Biden deploys 1,000 soldiers as Helene death toll rises to 175

US President Joe Biden has deployed an additional 1,000 active-duty troops to bolster relief efforts in the southeastern US after the region was hit by Hurricane Helene.

These soldiers will join the 6,000 National Guard members and 4,800 federal responders already deployed in six states affected by extreme weather.

It is now known that at least 175 people have died as a result of Hurricane Helene, one of the deadliest storms to hit the United States in recent memory.

Hundreds more remain missing and search and rescue teams are struggling to reach remote areas.

Aid was delivered by air drops and mules. The U.S. government said the reconnaissance effort could take years.

Biden is scheduled to visit the hard-hit states of North Carolina and South Carolina, while Vice President Kamala Harris is traveling to neighboring Georgia.

Both happen to be key swing states in November’s presidential election – and the storm has already intensified politically after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made his own trip to Georgia earlier this week.

Helene hit the US on Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane – the strongest on record, hitting Florida’s Big Bend – before sweeping through neighboring states and downgrading to a tropical storm.

The extent of the rain clouds was unusual and the storm lasted for a relatively long time. Saturated soil from previous rains was also a complicating factor.

The BBC’s US partner, CBS News, reported 175 deaths recorded in six states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Virginia.

The death toll exceeds that of Hurricane Ian, which in September 2022 became another of the deadliest storms of the 21st century, claiming at least 156 lives.

According to CBS, almost half of the deaths caused by Helene occurred in North Carolina alone, where rain fell for six months.

The state’s mountainous regions experienced particularly heavy rains – typical of storms – that resulted in homes and bridges being washed away.

An emergency official in Buncombe County – which includes the hardest-hit city of Asheville – said the state had seen “biblical devastation.”

A volunteer involved in relief efforts told the BBC on Tuesday that he knew someone who “lost everything” in Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and moved to Asheville, only to be devastated again nearly two decades later.

“Looks like it’s been wiped out again,” the volunteer said. “She has no drinking water. No gasoline. The food in her fridge is rotten.”

The extreme weather has also forced the closure of mines in Spruce Pine, a small town that is home to the world’s largest known source of high-purity quartz.

In Tennessee, state authorities are investigating the operator of a plastics factory where eleven workers were swept away by rushing floodwaters on Friday. Five of the employees were rescued. Two were confirmed dead and four others are still missing.

Impact Plastics told CBS in a statement that it monitored weather conditions around its Erwin plant in northeast Tennessee and laid off employees “when water began covering the parking lot and adjacent access road and the plant lost power.” .

But in interviews with local outlets, employees said they were allegedly ordered to continue working at the factory until it was too late for a safe exit.

Jacob Ingram, a mold changer at the factory, filmed himself and four others waiting for rescue as vehicles and debris were swept away by the muddy water around him.

“I was working on impact when the storm hit yesterday,” Mr. Ingram wrote in a post on Facebook, adding that he and 11 others were trapped in the back of a semi-truck. “I’m lucky to be alive.”

Reconstruction could take years, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said. Biden has made it possible for survivors to apply for federal relief funds by issuing disaster declarations in various states.

On Monday, Biden referred to reports that up to 600 people were missing. “God willing, they are alive,” he said. “But contacting us again is no longer possible due to the lack of mobile phone coverage.”

More than a million people also remained without power in some of the affected states as of Wednesday morning, according to monitoring site Poweroutage.us.

Initial analyzes of the storm already indicate that human-caused climate change played a significant role in the amount of precipitation.

After Helene hit late Thursday, record flood levels were recorded in at least seven locations in North Carolina and Tennessee.

In parts of western North Carolina, records that had existed since the “Great Flood” of July 1916 were destroyed.

The Atlantic hurricane season lasts until the end of November. Water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean are currently above average, meaning even stronger storms are possible.