By Stephanie Kelly
(Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia on Wednesday to assess the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene in the southeastern U.S., killing at least 140 people cost.
While Biden visits North and South Carolina, Harris will travel to Georgia and North Carolina in the coming days on Wednesday. The trips come as former President Donald Trump, who is running against Harris in this year’s presidential election, falsely claimed that Biden, a Democrat, failed to respond to the hurricane’s destruction.
Biden will take part in an aerial tour of Greenville, South Carolina, before receiving an operational briefing in Raleigh, North Carolina, as rescuers scour the state’s mountains for survivors. He will travel to Georgia and Florida soon, he said earlier.
North Carolina and Georgia are among the seven key battleground states in this year’s elections, which are expected to be won by narrow margins. Harris currently leads Trump by 2.6 percentage points in national polls, according to aggregator FiveThirtyEight.
North Carolina election officials are scrambling to ensure the state’s more than seven million registered voters can cast ballots in the upcoming presidential election.
Trump visited Georgia earlier this week. Presidents and presidential candidates typically do not immediately visit a storm-affected area for fear that they will distract from rescue efforts and take resources away from local law enforcement officials and emergency responders.
Hurricane Helene tore into Florida on Thursday as a powerful Category 4 hurricane before carving a devastating path through the southeastern states for several days.
Biden quickly made major disaster declarations in several states, allowing survivors to apply for federal assistance. The White House also called hundreds of officials in North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina and Florida.
Biden could ask Congress to return to Washington for a special session to approve additional relief funding, he said earlier this week, with more than 3,500 federal employees involved in response efforts in affected states, according to the White House.
The rebuilding process after Hurricane Helene will be extremely costly and take years, US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; Editing by Heather Timmons & Shri Navaratnam)
