Biden authorizes deployment of 1,000 soldiers to Hurricane Helene-hit states

President Joe Biden on Wednesday authorized deployment of 1,000 active-duty U.S. troops to assist in the response and recovery efforts in communities hit by Hurricane Helene.

The White House said in a statement that the soldiers would “support the delivery of food, water and other critical commodities.”

The deployment of the soldiers will also “provide additional manpower and logistics capabilities, enabling FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] and other interagency partners to reach the hardest-hit areas as quickly as possible.”

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris traveled Wednesday to the impacted areas. The president went to South Carolina to talk with first responders and local officials. He later took an aerial survey of parts of the Carolinas damaged by the storm.

Harris, meanwhile, went to Georgia, where she also met with local officials and residents of the areas affected by the hurricane.

The president and the vice president are also going to other affected states, the White House said, with Biden scheduled to go to Florida and Georgia and Harris to North Carolina later in the week.

Many residents of the Carolinas still lacked running water, cellphone service and electricity Wednesday as rescuers searched for people unaccounted for after Hurricane Helene caused catastrophic damage across the Southeast and killed at least 166 people. More than 1.2 million customers still had no power Wednesday in the Carolinas and Georgia, where Helene tore far inland after initial landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

The Water Mission Disaster Response Team, an international nonprofit Christian organization, was on the ground in Boone, North Carolina, helping to ensure residents were provided with safe drinking water.

“Hurricane Helene came through and wiped out towns. We've seen so much destruction of the infrastructure,” Brock Kreitzburg, senior director of the water disaster response team, told VOA in an interview. “People in western [North] Carolina are without power and without water, and many mountain communities are cut off, so they have limited access to food, water and electricity. ... We don't normally see this type of need in the U.S., but the needs are overwhelming here. ... It could be weeks before they get power back into their homes.”

Kreitzburg said his organization has systems that can transform debris-filled water into drinkable water.

“We can draw water from rivers that look like chocolate milk and we can filter that water through our systems, and the end product would be safe water that people can drink,” he said.

Helene crashed ashore late Thursday in Florida and then began its path of destruction across multiple states in the Southeastern U.S. In addition to Florida, the Carolinas and Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia were also affected.

Emergency workers and rescue teams have been working around the clock to clear roads, provide food, clean up debris and look for people who are stranded.

Hundreds of people have been reported missing, officials said.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.