US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris headed Wednesday to areas devastated by Hurricane Helene, after Harris’s election rival Donald Trump sought to turn their handling of the disaster into campaign fodder.
Biden touched down in South Carolina and greeted local officials and first responders ahead of a survey of catastrophic damage and parts of the sprawling rescue and recovery effort across the US Southeast after the enormous storm left at least 159 people dead in six states.
He flew by helicopter over the flood-hit city of Asheville, North Carolina, one of the places worst hit by the storm’s deadly rampage through the southeastern United States.
Biden will also visit a rescue command center in the state, where more than 70 people were killed.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, traveling with the president, described Helene as a storm of “historic strength” that brought calamitous flooding to cities and remote mountain communities.
“We have towns that have disappeared, literally,” he said aboard Air Force One. “This is a multi-billion-dollar, multi-year recovery.”
Before departing Washington, Biden announced the deployment of up to 1,000 active-duty soldiers to North Carolina to boost emergency response efforts including the “fight to save lives” in the devastated communities.
“These soldiers will speed up the delivery of life-saving supplies of food, water, and medicine to isolated communities in North Carolina,” the president said in a statement.
“My heart goes out to everyone who has experienced unthinkable loss,” he added. “We are here for you — and we will stay here for as long as it takes.”
The federal response in the region now tops 4,800 personnel, Mayorkas said, including emergency responders, health workers, and debris-clearing and power-restoration experts.
That is in addition to the more than 6,500 National Guard personnel that have been activated, according to the Pentagon.
Harris, who replaced Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee for the November 5 election, flew separately to the southern state of Georgia, which has also been badly hit.
The White House announced Wednesday that Biden will also travel to Florida, where the storm roared ashore last week as a Category 4 hurricane, and Georgia on Thursday to visit impacted communities.
Deluges triggered by Helene have caused huge devastation in the region of the Appalachian mountains, with towns and villages cut off from the rest of the world.
Biden said he had not traveled earlier because rescue workers said his visit could have disrupted emergency operations.
North Carolina and Georgia are two of the seven crucial swing states that are likely to decide the result of the US election. Early voting has already begun in several states.
– ‘He’s lying’ –
The visits come a day after the vice presidential candidates, Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Walz, faced off in a surprisingly civil debate — the last scheduled on-stage showdown before election day.
The pair acknowledged common ground on multiple issues, including about those suffering from the storm, with Vance saying: “We want as robust and aggressive a federal response as we can get to save as many lives as possible.”
But Republican former president Trump earlier sought to make political capital out of the disaster, accusing the administration, without evidence, of ignoring the crisis and denying help to his supporters.
Responding to the accusations, Biden told reporters on Monday that Trump was “lying” and termed his attacks “irresponsible.”
The political storm over Helene comes as Biden and Harris weather a series of crises with barely a month until the knife-edge election.
As they coordinate the hurricane response, Biden and Harris are also contending with a rapidly escalating situation in the Middle East, where Iran fired missiles at Israel, after the latter expanded its military operations into Lebanon.
The White House is also trying to resolve a strike by US dockworkers that threatens the country’s economy, a major issue ahead of the November 5 poll.
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