Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Texas storm prompts Biden visit
President thanks emergency crews for doing ‘God’s work’
HOUSTON — President Joe Biden heard firsthand from Texans clobbered by this month’s brutal winter weather on Friday as he and his wife made their first trip to a major disaster area since he took office.
Biden was briefed by emergency officials and thanked workers for doing “God’s work.”
With tens of thousands of Houston-area residents still without safe water, local officials told Biden that many are struggling. While he was briefed, Jill Biden joined an assembly line of volunteers packing boxes of quick oats, juice and other food at the Houston Food Bank, where he arrived later.
The president’s first stop was the Harris County Emergency Operations Center for a briefing from acting Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Bob Fenton and state and local emergency management officials.
Texas was hit particularly hard by the Valentine’s weekend storm that battered multiple states. Unusually frigid conditions led to widespread power outages and frozen pipes that burst and flooded homes. Millions of residents lost heat and running water.
At least 40 people in Texas died as a result of the storm and, though the weather has returned to more normal temperatures, more than 1 million residents are still under orders to boil water before drinking it.
“The president has made very clear to us that in crises like this, it is our duty to organize prompt and competent federal support to American citizens, and we have to ensure that bureaucracy and politics do not stand in the way,” said homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall, who accompanied Biden to Houston.
Biden was joined at the operations center by Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. John Cornyn, both Republicans, as well as by four Democratic Houston-area members of Congress, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo.
Sen. Ted Cruz, an ally of former President Donald Trump and one of a handful of GOP lawmakers who had objected to Congress certifying Biden’s victory, was in Florida addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Cruz, who has been criticized for taking his family to Cancun, Mexico, while millions of Texans shivered in unheated homes, later said the trip was a mistake, but he made light of the controversy on Friday. “Orlando is awesome,” he said to laughs and hoots. “It’s not as nice as Cancun. But’s nice.”
At the peak of the storm, more than 1.4 million residents were without power and 3.5 million were under boil-water notices in the nation’s third largest county.
Before leaving Houston, the president also stopped by a mass coronavirus vaccination center at NRG Stadium that is run by the federal government.
Post-storm debate in Texas has centered on the state maintaining its own electrical grid and lack of storm preparation, including weatherization of key infrastructure. Some state officials initially blamed the blackouts on renewable energy even though Texas is a heavy user of fossil fuels like oil and gas.
The White House said Biden’s purpose in visiting was to support, not scold.
“I expect that what he will do during this trip today is asking every single person he sees, ‘What do you need? How can I help you more?’” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.
Biden has declared a major disaster in Texas and asked federal agencies to identify additional resources to aid the recovery. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has sent emergency generators, bottled water, ready-to-eat meals and blankets.
Galveston County Judge Mark Henry said in an interview that he didn’t know what more the federal government could do to help because the failures were at the state level. But Henry, a Republican who is the highest county official in the suburban Houston county, said that if Biden “thinks it’s important to visit, then come on down.”
Biden wanted to make the trip last week, but said at the time that he held back because he didn’t want his presence and entourage to detract from the recovery effort.