In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, senior Biden administration officials raced to engage in a round-the-clock effort to respond to what appeared to be an unprecedented amount of misinformation circling about the storm and the federal response to it.
Meetings were quickly convened across government to try to solve for the alarming rise in false information – from claims about funds being directed to migrant services instead of recovery to allegations that survivors were only eligible for little assistance – that have in part been amplified by Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump.
“This has been a galvanizing moment for the White House and the federal government because of just the outright lying and spreading of lies,” one US official said.
It’s not unusual for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to have to respond to rumors surrounding any given natural disaster. But US officials are concerned about the scale and scope of the conspiracy theories and the threat they pose to hurricane victims and the government employees responding to the disaster.
This week, President Joe Biden requested a memorandum from his team on the federal government’s digital response, including how officials were remediating misinformation, a senior administration official told CNN. While addressing preparations for Hurricane Milton, Biden called out “reckless, irresponsible and relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies that are disturbing people” and “undermining confidence in the incredible rescue and recovery work that has already been taken.” He specifically called out Trump for his role in spreading misinformation.
“The contours of this misinformation are unlike anything we’ve seen before,” a senior administration official told CNN.
With Hurricane Milton barreling toward Florida, concerns among administration officials have only been exacerbated, and new tactics to share information have been deployed to reach different corners of the internet, like a newly launched White House Reddit page.
Senior US officials have also instructed public affairs teams at federal agencies to ramp up social media posts from government accounts with photos that illustrate how federal workers are clearing debris and dispensing aid, the first US official familiar with the effort said.
“We have a massive misinformation problem, and this is something that actively harms the ability of responders to do their job,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN’s John Berman on Wednesday. “I think a lot of it’s driven by politics. Some of it’s just the internet doing what it seems to do lately and amplify the loudest or strangest thing that is being said.”
Buttigieg spoke with Musk over the weekend amid rumors that the Federal Aviation Administration was shutting down airspace and blocking rescue and recovery flights. After Musk tweeted that private helicopter flights to deliver satellite internet devices were being restricted by the FAA, Buttigieg walked the Starlink founder through how airspace restrictions work and put Musk in touch with the agency, a Department of Transportation spokesperson told CNN.
While the administration has been willing to engage with Musk directly to try to tamp down the misinformation, officials are also working to disseminate accurate guidance to Musk’s deputies and directly to residents on the ground in affected states.
At the ground level, the White House hopes that communicating directly about available resources and programs through text messages, telephone calls, emails, flyers and FEMA centers will inform residents before they hear from other corners of the internet.
At the corporate level, two senior administration officials told CNN that the Biden administration has engaged top leaders at X, formerly known as Twitter, and SpaceX, to provide it with direct information about ongoing recovery efforts.
The goal, another official said, is twofold: to dispel some of the notions that Musk has perpetuated, and to allow companies like SpaceX’s Starlink to craft their own strategy around the footprint of the region’s needs.
“We’re trying to give them information and to clear the runway, clear the path so that they can actually do what they do best,” the official said.
North Carolina state agencies, along with the FAA are continuing to stress that airports near the Hurricane Helene disaster zone are open for recovery flights, despite the attacks on social media – and from Trump – asserting otherwise.
“FEMA is not controlling any airports in western North Carolina,” the North Carolina Division of Aviation posted in a new “Helene Aviation Fact vs Rumor” section of its website. “The FAA is not restricting access for recovery operations.”
The state agency said it asked for the FAA’s help in establishing “coordinated measures” to reduce the risk of incidents involving relief flights, with air traffic surging 300%. CNN previously reported that there were 30 midair near-collisions involving noncommercial flights in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Helene on Saturday, September 28.
Since then, the FAA has set up a “Prior Permission Request” phone line for relief pilots to call before flying into Asheville Regional Airport and Rutherford County Airport “to schedule landing and unloading times and aircraft parking, so aircraft are spaced out and reducing congestion and risk of incidents.”
Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards, who represents much of Western North Carolina, put out a multipoint release this week, trying to dispel what he called “the outrageous rumors that have been circulated online.”
Many of the “myths” Edwards sought to address have been promoted by members of his own party – including claims from Trump about FEMA money and rescue operations. Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee falsely claimed on X Tuesday that migrant services had become central to FEMA’s mission.
While FEMA manages grants for shelters assisting migrants, that is a separate and unrelated pot of money authorized by Congress, and disaster relief funds have not been used for that effort.
Another part of FEMA’s assistance that has also been mischaracterized by Trump and others is a $750 payment that goes to disaster survivors in the immediate aftermath of a hurricane, tornado or other major storm.
This $750 amount is a relatively new program, implemented in March of this year. Disaster survivors are eligible for additional funding to help them with the cost of temporary housing and to help relocate or rebuild their homes, and they are not required to give it back to the government like some have suggested.
The snowballing of false information on the heels of Hurricane Helene has also directly affected those on the ground. That includes FEMA personnel who began fielding threats stemming from the falsehoods, according to one agency official.
Those falsehoods include the heated rhetoric about funds being directed to migrants and the $750 upfront, direct payment to survivors, according to Steve Reaves, former president of the American Federation of Government Employees’ FEMA council.
“The people I work with love to do these jobs. They love to help fellow Americans. To have that questioned, to have that politicized and to have that interfere with our actual mission is damn exasperating,” Reaves, a longtime FEMA employee based in Fort Worth, Texas, said.
“It’s offensive to everything we do and are,” he added.
Reaves recalled that FEMA personnel have also received threats in the wake of other hurricanes, including Katrina, Sandy and Maria, but argued it’s greater in scale now.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an interview with CNN on Wednesday called the wave of antisemitic threats being directed at officials involved in the response to Hurricane Helene “repugnant expressions of hate.”
Mayorkas told CNN that his department has seen the “real consequences” of misinformation being spread following Hurricane Helene including that some are “reluctant to seek the federal assistance that they are entitled to.”
A post on X, which received over 3 million views, claimed that an official in the sheriff’s office of Carter County, Tennessee, was threatening to jail a county resident for gathering their belongings in the aftermath of the hurricane. The claim spread to extremist channels on Telegram, where the far-right Proud Boys falsely claimed the official was not part of the sheriff’s department.
“This type of content, spread by online extremists, places FEMA personnel, first responders, as well as those impacted by these disasters at great risk,” John Cohen, the former acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at DHS, told CNN.
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