Some N.C. residents distrust FEMA so much they’re hesitant to apply for hurricane aid

SWANNANOA, N.C. - Why, Shawna Gilmore thought, would she want to ask them for help? FEMA wasn’t there right after Hurricane Helene all but destroyed her town. And a week or so later, when responders from the Federal Emergency Management Agency did show up, she became suspicious. An aerial video posted in one of her main Facebook groups showed trucks setting up what looked like some sort of camp. She said she kept hearing how FEMA “took things,” like people’s land.

“What are they actually doing here?” Gilmore said she thought to herself. “Why are they really here?”

This was not an agency that she said she wanted to give her personal information to, not even for a $750 emergency check or other assistance. Beyond her “trust issue,” she said, relying on the government for help isn’t how she is built. The 54-year-old grew up in a rural southeast Missouri town right on the Mississippi River that frequently flooded, but they always picked themselves back up. Then she moved to this part of the Appalachian foothills about 30 years ago, becoming a property manager and even more self-sufficient.

“To apply for aid of any kind …” she said, carefully choosing her words. “I mean, just to need something is already vulnerable. It’s all uncommon and unfamiliar and uncomfortable.”

Gilmore’s reluctance to seek out federal aid underscores one of the more unusual elements of Hurricane Helene’s aftermath in western North Carolina, according to data, experts, residents and FEMA officials.

Only about 15% of households in the affected region have applied to the agency for individual and household assistance, according to a Post analysis of months of FEMA data up to the second week of December. It’s a low number, three independent experts and the FEMA official said, given how many people are in need. It’s far less than Georgia and South Carolina, states that sustained comparatively less damage, but where about twice as many households have applied.

Rampant misinformation and conspiracy theories early on about FEMA’s motives and plans inflamed a long-existing skepticism about government here. That, combined with a federal response that has been trying to navigate complex logistics in a region that is not used to big disasters, is threatening people’s chance to get critical help and, ultimately, the state’s ability to rebuild.

It’s a “downward spiral,” said one FEMA official who has been on the ground since October, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk.

“These folks will limp instead of walk,” the official said. “Their trust in government, social cohesion, is forever denigrated.”

The Washington Post spoke with more than 40 people across at least five hurricane-hit North Carolina counties and found that many had been hesitant to apply to the federal agency - even local volunteers who were helping others do just that. Most residents did say they got paid and had positive experiences with FEMA. Overall, FEMA has approved $263 million for 138,000 North Carolina households.

Residents and community advocates say there are some key reasons why people here may not be applying for aid. Some say they don’t trust the government because it’s let them down before. Some say they aren’t familiar with FEMA and concerned about how it works. Some worry that if they accept aid, others who need it won’t get it.

Logistics and shoddy infrastructure have also made it hard for people in this rural, mountainous area to fill out forms online and in person. Helene knocked out power, internet, cellphone service, roads and driveways for an untold number of people in regions where these services were already unreliable or where some people didn’t have computers or cellphones to begin with.

When people in North Carolina did apply, they often encountered confusing bureaucratic hurdles to get help or were denied. Many have yet to see a dime. This affirmed many residents’ initial skepticism of the government’s ability to help.

As the weeks wore on, the number of people in North Carolina that FEMA projected to apply for assistance fell, according to internal information The Post obtained. The disaster area roughly includes 1.7 million households.

In an interview, Colt Hagmaier, the agency’s assistant administrator for recovery, acknowledged that North Carolina has unique challenges and said the agency is “helping reach people who are hesitant and (convincing) them that the damage or loss they have is worth applying for.”

“We are doing everything we can to help people get registered,” he said.

In January, FEMA made sweeping changes to speed up assistance. They introduced a rapid $750 payment to cover expenses that quickly pile up after a disaster such as food, bills and gas, especially when power goes out. Experts and FEMA said that change enables more people apply for emergency cash, meaning more residents in North Carolina would and could sign up. (It also makes it more difficult to compare this year’s application numbers to the past.)

The low number of people applying to FEMA is “concerning” because “it could also affect the state’s long-term recovery funding,” said Maddie Sloan, the director of disaster recovery for Texas Appleseed, a public interest justice center that has worked on disaster recovery issues since 2006 and reviewed Helene’s FEMA data.

Each step in the federal recovery process unlocks another. Federal agencies look at FEMA’s individual assistance data to calculate unmet housing needs as part of their assessment of how to distribute these funds, Sloan said.

Local advocates and some inside FEMA say the barrage of conspiracy theories about the agency and a lack of knowledge about FEMA’s role in responding to disasters has discouraged and angered residents.

On Oct. 3, then-presidential-candidate Donald Trump stood onstage in Saginaw, Michigan, and falsely stated that the Biden administration didn’t have any money for hurricane relief and that the officials “stole the FEMA money … so they could give it to their illegal immigrants.” Other influential figures also propelled a range of conspiracy theories across the internet, exacerbating fears and tensions among residents and federal workers on the ground.

Around that time, applications fell and never bounced back as officials had hoped.

The drop-off in applications, the FEMA official on the ground said, “was unexpected and does not jive with historic precedent, the nature of the impacts from Helene or expectations on the ground.”

“A healthy chunk of this has to be the rhetoric and misinformation,” the person said.

‘The four-letter word’

For local volunteers such as Vicki Randolph, Oct. 4 was when “everything changed.”

That day, she and a crew from Down Home North Carolina, a nonprofit that helps rural, low-income families, were out in the mountains of Watauga County, stopping at houses where people were shoveling mud out of their homes. Per usual, she said, they asked residents: “Did you apply for your FEMA?”

“And this one day, 100% of the people we talked to said, ‘We don’t want the government to come around here. We have guns if they come around here,’” she recalled. “I had no idea why this was happening until I found out what had been said on television.”

On a crisp November afternoon, she took a break outside the State Line Resource station, a big skate warehouse that was turned into a relief center and straddles the Tennessee border, 11 miles outside Boone. People thumbed through donated winter clothes as she wearily recounted a recent argument she’d had with a resident: The $750 was not a loan; their money did not go to immigrants. It has been “a struggle to just hand out these FEMA fliers to encourage people to go to the disaster recovery office,” she said.

Valentine Reilly, who co-runs the Stateline operation, agreed. She said she told her volunteers “don’t use the four-letter word,” because when people heard it, “they got scared.”

Randolph has lived in the high country for 30 years. Mountain people, she explained, don’t like to accept outside help.

Filling out Stateline’s intake form, Sherry Hicks shook her head when Randolph and another volunteer asked if she had applied to FEMA. She said she has “heard too much bad stuff.” In her holler, where she lives on land her family has owned for five generations, stories have gotten around about people “not hearing back from FEMA,” or losing everything and not getting much in return.

And even though they lost four freezers filled with food, she didn’t think FEMA could fix her main problem anyway: sinkholes. It’s now hard to get off the property. Her elderly mother also didn’t apply. She doesn’t have a cellphone, let alone a computer.

Still, Randolph told her about the $750: “free money.”

“I don’t know,” Hicks faltered. “I don’t want to be more discouraged.” Besides, she’d “heard (FEMA) were running people off not letting people bring stuff or help.”

Then she, her mother and teenage daughter got some basic necessities and left. The air turned sharper.

“Who knew the hardest part of recovering from our disaster would be convincing people to get the help they deserve?” Randolph said.

‘Survival economy’

Moriah Cox, whose family has lived in Appalachia for generations, explains it like this: When there’s “never been enough aid to go around,” as has been their experience time and time again, “when aid does come in, it needs to go to whoever needs it the most.”

“That’s survival economy,” she said.

And in her 31 years, Cox said, she and her family have repeatedly been disappointed by government policies on healthcare, the economy and other issues. It gets exhausting, she shrugged, “continuing to be disappointed.”

Her job, though, is requiring her to believe in them. She also works with Down Home North Carolina, now a fellow making $65,000 - a huge lift from the $30,000 she barely pulled in between multiple jobs for years. A big part of her role has been going door to door, convincing people to apply to FEMA.

Even though Hurricane Sandy survivors traveled from Jersey to Watauga County to tell her nonprofit all about FEMA, and even though her tiny “shoebox” square home filled up with brown floodwater, black mold growing in the soggy, caving roof, Cox still had to convince herself to apply.

It took her nearly three weeks.

FEMA gave her the $750 emergency money, but everything else she asked for - housing assistance, medical, lodging reimbursement and more - is pending. FEMA had trouble getting in touch with her, according to her case files.

She said that she has tried calling several times but that she doesn’t have time to wait up to an hour when she’s driving back roads and hours away to neighboring counties to check on people she knows have it worse than she does. By late November, she said, FEMA called and told her they would be sending out an inspector soon - they’ve just been swamped.

“The amount of effort I have to put out just to survive, to feed myself, my pets, to pay the rent for this place that’s falling apart,” she said heatedly. “What extra energy do I have to put in to chase down help and figure out how to get that support for a once-in-a-lifetime event?”

FEMA is not denying a high or unusual number of aid applications, according to the Post’s data analysis. But many people said they are getting denied - which FEMA says usually is a request for more information - or are waiting for an inspector.

Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican who represents scores of North Carolina hurricane victims, testified before Congress last month about people’s struggles. This is his first disaster, and he told The Post that he has learned FEMA “operates in a bureaucratic process that makes it difficult to get clear answers.” So exasperated, he created a phone number, “223-FIX-FEMA,” that directs callers to his district office. He has blasted it out on social media, even buying “a radio campaign.”

“Folks have a difficult time understanding what is required of them, and I see a lot of people giving up,” Edwards said.

Is FEMA a risk?

Jenn Baars is one of them. Even though she is a veteran, she was skeptical about FEMA. Her boyfriend, whom she lives with “in the back of a holler” in Swannanoa, refused to apply because he “doesn’t want his name on anything government-related.” They also believed “everything was going to clear up” soon enough, she said.

But then her new car payment of $400, the insurance, the gas, the child support she pays for her two teenagers, the groceries - all the $1300 she pays in bills seemed to hit at once, and suddenly they were in a hole. They had lost a lot by being out of work, she said. The power was also out for almost a month, which meant they threw out hundreds of dollars in food.

Asked about savings, Baars, a 41-year-old caregiver, laughed: “I don’t make enough around here to be able to have something.”

So she figured she would go ahead and file for FEMA. Then she got denied. She’s not sure why. After several calls, she said, someone at FEMA recently told her “that not everyone qualified.”

Trying to shrug off the disappointment, Baars said she’s “just been pushing forward and doing what I can to get caught up.” Right now, she owes $280 on her insurance, money she doesn’t have.

“We never had to deal with this before,” she said of the process. “Every day we are learning what we can do to make it better. That is best that we can do.”

Gilmore, the property manager, lives in a little house on a tree-filled property a few miles away. One night in early November, her neighborhood had a meeting to go over the recovery and what lay ahead. Most people then were still without power, with some using neighbors’ showers to bathe. Like Cox, Gilmore learned that her FEMA application could help the state get more federal dollars. Most everyone in her neighborhood had applied to FEMA, she said, even if, like her, their homes weren’t in bad shape.

She said she swallowed that, wondering to herself: “Is it worth the risk? Is it even going to happen?”

The next day, she went to the mobile FEMA center in town and met the workers in real life, who all “seemed very kind,” she said. A man who has worked for the agency for five years explained why FEMA sets up camps: “to leave whatever housing resources like hotels available for the local people that might need them.” She said that she has learned more about how this major-disaster response works, that there’s been “some misunderstanding” about FEMA’s role.

She signed up. Then, the next day, she became anxious. She’d read up, and didn’t like that FEMA can buy up people’s property or lease their homes.

“I have further processed this whole thing with FEMA. I feel really that I don’t even want any assistance from them,” she texted late that night. “I’m going to cancel my application. I do not want them showing up at my property.”

Also, as a single woman, she said the idea of a stranger showing up to inspect her home “was unsettling.” She changed her application to only ask for the emergency stipend. They added a note to her file to not have anyone come to her property, she said. As of now, her application is in process. They need her to upload receipts of her food and hotel expenses from when she lost power. She is considering it.

On one hand, “$750 is no small thing right now,” she said. On the other hand, in her experience, “to be in a situation of asking for help, and then not receive it is even worse than having asked for it at all.