Fact-checking the viral conspiracies in the wake of Hurricane Helene

This story is part of state of emergencyA Grist series exploring how climate disasters affect voting and politics.

The conspiracy theories began swirling even as the floodwaters rose: Hurricane Helene, the deadliest storm to hit the United States since Katrina in 2005, was created specifically to target Trump voters in key swing states. “Yes, they can control the weather,” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right representative of Georgia, placed on X on Thursday. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, best known for insisting the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, released a video on X claiming the government targeted Helene in North Carolina. Why? To force people out of the region so it can mine the state’s vast reserves of lithium, a key component in the batteries that power electric vehicles and store renewable energy. The video got almost a million views in three days.

Hundreds of keyboard-wielding conspirators took to TikTok, X, Reddit and other social media sites to say the Federal Emergency Management Administration is withholding critical supplies from stranded communities across the Southeast. “Just get off the mountains and deliver supplies,” someone with the username “RastaGuerilla” posted on X on September 30. “As crazy as it sounds, FEMA directly confiscates donated items and prevents volunteers from helping, kicks churches out of parking lots, etc.” The post received tens of thousands of likes, and similar messages from people claiming to have been in the disaster zone racked up hundreds of thousands of views and reposts.

There’s no telling what percentage of these bogus claims came from people in the areas devastated by Helene, let alone whether humans or bots spewed them out. Regardless of who or what they wrote, the conspiracies are obviously untrue. FEMA does not confiscate supplies. The Biden administration isn’t trying to kick people off land it wants to mine for lithium. And the federal government certainly cannot control the weather. For disaster researchers, the flood of shrewd conspiracies is further evidence that conspiratorial thinking is becoming something of an epidemic.

“We’ve moved into a space where conspiratorial thinking has become mainstream,” said Rachel Goldwasser, who tracks far-right activity and disinformation at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Every tinfoil hat out there who says the government controls the weather now feels vindicated because Marjorie Taylor Greene said so too.”

Disasters invariably kick up a cloud of conspiracies aimed at questioning the government’s legitimacy – the dark corners of society have long characterized FEMA as a sinister, all-powerful bogeyman capable of the most outlandish and devilish deeds. During the COVID-19 pandemic, conspirators claimed it was seized medical supplies from hospitals and local governments. Similar rumors about FEMA and the Red Cross confiscate donations in Lāhainā hit the internet after the devastating wildfires in Hawaii last year.

But experts told Grist that the storm’s proximity to Election Day has produced a toxic hotbed of conspiracies that mirror broader conversations about immigration, workplace inclusiveness and other hot-button issues that Republicans and conservative news outlets tried to turn into cultural referendums ahead of November. 5.

One popular theory littering online forums claims that the government diverted money from FEMA to fund programs for illegal immigrants. “FEMA spending more than a billion dollars on illegals while leaving Americans stranded and without help is treason,” Tim Burchett, a Republican representative from Tennessee, said on X without citing evidence. Another theory says the agency prioritized diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, training over disaster preparedness. Immigration, and to a lesser extent DEI, is at the heart of former President Donald Trump’s re-election platform. (The former president took to Truth Social on Thursday to condemn the Biden administration’s response as “the worst and most incompetent ‘storm’ at the federal level,” before adding, “but their management of the border is worse!” )

“There has already been a discourse around these issues and clearly there are already people who are very concerned about them,” said Samantha Penta, a sociologist and expert on emergency management and homeland security at the University at Albany. “I’m not surprised that those concerns are being integrated into the discussion around Helene’s response.”

Some of the theories reflect some small facet of the truth. In his video, Jones cited a real government program from the 1960s called Project Stormfury as evidence that the government deliberately “seeded” the storm. The program, which explored the possibility of reducing a hurricane’s strength by seeding it with silver iodide, ended in 1983.

Conspiracies claiming that FEMA is both absent from disaster relief efforts and confiscating supplies also contain a grain of truth based on a pervasive misconception of the agency’s role in disaster relief. Many people believe it descends on a place with cases of water and pallets of food and armies of people with shovels and flashlights immediately after a disaster. But it is better described as a logistics coordination and check writing organization. “You’ll never see someone in a FEMA jacket putting sandbags by a riverbed,” Penta said. “It’s not their job.”

One of his primary roles is to coordinate relief efforts and supply distribution with local and state officials and nonprofit organizations. FEMA generally discourages people from sending supplies or going into a disaster zone, not because it wants to keep aid from the people who need it, but because all those items and untrained volunteers simply get in the way and slow down relief efforts. . That’s why states often repeat FEMA’s calls to stay out of the way and leave recovery efforts to those who know what they’re doing.

“The State of North Carolina advises everyone NOT to travel to the affected region,” the North Carolina Business Emergency Operations Center said in an email Thursday. “We have live communications and power cables on roads providing essential resources to affected communities that should not be disturbed. We also have roads that have not been cleared.”

The federal Department of Transportation has placed temporary flight restrictions over parts of the Southeast to prevent amateur drone operators and other rescue efforts from being hampered, providing further fodder for those who insist the federal government is conspiring to prevent Good Samaritans from helping people in need. help. “Do not fly your drone near or around rescue and recovery efforts for Hurricane Helene,” the agency said in a post on X on Wednesday. “Interference with emergency response operations has an impact on search and rescue operations on the ground.”

It’s true that in the immediate aftermath of the storm, which devastated a wide swath of six states, many people — especially those in remote areas or those completely cut off by flooding — were left to fend for themselves.

Joshua Hensley, an entrepreneur who lives in Asheville, drove through western North Carolina delivering supplies. “Most of the government involvement we’ve seen is Ospreys and helicopters flying over and trying to get things in and trying to evacuate people,” he told Grist via a Starlink satellite hotspot on Thursday. “But as far as on the ground, I’ve been all over the place and it’s almost entirely local.”

In the days before federal aid arrived, restaurants, breweries and other businesses in Asheville provided water, medical care and other assistance to residents. “All the employees and community members volunteered their time and energy,” said Mae Walker, a service worker who lives in the city. “Much more than any visible assistance from police or other city officials outside of power restoration.”

In the days after the storm, local pilots used the airport in Asheville as a distribution center to transport supplies to stranded communities and conduct search and rescue operations. But as the state and federal government’s vast disaster relief apparatus got into motion, their efforts became more of a hindrance than a help, and airport officials asked them to stop as the state took over such operations.

The misconception that the government does not respond to a disaster, and the false conspiracy theories that reinforce such ideas, can have dangerous implications. The Southern Policy Law Center has heard credible reports that far-right militias and white supremacist organizations are moving into the region to provide assistance — and if past disasters are any indication, sympathy for their cause on drum.

“The more people who believe that FEMA isn’t there, or that FEMA has spent all its money on DEI or whatever, the more groups like militias believe they’re needed in those areas,” Goldwasser said. “They have their own agendas and goals they’re trying to achieve that supersede the needs of the people on the ground who need help.”

It’s easy to see how in the chaotic hours and days after a disaster, people might think the government has abandoned residents of the affected areas. But the conspiracy theories that crop up online, and the politicians and pundits who cultivate their spread, obscure the truth, which is that disaster relief work is messy and, yes, often flawed. “FEMA is an institution built and run by people,” Penta said. “It’s going to make mistakes and things are going to go poorly and they’re going to get criticized for that.”

Such criticism is fair, even justified. FEMA was chronically underfunded for decades, a situation that will only worsen as climate-driven disasters become more common, more devastating and more costly. Compounding the problem is the deepening polarization of American society, and a willingness by many to see only the worst in government and the people who work in it. The confluence of these two trends creates the fertile ground that allows conspiracy theories to flourish – and suggests that the flood of lies will continue to rise long after the waters that flooded the Southeast have receded.