WASHINGTON — For the fifth time since taking office less than a year ago, President Joe Biden is taking on the grim task of visiting a region devastated by an herbal crisis wednesday to offer comfort and condolences.
Biden was on his way to Kentucky to assess the damage and offer federal aid to those who suffered from the devastating tornadoes that killed dozens and left thousands more in the region without heat, water or electricity.
More than 30 tornadoes devastated Kentucky and 4 other states over the weekend, killing at least 88 other people and demolishing homes, cutting power lines and cutting off citizens from primary utilities when temperatures dropped below freezing in Kentucky earlier this week.
Biden will travel to Fort Campbell for a briefing on the typhoon and to Mayfield and Dawson Springs to assess the damage caused by the typhoon. Although Biden is not expected to give a speech, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president will meet with those affected by the typhoon and local officials to provide federal support.
Biden “needs to listen to other people directly and he needs to offer them his own directly,” Psaki said.
Jeff and Tara Wilson, a married couple from Mayfield, were at the Graves County Exhibition Center on Tuesday, where a distribution center was set up to distribute food, water and clothing to those affected by the typhoon. of the typhoon to get a recommendation and said their house was unharmed.
Asked about the president’s scale in and the reception he will get in this strongly Republican region, Tara Wilson replied: “I don’t know. I think as long as everyone’s center is in the right place, we don’t focus on politics right now. “She said it was “a very positive thing” that Biden was making a stopover, and she and her husband expressed hope that the president would simply help bring the community together.
“This position is as if a bomb has been dropped on him. And everyone wants to come together,” Wilson said. So far, that’s what’s happening. You see everyone recover.
Biden’s to Kentucky comes to the end of a year marked by a remarkable accumulation at times of excessive weather, mainly due to climate change. Just a month after his swearing-in, Biden traveled to Houston to assess the damage caused by last winter’s historic storm. he eventually traveled to Idaho, Colorado and California to examine the damage caused by wildfires over the summer, as well as louisiana, New Jersey and New York before this fall after Hurricane Ida devastated the region.
The blunders presented Biden with compelling and visceral evidence of what he says is the urgent desire for the United States to do more to combat climate change and prepare for long-term blunders, a case he made for his spending proposals to be approved.
The $1 trillion infrastructure bill, signed into law last month, includes billions for climate resilience projects to better protect other people and assets from prolonged storms, wildfires and other herbal disasters. His proposed $2 trillion social spending program, still pending in Congress, includes billions more. the country is moving away from oil, fuel and coal and approaching the widespread use of electric vehicles and blank energy.
The White House spent much of the week talking to lawmakers about the latter. Biden spoke with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a key Democrat, hoping to resolve some of his problems in time to pass a package before the end of the year.
But on Wednesday, Biden will go straight to Kentucky. Five tornadoes hit the state, adding one with an extremely long adventure of about two hundred miles (322 kilometers), the administration said.
In addition to the deaths in Kentucky, tornadoes also killed at least six other people in Illinois, where they hit Amazon’s fulfillment center in Edwardsville; 4 in Tennessee; two in Arkansas, where a nursing home was destroyed and the governor said staff were protective citizens with their own bodies; and two in Missouri.
The president signed two federal crisis statements for Kentucky over the weekend, offering federal assistance for search, rescue and cleanup operations, as well as assistance with transitional and recovery housing for Americans and businesses.
Biden said this week at a White House briefing on the tragedy with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and other senior emergency response officials that the federal government is committed to delivering everything affected states want after the storm.
“We’re going to get there,” Biden said. We’ll be there as much as it takes to help. “
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AP Bruce Schreiner in Mayfield, Kentucky, contributed to this report.
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