Helene response hampered by misinformation, conspiracy theories

One day after Hurricane Helene slammed into Asheville, North Carolina, leading to seven trees falling on her house and destroying her roof, Nicole McNeill read an alarming article that warned a second storm was barreling toward the area.

McNeill, 43, had a panic attack, her anxiety spiking and her heart pounding. She knew she didn’t have enough gasoline in her car to evacuate from yet another disaster.

But it was all a hoax.

“The second storm turned out to be a nonsensical rumor,” said McNeill, who works at a strategic communications firm focused on climate change. “And when you are with limited cell service and you come across misinformation, you can make a split-second decision that can have life-or-death consequences.”

Across the Southeast, false rumors and conspiracy theories are flying about Helene, which made landfall as a major hurricane about a week ago, causing at least 221 deaths in six states. The misinformation is adding to the chaos and confusion in many storm-battered communities, including many rural areas that lack power and cell service, leading locals to rely on word of mouth.

Officials have sought to tamp down the misinformation that has continued to spread online. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been updating a webpage seeking to dispute common rumors, while the North Carolina Department of Public Safety has done the same, writing that authorities were “working around-the-clock to save lives and provide humanitarian relief.” FEMA also said in a news release Saturday that federal aid provided had topped $110 million so far.

The Army on Saturday was preparing to expand the active-duty military relief mission and send an additional 500 U.S. troops on top of those already approved by President Joe Biden, said Col. Jimmy Hathaway, the director of operations for U.S. Army North.

The planned increase, which has not previously been reported, would push the number of active-duty forces involved in relief efforts to about 1,500, after the approval of 1,000 from Fort Liberty, North Carolina, that were in the process of joining the mission on Saturday.

In western North Carolina this week, some residents shared false information that a dam was about to burst, prompting hundreds of people to unnecessarily evacuate and diverting the attention of first responders. In eastern Tennessee, some locals spread a hoax about federal officials seizing and bulldozing a town hall. And in many parts of the Southeast, a debunked conspiracy theory has circulated about FEMA spending disaster relief money on helping migrants who are in the country illegally.

In places with internet access, such falsehoods have flourished on social media platforms such as X. The tech company has pulled back on efforts to combat misinformation after its takeover by billionaire Elon Musk, prompting concern from many disaster experts.

“There’s always misinformation that flows during disasters, but after Helene, it is really difficult to find good and accurate information,” said Sam Montano, a disaster expert and assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

“When Musk bought Twitter, there were many of us in the disaster space who warned that there would likely be changes that would make the platform less useful during disasters,” Montano added. “I think that we’re seeing that manifest now.”

Election-year politics has also played a role. Former president Donald Trump has amplified the false claim about migrants during campaign rallies and on his platform, Truth Social. And Mark Robinson, the embattled Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, has repeatedly alleged that there has been no state government response to Helene, even though Gov. Roy Cooper (D) has traversed the affected areas, visiting emergency operations centers and meeting with storm survivors.

“We’re in an election year where misinformation and deliberate attempts to sow chaos are certainly part of the strategies being utilized,” said Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, a Democratic commissioner in Buncombe County, North Carolina, which includes Asheville.

North Carolina state Sen. Kevin Corbin, a Republican, slammed the rampant misinformation Thursday in a Facebook post, tagging several GOP colleagues.

“Friends can I ask a small favor? Will you all help STOP this conspiracy theory junk that is floating all over Facebook and the internet about the floods in WNC,” he wrote, referring to western North Carolina.

One particularly troubling falsehood that went viral online was a claim that government officials planned to seize the flooded town of Chimney Rock, North Carolina, and bulldoze bodies under the rubble. Though authorities and local outlets thoroughly debunked the notion, some posts on X asserting it as fact garnered millions of views. One user suggested “a militia to go against FEMA,” in a post that had received more than half a million views as of Saturday afternoon.

Mark Honeycutt, 33, an Asheville resident who has been posting videos of Helene’s destruction to his YouTube channel, said he had seen the viral social media posts about the small tourist town. On Thursday, he drove his motorbike to where the road ended and then hiked nine miles into Chimney Rock, to check out the situation for himself.

The scenes along the way were devastating, Honeycutt said, with entire houses swept away by surging floodwaters. But when he got to Chimney Rock, there was no stench of dead bodies. The sun was shining and bulldozers were at work, but only to move debris out of the road. He approached a police officer to ask about the rumors.

“I felt kind of embarrassed to bring up that conspiracy,” Honeycutt said. “He was like, ‘No, that’s not happening!’”

Honeycutt also spoke to a worker and resident of the area who said the assertion was incorrect.

Human psychology helps explain why such claims have gained traction. In times of crisis, people tend to be attracted to any narratives that help them make sense of a chaotic situation, even if those narratives wouldn’t pass a basic fact-check, said David Harker, a philosophy professor at East Tennessee State University.

“Unfortunately, not everyone is motivated to check the reliability of the source or seek independent verification,” Harker said.

Before Musk’s takeover in 2022, Twitter had established itself as a go-to source for public agencies to share critical information during emergencies.

While false rumors and hoaxes were common, the company hired former journalists to curate reliable information on trending topics and to debunk misinformation. The site also gave blue verification check marks to public agencies, public officials and members of the news media.

Under Musk, the rebranded X has leaned into its role as a primary news source, but it has pulled back heavily on content moderation. The platform has eliminated the curation team, reinstated banned users, and replaced the previous verification system with one that elevates content from paying subscribers, including conservative and right-wing influencers.

Rather than take on a fact-checking role, X under Musk has leaned on a crowdsourced feature called “Community Notes” that lets volunteers propose fact-checks of their own. If a proposed fact-check gets enough support from other volunteers in the program, it is appended to the original post.

As of Saturday morning, only a few of the false and misleading posts about Helene’s aftermath had community notes attached to them. In several cases, users had proposed posts correcting the record, but they had not garnered enough support from other users to appear publicly on X.

Musk, whose 200 million X followers make him the platform’s most influential user, sent at least 12 posts Friday amplifying criticism of the Biden administration’s response to Helene, much of it based on false or misleading claims.

He labeled FEMA’s actions “treason” and sent a reply indicating agreement with a post from another user who said Vice President Kamala Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “should be jailed for life for spending FEMA money on illegal aliens and not Americans.”

Spokespeople for X did not respond to a request for comment.

On TikTok, real videos posted by people with up-close views of Helene’s damage mingled with fakes, some more obvious than others. One bogus video purporting to show Helene hitting Florida on Sept. 25 included apocalyptic scenes of a giant fire tornado, racking up millions of views.

Other conspiracies have centered on a higher death toll from Helene than county, state and federal officials have reported.

“I’ve heard people say there’s dead bodies everywhere,” said Damion Lineberger, a volunteer who drove up from the Hickory, N.C., area to do wellness checks and deliver supplies to people in Black Mountain, a hard-hit town east of Asheville.

But his experience in person didn’t match with what was online. “Somebody puts something on social media and it turns 10,000 times worse,” Lineberger said.

One rumor going around the area and online was that 20 people died in a trailer park in Black Mountain and that authorities were suppressing the information. But Brian Vanaller, one of the park’s residents, said Friday outside his mobile home that he hadn’t heard of any deaths in the neighborhood. Asked about online rumors, he said he hadn’t been able to access social media much since the storm. “I can barely get service,” he said.

Outside the visitor center in Black Mountain this week, volunteers set up a table and posted signs with whatever updates they had to share. The signs told which radio stations to tune into for more updates, where people could find a WiFi signal and which gas stations in the area were open and accepting cash or credit.

A handwritten poster nearby offered a plea to residents: “We need everyone to share good, credible information.”

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Joselow and Oremus reported from Washington, and De Vynck reported from Asheville and Black Mountain, N.C. Brady Dennis, Amy Gardner, Mark Berman and Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.