Faced with one of the largest natural disasters in United States history, President Donald Trump is heading to Florida on Thursday to oversea cleanup and rescue efforts.
Trump is also going to hear firsthand from people affected by Hurricane Irma as he makes his third visit in less than three weeks to survey storm damage and direct recovery efforts.
For Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, the visit Thursday to Naples and Fort Myers on Florida’s southwestern coast offered the chance to see how people were coping — and how the Federal Emergency Management Agency has responded.
“Historically there’s never been anything like this,” Trump told reporters before leaving the White House. “But the United States Coast Guard, FEMA, working along with Gov. (Rick) Scott, they’ve really done an amazing job,” adding that “power is being turned on rapidly,” he said.
On Trump’s visits to Texas and Louisiana earlier this year, he was very hands-on. He toured a Houston shelter housing hundreds of displaced people and walking streets lined with soggy, discarded possessions.
The president monitored Irma over this past weekend from Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.
Nearly half of Florida was engulfed by Irma, which left flooded streets, damaged homes and displaced residents in its wake. The Keys felt Irma’s full fury when the hurricane roared in after wreaking devastation in the Caribbean, but the extent of the damage has been an unanswered question because some places have been unreachable.
Florida’s southwestern coast is a haven for retirees seeking warm weather and beautiful sunsets across the Gulf of Mexico. Many communities there are still cleaning up or without power or air conditioning.
As of Thursday morning, the number of homes and businesses without electricity in Florida was 2.69 million, according to the state’s Division of Emergency Management. That’s 25.6 percent of all customers in the state.
The Associated Press contributed to this article