President Biden is heading to Florida and Georgia Thursday to survey the widespread harm from Hurricane Helene and obtain updates on the federal, state and native response to the storm.
The journey is the president’s second consecutive day viewing hurricane harm within the Southeast. He visited the Carolinas on Wednesday, surveying the flood harm from Greenville, South Carolina, to Asheville, North Carolina, by air, and receiving emergency response updates from officers in Raleigh. The president introduced the federal authorities will cowl “100%” of all particles elimination and emergency protecting measure prices in North Carolina for six months, and can do the identical for Florida and Georgia for the subsequent 90 days.
Vice President Kamala Harris was in Augusta, Georgia, on Wednesday, receiving updates on the aftermath of Helene. As of Wednesday morning, storm-related deaths have topped 190 throughout Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. A whole lot are nonetheless lacking, as communities undergo nonetheless with out energy, working water and satisfactory roads.
On Thursday, the president first heads to Tallahassee, Florida, the place he’ll start an aerial tour of the harm en path to Perry, Florida. The Huge Bend space of Florida is the place Hurricane Helene made landfall week as a Class 4 storm.
From Florida, the president will head to Georgia, the place he’ll obtain an on-the-ground tour of the harm in Ray Metropolis. There, the president will converse on the harm he is seen and what the federal authorities is doing about it.
The president introduced Wednesday that he is directing the Pentagon to deploy as much as 1,000 active-duty troopers to assist ship meals and provides to cut-off communities in Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas.
Each Mr. Biden and congressional leaders have stated the federal authorities will seemingly must move supplemental funding to answer the harm and humanitarian disaster that adopted.
