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‘There is deep frustration,’ one North Carolina official who works with groups in the Hurricane-battered areas told The Federalist.
The washed-out, mud-caked roads and bridges of Madison County, N.C., the river-ravaged homes and businesses in county seat Marshall, and the desperation of the Appalachian inhabitants are all testament to the merciless destruction of Hurricane Helene.
That so many remain lost, trapped, hungry, and hopeless a week after the hurricane unleashed historic rains and horrific flooding is testament, some residents and family members say, to the abject incompetence of the Biden-Harris administration and its ill-prepared Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Sarah Parkhurst, of Montgomery, Ala., born and raised in the small-town shadows of Asheville, N.C., tells The Federalist that she thanks God for the private citizens that have lent a helping hand because the federal government hasn’t.
“The government is not there,” she told me in a phone interview Thursday afternoon in between taking and making calls to bring relief to the mud-buried communities in Madison, Buncombe and Yancy counties.
‘We Need Rescue’
Parkhurst said her mother, who runs the nonprofit Hot Springs Health Program in Hot Springs, has been literally begging FEMA officials for critical supplies. They desperately need oxygen for stranded home-bound seniors. They need food, clean water, and shelter.
Sadly, they also need bodybags.
The heart-breaking work of collecting the dead is far from over, Parkhurst and others on the ground say.
“My mom said so many people are still stuck. They’re asking for bodybags,” Parkhurst said.
“This is not a recovery effort yet in a lot of these places. We need rescue,” Parkhurst added. “We do not yet know the body count. We’ve got starving babies and it’s about to get a lot worse when the temperatures drop next week.”
The dead from Helene, as of last Thursday afternoon, numbered more than 200 in six states. That figure was expected to climb as hope that rescue efforts would find more survivors sank. North Carolina has recorded half of the fatalities thus far, with some 60 dead in Buncombe County alone.
It’s awful all over throughout large swaths of the Southeast. In Georgia, Kobe Williams, 27, and her twin babies were found dead after a tree fell through the roof of her home and crushed the mother and her newborns, according to WJTV. In neighboring South Carolina, John Savage told the Associated Press that his grandparents died when the powerful winds felled a massive tree on the property, smashing into the couple’s bedroom and killing them both. They were found holding each other as they had so often in life, Savage told the news outlet. As of Thursday evening, 39 people in the Palmetto State had been killed as the result of the hurricane.
‘Deep Frustration’ --->READ MORE HERE
Former President Donald Trump tore into what he called the “terrible” federal response to Hurricane Helene Friday as outraged critics aired allegations that relief workers are sitting idle without orders — and that those who are working are “seizing” aid deliveries and slow-walking distribution of Starlink satellite internet equipment.
“It has been a terrible response from the White House,” the Republican presidential nominee said in Georgia, where he was briefed on damage around the city of Augusta longside GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, who thanked Trump for helping to keep “the nation’s attention” on those affected by the storm.
“They are missing a billion dollars that was used for another purpose,” Trump added in reference to $1.4 billion in FEMA funds spent over two years on the migrant crisis, which the Department of Homeland Security insists were approved by Congress for that purpose.
Allegations against the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were outlined earlier in the day by Elon Musk, the CEO of Starlink operator SpaceX, and by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), citing on-the-ground whistleblowers as the death toll topped 215 across six states, making the storm the deadliest in America since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“Just received this note from a SpaceX engineer helping on the ground in North Carolina. @FEMA is not merely failing to adequately help people in trouble, but is actively blocking citizens who try to help!” Musk wrote on X.
The note read: “Hey Elon, update here on site of Asheville, NC. We have powered up two large operating bases for choppers to deliver goods into hands. We’ve deployed 300+ starlinks [sic] and outpour is it has saved many lives. The big issue is FEMA is actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own.
“It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping. We are blocked now on the shipments of new starlinks [sic] coming in until we get an escort from the fire dept. [sic] but that may not be enough.”
Musk also posted a text message he claimed to have received telling him that federal officials were “about to shut down the Air space [sic] to ‘regulate’ the private choppers we are riding in to deliver Starlink and supplies. --->READ MORE HERE
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