Triangle/Local

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina legislators have approved an initial $273 million relief package to help address Hurricane Helene’s devastation and recovery in the mountains. The unanimous House and Senate passage on Wednesday came less than two weeks after Helene’s historical rainfall caused catastrophic damage and loss of life. Repubilcan legislative leaders who helped craft the measure described it as a down payment on aid. The bill also mostly follows rule alterations for conducting elections and turning in ballots that were approved unanimously Monday by the State Board of Elections for 13 western counties. But it would now cover 25 counties. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and the board offered input for the bill.

LAKE LURE, N.C. (AP) — The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is again forcefully pushing back against false claims and conspiracy theories about how her agency is responding to Hurricane Helene. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell appeared Monday in Asheville, North Carolina, to assure residents that the government is ready to help. Misinformation has spread over the past week in communities hit the hardest. Former President Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans have questioned FEMA’s response and falsely claimed that its funding is going to migrants or foreign wars. The death toll from Helene has risen to at least 230.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government’s top disaster relief official says false claims and conspiracy theories about the federal response to Hurricane Helene, which are being spread most prominently by Donald Trump, are “demoralizing” aid workers and creating fear in people who need recovery assistance. Deanne Criswell of the Federal Emergency Management Agency tells ABC that “it’s frankly ridiculous, and just plain false. This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people.” She says the unfounded allegations have created a sense of fear and mistrust from residents against the thousands of FEMA employees and volunteers on the ground.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — The death toll from Hurricane Helene has inched up to 227 as the grim task of recovering bodies continues more than a week after the monster storm ravaged the U.S. Southeast. Helene came ashore Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane and carved a wide swath of destruction as it moved northward from Florida. It destroyed homes, washed away roads and knocked out electricity and cellphone service for millions. The death toll could rise even higher. It is not clear how many people are unaccounted for or missing. Helene is the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris has pledged ongoing federal support for those affected by Hurricane Helene as she visited North Carolina. The Democratic presidential nominee met with state and local officials Saturday in Charlotte, where she praised the work of strangers helping strangers. She also helped pack aid kits and met with volunteers, calling them “heroes among us.” It was her second trip in four days to the disaster zone. Republican nominee Donald Trump was in the state a day earlier, and has been spreading false claims about the federal response to the disaster. But Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper says that federal officials have been on the ground in the state helping “since the very beginning.”

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Hurricane Helene has left millions without electricity, water and phone service across the Southeast in the six days since making landfall. Now many people are relying on old-fashioned ways of communicating and coping. In one North Carolina town, local leaders are updating residents at meetings in the town square. Message boards list the names of the missing. Mules delivered medical supplies to mountaintop homes. The death toll has topped 180, and many people remain unaccounted for. President Joe Biden surveyed the devastation in the Carolinas from the air on Wednesday and plans to tour disaster areas in Georgia and Florida on Thursday.

SWANNANOA, N.C. (AP) — Rescuers are scouring the mountains of western North Carolina for anyone still unaccounted for since Hurricane Helene’s remnants caused catastrophic damage across the Southeast. The death toll Tuesday reached 166 people. Residents in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina have been lining up for water and food and hunting for cellular signals after the storm deluged the region. In Augusta, Georgia, people waited in line for more than three hours to try to get water from one of five centers set up to serve more than 200,000 people. President Joe Biden plans to survey storm damage on Wednesday.

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — The death toll after Hurricane Helene left a trail of destruction across the U.S. Southeast has reached at least 133. A crisis is unfolding in the mountains of western North Carolina, where water, food and other supplies are being airlifted into places cut off by mudslides and washed-out roads. Officials worry the death toll will rise further as searchers reach isolated areas. Nearly three dozen people have died in the county that includes the tourism hub of Asheville. The city’s water system has been severely damaged. Forecasters are keeping a close eye on Tropical Storm Kirk, which is expected to become a powerful Atlantic hurricane this week.

PERRY, Fla. (AP) — Massive rains brought by Hurricane Helene have left many people stranded or homeless as the cleanup begins from the monster tempest that killed at least 56 people. Helene has caused billions of dollars in destruction across a wide swath of the southeast U.S. More than 3 million customers were without power Saturday, and some face a continued threat of floods. Helene blew ashore in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday and then quickly moved through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee, uprooting trees, splintering homes and sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams. Deaths from the storm have occurred in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

CRAWFORDVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Helene has made landfall in northwestern Florida as a Category 4 storm as forecasters warn of “catastrophic” flooding along the Gulf Coast. The National Hurricane Center says Helene came ashore Thursday evening in the Big Bend area of Florida’s Gulf Coast. Officials have forecast storm surges of up to 20 feet and warned they could be particularly “catastrophic and unsurvivable” in Florida’s Apalachee Bay. Hurricane warnings and flash flood warnings extend far beyond the coast up into northern Georgia and western North Carolina. The governors of Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia have all declared emergencies in their states.