US President Donald Trump visited Louisiana on Saturday, hit this week by a hurricane with very high winds, but which fortunately caused much less damage and death than Hurricane Katrina 15 years ago.
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Donald Trump, red “USA” cap screwed to his head, first landed in the city of Lake Charles, where several refineries are located not far from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Without a mask, he visited a neighborhood with felled trees and damaged houses, as well as a warehouse.
He announced that the federal agency for emergencies (Fema) had already distributed 2.6 million liters of water and 1.4 million meals, while electricity and running water were cut for hundreds of thousands of inhabitants.
“I have not had a single complaint,” said the president, congratulating federal officials around him during a short press conference in a fire station. An individual among the ten elected officials and officials seated on tables around him was masked.
“Louisiana has been through a lot with COVID and this and other things, you did a great job,” Donald Trump also said, in the presence of the Democratic governor of the state.
The Category 4 hurricane (on a scale of 5), with peaks of nearly 240 km / h, killed at least ten in Louisiana and four in neighboring Texas, eight of those 14 deaths being due to poisoning. carbon monoxide emitted by portable generators started indoors due to power cuts.
In Louisiana, four people were also killed by falling trees on their homes and one drowned after her boat was washed away by the storm.
Katrina, in August 2005, had broken dikes around New Orleans and caused the deaths of at least 1,800 people.