Administration of Donald J. Trump, 2019

Remarks During a Briefing on Hurricane Dorian Aboard Air Force One in Havelock, North Carolina September 9, 2019

The President. So we were going to take a helicopter to Emerald Isle in North Carolina, which was hit very, very hard. Atlantic Beach was hit very hard. Certain areas were really hit. The Governor is with me. Roy, thank you very much for being here. Governor Roy A. Cooper III of North Carolina. Sure, Mr. President. The President. The Governor was standing in the rain for a long time, along with a lot of talented people that have really helped us a lot. Lindsey, I'm glad you're here with us, and we appreciate it very much. And Kevin is here someplace. House Minority Leader Kevin O. McCarthy. I'm behind you. The President. Where's—hello, Kevin. Thank you. Thank you for being here. We have a big rally tonight for Dan Bishop. I was going to go from Emerald Isle right back into the rally, but now we'll be very early for our rally. That's the one thing. But it was, I guess, Roy, they say very dangerous flying conditions. I said, "Let's do it anyway." They said, "Sir, we'd rather not." So I said, "Okay, I'll take your word for it." The greatest pilots in the world. We will be spending a little time. We're going to be given a presentation as to what's happening in North Carolina and a little bit about a couple of the other places. I just spoke to Governor Henry McMaster, and they're in great shape in South Carolina. They've done a really good job. Roy, maybe I could ask you to say a few words—— Gov. Cooper. Yes, sir. The President. ——and what you need from the Federal Government. Gov. Cooper. Yes, sir. First, Mr. President, thank you for coming to North Carolina. We've enjoyed our working relationship probably too much. With FEMA, we're glad to have Mr. Gaynor here with us. And of course, we've had the FEMA team embedded with us at our Emergency Operations Center in Raleigh. This is the third hurricane that has crossed the coast of North Carolina in less than 3 years. So this is something that we take very seriously. The widespread damage of Dorian did not approach the damage that we had from Florence and Matthew, but it was still significant in some parts. We've had three deaths in North Carolina related to the storm. Two of them were people who fell off ladders while they were trying to get their house boarded up for the storm. And the other death happened poststorm, with a chainsaw accident with cleanup. We still have about 3,500 people without power, but we had a couple of hundred thousand at one point. The President. Right. They've done a great job. Gov. Cooper. One of the hard-hit areas is Ocracoke Island, which—and they said it's the worst that they had ever seen. I talked to a man who had a house built in the 1870s, and they had never seen it that bad. The power is still out there. The President. Right.

1 Gov. Cooper. We're providing food, resources, working with all of our Federal and local partners to provide help there. The place that you were going to go, Emerald Isle, as the storm approached, it had an EF2 tornado hit an RV park. I toured it on Saturday. The damage was significant, many homes absolutely destroyed. We had issued an evacuation order, and therefore, most of the people were gone. The few people who were there survived and are lucky that they are alive. And they—I'm sure they appreciated the fact that you had planned to go and see. And I know we have local government officials here who were ready. We have a nuclear power plant at Brunswick—— The President. Right. Gov. Cooper. ——which had to be powered down as the storm hit. Today it's powered back up, and we think everything is okay with that. We still have about 20 road closures. We don't have anything approaching the last two storms, but we still have some there. We've got 125 National Guard activated now, down from 577. What we would request, Mr. President, is an expedited disaster declaration for both debris removal—— The President. Right. Gov. Cooper