Biden to Visit the Region Gutted by Hurricane Helene
The New York Times
Officials are still uncovering the extent of the devastation in western North Carolina, which President Biden will view from the air. The storm killed more than 130 people in six states.
President Biden will get an aerial view Wednesday of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene across the mountains of western North Carolina, where many residents are isolated by muddy debris and washed-out roads.
Six days after Helene made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast, the extent of the damage across the Southeast is still coming to light. Broken water systems, downed power lines and poor cellphone service are complicating rescue and recovery efforts.
“There’s so much, so much, that has to be done, beyond what we’re even thinking about now,” Mr. Biden said in a call this week to the mayor of Asheville, N.C. She shared a portion of the call on social media ahead of the president’s trip.
Mr. Biden plans to visit the emergency operations center in Raleigh, the state’s capital, and fly over the damaged region to avoid disrupting emergency efforts. He will also meet with emergency workers in South Carolina, and said he planned visits to other states, as well.
“It’s going to take a long haul to restore these communities,” the president told reporters on Tuesday. A White House statement said the federal government had sent more than 7.1 million meals, 150 generators and more than 200,000 tarps to the region.
Though the storm did extensive damage in parts of Florida, many of the hardest-hit places were in the mountains of southern Appalachia, hundreds of miles from any coastline. Floods and landslides rendered roads useless, turned downtowns into ghost towns and reduced entire neighborhoods to piles of rubble.
