Helene, Milton, and the Response

I watched the devastation of Helene as it tore through the Carolinas region. Entire towns are gone, and when I say gone, I mean they no longer exist. They are buried beneath rubble and mud in a level of destruction not seen (IMO) since the Galveston hurricane of 1900. I have heard reports of over 300 dead, and I think that’s ridiculously low. I know that the “official” number is currently 95 (as of this writing, 10/15/24), per NCDHHS. That number is just offensive. People on the ground are stating bluntly that they’ve seen piles of bodies.

Milton, too, was a force to be reckoned with, especially right after Helene. It spared the Carolinas, but hit Florida, and did so hard. I’ve heard of 17 deaths so far, and it’s well reported. There are news people in Florida, walking through the very wet, sometimes partially submerged neighborhoods. A number of houses are demolished, thanks to the tornadoes spawned during Milton’s arrival.

These two disasters are NOT the same. Please know, I’m not meaning to disparage any of the people involved in either hurricane. To anyone who has helped, in any way, you deserve kudos, love, support, and praise. But the response is just not the same, and the disasters are of entirely different levels.

Just as an example, “FEMA has approved more than $96 million in housing and other types of assistance for over 75,000 households.” (FEMA) and “FEMA has approved more than $177.6 million for over 56,900 households.” That means in NC, each of the households has gotten about $1280. In Florida, each household has gotten about $3093.

What?

And that’s just the reported stuff, right from FEMA’s website, which is probably quite biased. Florida, which wasn’t hit even remotely as hard, which hasn’t been rocked by watching loved ones swept away by violent mudslides they had NO warning of, have gotten more than twice what the folks in NC have gotten.

And people wonder why the folks in NC are “hunting FEMA” right now?

The news is equally or more biased. There’s been next to nothing on the disaster in the Carolinas. I’ve gotten almost all my “news” from TikTok and friends who went down there in person with a truck load of supplies. Florida, however, is all over the news. Some of it is about the disaster (and please understand, it IS a disaster, regardless of whether it’s not as bad as the Carolinas), and some of it is bullshit about DeSantis “turning away aid” from his constituents. Obviously, that isn’t true, because they’re already getting more than anyone else at the moment.

The admin in the Carolinas is all up in arms about the misinformation being spread. What they’re failing to realize is that the “misinformation” is not what’s being said. It’s their approach to helping the folks who are trapped out there.

Currently, FEMA is saying that they’ve been helping since the beginning, that military was deployed immediately or almost immediately, that there’s money flowing into communities in need, that rescue operations are ongoing, and that there’s only a handful of dead. All of that is misinformation, at least when you talk to people who are actually out there, in the area.

FEMA appears to have arrived no earlier than October 1st, and possibly not until the 3rd, in many areas in the Carolinas. There is aid ongoing in several of the larger communities, and that’s great. FEMA is good at providing warming stations, places for homeless folks to sleep, and cookie cutter meals. I’m glad they’re doing what they’re doing, at any level. But when they claim to have been there right from the start, that’s just a lie. Their arrival into the area caused havoc among those who were actively rescuing people and recovering bodies, clearing roads and making safe and usable paths to blocked homes. There was dick swinging over who got to be in the air helping, and quite a few people who took down supplies for those folks have come back with stories of being turned away or having their supplies confiscated. While not all of those stories are true, there are just SO MANY of them that, statistically speaking, at least some are going to be true. Since we know FEMA’s done it before, it’s likely to be ongoing.

There were lots of military men and women ready to go the morning after Helene, who were never given orders to go help. They wanted to go, but are required to wait for orders. It seems that most of them weren’t permitted to go help out until at least October 4th (US Army). National Guard troops were there by the 2nd, but several soldiers reported that they were sent overseas right after the disaster, both preventing them from helping with recovery, and taking them away from American soil when they didn’t know whether their families had survived the disaster. That was a shitshow, in my very strong opinion.

I have now heard of several people in the Carolinas who’ve gotten at least some FEMA money. Most have gotten somewhere in the $300 range, but many were told flat out that they made too much money to get help. This is being said to folks who no longer have homes, who have nothing but the clothes on their backs, who lost family members in mudslides, and who have had their businesses destroyed. Please note, they’re not being told they have too much in the bank. That I could almost understand. It doesn’t matter what they have in the bank… it’s what their net worth is (pre disaster, of course) that this stuff is being calculated against. They have two cars, some ATVs, livestock, a home, a barn… all that makes them worth “too much” to get help. Except that all of that, including the damn livestock, is gone, washed away. In many cases, too many cases, it isn’t even a matter of going back home, cleaning up or rebuilding, and moving on. The landscape has changed so much that many folks don’t have any usable land to go back to. All that’s there is marsh or river, now.

Rescue operations are definitely still going. Luckily, both the Army and the National Guard are just fine working with civilians, and stepped in to help ongoing recoveries. They’ve taken over, where they’re able or more skilled, and stayed out of the way of the people who are already doing the job and doing it well. Every single military member that I have listened to over the last two weeks has said that it will take months, perhaps years, before the area will be livable again. They’re still looking for body parts amid the rubble, because dead bodies got chomped up amidst the debris of the hurricane.

And there is definitely a LOT more than 97 people dead. There’s more than 300 people dead. I’m just sick over the fact that the numbers are so low. It’s like the people reporting have no heart.

One good thing I can report is that the stuff online about 163 kids missing/unaccounted for is no longer true. It was true at the time of the video that started it all (on TikTok), but only because phone lines were still down and teachers hadn’t been able to reach anyone. As of Oct 15, 2024, all the children from the schools affected by Helene have been accounted for (which does not mean they’re all alive, I must add, but that their whereabouts and status are now known). (NC News Observer) Note that not everything on that website is, imo, factually correct. However, it contains enough original source links that at least parts of it are good.

Look, folks in the Carolinas woke up to their world washing away. It was horrific on a level that I hope most of us never, EVER get to see. We can’t comprehend it. We shouldn’t try to. They were told that the storm wasn’t going to affect them that much, and they buckled down more than they usually would, just in case. The fact is, by the time the people in charge sent out the phone warnings, vast portions of the cell service were already down and out. I watched a TikTok video a few days ago, where everyone’s phones suddenly started beeping at them, as the cell tower came back online. It took those folks more than a week to get their emergency notice. And those notices were NOT evacuation notices.

On the other side of things, we knew Milton would be bad. People were told to leave. Shelters were set up and ready for the people. Staging was done in advance. Linemen were on hand to get to work the following morning. Florida was ready for this. If people chose to stay behind, I have a lot less sympathy for them than for the NC people. There were all sorts of ways to get out of that storm’s path. Uber gave away free travel to anyone who needed to get to a shelter. Ambulances and police were willing to transport anyone in need, right up until about a half hour before Milton made landfall. So… yeah.

These two situations were not the same. And it’s a damn shame that the reporting on it is so abysmal.