Vice President JD Vance will travel to Damascus Monday afternoon to see recovery efforts that are underway following Hurricane Helene.
He announced the visit Sunday during an interview on the CBS News Show “Face the Nation.”
“The American people should expect more from their government,” Vance said in the interview. “When there’s a terrible disaster, they should expect food, medicine and water to get to the people who need it.”
Vance originally visited Damascus last October during the presidential campaign. He was joined by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin.
In December Congress allocated $100 billion to help communities in six states recover after Hurricane Helene and Milton. The funding was part of legislation to keep the government running until March.
Gov. Youngkin also proposed a $127 million disaster relief fund for people impacted by Hurricane Helene. If approved, $102 million would come from the final payment from the state’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a program the Youngkin administration ended, a move a circuit court judge ruled was unlawful last November. The future of the program will fall to the General Assembly to decide.
Flooding last September damaged hundreds of homes in southwest Virginia, and the town of Damascus, not far from the North Carolina line, was the hardest hit.
Nearby communities of Whitetop, Green Cove, Independence and Konnarock were also severely impacted by flooding due to Helene.
