Biden visits Kentucky to tour tornado-ravaged towns

MAYFIELD, United States — US President Joe Biden arrived in Kentucky on Wednesday to visit tornado-ravaged towns and meet with survivors of the twisters that took scores of lives.

The 79-year-old president flew to Fort Campbell on Air Force One and is to conduct an aerial flyover before visiting Mayfield and Dawson Springs — two towns now synonymous with the damage wrought by the weekend storms.

"We appreciate the president coming down, coming to Mayfield," Bryan Wilson, a lawyer, told AFP as he sifted through the rubble of his firm's decimated downtown building. "It does mean a lot."

Wilson, speaking over the grinding sounds of construction equipment removing debris, said he was trying to salvage legal files, client records, computers — anything that would preserve the integrity of the business.

He said the Democratic president's visit to Kentucky, which voted heavily for Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, signals that people in Washington "do care about rural America".

"And hopefully that gives the incentive for people to stay, to build back," he said.

Wilson said he "can only hope" Biden's trip heals some of the bitter political and cultural divides that have plagued the country in recent years.

"America has been divided for too long," he said. "This is not Republican, this is not Democrat, this is not independent. This is America."

The death toll in Kentucky from the powerful twisters that struck late Friday has been put at 74, but Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has said he expects more victims to be found.

At least 14 people died in Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois.

'We've got common ground here' 

Brad Mills, a 63-year-old orthodontist in Mayfield, said his message to Biden was to expedite federal disaster assistance.

"As divided as we are on so many issues, we've got common ground here," he said

"Let's get the federal aid in here that we need," Mills said. "As divided as we are on so many issues, we've got common ground here."

Mills spoke to AFP outside his office in downtown Mayfield that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s before him. His son Stuart, who is in dental school, was on the roof putting on a tarp.

Asked if he was going to rebuild his practice, Mills said “that’s going to be the big question.”

“It’s so emotional right now, you can’t make a rational decision.”

Biden is to visit the town of Dawson Springs — 75 per cent of which was destroyed by the tornadoes — after touring Mayfield.

More than 500 National Guard troops have been deployed to help with law enforcement, traffic control and recovery efforts, along with volunteers and associations on the ground to support victims.

Biden declared a major disaster in Kentucky, allowing additional federal aid to be channelled into recovery efforts and has pledged Washington’s support in rebuilding.

“We’re going to be there as long as it takes to help,” he said at the White House on Monday after a meeting dedicated to what he said was one of the country’s worst tornado disasters.

While Biden said it was certain the tornadoes were “unusual”, due in part to the length of their path and the number of places they touched down, he was careful to note that the link between the phenomenon and climate change still needed more investigation.

“We have to be very careful. We can’t say with absolute certainty that it was because of climate change,” Biden said of the tornadoes.

Biden, who has made empathy one of his trademarks, was careful before his departure not to politicise the visit.

“The president looks at people through the tragedy they’re experiencing — the heartache they’re feeling at the loss of life, the loss of their homes,” said Press Secretary Jen Psaki. “He looks at them as human beings, not as people who have partisan affiliations.”