Biden, Harris survey Hurricane Helene’s aftermath

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris traveled Wednesday to areas in the southeastern United States to survey devastation left by Hurricane Helene.
Biden went to North Carolina and South Carolina, while Harris went to Augusta, Georgia.
“It is going to cost billions of dollars to deal with this storm and all the communities affected,” the president said after a helicopter survey over parts of North Carolina affected by Helene. “You can see homes that have moved clearly from one side of the river down the river to another side.”
Harris surveyed Augusta’s Meadowbrook neighborhood with Mayor Garnett Johnson and other local officials. She said she wanted to “personally take a look at the devastation, which is extraordinary.”
She also toured a Red Cross center and was briefed on the post-Helene conditions the area is facing.
“There is real pain and trauma that has resulted because of this hurricane and what has happened in terms of the aftermath of it,” said Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee. “We are here for the long haul.”
Earlier Wednesday in Washington, Biden authorized the deployment of 1,000 active-duty U.S. troops to assist in the response and recovery efforts in the communities hit by Helene.
The White House said in a statement that the soldiers would “support the delivery of food, water and other critical commodities.”
The deployment of the soldiers will also “provide additional manpower and logistics capabilities, enabling FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] and other interagency partners to reach the hardest-hit areas as quickly as possible.”
The president and the vice president are also going to other affected states, the White House said, with Biden scheduled to go to Florida and Georgia and Harris to North Carolina later in the week.
Many residents of the Carolinas still lacked running water, cellphone service and electricity Wednesday as rescuers searched for people unaccounted for after Hurricane Helene caused catastrophic damage across the Southeast and killed at least 166 people. More than 1.2 million customers still had no power Wednesday in the Carolinas and Georgia, where Helene tore far inland after initial landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
The Water Mission Disaster Response Team, an international nonprofit Christian organization, was on the ground in Boone, North Carolina, helping to ensure residents were provided with safe drinking water.
“Hurricane Helene came through and wiped out towns. We’ve seen so much destruction of the infrastructure,” Brock Kreitzburg, senior director of the water disaster response team, told VOA in an interview. “People in western [North] Carolina are without power and without water, and many mountain communities are cut off, so they have limited access to food, water and electricity. … We don’t normally see this type of need in the U.S., but the needs are overwhelming here. … It could be weeks before they get power back into their homes.”
Kreitzburg said his organization has systems that can transform debris-filled water into drinkable water.
“We can draw water from rivers that look like chocolate milk and we can filter that water through our systems, and the end product would be safe water that people can drink,” he said.
Helene crashed ashore late Thursday in Florida and then began its path of destruction across multiple states in the Southeastern U.S. In addition to Florida, the Carolinas and Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia were also affected.
Emergency workers and rescue teams have been working around the clock to clear roads, provide food, clean up debris and look for people who are stranded.
Hundreds of people have been reported missing, officials said.
Former President Donald Trump, who is the Republican Party’s candidate for the upcoming presidential election, has accused Biden of “sleeping” and ignoring calls for help from Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp. Kemp has denied Trump’s claims and has said that Georgia is getting everything it needs.
Biden said the former president was “lying and the governor told him he was lying.”
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.