Elon Musk's Disaster Relief Promises: Should We Believe The Hype?

Opinion I live in Asheville, North Carolina. You may have seen my hometown in the news over the last few weeks after Hurricane Helene wrecked the place.

Many nearby smaller Blue Ridge Mountain communities, such as Swannanoa, Marshall, and  Chimney Rock, have been "wiped off the map."  At last report, there were 72 dead in my area. There will be more. Many are still missing and presumed dead.

With all that, not having power, water, internet, or cell service is its own kind of agony. Before I left town to regroup, I knew things were bad. How could they not be? In my neighborhood, trees and power lines were down everywhere, and we knew the French Broad and Swannanoa Rivers must have flooded badly. It wasn't until we were a hundred miles away that we could connect to the internet and see, to our horror, just how bad it really was.

So, when I heard tech billionaire Elon Musk was going to offer free Starlink terminals to people in western North Carolina, I thought that was great news. More fool me.

It turns out that Musk's free Starlink terminal service wasn't free at all. I know this will be a shock. True, you could get 30 days of free service. First, though, you must pay almost $400 for the equipment. And afterward, you'll be on the hook for a $120-a-month residential subscription. 

Let me tell you something about my home. The Asheville area runs on tourism. There is no tourism there today. There won't be any this month. There won't be any for the rest of the year.

Visitors need toilets. Without running water, we have minimal facilities. We won't have potable water for weeks. I won't be surprised if it takes months. No water, no tourists, no jobs, and no way for many people to pay for Starlink or anything else other than the bare necessities.

So, Musk's offer may have sounded good, but really, it's not much more than a PR stunt.

On top of that, in Helene's aftermath, Musk publicly accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of blocking Starlink satellite internet deliveries to affected areas in North Carolina. As FEMA and US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg pointed out, the emergency made normal flights impossible.

Musk finally conceded that point, but in the meantime he continued to broadcast and repeat the claims of others on X that FEMA was limiting disaster relief to $750 per person and that it was "seizing" donations and "claiming them as their own." 

I'm from there. FEMA was there on day one. FEMA representatives and many other federal employees from other agencies are there and helping. Musk? By encouraging these false claims, he's ensuring that gullible victims will be less likely to get the help they desperately need.

I should have known better. It's hardly the first time Musk has made big promises and failed to deliver. 

Consider, if you will, the 2018 Thai cave rescue. Musk offered to provide a miniature submarine to help rescue a dozen boys and their football coach trapped in a flooded cave. However, rescue operations commander Narongsak Osotthanakorn deemed the device "not practical," and it was never used. Musk's involvement turned sour when he baselessly accused one of the rescue divers of being a "pedo." Musk would later claim, successfully, that he hadn't meant that he was a pedophile.

Before that, though, following Hurricane Maria's devastation in Puerto Rico in October 2017, Musk promised to help restore power using Tesla's solar panels and Powerwall batteries. Again, it sounded great, but as one inhabitant said: "Was it good that Tesla came in and served our emergency needs? Of course. But it was terrible that they left their equipment to decay."

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Musk just isn't that good at following through on his promises. Leaving aside establishing a colony Mars, which is more inspirational than practical, he hasn't delivered on many others. For example, he's repeatedly promised fully autonomous self-driving Tesla vehicles since 2017. We're still not there. In 2019, Musk said we'd have a fleet of one million autonomous robotaxis real soon now. In 2024, Tesla just released a prototype Cybercab, and I, for one, am unimpressed.

I have a suggestion for Mr Musk. With a net worth of $269 billion, he's the world's richest person. Number two, and a long way back, is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, with a mere $208 billion. In the meantime, much "poorer" rich people such as Dolly Parton have pledged $1 million to the Mountain Ways Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing immediate assistance to Helene flood victims in Appalachia, and Taylor Swift contributed $5 million to Feeding America for the Helene and Milton relief effort. There are many worthy charities that are helping people now with their immediate needs that could use their money and help.

If Musk would prefer, how about offering free Starlink service for people in Helene's footprint for, say, six months? Or, for that matter, since Puerto Rico's power grid never fully recovered from Maria and was swatted again by a tropical storm, how about returning to set up Tesla solar and Powerwalls for the long run?

Musk could make a real positive difference in the world if he chose to. Or he could keep tweeting his right-wing friends and jumping around on stage with former President Trump. It's his choice. ®