US: Kamala Harris to visit hurricane-struck North Carolina

Kamala Harris is set to visit North Carolina to survey the damage after Hurricane Helene. Her trip comes after that of Donald Trump, who has been accused of lying about the federal response to the crisis.

Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee for November elections, will travel to the Southeastern US state of North Carolina on Saturday, days after Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc in the region.

Her visit comes one day after a visit by Republican nominee Donald Trump, who used his trip to disparage the Biden administration's handling of the disaster and repeat his declared view that climate change is a "scam."

Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in Florida on September 26 and swept over several states before dissipating three days later, claimed more than 220 lives, making it the deadliest US mainland storm since Katrina in 2005.

More than half of the deaths from Helene were in North Carolina.

Proactive response

Harris' trip comes after a similar visit to the state of Georgia, which also suffered severe damage from the hurricane. 

In Georgia, Harris helped distribute meals and tried to give comfort to families that were hard-hit by the storm.

Harris said this week that she wanted to "personally take a look at the devastation, which is extraordinary."

The Biden administration, in which Harris is vice president,  has so far pledged to cover all rescue and recovery costs across the entire Southeast for several months.

President Joe Biden has also called on lawmakers to quickly restore funding to the Small Business Administration's disaster loan program.

Biden also visited the disaster zone during a two-day trip in the Carolinas, Florida and Georgia.

Trump claims

The realities of the federal government's response to the disaster contrast strongly with remarks made by Trump on his visits this week to the region.

Trump claimed the Biden administration was failing to do enough to help hurricane victims in Republican areas.

During a stop in Fayetteville, North Carolina on Thursday, Trump once more criticized the federal response and cited "lousy treatment to North Carolina in particular."

That goes in the face of comments by the state's Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, who said more than 50,000 people in the state have been registered for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Cooper said some $6 billion (€5.5 billion) had already been paid out in financial aid.

Trump also continued to make false claims about climate change, calling it "one of the great scams of all time."

In fact, climate scientists say that natural weather disasters on the scale of Helene are made many times more likely by human-induced global warming. 

Country music star Dolly Parton donates a million

Meanwhile, the country music star Dolly Parton, who was born in Tennessee — another state badly hit by the hurricane — has said she will donate $1 million (approx €910,600) for relief efforts.

Parton, 78, said the money would be given to the Mountain Ways Foundation, a nonprofit organization that aims to provide fast assistance to Hurricane Helene flood victims.

"These are special people here; they're my people," Parton said while announcing her donation in Newport, Tennessee.

tj/rm (AP, Reuters)