“You saw things that you wouldn’t believe,” Trump told reporters after he surveyed a neighborhood that was among the most gravely damaged during Sunday’s outbreak, which left at least 23 people dead and spawned a tornado with estimated winds of 170 mph.
Later, Trump traveled to Providence Baptist Church — the hub of a sprawling volunteer relief effort that has taken shape in east Alabama in recent days. Local officials said he was expected to also meet with relatives of those killed and emergency workers.
A few hundred people lined a two-lane county highway near the church, hoping for a glimpse of Trump from the roadside grass or from the cemetery across the street. When his motorcade arrived, it passed 23 white crosses, one for each of the storm’s victims. Just before Trump left the church, he and the first lady, Melania Trump, approached the display. The couple walked the row of crosses, pausing at each one.
The president’s trip came three days after he approved a disaster declaration for Lee County, where residents are eligible for grants for temporary housing and home repairs and loans for uninsured property. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has already approved more than $42,000 in assistance in the county. The agency said that five applications had been approved and that more were being processed.
FEMA — and U.S. presidents — have long grappled with the aftermath of severe storms in the South, where hundreds of deaths in the past decade alone have been attributed to tornadoes. Trump is the fourth consecutive president, at least, to visit Alabama to survey tornado damage.
But as Trump and the Beauregard community mourned the dead, the state was preparing for the possibility of more severe weather. Although forecasters have gradually become more concerned about dangerous weather in Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee, experts said that Alabama remained in some jeopardy.
“While the setup through the weekend is not as potent as what we saw last weekend, we still have to be vigilant with severe storms as we are now in our spring severe weather season in Alabama,” Scott Martin, an Alabama meteorologist, wrote in an analysis Friday. “If you strictly rely on outdoor sirens for your way of receiving warnings, you don’t have much hope.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.