WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden will travel to Florida on Saturday to survey the damage caused by Idalia, which made landfall in northwest Florida on Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane and then crossed the states of Georgia and Carolina.
“I will fly to Florida on Saturday morning,” Biden announced this Thursday during a surprise visit to the Washington headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is coordinating the response to the hurricane.
The president’s visit to Florida promises to raise great expectations, as that state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, is one of the members of the Republican Party who are in a primary race to win the nomination for the 2024 presidential election, in which Biden is running a re-election.
Biden has had a difficult relationship with DeSantis, who has implemented policies that conflicted with the president’s vision on several areas, such as immigration, abortion and the rights of the LGTBIQ+ community.
Idalia, which has developed into a storm, is currently in Atlantic waters about 120 miles southeast of Cape Lookourt, North Carolina, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) stated in its 2:00 p.m. bulletin
Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas continue this Thursday to clear debris and fallen trees after the passage of Idalia, which, after making landfall on the western end of Cuba, made landfall as a strong hurricane in the rural “Big Bend” region of the northwest coast of Florida.
While Idalia did not cause devastating damage after landfall, hundreds of thousands of homes in these states remained without power and roads and port facilities were flooded by the heavy rains, damaging winds and tides.