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President
Joe
Biden
speaks
at
Seacliff
State
Park in
Aptos,
Calif.,
Thursday,
Jan 19,
2023,
after
seeing
storm
damage
caused
by the
recent
storms.
(AP
Photo/Susan
Walsh) |
| |
Biden
tours
beach
town
damaged
by
massive
California
storms
By ZEKE
MILLER
apews.com
CAPITOLA,
Calif. -
President
Joe
Biden
walked
along
the
splintered
boardwalk
of this
picture-postcard
California
beach
town
Thursday
and
heard
from
business
owners
struggling
to
repair
damage
to their
shops
after
deadly
storms
caused
devastation
across
the
region
and
killed
more
than 20
people
statewide.
Biden
toured a
gutted
seafood
restaurant
and the
badly
flooded
Paradise
Beach
Grille,
not far
from the
collapsed
Capitola
Pier and
the
brightly
painted
pink,
orange
and teal
shops
that
were all
boarded
up
following
the
storms.
Walls
were
crumbling,
debris
scattered
everywhere
and
floors
swept
away by
raging
waters.
Paradise
Beach
Grille
Owner
Chuck
Maier
told
Biden
that
water
had
gushed
up from
the
floor
and
swamped
his
business
on
Monterey
Bay not
far from
Santa
Cruz.
“No
kidding,”
Biden
exclaimed.
“You
don’t
feel it
until
you walk
the
streets,”
Biden
said
later
from
nearby
Seacliff
State
Park,
speaking
about
how bad
the
damage
was and
blaming
climate
change
for the
severity
of the
weather.
“If
anybody
doubts
the
climate
is
changing,
they
must
have
been
asleep
for the
last
couple
of
years.”
Flanked
by first
responders,
California
Gov.
Gavin
Newsom
and
Federal
Emergency
Management
Agency
Administrator
Deanne
Criswell,
the
president
highlighted
the
damage
from the
punishing
rains,
powerful
winds,
floods
and
landslides.
He
warned
climate
change
would
create
more
extreme
weather.
“We know
some of
the
destruction
is going
to take
years to
rebuild,”
Biden
said.
“But
we’ve
got to
not just
rebuild,
but
rebuild
better.”
From
Dec. 26
to Jan.
17,
California
was
deluged
by 11.47
inches
of rain
and snow
on
average
across
the
state,
according
to the
National
Weather
Service’s
Weather
Prediction
Center,
with
some
reports
of up to
15 feet
of snow
in the
highest
elevations
of the
Sierra
Nevada.
California
gets
much of
its rain
and snow
in the
winter
from a
weather
phenomenon
known as
“atmospheric
rivers”
— long,
narrow
bands of
water
vapor
that
form
over the
ocean
and flow
through
the sky.
California
has been
hit by
nine
atmospheric
rivers
since
late
December.
The
storms
have
relented
in
recent
days.
Forecasters
were
calling
for
light
rain
toward
the end
of this
week
followed
by a dry
period.
Criswell
said
Thursday
on the
trip
from
Washington
that the
president
and
staff
have to
be
mindful
of what
people
have
been
through
when
traveling
to
places
devastated
by
storms
and
other
natural
disasters.
“There
has just
been so
much
trauma
to this
community
and it’s
really
important
that we
keep
that in
mind,”
she
said.
“These
communities
have had
loss of
life,
loss of
their
well-being
and
their
livelihood,
and I
think
it’s
incredibly
important
that
they
know
that the
president
is here
to
support
them and
that the
full
force of
the
federal
family
is going
to be
behind
them.”
Biden
has
already
approved
a major
disaster
declaration
for the
state,
freeing
additional
federal
resources
for
recovery
efforts.
Hours
before
the
visit,
he
raised
the
level of
federal
assistance
available
even
higher.
More
than 500
FEMA and
other
federal
personnel
have
been
deployed
to
California
to
support
the
emergency
operations.
Thousands
of
bystanders
gathered
for the
president’s
visit
and
cheered
him as
he
toured
the
boardwalk.
Newsom
praised
the fast
federal
response,
but
warned
the
threat
remains
high in
a state
that
just a
few
years
ago
suffered
devastating
drought
and is
now
facing
record
rainfall.
“The
scale
and
scope of
these
floods
is hard
to
understand
unless
you get
out, and
that’s
why I
couldn’t
be more
grateful
to the
president
for
taking
the time
to come
out
again.”
___
Associated
Press
writers
Colleen
Long and
Seth
Borenstein
in
Washington
and Adam
Beam in
Sacramento,
California,
contributed
to this
report.
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