At least 92 people are still unaccounted for and over 5,000 remain in temporary housing in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene hit the southeastern U.S. late last month, officials said Tuesday, calling it the state’s “worst disaster.”
The tally of missing people, which comes more than two weeks after flash floods and mudslides ripped through the state’s mountainous western region, is expected to change as recovery efforts continue, Gov. Roy Cooper said at a press conference.
“The number will continue to fluctuate as more reports come in and others are resolved,” he told reporters, adding that authorities “will continue working to locate those who are unaccounted for.”
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Members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been combing the storm debris with canine search teams that the agency has said are trained to detect living and deceased humans, including people buried deep in rubble.
Those aiding the efforts include more than 1,500 first responders from 38 states, said Will Ray, North Carolina’s public safety emergency management director, who called Helene “our state’s worst disaster.”
As of Tuesday, there have been 95 confirmed deaths in the state from the storm. The vast majority of deaths resulted from flooding, said Kody Kinsley, the secretary of North Carolina’s Health and Human Services Department.
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Roughly 170,000 North Carolina residents have applied for individual assistance from FEMA, and nearly $100 million has been disbursed directly to these survivors, said Ray, stressing the need for more work to be done with housing, particularly as colder temperatures set in.
About 4,600 people are currently residing in hotels, and more than 500 people and 80 pets are in 13 shelters, he said.
On the ground, some of the approximately 1,200 FEMA personnel have been going door to door to register storm survivors for federal assistance, said Ray. Their work was briefly paused over the weekend, however, after alleged threats to agency workers were reported to law enforcement, resulting in a man’s arrest.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said Tuesday that the agency’s canvassing operations have since resumed.
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“Misinformation will not deter us from helping people, period,” she told reporters. “This is what we are here to do, and I want to set the story straight.”
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The federal agency has seen a surge in threats amid the spread of false allegations and misinformation about storm relief efforts.
North Carolina’s own lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, has been called out for pushing untrue and misleading claims. Cooper on Tuesday urged Robinson, who is in the midst of a run for governor, to stop his false, inflammatory rhetoric. He also repeated a plea for Robinson to resign, citing the “extreme positions that he has taken and his attacks on people.”
“We don’t know how many people are not going to apply for FEMA [aid] because they’ve heard misinformation about FEMA taking their property or other wild accusations that are out there,” Cooper said of the spread of false information, pointing to “people who desperately need this help but have been convinced that they should be afraid of FEMA or other government officials.”
Meanwhile, repair work on the local power grid and roadways is making progress following Helene, said state Transportation Secretary Joey Hopkins.
Of the roughly 1 million people who lost power, a little under 13,000 remain off the grid. More than half of the 1,200 roads that were closed by the storm have reopened as of Tuesday, Hopkins said, noting that the total damage to the transportation infrastructure could cost several billion dollars.
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