Harris pledges ongoing federal support as she visits North Carolina to survey Helene’s aftermath
CHARLOTTE, NC– Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris promised continued federal support and praised the “heroes among us” as she visited north carolina on saturday in the wake of Hurricane Heleneher second trip in four days to the disaster area.
The vice president was in Charlotte for a day after a visit to the state by Republican Donald Trump, who is spreading false claims about the federal response to the disaster.
Harris opened her visit by attending a briefing with state and local officials, where she thanked “those who are in the room and those who are there now working around the clock.”
She promised that federal aid would continue to flow and added praise for the “strangers who are helping each other, giving people shelter, food, friendship and community.”
Despite Trump’s claims that the federal response in the state has been “worthless,” Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper said the state was “very grateful for the federal resources that we have.” FEMA has been on site with us from the very beginning.” he said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
After her briefing, Harris helped pack toiletries into relief kits at a distribution center, where she met Angelica Wind of hard-hit Asheville, who was there to volunteer with her daughter and a friend, even though Wind said her own family was still without power and people were ‘just surviving’.
“There’s a lot of resilience,” Wind told Harris, adding, “We want to make sure people don’t forget about us.”
Harris assured her that the federal government was “here for the long haul.”
Melissa Funderbunk told Harris about driving a truck delivering aid to people in remote Morganton, “where people weren’t going.”
“You are the heroes among us,” Harris said.
Earlier this week, Harris was in Georgia, where she helped distribute meals, toured the damage and comforted families hit hard by the storm. President Joe Biden also visited the disaster area. During stops lasting more than two days in the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia, Biden inspected damage and met with farmers whose crops had been destroyed.
The two have been outspoken and visibly vocal about the government’s willingness to help, and the government’s efforts to date include covering the costs for all rescue and recovery efforts in the Southeast for several months, while states struggling under the weight of the massive damage.
In a letter Biden wrote to congressional leaders late Friday that while FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund “currently has the resources it needs to meet immediate needs, the fund faces a shortfall at year’s end.” He also called on lawmakers to act quickly to restore funding to the Small Business Administration’s disaster loan program.
More than 200 people have died. It is the worst storm to hit the US mainland since Katrina in 2005, and scientists have warned that such storms will only worsen due to climate change.
But in this overheated election year even natural disasters have become deeply politicized as the candidates criss-cross the disaster area and in some cases visit the same locations to win over voters in battleground states.
Trump has wrongly claimed the Biden administration is not doing enough to help affected people in Republican areas and has harshly criticized the response. He has, in the aftermath of Heleneembraced falsehoods about climate change, calling it “one of the biggest scams of all time.”
At a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump renewed his complaints about the federal government doing a “very poor job” in its storm response, with little relief particularly in North Carolina. In fact, Cooper said this week that more than 50,000 people have signed up for FEMA assistance and about $6 million has been paid out.
Biden has suggested that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., withhold money for disaster relief.
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Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Makiya Seminera in Boone, North Carolina, and Meg Kinnard in Fayetteville, North Carolina, contributed to this report.