Members of the congressional delegation and local leaders that he will encounter today. so that could be part of what would be sort of known in the washington parlance as the deliverables of this visit, and again, it s that chance for the president to show he s concerned and the chance for the president outlining some of his own agenda items. andrea? and thanks to kelly, ellison barber where the families have homes after damage. people need help. people didn t just lose all of their material belongings, everywhere you look down the street you can see what is left of the inside of their homes and all of it put outside on the curb like everyday trash. a lot of people also lost the basic comfort that so many of us take for granted of feeling safe in their own home. we met one woman who crawled
Officials there say it should be a wake-up call about future storms. what are they hoping to show president biden today during this visit? reporter: they want to show him what is happening on this street, craig, and so many others throughout the community. while the sun is shining it s a very dark cloud hanging over people here. i am almost 5 8 , and in some homes the water level was above my head. look inside ray s house where his parents live, they are in their late 80s and 90s, and everything in the basement is gone, it was devastated, damaged. he says it was not just the wooden things and the furniture, but listen to what he says how powerful this water was. this is what remains of the wall. so when the water came in here, it created like a swimming pool, and then it was pushed. anybody that would have been on that side would have been dead.
reporter: they would have been dead, and as you pointed out, craig, in new york city 13 people died and several of those right here in the queens section of new york. block after block and house after house you see garbage lining the streets, and it looks like trash to most people but these are precious treasures, and they can t get some back and they can put a couch back in their house but can t put back the memories of some of the things they lost, and they want to tell the president how devastating this is, and they hope he gets an opportunity to see and hear them. some were saying to me, once you see this it hard to believe that we don t need some sort of enhanced abilities for our infrastructure, because this, they say, can t keep going. one woman down the street where you see a pile of debris behind me, she said they have had floods here for years, but nothing, nothing was ever here like this, craig. so many stories like that. so much water so fast, so
Very, very secure about is that as you wore the atmosphere and it can rain a lot more in these kinds of storms. professor emanuel, let s talk about the president. the president linking this to his infrastructure bill which does deal with climate change. so you know, how legitimate is that? can we do anything with one piece of legislation in the near-term? do we have to take small steps, smaller steps? some people, of course, senator manchin is complaining it is way too big. nothing is too big at this point and we waited so long, andrea, and here we don t have much choice yet. we have to build better infrastructure to control the storms we re already getting. it s not a question of the future anymore. it is here, and they re getting worse and we need to take the big steps we need to take and make sure things don t get
More damage. we saw oregon and california, of course, this year. and meteorlogically, we are seeing places that are already dry especially during their dry seasons get dryer generally speaking as you warm the climate and as you get dryer weather of course, you are more susceptible to wildfires and there s human management, of course, and certainly the weather is a factor in these fires. professor kerry emanuel, thank you so much for staying with us. as the president continues to tour the zones, we are going to be following him, of course, all day on msnbc. thank you. coming up next, the abortion ban battle the justice department vowing to battle the abortion ban in texas as other states look to copy the law and to protect those having