DAMASCUS, Va. (WDBJ) – US Senator from Ohio and Republican Vice-Presidential candidate J. D. Vance visited Southwest Virginia Thursday, surveying the damage from the remnants of Hurricane Helene.
He visited the town of Damascus, one of the Virginia communities hit hard by flooding.
J. D. and Usha Vance touched down at Tri-Cities Airport in Tennessee, shortly before two o’clock Thursday afternoon, and then made the 45-minute drive to Damascus, Virginia.
Once there, they were greeted by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Virginia) and other state and local officials, outside First Baptist Church, which was heavily damaged by floodwaters.
They met with residents who suffered losses, and with volunteers who have been pitching in to help. And Vance told reporters he had heard inspiring stories of survival. “I heard a story of a family that got out of a house because they took bedsheets. They used them to crawl out a window and then get in a boat in which they were eventually rescued. I heard about a husband and wife where the husband was rescued and thought for 20 hours he had lost his wife and eventually she was found. It really was miraculous, but also a testament to the incredible human courage of the people of Damascus that there wasn’t any loss of life,” Vance said.
Vance walked through a portion of the town with Gov. Youngkin and others, and surveyed the damage that is still fresh a week after flooding from Helene inundated the town. Vance said it’s clear that recovery will take time and money.
“I think the biggest thing that I take away from this is one, people need lot of resources to rebuild, rebuild the water system, rebuild the roads, to put power back on, to restock people’s refrigerators, but most importantly I heard an incredible number of stories of incredible human tragedy, but also human heroism that saved a lot of lives and made it so this very significant tragedy wasn’t a whole lot worse,” Vance said.
Answering a reporter’s question, Vance appeared to support calling Congress back into session to approve additional funding for disaster relief.
Vance spent three hours in the area – just over an hour on the ground in Damascus. And he said this won’t be his only visit to the town. Vance said he plans to return, hopefully, he said, as Vice President.
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