200 dead and hundreds missing: Helene becomes the deadliest hurricane since Katrina in the US.

The death toll from Hurricane Helene as it passed through the southeastern United States has exceeded 200, making it the deadliest cyclone since Katrina in 2005.

More than half of the deaths occurred in the state of North Carolinawhere entire towns were devastated by the storm.

And the emergency is not over yet, as rescue teams continue searching for hundreds of missing.

At the same time, almost a million homes remain without power a week after Helene made landfall in Florida on September 26.

The increase in the death toll comes while President Joe Biden is on a two-day tour of the affected area in the states of Florida and Georgia.

Their activities included an aerial tour to observe the damage in the city of Tallahassee, the capital of Florida, near the point where the hurricane made landfall as a category 4 storm.

Later, in Ray City, Georgia, Biden told residents: “I see you, I hear you, I grieve with you, and I promise you that we will stand with you.”

“We will stay until they recover,” he added.

The president has approved federal aid by declaring a disaster area in regions of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

Since the emergency began, tens of thousands of people have been left no drinking water service in North Carolina, a state that has suffered some of the most serious effects of the storm, especially in the mountainous area of ​​Asheville.

“I feel like I’ve just survived the Apocalypse,” Nicole Rojas, a resident of the town of Vilas in that state, told the BBC.

not far away, An elderly couple, Jerry and Marcia Savage, died in their bed when a tree fell on his house in South Carolina, according to what his grandson told the AP agency. They were found hugging.

Meanwhile, hundreds of roads remain closed, making it difficult to send aid to the most affected communities.

Given the situation, some volunteers have been helping to distribute aid in various ways, including in muleslike those from the Mountain Mule Packer ranch that has provided some of these animals to help transport thousands of supplies to remote communities.

Michele Toberer, from that ranch, explains that these “steady-footed” pack animals are familiar with rural trails and can navigate damaged asphalt that vehicles cannot.

“They are perfectly prepared for mountain conditions,” he explained.

So far, the nine-mule team has transported hundreds of kilos of insulin, formula, diapers, canned food, cleaning supplies and animal feed, Toberer told the BBC, adding that the biggest challenge they have faced so far Now it is the deep mud left by the floods.

On the other hand, some civilians have made available their private helicopters.

And a special situation is that of the North Carolina prisoners. The storm caused 800 inmates to be relocated Wednesday due to a lack of electricity and running water, the state Department of Corrections said.

They join more than 2,000 inmates who were brought from other prisons earlier this week.

Some relatives of inmates told the newspaper Asheville Citizen-Times who have not been able to contact their loved ones for more than a week.

Across the Southeastern United States, more than 933,000 customers were still without power Thursday, according to the monitoring site Poweroutages.us.

More than 6,700 Army and Air National Guard members from 16 states are assisting in the response on the ground, according to the National Guard.

The president deployed 1,000 active-duty troops to help with relief efforts.

On Wednesday, Biden and the vice president Kamala Harriswho is campaigning for the presidency, toured areas of North Carolina and Georgia, respectively.

Biden said the federal government will cover 100% of all costs for emergency protection and debris removal measures in North Carolina for six months. It will do the same with Georgia and Florida over the next 90 days.

The former president donald trump toured affected areas in Georgia earlier in the week.

More rain is expected in the coming days in parts of the Gulf Coast and Florida, which could complicate recovery efforts.

The Atlantic hurricane season continues until the end of November.

Two storms are currently forming in the Atlantic. It is expected that the Hurricane Kirkwhich is currently a category three storm, creates dangerous conditions for the coasts of Florida and the Caribbean islands, but is not expected to make landfall in the US.

The Tropical Storm Leslie does not currently represent any threat to the country.

The head of US Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, warned earlier this week that if another storm hit the United States in the coming months, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would have difficulty providing aid.

“FEMA does not have the funds necessary to deal with the season and what is imminent,” Mayorkas told reporters earlier this week, referring to the possibility of another hurricane hitting the US this season.

The Biden administration has sent more than 8.8 million meal rations, 7.4 million liters of water, 150 generators and 225,000 tarps to the region, according to Mayorkas.

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