Dozens of volunteer groups converged on Western North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Possibly the largest and most experienced in special operations is Savage Freedom, a group of mostly military veterans and former law enforcement members from across the country, run by former Green Beret Adam Smith.
Despite their leader’s high profile – including sharing the podium with former President Donald Trump weeks after the storm – the group has largely kept politics out of their response and messaging after the storm.
“The biggest fear that Western North Carolina is sitting on right now, at least from the communities we've talked to, is being forgotten,” Smith said in his brief comments during Trump’s visit. “To have you here and have an opportunity to have this conversation at a national level will keep Western North Carolina on the map.”
Trump repeated his own claims of the federal government not providing timely disaster response.
Smith said he feels the focus should be on how to help people in Western North Carolina.
“There are infrastructure issues that the county and state are running into that again, they couldn't be prepared for,” he told BPR on October 22.
“So this is not a defense of them. This is just understanding the ground reality. And if I'm going to try and be fair and understand the ground reality, rather than me saying, ‘Hey, you didn't do enough’ it's more along the lines of ‘Man, this really sucks. And this sucks in a level that nobody I think could have predicted.’
“And so at this point, everybody's kind of just taping the plane together as it flies, and they're doing the best they can.”
As the group worked on the ground to search for storm victims and run supplies to survivors, others — behind computer screens — worked to perpetuate false narratives, including a now-viral claim, that BPR News has debunked, that the state’s death count intentionally excludes some victims.
In the October 22 interview with BPR, Smith noted the political nature of these claims and said the issue will be finding the remains of people who are still reported missing. In Buncombe County, the sheriff's office has said the number of unaccounted-for residents is 10 or less.
“A lot of people in one way or the other are vying for a position to justify their own mentality,” he said. “And so you have one group of people that are saying [the government is] lying about a death toll because it justifies whatever position or opinion they have.”
Although some people remain missing, there is no evidence of bodies being found and excluded from the official state count. The inaccurate claims don’t suggest vaguely that there are undiscovered victims among the debris and destruction, but instead allege that there are specific victims, whose remains have been found, being excluded from the state’s tally.
One recent claim inaccurately stated that there were “90 bodies [found] along U.S. 70, between Patton Cove Road and Asheville East KOA in Swannanoa” in Buncombe County. The claim goes on to say there are "at least 142" victims in Buncombe — nearly three times the confirmed fatality count by North Carolina authorities. As of Monday, the total number of deaths across 24 counties, reported by state officials, is 101.
Air Force veteran Chris Daley runs search and recovery missions for Savage Freedom. He said the speculative death tallies from non-official sources are counterproductive to the mission at hand.
“The last thing that I want to do is create an environment where there's a dispute between the government and the populace. And it's just not productive to what we're trying to accomplish and helping these people,” he told BPR on October 29, equating rumors and conspiratorial claims to “stoking the fire.”
Daley said that county and state numbers are “in line with what I've seen.”
“I have met with the Buncombe County guys, and I am in complete agreement with what they're stating,” Daley told BPR. He declined to give a number of remains his teams have found.
Daley is one of several prominent leaders trying to dispel misinformation.
Swannanoa Deputy Fire Chief Larry Pierson called the claim of an intentional undercount “untrue.”
“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,’" Pierson said in an October 19 Facebook post. "There are inflated numbers of body bags ordered, insinuating there are that many more that the public isn't being told about. Untrue.”
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 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 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.
Editor's Note: This story was published Nov. 3 and updated on Nov. 4 to clarify some information and provide an updated death total from state officials.
