US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris visit several hurricane-ravaged Atlantic coast states Helenea disaster whose management by the Democratic administration earned it criticism from Donald Trump.
Arriving early in the afternoon in South Carolina, Mr. Biden mobilized a thousand additional soldiers for relief operations in North Carolina, the neighboring state where he is expected later in the day.
These reinforcements are in addition to the thousands of rescuers and members of the National Guard, a reserve force, already hard at work on the ground.
The White House announced that President Biden would travel on Thursday to Florida and Georgia, another state affected by the hurricane which left more than 150 dead, where his vice-president will precede him on Wednesday.
Some of these stricken states are electorally decisive, just over a month before the presidential election on November 5.
“We will stay there as long as necessary,” assured Joe Biden in a press release, accompanied in particular by his Minister of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
Reconstruction will require “billions of dollars and years,” warned the minister aboard the presidential plane.
“There are localities that have literally disappeared,” he stressed.
In South Carolina, where at least 36 deaths have been recorded, President Biden spoke with emergency responders and local officials.
In North Carolina, the state with the highest number of deaths with more than 70, President Biden will fly by helicopter over particularly affected areas, around the town of Asheville. He will also go to the emergency operations command center.
The vice-president and Democratic candidate arrived a little later in Georgia, also seriously hit by this large-scale natural disaster.
Upset campaign calendar
The hurricane Helene caused 155 deaths, according to a provisional report, and caused considerable damage due to sudden and devastating floods.
In the south of the Appalachian Mountains, residents found themselves cut off from the world.
In Asheville, entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble. Due to lack of access by road, the authorities are sending relief, water and food by air.
One month before an election that promises to be extremely close, Donald Trump immediately took up the subject.
The former president went to Valdosta, a disaster-stricken town in Georgia, on Monday, where he spoke to the press in front of a partially destroyed building.
“The federal state is not responsive,” lambasted the Republican candidate, after earlier accusing the central government and Democratic authorities in North Carolina of “deliberately not helping people in Republican areas.”
“He’s lying,” a virulent Joe Biden was indignant the same day, denouncing “irresponsible” comments.
The president brushed off Republican criticism of his handling of the crisis, ensuring that he had worked tirelessly, even if he spent the weekend at his beach house in Delaware.
Joe Biden assures that he did not travel before Wednesday so as not to disrupt already difficult relief operations.
Kamala Harris, for her part, cut short a campaign trip to the southwest of the United States to return to Washington and disrupted her schedule for the week to go to Georgia.
According to a survey conducted by Quinnipiac University between September 25 and 29, that is to say shortly before and during the hurricane HeleneDonald Trump would be ahead of Kamala Harris in Georgia (50% of voting intentions against 44%).
He would also have the ascendancy, but less clearly, over the Democrat in North Carolina (49% against 47%).