Another potentially devastating storm barreled toward the Florida coast on Sunday, as the head of the US disaster relief agency lashed out at a “dangerous” misinformation war being waged over the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the new storm, Milton, had intensified into a Category 1 hurricane Sunday with maximum sustained winds of 80 miles (130 kilometers) an hour.
Milton was churning in the Gulf of Mexico, west-southwest of Tampa, with nothing but 800 miles of warm ocean between it and the Florida coast — an area still reeling from Helene’s catastrophic winds and storm surge.
It could hit by midweek as a major storm, the NHC said.
Deanne Criswell, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), said federal authorities were “absolutely ready” for Milton.
“We will move resources in there to support their needs,” she told ABC’s “This Week.”
Florida governor Ron DeSantis upped the number of counties under a state of emergency to 51 ahead of the storm.
Helene roared into the Florida coastline as a Category 4 storm on September 26 and carved a path of destruction inland to the Appalachian mountains, dumping torrential rainfall and flash flooding on remote towns in states such as North Carolina.
The storm has killed more than 220 people — making it the deadliest natural disaster to hit the United States since 2005’s Hurricane Katrina — with the toll still rising.
Relief workers are racing to find survivors and to get power and drinking water to mountainous communities cut off by the devastation.
But that effort has been hit by a wave of false claims and conspiracy theories.
Among the litany of disinformation is the lie pushed by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump that funding for relief has been misappropriated by his rival for the White House, Democrat Kamala Harris, and redirected toward migrants.
“It’s frankly ridiculous and just plain false … it’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people,” Criswell told ABC.
It is a “truly dangerous narrative that is creating this fear of trying to reach out and help us or to register for help,” she said.
ABC reported that law enforcement is monitoring threats toward FEMA officials and other recovery agencies prompted by the disinformation.
– ‘Turn that garbage off’ –
In addition to Trump’s false claim, the Washington Post reported Sunday on a series of other lies swirling around Helene that it said were “adding to the chaos and confusion in many storm-battered communities.”
They include a false claim that a dam was about to burst, which the Post said prompted hundreds of people to unnecessarily evacuate, and a “troubling” lie that officials planned to bulldoze bodies under the rubble in one North Carolina town.
One user suggested “a militia go against fema” in a post on X, formerly Twitter, which has received more than half a million views.
Asked about that post, Criswell said it “has a tremendous impact on the comfort level of our own employees to be able to go out there,” and called it “demoralizing.”
“It’s just, you know, a shame that people are sitting home on their comfortable couches (while) we have thousands of people here on the ground that have left their own families to be able to help those in need,” she said.
FEMA has begun debunking the rumors online, as have authorities in the hard-hit state of North Carolina.
Local officials have urged residents to ignore the online falsehoods. “I would encourage the good residents of western North Carolina to turn that garbage off,” one local sheriff said.
Much of the focus was on X.
Before the platform was purchased by Elon Musk, when it was still known as Twitter, it was a go-to place for disaster coordination and information sharing.
But the billionaire has allowed right-wing disinformation and conspiracy theories to flood the platform.
“When Musk bought Twitter, there were many of us in the disaster space who warned that there would likely be changes that would make the platform less useful during disasters,” Sam Montano, a disaster expert, told the Post.
“I think that we’re seeing that manifest now.”
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