President Trump said Thursday that he would soon visit Puerto Rico to take stock of the damage inflicted by Hurricane Maria, which he said had “absolutely obliterated” the island.
“Puerto Rico got hit with winds, they say they’ve never seen winds like this anywhere,” Trump said before a meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in New York. “Their electrical grid was totally destroyed, and so many other things.”
Hurricane Maria, which struck Puerto Rico this week as a Category 5 storm, left the island completely without power and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses.
“It’s in very, very, very perilous shape. It’s very sad, what happened to Puerto Rico,” Trump said.
The president has already visited Texas twice and Florida once to take stock of the destruction left behind by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, each of which caused thousands of families to evacuate their homes and wrought billions of dollars in damaged property.
Trump told reporters Thursday that Tom Bossert, his homeland security adviser, was waiting for him in an adjacent room and had been helping him manage the storm recovery response during his trip to the United Nations General Assembly this week.
