US President Joe Biden traveled to Florida on Saturday to assess the damage caused by Hurricane Idalia in the state. Together with his wife Jill, he visited, among other things, the badly affected place of Live Oak, from where he flew over the area in a helicopter and was updated by the mayor, among others.
Although Biden had indicated on Friday that he also intended to speak to Republican governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, which often happens when the president visits a disaster area, that meeting did not take place.
According to a DeSantis spokesperson, “security arrangements for such a meeting did not materialize in time.” But observers suspected that the Republican feared image damage as a result of a photo opportunity with Biden. DeSantis is second in the polls for the Republican nomination, but is well behind his closest rival, Donald Trump. Governor DeSantis and President Biden spoke by phone about the storm several times during the week.
During his visit, Biden said he was not disappointed that DeSantis was missing. “He did help plan the visit,” the US president told reporters. “He decided where we should go so that we would cause as little disruption as possible.” Biden said he did not know why the meeting did not take place. After the passage of Hurricane Ian, in October 2022, DeSantis and Biden did meet. Ian had killed nearly 150 people.
DeSantis spent the day some 50 miles south, visiting several small communities along the Florida coast.
A dead person
According to the authorities, there has been at least one death in Florida as a result of Hurricane Idalia, which brought wind speeds of up to 200 kilometers per hour. Thousands of homes in the state were flooded and several villages were cut off from the rest of the country by the high water.
A week ago, Biden also traveled to the state of Hawaii, which has been hit by major fires. More than a hundred people died there. After that visit, the president said that it can no longer be denied that the climate crisis leads to these kinds of extreme weather events.
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2023-09-02 23:39:47
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