Clinton Brings Solace to Storm Victims

President Clinton brought personal solace and the promise of federal financial aid Saturday to tornado survivors in Oklahoma, where devastating twisters caused 41 deaths and more than $600 million in property losses Monday.

On a walking tour of the hard-hit Frolic Meadows neighborhood southwest of Oklahoma City, the president spent 90 minutes embracing residents and offering his sympathy.

Tammy Weston, a mother of three whose family “lost it all” when the storm hit, said the president’s words of consolation “made us feel better, actually.”

“It’s like when you were small and your father came and said, ‘It’s going to be OK,’ ” Weston told a reporter. “It feels like the whole country is behind us, not just Oklahomans.”

Phillip Squires, another storm survivor who shook the president’s hand and chatted with him briefly, said Clinton “told me he was glad to see we’re OK. That made me feel pretty good.”

Later, addressing dozens of residents gathered across the street from David Haiden’s demolished home on Angela Drive, the president said the Labor Department would spend $12 million to provide temporary jobs for 3,500 Oklahomans who lost their jobs “because their businesses were taken out by the tornado.”

Those left unemployed by the storms “will be paid to serve at relief centers, to distribute food and water, to help on construction crews,” Clinton said. “They’ll be able to feed their families by rebuilding their communities.”

Clinton also said he would ask Congress to add $372 million to the government’s disaster relief fund to help victims in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and Tennessee rebuild their destroyed homes and businesses. Although Oklahoma was the hardest hit, the storm system also caused considerable damage and several deaths in the other states.

“Our hearts go out to you, especially the families of those who lost their lives,” said Clinton, wearing an open-collar blue dress shirt, dark slacks and shiny red cowboy boots.

In addition, Clinton said he would press Congress to approve his $10-million budget request for the National Weather Service’s next generation of Doppler radar.

An improved Doppler system would further increase the warning times for tornadoes, Clinton said, giving residents more time to seek shelter and a better chance of survival.

Earlier in the day, the president got an aerial view of the widespread devastation on a 25-minute trip aboard a Marine helicopter with Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating and James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Gazing down at entire subdivisions flattened by the half-mile-wide twister, whose winds topped 260 mph, Clinton called the storm “the biggest, most intense tornado I have seen.”

“It’s amazing people lived through this,” the governor said. “It’s a miracle,” the president agreed.

Clinton recalled that when he “was a kid, we had old-fashioned storm cellars, like the one at my grandfather’s house. It’s too bad most houses don’t have basements now.”

Clinton told Keating he favored “strong housing codes” nationwide to protect Americans who live in areas prone to tornadoes and hurricanes.

As the trip ended, Keating told the president that “over 5,000 homes have been left uninhabitable. Yet there has been no looting.”

“This is a real tribute to Oklahomans,” the president replied.

Clinton flew to Oklahoma from Texas, where he raised $700,000 at Democratic Party fund-raising events Friday in Houston and Austin.