US President Donald Trump defended the government’s response to deadly flash flooding in Texas on Friday, where at least 120 people, including dozens of children, perished a week ago.
During a roundtable discussion after touring the epicentre of the disaster, Trump praised both Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for their response, saying they both did an “incredible job.”
The Trump administration, as well as local and state officials, has faced mounting questions over whether more could have been done to protect and warn residents ahead of the flooding, which struck with astonishing speed in the pre-dawn hours on July 4, the US Independence Day holiday.
A girl sorts through personal items at Camp Mystic in Texas, from where dozens of children died in the floods. (Picture: Ashley Landis/AP)Trump reacted with anger when a reporter said some families affected by the floods had expressed frustration that warnings did not go out sooner.
“I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances,” he said. “I don’t know who you are, but only a very evil person would ask a question like that.”
Some critics have questioned whether the administration’s spending cuts at the National Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which coordinates the US government’s disaster response efforts, might have exacerbated the calamity.
Trump officials have said that cuts had no impact on the NWS’s ability to forecast the storms, despite some vacancies in local offices.
But the president has largely sidestepped questions about his plans to shrink or abolish FEMA and reassign many of its key functions to state and local governments.
“I’ll tell you some other time,” Trump said on Tuesday, when asked by a reporter about FEMA.
Before the most recent flooding, local officials declined to install an early-warning system after failing to secure state money to cover the cost.
The Texas state legislature will convene in a special session later this month to investigate the flooding and provide disaster relief funding.
Abbott has dismissed questions about whether anyone was to blame, calling that the “word choice of losers.”
Search teams on Friday were still combing through muddy debris littering parts of central Texas, looking for the dozens still listed as missing, but no survivors have been found since the day of the floods, when heavy rains sent a wall of water raging down the Guadalupe River early on July 4.
After the president arrived, Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Abbott drove to an area near the river, where Trump received a briefing from first responders amid debris left in the wake of the flood.
The area is located in what is known as “flash flood alley,” a region that has seen some of the country’s deadliest floods.
More than a foot of rain fell in less than an hour on July 4. Flood gauges showed the river’s height rose from about a foot to 34 feet in a matter of hours, cascading over its banks and sweeping away trees and structures in its path.
More than 160 people remain unaccounted for. The dead include 67 adults and at least 36 children, many of whom were campers at the nearly century-old Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer retreat on the banks of the river.
Jon Moreno, 71, a longtime resident whose property on high ground was spared, praised the government response.
He has heard the debate about what more could have been done but said he did not think it would have made much difference, given people’s desire to build along the flood-prone riverbanks.
“It’s unavoidable,” he said. “All those people along the river – I wouldn’t want to live there … It’s too dangerous.”
With Reuters
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