With just one month to go till the US Presidential election, Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris has visited North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc last month.
Harris met the governor of the state and volunteers helping reconstruction on Saturday.
On Wednesday, she visited Georgia, another state hit hard by Helene. Harris is apparently trying to show leadership in emergency response, as these are swing states that can determine the outcome of the presidential race.
CNN says Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in late September, left at least 227 people dead in six states.
The US TV network says Helene is the second deadliest hurricane to strike the United States after Katrina, which killed at least 1,800 in 2005.
Harris’s rival, former president Donald Trump, criticized her response at a rally in Pennsylvania. Trump called it the worst hurricane response by a president and a vice president since Katrina, calling it “simply not acceptable”.
Attention is focused on whether Harris’s hurricane response will impact the presidential race, as was the case for President Barack Obama in the 2012 race. His response to a hurricane close to voting day was so appreciated that it served to help his reelection.