A claim that the Helene death toll in Buncombe County is more than three times higher than state officials are reporting has gone viral over the last week. But, after a thorough fact-check, BPR News has found plenty of evidence the claim is not true and may stem from various points of misinformation.
At the top of the list of reasons the claim is untrue: The leader of the nonprofit group (to which one news outlet attributed this information) said his group didn’t produce, confirm, or otherwise share an inflated death toll figure.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, misinformation has been shared online – including that the number of people killed is much higher than official reports.
Several posts with inflated false numbers cite a FITSNews report on Oct. 16 which attributed its claim – that 142 bodies have been recovered in Buncombe County alone – to the Western Carolina Emergency Network (WCEN) organization. The post called the information evidence of an “Appalachian Apocalypse” and suggested it’s being ignored by “mainstream media.”
The leader of WCEN, a North Carolina nonprofit, told BPR that the relief group did not confirm or produce the death toll statistic being attributed to it. The false assertion would push the Helene death toll in Buncombe County more than three times higher than the state’s official count: 42 locally; 98 statewide.
In addition, the local deputy fire chief Larry Pierson, Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office, and a local funeral home all offered evidence refuting the claim of “the discovery of at least 142 bodies in Buncombe County.”
BPR News reached out to FITSNews but the outlet didn’t respond to requests for comment about the claim. If FITSNews or its reporter responds, BPR will update this fact-check to include what they say.
The claim is directly contradicted by the following facts:
- The deputy fire chief of Swannanoa – where the majority of uncounted victims purported in the claim are said to have been recovered – labeled the claim “untrue,” among other comments we’ll provide below.
- The sole funeral home in Swannanoa (which was indirectly implicated in a related claim about unreported casualties) says it has processed fewer than 20 remains of Helene victims. The facility is not housing bodies awaiting identification.
- The sheriff’s office says it knows of only 10 total unaccounted-for or missing people, who authorities are actively trying to find post-flood.
- Amid a prolonged search and recovery process, recently found human remains have been reported to state officials – but not on the scale of hundreds or even dozens of victims being found. In a two-week period, for example, between Oct. 10 and Oct. 25, state officials recorded two cases of victims being found among debris.
- There’s no backlog of tracking and identifying remains at the Medical Examiner’s Office, meaning that when recovery crews encounter remains, a death investigation and public disclosure generally occur within a few days.
Further, private recovery teams are not authorized in North Carolina to transport or house human remains. It’s illegal for unlicensed individuals (outside law enforcement and emergency management) to transport or keep human remains after finding a victim.
In a mass casualty circumstance such as a natural disaster, the state Medical Examiner’s Office must be notified when a body is found. Given that – and the Medical Examiner’s Office's confirmation there is no backlog – the suggestion that there are 100 or more victims excluded from the state’s official tally effectively implies that a person with custody of those remains is breaking the law.
BPR News has found no proof that any recovered victims have been unaccounted for in the Medical Examiner’s official report. The agency has confirmed that it includes in its public death toll figure all Helene victims – including those whose body was found but where officials have not yet confirmed their identity or connected with their families.
Here’s more about what we know – and how.
WCEN says they don’t keep body count statistics
Chris Larsen, the founder of WCEN, told BPR the group doesn’t keep official statistics of recovered victims and that he had no knowledge of 142 or more bodies.
He said that because the network works with almost two dozen other organizations, someone may have spoken on behalf of the organization without his knowledge to a news reporter at FITSNews.
“Because we act as a conduit for information and we sometimes repost information from groups that we work with, it gets conflated,” he said, adding that he had not seen the FITSNews report. “If somebody posts on a social channel or tags us, it could get associated with us.”
He noted that the feeling of being forgotten by people outside western North Carolina, mixed with exhaustion from volunteering after the storm may have driven people to make such claims.
“I don't know what the final, you know, body count is. I don't want to peddle in conspiracy theories, in any of that. But I know for a fact that in the early stages that the devastation was certainly underreported, but that underreporting was because there was no way to know unless you were there, what was occurring.”
Larsen is a local who started WCEN after the storm. The organization has raised about $200,000, he said. The group is a logistics network of sorts, working to communicate community needs to about two dozen organizations on the ground.
“I will say that we don't have any official statistics. And if anybody from the Western Carolina Emergency Network was quoted, there's certainly not some official source of that. And that's the challenge when you're bringing groups together as a network,” Larsen said.
Fire officials and law enforcement officials refute false claims
So far, the state has tallied 98 people dead from the storm. That number could rise as more bodies are discovered, but there is no evidence that hundreds of victims remain undiscovered in Buncombe County.
In either case, the claim at the heart of this fact-check by BPR was specific – going as far as to list details like: “90 bodies along U.S. 70, between Patton Cove Road and Asheville East KOA in Swannanoa.” The claim isn’t suggesting vaguely that there are undiscovered victims among the debris and destruction – but that there are specific victims, whose remains have been found, being excluded from the state’s tally.
The majority of uncounted victims purported in the claim are said to have been recovered in Swannanoa – a particularly hard-hit area of Buncombe. The deputy fire chief of Swannanoa Larry Pierson called the claim “untrue.”
In a Facebook post, Pierson said:
“As we still navigate the process of search and recovery, we beg that people do not share misleading, inflated, or sensationalized information from uninformed sources,” he wrote.
“From the actual responders from hour one, the boots on the ground, the ones who have been involved in rescuing and recovering our people, nobody is ‘hiding numbers.’ There are inflated numbers of body bags ordered, insinuating there are that many more that the public isn't being told about. Untrue.”
“There is an image of a "reefer" (refrigerated trailer) at a funeral home insinuating there are so many, it is full. Logic would tell any of us that the funeral home also did not have power, and that is just such a contingency for normal operations at such a facility.”
In addition, investigators with the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office have been working to locate all missing persons reported after Hurricane Helene. That number has now been reduced to less than 10 active cases.
“Despite multiple lists and many challenges in the days after the storm, through their hard work, that number has now been reduced to less than 10 active cases,” Matt Marshall, a public information officer said. “Should additional calls be reported to the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office we will collaborate with other agencies to ensure the case is followed up on by the appropriate agency.”
BPR spoke with a representative from a funeral home in Swannanoa – where many organizations are basing their operations – who said that they have processed fewer than 20 bodies who were victims of the storm.
Their offices in Asheville were destroyed, forcing them to process all of their bodies at the Swannanoa location. The home is not holding any recovered bodies not yet included in the state’s total.
False claims go viral
The false claim is just one example of how – as hundreds of volunteers and others rushed into Western North Carolina – the spread of information, and misinformation, proved to be one of the biggest challenges.
Misinformation has fueled conspiracy theories and online hate towards the federal government and others after the storm.
Claims have ranged from conspiratorial notions that there’s a large-scale government cover-up being aided by journalists to rumors that funeral homes are housing bodies of victims not yet accounted for in the state’s official tally.
