President Biden on Wednesday said he’s deploying 1,000 active-duty soldiers to North Carolina to help the state’s National Guard in the response to Hurricane Helene.
Mr. Biden said the troops will speed the delivery of food, water and medicine to isolated parts of the state, which faces the highest death toll from Helene.
“They have the manpower and logistical capabilities to get this vital job done, and fast,” the president said.
Mr. Biden is visiting an emergency coordination center in Raleigh and flying over the hard-hit western parts of North Carolina on Wednesday. Then on Thursday he’ll visit battered communities in Florida and Georgia, according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
The storm killed over 160 people along its 500-mile path, including 77 people in North Carolina, according to the latest count.
The president and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, are under intense pressure to speed recovery efforts, both for humanitarian and political reasons, given the nearing election.
North Carolina is a swing state that will award 16 electoral votes.
Mr. Biden is defending his efforts in the state, which is expected to host a visit from Ms. Harris in the coming days.
“Even before Hurricane Helene hit, I directed my team to do everything possible to prepare to support communities in the storm’s path,” Mr. Biden said. “I mobilized the entire federal government to bring every possible resource to the fight to save lives and help those in urgent need.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Congress will need to authorize more money to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency get through hurricane season, given Helene’s destruction.
“This is a multibillion-dollar undertaking and a multiyear undertaking,” he said. “We have towns that have disappeared, literally.”
Former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, says Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris are falling short. He is carrying out a parallel effort to show leadership in the recovery.
He spoke in Georgia after the storm blew through, and authorized a GoFundMe page for storm recovery efforts that raised nearly $4 million as of Wednesday.
Mr. Trump also linked himself to the distribution of satellite internet systems from Starlink in hard-to-reach parts of North Carolina. Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, the company owned by Elon Musk, a Trump supporter considered the world’s richest man.
“So badly needed in North Carolina, where there is virtually no communication,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Starlink was the perfect answer, and Elon Musk, as usual, came through.”
Some conservatives have used social media to describe the Biden-Harris response as akin to the flubbed federal response to Hurricane Katrina, though various political analysts are skeptical of the comparison.
Steven Greene, a politics professor at North Carolina State University, said he doesn’t think the situation will rise to the level of what unfolded in 2005 when President George W. Bush praised his FEMA chief for doing a “heck of a job” even though things weren’t going well.
“This will not be Katrina in terms of political impact on leaders,” Mr. Greene said. “Most notably, I think the government itself and politicians learned from Bush’s mistake.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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