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Seven people have been hospitalized after those attending a late-night Trump rally at an airport in Omaha, Nebraska, were stranded in the cold.
A large portion of the crowd, estimated in the thousands, remained at the scene waiting for buses hours after Trump’s plane left, according to reporters at the scene. The outside temperatures were at freezing.
The problem was attributed to limited traffic flow on the two-lane road leading to the rally site.
Aaron Sanderford
(@asanderford)If you are waiting for someone who attended the @realDonaldTrump meet in #Omaha, it may take a while for them to get on a bus and get off. Traffic along the small road to the private side of Eppley Airfield is jammed and buses were having trouble getting through. We saw this: pic.twitter.com/DTRKnH5lkb
The Washington Post reported that Trump supporters were stalled after the president spoke at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield. He said many elderly Trump supporters were among those stranded.
Omaha police said in a written statement that first responders treated 30 people for medical reasons throughout the day and seven were sent to the hospital.
Jeff Paul
(@Jeff_Paul)Thousands of people left in the cold and stranded in #Omaha, #Nebraska after #Triumph meeting. I have been told that the shuttles do not work and that there are not enough buses. The police did not seem to know what to do. Some walked. I saw at least one woman receiving medical attention. pic.twitter.com/oIkmixaZt0
Police monitoring sites on social media reported that some people suffered adverse effects from temperatures hovering around 30 ° F (-1 ° C) while waiting for shuttle buses or attempting to walk to their cars more than two miles away after the rally.
“Many people underestimated the distance from the event to the parking lot on foot,” Officer Michael Pecha, a spokesman for the Omaha Police Department, said in the statement.
Police said 40 buses were used to transport 25,000 people over a 10-hour period, starting at 10 a.m., to the event site, although an undisclosed number left before the rally ended, police said.
Traffic jammed and waiting buses with a capacity of 50 passengers each were overwhelmed when the crowd left the event around 9 p.m., police said. Additional buses were called to try to get people to their cars.
Police said the last of the rally attendees was able to leave around midnight.
Trump’s deputy national press secretary, Samantha Zager, said in a statement that the 40 shuttle buses deployed by the event were twice the number typically used at Trump campaign rallies. But “local road closures and the resulting congestion caused delays,” he said.
“At the guest departure location, we had tents, heaters, generators, hot chocolate, and hand warmers 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 candidate Joe Biden used the image of Omaha supporters left in the cold after the rally on Wednesday to criticize Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s an image that captured the whole of President Trump’s approach to this crisis,” Biden said.
Trump was in Omaha because it shares a media market with much of Iowa, where the president appears to be behind Biden despite winning the state in 2016 by nearly 19 points. Additionally, Nebraska divides its electoral votes by congressional district (Maine does, too, but all other states win all) and the second congressional district in Douglas County that is voting heavily for Biden, which potentially giving the Democrat his only electoral vote, as he did for Obama in 2008.
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