Hurricane Helene was a category 4 hurricane which made landfall on the mainland United States on the 26^th September, 2024. The storm made its first landfall at Florida’s Big Bend region at 11:10 PM EDT. From here, it dissipated into a category 2 storm before moving through the State of Georgia. From here, Helene dissipated into a tropical storm, before battering North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The death toll from Hurricane Helene stood at more than 220 as of October the 4^th 2024, with rescue efforts still ongoing as of the time of writing.

This marks a major tragedy for the United States, with Hurricane Helene being the most deadly Hurricane in the mainland United States since Katrina in 2005. Its intensity was not just typified by the high storm surges and extreme wind speeds on the sight of landfall (the wind speeds were estimated at 225 km/h when the hurricane made landfall and the storm surge was estimated to have stood at over 4 meters in some areas), but also by devastating inland flooding in the States of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee, covering an area of over 800km.

In response, various organizations such as the National Guard, the Army and FEMA have been mobilized to help with the relief effort. The relief process, occurring ahead of a contentious election, has been the centre of a political battle, exacerbated by the internet and social media. Given that Africans are no strangers to divisive elections as well as climate disasters, it is in our best interest to view the politicisation of the American response to the disaster with a critical eye. The same process occurring in America may very well occur in Africa if circumstances allow. In contrast, African states have much fewer resources at their disposal to deal with disasters. Therefore, they can ill afford a political battle in a time of crisis.

The estimated damage to property caused by Hurricane Helene stands between $30.5 and $47.5 billion. The recovery effort in the affected states is bound to be complicated because much of the damage affected items that were not insured against flooding. (The CoreLogic group has estimated that $20 billion to $30 billion worth of damage occurred to uninsured property). Considering that FEMA is tasked with providing individual assistance to those who lost property to the extent that their needs are not covered by insurance, this figure represents a significant challenge for the Federal government. The FEMA has already come under enormous political scrutiny on top of the pressure they are already facing to provide disaster relief to hundreds of thousands of Americans. This has raised concerns that the efficacy of the agency and the trust that citizens have in it could be undermined.

The pattern of damage done by this hurricane is atypical, given that much of it did not occur on the seaboard where the hurricane made landfall, but inland in the mountainous areas of the deep south through heavy rainfall caused by the hurricane. It dumped over 151416 gigalitres (one gigalitre is 1000000000 litres) of water over the United States. Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee were hit by half of all the combined rainfall brought on by the storm. This was worsened by the fact that the mountainous regions of the South had already experienced heavy rainfalls in the days leading up to the storm, leading to saturated soil that exacerbated flooding. North Carolina, which was particularly hard hit, saw the equivalent of 6 months of rainfall over the course of the storm. Flood crests in North Carolina broke records of flood severity that have been in place since 1916. In the aftermath of the disaster, not only were countless homes, businesses and critical infrastructure been destroyed, 220,000 people were left without electricity. The areas affected by the storms have been the sites of various campaign stunts in the past week.

In response to the devastation, the relief efforts of the Biden administration have been a focal point of heated partisan debate between the Trump campaign, the Harris campaign and the Biden White House. To begin with, the Trump campaign and the Biden White House have engaged in a public spat over the allocation of FEMA funds and supposed inaction. A further debate has arisen concerning the amount of money given to victims and whether that amount is adequate for their needs. All of this demonstrates that in America, rival politicians are using the disaster response as an opportunity to gain political leverage in the run-up to the election.

To avoid politicking in times of disaster, African people and leaders should not fall into the trap of taking undue advantage of disaster relief to secure cheap political advantages at the expense of the individuals affected but must face such unfortunate occurrences with a sense of unity. Leaders must be expected to put aside their differences for the sake of their respective countries. Politicising crises of this nature can weaken the coordination of the response and divert attention to needless blame-game conversations instead of actions. These disasters should be viewed as humanitarian and environmental catastrophes that should galvanise emergency services and pull the citizens of a country together in support of relief.

Daniel Gibson is a research assistant at the Center for the Study of the United States, University of Pretoria (ACSUS-UP), South Africa. He can be contacted via [email protected]

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