Harris, Biden take in Helene’s destruction in separate visits to Carolinas, Georgia

Homes and vehicles that were damaged in a flash flood from Hurricane Helene lie on the side of a road

By Chris Megerian and Colleen Long

Oct. 2, 2024 Updated 2:21 PM PT

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Vice President Kamala Harris praised the workers straining to “meet the needs of people who must be seen, who must be heard” on Wednesday, as she and President Biden surveyed Hurricane Helene’s path of destruction in separate visits to Georgia and the Carolinas.

Biden flew over toppled trees, twisted metal and towering piles of debris in the normally tourist-friendly downtown of Asheville as he took an aerial tour of some of the hardest-hit parts of North Carolina. Nearly 200 miles to the south in Georgia, Harris was in Augusta, where fallen trees littered the sides of the highway, their trunks snapped like matchsticks.

″I’ve been reading and hearing about the work you’ve been doing over the last few days, and I think it really does represent some of the best of what we each know can be done,” Harris said. “Especially when we coordinate around local, state, federal resources to meet the needs of people who must be seen, who must be heard.”

She added, “I am now listening.”

Many highways in the hard-hit parts of North Carolina remained inaccessible. But from his Marine One helicopter, Biden saw flooded roads, piles of shredded lumber and displaced sandbags, emergency trucks and downed power lines. In one area, homes were partly under water and it was hard to distinguish between lake and land.

The role was familiar for Biden, who has frequently been called on to survey damage and console victims after tornadoes, wildfires, tropical storms and other natural disasters. But it’s less so for Harris until now, as she vies to succeed him as president. Both are also seeking to demonstrate a larger commitment and competence in helping devastated communities after Donald Trump’s false claims about their administration’s response.

Biden wore a vest and boots. Before his air tour, he hugged and grabbed the hand of Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer who was at the airport in Greenville, S.C., to meet him. The White House said Biden would also be visiting storm-damaged parts of Florida and Georgia on Thursday.

Manheimer noted that the area’s one operable road could not be shut down for Biden’s motorcade. The White House said Harris had also spoken to the mayor and was planning her own trip to North Carolina in coming days.

Before leaving Washington, Biden made a point of mentioning how an ongoing dockworkers strike could make getting supplies to hard-hit areas more difficult.

“Natural disasters are incredibly consequential. The last thing we need on top of that is a man-made disaster that’s going on at the ports,” the president said. “We’re getting pushback already, we’re hearing from the folks regionally that they’re having trouble getting product that they need because of the port strike.”

Harris’ trip, meanwhile, presented an additional political test in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. She’s trying to step into a role for which Biden is well known — showing the empathy that Americans expect in times of tragedy — in the closing stretch of her White House campaign.

The vice president last visited scenes of natural disasters as a California senator, including when she went to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 and when she walked through charred wreckage in Paradise, Calif., after the Camp fire in 2018.

Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Harris’ campaign manager and former state director in her Senate office, said the vice president uses her experience consoling victims as a courtroom prosecutor to connect with people after tragedies.

She said the trip to Georgia was a chance for Harris “to continue to show her leadership and her ability to get things done, versus Donald Trump and JD Vance who want to dismantle the basic services and the role that the government should play.”

Trump, the Republican nominee, traveled to Valdosta, Ga., on Monday with a Christian charity organization that brought trucks of fuel, food, water and other supplies. The former president accused Biden of “sleeping” and not responding to calls from Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. However, Kemp had spoken with Biden the previous day, and the governor said the state was getting everything it needed.

Biden was infuriated by Trump’s claim, saying Trump was “lying, and the governor told him he was lying.”

The White House said that as many as 1,000 active-duty soldiers, part of an Infantry Battalion Task Force based out of Fort Liberty, N.C., will be called into service to deliver food, fuel and supplies in the region.

“Even before Hurricane Helene hit, I directed my team to do everything possible to prepare to support communities in the storm’s path,” Biden said in a statement. “I mobilized the entire Federal government to bring every possible resource to the fight to save lives and help those in urgent need.”

The death toll climbed to at least 178 people, and power and cellular service remained unavailable in some places on Wednesday.

After viewing storm damage from the air with many roads and highways still impassable, Biden was heading to Raleigh, N.C., for a briefing.

Trump claimed without evidence that Democratic leaders were withholding help from Republican-leaning areas, an accusation that better describes his own approach to disaster relief. He recently threatened that he would withhold wildfire assistance from California because of disagreements with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.

When Trump was president, in September 2017, Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria, which killed 3,000 people. His administration waited until the fall of 2020, just weeks before the presidential election, to release $13 billion in assistance for Puerto Rico’s recovery. A federal government watchdog also found that Trump administration officials hampered an investigation into delays in the aid delivery.

He was criticized for tossing paper towel rolls to survivors at a relief center during a visit there. The gesture seemed to go over well in the room but was widely panned as insensitive to those who were suffering. He also questioned whether the death toll was accurate, claiming it rose “like magic.”

Harris visited Puerto Rico after Maria as part of a bipartisan delegation.

“When disaster hits anywhere in America, our government has a basic responsibility to commit the resources necessary to save lives, accurately assess damage, and rebuild communities,” she wrote on Twitter, now X, in 2018. “We now know that after Hurricane Maria, our government failed Puerto Rico at every level.”

Last month, on the seventh anniversary of Maria, Harris recalled speaking with Puerto Ricans who had lost businesses and homes.

“They didn’t need paper towels thrown at them — they needed real help and partnership,” she said.

Megerian and Long write for the Associated Press. Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Nancy Benac in Washington contributed to this report.