As recovery missions and repairs continue in North Carolina more than a week later Hurricane Helene Having charted a path of devastation across the western part of the state, Republican state Sen. Thom Tillis called for more resources to bolster relief efforts and compared the damage to Louisiana’s Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“This is unlike anything we’ve seen in this state,” Tillis told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” Sunday morning. “We need increased attention. We need to continue to increase the influx of federal resources.”
Hurricane Helene torn apart the southeastern United States after making landfall in Florida on September 26 as a powerful Category 4 storm. Helene brought heavy rain and catastrophic flooding to communities in several states, including Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, North Carolina being the most affected by the destruction. Officials previously said hundreds of roads in western North Carolina were washed out and inaccessible after the storm, hampering relief efforts, and several highways were blocked by mudslides.
Tillis said Sunday that most roads in the area likely remained closed due to flooding and debris. Water, electricity and other essential services have still not been fully restored.
“The magnitude of this storm is more like Katrina,” he said. “This may look like a flood to an outside observer, but again, this is a landmass the size of the state of Massachusetts, with damage spread far and wide. We need to immediately mobilize as many resources as possible on the ground to complete the rescue operations.”
Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,000 people after hitting the Louisiana Gulf Coast in August 2005, flooding neighborhoods and destroying infrastructure in and around New Orleans, as well as parts of the surrounding region. It was the deadliest hurricane to hit the continental United States in the past 50 years, and the costliest storm on record.
The death toll from Hurricane Helene is at least 232, CBS News has confirmed, with at least 116 reported in North Carolina alone. Officials said they expected the death toll to continue to rise as recovery efforts continued, and an Asheville Police Department spokesperson told CBS News on Friday that their agents were “actively working on 75 missing persons cases.”
On Saturday, the U.S. Department of Transportation released $100 million in emergency funds to North Carolina to rebuild roads and bridges damaged by the hurricane.
“We are providing this first round of funding so that there is no delay in repairing and reopening roads and restoring critical roads,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. . “The Biden-Harris Administration will stand with North Carolina every step of the way, and today’s emergency funding to help get transportation networks back up and running safely will be followed by additional federal resources.”
President Biden previously announcement that the federal government would cover “100 percent” of the costs of debris removal and emergency protection measures in North Carolina for six months.
As North Carolina leaders work with a number of relief agencies to deal with the storm’s aftermath, Tillis urged federal officials to increase resources funneled to the hardest-hit areas of the state. The senator also addressed the surge in conspiracy theories and misinformation about the Biden administration’s disaster response, which have been fueled by Republican political figures like former President Donald Trump.
Trump falsely claimed that Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent in the November presidential election, were embezzling funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that were supposed to support relief efforts in North Carolina towards initiatives in favor of immigrants. He also baselessly claimed that the administration and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, were withholding funds because many of the hardest-hit communities are majority Republican. Elon Musk also shared false statements about FEMA.
“A lot of these sightings aren’t even coming from people on the ground,” Tillis said of these claims. “I believe we need to stay focused on rescue operations, recovery operations, cleanup operations, and we don’t need any of those distractions on the ground. It comes at the expense of the first responders who are working hard and people who are just trying to get their lives back.”
