By Zach Montague and Jacey Fortin
President Joe Biden on Wednesday took an aerial tour of the devastation from Hurricane Helene and ordered the Pentagon to deploy up to 1,000 active-duty troops to assist with aid efforts as rescue workers continued dangerous rescue missions in remote mountain communities.
Biden’s visit to the Carolinas came as the death toll from the storm rose to more than 175 people on Wednesday, making Helene the deadliest hurricane to strike the mainland United States since Katrina, which caused nearly 1,400 deaths in 2005, according to statistics from the National Hurricane Center.
Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, told reporters traveling with the president that the costly relief effort so far could burn through much of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s funding for the rest of the year, leaving the agency unprepared for another major disaster this season unless Congress returns from recess to authorize more funds.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas told reporters. “We are expecting another hurricane hitting — we do not have the funds, FEMA does not have the funds, to make it through the season.”
On Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said lawmakers would not return to Washington before the November election to consider an emergency spending package.
“We wouldn’t even conceivably have the request ready before we get back in November,” Johnson said in an interview, noting that it would take time to assess the damage and calculate the costs of recovery and rebuilding. “There’s no necessity for Congress to come back.”
After briefly meeting with a group of officials in South Carolina, including Sen. Lindsey Graham and Gov. Henry McMaster, Biden surveyed some of the hardest-hit portions of North Carolina from the air while rescue teams worked below. He flew over Asheville and Lake Lure, North Carolina, alongside the state’s governor, Roy Cooper, and Asheville’s mayor, Esther Manheimer.
The decision to observe the scene from the air was informed by the severe conditions on the ground, in which more than 1,200 personnel from FEMA and other agencies were still looking for survivors and racing to bring in food and fuel, Mayorkas told reporters.
“What he does not want to do is in any way impair or impede the rescue that we are providing,” he said.
While the president took in the destruction in North Carolina, Vice President Kamala Harris visited the Augusta Emergency Operations Center in Georgia to thank a group of emergency medical workers assembled there.
“You do this work in these moments of crisis, around the clock, with an intention and with a level of care and love for community that is unmatched,” Harris told the group.
Biden will meet with officials in Florida and Georgia on Thursday.
The extent of the wreckage across the Southeast was still coming to light nearly a week after Helene made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Across the mountains of southern Appalachia, many residents remain isolated by muddy debris and washed-out roads.
Although the storm did extensive damage in parts of Florida, many of the hardest-hit places were 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.
Broken water systems, downed power lines and poor cellphone service are complicating rescue and recovery efforts. The active-duty troops Biden is deploying from Fort Liberty in Fayetteville, North Carolina, will join more than 6,000 National Guard members and 4,800 federal aid workers already spread out across devastated parts of the Southeast.
At least 183 people in six states, from Florida to Tennessee, have died because of the hurricane, and it remains unclear how many people are missing, officials have said.
Thousands of emergency workers, including volunteer groups such as World Central Kitchen and the Salvation Army, have been racing to clear blocked roads and push through — or fly over — soggy debris to deliver food and water, including with airdrops made from helicopters and cargo planes.
In Asheville, a fast-growing city in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, water access remains a stubborn problem. The University of North Carolina Asheville has been without power, water and internet service since last week, and the school said Tuesday that classes would not resume until the end of the month.
More than 1 million electricity customers from Florida to West Virginia were still without power Wednesday morning, according to the tracking site PowerOutage.us.
While state officials across the Southeast are still focused on immediate needs, including search-and-rescue efforts and road repairs, they have also made clear that there will be no quick fix for the region.
“This disaster is unlike anything our state has ever experienced,” said William Ray, North Carolina’s emergency management director.
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