Sen. Marco Rubio stated on Sunday that Hurricane Ian was a “character-altering event” for the state of Florida as state and federal officials considered the damage done over the course of the week.
Rubio (R-Fla.), alluding to one of the regions worst damaged by the storm, declared on ABC’s “This Week” that Fort Myers Beach “no longer exists.” When the town is restored, he continued, “it’ll be something different. It was a piece of past Florida that is impossible to recreate.
More than 40 people have died as a result of the storm. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said on CNN that many properties, particularly along Florida’s western coast where the storm made landfall, had been severely damaged or completely destroyed.
Some homes in central Florida are “still submerged” as a result of flooding brought on by the storm, she said.
As in the past, Rubio described the federal response as being “quite favourable” thus far. Following a series of severe storms, President Joe Biden met with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis many times and plans to travel to both Florida and Puerto Rico in the near future.
The extent of the damage prompted Sunday’s consideration of a relief bill.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) declared, “We definitely have to provide disaster help.” “And we have to do it, whether it’s for a storm, whether it’s for flooding, whether it’s for wildfires, or whether it’s for anything else.”
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” when asked if he would support a relief plan that included funds for seemingly unrelated projects, Rubio responded that he would “fight against it having pork.”
“Without using it as a vehicle or a method for individuals to fill it up with things that’s irrelevant to the disaster,” Rubio added, Congress is “capable” of enacting a relief bill.
The senator voted against parts in the measure that were too far removed from disaster aid when Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeastern states in 2012, but he justified that decision on Sunday.
Former Florida governor Scott refrained from criticising the actions of local officials in Lee County, which did not issue an evacuation order to its citizens until Tuesday while numerous nearby jurisdictions did so on Monday.
Scott stated on CNN’s “State of the Union” that it was something that needed to be examined. According to DeSantis, the officials behaved properly.
Hurricane Ian left tens of thousands of people without power as it traversed virtually the whole state of Florida, causing significant flooding and major infrastructure damage. It struck the coast of South Carolina on Friday as a Category 1 hurricane after making landfall in Florida on Wednesday as a strong Category 4 storm.
On Sunday, Ian kept moving along the East Coast, spreading rain. On Sunday morning shows, however, both Governors Brian Kemp (R-Ga.) and Cooper (D-N.C.) said that their states had escaped the kind of damage that Florida had experienced.
“We have undoubtedly escaped the worst of it, and we feel bad for the folks in Florida. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Cooper stated, “We’ve volunteered to help them.