Schrödinger's Disaster Area
The anemic federal response to Hurricane Helene is raising critical questions about what's going on inside the box
When we made the decision in August — rather impulsively, even for us — to move to North Carolina instead of Virginia, we had no idea that we were just a few weeks away from one of the biggest natural disasters in American history devastating the Western part of the state.
Here in Raleigh, we got plenty of rain, and some minor flooding, but nothing compared to what came down in Asheville and the surrounding areas. Photos of I-40 show that portions of the highway have collapsed near Eastern Tennessee, and all I could think was, “Holy cow, we just drove through there.”
I am profoundly grateful that we didn’t move to an area that was wiped out before we could even get all our boxes unpacked. I have no idea where we would have gone or what we would have done. We barely know anything about this state at this point in time, and except for some old family friends and distant relatives I haven’t seen in many years, we don’t know anyone here.
From afar, I’ve been watching what’s going on in the areas affected by Hurricane Helene, and something feels very off.
Helene broke all the records in an area that has been keeping them for over a century. The storm dropped 40 trillion gallons of water on the Southeastern US — approximately the same amount of water in Lake Tahoe.
For reference, this is Lake Tahoe:
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According to Keep Tahoe Blue, Lake Tahoe is “1,645 feet deep, 22 miles long, 12 miles wide, with 75 miles of shoreline.” It is the second deepest lake in America.
That’s a lot of freaking water.
As of this writing, at least 204 people have died as a result of Helene, more than half of them right here in North Carolina. Hundreds are still reported missing, and it’s been almost a week since the worst of the storm.
You’ve no doubt seen the aftermath videos and images. They’re bad. This is like Appalachia’s own Hurricane Katrina. “Hillbilly Katrina,” a friend from Louisiana called it. There’s a sense that, like J.D. Vance’s own story in Hillbilly Elegy, this is becoming a tale about forgotten folks from rural America.
This, from ABC news, shows a lot of the damage:
Now, I don’t know about you, but I remember Hurricane Katrina when it happened. It was all anyone could talk about. There was definitely government overreach in the aftermath — like law enforcement going house to house, confiscating guns — but the government seemed like they at least got there and were trying to help people. Nevertheless, President George W. Bush was heavily criticized for not doing enough - an accusation he later said he agreed with. “I should have recognized the deficiencies sooner and intervened faster,” Bush wrote in his 2010 memoir, Decision Points. “The problem was not that I made the wrong decisions; it was that I took too long to decide.”
In Helene’s aftermath, Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee are like a black box. Communications went down during the storm, and most still haven’t come back up. An estimated 90% of Asheville’s residents are still offline as of this writing. Elon Musk, who has been donating Starlink terminals to the area (with free service to aid recovery efforts) lashed out yesterday at the Federal Communications Commission for retributively revoking an award to Starlink that would have provided nearly 20,000 satellite internet terminals to rural areas that would have provided broadband not disrupted by storm damage, as the equipment can run on battery banks and does not require physical network infrastructure.
“Had the FCC not illegally revoked the SpaceX Starlink award,” he tweeted, “it would probably have saved lives in North Carolina. Lawfare costs lives.”
(The FCC argued in 2022 and 2023 that Starlink couldn’t meet the program’s requirements, which is ironic, considering that the FCC never fulfilled those requirements on its own, and Starlink has now been forced to step in to help the people who are stranded in these communities.)
With almost no functional communications, and most roads in and out of the area destroyed or otherwise impassible, it is incredibly difficult to know what’s really going on on the ground. Eyewitnesses who have conjured up access to the internet seem to be the primary source of information.
Conflicting reports indicate that either the federal government is or is not making a substantive contribution to the rescue and recovery effort. And there’s no way to know for certain which thing is true.
Asheville is, at the present moment, Schrödinger’s proverbial cat. Anything could be happening inside the blackout box surrounding the area if we could only look and see.
Still, the number of reports indicating an underwhelming and insufficient government response are numerous. Some — like the announcement that members of West Virginia’s National Guard’s Fatality Search and Recovery Team who were supposed to be deployed to North Carolina have been inexplicably put on hold — come from official news channels. North Carolina governor Roy Cooper announced a deployment of 1,000 members of the state National Guard and said the Biden administration approved 100% FEMA Reimbursement for six months — whatever that means, exactly — on his official website.
But other reports coming from the area paint a picture stripped of political PR. A couple days back, a man who identified himself as Jonathan Howard, a member of the Florida State Guard’s Special Missions Unit, working with the nonprofit rescue group called Aerial Recovery, made the following video about the situation on the ground:
Here’s an excerpt of what he has to say, but please, if you can, make time to watch the whole thing yourself:
Here's the problem. I'm going to tell you everything that's happening from the ground. What I'm actually seeing. Because what they're telling you is complete bullshit on the news. And these politicians don't have a fucking clue and they're lying. And I'll say this now, I'll say at the end of the video, the only thing I need from this video is helicopters.
If I have helicopters, I can save lives. Without helicopters, I can't reach these people. It doesn't matter how many chainsaws and trucks I got. I can't get to them. They're 10 miles in, 20 miles, 40 miles in the mountains. There's no way to get with them or even communicate with them. I am literally flying around in a civilian helicopter, looking for S.O.S. Messages carved in the mud or pain on the ground and we're dropping down and saving them.
What got me fired up about this was yesterday. Me and my team did the rescue of that 11 day old baby, and all these government officials and social media, they're showing that video, that…pictures and video of that rescue, and claiming that, like, they have some, like, government helped with that.
And I mean, even USA, I think it was USA Today, wrote an article about it saying it was a Florida National Guard that went and got it like with a helicopter. No, it was me, my buddy Charlie, and a civilian named Zeb with his own personal helicopter out of Wilmington, North Carolina. Like, without that civilian, that baby would be dead.
And the old lady, we went and rescued after that. She'd be dead too because she had one day left of oxygen, that no one was going to go get them. I will tell you when we go up in the air, I probably see 40 civilian helicopters. I might see two black hawks, National Guard, military, whatever they are. That's it.
No one's out there doing rescues. I have my entire team up here from Florida right now, and they have no ability to go rescue these people other than what they can drive to. The people that are in dire need, they're out in the mountains. They are completely cut off. Now, I will say, I spoke to my congresswoman down in Florida, and she's a badass, and she made a bunch of phone calls, and now we got two contracted 60s coming up here tomorrow, which is great.
I love that, but like, I still don't understand why we don't have more helicopters. Like we'll get a lot of work done with that. But there's no, no, there's no military. There's no, no one's doing nothing. I just, it blows my mind and they're not even allowing people to see what's really going on.
He posted another update yesterday, saying that he’d heard the military was on the way and there were more helos coming, but that Biden coming in to survey the damage created a temporary flight restriction order that shut down any rescue efforts for hours. All for a big photo op.
Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is telling civilians with drones not to help with rescue and recovery efforts, citing safety issues. But federal aid has taken so long to get there, people waiting to be rescued may not have time for them to get up and running. Folks with medical needs ranging from oxygen to insulin are in a precarious position. And those without clean drinking water or food are as well.
On Twitter, a guy named Ryan Tyre, who said he’s been able to offer some help in Asheville and has worked on other disaster recovery efforts, put up a long post yesterday about the political machinations that get in the way of aid making it to the people who need it most. He also shared the following images:
By way of explanation on why he thinks people who are trying to help are being turned away from Helene aftermath areas, Tyre told the story of his experiences in the Florida Keys after Hurricane Irma in 2017. Here’s a part of that post:
The federal agencies had US1 shut down just South of Key Largo and wouldn't let anyone in or out, even though the road was okay to pass.
We explained to them that we had boats, Jet skis, food, water, chainsaws and fuel to bring these people.
They didn't care and wouldn't let us in.
It was night by that point and you rarely saw the lights of vehicles in the distance on the individual keys, meaning the emergency response teams from FEMA weren't even working, it was all quiet.
We decided that we would go in anyways.
We filled up the boats and jet skis with all that we could reasonably carry and went by water, around all their BS blockades and around their law enforcement presence on the water.
It was 87 miles by water to get to our first stop, Cudjoe Key and Sugarloaf Key.
When we arrived there we were greeted by a homeowner (for privacy, I won't name him, though we have video) who was elated to see us and all the supplies we brought, his house was in shambles.
We started offloading supplies on the shoreline and helping to get them into what was left of his house. During that process, he explained to us that FEMA had set up a command center at a local high school on the island, but that they weren't doing anything to help the residents, not even bringing them WATER!
Instead, he explained that they were driving around using a loudspeaker, telling people to stay in their homes. They weren't even helping the home owners with supplies.
I was skeptical at first while he was telling me all of this, but then he said something that broke my heart....
He told us that the people of the keys were all in despair, because they had just seen, weeks before, the overwhelming support for Texas with Hurricane Harvey, by the citizens of this country. He, and his neighbors on all of the keys, felt like Americans had forgotten about them completely, because at this point, FIVE DAYS after landfall, all they had seen was FEMA, and they were of NO HELP.
The residents were cut off from the outside world, no cellular, no internet, no way to contact anyone or hear of any efforts to try to help them.
The ONLY communication they had was from a local radio station on Sugarloaf Key, that was broadcasting on AM to the surrounding keys.
The man, after hearing that there were citizens trying to bring them help, but being refused entry by federal law enforcement was visibly upset. He, and his neighbors, really thought the country had abandoned them.
He insisted that we get into his waterlogged truck and that he would take us to that radio station so that we could go live on air, to tell the citizens trapped in the Keys that we, the American people, were there to help and that the government was trying to stop our efforts.
And that is exactly what we did.
Tyre says he was later able to get together with some state and local authorities to try to coordinate some more relief efforts. But during a meeting, he was informed that any unauthorized shipments of supplies were to be turned back and not offloaded at the Emergency Operations Center. Tyre continues:
THE REASON they gave us, was that these donations were not from companies on their "preferred vendors list" and that they would not accept them or give them to the residents of the keys impacted by the storm.
It was at that point that I realized, this is ALL ABOUT MONEY.
These 'preferred vendors" are getting part of the money being released by the state and federal govt for each disaster. In turn, some of the "vendors" make it on the list because a friend gets them on the list, and in return for getting ridiculously outlandish amounts of compensation for the services they render, they give kickbacks.
So accepting outside donations, even though they are on location and can help people NOW, they would rather let people suffer so they can get their kickbacks.
Is it true?
I can’t say for certain.
Would it surprise you in a country where Nancy Pelosi’s husband just sold half a million dollars worth of Visa stock days before the DOJ filed an antitrust lawsuit against the company?
Yeah, me neither.
Still, the government isn’t quite doing nothing. Kamala Harris announced that victims of Hurricane Helene will get a whopping $750 from FEMA for “folks who need immediate needs being met,” which is one hell of a sentence.
Meanwhile, just as the hurricane was making landfall, the administration announced a new $8 billion aid package to…Ukraine. With roughly 100,000 people in Asheville and the surrounding areas, that aid package would come out to about $80,000 per person.
But yeah, $750 should do. If you can even find a store containing essential products to spend it in, with electricity and functioning terminals that can read a government-issued debit card. You know, what with the ENTIRE AREA HAVING BEEN DESTROYED BY MASSIVE FLOODING.
Ironically, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said yesterday that FEMA is out of money to help Americans during the remainder of this hurricane season. What he did not mention is where FEMA’s budget went: the agency spent nearly $641 million this year on funding for state and local governments dealing with an overwhelming influx of immigrant asylum seekers.
They spent all this money on the very same migrant crisis that this administration intentionally caused, and now there’s nothing left for the citizens.
Georgia governor Brian Kemp said he was “outraged” that of 90 affected counties in his state, only 11 were included in the emergency declaration. “Look, you’re sending the signal that you’re not paying attention to some of these rural communities.”
A member of the U.S. Army posted a video on social saying they can’t do anything until they get orders. She expresses frustration at people for not understanding that they are stuck in a holding pattern and they have no ability to overcome that without authorization.
On X, some locals in Western NC are pushing back on the reports and the rumors, saying they do see the federal government stepping in to help out. But there’s precious little video or photographic evidence of that right now, and the preponderance of anecdotal information online tells a different story. I’ve seen so many folks wondering out loud where their country is in their hour of need, and why the locals with boats and civilian pilots with helicopters (which they pay to fuel and fly out of their own pockets) are doing all the rescuing.
If George W. Bush admits he wasn’t decisive enough and failed to act quickly enough with Katrina, what does that say about what we’re watching unfold? Helene is already the deadliest hurricane to make landfall since Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast in 2005. In the end, Katrina claimed 1,395 lives, but rumors are circulating that the current casualty count of 200 from Helene is just the beginning.
On reddit, someone writes, “I finally heard back from my friend in Western NC and he’s saying that the death toll is so much higher than what we are seeing on the news and the destruction is so vast he doesn’t even know how to process it.”
Another responds:
“Can confirm. My folks survived Lake Lure and got out. Currently at a hotel in Charlotte with the dog. Every day I’ve speak to my mom she just starts sobbing mid sentence. Lost friends and businesses, homes everything is gone . Just washed away. It will take years and years to clean up. She keeps mentioning she feels guilty that she is having a burger and drink at the hotel well some her friends and towns folk are stuck. Almost like a survivals guilt. The devastation is hard to comprehend.”
Another says, “My sister was trapped and we luckily got her out on Monday. The fire department told her death toll was around 750 (at that time) but numbers aren’t public yet because they need to notify families or are trying to. It’s horrible.”
With so many roads out, horses and pack mules are being used to bring in supplies. Locals who are sufficiently mobile are being forced to evacuate on foot.
Conspiracy theories are mounting, too. Dr. Chris Martenson, an economic researcher and founder of the website Peak Prosperity, shared with his 200,000 followers a message he said he received from a member of his online community who lives in Charlotte. In it, the individual relates that he has a friend in the town of Chimney Rock — located near Ashville at the site of the state park of the same name — who owns an AirBnB there:
“They had a town meeting yesterday and someone from the federal government told them all of those things in the town meeting, but doesn’t want the information getting out. Also, they are not picking up the bodies. The stench of the bodies everywhere is insane and for some reason, the government does not want to pick up the bodies. One pastor of a local church was going to order to door delivering water and they changed their delivery request to body bags because so many of the homes that they’ve gone to have needed body bags, we’re trying to keep the body count. They’re not picking up the bodies. They don’t wanna identify the bodies and they’re just leaving them to rot in the streets.”
David Larson, one of my Twitter mutuals who is the opinion editor at The Carolina Journal, tells me this is nonsense. In a post of his own, he writes:
This ridiculous post is going viral. @NCHouseSpeaker was at this meeting. If the feds said, "The federal gov't now owns Chimney Rock; leave the bodies; we're here to take the lithium," I'd hope he would have objected. Conspiracies everywhere...
I dug into the North Carolina Geochemical Atlas to look for myself. Looks to me like all the big lithium deposits are in and around Shelby, which is roughly 1.5 hours’ drive from Chimney Rock.
(In a Tweet just a few moments ago, Larson informed he thinks he found the source of this rumor. Video at the link.)
Now, if there was some urgent discussion about a valuable natural resource, it could be that they were talking about the quartz mine in the town of Spruce Pine, which produces the purest known natural quartz on the planet, and is used to make crucibles to refine polysilicon for semiconductor manufacturing. It’s a single-source resource that only comes from one little town in the Carolina mountains, and as many as 90% of the silicon crucibles used on earth are made from Spruce Pine quartz. According to the Associated Press, Spruce Pine has been “devastated” by Helene, and they have no estimated date for re-opening operations. A prolonged shutdown won’t just affect the local economy, but the entire world.
But this is the problem with Schrödinger's Disaster Area. It’s almost impossible to know for certain what’s going on inside.
As I wrote on X this morning, pertaining specifically to the claims about Chimney Rock:
Situations like this emphasize why loss of trust in institutions and weaponized misinformation is so dire.
This could all be just rumor, but it doesn’t feel like it is. It tracks with the malice and corrupt incompetence we see from government all the time.
But is it really true?
How can we be sure? This is a “fog of war” situation and we can only grab information coming from unofficial sources.
But rumors like this are piling up, and they’re all pointing on one direction. Is there not a single journalist who knows this is a story that could make their career? Other than aerial footage, where is the video and photo evidence of what is (or is not) going on?
This is Schrodinger’s disaster, and we have no sure idea what’s inside the box.
This is life for the foreseeable future. Important events aren’t going to stop happening, but your ability to trust the information you receive is drastically impaired. Videos of past floods in other countries get mixed in with current hurricane footage and few people can easily spot the difference. AI voice and video simulation as well as plain old selective editing can make it appear that things are happening or being said that are not. People chasing clout for click revenue can make serious money if a post goes viral — even if it’s a lie.
In the absence of sufficiently trustworthy journalists offering corroborating reports, we’re all stuck in the dark, trying to make sense of it.
And as we all know, we can’t trust the media or the average journalist, and we certainly can’t trust the government. At this point, it’s easier to believe rumors and conspiracy theories than official stories. They just sound more credible.
And that’s not a good thing.
There’s an election only a month away, and Americans are watching. Here’s hoping this helps to inform their decision.
And that whatever they decide to do at the ballot box is actually counted.