US President Joe Biden visited a tornado-ravaged Kentucky town on Wednesday, surveying the widespread damage and consoling survivors of the twisters that took scores of lives.
The disaster, which killed at least 74 people in Kentucky and 14 elsewhere, has seen Biden respond in his familiar role as consoler-in-chief. He promised to bring the might of the federal government to rebuild devastated communities that suffered billions of dollars in damage.
In downtown Mayfield, he walked past scene after scene of the tornado's rampage, including piles of bricks and scattered boards where structures used to be and where dozens of buildings had been turned to rubble.
He stopped to chat with a woman who was sitting on a pile of bricks. He and his entourage paused to pray in the middle of a street. His message to faith-based groups helping out was, "You’re doing God's work.”
In an earlier briefing with Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and emergency response officials, Biden said it was remarkable how the area's communities had come together to help each other out.
“There’s no red tornadoes, there’s no blue tornadoes," he said, referring to the colours associated with Democrats and Republicans.
Beshear, the state's governor, is a Democrat but Kentuckians voted overwhelmingly for Republican candidate Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
‘It does mean a lot’
"We appreciate the president coming down, coming to Mayfield," Bryan Wilson, a lawyer, told AFP as he sifted through the rubble of his firm's decimated downtown building. "It does mean a lot."
Wilson, speaking over the sounds of construction equipment removing debris, said he was trying to salvage legal files, client records, computers – anything that would preserve the integrity of the business.
He said Biden's visit signals that people in Washington "do care about rural America".
"And hopefully that gives the incentive for people to stay, to build back," he said.
Wilson said he hopes Biden's trip heals some of the bitter political and cultural rifts in the country.
"America has been divided for too long," he said. "This is not Republican, this is not Democrat, this is not independent. This is America."
Brad Mills, a 63-year-old orthodontist in Mayfield, said his message to Biden was to expedite federal disaster assistance.
"Let's get the federal aid in here that we need," Mills said. "As divided as we are on so many issues, we've got common ground here."
Asked if he was going to rebuild his practice, Mills said "that's going to be the big question".
"It's so emotional right now, you can't make a rational decision."
‘Historical weather day’
Biden was to visit the town of Dawson Springs – 75 percent of which was destroyed by the tornadoes – after touring Mayfield.
Biden declared a major disaster in Kentucky, allowing additional federal aid to be channelled into recovery efforts.
More than 500 National Guard troops have been deployed to help with law enforcement, traffic control and recovery, along with volunteers and associations on the ground to support victims.
"We're going to be there as long as it takes to help," the president said at the White House on Monday after a meeting dedicated to what he said was one of the country's worst tornado disasters.
While Biden said it was certain the tornadoes were "unusual", due in part to the length of their path and the number of places they touched down, he was careful to note that the link between the phenomenon and climate change still needed more investigation.
"We have to be very careful. We can't say with absolute certainty that it was because of climate change," Biden said of the tornadoes.
As Biden toured Kentucky, weather forecasters warned that parts of the midwestern United States were facing a potentially "historical weather day" with wind gusts up to 100 miles per hour (160 kilometres) and the possibility of tornadoes.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)
