The Republican congressman who represents a western North Carolina district badly damaged by the remnants of Hurricane Helene is tired of the conspiracy theories about recovery efforts circulating online.
In a lengthy statement, Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) praised the support his district has received but also noted “an uptick in untrustworthy sources trying to spark chaos by sharing hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and hearsay about hurricane response efforts across our mountains.”
Falsehoods about the recovery effort — including claims that the government engineered the storm in order to seize people’s land — have circulated widely since last week, prompting the Federal Emergency Management Agency to set up a web page devoted solely to combating rumors. North Carolina state officials, too, had to set up their own rumor-busting web page.
Keith Turi, acting director of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, told reporters in a Monday call that misinformation has been “extremely damaging to the response efforts” to Hurricane Helene. He specifically cited false claims about FEMA confiscating people’s possessions or only providing survivors with $750.
“That is absolutely not true,” Turi said. “It is reducing the likelihood that survivors will come to FEMA and register for assistance. It’s important we have those trusted relationships with all of our partners and the public, and that misinformation is directly impacting our ability.”
He added that the agency is stepping up its efforts to combat misinformation ahead of Hurricane Milton’s expected arrival in Florida on Wednesday. He cited the rumor response page on FEMA’s website and said the agency plans to “push that aggressively.” FEMA is also working with local and state partners to make sure the public has accurate information, he said.
The continued proliferation of conspiracy theories apparently prompted Edwards to chime in with a debunking of his own on Tuesday. The congressman posted a list on his website addressing eight “outrageous” made-up stories about the disaster recovery.
“Hurricane Helene was NOT geoengineered by the government to seize and access lithium deposits in Chimney Rock,” Edwards wrote in the first bullet point on his list, referring to a village in his district that was badly damaged by the storm.
“Nobody can control the weather,” he continued, before going to the trouble of citing an authority for the seemingly obvious point that the government is not capable of creating hurricanes.
“Charles Konrad, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southeast Regional Climate Center, has confirmed that no one has the technology or ability to geoengineer a hurricane,” Edwards wrote.
One of his colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), has repeatedly insisted since last week that the government actually can control the weather. Other right-wing influencers on sites like Facebook and X, formerly called Twitter, have made up stories about the government blocking private recovery efforts and using the disaster as a pretext to steal people’s land. The country singer John Rich suggested Tuesday on X that FEMA has no presence in North Carolina at all.
Kevin Corbin, a Republican senator in the North Carolina legislature, called out the conspiracy theories in a Facebook post last week.
“Please don’t let these crazy stories consume you or have you continually contact your elected officials to see if they are true,” Corbin wrote.
Democrats on the ground, too, have begged people to stop spreading misinformation about the disaster response. North Carolina state Rep. Lindsey Prather told HuffPost last week that the misinformation has been hurting their efforts to help people get the resources they need and emphasized that nobody on the ground there is playing politics amid the crisis.
“I’m in regular communication, as a Democrat, to Republicans all the time. There’s no partisanship right now,” Prather said. “That stuff is the last thing on our minds.”
Outside of North Carolina, there’s lots of partisanship. Former President Donald Trump on Saturday spread the false claim that FEMA is offering only $750 to people impacted by the storm.
“They’re offering them $750, to people whose homes have been washed away,” Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania. “And yet we send tens of billions of dollars to foreign countries that most people have never heard of.”
Without naming Trump, Edwards called out his FEMA falsehood.
“FEMA is NOT only providing $750 to disaster survivors to support their recovery,” Edwards wrote, explaining that residents can get $750 as an immediate cash grant called Serious Needs Assistance as soon as they apply for more ongoing aid. “The $750 is an upfront, flexible payment to help cover essential items like food, water, baby formula and medication while FEMA assesses the applicant’s eligibility for additional funds.”
Edwards also pleaded with his constituents not to believe garbage online.
“I encourage you to remember that everything you see on Facebook, X, or any other social media platform is not always fact,” he wrote. “Please make sure you are fact checking what you read online with a reputable source.”