(Bloomberg) -- When recovery workers with the US Federal Emergency Management Agency arrived in Boone, North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene and began setting up temporary housing in a local park, it prompted a backlash in the storm-wracked town: “We had folks that were literally protesting FEMA out at the site,” says Tim Futrelle, Boone’s mayor.
Nearby in Swannanoa, on the outskirts of Asheville, there were rumors that officials were covering up the true death toll from the storm. The deputy fire chief took to Facebook and begged the public to stop sharing “sensationalized” information.
In Rutherford County, a man was arrested for allegedly threatening to hurt FEMA workers. In the aftermath, Sheriff Aaron Ellenburg says, armed deputies were guarding the agency’s staff as they helped storm survivors fill out paperwork to receive financial aid.
Misinformation about disasters and their aftermath is becoming more prevalent in the US, thanks to deep political polarization, weakened trust in institutions and a lack of content moderation on social media that allows false claims to flourish. Experts say the kind of crisis that followed Helene is likely to happen again, especially as climate disasters affect parts of the country that didn’t previously experience them often.
For many communities in western North Carolina and across Appalachia, Helene was their first encounter with devastating extreme weather driven by climate change, and also with FEMA, the US government’s primary agency overseeing disaster response and recovery. That made it fertile ground for conspiracy theories and rumors. Government officials struggled to quash misinformation that disrupted recovery efforts and triggered threats against the very people trying to help.
It was “one of the most extreme situations” of its kind, says emergency management consultant Zach Stanford. “We’re encroaching on violent territory,” he adds.
It didn’t help that false claims were amplified by a collection of high-profile posters on social media, including former President Donald Trump, members of his current presidential campaign and tech billionaire Elon Musk. Accounts linked to foreign actors also promoted them.
Asked about Trump’s posts, Karoline Leavitt, his campaign’s national press secretary, said, “President Trump visited North Carolina and Georgia and was briefed on the damage that occurred from Hurricane Helene,” and noted that he had raised more than $8 million in hurricane relief. Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.
FEMA acknowledges that Helene was a wake-up call of sorts. Jaclyn Rothenberg, the agency’s director of public affairs, describes it as a “collective moment” for emergency managers and others to “really take a hard look and understand what misinformation does” in disaster scenarios.
The upcoming presidential election was one reason why North Carolina, a key swing state, was especially targeted with a large volume of falsehoods. But disinformation experts say it likely wasn’t a one-off.
“It’s a supply and a demand-side issue,” says Jennie King, director of climate disinformation research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a nonprofit that advocates for policies to fight extremism. “Yes, there are people who are flooding the zone with deliberate false and misleading content,” King says. But there’s also strong demand for what they’re supplying — “a desire among the general public to consume this kind of content.”
FEMA’s modern-day playbook for tackling rumors online dates back to 2012, when Superstorm Sandy walloped neighborhoods in and around New York City with heavy rains and storm surge, just days before a presidential election. Twitter (now X) and Facebook both teemed with rumors and falsehoods about Sandy’s impacts and the recovery. This was mostly what experts call “misinformation,” or information coming from people who have their facts wrong. Such claims “typically originate, ironically, from people trying to help,” says Stanford.
Consequently, FEMA set up a rumor control page on its website for the first time, addressing specific falsehoods head on, says Rafael Lemaitre, a former head of the agency’s communications. “It became standard practice for the agency to do that after major disasters,” he says. And between disasters, the agency has started to train staff on how to proactively find and respond to false claims.
Beyond misinformation, however, officials are also facing disinformation, where the intent of the person or people making the claim “is to confuse and to harm,” says Leysia Palen, a professor of information science and computer science at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Take the 2023 wildfires that devastated the Maui town of Lahaina, which prompted a deliberate disinformation campaign by China. Information experts found China’s fingerprints on claims that the disaster was a result of a secret US government “weather weapon.”
On social media, that theory mingled with a claim that FEMA was going to seize Hawaiians’ land — a rumor that resonated with some Hawaiians who were already wary of the federal government, based on the islands’ history of colonization. FEMA officials grew concerned that survivors would be discouraged from seeking assistance.
Similar fears about land seizures surfaced in response to Helene too. But this time, misinformation and confusion about FEMA’s policies eventually curdled into anger and threats against its staff.
False claims started circulating even before the rain stopped and continued to swirl for weeks. It was as if someone had put a bubble over the state and pumped in a lot of noise, according to a staffer in the office of North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, who asked not to be identified to speak openly.
Many of the falsehoods centered on what the federal government was or wasn’t doing to help people in need. There were claims that no one was coming to rescue people in Appalachia; that the government was withholding aid to Republican-voting communities; and that officials were funneling aid earmarked for disaster relief to migrants.
Futrelle saw FEMA personnel on the ground in Boone within days of the storm. But he soon realized that many others were not aware of their presence. Right after Helene, the power was out and communications were spotty, he says, which “created a very tense and anxious situation.”
As normal communications gradually returned, residents increasingly encountered disjointed rumors on social media. Questions about when and if FEMA planned to come to Boone turned to suspicion when locals learned that the agency was setting up housing in the park, which hosts a weekly farmers’ market. A rumor erupted that FEMA was engaging in “a money grab to push out the farmers’ market,” Futrelle says.
“It’s funny now, in hindsight,” he says, “but it was very serious when it was happening.”
FEMA launched a rumor page for Helene a week after the storm made landfall. “It’s making sure that we’re communicating the facts right,” says Rothenberg. The agency is deliberate about which pieces of misinformation it chooses to respond to and tries to find “the right balance in terms of not [giving] it more oxygen,” according to Rothenberg. Its efforts were bolstered by North Carolina politicians from both major parties, including Cooper, a Democrat, and Representative Chuck Edwards and State Senator Kevin Corbin, both Republicans.
“You had a fire line of truth that cut across political lines, and that was helpful,” says Zeb Smathers, mayor of Canton, North Carolina.
The White House also stepped in, holding press briefings with the top official at FEMA, Deanne Criswell, and launching a Reddit account to post fact checks and updates. Carrie Speranza, chair of FEMA’s National Advisory Council and a former emergency management official for the District of Columbia, says she can’t think of another recent time when an administration was so “proactive in the counter-narrative, from the very top, very early on and continuously so.”
But that still wasn’t enough to keep the situation from boiling over. In mid-October, nearly two weeks after the storm, rumors began spreading in Rutherford County that armed militias were targeting FEMA workers. Law enforcement ended up arresting one man, William Parsons, who was reportedly carrying firearms, and charged him with “going armed to the terror of the public,” after he allegedly threatened to hurt FEMA workers in a conversation with someone at a gas station. (Parsons didn’t respond to a request for an interview; he reportedly said that his anger toward FEMA was partly based on misinformation he saw on social media.) The same weekend, a local sheriff in Tennessee received reports that FEMA workers responding to Helene were harassed by an armed group.
The threats prompted FEMA to reorganize its aid work in some areas hit by Helene, suspending door-to-door visits for several days and moving staff to centralized locations where they’re helping storm victims register for aid. As of last week, armed deputies were performing regular check-ins with FEMA or guarding its offices daily in at least two North Carolina counties, Rutherford and Avery. Posting armed security at FEMA offices is a rare step, but an appropriate one, says Speranza.
It’s a strain on already tight resources. In addition to checking up on FEMA staff, the Avery County Sheriff’s Department has started monitoring social media and responding to misinformation about FEMA’s response in real time. Juggling more responsibilities as the region cleans up is a challenge, says Sheriff Mike Henley: “We have to make sure we’re performing our mission.”
Political polarization and hunger for mis- and disinformation aren’t going away. Neither are damaging storms. Research suggests that climate change is helping hurricanes hold together longer after making landfall, bringing damaging winds and extreme rainfall farther inland. So in the future, communities that have less experience with extreme weather may find themselves increasingly in its crosshairs, leaving them vulnerable to misinformation.
Jeff Dowdy, the senior pastor at Swannanoa First Baptist Church, lived in hurricane-prone Florida for about a decade and knew what to expect when FEMA workers streamed into Swannanoa soon after Helene hit. But it was new to many people in his congregation. “People don’t know how to proceed,” he says.
Florida got hit by Helene, too, and days later by Hurricane Milton. But it didn’t experience what played out in Appalachia, says Craig Fugate, who led FEMA during the Obama administration and who now lives in Florida. Misinformation and disinformation about FEMA “ain’t getting much audience” in the state, Fugate says, because Floridians are generally familiar with hurricanes and how the government responds to them.
FEMA and local emergency managers could do a better job explaining what the agency’s programs cover and what the relief effort will look like before it starts, Speranza says. That might prevent bad information from taking hold. And if rumors start spreading online, emergency managers need to know how to fight back. Unfortunately, there are few evidence-based studies on how to do this effectively.
While the research catches up, intelligence agencies that already monitor social media for threats tied to political misinformation could be “an untapped resource” after disasters, Speranza says, by flagging emerging rumors and false narratives in real time.
In the fight against misinformation, says ISD’s King, “just strengthening the good is not going to be enough if you don’t weaken the bad.”
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