Fact Check: Hurricane Disaster Leads to Misleading LGBTQ Social Media Posts
have led to concern that the Federal Emergency Management Agency may face a funding shortage. The White House acknowledged that Congress may need to approve additional money soon.Milton is forecast to make landfall on Wednesday evening in Florida, which is still reeling from Helene.
At least 227 people have been killed across six states after Helene came ashore on September 26.Amid concerns about FEMA, one viral post shared a video conference hosted by the disaster agency that attempted to sow division regarding its approach to the LGBTQ+ community.The ClaimA post on X, formerly Twitter, by user EndWokeness on October 6, viewed 19.4 million times, included a video conference in which a participant, sitting in front of a FEMA screen saver, said, "...sparked a few things in my mind thinking about preparedness and how you said, you know, LGBTQIA people and people who have been disadvantaged already are struggling."They already have their things to deal with so you add a disaster on top of that, it's just compounding on itself and I think that maybe is the 'why' of why we're having these discussions."It isn't being talked about, it isn't being socialized, we're not paying attention to this community."Another participant said, "There are a couple of things that are intersecting in my mind here.
One of them is the culture of emergency management, as an organization, as an industry in the United States specifically, not abroad."This has...the shift that we're seeing right now is a shift in emergency management from utilitarian principles where everything is designed for the greatest good for the greatest amount of people to disaster equity."But we have to do more, right?
And so this topic is intersecting with a number of other topics where we have to look at policies and understand to what extent they have disadvantaged communities that have less assets, communities that have pre-existing vulnerabilities in accessing disaster-related recovery supports."EndWokeness.
