President tours ‘total devastation’
Trump visits California in aftermath of wildfires that killed more than 70
PARADISE, CALIF.— President Donald Trump on Saturday acknowledged Californians suffering from twin tragedies, walking through the ashes of a mobile home and RV park in a small northern town all but destroyed by deadly wildfires and privately consoling people grieving after a mass shooting at a popular college bar outside Los Angeles.
“This has been a tough day when you look at all of the death from one place to the next,” Trump said before flying back to Washington.
Trump’s visits to areas of northern and southern California in the aftermath of unprecedented wildfires that have killed more than 70 people gave him what he sought in flying coast to coast and back in a single day — a grasp of the desolation in the heart of California’s killer wildfires.
“We’ve never seen anything like this in California, we’ve never seen anything like this yet. It’s like total devastation,” Trump said as he stood amid the ruins of Paradise, burned to the ground by a wildfire the president called “this monster.”
Before returning to Washington, Trump met briefly at an airport hangar with families and first responders touched by the shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks more than a week ago, which left 12 dead in what Trump called “a horrible, horrible event.”
Reporters and photographers were not allowed to accompany the president to the session, which Trump later described as emotional.
“What can you say other than it’s so sad to see. These are great people. Great families, torn apart,” he told reporters. “We just hugged them and we kissed them — and everybody. And it was very warm.”
He added: “It was tragic and yet, in one way, it was a very beautiful moment.” Trump had made only one previous trip as president to California, a deeply Democratic and liberal state that he has blamed for a pair of overheated crises, illegal immigration and voter fraud.
He also has been at odds with the state’s Democratic-led government, but differences were generally put aside as Gov. Jerry Brown and Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom joined Trump in surveying the wildfire damage.
“We’re going to have to work quickly,” Trump said near the crumpled foundations of Paradise homes and twisted steel of melted cars.
“Hopefully this is going to be the last of these because this was a really, really bad one.”
Hours later and hundreds of miles to the south, Trump found similar signs of devastation in the seaside conclave of Malibu, one of the areas of Southern California ravaged by wildfires that have killed at least three.
Palm trees stood scorched and some homes were burned to the ground on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
At least 71 people have died across northern California, and authorities are trying to locate more than 1,000 people, though not all are believed missing. More than 5,500 fire personnel were battling the blaze that covered 590 square kilometers and was about 50 per cent contained, officials said.
When asked in Paradise if seeing the historic devastation, which stretched for miles and left neighbourhoods destroyed and fields scorched, altered his opinion on climate change, Trump answered, “No.”