Harris, Biden take in Helene’s destruction in separate visits to Carolinas, Georgia

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris praised the workers straining to “meet the needs of people who must be seen, who must be heard” on Wednesday, as she and President Joe Biden surveyed Hurricane Helene ’s path of destruction in separate visits to Georgia and the Carolinas.

Biden flew over toppled trees, twisted metal and towering piles of debris in the normally tourist friendly downtown of Asheville as he took an aerial tour of some of the hardest-hit parts of North Carolina. Nearly 200 miles to the south in Georgia, Harris was in Augusta, where fallen trees littered the sides of the highway, their trunks cracked like matchsticks.

″I’ve been reading and hearing about the work you’ve been doing over the last few days, and I think it really does represent some of the best of what we each know can be done,” Harris said. “Especially when we coordinate around local, state, federal resources to meet the needs of people who must be seen, who must be heard.”

She added, “I am now listening.”

Many highways in the hard-hit parts of North Carolina remained inaccessible. But from his Marine One helicopter, Biden saw flooded roads, piles of shredded lumber and displaced sandbags, emergency trucks and downed powerlines. In one area, homes were partly under water, and it was hard to distinguish between lake and land.

<bsp-list-loadmore data-module="" class=«PageListStandardB» data-gtm-region=«More election coverage» data-gtm-topic=«No Value» data-parsely-title=«Related Stories» data-gtm-modulestyle=«List B»> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> More election coverage <use xlink:href="#link-caret" xmlns:xlink=«http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink»> </bsp-custom-headline> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> Harris and