United States President Donald Trump visited parts of Texas on Friday that were affected by deadly flash floods a week ago.
At least 120 people, including many children, have died after a river overflowed on July 4. The flood swept away homes, cabins, vehicles, and people. Search teams are still looking for 170 people who are missing.
Speaking in central Texas’s Hill Country after he and First Lady Melania Trump had met with first responders, local officials, and victims’ families, Trump said, “this is a tough one.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Trump said at a roundtable meeting in Kerrville, in Kerr County, the worst-affected by the floods.
“I’ve gone to a lot of hurricanes, a lot of tornadoes. I’ve never seen anything like this. This is a bad one,” Trump said.
He also compared the rising floodwaters to a “giant wave in the Pacific Ocean that the best surfers in the world would be afraid to surf.”
Trump administration faces scrutiny over response to the disaster
Trump, who has pledged to shrink or abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as part of his drive to drastically reduce the size of the federal government, praised the first responders in Texas, a Republican state.
“The search for the missing continues. The people that are doing it are unbelievable,” Trump said. “You couldn’t get better people, and they’re doing the job like I don’t think anybody else could, frankly.”
The Republican leader has previously been critical of officials in Democrat-run states that were struck by natural disasters.
He reacted with anger when a reporter said some families affected by the floods had expressed frustration that warnings did not go out sooner.
“I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances,” he said. “I don’t know who you are, but only a very evil person would ask a question like that.”
Trump also discussed the flood victims from Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp where at least 27 people, mostly children, were killed.
“They were there because they loved God. And, as we grieve this unthinkable tragedy, we take comfort in the knowledge that God has welcomed those little beautiful girls into his comforting arms in heaven,” he said.
Fears death toll will rise
With more than 170 people missing, including five girls who were attending a summer camp, more than eight days after the disaster struck, hopes are dwindling of finding more survivors.
Trump has repeatedly faced questions from reporters about how his administration’s severe cuts to a range of federal agencies, including FEMA, have affected the response to the floods, which the president has described as “a 100-year catastrophe” which “nobody expected.”
Emergency evacuation messages to people along the Guadalupe River which flooded were reportedly delayed.
Kristi Noem, who was with Trump on his trip to Texas, said Thursday that the response to the flood was “swift and efficient.”
Edited by: Louis Oelofse
