GO WITH THE FLO-PAS!
Prez pitches in & gaffes in N.C. Asks about his golf resort, tells vic ‘have a good time’
President Trump hit the ground in flood-ravaged North Carolina on Wednesday, handing out meals to now-homeless storm victims and assessing the damage left by deadly Hurricane Florence.
At a church in the hard-hit coastal town of New Bern, Trump helped volunteers distribute foam containers filled with hot dogs, chips and fruit, and got ominous updates from first responders.
“How’s the house?” Trump asked a resident as locals snapped cell phone pictures. “You take care of yourself.”
Trump told another perabout son who waited more than an hour for the packaged meal to “have a good time.”
At least 37 deaths have been attributed to Florence, which made landfall last Friday and led to days of rain and flooding in coastal areas in the Carolinas.
Thousands of evacuees have been urged to stay away from their homes as rivers continued to rise and flooding remains a concern.
“The job you’ve done has been incredible. They’re talking about it all over the world,” Trump told emergency workers. “We want to keep it going that way. Some of the hard work is now.”
The President also not-sosubtly asked specifically an area in North Carolina where he owns a golf course.
“How is Lake Norman doing?” Trump asked. “I love that area. I can’t tell you why, but I love that area.”
Trump National Golf Club is in Mooresville, next to Lake Norman.
The President later traveled to Conway, S.C., where rivers continued to rise, and peanut crops and cotton fields were hard hit.
The death toll included two women who drowned when a sheriff’s van taking them to a mental health facility was swept away by floodwaters,
Horry County, S.C., deputies were driving on a highway near Little Pee Dee River on Tuesday when their
vehicle was overrun by water, the sheriff’s office said. The deputies tried to remove the two women from the vehicles, but were unable to open the doors to reach them.
High-water rescue teams were able to safely retrieve the deputies, but Windy Wenton, 45, and Nicolette Green, 43, could not be saved. Their bodies were recovered Wednesday morning.
Little Pee Dee River is one of the bodies of water officials are watching closely for intense flooding.
In addition, a Virginia man was killed Tuesday after his pickup truck was flipped by rushing water during a flash flood. The truck was found upside down and submerged.
The storm featured many tales of heroism. A man trying to leave a North Cardaughter olina town with his family came to the rescue when he spotted a blind woman in distress.
Michael Cornelius, 34, of Spring Lake, N.C., was in his car with his wife and four kids when they spotted about 20 people on the edge of the water, and a woman appeared to be stuck near a guardrail.
Cornelius and two other men went into the chestdeep water from which Cornelius emerged with the woman on his back.
“I thought I was gone,” Kathy Griffin told KARE-TV. “Because I can’t swim and I’m blind.”
Cornelius said stopping to help was “a no-brainer.”
“You did good, Daddy,” his said from the back seat.
The storm took a devastating toll on animals.
Nearly 3.5 million chickens and turkeys and 5,500 hogs have been killed in the Florence flooding, the fallout from rising rivers that swamped dozens of farm buildings where the animals were being raised for market, state officials said.
The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality said the earthen dam at one hog lagoon in Duplin County had breached, spilling its contents.
Another 25 of the pits containing animal waste have suffered structural damage, spewing the contents into nearby rivers. Large mounds of manure are also typically stored at poultry farms.
North Carolina is among the top states in the nation in producing pork and poultry, with about 9 million hogs at any given time and 819 million chickens and 34 million turkeys raised each year.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper called the storm “epic, disastrous and widespread.”
Trump, meanwhile, was trying to get ahead of any potential criticism, like what he faced after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, a year ago.
“Right now, everybody is saying what a great job we are doing with Hurricane Florence – and they are 100% correct,” Trump tweeted a day before his visit. “But don’t be fooled, at some point in the near future the Democrats will start ranting that FEMA, our Military, and our First Responders, who are all unbelievable, are a disaster and not doing a good job. This will be a total lie, but that’s what they do, and everybody knows it!”
But Trump was quiet about Puerto Rico on the eve of the anniversary of Hurricane Maria’s Sept. 20, 2017, stampede across the island, and announced no immediate plans for an in-person update on recovery efforts.
Trump was roundly criticized for the federal government’s response to the tragedy, for disputing revised death tolls and for flinging paper towels like basketballs to people on a supply line during a visit to Puerto Rico.