President: Nation ready for Florence
Trump lauds response to ’17 series of storms
WASHINGTON — With a powerful hurricane bearing down on the Southeast, President Donald Trump on Tuesday turned attention back to the federal government’s response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico a year ago, deeming it “incredibly successful.”
Puerto Rico’s governor last month raised the U.S. territory’s official death toll from Hurricane Maria from 64 to 2,975. The storm is also estimated to have caused $100 billion in damage.
“I actually think it was one of the best jobs that’s ever been done with respect to what this is all about,” Trump said Tuesday of the response in Puerto Rico, suggesting it was made more difficult by the “island nature” of the storm site.
The president praised the response to the series of storms that battered the United States last year. “I think Puerto Rico was an incredible, unsung success,” he said. “Texas we’ve been given A-pluses for. Florida we’ve been given A-pluses for.”
While defending the handling of the previous storms, Trump urged caution in regard to the new one bearing down on North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
“The safety of American people is my absolute highest priority,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We are sparing no expense. We are totally prepared. We are ready. We are ready as anybody has ever been.”
The president, flanked by maps of the storm and the heads of the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Florence was unlikely to change course before it is expected to make landfall with
130 mph winds and potentially ruinous rains.
“They haven’t seen anything like what’s coming at us in 25, 30 years, maybe ever,” Trump said of the states in the storm’s path. “It’s tremendously big and tremendously wet. Tremendous amount of water.”
Florence is expected to blow ashore late Thursday or early Friday.