicology reports to identify causes of death.
Still, these findings reveal a need to improve Maui’s disaster preparedness and invest in wildfire mitigation strategies rooted in Indigenous knowledge, Nakatsuka said. “Native Hawaiian practices center around caring for the land (mālama ʻāina) in ways that naturally reduce fire risk, like restoring native plants, maintaining diverse ecosystems, and managing water resources,” she said. “Bringing Indigenous knowledge together with modern climate prediction tools will minimize risk of future climate crises and center the community’s voice at the heart of disaster prevention and recovery efforts.”
There’s a popular T-shirt on Hatteras Island on the North Carolina Outer Banks that says: “One road on. One road off (sometimes)” — poking fun at the constant battle between Mother Nature and a thin ribbon of pavement connecting the narrow barrier island to the rest of the world.
Mother Nature is probably going to win this week. Hurricane Erin is forecast to move hundreds of miles offshore from the islands but the massive storm is still sending waves 20 feet (6 meters) or greater crashing over vulnerable sand dunes.
Officials have ordered evacuations of Hatteras and Ocracoke islands even without a hurricane warning because that tiny ribbon of highway called NC 12 will likely be torn up and washed out in several places, isolating villages for days or weeks.
The 3,500 or so Outer Bankers who live there have handled isolation before. But most of the tens of thousands of vacationers have not.
“We haven’t seen waves of that size in a while and the vulnerable spots have only gotten weaker in the past five years,” said Reide Corbett, executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute, a group of several universities that study the Outer Banks.
In a basic sense, they are sand dunes that were tall enough to stay above the ocean level when many of the Earth’s glaciers melted 20,000 years ago.
The barrier islands in some places are as far as 30 miles (48 kilometers) off mainland North Carolina. To the east is the vast Atlantic Ocean. To the west is the Pamlico Sound.
“Water, water everywhere. That really resonates on the Outer Banks,” Corbett said.
The most built up and populated part of the Outer Banks are in the north around Nags Head and Kill Devil Hills, which aren’t under the evacuation order. South of the Oregon Inlet, scoured out by a 1846 hurricane, is Hatteras Island, where the only connection to the mainland is the NC 12 highway. South of there is Ocracoke Island, accessible only by boat or plane.
The first highways to reach the area were built more than 60 years ago. And the Outer Banks started booming, as it went from quaint fishing villages to what it is now, dotted with 6,000-square foot vacation homes on stilts.
On a nice day, what look like snowplows and street sweeper brushes wait on the side of NC 12 to scoop and sweep away the constantly blowing sand.
When the storms come, water from the ocean or the sound punch through the sand dunes and wash tons of sand and debris on the road. In more extreme cases, storms can break up the pavement or even create new inlets that require temporary bridges.
It cost the North Carolina Department of Transportation more than $1 million a year in regular maintenance to keep NC 12 open during the 2010s. They also spent about $50 million over the decade on repairs after storms.
But the state estimates Dare County, which includes most of the Outer Banks, brings in $2 billion in tourism revenue a year. So the cycle of clean up and repair continues.
It can take time to fix things. Hurricane Isabel in 2003 and Hurricane Irene in 2011 both cut inlets into Hatteras Island and ferries were needed for two months. It can still take days to get NC 12 back open even after more routine Nor’easters.
It’s not just storms that impact the island. As the planet warms and polar ice melts, rising ocean levels threaten the Outer Banks. In a place where most of the land is only a few feet above sea level, every inch of sand counts.
In Rodanthe, which sticks the farthest out into the Atlantic, the churning ocean has swallowed up more than a dozen homes since 2020. Officials think at least two unoccupied homes are likely to be lost if the waves from Erin are as strong as predicted.
Shelli Miller Gates waited tables on the Outer Banks to earn money as a college student in the late 1970s. She remembers houses with no air conditioning, televisions or phones. And she adored it.
“I love the water. I love the wildness of it. It’s the way I want to live my life,” the respiratory therapist said.
It’s a lifestyle embraced by many. The area’s shorthand “OBX” shows up in many places as a source of pride, including the first three letters on license plates issued by the state.
The isolation contributes to a sense of community. Gates has seen people band together countless times when their connection to the outside world is severed. And there is always the allure of getting to live someplace where others just get to visit.
“There’s things everywhere. There’s earthquakes and lizards and floods. Looks at the poor people out in western North Carolina,” Gates said. “There are so many things that can happen to you. I feel like you have to find the place that feels like home.”
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Associated Press Journalist Ben Finley contributed to this report.
Several large brush fires broke out across the region this weekend amid the ongoing dry weather.
A large brush fire had been smoldering for a day off Cain Road and Highland Avenue in Salem before flames broke out early Sunday morning.
Salem firefighters were trying to contain the blaze via a controlled burn, according to reports, but also had to work to protect buildings and homes close to the flames. The fire also threatened a cell tower at one point.
A public safety alert just before 10 a.m. urged residents to avoid the area.
In Beverly, a brush fire broke out near 40 Enon St., behind McDonald’s toward Wenham Lake, on Saturday blanketing the area in smoke.
Two brush fires were also reported in Topsfield on Saturday. And yet another brush fire was reported in Middleton Sunday afternoon near Emerson Brook Reservoir.
A red flag warning is in place across Massachusetts, indicating extreme fire danger.
RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina state legislators returning to work Thursday to consider further Hurricane Helene relief have received an estimate of the monetary scope of the catastrophic flooding and what Gov. Roy Cooper wants them to spend soon on recovery efforts.
The Republican-dominated General Assembly scheduled a one-day session to consider additional funding and legislation four weeks after Helene tore across the Southeast and into the western North Carolina mountains.
Earlier this month, lawmakers unanimously approved — and Cooper signed — an initial relief bill that included $273 million, mostly the state’s matching share to meet federal requirements for disaster assistance programs. Lawmakers said it would be the first of many actions they would take to address the storm.
North Carolina state officials have reported 96 deaths from Helene, which brought historic levels of rain and flooding to the mountains in late September.
Thursday’s session comes one day after Cooper, a Democrat, unveiled his request to legislators to locate $3.9 billion to help pay for repairs and revitalization. The request was included in a report from his Office of State Budget and Management, which calculated that Helene likely caused at least a record $53 billion in damages and recovery needs in western North Carolina.
Cooper said on Wednesday that the state’s previous record for storm damage was $17 billion from Hurricane Florence, which struck eastern North Carolina in 2018.
State government coffers include several billon dollars that can be accessed for future recovery spending. Almost $4.5 billion is in the state’s savings reserve alone.
Cooper’s request includes $475 million for a grant recovery program for businesses in the hardest-hit areas; $325 million to help homeowners and renters quickly with rebuilding and minor repairs; $225 million for grants to farmers for uninsured losses; and $100 million for public school and community college capital needs.
Agricultural and residential losses are expected to be particularly acute in the damaged areas because few growers were covered by crop insurance and homeowners by flood insurance.
According to the budget office, the storm and its aftermath caused 1,400 landslides and damaged over 160 water and sewer systems, at least 6,000 miles (9,650 kilometers) of roads, more than 1,000 bridges and culverts and an estimated 126,000 homes.
At a Harley-Davidson dealership in Appalachia, one expects to encounter the occasional roar of some serious horsepower.
Less expected is the sight that has accompanied that sound in Swannanoa, North Carolina, for the past three weeks: Helicopters, many of them privately owned and operated, launching and landing from a makeshift helipad in the backyard of the local hog shop. According to the men who organized this private relief effort in the wake of devastating floods unleashed by the remnants of Hurricane Helene, more than a million pounds of goods—food, heavy equipment to clear roads, medical gear, blankets, heaters, tents, you name it—have been flown from here to dots all over the map of western North Carolina.
“We’re not the government, and we’re here to help,” says one of the two men standing by the makeshift gate—a pair of orange traffic drums—that controls access to and from the Harley-Davidson dealership’s parking lot and the piles of donated items neatly organized within it. “We can do it quicker, we can do it efficiently, and we genuinely just want to help our neighbors.” He identifies himself only by his first name and later asks that I don’t use even that. It’s an understandable request, as what he’s doing is probably not, strictly speaking, totally legal.
There are a lot of those blurry lines in western North Carolina right now, and thankfully the police are either too busy or too grateful for the help to care much about it. An ethos of do-it-yourself-ism, plenty of cooperation, and a healthy amount of “ask forgiveness rather than permission” is on display everywhere in Asheville and its surroundings.
Every bit of it is needed. The flooding caused by Helene is catastrophic, as I witnessed firsthand during a two-day trip to the area last week. Pictures and videos on social media and in the news do not fully capture the scope of this disaster—and the digging out, picking up, and rebuilding is a process far too large and too important to be left to the government.
The Harley-Davidson dealership in Swannanoa, North Carolina, has become an official relief center in the weeks since Hurricane Helene hit. (Photo by Eric Boehm)Piles of bottled water, clothes, gasoline, propane, and more donated goods in Swannanoa, where an ad hoc helicopter landing pad has been set up. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
“It’s been miraculous.”
The man largely responsible for organizing the Harley-Davidson airlift is a burly, bearded former Green Beret who goes by Adam Smith—yes, really.
Smith was on a work trip to Texas on September 27, when the remnants of Helene stormed into the southern Appalachians and dumped over 20 inches of rain onto the mountains. After losing contact with his ex-wife and 3-year-old daughter, Smith drove through the night to get back to the Asheville area. What greeted him was a nightmare: Roads to the mountain hamlet where the two lived were completely impassable thanks to downed trees and power lines, mudslides, and collapsed bridges. After two days of trying to get to them, and still no contact, Smith feared the worst.
“They’re about eight miles that way,” he gestures toward the mountain ridge that runs south of Swannanoa, an area where some of the worst flooding in the area occurred. “I just assumed they were dead at that point.”
Former Green Berets don’t give up easily. Through a series of connections, Smith got in touch with someone who owned a small recreational helicopter. On the morning of September 29, he hitched a ride on his last hope.
He found them, alive and well. Tears well up in his eyes when I ask him about that moment. “We landed the helicopter and I was getting out of the door and I saw them walk from the tree line,” he says. “And they were perfect.”
They weren’t the only ones who needed help. Smith’s day job these days is running Savage Freedoms Defense, a training and consulting firm, where he draws on his military experience to help prepare people to take care of themselves and their loved ones under difficult circumstances. Through that business and via connections with other retired special operations veterans in the area, Smith launched what’s been called a redneck air force to get supplies to flooded mountain towns. Smith owns motorcycles and knows people who work at the Harley-Davidson dealership. He also knew it would be a perfect spot for the group’s ad hoc operations: a big parking lot with a single entrance, and a large field out back where the helicopters have been landing.
By the end of the first week, they had three civilian helicopters running missions, and it has only grown from there. In addition to food and supplies, the group has carried Starlink devices into places where internet and cell connections were down.
Bringing together veterans and others with experience in emergency response meant that the group had people who knew “the different systems and procedures and process, and understand the red tape and also understanding the people on the ground,” says Austin Holmes, who is handling communications for Savage Freedoms.
The bootstrapped operation has gained notoriety in the region—and a visit from former President Donald Trump on Monday of this week—as well as the respect of the National Guard, which has started piggybacking on some of Savage Freedom’s supply runs. When I visited on Friday, a truckload of National Guardsmen were picking up a free lunch—smoked turkey, with peas and carrots—being distributed by volunteers in the parking lot.
Even the bureaucrats at the Federal Aviation Administration have had to get out of the way: The field behind the Harley-Davidson dealership was granted an emergency designation as a legitimate landing zone.
Smith says this is meant to be a “collaborative” operation, rather than a fully private one. But there are no uniformed cops controlling access, just Travis and his buddy, who declines to speak with me. The National Guardsmen who are here seem to be waiting for orders rather than giving them. What’s happening here resembles a militia operation, in the best and truest sense of the term.
“Now that we’re three weeks into it, we’ve had no less than 60 people here. At the height, we had 130 people here every day,” Smith says. “It just, it’s been miraculous.”
(Photo by Eric Boehm)
Who will build the roads…and the hot showers?
Any doubts about the necessity of those helicopters disappear as I wind my way into the mountains southeast of Asheville. It’s been three weeks, but U.S. Route 74—the only main road in this area—is passable only in the strictest sense of the word. Trees have been cut and the mudslides partially cleared, but power lines are down everywhere. In some places, it looks like every third tree was felled by the storm. In others, whole mountainsides came loose and tumbled down.
Where the road wasn’t blocked with debris from above, it was washed out from below. After crossing the top of Strawberry Gap, Route 74 follows Hickory Creek as it spills down the side of the eastern continental divide toward the Broad River. In places where floodwaters from the storm came into conflict with anything man-made, the creek won. The road is open now thanks to piles of gravel and steel plates filling some of the washed-out sections. Hastily constructed culverts have replaced destroyed bridges in so many places that I lost count.
“I’ve never dealt with anything like this, and I hope I never do again,” says Jay Alley, who has been the chief at the volunteer fire department in Gerton since 1994. “We had pretty much no roads, no bridges, no power poles, nothing. Had a lot of homes destroyed.”
Despite the damage, he’s proud to report that the town didn’t lose a single life in the flooding. “We actually gained one,” he says. “We had a baby born in the middle of all this, so that was really great.” The stories that kid will be told.
Other places have not been so lucky. As of October 23, there have been 96 deaths attributed to Helene’s impact on North Carolina—seven of them in Henderson County, where the town of Bat Cave (just down the road from Gerton) was nearly wiped out.
Flooding washed out sections of U.S. Route 74, slowing relief efforts. (Photo by Eric Boehm)A message of defiance in Bat Cave, North Carolina. (Photo by Eric Boehm)Debris from homes line the roads of western North Carolina. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
Donations and supplies that poured into Gerton overflow onto the driveway outside the firehouse: propane heaters, sleeping bags, warm clothes, and more. A trailer with a massive propane-fueled rotisserie oven—one that’s normally used to cook turkeys for church dinners, says Debbie, who offers me a chili dog while I wait to chat with Alley—has been churning out hundreds of hot meals every day for first responders and residents alike.
“It speaks to the generosity of the people who have come to help us,” says Alley. “We had lots of faith-based organizations and volunteers who came in and they rebuilt roads and they rebuilt things for everyone in the community.”
Wait, even the roads?
“We’ve had private organizations from Ohio, Kentucky, Alabama, just all over the country have been here rebuilding our roads,” Alley says. “I don’t know how they got here, but we said ‘hey, go fix this problem,’ and they went and fixed it.”
Groups with names like God’s Pit Crew have poured into North Carolina in the weeks since Helene, armed with the power of prayer, chain saws, and front-end loaders. In a church parking lot near Mills River, I meet a group of volunteers from Pennsylvania as they’re packing up a trailer to head home after a week of cutting tree limbs and clearing debris. In two days of driving around, I see more “Texas Strong” decals on trucks and trailers than Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) logos.
The Cajun Navy, a Louisiana-based disaster response team that made headlines in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is here too. At an outpost the group established in the parking lot of a Dollar General in Black Mountain, Chris Woodard is serving corn bread and chili. He’ll be here for a week, and then other volunteers will arrive to take his place. World Central Kitchen, the relief group founded by Chef José Andrés, has set up a massive outdoor kitchen in downtown Asheville, where the public water supply was only partially restored this past Friday: For the first time since the storm, toilets could be flushed and residents could take showers, but the water was not yet safe for drinking or cooking.
Outside of the more well-established relief efforts, local networks of volunteers have sprung up around churches, firehouses, and other gathering points. Many rely on the ingenuity of the people running them, or at least a willingness to think outside the box. At BattleCat Coffee in East Asheville, staff are hauling tanks of water from a nearby World Central Kitchen distribution point, and using a jury-rigged pump system to feed it into the expresso machine.
The community pool in Black Mountain has become another of the many ad hoc relief centers in the region: Piles of donated clothes fill the locker rooms, hot food is being grilled on a trailer in the parking lot, and volunteers who traveled from Maryland and Indiana are crashing in the swim team’s clubhouse. This one has something that many other do not: hot showers.
“We had an idea and we just went with it,” says Heather Hensley, who works as the pool’s assistant manager during the summer months. A few days after the flood took out Black Mountain’s power and water supply, Hensley and her colleagues realized that the pool could be used to filter the available water—which was unsanitary due to broken pipes—to make it usable. A generator got the filter up and running. Then, another problem: the October sun wasn’t warm enough to heat the solar shower bags someone provided. So, she called a friend who owns a propane-powered turkey fryer.
Like so many of these off-the-cuff setups, it’s the sort of thing that almost certainly violates at least a few of the town’s ordinances. Hensley says she’s found it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission when attending to flood victims’ needs.
That approach has turned Hensley into something of a field marshal. Our conversation is interrupted at one point by a volunteer who is in contact with some members of the 101st Airborne Division, which has been deployed to the region. The other woman asks Hensley to decide what task the airmen should be given: Are they needed here to unload a truck of donations scheduled to arrive shortly, or focus on clean-up efforts down the road?
“Did you ever think you’d be giving orders to the 101st Airborne?” I ask her after the volunteer steps away to deliver the message (the airmen get clean-up duty, as Hensley has enough volunteers here).
“I’m not,” she laughs, “I’m not giving orders.”
But, yeah, she is.
Makeshift hot showers in Black Mountain, thanks to a community pool and a turkey fryer. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
The road from Black Mountain back to Swannanoa is lined with piles of debris—the guts of homes that were swamped when the Swannanoa River overflowed its banks. The football bleachers from the Asheville Christian Academy have been dragged across the field and crushed like an empty beer can. Mud-logged cars and trucks have been strewn in fields and flushed down the riverbank.
Amid the destruction, the Valley Hope Church has become a hub of activity. Inside, Amy Berry oversees the stockpiles of donated clothes, bedding, furniture, and food that have poured in from as far away as Canada and Connecticut, and now fill the church’s rec center.
“It just has been amazing to see the best of humanity,” Berry says. “We can always talk about the worst of it, but I have seen the best of it, I really have.”
On the church’s front lawn, Taylor and Frances Montgomery are serving a full hot dinner of roasted chicken, Tex-Mex soup, parmesan pasta, and vegetables to dozens of families from the area. Kids are playing tag in the playground. The buzz of generators and an approaching autumn chill hang in the air.
“We’ve seen tears over salad,” says Taylor, who has been a chef for more than two decades. “My whole career, I concentrate on learning the next culinary discipline or new trend or how to develop flavor. And not one of those plates has been more important or impactful than the plate I’m handing to a person on the other side of this slide.”
In more normal times, Taylor and Frances run the Montgomery Sky Farm and an associated animal rescue center in Leicester, about 10 miles northwest of Asheville. If Smith and his brand of redneck mountain tough guy represent one-half of the western North Carolina cliché, then the Montgomeries are the yin to that yang: crunchy, flannel-wearing folks who talk about “scratch” cooking and run a carefully curated Instagram page. They’re also the type who depend on the area’s agritourism, which usually peaks in the autumn.
Not this year. With their farm partially flooded by the storm and the tourists staying away, Taylor and Frances hit the road with a mobile kitchen trailer and food that’s been provided by fundraising on social media. For two weeks, they’ve been feeding desperate people in stricken communities across the Black Mountains. They’re hoping to keep this up through Thanksgiving, and maybe longer if the donations keep flowing.
“We figured we could sit and cry,” says Frances, “or we could be proactive.”
Scenes of destruction along the banks of the Swannanoa River. (Photo by Eric Boehm)
“We’re the ones seeing our friends float away”
The question that will be asked in the wake of Helene is whether FEMA’s response was sufficient. For what it’s worth, President Joe Biden has already delivered his verdict—”you’re doing a heckuva job,” Biden told FEMA Director Deanne Criswell on October 9 (an irony-free callback to then-President George W. Bush’s questionable praise for then-FEMA chief Michael Brown after Hurricane Katrina).
Many in western North Carolina will have a different view, no doubt. Threats of violence against FEMA personnel earlier this month caused a brief suspension of federal relief efforts in Rutherford County, where the town of Chimney Rock was wiped off the map by the same floodwaters that devastated Gerton and Bat Cave. The man responsible for those threats was quickly arrested, and the recovery efforts resumed.
Threats like that are not helping anyone, obviously, and the people engaged in the actual work on the ground—from first responders like Alley to the redneck airforce leaders like Smith—are quick to dismiss that incident as an outlier. It’s no secret that FEMA’s efforts are often slow, incompetent, and ineffective, but the aid is accepted for what it is. (And it hasn’t been completely insignificant: FEMA says it has shippedover 9.3 million meals, more than 11.2 million liters of water, 150 generators, and more than 260,000 tarps to western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.)
But the people here also know that FEMA can’t be trusted with the really important tasks.
“If we weren’t here, there wouldn’t be people getting warm clothes, because FEMA doesn’t give out clothes,” says Bob Wright, who is running another of these roadside donation distribution centers, this one in a shopping center parking lot in Swannonoa. Wright works for a local nonprofit, Hearts and Hands, that is distributing heaters, canned food, blankets, and other items alongside plastic bins containing sweaters and jeans in various sizes.
“They give you $750 to go buy some,” he adds, gesturing at the nearby Ingles grocery store that’s been closed due to damage from the flood as if to underline his point.
In any disaster, a federal response is bound to be insufficient. There will always be the need for people in the affected communities—first responders and other public officials, yes, but also ad hoc volunteer efforts and charity.
Not everyone involved in the recovery is a former Green Beret. Not everyone knows how to fly a helicopter or operate a front-end loader. That’s fine. Surviving the first three weeks after Helene required the assistance of farmers and pool managers, of breweries and barbeques, of chefs and fishmongers from the next state—and untold contributions from the wallets of ordinary Americans and the corporate accounts of some of the country’s biggest businesses. The overflowing donations, the pallets of bottled water, the fresh food, and the helicopters, too. They all represent the wealth of America, and not in some metaphorical sense but in a very literal one.
“I do not have time to defend what the government is doing. They are doing a lot of hard, dangerous work,” says Berry. But grassroots organizations like her church have a vital role to play. “We can respond a lot faster. We’re a lot smaller, but they are our neighbors. It is our home. We are going to respond faster because we are the ones standing in the water, in the mud. We are the ones seeing our friends float away.”
Down the road, at the Harley-Davidson dealership, Smith and his collaborators are working on a planto ferry huge tanks of clean water into the mountain hollows that might not have regular service restored for months.
“This is a long-term effort. And we’ve given our word to the community that we will stay and support them as long as it takes for them to get back on their feet,” says Smith. “The mission is to get the local economy up and running again, make sure the community and residents of western North Carolina are taken care of, and to remind them on a regular basis that they haven’t been forgotten.”
TOKYO — Japan’s beloved former Empress Michiko received greetings from her relatives and palace officials to celebrate her 90th birthday Sunday as she steadily recovers from a broken leg, officials said.
Michiko is the first commoner to become empress in modern Japanese history. Catholic-educated Michiko Shoda and then-Crown Prince Akihito married on April 10, 1959, after what is known as their tennis court romance.
Since then, Akihito and Michiko have largely withdrawn from public appearance to enjoy their quiet life together, taking daily walks inside the palace gardens or occasionally taking private trips, hosting small gatherings for book reading and music, according to the Imperial Household Agency.
Former Emperor Akihito has been concerned about Michiko’s physical strength and asking how she is feeling, officials said.
Michiko, who fell earlier in October at her residence and had a surgery for her femoral fracture, was steadily recovering with a daily rehabilitation session for about an hour at a time, palace officials said. She was expected to be in a wheelchair when joining her well-wishers for Sunday’s celebration.
The former empress was deeply concerned about the people affected by the deadly Jan. 1 earthquake in Japan’s north-central region of Noto, especially those who suffered additional damage from September’s heavy rains and floods, the palace said.
Since retirement, Michiko has shared her love of literature, including children’s books, English poetry and music, with her friends as well as with Akihito.
The palace said she reads parts of a book aloud with her husband as a daily routine after breakfast. They are currently reading a book chosen by Akihito about war and Okinawa, a southern Japanese island where one of the harshest ground battles took place at the end of World War II fought in the name of his father.
The couple broke with traditions and brought many changes to the monarchy: They chose to raise their three children themselves, spoke more often to the public, and made amends for war victims in and outside Japan. Their close interactions have won them deep affection among Japanese.
TAMPA, Fla. — When ankle-deep floodwaters from Hurricane Helene bubbled up through the floors of their home, Kat Robinson-Malone and her husband sent a late-night text message to their neighbors two doors down: “Hey, we’re coming.”
The couple waded through the flooded street to the elevated front porch of Chris and Kara Sundar, whose home was built on higher ground, and handed over their 8-year-old daughter and a gas-powered generator.
The Sundars’ lime-green house in southern Tampa also became a refuge for Brooke and Adam Carstensen, whose house next door to Robinson-Malone also flooded.
The three families met years earlier when their children became playmates, and the adults’ friendships deepened during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. So when Helene and Hurricane Milton struck Florida within two weeks of each other, the neighbors closed ranks as one big extended family, cooking meals together, taking turns watching children and cleaning out their damaged homes.
And as Milton threatened a direct strike on Tampa last week, the Malones, the Sundars and the Carstensens decided to evacuate together. They drove more than 450 miles (725 kilometers) in a caravan to metro Atlanta — seven adults, six children, four dogs and teenage Max Carstensen’s three pet rats.
“Everyone has, like, the chain saw or a tarp,” Robinson-Malone said Sunday. “But really the most important thing for us was the community we built. And that made all the difference for the hurricane rescue and the recovery. And now, hopefully, the restoration.”
Recovery efforts continued Sunday in storm-battered communities in central Florida, where President Joe Biden surveyed the devastation. Biden said he was thankful the damage from Milton was not as severe as officials had anticipated. But he said it was still a “cataclysmic” event for people caught in the path of the hurricane, which has been blamed for at least 11 deaths.
Nearly 800,000 homes and businesses in Florida remained without electricity Sunday, according to Poweroutage.us, down from more than 3 million after Milton made landfall late Wednesday as a Category 3 storm.
Fuel shortages also appeared to be easing as more gas stations opened, and lines at pumps in the Tampa area looked notably shorter. Gov. Ron DeSantis announced nine sites where people can get 10 gallons (38 liters) each for free.
While recovery efforts were gaining steam, a full rebound will take far longer.
DeSantis cautioned that debris removal could take up to a year, even as Florida shifts nearly 3,000 workers to the cleanup. He said Biden has approved 100% federal reimbursement for those efforts for 90 days.
“The (removal of) debris has to be 24/7 over this 90-day period,” DeSantis said while speaking next to a pile of furniture, lumber and other debris in Treasure Island, an island city near St. Petersburg that has been battered by both recent hurricanes. “That’s the way you get the job done.”
National Weather Service meteorologist Paul Close said rivers will keep rising for the next several days and result in flooding, mostly around Tampa Bay and northward. Those areas got the most rain, which came on top of a wet summer that included several hurricanes.
Meanwhile, residents unable to move back into their damaged homes were making other arrangements.
Robinson-Malone and her husband, Brian, bought a camper trailer that’s parked in their driveway. They plan to live there while their gutted home is repaired and also improved to make it more resilient against hurricanes.
“These storms, they’re just going to keep happening,” she said. “And we want to be prepared for it.”
The Carstensens plan to demolish what’s left of their flooded, low-slung home, which was built in 1949, and replace it with a new house higher off the ground. For the time being they are staying with Brooke Carstensen’s mother.
Chris Sundar said he’s questioning his plan to remain in Tampa until his children have all graduated from high school a decade from now. His house remains the home base for the families’ kids, ages 8 to 13. On the wall there is a list of chores for them all, from folding laundry to emptying wastebaskets. Brooke Carstensen, a teacher, has helped the children through an extended period without school.
The Sundars lost both their vehicles when Helene’s storm surge flooded their garage, so they drove Robinson-Malone’s car when they evacuated to Georgia. Arriving, exhausted after the 14-hour trek, Chris Sundar said to Robinson-Malone: “This is where community shines or it falls apart.”
“And that night we got together and we all hung out,” he said.
On Sunday back in Florida, they worked together to remove sticks and logs from a large oak limb that dangled over another neighbor’s driveway. Brian Malone cut it up with a chain saw.
Tackling recovery as a group has made it seem far less overwhelming, Brooke Carstensen said. The families share tips and ideas on a group text thread. The Sundars threw an impromptu 13th birthday party for her son at their house between the storms. And she found solace and laughter from Brian Malone’s advice about rebounding: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
It’s why she wants to remain in Tampa, despite her concerns that Helene and Milton won’t be the last storms.
“Why do we live here in a place that’s trying to destroy us?” Brooke Carstensen said. “Well, it’s all the people that we have here.”
Let’s say you represent the most powerful government on Earth and would like to convey some information to the citizens of your country in a moment of crisis. We’re talking pretty basic stuff: How to apply for federal assistance after a series of massive natural disasters, the general state of the recovery effort, things like that. You’ve got a lot of options, more than ever in the history of mankind. You can issue a press release. You can call a press conference. You can have the president give a little speech or send surrogates out for interviews. You can communicate with state and local authorities who will use the channels at their disposal. You can post anything you want on all sorts of social media platforms and reach out to influencers, theoretically accessing a near-infinite audience.
This will all help, but it won’t necessarily work. Nobody pays attention to the channels you control. Traditional media is fragmented and its audiences are diminished and hyper-polarized. Lots of people are watching TV, but not the TV you need them to watch; everyone’s looking at their phones, but they’re not receiving your messages. Your posts on Facebook, which briefly assumed a role in basic civic communication across the country, are filtered through recommendation algorithms and submerged in slop. Your announcements on Instagram have no way to spread and people aren’t looking for them, anyway. Your posts on TikTok feel like a joke and mostly get distributed to random people in other states. Your posts on X, which used to be at least marginally helpful as a sort of straightforward institutional newswire, are barely visible and overwhelmed by conspiracy theories. It’s a little paradoxical, and if you’re in the business of communications, probably sort of discouraging: It isn’t just your propaganda machine that’s broken, it’s your basic means of reaching people in any way at all. It’s also darkly funny: Everyone can talk to everyone and now suddenly nobody can hear anyone.
Still, you’d like to get that FEMA phone number out there and clarify a few things. A weary social media manager pipes up from the corner of the office: I guess… we could post on Reddit? Reports the Verge:
Reddit isn’t the first place you’d think to see official statements and news coming from the federal government, but today, The White House is on the site making posts… The Biden administration’s “whitehouse” account has new posts in subreddits r/NorthCarolina and r/Georgia to discuss the federal response to Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.
For years, the typical story about governments, politicians, or public figures showing up on Reddit focused on the unlikeliness of that match. Reddit was rowdy, weird, or nerdy, and it was sort of interesting or fun or strange for people with big platforms to show up there. In recent years, Reddit has grown from a large cluster of online communities into a sort of last refuge semi-protected habitat for online communities in general — that is, spaces where actual people gather to discuss or find information about certain topics or interests, organized and moderated by other actual people. Now, nobody is deigning to post on Reddit. They’re just hoping it might add to their audience a bit. It helps that /r/NorthCarolina is the sort of place where you might be able to post something like “hey, visit DisasterAssistance.gov” without getting drowned out by posts claiming that FEMA is going to seize your property.
Reddit is also coming into play for another (comparatively inconsequential) type of crisis: Brand meltdowns. At her Substack Link in Bio, Rachel Karten tells the story of KeithFromSonos, the Sonos employee who kept dutifully and patiently posting on the brand’s unofficial subreddit after a disastrous app update nearly tanked the company. The subreddit has a couple hundred thousand members, many of whom are pretty mad at the company. But they don’t hate Keith, who has been posting there for a while, and some even feel sorry for him. As a result, he can post straightforward updates without getting yelled at, unlike pretty much anywhere else, which got the attention of the company’s CEO — who then ended up heading over to Reddit, too.
To be clear, Reddit probably won’t help save Sonos from its angry customers, much less have any measurable effect on the response to hurricanes Helene and Milton — these are, in the grand scheme of things, fairly small communities full of people who otherwise don’t have too much trouble finding information online. And for its part, Reddit hasn’t grown without consequence. Community moderators have grown weary of volunteering for an increasingly profit-minded (and now public) company that takes them for granted, and the site’s size and new visibility on Google — the search company also sees Reddit as a rare source of authentic human activity, albeit for harvesting purposes — has caused an influx of spammers and bots looking to get a piece, all but setting a timer on Reddit’s eventual ruin. But in the meantime, Reddit is serving as an online information oasis of last resort, a channel through which extremely basic mass communication is still possible, at least for now.
Former President Donald Trump has fueled a persistent and unproven narrative since Hurricane Helene struck the southeast: Democratic leaders have failed residents who faced the wrath of the hurricane that left more than 200 people dead.
In the span of a week, Trump falsely said Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp could not reach President Joe Biden, falsely said the feds were offering only $750 to people whose homes were washed away and falsely said the Federal Emergency Management Administration had used up its money for relief on migrants.
Add another one involving North Carolina’s Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to the list.
“It has just come out that Democrats in Washington and the Democrat Governor’s Office of North Carolina (Roy Cooper) were blocking people and money from coming into North Carolina to help people in desperate need,” Trump wrote Oct. 11 on Truth Social. “Biden knew about it, and so did Kamala! It’s all over the place – A HORRIBLE SITUATION. I will make it up to everyone when we take Office on January 20th. HOLD ON, I’M COMING!”
Cooper rejected Trump’s claim that he blocked people from coming to help, writing on X: “This is a flat out lie. We’re working with all partners around the clock to get help to people. Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories have hurt the morale of first responders and people who lost everything, helped scam artists and put government and rescue workers in danger.”
We wondered what Trump meant about any alleged evidence that had “just come out,” but his campaign did not respond to our request for evidence.
We found a similar headline published Oct. 10 a right-wing outlet: “LEAKED EMAILS: Blue Cross Blue Shield NC Coordinated Directly with NC Democrat Gov to Stifle Aid to Western NC.”
The story and Trump’s statement distorted the facts.
Falsehood stemmed from employee’s email
Victims collect supplies Oct. 3, 2024, at Watauga High School in Boone, North Carolina, following Hurricane Helene. (AP)
The National File is a right-wing website created by Alex Jones, the owner of the conspiracy website InfoWars, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported.
The National File’s Oct. 10 article discussed companywide emails from two Blue Cross Blue Shield in North Carolina employees with updates about the hurricane disaster and guidance about how to safely assist.
A staff member’s Oct. 1 email said the flooding’s full impact was unfolding and that people urgently needed medical and hygiene supplies along with food, water and temporary shelter.
“We are coordinating all disaster response efforts through the Governor’s office, and they have asked us to spread the following message: Please do NOT travel to western NC to deliver donations, volunteer spontaneously, bring home cooked meals, or view the devastation. The roads are impassable, and rescue and recovery operations are ongoing.”
The email also encouraged employees to make donations or volunteer with agencies designated to coordinate relief efforts.
A different employee sent a Sept. 30 email that said “the urgent needs of these communities ignite a desire to help in all of us.”
“We are following the governor’s office’s coordination in a statewide response. Blue Cross NC is working with state, federal, local officials and our community partners across western NC counties to assess the needs of our communities and determine how we can best support them.”
Also on Sept. 30, the state’s Transportation Department discouraged all nonemergency travel to western North Carolina because hundreds of roads remained impassable there.
Using those emails, the National File concluded that Blue Cross “intentionally worked to slow down the Helene response in western North Carolina.”
But the emails do not prove that. They show the company wanted to ensure that their employees didn’t drive on dangerous roads and offered them several ways to help victims. The article did not quote any government officials or nonprofits assisting with rescue or recovery. It is common for government officials to urge people to avoid damaged areas in the aftermath of a disaster amid rescue efforts.
A Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina spokesperson provided a statement from the company that called the National File story “not only false, the entire premise is outrageous.”
“We are a North Carolina based not-for-profit that exists to serve our fellow North Carolinians — and that is exactly what we have done for the past two weeks,” the statement said. “We are working with a wide range of relief organizations including the United Way, the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, Samaritan’s Purse, the American Red Cross, and many others. It’s a shame that some choose to share this disinformation when so many North Carolinians are suffering.”
Blue Cross announced a $2.5 million donation to hurricane relief and said it has delivered more than 60,000 items — including water, diapers, wipes, and gloves — to western North Carolina since Oct. 4. Blue Cross is also supporting faith-based organizations who are providing direct aid.
State and federal agencies responded to the hurricane
President Joe Biden listens to Gov. Roy Cooper, D-N.C., on Oct. 2, 2024, as he visits the emergency operations center in Raleigh, North Carolina, for a briefing on damage from Hurricane Helene. (AP)
Rescue and relief efforts were well underway by the time Blue Cross Blue Shield workers emailed guidance. In a Sept. 29 news release, Cooper announced:
Five hundred fifty members of the North Carolina National Guard had deployed, along with more than 100 vehicles and 11 aircraft.
Twenty-four shelters had opened to up to 942 victims
State search and rescue teams have conducted hundreds of rescues.
More than 1,600 North Carolina Department of Transportation employees and contract crews were working to clear and reopen roads.
The federal government had granted Cooper’s request for a Federal Major Disaster Declaration, helping 25 counties and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
By Oct. 1, more volunteers and rescue teams were on the ground and in the air in western North Carolina. Cooper was on the ground that day, too, surveying damage. That day, 35 National Guard helicopters were engaged in response missions, including Chinooks for delivering essential supplies and Blackhawks and Lakotas for rescue and recovery efforts, said Jody Donaldson, North Carolina Department of Public Safety communications officer.
“Moreover, we’re supported by a large fleet of FEMA air assets, providing comprehensive aerial coverage to aid in the ongoing response and recovery efforts,” Donaldson told PolitiFact on Oct. 1 in response to a different inquiry.
Cooper signed a $273 million Helene relief package Oct. 10, a day after the GOP-led state Legislature passed it unanimously. The package includes money for public schools, the state Board of Elections and regional governments in storm-affected counties and helps the state match federal government relief money.
The federal response has been robust. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said as of Oct. 11, federal disaster assistance for survivors of Hurricane Helene In North Carolina included:
More than $71.7 million in housing and other types of assistance for over 52,000 households.
Search-and-rescue personnel had rescued or supported over 3,200 survivors.
More than 1,600 families are in a transitional shelter program.
Biden declared a federal disaster in North Carolina on Sept. 28, which then made federal funding available. Biden approved a 100% federal cost-share for North Carolina and other states to help those states’ response efforts. The U.S. Transportation Department said Oct. 5 that it was giving $100 million to North Carolina to repair roads.
The majority of western North Carolina counties voted for Trump in 2020. Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., said that while FEMA’s response “has had its shortfalls” the federal government has not prevented supplies or donations or rescue efforts from reaching western North Carolina.
Our ruling
Trump said, “It has just come out that Democrats in Washington and the Democrat Governor’s Office of North Carolina (Roy Cooper) were blocking people and money from coming into North Carolina.”
There is room for legitimate discussion about the pace and scope of the government response, and how it could be improved. However, it is entirely different to claim Democrats, including the state’s governor, were “blocking” assistance.
In our search for anything that might support Trump’s statement, we found an article from a right-wing website that misconstrued internal emails from Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. The employees cited Cooper’s office and urged colleagues who wanted to help after the storm not to travel to the state’s western region, as roads were impassable there and rescue operations were underway. Those emails did not show Cooper blocking aid; they explained how workers could donate.
It is ridiculous to tell hurricane victims that their top state leader and politicians in the federal government were blocking aid.
We rate this statement Pants on Fire!
PolitiFact Staff Writer Sara Swann contributed to this fact-check.
As of Oct. 12, there were no hurricanes forecast to hit the U.S. in the coming days — welcome news, despite social media rumors warning about “Hurricane Nadine.”
As many Floridians waited for information about their homes and loved ones following Hurricane Milton, social media users shared false information about another hurricane poised to imminently hit the state.
A narrator in an Oct. 10 Instagram video said, “Breaking news: Nadine Hurricane expected to hit Florida right after Milton. This unexpected blow raises serious concerns for the safety and well-being of Florida residents. Communities still reeling from Milton’s impact now face another incoming threat. Experts warn that this upcoming hurricane could bring devastating consequences.”
A Threads post, also shared Oct. 10, said, “Hurricane Nadine is building its way up to Florida! Back to back hurricanes!!!!”
Other posts on InstagramandFacebook made similar claims about an impending Hurricane Nadine, causing understandable concern after Hurricane Helene hit the state Sept. 26 followed by Hurricane Milton on Oct. 9. These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)
The next hurricane could be called Nadine as it’s the next name on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2024 list of Atlantic tropical cyclone names. But as of Oct. 12, the administration’s National Hurricane Center had not reported that a storm called Nadine was developing near the U.S.
PolitiFact has fact-checked other falseclaims about a supposed Hurricane Nadine.
The National Hurricane Center was monitoring Tropical Storm Leslie in the Atlantic Ocean, although it is not predicted to hit land in the U.S. There were no coastal watches or warnings in effect.
The center was also tracking an area of low pressure over the Atlantic Ocean, a couple of hundred miles west of the Cabo Verde islands. This “disturbance” has a 40% chance of cyclone formation in 48 hours, the center said.
“Environmental conditions are expected to become less conducive for further development later today. A short-lived tropical depression could still form at any time today while the system moves generally westward,” the center reported at 8 a.m. ET Oct. 12.
In May, NOAA predicted 17 to 25 storms with winds of 39 miles per hour or higher would hit the U.S. during the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, which runs June 1 to Nov. 30. Of those storms, eight to 13 were forecast to become hurricanes. There have been 13 named storms in the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season so far, USA Today reported.
We rate the claim that a hurricane named Nadine was on a path Oct. 12 to hit Florida False.
BEVERLY — Beverly firefighters are heading to North Carolina on Saturday to deliver donations to help victims of Hurricane Helene.
Fire Chief Pete O’Connor said the department put out a request for donations on Wednesday and got a “huge response.”
“It’s been phenomenal,” he said.
People have been dropping off items at Beverly Fire Department headquarters at 15 Hale St. over the last few days. Firefighters loaded the items onto two rental trucks and will drive them to a designated donation drop-off site at the North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina.
Donated items include clothes, fans, charcoal grills, first aid supplies, flashlights, blankets and hygiene products, among other items. Donations are being accepted until 8 p.m. Friday.
O’Connor said the relief effort was the idea of Lt. Mike Kraus. The Peabody and Danvers fire departments also became involved and collected donations.
“It was definitely a team effort,” O’Connor said.
Staff Writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2535, by email at pleighton@salemnews.com, or on Twitter at @heardinbeverly.
Mobile homes surrounded by flood water after Hurricane Milton made landfall, in St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S. October 10, 2024.
Octavio Jones | Reuters
If your home is temporarily uninhabitable after a natural disaster, a provision in your homeowners or renters insurance policy may help you with new lodging and other living expenses.
Insured wind and flood damage from Hurricane Helene is estimated to be up to $17.5 billion, according to CoreLogic, a real estate data site. Insured losses from Hurricane Milton could range from $30 billion to $60 billion, per Morningstar DBRS.
Homeowners and renters affected by a natural disaster can ask about so-called “loss of use” or “additional living expenses” coverage from their insurance providers, experts say.
The provision is meant to help cover reasonable living expenses if your home is not suitable to live in as a result of a covered peril such as a hurricane, fire or burst pipe.
“I don’t know of any homeowners policy that doesn’t have it already there,” said Karl Susman, president and principal insurance agent of Susman Insurance Services, Inc. in Los Angeles.
As you file a claim, it will be important to ask your insurance company about the loss of use coverage and how quickly it can kick in, said Shannon Martin, a licensed insurance agent and analyst at Bankrate.com.
“If you call your carrier, they might be able to expedite the loss of use claim filing for you and issue a check early so that you’re not stuck trying to figure out how to pay for separate housing,” she said.
Here’s what the coverage is and what to consider before you use it, according to experts.
Loss of use coverage is a provision that is typically included in your homeowners insurance policy. It’s usually about 20% of the dwelling coverage and is paid out in the event that the home becomes uninhabitable and a policyholder needs funds for living expenses while the home is repaired or rebuilt, experts say. Eligible expenses might include a hotel or rental home, food, pet boarding or storage fees, among others.
For example, if you’re ensuring a house for $100,000, and that’s what it costs to rebuild the house, that is considered the dwelling coverage, Susman said.
“Then the policy would automatically come with $20,000 in coverage for loss of use,” he said.
“That way you and your family can pay for your hotel and pay for food, because you might be separated from your home for an extended period of time,” Martin said.
Renters insurance typically has a similar provision, as would condominium policies, Susman said.
For renters and condo insurance, the primary coverage is not dwelling because you’re insuring personal property rather than the building, he said. You’ll typically get 20% of the personal property coverage for loss of use, he said.
Ask your insurer about any policy restrictions. There may be expense-specific dollar caps or time limits to claim loss of use coverage.
Loss of use coverage can help homeowners cover living expenses after a natural disaster. However, the money is meant to be a short-term fix, experts say.
“It’s generally not intended to be a long-term solution,” said Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications research at First Street Foundation, an organization focused on climate risk financial modeling in New York City. “It’s generally not enough money to carry people through an extended period of time.”
That can be a problem because what it would cost to move out would be very different after a major disaster than during more typical times, Susman said, as there’s often less housing available and hotels may raise their prices amid demand.
While the coverage is meant to be temporary, repairs and broader financial recovery take a long time after major disasters, experts say.
“It takes a long time to recoup and recover,” said Loretta Worters, a spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute.
You might be able to use funds from the government to help you stay in a hotel for a month, then get a place closer to your home and use your loss of use coverage to pay for the difference, Martin said.
Meanwhile, analysts anticipate that Hurricane Milton could be a “once-in-a-century” storm with the potential to generate record-breaking damage when it makes landfall along Florida’s west coast on Wednesday.
Once you’re safely out of harm’s way, starting the insurance claim process is an important consideration. The sooner you report a claim, the sooner your insurance company can start the process and you can begin rebuilding, experts say.
“Your adjuster is assigned on a first-come, first-serve basis,” said Shannon Martin, a licensed insurance agent and analyst for Bankrate.com.
The processing arm of your insurance company is going to have a “tremendous amount of paperwork and claims coming through,” said Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications research at First Street Foundation, an organization focused on climate risk financial modeling in New York City.
“The longer you wait, you’re not only delaying the ability to have your claim approved and make its way to you, but you’re lengthening the time in which that claim will sit in the processing pipeline,” Porter said.
Here are three important steps to quickly file an insurance claim after a disaster, according to experts.
Once a disaster has passed, immediately contact your insurance company to let them know that your home has damage from a recent disaster and you’d like to start the claims process, said Porter.
If you evacuated, “you can start the claim from anywhere,” Porter said. “You’ll eventually have to schedule with the insurance company to actually review and inspect the damage.”
But if you decide to wait out the storm in your house, you need to first prevent further damage to the home before calling, said Bankrate.com’s Martin.
A typical home insurance policy has language requiring homeowners to lessen the impact and prevent further damage, she said.
“Then you can call the insurance company, take pictures of the damage and [move] items into safer locations,” Martin said.
During your call, provide your insurance company with some initial details, like if your roof blew off or several windows broke, said Porter.
“But they really won’t make their assessment until they come in and inspect the damage,” he said.
While the insurer will make its own inspection, it’s always important to document your damages, including taking pictures, so that you can align that with the formal inspection record that comes out from the insurance company, Porter said.
This way, you can dispute any claims if you have to later, he said.
In the event of a loss, you have to give prompt notice to your insurer and you have a duty to protect the property, said Daniel Schwarcz, an insurance law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School.
You have to protect the property from further damage after the storm, make reasonable repairs and have an accurate record of repair expenses, Schwarcz said.
The receipts that you need to keep on file are for purchased materials used to prevent further damage on the property that’s already been damaged by a covered peril, said Schwarcz — meaning wind and trees, but not generally flooding unless you have a flood insurance policy. The insurer will generally reimburse you for reasonable expenses you incur.
If you don’t take such measures after the storm, and that inaction results in further damage, the insurer is not obligated to cover the loss, he said.
Materials purchased to protect the home before the natural disaster — for example, plywood to cover windows — are oftentimes not covered.
You also want to keep a record of receipts when you start working with contractors to rebuild from the damage, experts say.
One of the reasons why you want to document the damage immediately with your insurer is so that you can attach it to the event itself, increasing the likelihood of the event being covered by your home insurance, said Porter.
“Filing the claim immediately is the number one most important thing to do,” Porter said.
It’s important to keep track of where the damage came from, and having evidence can help avoid problems down the road, he said.
Port offers the hypothetical of of someone whose home sustained wind damage from Hurricane Debbie or Helene, but hasn’t filed a claim before the Milton makes landfall and causes flood damage.
“All of a sudden, you have a problem where the National Flood Insurance Program, which covers flood, and your home insurance company, which covers wind, can potentially start to argue over what actually caused the damage to the property,” Porter said.
You want to make sure you file any claim within three to five days of when the incident occurred, said Martin. As long as you had submitted all of your information in a timely manner for the first incident, if something else arises, you’re able to show the adjuster that it happened from a second event, she said.
Neither the Federal Emergency Management Agency nor the Federal Aviation Administration are preventing flights from delivering supplies, including Starlink satellite internet receivers, to Hurricane Helene survivors.
But if you’ve been on social media in recent days, you might have heard otherwise.
After entrepreneur Elon Musk claimed on X that FEMA was blocking relief efforts in North Carolina, social media posts multiplied, amplifying the claim and garnering thousands of views and shares.
“Did you see Elon’s post?” a woman asked in one video shared Oct. 5 on Facebook. “One of his SpaceX engineers on the ground in North Carolina reported FEMA is interfering. More confirmation — this engineer reported that FEMA is blocking shipments of Starlink receivers which are essential for maintaining communication in disaster zones like the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. These shipments can’t be delivered without an escort from local first responders to get past FEMA’s enforcers.”
Starlink, a satellite internet provider, is a subsidiary of Musk’s commercial spaceflight company, SpaceX. Starlink has distributed user terminal devices to help people connect to the internet in hurricane-hit areas.
The woman continued: “FEMA is playing gatekeeper. And when an agency blocks critical aid, they’re no longer helping. They’ve become part of the problem.”
Text on an Oct. 4 Instagram video that showed aerial footage of an unknown area read, in all-caps: “Breaking: FEMA is blocking all assistance to NC including Starlink.”
The posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)
FEMA, the FAA and North Carolina’s Department of Public Safety and Emergency Management have rebutted these inaccurate claims.
What sparked these claims?
On Oct. 4, Musk shared on X — the social media platform he owns, where he has amassed more than 200 million followers — anecdotes and screenshots promoting this falsehood.
At about 1 p.m. ET Oct. 4, Musk posted that a SpaceX engineer in North Carolina told him FEMA was “actively blocking citizens who try to help” Hurricane Helene survivors.
“‘Hey Elon, update here on site of Asheville, NC,’” Musk quoted the unnamed engineer as saying. “‘The big issue is FEMA is actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own.’”
At 1:15 p.m. ET, Musk shared a screenshot of direct messages saying “they are now about to shut down the Air space to ‘regulate’ the private choppers we are riding in to deliver Starlink and supplies,” asked Musk to “get the word out about FEMA.”
(Screenshots from X)
The unidentified sender said that “Starlinks” were successfully distributed Oct. 3, “but FEMA then showed up and started blocking us.” The messages described the FAA “requiring to/from information” and described that as “cumbersome to the ops.”
Musk wrote, “Just received this text 20 mins ago. The level of belligerent government incompetence is staggering!!”
Since then, Musk’s initial posts have collectively been viewed nearly 70 million times — garnering so much attention that U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Buttigieg responded on X.
“No one is shutting down the airspace and FAA doesn’t block legitimate rescue and recovery flights,” Buttigieg wrote at 2:32 p.m. ET. “If you’re encountering a problem give me a call.”
Musk continued posting. At 3:25 p.m. he wrote: “SpaceX engineers are trying to deliver Starlink terminals & supplies to devastated areas in North Carolina right now and @FEMA is both failing to help AND won’t let others help.”
(Screenshot from X)
After Musk expressed initial difficulty contacting Buttigieg, they appeared to have resolved the issue.
(Screenshot from X)
At about 7:30 p.m. ET, Musk replied: “Thanks for helping simplify the FAA (Notice to Airmen). Support flights are now underway. Much appreciated.” As of Oct. 8, that post had been viewed 970,000 times, a fraction of the readership his original post received.
Federal and North Carolina emergency response officials rebut these claims
North Carolina Emergency Management told PolitiFact in a statement that the State Emergency Response Team knew of no delayed disaster relief flights. The statement also said the FAA was coordinating with state and local officials to ensure safe flights in congested airspace.
On its “Rumor Response” page, FEMA disputed that the FAA was “restricting access for recovery operations,” and clarified that the administration was “coordinating closely” with local officials to prioritize safety.
The Federal Aviation Administration said in an Oct. 4 statement that recovery efforts in North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee have “high levels of aviation activity, including small airplanes, helicopters and drones.”
“The FAA’s goal at all times is to ensure safety and help facilitate this critical work,” the FAA site said, adding that the FAA can issue temporary flight restrictions at the request of local authorities “to ensure safety for aircraft conducting Hurricane Helene rescue and recovery activities.”
“TFRs do not ban aircraft, including drones, from providing disaster relief and recovery assistance,” the site said. “Relief operations, including civilian and volunteer operations, may access the restricted airspace if they are coordinated with emergency responders.”
North Carolina’s Department of Public Safety created a “Hurricane Helene: Fact vs. Rumor” webpage, on which it addressed what it described as a “rumors,” including that 1) the FAA was “restricting access to the airspace for Helene rescue and recovery operations” and 2) FEMA was “operating and controlling airports in western North Carolina.”
The page said both claims are inaccurate.
“FEMA is not controlling any airports in western North Carolina,” the site read. “Airport Managers and Airport Sponsors are the legal entities in charge of operating airports, even in Helene response. FEMA staff may be present at airports as they deploy supplies and stage for Helene response.”
At around 9:30 a.m. Oct. 4, North Carolina’s Division of Aviation said on X that the increased air traffic meant pilots needed to get permission to use runways and airports.
🚨 With a 300% increase in traffic over Western NC, Prior Permission Required (PPR) is now in place at select airports to ensure safe skies and sustainable operations. For all aircraft pilots, please check NOTAMs for PPR numbers before you fly. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/9HfwQVqavN
Social media posts claimed FEMA and the FAA are “blocking” delivery of Starlink devices and supplies to hurricane-affected areas.
The claims are inaccurate. The FAA can temporarily restrict flights to help keep airspace safe during hurricane response. North Carolina’s Department of Public Safety rebutted inaccurate claims about the FAA and FEMA.
As the Federal Emergency Management Agency responds to Hurricane Helene’s deadly impacts and braces for Hurricane Milton to hit Florida, some social media users amplified baseless falsehoods about FEMA stealing disaster supplies.
In a video shared Oct. 2 on Facebook, Jeremy Herrell, the host of Live From America TV, a conservative media website said: “FEMA, that now has jurisdiction in a lot of these areas, is literally confiscating donations and relief materials,” listing items like first aid kits, food and water.
(Screenshot from Facebook)
On Threads, a user claimed that a friend in a disaster-stricken community in Tennessee told them that FEMA and the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency were “out here confiscating supplies from community donation centers.”
“I’m trying to share it bc this is what is *actually* happening and it will never ever be reported so it must be spread!” the poster wrote Oct. 4, using an abbreviation for “because.”
(Screenshot from Threads)
These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)
FEMA is not “confiscating” emergency supplies or donations meant for Hurricane Helene survivors. Officials from FEMA and local leaders in states like Tennessee and North Carolina have denied these claims, warning that they impede disaster relief.
FEMA officials deny claims, warn they hinder disaster response
FEMA Press Secretary Daniel Llargues told PolitiFact that claims about FEMA confiscating emergency supplies are false.
“We bring commodities to the state,” Llargues said. “We hand them over to the state,” and the state distributes them.
In North Carolina, for example, Llargues said FEMA delivered supplies to Raleigh, North Carolina, and then groups including the North Carolina Air National Guard moved them to the state’s western end.
“But FEMA taking, confiscating the supplies — that’s another rumor” without any factual basis, he said.
On Oct. 6, ABC News’ “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos said the falsehoods about FEMA have prompted online attacks on the agency, such as one social media post that said “a militia should go against FEMA.”
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told Stephanopoulos such attacks have been harmful and demoralizing to FEMA staff, but also to first responders and local staff and volunteers.
“It has a tremendous impact on the comfort level of our own employees to be able to go out there,” she said. “When you have this dangerous rhetoric like you’re hearing, it creates fear in our own employees, and we need to make sure we’re getting help to the people who need it.”
“FEMA does not take donations and/or food from survivors or voluntary organizations,” the agency wrote. “Donations of food, water, or other goods are handled by voluntary agencies who specialize in storing, sorting, cleaning, and distributing donated items.”
Workers helping with clean up efforts stop for lunch under the shade of a tree as a building destroyed by Hurricane Helene is seen in the background Oct. 5, 2024, in Newport, Tennessee. (AP)
Local leaders say supplies are not being ‘confiscated’
During an Oct. 3 media briefing, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, was asked about rumors that FEMA, the Red Cross, or the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency funds were turned away.
“That’s totally inaccurate,” Lee said. “There’s a lot of misinformation — in fact, there’s some belief and understanding that it may be coming from foreign sources just to confuse on the ground what’s happening here. There’s no confiscation of supplies or of products coming in by FEMA or TEMA.”
In X posts, Knox County, Tennessee, Mayor Glenn Jacobs, another Republican, acknowledged frustration with FEMA and also encouraged people to “pitch in to help” without spreading misinformation about the emergency.
“To my knowledge, FEMA, TEMA, nor anyone else is confiscating supplies,” Jacobs wrote in an Oct. 4 X post. “Please quit spreading those rumors as they are counterproductive to response efforts.”
Two things: 1) To my knowledge, FEMA, TEMA, nor anyone else is confiscating supplies. Please quit spreading those rumors as they are counterproductive to response efforts. 2) If everyone could maybe please put aside the hate for a bit and pitch in to help, that would be great.
North Carolina’s Department of Public Safety also created a “Hurricane Helene: Fact vs. Rumor” webpage, where it addressed the “rumor” that the state was “discouraging donations in the wake of Hurricane Helene” and “physical donations are being confiscated by state and federal officials.”
The page said North Carolina encourages financial donations and is “working with these organizations to stand up logistical operations to coordinate the collection and distribution of countless physical donations from across the state and country.”
“Donations are not being confiscated by state and federal officials,” it said.
In a video on that page, Justin Granny, a North Carolina Emergency Management spokesperson, said misinformation can spread quickly on social media.
“If you see something alarming, pause and verify it through a trusted source of information before you share it,” he said. “The last thing we want to do is spread confusion during an already stressful time.”
Facebook posts claimed FEMA “is confiscating supplies and donations” meant for Hurricane Helene survivors.
FEMA officials and local and state leaders in Tennessee and North Carolina said these statements are baseless. FEMA delivers supplies and donations to states; the states and state-designated groups deliver the supplies.
Besides responding to the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene, emergency workers are battling online misinformation that could dissuade survivors from accepting disaster relief.
Some false claims have focused on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s $750 payments for essential supplies.
“BREAKING: Hurricane victims are now realizing that the $750 from FEMA that Kamala Harris is offering them is actually a loan, not real relief,” Philip Anderson wrote on X Oct. 4. “And that if they don’t pay it back the feds can seize their property. These people don’t even have property anymore because of the hurricane.”
Anderson, of Smith County, Texas, pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol. His X handle is @VoteHarrisOut.
(Screenshot from X)
This narrative also spread on TikTok. In one video that drew almost 400,000 views as of Oct. 6, an unidentified man described as a “FEMA inspector” issued what he described as a “dire warning.”
“There is a contract, at the beginning when the inspector gets there before he starts inspecting,” he said. “In that contract, if you do not pay the money back — it is a loan. A loan. And even if it’s just a dollar or $750, if you don’t pay it back, they have the right to seize all of your property.”
On Oct. 5, someone shared that TikTok on X, writing: “Shocking… a scam, $750 is a trap.” It had received more than 79,000 views as of Oct. 6.
These claims are baseless: FEMA’s assistance payment for essential supplies is not a loan, and FEMA does not seize property.
“Our number one goal is for survivors to get the assistance that they deserve, that they need so they can recover,” FEMA Press Secretary Daniel Llargues told PolitiFact. “All of this noise and misinformation may prevent some people from coming to us for assistance.”
FEMA’s $750 “Serious Needs Assistance” payment is not a loan that must be repaid
FEMA’s “Serious Needs Assistance” offers a one-time $750-per-household payment to disaster survivors who apply during the first 30 days after a disaster declaration. It is meant to help cover “essential items” and emergency supplies, including, “water, food, first aid, breast-feeding supplies, infant formula, diapers, personal hygiene items, or fuel for transportation.”
On Oct. 5, Jaclyn Rothenberg, FEMA’s public affairs and planning director, responded directly to claims that this assistance is a loan that must be repaid.
“This is not true,” she wrote in response to the Oct. 4 X post. “We do not ask for this money back.”
FEMA also addressed these falsehoods on a “Myth vs. Fact: Disaster Assistance” website.
“Myth: FEMA grant money is a loan that I will need to pay back,” it read. “Fact: FEMA disaster assistance are grants which do not need to be repaid.”
Serious Needs Assistance is available to disaster survivors who are U.S. citizens and qualified noncitizens. For people to qualify, their primary home must be in the disaster-stricken area. These people also must apply for the assistance while it is available. And FEMA must be able to confirm the applicants’ identities and review supporting documents to confirm damage to the applicants’ homes.
Serious Needs Assistance is “an initial payment people may receive” while they wait for the other forms of assistance they might qualify for, according to FEMA’s website.
“As people’s applications continue to be reviewed, they may still receive additional forms of assistance for other needs such as support for temporary housing, personal property and home repair costs,” the site said.
In most cases, FEMA says its grants do not have to be paid back.
There are exceptions. For example, if someone has insurance that covers temporary housing costs but asks FEMA to advance money to help with those costs while the insurance money is delayed, then “you will need to pay that money back to FEMA after you receive your insurance settlement,” FEMA said.
People can apply for assistance online by visiting disasterassistance.gov, by calling 800-621-3362 or by downloading FEMA’s app.
FEMA does not seize personal property
On its “Rumor Response” page, FEMA rebutted claims that people who apply for FEMA assistance risk having their property seized or confiscated.
“FEMA cannot seize your property or land,” the agency wrote. “Applying for disaster assistance does not grant FEMA or the federal government authority or ownership of your property or land.”
Applying for disaster assistance means a FEMA inspector might be sent to verify and assess damage to a residence, which is one factor reviewed to determine eligibility for different types of disaster relief, the website said.
The page concluded: “If the results of the inspection deem your home uninhabitable, that information is only used to determine the amount of FEMA assistance you may receive to make your home safe, sanitary and functional.”
Llargues of FEMA described the process someone might experience when applying for disaster relief.
“You apply for assistance, and you tell me that you have five feet of water in your house,” he said. “We’re going to be sending an inspector out there.” That inspector might be a FEMA employee or a contractor. Either way, the inspector will not charge for anything and there’s “no contract,” Llargues said.
“They will come out to your house, they’ll take photos, do the inspections, look at the house from the outside, inside, and document everything,” and report it back to FEMA, he said. “Based on what (the inspector) saw and their findings, we’ll give you some kind of eligibility.”
Although it is possible you could be found ineligible for assistance — a decision you can appeal — “there’s no FEMA taking over land, or property or houses,” Llargues said. “That’s false.”
FEMA encouraged people to do their part to stop spreading false information by finding “trusted sources of information” and sharing information from those sources and discouraging “others from sharing information from unverified sources.”
Our ruling
An X post said “The $750 from FEMA that Kamala Harris is offering them is actually a loan, not real relief. And that if they don’t pay it back the feds can seize their property.”
FEMA’s $750 one-time assistance payments for essential supplies are not loans that need to be repaid, according to the agency and its spokespeople. The agency also does not seize people’s property.
Emergency officials warn these baseless claims serve only to confuse the delivery of aid to disaster-affected people. We rate these claims Pants on Fire!
PEABODY — Two lineworkers from the Peabody Municipal Light Plant went down to Georgia to help fix in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
Kevin MacGregor, a supervisor and lineworker, and Ed Melo, a lead lineworker and troubleworker, left for Cordele, Georgia, on Sept. 27 in PMLP’s Truck 58, PMLP said in a statement.
PMLP was called upon by the Northeast Public Power Association’s mutual aid network to assist the South following the storm. Once in Georgia, MacGregor and Melo helped the Crisp County Power Commission work to restore power to thousands of people.
“Mutual aid is an important investment in public power and other municipalities around the country. We are all partners,” PMLP General Manager Joe Anastasi said in the statement. “When natural disaster or other catastrophic events happen, utilities in cities and towns do what we do best: help get power restored to customers.”
Mutual aid is fully paid for by the requesting utility company, PMLP said.
“Although PMLP has not requested mutual aid, being a part of this network assures that Peabody and South Lynnfield will have support should it ever face such a disaster,” according to the statement.
Other local public power utilities who have sent aid to areas affected by Hurricane Helene include Danvers, Wakefield, Rowley, Middleton and Reading.
