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The political war over Hurricane Helene is heating up. Elon Musk is accusing FEMA of blocking his attempts to deliver Starlinks to areas affected by the disaster. Right-wing Twitter/X is full of talk about various incidents in which purportedly people coming to the area to try to help and/or deliver supplies are being turned away by FEMA. Also full of talk about FEMA using money to support illegal immigrants. Some people are pushing theories that FEMA is deliberately withholding help.
How credible is any of this?
My guess is that FEMA is a typical semi-competent government agency that makes many blunders. It might be bad at coordinating with random people who want to help but are not government employees and it might thus institutionally prefer to just block off the area and try to handle everything without random people's assistance. This policy then causes the various incidents that are being talked about.
I doubt that FEMA is deliberately withholding aid, if for no other reason than that I do not see how withholding aid would benefit the Democrats politically.
What do you make of it?
Yes, the normal stupidity of bureaucracy.
But Secretary Buttigieg reacted to Elon Musk!
https://x.com/SecretaryPete/status/1842271678274928964
Musk reacted first aggressively, but after the call conciliatory:
Maybe he overreacted? Let’s see what he posts tomorrow.
But I think “legitimate” could be a key word here. It is an emergency, business as usual shouldn’t apply, and they shouldn’t restrict the airspace in any way. It is not like aircraft/helicopters pilots are blind, they are not crashing into each other easily.
Edit:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1842352252922843403
I think we need subject-mater expertise here. How is airspace usually regulated? What would happen if all restrictions were lifted? How hard is it to operate in the mountains (especially takeoff and landing)?
I'm sure FEMA considers Starlink to be low-priority compared to food, water, gas, etc. It's plausible that SpaceX flying wildcat deliveries of Starlink is net-negative to the relief efforts, but I would like to know why specifically they think that.
EDIT: Per CNN's Pete Muntean, "an unprecedented number of airplanes, helicopters, and drones swooping in to help with Hurricane Helene recovery efforts are now posing a safety hazard. There were 30 near-mid-air collisions last Saturday, a federal source tells me." I guess that's the official line. No idea if it's accurate or not.
There was probably some thing that happened that one time and there was an accident and then a rule for made.
Mid-air collisions happen more often than you might expect given the size of, well, the atmosphere even in spots that aren't busy disaster zones. There was one just a few weeks ago in Nevada in clear weather, and there have been several over the years in tourist flight hotspots like Alaska. The automated systems (TCAS) are getting better, but still aren't going to prevent everything.
Although in this case, I think we should, as a society, consider that reducing safety standards (in a limited capacity) is an acceptable risk in response to the much more imminent risk to life and limb. I'm not sure exactly what my judgement would be in this case.
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