President Joe Biden will visit Florida and Georgia on Thursday to tour areas devastated by Hurricane Helene, the White House announced Wednesday.
The visit will be the president’s first to Florida’s Big Bend area since the Category 4 storm made landfall last week, bringing record storm surge across the state’s Gulf Coast before heading inland and inundating the southeast.
The president plans to arrive in Tallahassee shortly after noon for a brief visit before heading to Georgia, rounding out a two-day tour of states that were ravaged by Hurricane Helene.
While in Florida, Biden will take an aerial tour of the devastation on his way to Perry, where he’ll receive an operational briefing on Keaton Beach once he lands, according to White House officials.
Biden visited the state in 2022 after Hurricane Ian landed in Southwest Florida and in 2021 after a condominium collapsed in Surfside. Both times, he met with Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has said the federal government should focus on helping North Carolina after Helene, saying Florida now has what it needs.
Biden called the governor on Sunday, but DeSantis said he missed the call because he was on a plane. The governor’s office did not respond to a question about whether he would meet with the president, but announced Thursday morning that he will hold a press conference at 11:15 a.m. on Anna Maria Island in the Tampa Bay area.
On Wednesday, Biden traveled by helicopter to view storm-ravaged areas in the Carolinas. He landed in Greenville, South Carolina, and then left again to tour affected parts of North Carolina by air. Vice President Kamala Harris visited Augusta, Georgia. The White House said Harris was planning her own trip to North Carolina in coming days.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, traveled to Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday with a Christian charity organization that brought trucks of fuel, food, water and other supplies.
The death toll from the storm has climbed to at least 178 people, and power and cellular service remained unavailable in some places.
Information from the Associated Press contributed to this report.
This story was originally published October 2, 2024, 2:40 PM.
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