As North Carolina Hurricane Helene victims continue to struggle, FEMA reportedly refuses to deploy empty RV trailers to help them.
According to an unnamed N.C. lawmaker, FEMA has multiple empty RV trailers sitting in the N.C. town of Hickory — trailers that critics say could be used to provide housing to those who’ve lost their homes.
BREAKING
Whistleblower from NCGA reveals there are FEMA trailers sitting in Hickory right now and FEMA has no timeline on when those will be deployed to those who need them.
Meanwhile, people across the region are sleeping in tents. Tonight it will snow – and the temps will… pic.twitter.com/wUkpkNULj1
— Cassie Clark (@dogwoodblooms) November 20, 2024
“Don’t use my name, but a constituent called me yesterday asking about all the FEMA housing units and trailers that are staged in Hickory,” the lawmaker wrote in a private message to Cassie Clark, an N.C. influencer.
“They’ve been there for a few weeks. I asked FEMA what they were and confirmed they indeed are housing units staged for inspection waiting to be sent out to ‘qualifying counties.’ I asked for a timeline. Attached is the response. Very disappointing,” the lawmaker added.
The attached response from FEMA read as follows: “At the moment not specific time frame, this would be very depending on each individual survivor that are in the FEMA IA program and also in the process with the counties/cities to look for areas to stage them for the survivors.”
— Cassie Clark (@dogwoodblooms) November 20, 2024
According to Matt Van Swol, a reporter and photographer, a non-profit by the name of EmergencyRV has been doing FEMA’s job by providing affected families with an RV if and when possible.
The non-profit did at one point try begging FEMA for access to their empty trailers but were denied.
View the empty trailers below:
The non-profit, @EmergencyRv reports that they “begged” for RVs sitting in government storage for a 103 year old World War 2 veteran who was a victim of Helene.
They were denied.
Instead, a fellow veteran stepped up and donated his. pic.twitter.com/XQVSDo4YVW
— Matt Van Swol (@matt_vanswol) November 20, 2024
Speaking later on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” Swol called for FEMA to just hand over the RVs and deal with the paperwork later.
“It’s absolutely horrific,” he said of the crisis in N.C. “I mean, there should be zero American citizens living in tents in North Carolina right now. There are plenty of FEMA trailers available for these citizens. They’re sitting maybe 15 miles away.”
“They’re nice and heated, and they’re occupied by FEMA workers. So I put out a post saying that maybe you should get out of those and hand them to the people [who need them] because it’s getting cold outside. So why not just hand them over and deal with the paperwork later?” he added.
Listen:
A huge thank you to Laura Ingraham and Fox News for keeping the story of #WNC alive.
It means more than you know. pic.twitter.com/eIv64Ie4Ue
— Matt Van Swol (@matt_vanswol) November 20, 2024
When confronted by Fox News, a FEMA spokesperson handed over a fact sheet highlighting all that the agency has supposedly done for the Hurricane Helene survivors in North Carolina.
With this fact sheet in mind, host Laura Ingraham asked Swol, “Could it be that people are choosing as the inclement weather is coming to live in these tents?”
Swol’s wife then cut in to answer that question.
“No, they’re basically given a choice,” she said. “We were given a choice. A few days after we got out of Asheville and came back, we got a letter from FEMA with a voucher to a hotel in Tennessee, far away from everyone who needed us here. We came back. We decided to stay.”
“We got denied twice from FEMA, appealed, ended up having to have a generator to take care of our neighbors on either side of us. One’s on a CPAP machine. The other one didn’t have electricity of any kind, including cooked plates. Everyone’s circumstances is incredibly different,” she added.
According to a separate report, FEMA isn’t just denying people access to its trailers — it’s also denying them access to tiny homes built by volunteers.
If FEMA sitting on empty trailers in Hickory wasn’t enough, local governments are allegedly keeping people left homeless by Helene from occupying the tiny houses being built by volunteers, claiming they won’t pass inspection.
I can’t fathom, in my wildest dreams, what kind of… pic.twitter.com/rZK7MuwblD
— The Appalachian Podcast (@GetOnTap) November 21, 2024
Meanwhile, the federal government is now claiming it doesn’t have any more money to hand over to Hurricane Helene survivors.
Listen:
They are still lying to us.
Listen to the voicemail telling people that they have to wait for congress to give them more money to help while they have a FEMA camp full of empty trailers. pic.twitter.com/MoBhWIuOBN
— Based Drama (@TanyaBeard10264) November 16, 2024
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