By Stephanie Kelly
(Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will travel on Wednesday to North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia to assess the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene in the southeastern U.S. which has killed at least 140 people.
While Biden visits North and South Carolina, Harris will travel Wednesday to Georgia and to North Carolina in the coming days. 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, has been unresponsive to the hurricane’s destruction.
Biden will participate 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 previously said.
North Carolina and Georgia are among seven key battleground states in this year’s election, which is expected to be won by thin margins. Harris currently leads Trump by 2.6 percentage points in national polls, according to aggregator FiveThirtyEight.
North Carolina election officials are scrambling to make sure the state’s over 7 million registered voters can cast a ballot in the upcoming presidential election.
Trump visited Georgia earlier this week. Presidents and presidential candidates usually do not visit a storm-hit region immediately because of fears they will distract from rescue efforts and drain resources from local law enforcement officials and emergency responders.
Hurricane Helene slammed into Florida on Thursday as a powerful Category 4 hurricane before tearing a destructive path through southeastern states for several days.
Biden quickly made major disaster declarations in several states, which allows survivors to apply for federal assistance. The White House also has called hundreds of officials across North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina and Florida.
Biden may ask Congress to return to Washington for a special session to pass supplemental aid funding, he said earlier this week, while more than 3,500 federal workers are involved with response efforts in affected states, according to the White House.
The process of rebuilding after Hurricane Helene will be extremely costly and take years, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; Editing by Heather Timmons & Shri Navaratnam)
