As the president prepares to visit Maui on Monday to survey the damage and console distraught residents, both his government’s response and his personal reaction to the disaster are under intense scrutiny.
And with hundreds of people still unaccounted for days after the fires smoldered, many survivors complained that the recovery process appeared to be crawling along.
She sent her memo to Biden the following morning, and the president called her hours later to talk about what she had seen. The two began discussing options for Biden to visit Maui himself, something Criswell said would be helpful for both the president and survivors in need of reassurance.
Biden’s allies noted that many of the attacks were nakedly political and came from people who deny climate change despite evidence of increasingly frequent and intense natural disasters. They also pointed toStill, the president had opened the door to the criticism by remaining silent for so long, a decision that was out of step with his usual approach to publicly dealing with grief, said Barbara Perry, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
Aides say many of the lessons learned from natural disasters in 2021 have led to operational changes that have helped his administration respond more seamlessly to increasingly frequent extreme weather events caused by climate change. For example, FEMA often pre-deploys assets to an area in advance of a potential disaster, making recovery efforts less cumbersome on the back end.
Sen. Mazie Hirono , one of several Democrats who have publicly praised the Biden administration’s response, recentlyas “incredibly helpful.” Her first call from the administration came early the morning of Aug. 9, just hours after the fires started in Maui, from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who told her that the agency would cover any fire fighting costs incurred.
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