Biden is to meet Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards and local officials about the hurricane, which is providing the president with a tough test just after the chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy on Friday said the state had confirmed an additional two deaths overnight, bringing its total to 25. He said at least six people were still missing, and the death toll would likely climb higher.

The fifth most powerful hurricane to strike the United States came ashore in southern Louisiana on Sunday, knocking out power for more than a million customers and water for another 600,000 people, creating miserable conditions for the afflicted, who were also enduring suffocating heat and humidity.

At least nine deaths were reported in Louisiana, with at least another 46 killed in the Northeast, the Reuters news agency reported.

“My message to everyone affected is: ‘We’re all in this together. The nation is here to help,’” Biden said on Thursday.

Biden will tour a neighbourhood in LaPlace, a small community about 56 kilometres (35 miles) west of New Orleans that was devastated by flooding, downed trees and other storm damage, and deliver remarks about his administration’s response.

He will take an aerial tour of hard-hit communities, including Laffite, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish, before meeting with local leaders in Galliano, Louisiana, the White House said.

Officials who have flown over the storm damage reported astounding scenes of small towns turned into piles of matchsticks and large vessels hurled about by the wind.

Biden has also urged private insurance companies to pay homeowners who left in advance of the storm but not necessarily under a mandatory evacuation order.

Louisiana officials on Friday launched an investigation into the deaths of four nursing home residents who had been evacuated to a warehouse ahead of the hurricane.

The nursing home residents who died were among hundreds of people from seven residential care facilities taken to the warehouse in Independence, Louisiana where conditions became unhealthy and unsafe, state health officials said. A coroner classified three of the deaths as storm-related.

Meanwhile, the New York area was still dealing with crippling floods from Ida.

People across large swaths of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut were coping with water-logged basements, power outages, damaged roofs and calls for help from friends and relatives stranded by flooding.

“No longer will we say that won’t happen again in our lifetime,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said during a news briefing on Friday.

“This could literally happen again next week,” Hochul said, “and we have to be prepared for that.”

She said 100 people had to be rescued from flooded homes and vehicles on Thursday and at least 7,800 people in the state are without power.

At least 15 have died in the state of New York, Hochul said, including 13 in New York City where deaths of people trapped in flooded basements highlighted the risk of increasingly extreme weather events.

Biden approved an emergency declaration in New Jersey and New York and ordered federal assistance to supplement state and local response efforts, the White House said late on Thursday.

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