WASHINGTON (AP) – Moving from house to house is challenging under the best of circumstances, and even with movers as first-class as the housekeepers and other staff working in the White House.
But the coronavirus pandemic can be a complicating factor, as the executive mansion prepares for a new president and performs the Inauguration Day ritual to pull out one leader and settle in another.
This is usually a precision operation: both movements are usually performed within about five hours. The clock would normally start ticking when the outgoing and incoming presidents leave the White House together to go to the Capitol for the swearing-in ceremony. The process will continue during the ceremony and the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.
“They actually have the moving trucks waiting outside the gates of the White House,” said Matt Costello, a historian from the White House Historical Association. “And as soon as the president and the elected president leave, they wave in the moving trucks, and they pack the outgoing president’s stuff, and then they unpack all the new first family’s stuff.”
Biden’s wife, Jill, said on Friday that she and the president-elect had been preparing to move from their home in Wilmington, Delaware, for the past two months and that they were packing our closets this morning.
But things will unfold slightly differently this year.
President Donald Trump, who is still angry because he lost re-election, skips the inauguration. He also leaves the city before Biden takes the oath of office, meaning the couple will not go to the Capitol together. Depending on when Trump leaves, housekeepers and other hostel staff who help move the presidents’ possessions could get a welcome edge on packing and unpacking.
Inauguration planners have scaled down the traditional roster of events this year due to the pandemic, which is now responsible for nearly 400,000 U.S. deaths. A luncheon for the new president at the Capitol has been scrapped, and the hour-long parade in Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House will be virtual.
This combination of events in the past kept the new president and first lady out of the White House long enough for the housekeeping staff to finish putting on their clothes, furniture, and other personal items.
The pandemic can affect the moving process in other ways.
Some public health experts said it was important for the White House to take extra precautions to reduce the spread of the disease largely in the air during heavy traffic.
The White House was the scene of several coronavirus outbreaks that infected dozens of staff members and others, including Trump and his wife, Melania. Biden is in danger because of his age. The 78-year-old is regularly tested for the coronavirus and recently received his final dose of the vaccine.
Linsey Marr, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech, with expertise in transmitting viruses such as the coronavirus in the air, said domestic workers and other staff should make sure they wear face masks because they will exert themselves during the five to six hours it takes. usually expensive to turn the move off.
“A lot of people are going to move in and out,” she said. ‘I want to make sure the people are masked and cover their noses and mouths at all times. They are going to exert themselves because they are going to move things around. ‘
Marr also suggested that the Bidens should wait a few hours after the move is complete to go to the residence.
The White House is usually thoroughly cleaned between families, said Anita McBride, who as assistant to President George W. Bush helped coordinate his 2009 move out of the mansion.
“Everything is done through a major cleaning process,” she said. Beds are stripped, mattresses replaced, carpets cleaned or replaced and fresh coats of paint applied as needed.
The White House chief guard, who oversees the housekeeping staff, usually coordinates with someone in the incoming president’s team to learn more about their preferences so that the residence can feel as much at home as possible, with clothes in the closets and favorite food in the kitchen.
As soon as the waiting moving trucks are blown through a strict security and to the White House site, residence staff break into groups to carry out specific assignments. Some will only handle Trump’s possessions, while others have the task of placing the contents of Biden’s boxes in their designated places.
The chief importer reports to Melania Trump, who was touring the White House’s headquarters in November 2016 when she accompanied Donald Trump to the White House for a post-election meeting with then-President Barack Obama. President Trump broke the tradition and did not invite the Bidens to a similar meeting.
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Associated Press author Aamer Madhani in Chicago contributed to this report.