Biden and Harris tour devastating storm in Helene as death toll rises

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to southeastern US states hit by Hurricane Helene as the death toll from the storm rose to 180.

Biden flew in a helicopter over North and South Carolina to see the extent of the devastation.

Hundreds of people are still missing and search and rescue teams are struggling to reach remote areas.

Biden has deployed 1,000 active-duty troops to help 6,000 National Guard members and 4,800 federal responders already deployed in six states affected by the extreme weather.

Aid was delivered by air drops and mules. The U.S. government said the reconnaissance effort could take years.

Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, traveled to neighboring Georgia on Wednesday.

Both North Carolina and Georgia are key swing states in November's presidential election.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump traveled to Georgia himself earlier this week to view the storm damage.

In North Carolina, where tens of thousands of residents remain without running water, Biden took an aerial tour of the storm-ravaged western areas of the state.

“God willing, they are alive,” he said, citing reports of up to 600 missing people. “But contacting us again is no longer possible due to the lack of mobile phone coverage.”

The president will travel to affected communities in Florida and Georgia on Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Helene hit the US last Thursday as a category four hurricane – the strongest on record, hitting Florida's Big Bend – before weakening as it moved north.

According to CBS, almost half of the deaths caused by Helene occurred in North Carolina alone, where rain fell for six months.

Five other states recorded deaths attributed to the storm: South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Virginia.

Helene has proven to be one of the deadliest storms to hit the US in recent years. The death toll exceeded that of Hurricane Ian, which claimed at least 156 lives in 2022.

The mountainous regions of North Carolina experienced particularly heavy rains, causing houses and bridges to be washed away.

An emergency official in Buncombe County – which includes the hardest-hit city of Asheville – said the state had seen “biblical devastation.”

A volunteer involved in relief efforts told the BBC on Tuesday that he knew someone who “lost everything” in Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and moved to Asheville, only to be devastated again nearly two decades later.

“Looks like it’s been wiped out again,” the volunteer said. “She has no drinking water. No gasoline. The food in her fridge is rotten.”

Helene has also forced the closure of mines in Spruce Pine, a small town that is home to the world's largest known source of high-purity quartz.

In Tennessee, state authorities are investigating the operator of a plastics factory where eleven workers were swept away by rushing floodwaters on Friday. Two were confirmed dead and four others are still missing.

Impact Plastics told CBS in a statement that it monitored weather conditions around its Erwin plant in northeast Tennessee and laid off employees “when water began covering the parking lot and adjacent access road and the plant lost power.” .

But in interviews with local outlets, employees said they were allegedly ordered to continue working at the factory until it was too late for a safe exit.

More than a million people were without power in some of the affected states as of Wednesday evening, according to the monitoring site Poweroutage.us.

Initial analyzes of the storm suggest that human-caused climate change played a significant role in the amount of precipitation.

In parts of western North Carolina, records that had stood since the “Great Flood” of July 1916, another hurricane-related disaster, were broken.

The Atlantic hurricane season lasts until the end of November.