President Donald Trump is traveling to Texas and Louisiana on Saturday to survey the aftermath of Hurricane Laura, which caused billions of dollars in damage when it slammed into the Gulf Coast as a Category Four storm this week.
Trump is scheduled to spend time in the communities of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Orange, Texas, before returning to the White House in the evening.
Laura made landfall on Thursday morning packing winds of some 150 miles per hour, some of the strongest to hit the region in more than a century. The death toll in Louisiana and Texas is at least 14, the Associated Press reported. Hundreds of thousands of residents are still without water and power.
The storm's track shifted east at the last moment to strike the region visited by Trump, along the border between the two states, while sparing nearby oil refineries. A chemical fire that broke out in Lake Charles at a KIK Custom Products-owned BioLab facility is now under control.
Trump is making the trip a day after holding a rally in New Hampshire, a potential swing state in November's election, and as he criticizes Democrat Joe Biden for not appearing more frequently in public.
In a statement on Hurricane Laura on Saturday, Biden said "we will come back and we will be there to help you build back better."
