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 due to the rubble and flooding. There are also piles of dead people who have yet to be identified. They are transported across the state in hopes of finding an open mortuary space.
“According to people on the ground — fire, medical, law enforcement officials — they’re vastly underreporting the numbers. All mortuaries are full and they have collected a ton [of bodies] to Greensboro,” the state official said. “People are starting to bury them in their yards because they have no place to put them.”
One person who was in Asheville when Helene struck told The Spectator, “It’s so much worse than they say… I think there’s a massive cover-up.”
A drone shot shows a damaged area in Swannanoa, North Carolina on September 29, 2024, after Hurricane Helene tore through 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
Helene’s devastation and immense death toll in multiple states come just days before Category 5 Hurricane Milton is set to slam into Florida’s coastline.
Helene made landfall in the Big Bend region of Florida overnight on September 26 before devastating Georgia and the Carolinas with record storm surges and tornadoes.
In North Carolina alone, six confirmed tornadoes were recorded on the morning of September 27, two days before 500 National Guard members. were deployed to assist in rescue efforts.
Locals say they’re “angry” at Maj. Gen. Todd Hunt, director of the North Carolina National Guard, for waiting 48 hours to get boots on the ground.
There were 5,500 National Guardsmen deployed around this time, some from other states such as Florida.
“That’s why you saw the Florida National Guard and other units out there — and why private citizens stepped in even as state and federal officials tried to halt their efforts,” an anonymous source familiar with the situation in North Carolina told The Spectator.
Before the North Carolina National Guard was deployed, a four-year-old girl was killed in a car crash 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 boyfriend Eddy Sampson as they survey the damage left behind by Hurricane Helene on Tuesday, October 1, 2024 in Marshall, North Carolina
Forty people have died in North Carolina’s Buncombe County, the county manager said.
Asheville, a popular tourist destination in Buncombe County, was one of the hardest hit cities, where scenes of complete devastation are all too common.
The small mountain town of Swannanoa suffered flooding not seen since 1791, and locals say their community has been “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 embezzled money in the aftermath of Helene and is now “exacerbating the emergency.”
The letter to Gaetz also claims that “hundreds, if not thousands” of first responders and military personnel have been left “without orders to deploy,” with some waiting in hotels, others “sitting idle,” as Americans in the Southeast remain in dire need to be in.
A resident enters a makeshift FEMA station to attend claims from local residents affected by flooding after Hurricane Helene in Marion, North Carolina on October 5, 2024
Pictured: A destroyed church in Swannanoa, North Carolina
Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted that FEMA had run out of money to weather hurricane season after handing out more than $1 billion in taxpayer money to provide housing assistance to illegal immigrants over the past two years.
Joe Gabriel Simonson, a reporter for the Washington Free Beacon, took a photo of Mayorkas shopping at a luxury department store in Washington DC, reportedly on October 5, which would have been during the height of Helene’s rescue efforts.
“So suffice it to say, the guy doesn’t work around the clock,” Simonson wrote on X.
DailyMail.com reached out to Homeland Security for comment.
President Joe Biden also came under fire for his response to the disaster because he spent the hurricane weekend at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach.
Vice President Kamala Harris, pictured in Charlotte on Oct. 5, has visited the hurricane disaster area twice, but former President Donald Trump criticizes her response to the crisis
President Joe Biden also came under fire 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 too. I gave the order, it’s called a telephone,” he told reporters.
In response to this criticism, Biden sent 1,000 active duty soldiers to North Carolina. He also took an aerial tour with Governor Roy Cooper to witness the damage before giving a news conference.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, has also visited the designated hurricane disaster area twice.
Her opponent, former President Donald Trump, has criticized both her and Biden for what he called “the worst response in the history of hurricanes” at 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 worse. She’s doing even worse than him.’
