In front of the door of the Lake Lure Inn hotel, Peter Mellington had a coffee and a cigarette in his hand, and still a lot of sadness in the depths of his eyes. “I try to see the positive, but I can’t,” says the 67-year-old man, his voice trembling, in the middle of this small village in North Carolina devastated on September 27 by the hurricane Helene.
Downpours and strong winds, combined with accumulated precipitation from previous days, caused historic landslides that flattened much of this rural and mountainous community. In the west of the state, more than 100 people died from the effects of this storm, according to the latest report from local health authorities. Around ten have still not been found.
“I lost everything: my house, my possessions, my mother’s ashes, the collar of my dog who died recently,” he adds. It was my life that was washed away by the rivers of mud. There was $400,000 worth of property and nothing was covered. All I have left are the clothes I have on me and my car, which doesn’t even work anymore. »
At Lake Lure, the passage ofHelene marked lives. But not only that. The hurricane is now part of the ongoing presidential campaign in the United States, in this strongly Republican region where cleanup and reconstruction have also been in tune with the divisions, resentments and conspiracy theories that have animated the scene for years politics of the country.
“Luckily we have neighbors to help us,” says Richard Beaver, who came this week with his wife, Twana, to pick up bottles of drinking water offered free of charge in the parking lot of the local grocery store. The aqueduct network has not yet been put back into operation. He says he’s “blessed” to have been able to keep his home intact, but he now has to follow a boil water advisory. “The government never came to see us to find out how things were going. To take care of others, immigrants, illegal immigrants, he is there, but to help the Americans, there is no one left. »
Politics was not swept away by the deluge of mud in and around Lake Lure. She even made a strong effort to do so in the days following the tragedy, with the declarations of Donald Trump who, faced with the desolation unfolding before his eyes, took advantage of the crisis to attack his Democratic opponents. At several political rallies, the populist claimed — without ever providing proof — that millions of dollars in aid had been diverted from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to bring illegal immigrants into the country .
He argued that the government did not send anyone to North Carolina to help the victims, a claim at odds with the facts. In the aftermath of the tragedy, the agency sent 1,700 people to the field. As of mid-October, $100 million has been provided in individual victim assistance.
Conspiracy and manipulation
Extremism was expressed even louder when one of his close allies, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, suggested that Joe Biden’s administration had manipulated the path of the hurricane to hit areas with high concentrations of people. Republican voters. “Yes, they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous to lie and say that it’s impossible,” she wrote on the X network. A message seen by 43.8 million people to date and which did not escape Peter Mellington , now convinced, in all his distress, that he was the victim of a “plan” organized by “a deep state” to carry out bigger projects.
“It’s because of the lithium in the region,” adds the man seriously, pointing in the distance to the mountains of Chimney Rock, the small neighboring village, placed at the heart of a conspiracy by theorists. and vectors of disinformation like Alex Jones. The latter amplified rumors on social networks that the government was using the tragedy to expropriate people from the region and take over their land to extract the precious mineral. “There’s a lot going on that people don’t see,” Mr. Mellington says.
Faced with the proliferation of these numerous statements earlier this month, North Carolina’s Republican representative in Washington, Chuck Edwards, felt obliged to remind local residents that “no one can control the weather” and that the hurricane Helenewhich hit his state, “was not designed by the government.” “No one has the technology or geoengineering capacity to create a hurricane,” he wrote in a statement, where he pitted science against beliefs, however far-fetched they may be. “Current geoengineering technology can be used to intervene on a large scale to mitigate the negative consequences of natural weather events, but it cannot be used to create or manipulate hurricanes. »
This week, signs of expropriation were far from visible in the corner of Chimney Rock, where teams of volunteers continued to converge to support the cleanup and reconstruction efforts still underway a month after the hurricane hit. .
“Our priority is to get people back to normal life as quickly as possible,” said a smiling Connie Humenik of the religious disaster relief organization Spokes of Hopes. “All agencies, all groups are doing their best to help victims in the face of a disaster that was of enormous magnitude. And in this context, it is best not to get distracted by politics. »
Distracted, Richard Beaver says he was not distracted a few days ago, when he went to put his ballot in favor of Donald Trump. “I knew I was going to vote for him. Helene only strengthened my conviction,” he said. He also assures that the hurricane was “directed on [lui] by the government — or by a government, let’s put it that way.”
On Tuesday, local authorities opened three new polling stations to serve residents of Lake Lure, but also the many victims evacuated to hotels in the region and in the town of Hendersonville, a little further to the south.
It is in one of these offices that Peter Mellington will vote next Tuesday — “if I manage to repair my car by then,” he says. And added: “There are a lot of rich people here who seem to be the priority for the government. They care much more about their chalets, their boats, their burner than they do about us. I know who I’m going to vote for. And I hope this will help me find some peace in my heart. »
This report was financed thanks to the support of the Transat-International Journalism Fund. Duty.
