Are armed militias hunting Federal Emergency Management Agency employees in North Carolina? No, that's not true: Although federal and local authorities acknowledged rumors about armed militias in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene, no confirmed reports about such groups targeting FEMA employees exist. After pausing for what it termed a "potential threat" to its North Carolina staff, FEMA has resumed door-to-door assistance there. A spokesperson for North Carolina Emergency Management dismissed as "misinformation" claims about anti-FEMA armed militias in the state.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on Threads on October 14, 2024. The post said:
Armed militias are hunting FEMA employees because of the MAGA disinformation. Time to vote Kamala Harris in and end Donald Trump once and for all.
This is what the post looked like on Threads at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Mon Oct 28 16:38:21 2024 UTC)
The post provided no additional evidence to support its assertion that armed militias are targeting FEMA employees.
Federal Emergency Management Agency
Reporting that armed militias were "hunting" FEMA employees began with an October 13, 2024, article by The Washington Post (archived here) that mentioned a U.S. Forest Service email the Post had obtained. In the email, a U.S. Forest Service official involved in recovery operations for Hurricane Helene mentioned that FEMA had advised field agencies to relocate workers and noted that U.S. military personnel had encountered "trucks of armed militia claiming they were out hunting FEMA.
No information from FEMA corroborates that secondhand report. It has not specified that "armed militias" were "hunting" its employees.
An undated notice on the agency's Hurricane Rumor Response page (archived here) said:
On October 12, 2024, FEMA was made aware of a potential threat to our staff in North Carolina. We made the decision to shift from sending FEMA disaster survivors assistance teams into neighborhoods to knock on doors to stationing teams at neighborhood locations where they could still meet and work with disaster survivors to help them get assistance. This decision was made through our usual field operations processes to ensure FEMA staff are safe and able to focus on helping disaster survivors.
On October 14, 2024, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told a press briefing that the agency had "started to resume" its door-to-door survivor assistance, The Associated Press reported. She said nothing about armed militias hunting down the agency's employees, but did call for an end to "the ongoing spread of misinformation" about FEMA's operations.
Rutherford County, North Carolina, Sheriff's Office
The actual threat to FEMA proved less extensive than the email cited by The Washington Post suggested.
The Rutherford County Sheriff's Office received a call on October 12, 2024, stating a man with an assault rifle had made a "comment about possibly harming FEMA employees working after the disaster of Hurricane Helene," according to an an October 14, 2024, press release (archived here) on Facebook. The law enforcement agency said it arrested 44-year-old William Jacob Parsons and charged him with "Going Armed to the Terror of the Public." It denied that there were "truck loads of militia" in the area.
The release said in part:
The initial report stated there was a truck load of militia that was involved. However, after further investigation, it was determined Parsons acted alone and there were no truck loads of militia going to Lake Lure [North Carolina].
North Carolina Emergency Management
In an October 28, 2024, email in response to a query from Lead Stories about the claim, Justin Graney, chief of external affairs and communications for North Carolina Emergency Management, said online rhetoric has created misunderstandings and can create unsafe conditions for the people helping the impacted communities in the state. He continued:
The amount of misinformation that has surrounded the response and recovery to Hurricane Helene has been at levels never experienced before in prior disasters. The spread of this misinformation has caused angry, factually incorrect, and derogatory feedback, primarily on social media platforms. While an individual was arrested, NC Emergency Management is unaware of any threats towards our personnel or response partners at the state or local level.
Elk Mills, Tennessee
An October 12, 2024, incident near the border with North Carolina reportedly involved an armed group harassing Helene aid workers, but ultimately proved short-lived when the group itself began to bring donations.
The Associated Press wrote on October 21, 2024:
In Tennessee, Carter County Sheriff Mike Fraley said that witnesses reported Saturday that FEMA workers were being harassed by a small group of armed people in the remote community of Elk Mills, not far from the North Carolina border. No arrests were made, but Fraley said that the people who showed up were looking to cause trouble.
'It was a little hairy situation, no guns were drawn, but they were armed,' Fraley told The Associated Press.
WJHL-TV, a Tennessee affiliate for ABC and CBS, reported the same incident (archived here) with an armed group who didn't want FEMA receiving donations for relief efforts. When told local volunteers were taking the donations, however, the group backed off and later returned with supplies to donate, the station said.
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At the time this was written, VERIFY had reviewed the same claim.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims about FEMA can be found here. Our fact checks of claims about Hurricane Helene are here.
