PENSACOLA: In the mountains of North Carolina, real frustrations over federal aid for victims of Hurricane Helene have been supercharged by a whirlwind of lies and misinformation – fuelled in part by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Ten days after Helene carved a path of destruction through the southeastern United States, many residents are still cut off – from federal assistance, from electricity and running water, and, crucially, from accurate information.
Trump and others have poured false claims and conspiracy theories into that vacuum, targeting in particular the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) – which, when a US state asks for help, puts the power of the federal government behind the disaster response.
The result? Anger, on top of grief, loss and devastation.
“FEMA should have been here, boots on the ground,” Janet Musselwhite, a resident of Pensacola, North Carolina, which was hit hard by the storm, tells AFP.
The same thing happened after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, she said. “They waited and they waited and people died, and that’s what has happened here.”
Helene is now the deadliest storm to have struck the US mainland since Katrina, with a death toll of more than 230 people.
The United States has distributed more than US$210 million in federal aid and dispatched nearly 7,000 emergency response personnel to assist with relief efforts across the US southeast, according to the White House.
But Trump and his Republican party have accused the administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris – who is also Trump’s rival for the White House in November’s election – of misappropriating FEMA funds for migrants.
It’s a false claim that has been repeatedly debunked, and that Harris rejected on Monday as “extraordinarily irresponsible”.
But it’s just one in a slew of falsehoods and rumors about the federal response that FEMA’s chief has slammed as “dangerous”.
