How FEMA tries to combat rumors and conspiracy theories about Milton and Helene

With a second massive hurricane set to hit the United States in less than two weeks, the Federal Emergency Management Agency also has to contend with a deluge of rumors and conspiracy theories about its response and policies.

Baseless stories have swirled on social media since Hurricane Helene made landfall in late September, many framing FEMA’s actions as an instrument of a tyrannical federal government. On X, formerly Twitter, the same rumors and narratives are following the agency as it prepares for Milton.

“Although the rumors are rampant — they are totally rampant — I hadn't heard any of that impacting our response here yet,” Willie Nunn told NPR on Tuesday. Nunn, the FEMA administrator for the Pacific Northwest and Alaska and the tribal nations in that area, is currently serving as the senior FEMA official in Florida to support the response and recovery efforts for Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

One challenge for FEMA and local first responders is that prominent political figures, including former President Donald Trump, have amplified falsehoods, politicizing the storm response less than a month ahead of the presidential election. Without naming Trump and his allies, local Republican officials have pushed back against some of the false narratives that have been spreading.

As Hurricane Milton approaches Florida, Christina Pushaw, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary, took to social media to rebuke one viral falsehood that urged people not to evacuate so as to protect their property from FEMA: “Spreading LIES like this could have serious consequences.” She urged people to follow directions to evacuate.

“The basic thing you should understand about disasters is they are the most political thing that happens in a democracy,” said George Haddow, who was the White House liaison and deputy chief of staff at FEMA during the Clinton administration. “All these people hurting. Big media coverage. And then there's the politics and the money…That's why these events attract this kind of thing.”

“I've never seen this information like this and I've never seen as much and as mean-spirited,” said Haddow.

Fears that falsehoods will incite violence

One worry about the storm of falsehoods is whether it might incite violence against federal aid workers, according to research from the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue. On X, formerly Twitter, several antisemitic posts suggested that FEMA is run by Jews and a Jewish agency staffer was harassed online. One post warned that FEMA employees would be shot if they “continue blocking/seizing aid.” Another post — now removed — called for militias to resist FEMA. These posts each received over a million views and thousands of reposts, sometimes more.

Nunn said FEMA has been in touch with local law enforcement to make sure its operations remain safe.

Many of the rumors and conspiracy theories circulating about FEMA are old and also surfaced during last year’s wildfires in Maui. Among the old chestnuts is the debunked claim that FEMA only offers $750 in aid — in fact, that’s just one grant program. Another false claim is that FEMA will seize land from survivors, which is neither true nor legally possible. Further claims merged baseless claims about FEMA’s funding with anti-immigrant stories that have been central to Trump’s presidential campaign, claiming that FEMA funds are going to shore up the border or migrants, or that FEMA funds are being used to help noncitizens vote.

The rumor that FEMA grants have to be repaid is one that surfaces the most often over the years, said Nunn, who says that the agency runs a hotline to help people figure out their eligibility and register for aid, and that he has personally gone door to door to tell survivors to sign up.

“If they have questions, we ask them to call back, either utilizing the 1-800-621-3362 with 3362 spelling FEMA,” Nunn said, “if it's something that someone says, well, they're going to take your money, are they going to do that land grab? Call that number. We will tell you right away that that's debunked.”

Researchers who study disaster response worry that false narratives like these can get in the way of the recovery effort.

“Even on our best day, navigating the U.S. recovery system is challenging,” said Samantha Montano, an assistant professor of emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. “So to then add misinformation on top of that, you're really harming survivors who really need access to that funding.”

In the years past, the agency has rejected a high percentage of applications for aid, hitting low-income survivors harder than affluent ones. FEMA says it relaxed eligibility earlier this year. It had allocated disproportionate resources responding to smaller disasters and struggled to respond to major ones like Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

FEMA has always dealt with rumors, but not like these

While FEMA has considered responding to rumors as part of its disaster response for decades, the information landscape of 2024 is dramatically different than decades past.

“We had folks that spent all day watching TV and listening to the radio that they heard something that we thought was troubling that wasn't true. We go out there and try [to] correct it,” said Haddow, the former Clinton-era FEMA official, of how the agency responded in the 1990s.

Fast forward to 2012, when social media started to become important. “The rumor mill for [Hurricane] Sandy was somebody…saying they had sharks in the subway system that flooded and they had a video showing a shark in the subway system,” said Haddow. “Compared to what they're talking about now.”

FEMA responded by getting on social media and setting up region- and language-specific accounts.

After Trump put the agency in charge of leading the response to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, FEMA put up a web page to debunk rumors.

“I would say all of FEMA was encouraged to promote folks checking in with that rumor control website,” said Rebecca Rouse, a former FEMA staffer who now teaches emergency and security studies at Tulane University.

Rouse sent the rumor control page out to friends and family, while her contacts have shared it with entire listservs of faith leaders, elected officials and nonprofit workers.

Out of hundreds of major disasters that have been declared since the pandemic, only four have their own rumor control pages: the Texas winter storms of 2021, the New Mexico wildfires of 2022, the Maui wildfires in 2023, and Hurricane Helene.

Improving the public’s media literacy also needs to be part of the solution, said Margaret Stewart, a professor at the University of North Florida who has developed a crisis communication framework that she recommends to government and businesses alike.

“One of my biggest recommendations to social media consumers is the necessity now to go back to the original source … of the digital information that they're consuming and to verify the information there before passing it on to the members of their social community,” said Stewart.

“As far as FEMA, we're not here for the politics. We're here to help people,” said Nunn. “We have a storm that's approaching the west coast of Florida that could be very catastrophic. And it is approaching those areas that your emergency managers tell you to evacuate. This is a matter of life and death.”