The president has taken pains to show his commitment to the storm response even as his administration deals with the Afghanistan pullout and other critical issues.
President Biden flew to the New Orleans area on Friday to tour the damage wrought by Hurricane Ida, part of an effort to demonstrate his commitment to the federal government’s storm response even as his administration remains enmeshed in other pressing matters from the coronavirus surge to the aftermath of his Afghanistan withdrawal. Mr. Biden landed in Louisiana shortly before 1 p.m. local time, shook hands with a bipartisan group of elected officials from the state and boarded a helicopter for a multistop tour of the storm’s damage. He landed northwest of the city, in Reserve, La., along the banks of the Mississippi, and then traveled by motorcade to St. John the Baptist Parish Emergency Operations Center in LaPlace, where he received a briefing from officials on the ground. Along the drive, Mr. Biden passed miles of downed power lines and crews of workers repairing them. In the meeting, according to a pool reporter, Mr. Biden acknowledged the difficulties in reconnecting power to consumers across the region, while praising the crews working on the ground. “You’ve got to be frustrated about the restoration of power,” he said, “and I understand.” Ida slammed into Louisiana on Sunday as a Category 4 hurricane, leaving at least 13 people there dead and the power grid in shambles, before its remnants marched up the East Coast and deluged New York and much of the rest of the Northeast, killing dozens more. Despite the departure of the last U.S. troops from Afghanistan on Monday, Mr. Biden has taken pains to show his engagement with the storm response efforts throughout the week. On Sunday, as the storm made landfall on the Gulf Coast, he stopped at the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s headquarters in Washington to give workers a pep talk.
