By JOSH BOAK and SEUNG MIN KIM
FORT MYERS, Florida (AP) — President Joe Biden surveyed the devastation of hurricane-ravaged Florida on Wednesday, promising to marshal the facility of the federal authorities to assist rebuild as he comforted native residents alongside Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, a possible 2024 foe.
Both males declared they have been placing politics apart for now.
“Today we have one job and only one job, and that’s to make sure the people in Florida get everything they need to fully, thoroughly recover,” Biden stated on this southwestern Florida group that bore the brunt of Ian’s assault.
“It’s going to take a hell of a long time, hopefully without any snags in the way,” he stated. “Later, after the television cameras have moved on, we’re still going to be here with you.”
Earlier, DeSantis and his spouse Casey greeted the president and first woman Jill Biden as they arrived at Fisherman’s Wharf, the place properties and enterprise lay in ruins amid particles and muck after Hurricane Ian tore via final week.
Biden and DeSantis spoke by themselves subsequent to a ship the storm had lifted into a restaurant, then moved individually amongst native residents hit laborious by the hurricane. Biden embraced one lady.
The scope of the devastation was immense. Biden’s motorcade drove by wind-shorn bushes, some uprooted, others with branches pulled backwards by the storm. Fields off the freeway have been nonetheless flooded, forming stagnant lagoons.
Signs for shops and eating places have been blown out; ruined mattresses have been piled in neighborhood streets, a constructing was tipped to the aspect like a chess piece. An armada of staff and restore vehicles struggled with restoration.
Hurricane Ian has resulted in no less than 84 folks confirmed lifeless, together with 75 in Florida, and many individuals nonetheless look ahead to energy to be restored. Ian’s 150 mph winds and punishing storm surge final week took out energy for two.6 million in Florida. Many folks nonetheless are unable to get meals and water.
At a briefing with native officers, Biden emphasised that the rebuilding effort will take months or years.
“The only thing I can assure you is that the federal government will be here until it’s finished,” Biden stated.
With the midterm elections only a month away, the disaster was bringing collectively political rivals in frequent trigger no less than for a time.
DeSantis, in addition to Sen. Rick Scott, have been amongst Biden’s most distinguished Republican critics. Both, together with Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and different state and native officers, have been accompanying the president on Wednesday.
Before the journey, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre advised it might be inappropriate for them to concentrate on political variations.
“There will be plenty of time, plenty of time, to discuss differences between the president and the governor — but now is not the time,” Jean-Pierre advised reporters at a White House briefing. “When it comes to delivering and making sure that the people of Florida have what they need, especially after Hurricane Ian, we are one. We are working as one.”
Before the storm hit, the president had supposed to go to the Florida cities of Orlando and Fort Lauderdale final week, the place he deliberate to emphasize his efforts to strengthen Social Security and Medicaid. Biden has accused Scott of wanting to finish each packages by proposing that federal legal guidelines ought to expire each 5 years, though the Florida senator has stated he desires to protect the packages.
Biden and DeSantis have had a mess of variations lately over find out how to combat COVID-19, immigration coverage and extra. In latest weeks, they tussled over the governor’s determination to place migrants on planes or buses to Democratic strongholds, a observe that Biden has known as “reckless.”
The hurricane modified the aim and tone of Biden’s first journey to Florida this 12 months, which was in an space devastated by winds and surging water . Boats, together with enormous yachts, have been capsized and hurled inland.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell advised reporters on Air Force One that the price of rebuilding will likely be enormous: “It will certainly be in the billions and perhaps one of the more costly disasters that we’ve seen in many years.”
DeSantis made a degree Wednesday of praising FEMA together with native and state companies, saying coordination amongst them has been distinctive throughout Ian’s aftermath.
“There’s been less bureaucracy holding us back in this one than probably any one I’ve ever seen,” DeSantis stated a briefing in Matlacha. He gave a 30-minute noon briefing on hurricane restoration efforts, together with information that operating water had been restored via a lot of the affected zone.
The White House message of bipartisan unity marks a distinction from Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, who at occasions threatened to withhold help to Democratic officers who criticized him, together with Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Andrew Cuomo of New York.
Trump threatened to withhold federal cash from California after wildfires, saying its state officers have been in charge for the lethal conflagrations, tweeting in 2018: “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”
Politicians’ responses to pure disasters have the facility to make or break political careers.
As Florida’s governor for eight years, Jeb Bush maintained a gradual response to a parade of hurricanes and was rewarded with sky-high approval rankings. The response by President George W. Bush and Louisiana lawmakers to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 hangs over their legacies.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the Republican who welcomed President Barack Obama to his state to survey Hurricane Sandy harm simply days earlier than the 2012 normal election, stated that in pure disasters “the best political strategy is to have no political strategy, to do your job.”
___
Kim reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Zeke Miller in Washington, Bobby Caina Calvan in Fort Myers and Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Florida, contributed.
___
For extra AP protection of Hurricane Ian: apnews.com/hub/hurricanes
Source: www.bostonherald.com”