Vice President Kamala Harris, husband Doug Emhoff visit Santa Monica fire station
On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris, along with her husband, Doug Emhoff, visited a Santa Monica fire station, where Harris briefly spoke about the deadly shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois.
Staying at her Brentwood home this weekend, the vice president arrived by motorcade to Santa Monica Fire Station 2 just after 1 p.m. where she and Emhoff spoke to firefighters and posed for photos with them, according to the White House press pool.
Harris touched on the shooting in Illinois afterwards, saying she planned to keep a previously scheduled trip to Chicago on Tuesday.
"So the president and I have been in close coordination and we are being briefed on what's happening right now in terms of the active shooter situation. We are sending federal resources to local law enforcement folks on the ground to make sure that we can help them in terms of the capture of the shooter and any investigation that will follow," Harris said.
"But right now we do have an active shooter situation and so we are putting all of the resources possible into monitoring that in a way that we can bring this to a close in terms of also capture of that individual.
"I am going to travel to Chicago tomorrow morning to address the National Association of Educators NEA," she continued. "And I was just sharing with some of our heroes, our local firefighters that part of what I'm preparing, sadly I was preparing it before -- it's resonant every day -- is a whole section on what our teachers go through. They go to school to learn how to teach our children to inspire their ambition to create the future generations of leaders and our teachers are also in training to deal with an active shooter."
Noting her personal history with wildfires in California, the vice president also talked to firefighters about what the administration needs to do "in particular around federal support for local firefighters on every issue."
"We've had to be evacuated a couple of times. I'm a California kid where you know about drought and what that means. And the climate crisis and what that means in terms of creating an environment that is hazardous. Particularly for you, who are on the front line," she said.
Harris has previously made a surprise visit to first responders during one of her Southland trips, stopping by a Crenshaw fire station in December of last year.
The vice president is set to speak in Chicago on Tuesday at the National Education Association 2022 Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly.