A natural disaster upends the U.S. presidential election

Hundreds of Canadian workers are staying in trailers and dark hotel rooms as they repair power lines in the flood-battered southeastern U.S.

They've joined a massive relief effort after a once-in-a-century storm washed out houses and infrastructure of every conceivable type: roads, power lines, plumbing, communications towers, even a vital mining town.

The death toll from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene remains unknown, but with 600 people unaccounted for, the White House has expressed fear it could be in the hundreds. 

It has upended the U.S. presidential election. The storm struck two major swing states, North Carolina and Georgia.

Election administrators say it will take days to assess the damage to voting infrastructure. On the ground, regular campaigning has halted. On the national airwaves, however, partisanship persists unabated.

Donald Trump promoted humanitarian efforts but went a step further: he claimed, bizarrely, that governors in affected states couldn't reach President Joe Biden, despite those same governors publicly describing their conversations with the president.

"He's lying," an angry Biden later retorted. "I don't know why he does this … It's simply not true — and it's irresponsible." 

Neither Biden nor his vice-president, Kamala Harris, held public events related to the disaster until Monday. But the federal government has thousands of workers in the region, and has approved disaster-management payments for affected people and state authorities.

Tens of thousands of workers are here from other states, the military, the private sector — and north of the border, with more than 700 Canadian line workers in the region.

The Canadians are being assigned to rebuild downed distribution lines, some of which will not surge back to life until transmission stations are repaired, which could take days.

The Canadians were there before the hurricane even made landfall. 

A pair of New Brunswick-based companies, Holland Power Services and its partner Gagnon Line Construction, began sending crews to staging areas across the Carolinas early last week, after being contracted by a U.S.-based power utility.

The living conditions are par for the course on a job like this, says the man on-site leading Holland's operation. Some workers are in crowded trailers, others are in hotels, where there's no power, frequently no running water and in most cases no showers for days.

"The last thing we're worried about is where we're sleeping," said Fredericton resident Steven Hansen, as he paused for a phone interview just outside of Charlotte, N.C., on Monday. "Every single one of the workers here is used to those conditions. We're just thankful to have a roof over our head and a warm smile from the folks at the hotel."