Grieving families in North Carolina have been forced to bury their dead in their backyards and accuse authorities of downplaying the damage caused by Hurricane Helene.
The official death toll rose to 227 over the weekend, half of whom were from North Carolina, but state and federal officials said The spectator that this number is woefully inaccurate.
Many bodies have not even been recovered from the rubble and floods. There are also tons of deceased people who have not yet been identified. They are being transported around the state in hopes of finding an open space at the morgue.
‘According to the people on the ground (firefighters, doctors, law enforcement officials) they are way undercounted. “All the morgues are full and they have transported a ton (of bodies) to Greensboro,” the state official said. “People are starting to bury them in their yards because they have nowhere to put them.”
One person who was in Asheville when Helene hit told The Spectator: “It’s a lot worse than they say… I think there’s a massive cover-up.”
A drone view shows a damaged area in Swannanoa, North Carolina, on Sept. 29, 2024, after Hurricane Helene devastated the southern state.
Asheville, North Carolina, was one of the hardest hit areas in the state. Once a popular tourist destination, homes and businesses have been reduced to rubble.
The destruction caused by Helene and the immense death toll in several states comes just days before Category 5 Hurricane Milton hits the Florida coast.
Helene made landfall in the Big Bend region of Florida on the night of September 26 before sweeping through Georgia and the Carolinas with record storm surge and tornadoes.
Six tornadoes were confirmed in North Carolina alone on the morning of September 27, two days before 500 members of the state’s national guard They were deployed to assist in rescue efforts.
Locals say they are “angry” at Maj. Gen. Todd Hunt, director of the North Carolina National Guard, for waiting a full 48 hours to have troops on the ground.
There were 5,500 National Guardsmen deployed at the time, some of them from other states like Florida.
“That’s why you saw the Florida National Guard and other units out there, and why private citizens intervened, even as state and federal officials tried to end their efforts,” an anonymous source familiar with the situation told The Spectator. situation in North Carolina.
Before the North Carolina National Guardsmen were deployed, a four-year-old girl was killed in a car accident in Claremont, a city about 40 miles north of Charlotte.
Another person died after a tree fell on their home in Charlotte.
Resident Anne Schneider, right, hugs her friend Eddy Sampson as they survey the damage left behind by Hurricane Helene on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in Marshall, North Carolina.
In Buncombe County, North Carolina, 40 people have died, according to the county administrator.
Asheville, a popular tourist destination in Buncombe County, was one of the hardest hit cities, where scenes of total devastation are common.
The small mountain town of Swannanoa suffered flooding not seen since 1791, and locals have said their community was “completely wiped out.”
This comes days after a whistleblower wrote a letter to Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., detailing how the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has wasted and misappropriated funds in the wake of Helene and is now “exacerbating the emergency”.
The letter to Gaetz also alleges that “hundreds, if not thousands” of first responders and service members have been “without deployment orders,” some waiting in hotels while others “have remained idle” while Americans across the Southeast are in extreme need.
A resident enters a makeshift FEMA station to handle claims from local residents affected by flooding following Hurricane Helene in Marion, North Carolina, on October 5, 2024.
Pictured: A destroyed church in Swannanoa, North Carolina.
Last week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted that FEMA ran out of money to get through the hurricane season, after providing more than $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to provide housing assistance to illegal immigrants. during the last two years.
Joe Gabriel Simonson, Washington Free Beacon reporter, took a photo of Mayorkas shopping at a luxury department store in Washington DC supposedly on October 5, which would have been during the peak of Helene’s rescue efforts.
“Suffice it to say, the guy doesn’t work 24 hours a day,” Simonson wrote in X.
DailyMail.com has approached Homeland Security for comment.
President Joe Biden was also criticized for his response to the disaster because he spent the hurricane weekend at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach.
Vice President Kamala Harris, photographed in Charlotte on Oct. 5, visited the hurricane disaster zone twice, but former President Donald Trump is critical of her response to the crisis.
President Joe Biden was also criticized for his response to the disaster because he spent the hurricane weekend at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach.
—I was in charge, I was on the phone for at least two hours yesterday and the day before yesterday as well. “I ordered, it’s called a telephone,” he told reporters.
Following this criticism, Biden deployed 1,000 active-duty troops to North Carolina. He also took an aerial tour with Governor Roy Cooper to view the damage before holding a press conference.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, also visited the designated hurricane disaster area twice.
Her opponent, former President Donald Trump, criticized both her and Biden for what he called “the worst response in hurricane history” during a rally last Thursday in battleground Michigan.
“A certain president, I won’t name him, destroyed his reputation with Katrina,” Trump said, referring to former President George W. Bush. ‘And this is getting even worse. She’s doing even worse than him.