hot646 FEMA Chief: Hurricane Misinformation Is ‘Worst That I Have Ever Seen’
Disaster relief officials have issued several warnings this week that falsehoods and rumors spreading online about the government’s response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton have harmed relief efforts.hot646
Former President Donald J. Trump and other prominent conservatives have spread several false claims about the federal response to Helene in recent days. Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said on Tuesday that the claims had made the agency a target of partisan rebuke and put lives at risk.
“It’s absolutely the worst that I have ever seen,” Ms. Criswell said during a phone call with reporters on Tuesday morning.
Misinformation and rumors often circulate amid natural disasters, as information is scarce and tensions are high. But the scale and speed of falsehoods that have circulated during Helene and Milton have surprised officials, including Ms. Criswell, who said on Tuesday that she had “anticipated some of this, but not to the extent that we’re seeing.”
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research group that studies online platforms, found that debunked claims about Hurricane Helene and FEMA’s response were circulating widely on X, the platform owned by Elon Musk that has increasingly become a haven for misinformation. The group found that just 33 posts containing claims debunked by government sources were seen more than 160 million times by Monday.
Mr. Trump criticized FEMA’s response during recent rallies in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and attacked the White House and Vice President Kamala Harris for their role in the response. Among the falsehoods were suggestions that FEMA was running out of money, partly because it has helped pay for migrant housing.
“It’s just categorically false,” Ms. Criswell said in a television interview on Monday, adding that the agency had billions of dollars set aside to respond to Helene and Milton. (FEMA does have a program to help migrants with housing, but that uses a separate budget from the disaster relief fund.)
FEMA also set up a fact-checking portal for the hurricanes, addressing nearly a dozen false claims about the storms and FEMA’s response.
The misinformation has also sparked new concerns about the personal safety of FEMA workers who have flown into disaster areas in Florida and North Carolina to help with recovery efforts.
“If the narrative continueshot646, we always worry about the safety of our folks that are walking around in neighborhoods that may or may not have full confidence in the government,” Ms. Criswell said on Tuesday. “So we are watching that closely to make sure that we’re providing for their safety as well.”
