After devastating tornadoes in Kentucky, US President Joe Biden is due on Wednesday to pledge the federal administration’s support for the state, which still has its dead.
The president, who has left the White House, will first fly over a devastated area, then he will visit two of the most affected localities in this state in the central-eastern United States: Mayfield and Dawson Springs, a destroyed city in 75%.
State of major disaster
Wednesday morning, while waiting for the president, machines were activated among the collapsed buildings in Mayfield to clear the rubble, according to journalists on the spot. National Guard soldiers were deployed to maintain order or help clear and rebuild, alongside volunteers and associations who came to lend a hand to the victims. In Kentucky, historic tornadoes on Friday night killed at least 74 people, but Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear said he expected the toll to rise as more victims could be found in the ruins.
Joe Biden declared a state of major disaster in Kentucky on Sunday, which earned him the thanks of the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, a mark of courtesy that has become rare in an America where partisan divisions are exacerbated. “I salute the administration’s rapid mobilization to accelerate the provision of the necessary resources in the face of this crisis,” Mitch McConnell, senator from Kentucky and leader of the Republicans in the upper house, wrote on Twitter.
“As long as necessary”
Joe Biden has promised all the help of the federal authorities: “We will be there as long as it is necessary to help,” he said Monday in the Oval Office, after a meeting devoted to the exceptional meteorological phenomenon, which has also claimed victims in Tennessee, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas.
“This is what the administration [fédérale] let all the governors know: what they need, when they need it ”, they will have it, added the president. Politically speaking, Joe Biden is not going to conquered land: although Kentucky has a Democratic governor, the state gave Republican Donald Trump a very large majority in the 2020 presidential election.
A link with climate change?
The President of the United States, who has made empathy one of his hallmarks, and who praises at every opportunity the ability of Americans to stick together in difficult times, took care before his departure from do not politicize the visit. “The president sees people through the tragedy they are going through – the pain of losing loved ones, of losing their homes,” spokesman Jen Psaki said on Tuesday. (…) He sees them as human beings, not as people with partisan ties. The message he will send them, clearly and directly, is the following: we are here to help you, we want to rebuild, we will be by your side. “
Joe Biden spoke with great caution about a link between these tornadoes and climate change. In September, seeing the devastation of Storm Ida in New York and New Jersey, he spoke of a climate “red alert” and seized the opportunity to praise his major investment projects. “We have to be very careful, we cannot say with absolute certainty that it is linked to climate change,” he said on Monday, only calling the storms of the previous Friday “unusual”.