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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Tuesday he is postponing a planned trip to Germany and Angola to stay at the White House to monitor Hurricane Milton, as it spins closer to Florida’s Gulf Coast.
“I just don’t think I can be out of the country at this time,” he said at the White House after senior members of the administration updated him on the storm and the government's preparations. Biden warned that Milton “could be one of the worst storms in 100 years to hit Florida,” and said he's working “to increase the size and presence” of the federal government's response.
He said people in the storm's path should heed local orders to evacuate and leave “now.”
“You should have already evacuated,” Biden said, seated with some of the officials who briefed him. “It’s a matter of life and death, and that’s not hyperbole. It's a matter of life and death."
Biden said Milton's strength was such that it has the potential “to both enter Florida as a hurricane and leave Florida as a hurricane on the Atlantic Coast. This could be the worst storm to hit Florida in over a century. God willing it won’t be, but that’s what it’s looking like right now.”
He asked commercial airlines and other companies for help with evacuations.
“I’m calling on the airlines and other companies to provide as much service as possible to accommodate evacuations and not to engage in price gouging, to just do it on the level," Biden said.
It was unclear when Biden's overseas trip might be rescheduled and the White House did not announce new travel dates. The president had been scheduled to depart Thursday for Germany, where he had planned to host a summit on the war in Ukraine with allied nations at a U.S. military base before continuing on to Angola.
Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said officials would look for a date and location to replace Saturday's planned meeting on Ukraine.
The German government issued a statement saying “we very much regret the cancellation, but of course we understand due to the situation in Florida.”
Biden had promised to visit Africa during his term in office, which ends in January. He said Tuesday that he still intends to make the journey.
“I’m still planning on visiting all the places I said I’d be and all the conferences I said I'd participate in," he said.
Hurricane Milton weakened slightly Tuesday but remained a ferocious storm that could land a once-in-a-century direct hit on the populous Tampa Bay region with towering storm surges and turn debris from Helene’s recent devastation into projectiles.
Most of Florida’s west coast was under a hurricane or tropical storm warning as Milton and its 145 mph (230 kph) winds spun just off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, creeping toward the state. With the storm expected to remain fairly strong as it crosses Florida, parts of the state's eastern coast were put under hurricane warnings early Tuesday. Milton’s center could come ashore Wednesday night in the Tampa Bay area, which has a population of more than 3.3 million people.
This year's hurricane season has caused havoc for political calendars in the closing weeks of the presidential campaign. Less than two weeks ago, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, cut short a West Coast trip to return to Washington after Helene made landfall. She later visited Georgia and North Carolina, where some of the worst damage took place.
Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has also traveled through the Southeast, including two trips to Georgia.