AUGUSTA — Vice President Kamala Harris arrived Wednesday in east Georgia to tour storm damage and receive briefings from federal officials on the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene.
Her visit to the political battleground comes as former President Donald Trump derided the White House’s response to the storm, which carved a ruinous path across the state and killed at least 25 people.
There are still more than 400,000 Georgians without power from the storm, much of the outages concentrated in Augusta, Savannah and Valdosta. The White House declared 41 Georgia counties a federal disaster, and many more could soon be added to the list.
Chris Stallings, director of Georgia’s emergency agency, said early estimates project at least $300 million in damage — but he said that tally will soar as more counties compile their reports of the deadliest storm to ravage the state in decades.
“Everyone’s tired. Everyone’s frustrated,” Gov. Brian Kemp told first responders in Wrightsville earlier Wednesday, at one of several stops in hard-hit rural communities. “But we’ve never seen a storm like this before.”
The governor called up 2,500 Georgia National Guard troops to assist with the recovery and signed an order Tuesday to suspend the sales tax on gas. Some 20,000 Georgia Power workers have fanned out across the state, along with dozens of chainsaw squads clearing roads.
Shortly after her arrival, Harris was whisked to a utility building near downtown Augusta to get a closed-door briefing on the region’s response.
“These are very difficult times,” she told U.S. Jon Ossoff and about a dozen local officials crammed into a second-floor conference room. ”And in a moment of crisis, I think that really does bring out the best in us.”
The storm killed more than 130 people in six states, and officials are still uncovering the extent of the damage. President Joe Biden is set to visit Georgia on Thursday, while former President Donald Trump visited Valdosta on Monday.
The Republican quickly injected politics into the visit to the South Georgia town, calling Biden’s response lethargic and falsely claiming the president was “nonresponsive” to Kemp.
In fact, Kemp said he spoke to Biden on Sunday and praised the president’s efforts to help Georgia. Biden said Trump was “lying, and the governor told him he was lying.”
The collision of campaign politics and disaster response heightened Tuesday when the White House released an initial list of 11 Georgia counties that federal officials declared a federal disaster, a key designation that unlocks key aid.
Kemp, a second-term Republican, and the state’s bipartisan delegation pressed for 90 counties to be included on the list, including much of metro Atlanta. The discrepancy infuriated Trump’s allies, along with some local officials who quickly attacked Biden.
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
“Thousands of Georgians are currently without access to basic resources including electricity, food and water, and dozens have lost their lives as a result of this storm,” Trump spokeswoman Morgan Ackley said. “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have once again failed to lead during a time of crisis.”
Other Georgia Republicans worked with Democrats to lobby the White House to swiftly expand the list. Kemp reached a senior Biden aide with an urgent message. Within hours, 30 more counties were added.
“I called the White House and said, ‘Y’all don’t understand the message you’re sending to counties that have the same damage,” he said Wednesday. “Right now, people think they’re invisible. And they listened to us.”
The recovery marks a crucial time for Georgia and the presidential race. Trump’s campaign views the state as a must if it’s going to win, and polls show he’s locked in a tight race with Harris.
She was set to join her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on a bus tour across Pennsylvania on Wednesday after Tuesday’s vice presidential debate. But she rearranged her schedule as the storm’s wreckage came into clearer focus.
And Biden ordered the Pentagon to deploy as many as 1,00 active-duty troops to assist with Helene aid efforts before he visited North Carolina, where swollen rivers and washed-out roads have hampered recovery efforts.
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