Key events
Donald Trump may dismiss it as a “scam”, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency believes the climate crisis made Hurricane Helene more severe, the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports:
The head of the US disaster relief agency has called Hurricane Helene, which has killed nearly 100 people, a “true multi-state event” that caused “significant infrastructure damage” and had been made worse because of global heating.
The storm killed at least 91 people, according to state and local officials in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. Officials feared more bodies would be discovered.
“This is going to be a really complicated recovery in each of the five states” of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) administrator, Deanne Criswell.
She noted that a 15ft storm surge hit Florida’s Taylor county, where Helene came ashore as a category 4 hurricane late Thursday with winds of 140mph (225km/h), and pointed out that areas of western North Carolina, where search and rescue operations are continuing, recorded 29in (74cm) of rain when the storm stalled over the region.
“This is historic flooding up in North Carolina,” Criswell told the CBS show Face the Nation on Sunday. “I don’t know that anybody could be fully prepared for the amount of flooding and landslides they are having right now.”
Harris intends to visits areas affected by Hurricane Helene ‘as soon as it is possible’
Despite Donald Trump’s insistence to the contrary, the White House says Kamala Harris was briefed on Hurricane Helene’s impacts as she was campaigning over the weekend on the west coast.
Harris has canceled campaign events in Las Vegas today so she can head to Fema headquarters in Washington DC for a briefing on the storm, a White House official said. She has also spoken to North Carolina’s governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, and “contacted” Georgia and Florida’s Republican governors Brian Kemp and Ron DeSantis.
“The vice-president intends to visit impacted communities as soon as it is possible without disrupting emergency response operations,” the official added.
Trump attacks Biden, Harris over Helene response at lengthy Pennsylvania rally
Donald Trump’s rally in Erie, Pennsylvania yesterday stretched for nearly two hours, and began with the former president accusing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris of failing to respond as Hurricane Helene struck the southeastern United States.
“Biden is in Delaware sleeping right now in one of his many estates,” Trump said, before alleging Harris was “at fundraising events with her radical left lunatic donors, when big parts of our country have been devastated by that massive hurricane and are underwater, with many, many people dead.”
Here’s the moment:
Western North Carolina is currently under water.
Kamala is at a fundraiser in San Francisco.
Biden is once again sleeping at the beach.
America’s “leaders” are absent. pic.twitter.com/pV63bl7ENs
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 29, 2024
Harris’s campaign has thus far held back on making similar statements about Trump, but did seize on his comments downplaying the link between worsening natural disasters and climate change:
Biden to address Hurricane Helene damage as Trump seeks to turn storm into campaign issue
Good morning, US politics blog readers. After churning across the southern US and causing massive destruction and dozens of deaths in North Carolina, Georgia and elsewhere, Hurricane Helene appears set to collide with the presidential campaign. Donald Trump will speak this afternoon in Valdosta, Georgia about the storm, undoubtedly with an eye on turning the swing state’s voters away from Kamala Harris. The former president has already made the hurricane’s destruction into an attack line on the Democrats, reportedly accusing Joe Biden of “sleeping” as the storm raged. Speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania yesterday he also accused Harris of turning a blind eye to the destruction.
Biden plans to speak from the White House at 10.30am ET about his administration’s response to the storm, while Harris has announced the cancellation of campaign events in Las Vegas today so she can return to Washington DC and be briefed on the storm’s impact at Fema headquarters. She’ll arrive just after 5pm.
Here’s what else is happening today:
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Harris’s economic policies are more popular with voters than Trump’s, new polling commissioned by the Guardian finds. The vice-president laid out her plans in a major speech last week.
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The vice-presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz is set for tomorrow evening, with both candidates preparing for what is currently the last scheduled debate before the election.
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Israel may or may not be on the verge of launching a ground invasion of Lebanon. We have a live blog covering the crisis, and you can read it here.