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President Donald Trump acquired a firsthand look Saturday on the damage from Hurricane Laura on a post-Republican National Convention trip that allowed him to make use of the trimmings of his workplace to attempt to undertaking empathy and management.
His stops, first in Louisiana and later in Texas, got here two days after the Category Four storm slammed the Gulf Coast, leaving at the least 16 useless and wreaking havoc with extreme winds and flooding. While the storm surge has receded and the cleanup effort has begun, lots of of hundreds stay with out energy or water, they usually might for weeks or months as the recent summer season stretches on.
Also learn: As Hurricane Laura batters US cities, NOAA aircraft flies by it to seize uncommon pictures from inside
“I’m here to support the great people of Louisiana. It’s been a great state for me,” he mentioned in Lake Charles. “It was a tremendously powerful storm.” He mentioned he is aware of one factor concerning the state: “They rebuild it fast.”
During the marginally greater than two hours he spent in town, Trump met with officers and reduction staff however not with any of the residents whose properties had been ripped aside in the storm.
He did, nevertheless, get a superb take a look at the intensive damage and the particles strewn throughout town of 80,000 folks, starting with the fowl’s eye view from Air Force One because it got here in for touchdown.
His first cease was a warehouse getting used as a staging space for the Cajun Navy, a gaggle of Louisiana volunteers who assist with search and rescue after hurricanes and floods. “Good job,” Trump instructed them.
Trump then toured a neighborhood with Gov. John Bel Edwards and performing Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, making his manner down a avenue blocked by felled bushes and the place homes have been battered by the storm, one with its complete roof torn off.
Also learn: Hurricane Laura thrashes Louisiana, however damage is lower than predicted
Edwards has mentioned Laura was essentially the most highly effective hurricane ever to strike his state, surpassing even Hurricane Katrina, which was a Category three when it hit nearly precisely 15 years in the past.
“Whether you come from Louisiana or 5th Avenue In New York, you know about Katrina,” Trump mentioned.
The president then flew by helicopter to Orange, Texas, which was the worst-hit space in the state. Several hundred supporters greeted his arrival with Trump 2020 flags, banners and indicators. Among the officers available have been Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and US Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Before a flyover to view broken areas, Trump and different officers visited the emergency operations middle in Orange County to debate storm damage and the federal government response. He was flying again to Washington Saturday night.
Trump has typically struggled along with his function as consoler in chief, failing to undertaking empathy when visiting locations exhausting hit by tragedy and catastrophe. That consists of in Puerto Rico, the place Trump was photographed tossing rolls of paper towel into the group, which some noticed as inappropriately playful, given the circumstances. During a trip to the Carolinas in 2018, Trump marveled at a yacht floodwaters had washed onto a household’s property, telling them, “At least you got a nice boat out of the deal.” And he was caught on digital camera telling an individual he’d handed out meals to “have a good time.”
Also learn: Hurricane Laura strikes towards landfall in southwestern Louisiana
Other instances, Trump has been a supply of consolation. After a twister ripped by Alabama final yr, killing almost two dozen folks, Trump frolicked with households who’d misplaced family members, listening to their tales and hugging them.
Showing empathy has come extra naturally for his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, who issued a press release Saturday saying he and his spouse have been praying for these damage by the storm and promising that “we will be there to help you build back better.”
In a attainable refined dig on the incumbent, Biden praised the response of households in the hurricane-hit states and thanked them for “reminding Americans that no disaster, no single person, no injustice can match the humble, personal, courageous ways that Americans choose decency every single day.”
Laura, which packed 150-mph (240-kph) winds and a storm surge as excessive as 15 ft (4.5 meters), toppled bushes and broken buildings as far north as central Arkansas. More than 580,000 coastal residents evacuated in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
More than half of those that died succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning from the unsafe operation of mills. The hurricane additionally killed almost two dozen folks in Haiti and the Dominican Republic because it barreled towards the US.
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