No, ‘600 bodies’ weren’t found in a Helene debris field | Fact check

A Nov. 11 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a man speaking about storm-related recovery efforts in front of a pop-up canopy and cases of bottled water.
“Anywhere from 20 to 600 bodies in just one area, so look at how many areas it’s hit,” the man says in the video. “The truth needs to be, you know, known by everybody everywhere.”
On-screen text on the video reads, “Asheville NC. 600 bodies found in a debris field! More deaths than 9/11!”
The post’s caption reads in part, “Pay attention to this while you can still see it. #HurricaneHelene #Hurricane #NorthCarolina.”
It was liked more than 500 times in two weeks. A similar post on X, formerly Twitter, was reposted more than 11,000 times.
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This post drastically overstates the number of deaths connected to Hurricane Helene. Helene killed at least 225 people across the southeastern U.S., according to government and news reports. The 9/11 terrorist attacks killed 2,977 people. The North Carolina Department of Public Safety said it had no evidence of “600 bodies” found in a debris field.
Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 storm on Sept. 26, carving a path of destruction across the Southeast. Western North Carolina was particularly hard hit, and Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, suffered catastrophic flooding. The majority of the state’s storm-related deaths occurred there.
But there are no credible news reports about 600 bodies being discovered in the area after the storm. Brian Haines, a North Carolina Department of Public Safety spokesperson, said the agency had no evidence supporting the claim.
“At this time, we are aware of 103 fatalities as reported by the NC State Medical Examiner,” Haines said in a Nov. 21 email.
That’s in line with a tally of Helene-related deaths kept by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. The count was 102 on Nov. 11, according to an archived version of the website.
Helene’s overall death toll has undergone revisions to correct overcounts and reflect newly verified deaths since late September. But contrary to the claim in the post, it has never come close to exceeding the 2,977 people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S.
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The Washington Post reported Helene killed at least 226 people across six states in an Oct. 27 article examining lives lost to the storm. A Nov. 9 archive of data from the National Centers for Environmental Information, a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, put the number at 225. This figure remained unchanged as of Nov. 24.
A longer version of the interview with the unidentified man shown on Instagram was posted on YouTube on Nov. 7. This extended interview makes it clear that the man’s comment about “20 to 600 bodies” being found in a single unspecified area was secondhand information he said he heard from other people.
In October, local news outlets reported K-9 rescue teams recovered 20 bodies over 10 days in western North Carolina following the storm. It’s unclear whether this is the operation referenced by the man in the interview.
Still, the caption on the post declaring 600 bodies were found is wrong. And the number of people unaccounted for in North Carolina was reportedly down to 26 as of Oct. 22.
USA TODAY reached out to the Instagram user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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