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STORY: Tens of thousands of people in North Carolina did not have running water on Wednesday (October 2).

It’s been six days since Hurricane Helene carved a path through the U.S. South, killing scores of people.

Now residents of hard-hit Asheville have been warned to expect dry faucets for days or even weeks while pipes are repaired.

Search-and-rescue teams have been helping to deliver water – and comb through wreckage for the missing.

Paul Tartar is the leader of the federal FEMA team at Texas A&M Task Force 1.

"This is obviously a major disaster, it really affects everybody here, especially the locals that are impacted. It's it's beyond anything I've ever seen."

Survivors in the town of Canton, west of Asheville, have been left to pick up the pieces of lives ruined.

Martika Stansell and her family are taking stock of what’s left.

“That was my son’s room – he lost everything. Everything below the waist was lost.”

“We have got to rebuild everything. Our floors are bad, my kids lost everything. We’re waiting on FEMA to approve our application to hopefully get a hotel voucher. We’re staying at my mom’s right now, but, eight people in a two bedroom house - it’s super crowded, with four dogs too.”

Ashley Wells, another resident of Canton, says no one there expected how bad Helene got.

“Well, out of all the floods that have come through here, in the seventy-one and seventy-three years they’ve lived here, it never came up past the front step of the house. This one came through the house. So, it was unexpected. I mean, we did - it was, we were not told it was gonna be worse than Fred. Fred was like, the disaster here. So, really nobody was that prepared."

"We haven’t seen FEMA, we haven’t seen Red Cross, we haven’t seen Hearts with Hands - we’ve seen no agencies come through here. Most people drive through with their cameras out, filming us like we’re animals in a zoo, and don’t stop."

"You’ve got some nice people, that are stopping, but majority, no. We’ve seen no help through here."

While residents like Wells say they haven’t seen assistance, the White House says more than $10 million had been provided directly to those affected by Helene.

Wells also said she’s also wary of leaving behind what she still has.

“We could go to the shelter, but, I mean… animals don’t want to go to the shelter, why do we? You know, and not to mention the fact that, if you get away from your stuff a little bit, people are coming through and picking through it. And I don’t know why they wanna pick through it, but I mean - they are.”

President Joe Biden visited the state Wednesday to survey from a helicopter its washed out roads, smashed bridges and downed power lines.

He said earlier this week he may ask Congress to return to Washington to pass supplemental funding for aid.

The White House said more than 3,500 federal workers are involved in response efforts in affected states.

Former President Donald Trump, a Republican running against Vice President Kamala Harris in this year's presidential election, has falsely claimed that Biden has been unresponsive to the hurricane's destruction.

Local officials have denied that allegation.