President Biden said he plans to visit areas in North Carolina devastated by flooding from Helene on Wednesday, but will try to limit his disruption of ongoing recovery efforts.
Mr. Biden said Monday he would travel to Raleigh for a briefing with the emergency operations center, then take an aerial tour of the damage in Asheville.
“It’s too much for me, in terms of interrupting access to help there … to survey the damage other than through the air,” he said, in reference to security measures that that could divert resources on the ground. “Then it’s my plan to travel to Georgia and Florida as soon as possible after that.”
Earlier Monday, the president said he will likely need to ask Congress to pass supplemental funding to respond to the crisis across the Southeast. And the president said he may need to ask Congress to return to Washington, D.C., to accomplish that.
The catastrophic storm wiped out homes, parts of highways and left entire towns across the Southeast without running water, communication or electricity. The death toll, which has topped 100, continues to rise.
The president pledged the full support of the federal government to those affected towns, counties and states as they dig out from the devastation and, eventually, work to rebuild. More than 3,300 personnel from across the federal government have been deployed to support response efforts. Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell is heading to North Carolina on Monday.
“We’re going to stay as long as it takes,” the president said.
Mr. Biden met virtually with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Monday. Cooper said Asheville’s water system “is completely down” and getting water to the city “is going to be critical.”
The president, who was in Rehoboth Beach this weekend, was asked why neither he nor Vice President Kamala Harris were in Washington over the weekend to oversee and command the federal response.
“I was commanding — I was on the phone for at least two hours yesterday, and the day before, as well,” the president told the reporter who asked the question. “I command, it’s called a telephone.”
Harris traveled back to D.C. from the campaign trail Monday morning, earlier than planned, while her Republican rival for the White House, former President Donald Trump, visited Valdosta, Georgia, to survey hurricane damage.
At FEMA headquarters, Harris said she plans to be “on the ground as soon as possible, but as soon as possible without disrupting any emergency response operations, because that must be the highest priority and the first order of business.”
When asked about Trump’s false claim that the Biden administration was not responding to states’ needs in the aftermath, Mr. Biden said, “he’s lying” and it’s “simply not true and it’s irresponsible.”
“I don’t know why he does that,” Mr. Biden said. “Reason I get so angry about it — I don’t care about what he says about me. I care what he, when he communicates to the people that are in need, implies that we’re not doing everything possible. We are.”
contributed to this report.