26 people remain unaccounted for in North Carolina following Hurricane Helene

(ASHEVILLE, N.C.) — Twenty-six people remain unaccounted for in hard-hit North Carolina, weeks after the devastation unleashed by Hurricane Helene, officials said Monday.

Last week, 92 people were unaccounted for, officials said.

Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, wreaking havoc across the Southeast from Florida to Virginia. Helene destroyed homes and roads, stranded residents without cellphone service and water, and claimed the lives of nearly 250 people throughout the Southeast.

At least 95 of Helene’s fatalities were in North Carolina, officials said. Gov. Roy Cooper called Helene “the deadliest and most devastating storm” in the state’s history.

After misinformation spread about recovery efforts and the availability of Federal Emergency Management Agency funds in North Carolina, Cooper stressed at Monday’s news conference that the “deliberate disinformation and misinformation … needs to stop.”

“It hurts the very people we are all trying to help,” he said. “It discourages and makes people fearful of signing up for help. It enables scam artists and it hurts the morale of government officials, first responders and soldiers who are on the ground trying to help.”

Former President Donald Trump is set to visit to the hard-hit city of Asheville on Monday to survey damage from the storm.

Cooper said he’s asking the former president to “not share lies or misinformation while he is here.”

Cooper said the White House “responded quickly and positively to our request from FEMA, which has had 1,400 staff on the ground and has registered 206,000 people for individual assistance, and distributed $124 million directly to people who need it.”

“As for long-term recovery, state and local government will be all in, along with the federal government,” Cooper said. “This will take billions of dollars and years of bipartisan focus from everyone working together to make it happen — from new roads and bridges to public building to water supplies to people’s homes.”

FEMA is now launching a “new initiative” to hire community liaisons in North Carolina’s impacted counties, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell announced Monday.

“We know that so many people have temporarily lost their jobs. We know that others just want to be able to give back, and we want to help keep people in these communities while they recover,” she said. “So these new community liaisons are going to work alongside us at FEMA to make sure that they are the local voice, the trusted voice in their community, and that they can share with us the local considerations and the concerns, so we can include them as part of this recovery. They’re going to be embedded in every county, working directly with county administrators, mayors and community leaders, bridging their concerns with our FEMA staff. And these jobs are available for people to apply right now.”