Hundreds of Canadian workers are staying in trailers and dark hotel rooms as they repair power lines in the flood-battered southeastern U.S.
They’ve joined a massive relief effort after a once-in-a-century storm washed out houses and infrastructure of every conceivable type: roads, power lines, plumbing, communications towers, even a vital mining town.
The death toll from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene remains unknown, but with 600 people unaccounted for, the White House has expressed fear it could be in the hundreds.
It has upended the U.S. presidential election. The storm struck two major swing states, North Carolina and Georgia.
Election administrators say it will take days to assess the damage to voting infrastructure. On the ground, regular campaigning has halted. On the national airwaves, however, partisanship persists unabated.
Donald Trump promoted humanitarian efforts but went a step further: he claimed, bizarrely, that governors in affected states couldn’t reach President Joe Biden, despite those same governors publicly describing their conversations with the president.