US President Joe Biden has postponed visits to Germany and Angola to oversee preparations for and response to Hurricane Milton, the White House said in a statement on October 8.
“Given the projected track and strength of Hurricane Milton, President Biden is postponing his upcoming trip to Germany and Angola to oversee preparations for and response to Hurricane Milton,” the White House said in a statement on its website .
In addition, the American leader is going to check how work is being done to eliminate the consequences of Hurricane Helene, which affected the southeastern United States.
Reuters reported that Biden was supposed to attend a meeting of the Ukraine contact group in the Ramstein format in Germany on Saturday, October 12. The American leader, along with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose term expired on May 20, was supposed to deliver an opening speech at the meeting.
The trip to Germany would be Biden’s last foreign meeting as US president.
On October 7, NASA announced that Hurricane Milton would exit the Gulf of Mexico this week and head toward the Space Coast, an area in Florida around the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral. Because of this, NASA and SpaceX postponed the launch of the Europa Clipper spacecraft.
That same day, The New York Times reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was short-staffed to respond to Hurricane Milton. The agency’s workers were busy dealing with Hurricane Helena and other disasters. FEMA also lacked funding.
Hurricane Helene hit Florida on the night of September 27. More than 220 people died as a result , and hundreds of people are missing. Later, on September 29, Helene left more than 4 million households without power in the states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The hurricane was assigned a category four out of five possible, with wind speeds reaching 209-251 km/h.