Does a video on social media show firefighters being rescued by helicopter during the North Carolina floods in late September 2024? No, that's not true: The video is actually from September 15, 2024, in the Czech Republic, not the United States. The firefighters were helping people impacted by the raging waters when they became stranded and needed to be rescued themselves during flooding in Central Europe.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) on X, formerly Twitter, by alt-right podcaster Stew Peters, on September 30, 2024. The video's caption said:
🚨CATASTROPHIC Damage in Western, NC:
-100 times WORSE than Katrina
-Bodies lying everywhere.
-Uncountable number of bodies trapped in cars.
-THOUSANDS still missing.
-NO Federal Aid
-Media has been CRIMINALLY Silent.
-Death Toll from Katrina about 1,600. This will be WAY past that.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Oct 2 14:57:51 2024 UTC)
The post provided no additional evidence to support its assertion that the video shows firefighters being rescued by helicopter during the floods in North Carolina.
The video
The short clip of the fire crew being lifted to safety appears at the beginning of a 79-second video montage in the social media post. Lead Stories tracked it not to the flooding in western North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on the weekend of September 27, 2024, but to the Czech Republic nearly two weeks earlier.
A video (archived here) of the helicopter rescue was published on YouTube by Al Jazeera English on September 17, 2024. The clip is timestamped September 15, 2024, and is embedded below:
The same video (archived here) also appeared on the Microsoft Network website. Both clips are credited to the Lukas Vejvar/Fire Rescue Service of The Czech Republic.
Read more
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims about Hurricane Helene can be found here.
