Harris distributes meals and assesses damage caused by Hurricane Helene

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris handed out meals, hugged a shaken family and surveyed Hurricane Helen’s “extraordinary” path of destruction through Georgia on Wednesday as she left the campaign trail election to promise federal aid and personally witness scenes of toppled trees, damaged homes and upended lives.

She went to Augusta, where power lines stretched along the sidewalk and utility poles were cracked and broken. The vice president spoke from a lectern erected in front of a house with a fallen tree teetering on its roof, paying tribute to those who died in the disaster while trying to project a tone of unity and hope for the communities today faced with long and costly reconstructions.

Harris and President Joe Biden, who visited the Carolinas on Wednesday, sought to demonstrate their commitment and competence to help communities devastated after former Republican President Donald Trump’s false claims about their administration’s response.

Harris said she wanted to “personally take a look at the devastation, which is extraordinary.” She expressed admiration for the way “people come together. People help complete strangers.

The Democratic presidential candidate said it shows that “the vast majority of us have much more in common than what separates us,” an echo of a phrase she frequently uses on the campaign trail.

Before delivering his speech, Harris could be seen kissing and huddling with a family of five dealing with the aftermath of the storm.

“We’re in this for the long haul,” she said.

Harris also visited a Red Cross relief center and received a briefing from local officials, praising those working to “meet the needs of people who need to be seen and heard.”

“I’m listening now,” she said.

Brittany Smith, an Augusta resident, walked away from the distribution center with Styrofoam food boxes and fruit bowls, beaming at having taken a photo with the vice president. She said there was a hole in her roof and she had to send her children to live elsewhere because it wasn’t safe.

Harris’ visit, she said, “made things better” despite the difficulties.

Smith said she was encouraged that Harris was going to town instead of just appearing on television. “He’s a person. She is not just a voice.

About 200 miles north in the Carolinas, Biden was also monitoring the storm’s aftermath. With many area roads inaccessible, he flew a helicopter over toppled trees, twisted metal and towering piles of debris in normally touristy downtown Asheville.

From the air, Biden saw flooded roads, piles of shredded wood and displaced sandbags, emergency trucks and downed power lines. In one area, houses were partly submerged and it was difficult to distinguish between a lake and land.

Visits to disaster areas are a familiar responsibility for Biden, who has often been called upon to assess damage and comfort victims after tornadoes, wildfires and tropical storms. But it was Harris’ first visit to a disaster zone as vice president.

Because of the destruction Biden found himself in on Wednesday, he was unable to go around and personally comfort people like Harris did in Georgia.

Biden wore a vest and boots, and before his air tour, he shook and grabbed the hand of Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer, who was at the Greenville, South Carolina, airport to meet him. The mayor, with visible emotion. said they could not close the only passable road in the area for Biden’s motorcade.

Biden will return to the region on Thursday to visit Florida and Georgia, and Harris plans her own trip to North Carolina in the coming days — as Helen’s aftermath continues to pose a political and humanitarian test for the administration .

Before leaving Washington, Biden made a point of mentioning how an ongoing dockworkers’ strike could make it harder to get supplies to hard-hit areas.

“Natural disasters have incredibly serious consequences. The last thing we need on top of that is a man-made disaster happening at the ports,” he said. “We are already experiencing resistance, people in the region are telling us that they are having difficulty getting the products they need due to the strike at the ports. »

Harris is under particular scrutiny as her White House bid enters its home stretch, and Helen’s path includes the battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina.

The vice president last visited natural disaster scenes as a senator from California, including when she visited Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 and when she drove through charred wreckage in Paradise, California after the 2018 Camp Fire.

Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Harris’ campaign manager and former state director of her Senate office, said the vice president uses her experience consoling victims as a courtroom prosecutor to connect with people after tragedies.

She said the Georgia trip was a chance for Harris “to continue to show her leadership and her ability to get things done, in the face of Donald Trump and JD Vance who want to dismantle basic services and the role that government should play.” play “.

Trump, the Republican nominee, traveled to Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday with a Christian charity that brought truckloads of fuel, food, water and other supplies. The former president accused Biden of “sleeping” and not responding to calls from Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp. However, Kemp had spoken with Biden the day before and the governor said the state was getting everything it needed.

Biden was furious at Trump’s claims, saying Trump was “lying, and the governor told him he was lying.”

The storm’s death toll rose to at least 178 people, and electricity, running water and cell service remained unavailable in some places. Later Wednesday, Biden flew to Raleigh, North Carolina, for a briefing with officials and called Helene a “storm of historic proportions.”

“The nation supports you,” Biden said.

The tone of Harris and Biden was very different from that of Trump, who claimed without evidence that Democratic leaders were withholding aid from Republican areas. He recently threatened to withhold wildfire aid to California due to disagreements with Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom.

When Trump was president, Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria, which killed 3,000 people. His administration waited until fall 2020, just weeks before the presidential election, to release $13 billion in recovery aid to Puerto Rico. A federal government watchdog also found that Trump administration officials obstructed an investigation into delays in delivering the aid.

Weissert reported from Washington.