The White House announced that President Joe Biden planned to survey the damage in California. Biden will travel to areas of the central coast on Thursday to meet first responders, visit affected towns, and “assess what additional federal support is needed,” the White House said. The president had already issued an emergency declaration on Jan. 8 to free up federal aid and then on Saturday authorized disaster assistance for Merced, Sacramento and Santa Cruz counties. The Associated Press has the story:
Biden to visit devastated areas of California on Thurs.
Newslooks- WASHINGTON (AP)
President Joe Biden will travel to California’s central coast Thursday to visit areas that have been devastated by extreme weather.
The White House said in a statement Monday that the president would visit with first responders and state and local officials, survey recovery efforts and assess what additional federal support is needed. The White House has yet to reveal the areas Biden will visit.
The president’s trip was announced as the ninth atmospheric river in a three-week series of major winter storms was churning through California.
The storms have dumped rain and snow on California since late December, cutting power to thousands, swamping roads, toppling trees, unleashing debris flows and triggering landslides. Monday’s system was relatively weak compared with earlier storms, but flooding and mudslide risks remained because the state was so saturated, forecasters said.
President Biden over the weekend approved emergency declarations for California and Alabama, as both states continue to recover from a bout of natural disasters that have claimed numerous lives.
In separate statements, the White House announced that Biden had declared “major disaster” zones in the two states. The declarations will allocate federal funding for the hardest-hit areas. Biden’s declaration makes funding available to Merced, Sacramento, and Santa Cruz Counties in California, and Autauga and Dallas Counties in Alabama.
The decision by the president comes as both the Golden State and the Yellowhammer State face a mounting recovery from separate types of disasters — yet both equally destructive.
