U.S. President Joe Biden travels Thursday to the southeastern states of Florida and Georgia to tour areas hit by Hurricane Helene and to meet with first responders and state officials involved in disaster response efforts.
The visits follow stops Biden made Wednesday in North Carolina and South Carolina, while Vice President Kamala Harris made her own visit to 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."
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 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 Hurricane Helene.
The White House said in a statement the soldiers will “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 and other interagency partners to reach the hardest hit areas as quickly as possible.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters Wednesday the recovery will be a “multibillion-dollar effort and a multiyear undertaking.”
“We have towns that have disappeared, literally,” Mayorkas said.
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.
Brock Kreitzburg, senior director at Water Mission Disaster Response Team, an international nonprofit Christian organization, told VOA the group is working in Boone, North Carolina, to ensure residents have safe drinking water.
“Hurricane Helene came through and wiped-out towns. We've seen so much destruction of the infrastructure,” Kreitzburg said. “People in western [North] Carolina are without power and without water and many mountain communities are cut off and 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.
With more than 100 people dead in the Southeast, Helene was one of the country's deadliest storms.
Emergency workers and rescue teams have been working around the clock clearing roads, providing food, cleaning up debris and looking for people who are stranded.
Hundreds of people have been reported missing, officials said.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican party’s candidate for the upcoming presidential election, has accused President 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.
