"Elon Musk’s social media platform X has been an especially fertile place for politically charged rumors and conspiracies. Sometimes they have been fueled by the billionaire himself.
On Friday Musk fed into a common complaint online that governments are preventing private citizens from offering help to people in need. Musk wrotethat his “blood is boiling” after engineers from his company SpaceX tried to offer help via helicopter but “@FEMA wouldn’t let them land to deliver critical supplies.”
Actually the Federal Aviation Administration regulates airspace and the FAA said in a statement that following Helene the skies have been crowded and it's trying to maintain safety. A federal official confirmed to NPR that there have been more than 30 cases where two aircraft almost collided, as air traffic in the region increased 300% after the storm. There are no restrictions to aerial recovery operations.
Perhaps no area in North Carolina has been the subject of more blatant false online rumors than Chimney Rock — including the persistent untrue claim that FEMA abandoned the village so that the Biden administration can mine lithium there.
“Anything that you see, that you hear that sounds like that is not true,” says village mayor Peter O’Leary."
