Tag: fema

Disinformation complicates the work of disaster relief

This article was written by Lauren Rosenthal and Zahra Hirji of Bloomberg News and was published in the Toronto Star on November 10, 2024.

When recovery workers with the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency arrived in Boone, North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene and began setting up temporary housing in a local park, it prompted a backlash in the stormwracked town: “We had folks that were literally protesting FEMA out at the site,” says Tim Futrelle, Boone’s mayor.

Nearby in Swannanoa, on the outskirts of Asheville, there were rumours that officials were covering up the true death toll from the storm. The deputy fire chief took to Facebook and begged the public to stop sharing “sensationalized” information.

In Rutherford County, a man was arrested for allegedly threatening to hurt FEMA workers. In the aftermath, Sheriff Aaron Ellenburg says, armed deputies were guarding the agency’s staff as they helped storm survivors fill out paperwork to receive financial aid.

Misinformation about disasters and their aftermath is becoming more prevalent in the U.S., thanks to deep political polarization, weakened trust in institutions and a lack of content moderation on social media that allows false claims to flourish.

For many communities in western North Carolina and across Appalachia, Helene was their first encounter with devastating extreme weather driven by climate change, and also with FEMA, the U.S. government’s primary agency overseeing disaster response and recovery. That made it fertile ground for conspiracy theories and rumours. Government officials struggled to quash misinformation that disrupted recovery efforts and triggered threats against the very people trying to help.

It was “one of the most extreme situations” of its kind, says emergency management consultant Zach Stanford. “We’re encroaching on violent territory,” he adds.

It didn’t help that false claims were amplified by a collection of highprofile posters on social media, including presidentelect Donald Trump, members of his current presidential campaign and tech billionaire Elon Musk. Accounts linked to foreign actors also promoted them.

Asked about Trump’s posts, Karoline Leavitt, his campaign’s national press secretary, said, “President Trump visited North Carolina and Georgia and was briefed on the damage that occurred from Hurricane Helene,” and noted that he had raised more than $8 million (U.S.) in hurricane relief. Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.

FEMA acknowledges that Helene was a wakeup call of sorts. Jaclyn Rothenberg, the agency’s director of public affairs, describes it as a “collective moment” for emergency managers and others to “really take a hard look and understand what misinformation does” in disaster scenarios.

The presidential election was one reason why North Carolina, a key swing state, was especially targeted with a large volume of falsehoods. But disinformation experts say it likely wasn’t a oneoff.

“It’s a supply and a demandside issue,” says Jennie King, director of climate disinformation research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a nonprofit that advocates for policies to fight extremism. “Yes, there are people who are flooding the zone with deliberate false and misleading content,” King says. But there’s also strong demand for what they’re supplying — “a desire among the general public to consume this kind of content.”

FEMA’s modernday playbook for tackling rumours online dates back to 2012, when Superstorm Sandy walloped neighbourhoods in and around New York City with heavy rains and storm surge, just days before a presidential election. Twitter (now X) and Facebook both teemed with rumours and falsehoods about Sandy’s impacts and the recovery. This was mostly what experts call “misinformation,” or information coming from people who have their facts wrong. Such claims “typically originate, ironically, from people trying to help,” says Stanford.

Consequently, FEMA set up a rumourcontrol page on its website for the first time, addressing specific falsehoods head on, says Rafael Lemaitre, a former head of the agency’s communications. “It became standard practice for the agency to do that after major disasters,” he says. And between disasters, the agency has started to train staff on how to proactively find and respond to false claims.

Beyond misinformation, however, officials are also facing disinformation, where the intent of the person or people making the claim “is to confuse and to harm,” says Leysia Palen, a professor of information science and computer science at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Take the 2023 wildfires that devastated the Maui town of Lahaina, which prompted a deliberate disinformation campaign by China. Information experts found China’s fingerprints on claims that the disaster was a result of a secret U.S. government “weather weapon.”

On social media, that theory mingled with a claim that FEMA was going to seize Hawaiians’ land — a rumour that resonated with some Hawaiians who were already wary of the federal government, based on the islands’ history of colonization. FEMA officials grew concerned that survivors would be discouraged from seeking assistance.

Similar fears about land seizures surfaced in response to Helene too. But this time, misinformation and confusion about FEMA’s policies eventually curdled into anger and threats against its staff.

False claims started circulating even before the rain stopped and continued to swirl for weeks. It was as if someone had put a bubble over the state and pumped in a lot of noise, according to a staffer in the office of North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, who asked not to be identified to speak openly.

Many of the falsehoods centred on what the federal government was or wasn’t doing to help people in need. There were claims that no one was coming to rescue people in Appalachia; that the government was withholding aid to Republicanvoting communities; and that officials were funnelling aid earmarked for disaster relief to migrants.

Futrelle saw FEMA personnel on the ground in Boone within days of the storm. But he soon realized that many others were not aware of their presence. Right after Helene, the power was out and communications were spotty, he says, which “created a very tense and anxious situation.”

As normal communications gradually returned, residents increasingly encountered disjointed rumours on social media. Questions about when and if FEMA planned to come to Boone turned to suspicion when locals learned that the agency was setting up housing in the park, which hosts a weekly farmers’ market. A rumour erupted that FEMA was engaging in “a money grab to push out the farmers’ market,” Futrelle says.

“It’s funny now, in hindsight,” he says, “but it was very serious when it was happening.”

FEMA launched a rumour page for Helene a week after the storm made landfall. “It’s making sure that we’re communicating the facts right,” says Rothenberg.

The agency is deliberate about which pieces of misinformation it chooses to respond to and tries to find “the right balance in terms of not (giving) it more oxygen,” according to Rothenberg.

Its efforts were bolstered by North Carolina politicians from both major parties, including Cooper, a Democrat, and Rep. Chuck Edwards and State Sen. Kevin Corbin, both Republicans.

FEMA and local emergency managers could do a better job explaining what the agency’s programs cover and what the relief effort will look like before it starts, says Carrie Speranza, chair of FEMA’s National Advisory Council.

That might prevent bad information from taking hold. And if rumours start spreading online, emergency managers need to know how to fight back. Unfortunately, there are few evidencebased studies on how to do this effectively.

In the fight against misinformation, says ISD’s King, “just strengthening the good is not going to be enough if you don’t weaken the bad.”