President Joe Biden drew criticism after tried to empathise with survivors of the Maui wildfires on Monday by sharing his own story of overcoming a small house fire where, luckily, nobody was hurt and nothing of considerable value was lost.
At the Lahaina Civic Center, Mr Biden addressed a crowd of residents who are still reeling from a raging wildfire that spread across their community on 8 August – causing at least 115 people to die and 80 per cent of the town’s structures to be damaged or destroyed.
