President Joe Biden was seeing up close the devastation inflicted on Florida’s Gulf Coast by Hurricane Milton as he presses Congress to approve additional emergency disaster funding.
Vice President Kamala Harris was spending a second day in North Carolina, which was hit hard by Hurricane Helene, to worship with Black churchgoers and hold a campaign rally.
Mr Biden arrived in Tampa and flew by helicopter to St Pete Beach, surveying the wreckage left behind by Milton, including the roof of Tropicana Field that was shorn off by the powerful storm’s winds.
The US President said he was thankful the damage from Milton was not as severe as officials had anticipated, but he said it was still a “cataclysmic” event for the people in the storm’s path, and that many lost irreplaceable personal items when their homes were flooded.
Mr Biden also praised the emergency services who came from as far as Canada to assist.
“It’s in moments like this we come together to take care of each other, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans,” Mr Biden said after he was briefed by federal, state and local officials, and met with residents and some of the responders. “We are one United States, one United States.”
It was his second trip to Florida in two weeks. He travelled to the state’s Big Bend region on October 3 to survey damage after Hurricane Helene ripped through the area.
The president arrived in Tampa on Sunday and saw piles of debris, tattered billboards, toppled fences, fallen trees and closed gas stations from his motorcade as it drove along a highway. It passed through a neighbourhood where almost every home had water damage and heaps of belongings were on the kerb.
The visit gave Mr Biden another chance to press House speaker Mike Johnson for congressional approval of more aid money before the November 5 election.
Mr Johnson said that officials will deal with the issue after the election because of the amount of time it takes to come up with an estimate. He said on CBS’ Face the Nation that his “guesstimate” is that 100 billion dollars will be needed.
“We’ll provide the additional resources,” Mr Johnson said.
In Florida, Mr Biden was set to announce 612 million dollars for six Department of Energy projects in areas affected by the hurricanes to improve the resilience of the region’s electric grid, the White House said.
Ms Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, visited Raleigh on Saturday to meet with Black elected and religious leaders and help volunteers package personal care items for delivery to victims of Helene in the western part of the state.
She was spending Sunday in Greenville, with plans to speak during a church service as part of her campaign’s Souls to the Polls effort, to help turn out Black churchgoers before election day. She was also scheduled to hold a rally to talk about her economic plans and highlight Thursday’s start of early voting in the state, her campaign said.
Ms Harris spoke at the church about the hurricanes, alluding to the misinformation that some are spreading about the federal government’s response that she and others in the government have said is hurting people who need help the most.
“Now is not the time to incite fear,” she said. “It is not right to make people feel alone.”
With less than four weeks to go before Election Day, the hurricanes have added another dimension to the closely contested presidential race.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said the Biden administration’s storm response had been lacking, particularly in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. Mr Biden and Ms Harris have hammered Mr Trump for promoting falsehoods about the federal response.
Mr Trump made a series of false claims after Helene struck in late September, including incorrectly saying that the federal government is intentionally withholding aid to Republican disaster victims.
He also falsely claimed the Federal Emergency Management Agency had run out of money because all of it had gone to programs for immigrants in the country illegally.
Mr Biden said Mr Trump was “not singularly” to blame for the spread of false claims in recent weeks but that he has the “biggest mouth”.
The president is pressing for swift action by Congress to make sure the Small Business Administration and Fema have the money they need to get through hurricane season, which ends on November 30 in the Atlantic.
He said that Milton alone had caused an estimated 50 billion dollars in damages.
Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week that Fema will be able to meet “immediate needs” caused by the two storms. But he warned in the aftermath of Helene that the agency does not have enough funding to make it through the hurricane season.
However, Mr Johnson has pushed back, saying the agencies have enough money for the time being and that politicians will address the funding issue during the lame-duck session after the election.
Also percolating in the background are tensions between Ms Harris and Governor Ron DeSantis.
As Helene barrelled toward Florida, the two traded accusations that the other was trying to politicise the federal storm response.
Ms Harris’ office last week suggested that Mr DeSantis was dodging her phone calls. Mr DeSantis responded that he was unaware she had called and he grumbled that she had not been involved in the federal government’s response before she became the Democratic nominee.
Mr Biden said he hoped to see Mr DeSantis on Sunday if the governor’s schedule permitted.
“He’s been very co-operative,” Mr Biden said about Mr DeSantis. He added, “We got on very, very well.”
Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday evening. At least 10 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of residents remain without power.
Officials say the toll could have been worse if not for widespread evacuations. The still-fresh devastation wrought by Helene just two weeks earlier probably helped compel many people to flee.
