It’s time now for a fact-check of North Carolina news. A TikTok video that’s been widely shared accuses sheriff’s deputies in Mitchell County in western North Carolina of stealing generators intended for victims of Hurricane Helene. The video is about 2.5 minutes long. Here is the first part in which a man confronts deputies:
(Audio clip of TikTok video):
You are in possession of stolen generators. File a report. Have me charged. We need our generators back because we have — well, you got the one that I have. We had a list of people that are disabled who cannot start a generator.
Marshall Terry: The video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. For more, I’m joined now by Paul Specht of WRAL.
So, Mitchell County is north of Asheville — and like much of western North Carolina was hit hard by Helene. What's the deal with the generators that are the point of contention here? Where do they come from, and what happened to them?
Paul Specht: The generators come from Samaritan's Purse. Now they've played an integral role, along with other nonprofits, in getting resources out to Helene victims since the storm hit. In Mitchell County, officials there requested generators as the weather was turning bad, getting colder. And they were delivered to a school out there in Mitchell County on Oct. 15. And in the video, you can see these generators, and you can see school buses — 40 generators to be distributed to people who need them.
Terry: Now, that voice behind the camera throughout the video making these accusations, who is that?
Specht: It's a man from TikTok, and we don't typically put people's identities in our Fact Checks — especially social media fact checks if they're an individual, especially if what they're saying turns out to be inaccurate.
In this case, Mitchell County released a statement where they described this person as an out-of-town individual attempting to gain attention. Now, we reached out to that individual using his TikTok username and asked for comment and never got a response.
Terry: What's been Mitchell County's response to this TikTok video?
Specht: They claimed in their statement that this was a big misunderstanding. They say that it appears people are confused about how distribution goes. They say that they needed the sheriff's deputies help to distribute [the generators] throughout the county. In their statement they say they help deliver to people who are elderly, special needs, families with children 2 and under, and those expecting power outages during the coldest months of the winter. And they said these deputies are trusted members of the community [who] are uniquely equipped to distribute the generators and help get them connected.
Terry: Now, we've seen many videos and conspiracy theories with the same general theme — that the government is up to something sinister to hurt western North Carolina after the storm. How does this fit in with all that?
Specht: Right. First, FEMA is often a target of these conspiracy theories. We've seen and debunked claims that FEMA would steal food or confiscate land. There are claims out there that the federal government wants minerals or precious resources that are in the ground. There's no proof to it.
Even in the one we fact-checked about lithium — a precious resource — the lithium is not in the impacted area. So people come up with these wild things, and often it's the result of misunderstandings like this. But we always do our homework just in case.
Now, we did not just take the Mitchell County government's word for this — if generators are stolen, someone may have noticed, someone from Samaritan's Purse. So we reached out to the nonprofit as well, and they said they were not aware of any stolen generators. We also reached out to North Carolina Emergency Management — and they're the leaders in charge of sort of coordinating relief efforts for Helene. They said we have no verified reports of any donated generators being stolen.
Terry: So how did you rate this claim?
Specht: With no evidence, and no response from the person who made this claim, we rated it false.
