MADRID, 16 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has assured this Tuesday that he plans to visit the Hawaiian island of Maui, devastated by fires that have left 99 dead so far, a figure that could double, according to the authorities of the archipelago.
“My wife Jill Biden and I are going to Hawaii as soon as possible (…). I don’t want to get in the way: I’ve been to too many disaster areas, but I want to go and make sure we have everything they need. I want to make sure they We are not interrupting the ongoing recovery efforts,” the president explained in a statement reported by CNN.
Biden has not spoken on the matter since last Thursday, which has sparked some criticism of his management, especially from members of the Republican Party, for which the president’s assistants have stated that he has frequently exchanged calls with the Federal Management Agency of Emergencies (FEMA), with the delegation of the Congress of Hawaii and with its governor, Josh Green, who has publicly praised the management of the president.
Biden himself has chested out that he declared a state of disaster on the island immediately after the governor’s request as a way of telling him that everything he needed would be sent to him.
“Our prayers and our thoughts are with the people of Hawaii, but not just our prayers, but every resource, every asset that they need will be there for them. And we will be there in Maui for as long as it takes,” Biden said.
In addition, he has lamented the loss of life and that “generations of native Hawaiian history have been turned to ruins”, and that they will continue to work with state authorities to help those who have lost their homes.
“They don’t know how many bodies are there. They don’t know what they have left. Imagine being a mom or dad. Imagine being a husband or wife, mother, father,” Biden added.
The credit rating agency Moody’s Analytics has estimated the damage caused by the flames between 3,000 million and 7,500 million dollars (between 2,750 million and 6,800 million euros).
Parallel to the extinction and tracking work, the requests for accountability are also advancing, with some voices calling for clarification why the alert system did not work on time or if the electrical wiring had something to do with the start of the the fires, fanned by hurricane force winds.
This tragedy is already considered the deadliest natural disaster in recent Hawaiian history and the wave of fires that has claimed the most lives in the United States in more than a century: in 1918, 453 people died in a series of fires in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
