At least 166 people have died from Hurricane Helene, many are still missing and more than 1 million people remained without power as rescue and recovery efforts continued from the devastating storm.
Hundreds of people were missing in Buncombe county, home to Asheville, earlier this week, and 85 people were missing in Tennessee, CNN reported.
Joe Biden will travel to both North and South Carolina on Wednesday to survey the storm damage. The vice-president, Kamala Harris, will travel to Georgia to do the same. Donald Trump traveled to Georgia earlier in the week.
Nearly 1.3 million people were without power in several south-eastern states as of 7.30am ET, according to the site poweroutage.us, which 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 were still without power in Florida and Virginia, as well as an additional 10,000 people in West Virginia.
Several areas affected by the storm are also struggling to find drinking water. In Asheville, North Carolina, around 100,000 people were without running water, according to the Washington Post. Residents are boiling water and washing themselves and dishes in creeks, the Post reported. Fema delivered a cargo plane of food, water and emergency supplies on Tuesday, CNN reported.
Residents in Augusta, Georgia, also have not had running water for three days and several are under a boil water advisory.
Biden and some lawmakers from affected states, including Rick Scott, a Republican from Florida, suggested earlier this week he would call on Congress, which is on recess, to pass additional disaster relief funding. But that does not seem likely.
A stopgap funding measure Congress passed earlier this month allows Fema to more quickly use $20bn in disaster relief funds. About $6bn of those funds, however, were expected to be used to address relief for previous disasters, including Vermont flooding and Hawaii wildfires, according to Roll Call.
“Congress has previously provided the funds it needs to respond, so we will make sure that those resources are appropriately allocated,” the House speaker, Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said on Tuesday.
