At least 166 people were killed by Hurricane Helen, many remain missing, and more than 1 million people remain without power as rescue and recovery efforts continue from the devastating storm.
Hundreds of people went missing in Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, earlier this week, and 85 people went missing in Tennessee, CNN reported.
Joe Biden will travel to South Carolina on Wednesday afternoon to survey storm damage and is also scheduled to visit North Carolina. Vice President Kamala Harris is also visiting Georgia for a similar purpose. Donald Trump visited Georgia earlier this week.
As of 7:30 a.m. ET, about 1.3 million people were without power across several Southeastern states, according to poweroutage.us, a site that tracks outages. That total includes more than 373,000 people in Georgia, nearly 494,000 in South Carolina and more than 347,000 in North Carolina. More than 40,000 people remain without power in Florida and Virginia, and another 10,000 in West Virginia.
Some areas affected by the storm are also struggling to find drinking water. According to the Washington Post, about 100,000 people in Asheville are without running water. According to the paper, residents are boiling water in the stream to wash their bodies and dishes. Fema delivered a cargo plane loaded with food, water and emergency supplies on Tuesday, CNN reported.
Residents in Augusta, Georgia, have also been without water for three days, with some residents under boil water advisories.
Biden and lawmakers from affected states, including Republican Rick Scott of Florida, signaled earlier this week that they would ask Congress, which is in recess, to pass additional disaster relief funding. But that seems unlikely.
A stopgap funding measure passed by Congress earlier this month will allow Fema to use $20 billion in disaster relief funds more quickly. But about $6 billion of those funds will go toward relief from past disasters, such as the Vermont floods and the Hawaii wildfires, according to the roll call.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said Tuesday that “Congress has provided the necessary funding for the response and we will ensure that those funds are appropriately allocated.”
