President Joe Biden on Wednesday will be in hard-hit North Carolina where he will survey the damage Hurricane Helene left behind.
"We have to jump-start this recovery process," Biden said Tuesday. "People are scared to death. This is urgent."
Reuters reported that Biden may ask lawmakers to return to Washington for a special session of Congress to pass supplemental aid funding for the affected areas.
"Communities were wiped off the map," North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said Tuesday.
With also most 160 people dead in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Virgina, Helene was one of the country's deadliest storms. Nearly half the deaths were in North Carolina, authorities said.
Helene crashed ashore late Thursday in Florida and then began its path of destruction across multiple states in the southeastern U.S.
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.
"We've been going door to door, making sure that we can put eyes on people and see if they're safe," Avril Pinder, the county manager for North Carolina's Buncombe County, told The Associated Press.
More than 1 million homes and businesses were without power in several states Tuesday.
Residents of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains lined up for food and water Tuesday as they attempted to find cellular service for their cellphones.
Search crews and cadaver dogs have been deployed in western North Carolina to look for victims.
A Federal Emergency Management Agency official said more than 150,000 households have registered for assistance and that number is expected to rise.
One wheelchair-bound Marine veteran, according to an AP report, stayed in his home during and after the deluge. Cliff Stewart said the two feet of water that came into his house covered the wheels of his wheelchair. The bottles that contained his medicine floated from room to room. Stewart has refused offers to help him leave his home.
"What am I going to do? Be homeless? I'd rather die right here than live homeless," he said.
Trailer homes and cars stacked one on top of the other were revealed by the receding floodwaters in Swannanoa, North Carolina.
In Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee on Tuesday surveyed destruction of a high school in the eastern part of the state where residents told him that he and his entourage were the first help they had seen since the storm, AP reported. "We've been here all alone," one person said.
