Helene death toll in North Carolina nearly 100, not 1,000 | Fact check

An Oct. 14 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a video that includes an image of a flooded, storm-damaged street.
“The death toll is over 1000 just in one hospital in asheville (sic) there is 900+ unidentified,” reads on-screen text included in the video, which was first shared on TikTok.
The video was shared more than 2,000 times in 10 days. Similar claims, including those that specifically mention Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, circulated on Facebook and X, formerly Twitter.
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North Carolina officials say there were fewer than 100 confirmed deaths from Hurricane Helene as of Oct. 28, and no hospital is filled with hundreds of unidentified bodies.
Helene roared ashore in Florida on Sept. 26 and powered through the southeast, causing death and destruction in several states. In North Carolina, torrential rains from the storm combined with the mountainous terrain of the western part of the state to create catastrophic flooding.
The state is still grappling with the storm’s aftereffects and searching for missing people, but the Facebook post vastly overstates the loss of life, according to North Carolina officials. The state’s Department of Health and Human Services maintains a tracker of lives lost that showed 98 confirmed as of Oct. 28.
Kelly Haight Connor, a department spokesperson, told USA TODAY that all examinations of those who died in the storm and have been recovered are complete. She said local and state authorities have worked together to respond to the storm-related fatalities.
“Together, they are ensuring the right procedures and plans are in place for casualties to be properly identified and cause of death determined to ensure that those lost to the storm are quickly reunited to families left behind,” she wrote in an Oct. 23 email. “The system stays focused on their efforts to care for the decedents and to support the families left behind.”
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Officials in Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, acknowledged it overcounted the number of fatalities, previously claiming dozens more deaths than have been confirmed.
But Nancy Lindell, a spokesperson for Mission Hospital’s parent company, said it does not have hundreds of unidentified victims, nor does it serve as a “morgue” as some versions of the claim suggest.
“Mission Hospital is not serving as the local community morgue,” she wrote in an Oct. 22 email. “The federal government is responsible for efforts regarding fatalities in a community after a disaster, and Mission Health system, through an agreement with Buncombe County, is assisting that effort by providing off-site facility support.”
One of the posts circulating online says the hospital serving as a morgue is Biltmore Hospital, but there is no hospital operating under that name in the Asheville area. The former Biltmore Hospital building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a predecessor to Mission Hospital, which is located on Biltmore Avenue.
USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook users who shared the claim for comment but did not immediately receive responses and could not reach the X user.
Lead Stories also debunked the claim.
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