President Joe Biden.Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
PresidentJoe Bidenon Thursday will meet with victims, family members and first responders of the12-story residential buildingthat partially collapsed in Florida last week.
“We’re still working out the final components of the trip tomorrow,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in a Wednesday briefing, adding that “every component of the trip would be “coordinated with officials on the ground, there is still an ongoing search and rescue effort on the ground, and we want to ensure we’re not doing anything to pull away from those resources.”
Psaki added that the president and first lady “will be thanking heroic first responders, search and rescue teams, and everyone has been working tirelessly around the clock.”
Speaking to reporters while touring a Houston vaccination site Tuesday, Dr. Biden, 70, said she and her husband were “grieving alongside” the Surfside community, as recovery efforts continue in the collapsethat has already killed 16 peoplewith another 140-plus unaccounted for.
“Joe and I are going to be going there on Thursday to try to help comfort those families and so if you could find it in your hearts today, if you could just take a couple of minutes and say a prayer for those families that they have the strength to get through this,” Dr. Biden said, according to areport from a Miami CBS affiliate.
Earlier this week, Psaki told reporters the president believes “there should be an investigation” into what led the Champlain Towers South building to fall around 1:30 a.m. on Thursday.
Surfside condo collapse.Joe Raedle/Getty
Ina statement, Florida Fire Marshal and Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis said that he hoped Biden would assist in treating first responders for post-traumatic stress disorder.
“We’re planning on appealing to the President for the best PTSD support possible for the men and women who are working in conditions that resemble more of a warzone than a normal search and rescue mission,” Patronis said. “We’ve already deployed mental health experts to engage these heroes, but having access to the nation’s best mental health experts and guidance would go a long way in helping these officials cope with some of the horrible things they are having to see and deal with.”
The news comes days after President Biden called the incident “heartbreaking” in a statement released after he spoke with FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, whovisited the the wreckage of the 136-unit complexlast week.
“What I heard from Administrator Criswell was excruciating: she reiterated that words can’t describe the scene on the ground and she gave me an update on meetings she had with state and local officials to ensure they have everything they need,” the president said in the statement.
source: people.com
