Hurricane Milton: FEMA scrambles to confront two storms – and misinformation

Hurricane Milton has become a political football, with an unusual level of politically charged misinformation creating distrust of emergency services, with the risk people ignore evacuation orders.

Joe Biden listens to a briefing about Hurricane Milton. Picture: AFP.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency faces a herculean task to prepare millions of residents for the catastrophic wind gusts and flooding expected from Hurricane Milton. Evacuation orders in communities near the Florida coastline are so broad that people are caught in hours-long traffic jams trying to escape the impending storm. And FEMA officials are simultaneously working to help thousands of residents across several states dig out from Hurricane Helene.

But FEMA’s biggest concern isn’t a lack of money or personnel to address both storms.

Instead, federal officials’ efforts to save lives are being complicated by an unusual level of politically charged misinformation, which authorities say risks leading people to disregard evacuation orders or not ask the government for the assistance they need.

“I think the biggest impact that I’m concerned about, potential impacts, are the fact that it’s creating distrust in the federal government but also the state government,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said on a call with reporters Tuesday morning. “I need people to register for assistance and they’re misrepresenting the types of programs that FEMA offers and it’s creating fear in some of the individuals.”

By Wednesday morning, Criswell said as Milton approached, “the volume of the misinformation is starting to go down.”

FEMA, which has over 20,000 employees and an annual budget in the tens of billions of dollars, is responsible for co-ordinating with state and local agencies to respond to natural disasters, such as flooding, wildfires and hurricanes.

The agency says it has been confronting a deluge of false information about the agency’s response to Helene and its preparedness for the coming disaster that risks leading to unnecessary death and suffering. Federal officials say they are accustomed to contending with online scammers trying to make a buck off people’s desperation, but the political nature of the misinformation – amplified at times by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump – is different.

A car drives through the heavy rain in Fort Myers, Florida, as Hurricane Milton approaches. Picture: AFP.

Rumours have proliferated on social-media sites such as Elon Musk-owned X that the agency is giving priority to Black and other minority victims over white applicants for assistance, which FEMA denies.

Users are sharing posts alleging the agency doesn’t have money because it has been diverted to help migrants. Trump has said FEMA was out of money because the administration was spending cash on housing for immigrants in the country illegally. The agency plays a role in border management but that pot of money is separate from funds for responding to natural disasters.

Trump has also said that FEMA is offering victims $750 in federal aid, which is misleading. The maximum aid FEMA would provide for home repairs and a host of other services is more than $42,000. However, the agency will offer immediate upfront assistance of $750 as an initial stipend to cover supplies such as water, food and diapers.

An X representative didn’t address the spread of false claims on the platform but pointed to its Community Notes feature, which uses volunteers to add crowdsourced context to posts.

False claims often spread online in the wake of natural disasters. Experts say that false claims can spread easily in such crises because conditions on the ground can evolve rapidly, and people are worried and searching for answers.

FEMA has posted a “Rumor Response” page attempting to address the various claims.

Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that, according to residents on the ground, the federal response has been a disaster, and she said Trump would have done a better job.

“President Trump hears their concerns and will continue to highlight them,” she said.

“If he were in office today, the federal government would be moving at a business speed, not a bureaucratic speed.” The concerns about conspiracy theories have escalated to the point that some Republican lawmakers have started attempting to rebut them. On Tuesday, GOP Rep. Chuck Edwards, who represents one of the hardest-hit regions in North Carolina, published a letter to his constituents dispelling a list of eight rumours. Among them: The government was “geoengineering” the weather to destroy specific areas.

“While it is true, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Hurricane Helene has had its shortfalls, I’m here to dispel the outrageous rumours that have been circulated online,” he wrote.

Just 28 days out from the presidential election, the government’s response to back-to-back natural disasters, and how voters perceive that response, could threaten to up-end an exceedingly close race. That is particularly true in the pivotal swing states of North Carolina and Georgia, which were devastated by Helene. The dynamic carries political risk for the Biden-Harris administration. If the administration fumbles the response, it would give Trump a potent line of attack against his election opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Republicans including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis accused Harris of politicising the storm after the vice president said DeSantis didn’t return her calls about Helene recovery. On Fox News on Monday, DeSantis said Harris “has no role in this” and “is trying to politicise the storm” by casting him as unwilling to talk to her. President Biden said Tuesday he had spoken with DeSantis.

On Tuesday, Harris criticised Trump for fanning false rumours. “The role of the leader is not to beat people down, it’s to lift people up, especially in a time of crisis,” Harris said on ABC’s “The View.” A campaign adviser said she is attempting to elevate Trump’s role in spreading rumours to create a “split screen moment.” Last week, days after Helene’s landfall, Trump visited Valdosta, Ga., where he claimed Biden hadn’t reached out to the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp – which the governor contradicted. Trump alleged several times that the Biden administration and North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, were blocking aid from reaching Republican areas of that state. Cooper denied the allegation, saying it was demoralising to people working on Helene relief efforts.

And at a Michigan campaign rally later in the week, Trump connected the disaster to an oft-repeated claim that Democrats have allowed immigrants to enter the country illegally to vote for them. “They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season,” Trump said.

Immigrants in the country illegally or who are in the asylum system aren’t paid benefits by the federal government except in narrow circumstances, and risk deportation and jail time for illegally casting ballots. Voter fraud by noncitizens is exceedingly rare, election experts have found.

Last month, Congress passed some $20 billion in additional money for FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund as part of a short-term deal funding the government. As of this week, about $11 billion of that fund remains, the administrator said on Wednesday.

The White House said that it believes FEMA has the resources required to meet immediate needs but will face a shortfall at the end of the year. “Without additional funding, FEMA would be required to forego longer-term recovery activities in favour of meeting urgent needs,” Biden said in a letter Friday, asking Congress to provide FEMA “additional resources to avoid forcing that kind of unnecessary trade-off.” Some lawmakers have said that Congress should consider immediately approving more FEMA money, given that hurricane season isn’t yet over and everyone acknowledges the agency will need more money within a couple of months.

But others including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) have said they are aiming to take up that work when they return to town in November.

“We’ll be back in session immediately after the election,” Johnson told Fox News on Sunday. “That’s 30 days from now,” he said, adding: “We’ll get that job done. There shouldn’t be any concern at all.”

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