When rumors about Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) withholding aid spread through storm-ravaged communities after Hurricanes Helene and Milton, emergency workers found themselves facing not just disaster recovery but actual threats of violence. Some responders retreated from the hardest-hit areas, delaying critical relief efforts. One FEMA worker even directed workers helping hurricane survivors not to go to homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Donald Trump, a real world impact that negatively impacted these survivors and the employee was later fired for this clear violation of FEMA’s values.
This wasn’t a failure of disaster logistics, but something more insidious: targeted misinformation campaigns that exploited existing distrust and social media algorithms to turn victims against the very people attempting to help them and leading to behavior that was detrimental to FEMA’s mission and reputation as well.
Physical and virtual spaces intersect
Welcome to crisis management in 2025, where disasters unfold in both physical and virtual spaces simultaneously.
The Maui wildfires of 2023 offered an early warning of this troubling convergence. While firefighters battled actual flames, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about the government seizing land circulated widely, credited partly to coordinated Russian and Chinese destabilization campaigns. Concurrent with this digital assault, fraudsters posed as real estate agents or contractors to steal deposits from already-devastated wildfire survivors.
Such incidents reveal something fundamental about our current moment: technology has become both salvation and vulnerability in crisis management. The platforms that enable rapid coordination also accelerate disinformation. The data systems holding crucial survivor information tempt cybercriminals. The AI tools that forecast storm paths can also amplify bias in relief distribution.
FEMA recognizes this reality. The 2024 FEMA National Advisory Council (NAC) Recommendation 2024-13 explicitly called for evaluating and leveraging advanced technology, acknowledging both opportunities and threats. Business leaders would be wise to adopt a similar framework. Every organization with disaster exposure must reassess continuity planning through this bifocal lens.
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