Eustace Conway, a former reality TV star and founder of the 1,000-acre Turtle Island Preserve in Watauga County, has become one of the most prominent voices in North Carolina promoting debunked claims of Tropical Storm Helene’s devastation, giving them traction and a good audience. beyond North Carolina on social media.

Conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated rumors dominated parts of the internet in the wake of the storm, hampering efforts by state and local authorities to relay accurate and verified information to survivors and other North Carolina residents. One of the main issues of controversy is the death toll in western North Carolina.

In a video posted on October 19, Conway claimed that the official death toll from the storm underestimated the deaths by thousands and accused the government and news media of lying about the storm’s true impact.

“We have piles and piles and piles of bodies,” Conway said in the video.

“We have 18-wheeler refrigerated trucks full of dead bodies… Why is there such a difference between the reality of what I see here and what you’re being told?”

In another video posted on his YouTube and Instagram pages on Oct. 5, Conway alleged that officials leading response and recovery operations were preventing volunteers and donations from helping hurricane victims.

“The people who are supposed to be coming here to help the Appalachians are actually killing people, preventing help (from) getting to them,” Conway argued.

Together, the two videos have garnered over 600,000 views and 4,500 comments on YouTube alone.

Many of the claims he made—that the true death toll was in the tens of thousands, that temporary morgues were filling up rapidly, that massive numbers of corpses could be seen through the air coming out of the ground, that the “government” conspired with news organizations to hid the true death toll, and emergency management authorities threatened volunteers with arrest—they were continually reprimanded by local, state, and federal officials.

Carolina Public Press reporters who have personally visited many of the areas in question have seen no evidence to support any of these claims.

As of Friday, DHHS reported 101 storm-related deaths in North Carolina. That number includes people who died during recovery and cleanup efforts after the storm, so the total has gradually increased over time.

The CPP reported on October 18 that there is still no unidentified body count to be included in the death toll, as some on the internet have claimed. While a small number of additional storm-related deaths have occurred or been identified since then, they are nowhere near the claims coming from Conway.

The North Carolina Department of Public Safety — the entity that includes state emergency management — knows that only seven North Carolina residents are still unaccounted for from Thursday’s storm, Communications Director Justin Graney told CPP.

“The State Emergency Response Team has received no evidence to support any of the claims that there are many more deaths than have been recorded and publicly announced; a testament to the heroic response of our first responders and emergency management officials in western North Carolina,” Graney told CPP in an emailed statement.

“While we join our communities in North Carolina in suffering the loss of 101 of our own, it is important to note that many of our local partners have reported deaths in their jurisdictions and none of these reports corroborate the claims made on many social media platforms . .”

The Swannanoa Fire Department, a small community east of Asheville that was the center of many online rumors in the wake of Helene, took to Facebook to ask people not to share unverified information. That Oct. 19 post was written by Deputy Fire Chief Larry Pierson.

“I have seen inaccurate social media posts claiming their information is ‘verified’ with no source stating who verified it and no response when asked,” the post read.

“Of those who intervened from one o’clock, the boots on the ground, those who were involved in the rescue and recovery of our people, no one is ‘hiding numbers.’ There is an inflated number of body bags ordered, implying that there are many more that the public is not being told about. Untrue.

“There’s a picture of a ‘reefer’ (refrigerated trailer) at a funeral home that suggests there are so many, it’s full. Logic would tell any of us that the funeral home also had no power and this is such a situation for normal operations at such a facility.

When asked for comment, Conway told CPP that he would not retract his statements or delete the posts. He said he believed he was telling the truth based on accounts from people he claimed were involved in search and rescue efforts following the storm.

“I’m working with eyewitness accounts that have seen hundreds and hundreds of bodies,” Conway said during a phone call Friday. “So how can there be only 100 dead when there are hundreds and hundreds of corpses adding up to thousands?”

He has not provided any photos or other evidence to support these claims of hidden mass deaths related to the storm, other than these unsubstantiated claims by people Conway says he spoke to. In a video, he estimated the total actual loss of life related to the storm in North Carolina at 20,000.

Conway, the influencer

Conway is somewhat of a celebrity figure in the North Carolina mountains. The Turtle Island Preserve website describes him as a naturalist who has “lived in the woods for over 40 years” and says he is a graduate of Appalachian State University.

He is the subject of the 2002 book “The Last American Man” by bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert and was featured prominently in the TV series “Mountain Men.” Conway last appeared in the series in the summer of 2023 and is no longer listed on the official cast page.

A representative for A+E Networks did not respond when asked if Conway was still under contract with the network or if there were plans for him to appear in future episodes of the series.

Conway founded the Turtle Island Preserve in Watauga County, which is both a nature preserve and an education center that hosts children’s camps, workshops and other outdoor programs. Conway no longer runs the preserve, which is now a nonprofit governed by a board of directors.

Conway was not an overtly political figure, but his skepticism of local government institutions was well documented. In 2012, his camp at Turtle Island was nearly shut down after Watauga County inspectors found many structures on the property in violation of health and safety codes. In June 2013, the issue was put to rest after the state legislature passed a bill exempting “primitive” camps from those building codes.

In 2023, Conway endorsed perennial political candidate and conspiracy theorist Shiva Ayyadurai for president. Ayyadurai is an anti-vaccine activist and has spread various falsehoods about COVID-19 and the 2020 election on social media.