Chaos Inside FEMA as Death Threats Distract From Hurricane Response
Internal documents show how online conspiracies and personal attacks disrupted FEMA during back-to-back hurricanes last year.
Members of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force search a flood damaged area in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Asheville, North Carolina in 2024.
Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images
As a major storm rushed toward Florida last October, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency at the time faced a different kind of threat. Police had shown up in force to a rental property she owned as a result of a prank call, in a potentially dangerous attack known as "swatting."
Back-to-back Hurricanes Helene and Milton had sparked a torrent of online conspiracies, with FEMA officials enduring harassment and death threats, according to hundreds of pages of agency emails and other documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by Bloomberg News. The records shed new light on how disaster-related misinformation affects the government's emergency response, sucks up internal resources, and puts staff at risk.