Biden visits Carolinas to survey damage from Hurricane Helene

President Joe Biden on Wednesday traveled to North and South Carolina to meet with first responders and local officials in communities that were devastated by the hurricane. He landed in Greenville, S.C., took an aerial tour of western North Carolina, and received briefings about rescue and recovery efforts before heading to Raleigh, N.C. Biden called Helene a storm of historic proportion. His administration will deploy up to a thousand active-duty soldiers to reinforce the North Carolina National Guard in relief efforts, he said on social media. 

What is the impact of the storm? Officials in six states on Wednesday reported that the storm killed at least 160 people, making it one of the deadliest storms to hit the United States in 50 years. Hundreds of people were still missing. A Wednesday report in the journal Nature suggested that it could take years to fully account for the number of deaths connected to the storm. Hundreds of thousands of people in six states were without power Wednesday, and many communities were still without water or cell service, according to reports from local media. 

Dig deeper: Listen to Paul Butler’s report on The World and Everything in It about neighbors helping each other after the storm.