PALM BEACH (CN) — The White House said Tuesday that President Donald Trump will visit hurricane-stricken Florida on Thursday, but said the details of the trip are still to be determined.
About 10 million people — half of Florida's population — remained without electricity Tuesday, two days after Hurricane Irma roared across the length of the state. Seven deaths in the state have been blamed on Irma.
Trump visited Texas and Louisiana after Hurricane Harvey struck both states in late August.
On Tuesday afternoon, the president signed a measure increasing the Department of Health and Human Services annual cap on aid for people displaced by natural disasters. The measure increases the cap from $1 million to $25 million for fiscal years 2017 and 2018.
Meanwhile, the remnants of Hurricane Irma forced the cancellation of nearly 200 flights at the world's busiest passenger airport on Tuesday and is blamed for three deaths in South Carolina and two in Georgia.
Tuesday's cancellations brought to 1,300 the number of trips interrupted at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
The airport remained operational as heavy rain and strong winds periodically swept through the region, with flights taking off and landing.
But some passengers were forced to spend the night at the airport, according to spokesman Andrew Gobeil.
The weakening, but still fierce storm slammed into Georgia and South Carolina Monday after causing catastrophic damage in Florida. A number of tornados were reported as a storm surge 6 feet above normal and coinciding with high tide, inundated Charleston, South Carolina and several barrier islands on the Georgia and South Carolina coasts.
On Wednesday, as coastal residents returned home from evacuations and joined their neighbors in assessing the damage, the tropical storm continued to wreak havoc in northwestern South Carolina and northern Georgia.
So far, three people are known to have been killed by Irma in South Carolina. The first recorded death was Charles Saxon, 57, who was struck by a tree limb while clearing debris outside his Calhoun Falls home in Abbeville County.
A short time later, 21-year-old Zhen Tain died in a crash on a wet and windy Interstate-77 just east of Columbia, and Sumter County Coroner Robert Baker Jr. said 54-year-old William McBride was pronounced dead Tuesday of carbon monoxide poisoning after he had run a generator inside his mobile home for several hours, with only a single window cracked for ventilation.
In Georgia, a man in his 50s was killed in suburban Atlanta when a tree fell on hsi house while he was sleeping. A Forsyth County woman was killed when a tree fell on her vehicle while it was parked in a private driveway.
Also on Tuesday, Southern Florida continued to stagger from rescue toward recuperation. Florida Power and Light said it has organized the largest restoration brigade ever assembled in the United States: more than 19,000 line workers, arborists and other technicians, though power may not be restored for weeks to all of the more than 6 million Floridians still in the dark.