President
Joe Biden took an aerial tour on Friday 5 April of the collapsed Baltimore
bridge that is blocking a key East Coast shipping lane, and he pledged federal help in rebuilding the
span, an idea some Republican lawmakers in the U.S. Congress have resisted.
Aboard
his Marine One helicopter, Biden flew over the scene of the disaster, where six
people were killed, to get an aerial view. He met local officials for a
briefing on the economic impact to the Baltimore port, an important shipping destination for ships to offload
automobiles.
He also
vowed that the parties responsible for the bridge collapse will help pay to
repair the damage and “be held
accountable to the fullest extent the law will allow.”
Biden later met the families of the
six people killed in the accident.
The six
victims of the bridge collapse were all immigrants from Mexico and Central
America, who were fixing potholes on the road surface of the
bridge when it collapsed. Four of
the bodies have still not been recovered, but all are presumed dead.
Biden’s
meeting with the families of these immigrant workers comes as his rival
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has ramped up
anti-immigrant rhetoric and cast migrants as dangerous criminals “poisoning
the blood” of America.