The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
President pitches in at Texas storm shelter
HOUSTON » President Donald Trump cupped a boy’s face in his hands and then gave him a highfive. He lifted a girl into his arms to give her a kiss. He snapped on latex gloves to hand out boxed lunches of hot dogs and potato chips.
On his visit to a shelter for storm victims Saturday, the president declared he sees “a lot of love” in the wake of devastation left by Harvey.
“We saw a lot of happiness,” he told reporters after he and first lady Melania Trump greeted children in the kids’ zone in NRG Center, an emergency refuge for people who were forced out of their homes. “As tough as this was, it’s been a wonderful thing.”
It was his second trip to Texas in a week, and this time his first order of business was to meet with those affected by the record-setting rainfall and flooding. He’s also set to survey some of the damage and head to Lake Charles, La., another hard-hit area.
That interaction was missing from Tuesday’s trip to Texas, which was criticized as being offkey for a presidential visit to discuss communities in crisis.
In Corpus Christi and Austin, Trump sat with emergency responders and officials who were coordinating recovery efforts with his administration. The event was marked by Trump’s impromptu speech to supporters — “What a crowd, what a turnout,” he said — instead of images of the president consoling victims or walking among the damage caused by the storm.
Trump at that time kept his distance from the epicenter of the damage, in Houston, to avoid disrupting recovery operations. Still, critics said he failed to adequately express compassion for the families of those killed in the storm’s path or those whose homes were flooded. He raised eyebrows when he predicted his approach would be a model for future presidents to emulate.
Trump later voiced more direct concern for those caught up in the storm. At the start of a speech in Missouri on Wednesday, he said the nation was praying for those in Harvey’s path.
The president reiterated that support in a tweet as he rode to the NRG Center in Houston on Saturday. At the site, he called the federal, state and local response to the disaster “fantastic.”
“I think people appreciate what’s been done,” he said. “It’s been done very efficiently.”
More than 17,000 people have sought refuge in Texas shelters, the American Red Cross said last week. NRG Center opened Tuesday, one of a few mega-shelters housing hundreds of displaced people.
Joining Trump on Saturday were four Cabinet secretaries and other administration officials, including Brock Long, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
A Texas city that lost its drinking water system to Harvey’s floodwaters struggled Saturday to restore service, and firefighters kept monitoring a crippled chemical plant that has twice been the scene of explosions and fires since the storm roared ashore.
Officials in Beaumont worked to repair their water treatment plant, which failed after the swollen Neches River inundated the main intake system and backup pumps failed.
In Crosby, outside of Houston, authorities continued to monitor the Arkema plant where three trailers of highly unstable compounds ignited in recent days.
The storm that is blamed for at least 43 deaths is believed to have damaged at least 156,000 dwellings in Harris County, which includes the nation’s fourth-largest city.