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After former president Donald Trump said he spoke to Elon Musk about using Starlink in Hurricane Helene-hit areas, the U.S. government said it already had a plan to deploy the systems.
During a visit to Georgia on Monday, the Republican presidential candidate said he spoke to Musk, and that they “want to get Starlink hooked up, because they [North Carolina residents] have no communication whatsoever,” Business Insider reported.
“And so we’re working on that, getting them hooked up,” Trump said. “They asked me whether or not that would be possible. We’re going to try and get the Starlink in there as soon as possible.”
In a post on X (META+0.46%), White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said the plan to get Starlink terminals for hurricane-hit areas “is already happening.” Bates shared an announcement by the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Monday that outlined plans to deploy Starlink systems in North Carolina.
In North Carolina, “40 Starlink satellite systems are available to help with responder communications and an additional 140 satellites are being shipped to assist with communications infrastructure restoration,” FEMA said in the announcement. Each county’s emergency operations center will deploy one Starlink system to assist with communications and keep the government online, according to the agency.
Meanwhile, Musk said on X that his company “SpaceX has sent as many Starlink terminals as possible to help areas in need” since the hurricane started.
“Earlier today, @realDonaldTrump alerted me to additional people who need Starlink Internet in North Carolina,” Musk said. “We are sending them terminals right away.”
Neither spokespeople for Trump nor SpaceX immediately responded to a request for comment.
“Administrator [Deanne] Criswell made the decision yesterday to send Starlink down to North Carolina,” Jaclyn Rothenberg, FEMA’s director of public affairs, told Business Insider in a statement. Rothenberg said Trump was not involved in sending Starlink to North Carolina.
Rothenberg told Quartz that there are now 60 Starlink systems in North Carolina, and that FEMA is “continuing to add more Starlink systems on the ground.”
FEMA’s announcement does not include plans to deploy Starlink systems in other states that have been hit hard by Hurricane Helene including Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, or Alabama.