Seven people have been hospitalised after attendees of a late-night Trump rally at an airport in Omaha, Nebraska, were stranded in the cold.
A large portion of the crowd, estimated to be in the thousands, remained at the site waiting on buses hours after Trump’s plane had departed, according to reporters on the scene. Outside temperatures were about at the freezing point.
The problem was blamed on limited traffic flow on the two-lane road that led to the site of the rally.
Aaron Sanderford
(@asanderford)
If you’re waiting on someone who attended the @realDonaldTrump rally in #Omaha, it may be a while until they get on a bus and get out. Traffic along the small roadway to the private side of Eppley Airfield is backed up and buses were having trouble getting through. We saw this: pic.twitter.com/DTRKnH5lkb
October 28, 2020
The Washington Post reported that Trump supporters were stuck after the president spoke at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield. It said many elderly supporters of Trump were among those stranded.
Omaha police said in a written statement that first responders dealt with 30 people for medical reasons throughout the day and seven were sent to hospital.
Jeff Paul
(@Jeff_Paul)
Thousands of people left out in the cold and stranded in #Omaha, #Nebraska after a #Trump rally. I’m told the shuttles aren’t operating & there aren’t enough busses. Police didn’t seem to know what to do. Some walked. I saw at least one woman getting medical attention. pic.twitter.com/oIkmixaZt0
October 28, 2020
Police-monitoring sites on social media reported that some people suffered adverse effects from temperatures hovering around 30F (-1C) as they waited for shuttle buses or tried to walk to their cars more than two miles away following the rally.
“Many people underestimated the distance from the event back to the parking lot on foot,” officer Michael Pecha, spokesman for Omaha police, said in the statement.
Police said 40 buses were used to shuttle 25,000 people over a 10-hour period, starting at 10am, to the event site, although an undisclosed number left before the rally ended, police said.
Traffic became snarled, and awaiting buses which can hold about 50 riders each were overwhelmed when crowds left the event around 9pm, police said. Additional buses were called in to try to get people to their cars.
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Police said the last of the rally goers were able to leave around midnight.
Trump’s deputy national press secretary Samantha Zager said in a statement that the 40 shuttle buses the event deployed was twice the number usually deployed at Trump campaign rallies. But “local road closures and resulting congestion caused delays”, she said.
“At the guest departure location, we had tents, heaters, generators, hot cocoa, and handwarmers available for guests,” Zager said. “We always strive to provide the best guest experience at our events and we care about their safety.”
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Wednesday used the image of Omaha supporters left in the cold after the rally to criticise Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s an image that captured President Trump’s whole approach to this crisis,” Biden said.
Trump was in Omaha because it shares a media market with a lot of Iowa, where the president appears to be trailing Biden despite winning the state in 2016 by almost 19 points. Also, Nebraska splits its electoral votes by congressional district – Maine does too but every other state is winner-takes-all – and the second congressional district in Douglas County that is polling strongly for Biden, potentially giving the Democrat its one electoral vote, as it did for Obama in 2008.
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