When Jimmie Allen heads out as an opening act for Brad Paisley’s headlining tour this summer, it’ll be a big deal for both artists. Not only is Brad a musical idol to Jimmie, but their duet, “Freedom Was a Highway,” is now rising at country radio.
This will be the first time Brad’s ever toured with an artist with whom he shared a current single, as the country veteran points out during a recent interview the two singers did together for Apple Music Country.
“I’ve never had a tour with the person I had a duet out with,” Brad reveals. “When Carrie [Underwood] and I had ‘Remind Me,’ she wasn’t on tour with me anymore. She was way bigger than that.”
The singer goes on to say that there have been other near misses where he almost shared the stage with a current duet partner, but the timing’s never quite worked out before.
“I’ve had songs with Dierks [Bentley], I’ve had songs with Alan Jackson, but I’ve never had them out on the road while I had that. And in this case, while [the song is] rising like this…we’ve got great entrances planned for you, you know what I mean?” Brad tells Jimmie.
“We’re gonna shoot him out of a cannon for the song,” he jokes.
Before they hit the road together, Jimmie and Brad will take the stage for Good Morning America’s Summer Concert Series on July 5. They’re part of a lineup of July 4th festivities that also includes a performance from Lady A.
Sammy Hagar‘s recently announced four-date Las Vegas residency taking place at The STRAT Theater on October 29-30 and November 5-6 is completely sold out, so the Red Rocker has lined up two additional shows at the venue, on November 12-13.
Tickets for the newly added concerts will go on sale to the general public this Saturday, July 3, at 10 a.m. PT via TheStrat.com. Members of Hagar’s fan club and The STRAT resort’s True Rewards program will be able to purchase pre-sale tickets beginning Friday, July 2, at 10 a.m. PT.
Hagar also has confirmed that more Vegas shows will be scheduled soon in 2022.
“Adding these shows so quickly makes me happier than anyone for the fans that didn’t get tickets the first time,” Sammy says. “This is exciting, we’re going to be doing this for a while.”
As previously reported, Hagar’s Las Vegas show, which has been dubbed Sammy Hagar & Friends, will feature the Red Rocker performing with a rotating cast of his musical pals, similar to the annual birthday bashes he’s known for throwing at his Cabo Wabo Cantina in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
The first two concerts will feature Hagar playing with his current group The Circle, which also includes founding Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony, acclaimed rock drummer Jason Bonham and guitarist Vic Johnson of Sammy’s longtime backing band, The Wabos. Anthony and Johnson also are confirmed to perform with Hagar on November 5, 6, 12 and 13. Other special guests will be announced at a later date.
On Thursday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) announced the addition of 395 new members from 50 countries.
Among them are a diverse group of performers, from Minari Oscar nominee Steven Yuen and winner Yuh-Jung Youn, to trans Promising Young Woman actress and activist Laverne Cox, and singer/actress Andra Day, who was nominated last year for The United States vs. Billie Holiday.
Other invitees included Da 5 Bloods‘ Jonathan Majors and Isiah Whitlock, Jr.; One Night in Miami‘s Leslie Odom, Jr.; The Trial of the Chicago 7‘s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II; and actress and producer Issa Rae.
Ever since it was taken to task with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite in 2016, the Academy has made efforts to boost diversity both in front of and behind the camera, as well as in its own ranks. In 2020, it announced that it instituted new standards for representation and inclusivity when considering films for Oscar nominations, including the esteemed Best Picture category.
In 2021, a record nine actors of color were nominated, including Minari’s Yeun, the first Asian American to be nominated for Best Actor.
Last year was also the first time in Oscar history that white men were in the minority in the Best Actor category — however, the low-rated telecast made headlines for all the wrong reasons once again when Anthony Hopkins won the trophy for The Father, instead of the actor many believed would win, the late Chadwick Boseman for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
Janet Jackson is one of 395 individuals who’ve been invited this year to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — the folks who hand out the Oscars. If she accepts, she’ll get to vote on who wins them in the future.
The invitees have “distinguished themselves by their contributions to theatrical motion pictures,” the Academy notes, and are divided into different groups, such as actors, cinematographers, directors, makeup artists and hairstylists, and, in Janet’s case, music.
On the list of invitees, Janet is noted for two of her movies: Poetic Justice and Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too? Janet starred in the latter and recorded the song “Nothing” for its soundtrack. She also starred in Poetic Justice and her hit “Again” was used as the film’s closing song. It received a Best Original Song nomination at the 1994 Oscar ceremony.
Among the other musicians invited to become Academy members this year is singer/songwriter H.E.R., who just won the Best Original Song Oscar this year for “Fight for You,” from Judas and the Black Messiah. The list also includes singer/songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello, Leslie Odom Jr. and Jon Batiste, who wrote the score to the animated film Soul.
In an attempt to make its membership more diverse, the Academy notes that 46% of this year’s invitees are women, and 39% are from “underrepresented ethnic/racial communities.”
(NOTE LANGUAGE)Thursday night, Chris Pratt was at the Los Angeles premiere of his new sci-fi film The Tomorrow War, which debuts on Amazon Prime July 2, but he swore — literally — to Variety that he would spoil another big project, the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie.
“I’m giving you the scoop,” Pratt told the trade. “F*** it. I’m telling you everything.”
Sorry, Marvel fans: he was kidding. All he would allow about 2023’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3? The actor said, “[Writer-director] James Gunn is back.”
Pratt did shed a little light on another upcoming Marvel Studios property he’s in, Thor: Love and Thunder, which hits theaters next May, and in which he’ll again play Peter Quill/Star-Lord. He said of its Oscar-winning writer-director Taika Waititi: “He’s a madman. He’s a genius. He’s the kinda guy who can deliver an amazing movie, that’s the destination [but] the journey to getting there [is] just as fun as watching the movie. He’s vibrant, he’s always making the crew laugh, he’s doing bits. You can’t believe he’s the director.”
As for Tomorrow War, which was headed to theaters before the pandemic hit, Pratt joked that its debut on Amazon “is a pretty good deal” for families, seeing as they won’t have to shell out for movie tickets.
In the film, Pratt plays a man drafted — through time — to fight a war against aliens in 2051. So where does Pratt see himself in 2051?
“I’ll probably be on the set of Guardians of the Galaxy 71,” Pratt joked. “I think I’m probably going to be surrounded by grandchildren, hopefully…I’m going to be fat and happy and not wearing makeup.”
Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
White Chicks is one of the most hilarious films by comedian Marlon Wayans. But did you know that the Hilton sisters inspired it?
In an Instagram message posted Thursday, Marlonshared a photo of himself and Paris Hilton while revealing that the 2004 film, which starred himself and his brother Shawn Wayans, was inspired by Paris and her sister Nicky Hilton.
“The original ‘white chick’ and I. Funny story, one day my brother [Shawn] calls me at 3 am saying, ‘Marlon, we should play white chicks.’ I replied, ‘[man], you high?'” the 48-year-old wrote on Instagram. “The next day, he showed me a magazine with @parishilton and her sister on the cover and said we should play girls like this. I immediately got it.”
Marlon, who wrote and produced White Chicks, went on to say, “We did that film in good spirit to celebrate a special time in all of our lives. So thank you, Paris and [Nicky], for being muses.”
He concluded the post by mentioning a forthcoming sequel, White Chicks 2, and quoting one of the original film’s famous lines, “Let’s go shopping.”
White Chicks follows Marlon and Shawn as FBI agents, who go undercover as white women while investigating a kidnapping and money-laundering case. The film was directed by their brother Keenen Ivory Wayans and also starred Terry Crews, Jaime King, Busy Phillipps and Frankie R. Faison.
As previously reported, Jimmy Buffett is among the artists taking part in the 2021 edition of PBS’ A Capitol Fourth television special. Now comes word about what the lauded singer/songwriter will be performing on the show.
Buffett will be singing folk legend Woody Guthrie‘s classic Americana tune “This Land Is Your Land” in a segment that was taped at a Southern California location overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
The performance also features two members of Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band — keyboardist Mike Utley and steel-drum player Robert Greenidge — and will be intercut with scenes of various American landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Grand Canyon.
Written in 1940 and first recorded by Guthrie in 1944, “This Land is Your Land” was chosen in 2002 to be added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.
The 41st annual edition of the A Capitol Fourth special will be broadcast this Sunday, July 4, at 8 p.m. ET on PBS. The program also will stream on Facebook and YouTube as well as PBS’ website.
The special’s performance lineup also includes Gladys Knight, Train, Cynthia Erivo, Kermit the Frog, Alan Jackson, Pentatonix, Renée Fleming and many more.
Vanessa Williams will host the festivities but due to the pandemic, A Capitol Fourth will feature pre-recorded performances from stages all across the country, in lieu of the traditional concert on the U.S. Capitol’s West Lawn.
The show also will feature a live fireworks display over the D.C. skyline, as well as tributes to the men and women of the military and their families, and a salute to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Teams ahead of this year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo.
(SURFSIDE, Fla.) — Engineers and Surfside, Florida, officials are concerned that recent construction at a neighboring residential building may have contributed to instability at the Champlain Tower South building that collapsed last week — and could potentially have been “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” according to one expert.
“Construction of a neighboring building can certainly impact the conditions, particularly the foundation for an existing building,” Ben Schafer, a structural engineer at Johns Hopkins University, told ABC News. “A critical flaw or damage must have already existed in the Champlain towers, but neighboring new construction could be the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ in terms of a precipitating event.”
Construction at Eighty-Seven Park, a ritzy condominium that abuts Champlain Tower South to the south, began in 2015, when a firm called Terra Developers began erecting the 18-story building, according to news reports at the time.
The project caused such a ruckus for Champlain Tower residents that, in January 2019, a member of the board reached out to Surfside officials, according to records released by the city.
“We are concerned that construction next to Surfside is too close,” Mara Chouela, a member of the Champlain Tower South board of directors, wrote to city officials. “The Terra project … are digging too close to our property and we have concerns regarding the structure of our building.”
Chouela received a terse response from Ross Prieto, the city’s then-building inspector: “There is nothing for me to check.”
“The best course of action is to have someone monitor the fence, pool and adjacent areas for damage,” Prieto wrote, “or hire a consultant to monitor those areas as they are closest to the construction.”
Champlain Tower South residents and condo board members continued to complain about the construction next door, mostly regarding Styrofoam and dirt from the construction site washing up into the Champlain pool deck and plaza.
On Tuesday, Surfside Commissioner Eliana Salzhauer slammed Prieto’s response to Chouela, telling ABC News that it reflects “laziness” from a person “too comfortable” in his job.
“The residents should have a place to go for their complaints … they should have been treated seriously,” Salzhauer said. “What happened here is a wake-up call for every small town and for every government.”
Prieto has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
A spokesperson for 8701 Collins Development LLC, a joint venture that was established by Terra and other developers involved in the Eighty-Seven Park project, told ABC News in a statement Wednesday that they are “confident that the construction of 87 Park did not cause or contribute to the collapse that took place in Surfside on June 24, 2021.”
Joel Figueroa-Vallines, an Orlando-based forensic structural engineer, told ABC News that because Eighty-Seven Park is “lower in elevation” than Champlain Tower South, there is a possibility that the construction of the building could be a concern — but that more evidence is needed.
“It’s most important and necessary to not discard anything so early on that could potentially be a consideration,” Figueroa, president of the engineering firm SEP Engineers, said.
Dr. Mehrdad Sasani, a professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Northeastern University, told ABC News that the method in which Champlain South’s support structure was built would usually allow it to withstand disturbances to the soil near the surface, which means the impact of the excavation for the neighboring construction would have likely been what Sasani called “minute.”
“But indirectly, as a result of a failure in the pool area and the deck slab, the parking garage roof could have been affected,” Sasani said.
He said more information on both buildings, including a geotechnical distance analysis, would be needed to determine the potential role of the construction on the Champlain Tower. ABC News has requested relevant documents to the City of Miami Beach.
Dr. Mehrooz Zamanzadeh, a corrosion engineering expert, told ABC News that cracks and spalling on the Champlain building should also be examined to determine whether vibrations from the construction had any effect on the building’s structural integrity.
Regardless, said Zamanzadeh, the building’s accelerated deterioration and corrosion was likely a critical factor in the collapse. He said that corrosion inspections should be mandatory, and also called for building recertifications to be the performed more frequently than the current 40-year cycle.
Miami Dade County Commissioner Jose Diaz told ABC News that he would not speculate what role neighboring construction had on the collapse, but said, “We’re going to investigate.”
(NEW YORK) — When Carly Birmingham, a 7th grader from Massachusetts who identifies as nonbinary, was depressed and experiencing suicidal thoughts last fall, their mother drove to a local hospital emergency department at 2 a.m. hoping for immediate help.
But Carly says they ended up spending 14 days waiting for a psychiatric inpatient bed (seven in the emergency department (ED) and seven in a patient room) at Boston Children’s Hospital in what doctors and other experts describe as a troublesome and increasing practice that leads in many cases to substandard care for vulnerable patients — boarding.
“After a few days, I almost regretted [going to the hospital]. We were there, we were getting no sleep, and I wasn’t even getting any help. I was just sitting there waiting for a bed. And we didn’t know how long it was gonna take,” Carly, of Arlington, Massachusetts, told ABC News. Boston Children’s declined comment about Birmingham’s care citing privacy laws.
While there is no standard definition for boarding, the American College of Emergency Physicians describes it as the practice of holding patients in the ED after they have been evaluated because no inpatient beds are available or are awaiting transfer to another facility, which can result in lengthy wait times, possibly increased suffering among patients and strains overburdened EDs.
Boarding is a longstanding crisis in EDs across the country that some doctors interviewed by ABC News say has only worsened during the pandemic, especially in pediatric units. The coronavirus crisis has led to a surge in pediatric patients, like Carly, some of whom end up waiting days, if not weeks, for a spot in limited psychiatric wards.
The shortage of available psychiatric beds is also happening in the middle of a global pandemic, during which COVID-19 patients have died in hallways waiting for beds in overwhelmed hospitals.
While ED visits for other medical causes for children declined in the early stages of the pandemic, the number of children’s mental health-related ED visits rose 24% among 5 to 11-year-olds and surged 31% among 12 to 17-year-olds in April 2020 through October, compared to that period in 2019, according to a November Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
The pandemic also saw a rise in ED visits for suspected suicide attempts among young people. Among teen girls such visits were up 51% from February to March earlier this year compared to 2019, according to a June CDC report.
There is no nationwide data on mental health boarding numbers or wait times, however doctors in New York, Massachusetts and Colorado have painted similar pictures of inundated EDs.
Feeling ‘punished’ waiting for an inpatient bed
Dr. Amanda Stewart, an attending physician in the emergency department of Boston Children’s Hospital, where Carly was treated, said the hospital saw a surge in psychiatric cases in early spring 2021 and “we’re definitely not out of the woods.”
“Unfortunately, there’s a higher number of boarding behavioral health patients. We routinely have children that stay over 100, sometimes up to 200 hours in the ER,” Stewart told ABC News.
In Massachusetts, the number of all patients boarding in emergency rooms increased by 200 to 400% in June 2020 compared to the same month the previous year, the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health told ABC News. The department did not comment on the status of ED boarding in the state.
Carly said the wait in the noisy, bustling ED was agonizing. They said they spent seven days in the ED, then seven days in a patient room at Boston Children’s, before Carly finally got an inpatient psychiatric bed, where they were treated for two weeks.
“What Carly said to me is, ‘I feel like I’m being punished for having feelings,'” their mother Gail McCabe said.
“Carly slept on a stretcher. I slept on a stretcher for the seven nights that we were there. Carly actually started to have some visual hallucinations because of sleep deprivation one time,” McCabe said of their time in the ED. “You are pretty much sitting there staring at the wall for the whole entire time.”
Stewart said there are several causes for the surge in pediatric psychiatric patients at the hospital: the loss of mental health resources offered in-person at schools and at clinics with the shift to online learning and teletherapy, changes to social activities, school stress, and worries over COVID-19. Those stressors coupled with a limited number of beds dedicated to pediatric psychiatric care created a “bottleneck” in the ED.
McCabe said that when Carly arrived at the ED, there were about 25 other kids waiting for inpatient beds.
But Boston Children’s only has 16 inpatient psychiatric beds, and 12 acute residential treatment beds, according to Dr. Patricia Ibeziako, the associate chief for clinical services in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Boston Children’s Hospital. Now, the hospital is planning to add 12 more inpatient psychiatric beds, Ibeziako added.
Pandemic led to psychiatric bed closures
Long boarding times for pediatric psychiatric patients are also being seen in New York City as well, according to Dr. Adjoa Smalls-Mantey, an ABC News medical unit contributor and New York-based psychiatrist who works in several emergency room settings with adults and children.
“In March, April and May [of 2020], there was a decrease in the volume of people presenting with psychiatric complaints and I’ll attribute that to people being just scared to leave their homes with lockdown orders. But then by the time we got to the winter, it felt like people were waiting in the emergency room, for a day, maybe even two days to get a bed,” she said.
“For children, the wait is still long, I saw children one week and then I came back the next week for a shift and they were still there,” she added.
Smalls-Mantey said that during the pandemic some psychiatric beds had been converted into general medicine or ICU beds to focus on COVID-19. At one hospital where she works, both psychiatric units closed so patients were transferred to psychiatric units at other hospitals.
New York state’s Office of Mental Health told ABC News that 871 psychiatric hospital beds were repurposed due to COVID and so far 444 of those have reopened. The OMH said that despite the bed closures psychiatric inpatient admissions in NY are only at approximately 85% capacity, so the shortage of beds hasn’t prevented anyone from receiving needed care.
She said to curb the long wait times, hospital systems need to “reopen the beds that were closed.”
“The onus is on the healthcare systems to devote resources to helping people that are reaching out for help, because we have said, ‘Ask for help.’ So now that people are asking, the healthcare system needs to show up and do that,” Smalls-Mantey said.
A ‘pediatric mental health state of emergency’
In Colorado, physicians are also reeling from the “unprecedented” spike in pediatric psychiatric patients that led Children’s Hospital Colorado to declare a “pediatric mental health state of emergency” in May.
“We too, have seen an influx, particularly from January through May of this year, in unprecedented volumes. We’re seeing increases of upwards 70 to 90% from our 2019 volumes,” Jason Williams, the operations director for the Pediatric Mental Health Institute at Children’s Hospital Colorado told ABC News.
According to Williams, the wait for juveniles to be placed in an inpatient bed pre-pandemic was about eight hours. For the past two months, the wait has been upwards of 20 hours, he said.
Children’s Hospital Colorado has 18 general psych inpatient beds and 4 neuropsychiatric specialty care inpatient beds and they’ve been at 98% capacity for the last 18 months, Williams added.
He said he believes the state has a “broken system” equipped with fewer pediatric psychiatric beds, an issue shared across much of the nation.
Williams said the patients coming in are typically 12-years-old and up, mostly females, and most presenting suicidal ideation or suicidal attempts.
“We are seeing more severity in that patient population than we would have seen pre-pandemic, with kids making more lethal attempts on their lives,” he said.
Children’s Hospital Colorado CEO Jena Hausmann said the state’s mental health services are “not enough” in a May news release, calling for reform.
“It has been devastating to see suicide become the leading cause of death for Colorado’s children,” Hausmann said. “For over a decade, Children’s Colorado has intentionally and thoughtfully been expanding our pediatric mental health prevention services, outpatient services and inpatient services, but it is not enough. Now we are seeing our pediatric emergency departments and our inpatient units overrun with kids attempting suicide and suffering from other forms of major mental health illness.”
Colorado’s Department of Health did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment on boarding.
Surge in mental health needs and boarding
Mental health care in the U.S. has dramatically changed over time.
In the 1960s, deinstitutionalization was a government policy that moved mental health patents out of state-run institutions into community-based mental health centers. In part, the effort tried to target the negative effective of coercive hospitalization, except for high risk cases, but it also reduced the availability of long-term inpatient care beds across the country, according to a 2019 report in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine.
In June 2016 there were 37,679 staffed psychiatric beds in state hospitals nationwide, which came out to about 12 beds per 100,000 of the population, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), a national nonprofit focused on improving mental health care. That was a 17% drop from the 2010 bed numbers, the group reported.
Massachusetts has 608 public psychiatric beds, Colorado has 543, and New York State has 3,217, all as of 2016, per the TAC. The group says a minimum of 50 beds per 100,000 people is considered necessary to provide minimally adequate treatment for individuals with severe mental illness.
A 2020 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that among youth requiring inpatient psychiatric care, 23% to 58% experienced boarding and average durations ranged from 5 to 41 hours in EDs and 2 to 3 days in inpatient units. The study found that risk factors that led to longer boarding times included if patients came in during non-summer months (meaning during the school year), if they were younger and if they exhibited suicidal or homicidal ideations.
The study stated pediatric mental health boarding is experienced by at least 40,000 to 66,000 youth admitted to hospitals each year.
During the pandemic, use of telehealth services among Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) beneficiaries increased 2,700% from March to October last year compared to 2019, showing there was a demand for mental health services.
Yet at the same time, some vulnerable younger Americans went without mental health services. A May report by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service found a 34% decline in the number of primary and preventative mental health services utilized by children under age 19, which amounts to 14 million fewer mental services for kids, compared to the same time period in 2019.
This can eventually lead to kids coming into ED’s in more serious states of mental crisis.
Studies say once in the ED, waiting for so long for care can have serious consequences.
A 2011 study by the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine found that mortality increased with increased boarding time and patients who boarded in 12 hours or more had a 4.5% greater chance of in-hospital mortality.
ACEP said that those who are boarded are “less likely to be receiving optimal treatment for their mental health conditions while in the ED” and are more likely to require chemical and physical restraints. The group also cites the risk of medication errors, such as when patients are not given medications they take at home during their boarding time.
Changes in the works
In Colorado, Williams said an issue is a lack of residential treatment centers, which is the next level of care for kids who leave inpatient units. As a result, children are often sent out of state for care.
But changes appear to be afoot. On Monday, Gov. Jared Polis signed four new laws that will boost mental and behavioral health services in the state, which includes $2.5 million for elementary school programs and $5 million for youth residential help and therapeutic foster care using funds from the American Rescue Act.
President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act provided funding to address mental health and substance abuses challenges.
In Boston, leaders at Boston Children’s have worked with local lawmakers and started community service efforts to improve mental health resources at schools and training at primary care centers to equip doctors to manage acute problems early on.
Massachusetts has also launched the Roadmap for Behavioral Health Reform, which will create a new centralized service for people to call or text to get connected to mental health and addiction treatment and expand access to treatment at primary care offices. It will also create more inpatient psychiatric beds for pediatric and adult patients.
“There’s a lot of stigma associated with mental illness. And the more we can address this and bring other people to the table, such as private health insurance to actively engage in these efforts, that will really help in developing best practices for improving care for this patient population,” Ibeziako, with Boston Children’s Hospital, said.
For Carly and their mother, they want mental health to be paid attention to just as much as other health concerns.
“When you’re waiting, and you see other kids with medical problems like, ‘oh, I broke a leg,’ everybody’s on it, everyone’s taking care of it. And you have a psychiatric issue, it’s ‘oh, you’re going to have to wait for X amount of days.’ It makes these kids and their families feel like their mental health isn’t important,” McCabe said. “As a nation, kids should be our most important focus.”
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one, help is available. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 [TALK] for free, confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can also reach the Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386 or the Crisis Text Line by texting “START” to 741741.
(SURFSIDE, Fla.) — Biden and first lady to meet with families of Surfside condo collapse victims
The death toll has risen to 18 after the bodies of two children were found on Wednesda…
President Joe Biden is on the ground in Surfside, Florida, Thursday following the devastating partial collapse of a beachside condominium building last week that has killed at least 18 people.
The president departed the White House early Thursday morning and was planning to spend nearly eight hours on the ground in Florida. He’s already met with local officials and thanked first responders engaged in the ongoing search efforts ahead of consoling families affected by the disaster and delivering remarks at 3:50 p.m. ET. First lady Jill Biden is accompanying him for the visit.
At an earlier command briefing with local officials, seated next to Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Biden immediately made a big offer to cover the cost of the response effort.
“I think there’s more we can do, including, I think we have the power, and I’ll know shortly, to be able to pick up 100% of the cost to the county and the state,” Biden said, eliciting a surprised reaction from Miami-Dade mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who put her hand on Biden’s arm.
“I think the governor will you tell you, anything he asked for, he got,” Biden said, ahead of DeSantis nodding in agreement.
Biden took a moment to turn to politics, noting the bipartisan display of cooperation
“We’re letting the nation know we can cooperate when it’s really important,” Biden said.
Meeting later with a group of first responders, Biden was effusive with praise.
“I just want you to know that we understand,” he told the responder. “What you’re doing now, is just hard as hell. Even psychologically. And I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.”
He also invoked three personal stories to demonstrate the importance of first responders in his own life, referring to his experience having an aneurysm, describing his two sons being pulled out of the car crash that killed his first wife and daughter with the jaws of life and explaining that his home burned down after being struck by lightning.
“You saved my life. Literally, my fire department saved my life,” he said.
Search and rescue efforts were paused Thursday morning due to concerns about the stability of the remaining structure and the potential danger it poses to the crews. Structural engineers are on-site monitoring the situation as officials evaluate possible options and determine the next steps, according to Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.
“We’re doing everything that we can to ensure that the safety of our first responders is paramount and to continue our search and rescue operations as soon as it is safe to do so,” she said at an earlier press conference.
Officials were unable to provide a timeline for when the urgent operation will resume.
Separately, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the visit has been closely coordinated with officials on the ground to ensure that it does not divert any resources away from search and rescue operations.
“They want to thank the heroic first responders, search and rescue teams, and everyone who has been working tirelessly around the clock, and meet with the families who have been forced to endure this terrible tragedy waiting in anguish and heartbreak for word of their loved ones, to offer them comfort as search and rescue efforts continue. And they want to make sure that state and local officials have the resources and support they need under the emergency declaration,” Psaki said earlier this week.
En route to Florida, principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that local leaders urged the Bidens to visit Thursday, saying the time was right despite ongoing search and rescue efforts.
“The message that we’ve been given is very clear from the mayor’s office, from the governor’s office, from local officials, which is, they wanted us to come today, think now is the time to come, to offer up, offer up comfort and show unity from not just from him, but the country. And so this is why he and the first lady decided to come today, and he thought this was the right time to do it,” Jean-Pierre said.
