Bush Tours Hurricane-Torn Areas, Offers $1.1 Billion in Relief Funds

President Bush today toured a region ravaged by Hurricane Hugo, offering “a little encouragement” and a $1.1-billion relief check while defending federal efforts against charges of foot-dragging.

“I do know that there’s been a critic or two” of the federal disaster-relief effort, Bush said after a brief look at the storm damage. “To the critics, I simply say: I understand. We are trying very hard.”

Bush’s 15-minute motorcade from Charleston Air Force Base inland to Summerville took him past decimated trailer parks, dozens of roofless buildings and pine forests filled with trees snapped in half.

In Summerville, the President was shown around the Dorchester County Courthouse grounds, which were littered with smashed cars, fallen trees and twisted metal. He visited a community center where a school bus, flattened by a fallen tree, still stood in the driveway.

Later, he flew by helicopter over the Carolina coastline, where Hugo came ashore a week ago, and flew low over some of the hardest-hit areas of downtown Charleston.

Throughout, Bush offered words of encouragement to residents of a state where 270,000 people were made jobless by the hurricane, where more than 200,000 people still have no electricity and where 50,000 remain homeless.

Besides offering encouragement, Bush came to South Carolina to respond to a week of rising criticism that the federal government has been too bureaucratic and too slow in helping victims of what Summerville Mayor Berlin Meyers called “the worst storm that ever happened to our state.”

Bush was met as he landed by one of the most vocal critics, Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley Jr., who said it was “absolutely ridiculous” that only two federal disaster relief offices have been opened in Charleston. Riley complained that, when he asked for emergency power generators, he was told the proper forms had to be filled out first.

Later, as he ended his two-hour visit to South Carolina, Bush told reporters that the hurricane “was tough. It was devastating.

“But the spirit of the people of South Carolina came through loud and clear. . . . You couldn’t help but be impressed to hear people say, ‘We’re going to bounce back.’ ”

As for the complaints about the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) had described as “as sorry a bunch of bureaucratic jackasses as I’ve worked with in my life,” Bush said:

“When all the dust is settled and the debris is removed, people are going to understand that this has been a total team effort.”