| By Zahra Hirji In September 2018, I was in North Carolina riding out Hurricane Florence and reporting on its impacts. For a few days, I embedded with a FEMA rescue team stationed at Hope Mills Recreation Center near Fayetteville, accompanying emergency responders as they evacuated a senior center in the middle of the night and touring flooded neighborhoods by day. There were some false rumors circulating online at the time, including one about flooding at a nuclear power plant (it didn't happen) and another about service animals not being allowed in shelters (they were allowed). This was mostly what experts call "misinformation," or information coming from people who have their facts wrong and aren't trying to deceive. Such claims hadn't registered much with the people I interviewed. Six years later, I watched from afar as Helene hit a different part of North Carolina. It quickly became clear that something very different was happening online, with potentially massive implications on the ground.  A woman mounts a flag to a stack of cinderblocks in the aftermath of flooding from Hurricane Helene in Swannanoa, North Carolina, on Oct. 6, 2024. Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images North America On social media there was a surge of misinformation, as well as disinformation — when the intent of the person or people making the claim is to harm. The debunked or unsubstantiated claims were largely about the government's response to Helene, including that it was withholding aid to Republican communities and that FEMA was limiting assistance to $750 per family. Russian state media promoted some of these claims. They were amplified offline by conservative voices on the radio and TV, and at Donald Trump's rallies by the former president himself. But what wasn't immediately clear to me in my office in Washington, DC, was why this was happening, what it meant for the recovery and if this was going to be a new normal for disasters. So weather reporter Lauren Rosenthal and I started making calls to emergency responders and disinformation experts. Everyone seemed to agree the upcoming presidential election was one reason why North Carolina, a key swing state, was especially targeted with a large volume of falsehoods. They also said the rumors were hampering the recovery in an unprecedented way. For example, as workers with FEMA were setting up temporary housing in a park in Boone, North Carolina, after Helene ripped through the town, there was a backlash among some locals: "We had folks that were literally protesting FEMA out at the site," says Tim Futrelle, Boone's mayor. Nearby in Swannanoa, there were rumors that officials were covering up the true death toll from the storm. The deputy fire chief took to Facebook, begging the public to stop sharing "sensationalized" information.  Members of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force search a flood-damaged area in Asheville, North Carolina. Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images North America FEMA launched a rumor page on its website, a step it also took with Florence. "It's making sure that we're communicating the facts right," says Jaclyn Rothenberg, the agency's director of public affairs. 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," she explains. The White House also stepped in, holding press briefings with FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and launching a Reddit account for fact checks and updates. These efforts were bolstered by North Carolina politicians, including Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, and US Representative Chuck Edwards and State Senator Kevin Corbin, both Republicans. "You had a fire line of truth that cut across political lines, and that was helpful," says Zeb Smathers, mayor of Canton, North Carolina. But that still wasn't enough to keep the situation from boiling over. In Rutherford County, police arrested a man for allegedly threatening to hurt FEMA workers. After that, Sheriff Aaron Ellenburg says, armed deputies were guarding FEMA staff as they helped storm survivors fill out paperwork to receive financial aid. It's clear that emergency responders aren't ready to combat this level of misinformation and disinformation on a regular basis. And a big takeaway from our reporting is that this likely wasn't a one-off. "It's a supply and a demand-side issue," says Jennie King, director of climate disinformation research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 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." —With Lauren Rosenthal Read the full story on Bloomberg.com. | 
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