[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 124 (Wednesday, September 22, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H8539-H8540]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Towns) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  (Mr. TOWNS addressed the House. His remarks will appear hereafter in 
the Extensions of Remarks.)


               NORTH CAROLINA NEEDS THE HELP OF CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for this opportunity, and, as 
my colleague from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton) has just shared with 
us, I want to talk for a few minutes about some of the real damage that 
has affected not only my district, but my State, and the truth is some 
of this can be said for a number of other States and communities up and 
down the east coast.
  I have here with me this evening three charts. The first one is a 
chart from Wilson County. That is somewhere over 100 to 110 homes 
there, what we would call mobile homes or trailer homes in North 
Carolina and across the country. But as you can see, the early stages, 
all of these homes are under water in some form, and all of them, all, 
had to be removed and spent their time in shelters.
  As bad as this looks, in some places in eastern North Carolina 
tonight there are thousands of citizens of our State who went into 
shelters on Wednesday night, one week ago, fearing the worst from 
Hurricane Floyd, not realizing that a week later they would be there, 
and fears greater than they had ever anticipated have been realized. 
Not only have they been in shelters with people they did not know, they 
are in shelters with their children and with people who, many of whom 
have not had an opportunity for a bath in a week, but with the help of 
federal and State and the good graces of individuals they have been 
fed, they have been provided a place to stay, and as bad as the 
conditions are in some places, people are scrambling to help make it 
better with FEMA's help. And I must, this evening, pay tribute to 
Director Witt who, I think he and his people have just done an 
outstanding job in coordinating it.
  They had no idea that a week later they would have, in some cases, no 
home to go home to, no jobs to accept when they went back because the 
businesses they worked for were gone. If they happen to be farmers, 
their farms are under water. All the crops this year are gone because 
in North Carolina we had a bad drought this summer, and what crops were 
left are now totally under water and gone.
  If they happen to have been a tobacco farmer and were able to salvage 
something, those tobacco barns are under water, and what little tobacco 
they had in those barns, they are under water. Their tractors, all 
their equipment and in some cases their homes, their clothing, and the 
only thing many of them had when they left were the clothes on their 
back.
  It is a tough situation, and in some cases places in my district are 
still under water, but in places east of us are even worse. There are 
whole houses under water, and the water has not yet subsided a week 
later.
  This is an additional photograph taken also in Wilson County. As you 
can see, this was a commercial building, but behind it was supposed to 
have been farm land. It looks like a lake. I cannot tell you what kind 
of crops were in it because they are under water.
  This is a photograph of one of the towns. I traveled on Monday with 
the President and a number of other people from the district and 
Secretaries to Tarboro and over to Pitt County where the East Carolina 
University is, and today they are facing the brunt of it because the 
tidewaters have almost reached their high point.
  And for those who would think that when we talk of hurricanes they 
think of the coastline of North Carolina which sticks out; they were 
talking about the coast. I remind folks that these are areas that have 
never been affected by flood, some of them not for 500 years that we 
know of. They are above the 500-year flood plain, and they are flooded.
  Most of these people do not have flood insurance because there was no 
reason to have it. They have lost their businesses; in some cases, 
their homes; and as I said earlier, every single thing that they hold 
dear with their memories. Fortunately for most of them, they still are 
alive.
  We have lost a lot of life. Tonight there will be more that will lose 
their life before it is over with, and we will find them when the 
waters go down.

[[Page H8540]]

  But there are some good stories.
  On Monday, some people were on a boat checking houses; and they heard 
someone tapping, a noise on a roof of a house. They crawled up on the 
house because the boat went right up to it. They knocked a hole in the 
roof of the house, and out crawled 11 people.
  As water started to rise and rising so fast, the people in the house 
went up, and they kept going up, and they finally went up in the attic, 
and there was nowhere else to go; and they were trapped.
  So there are stories of saving lives and heroism from all the groups 
you could think of from firemen, to rescue squads, to FEMA, to all 
groups. I will not try to list them this evening, but they deserve a 
great deal of credit; and as the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. 
Clayton) said, the people in North Carolina are not unlike the people 
anywhere in America. They are tough folks. They will bounce back, but 
they need help.
  There is a reason we call them Tar Heels. They stick to it, and they 
get things done. They are tough people.
  But we are going to need this Congress to take action on a disaster 
bill before we go home. Our farmers will not be able to plant next year 
if they do not get help. They have lost everything. Many of our 
business people will not be able to continue and provide jobs, and 
thousands and thousands of people have lost their home and everything 
they have.
  I call on this Congress to take the action that we would take for 
anyone else in America. We have responded to world crises, it is now 
time to respond to those of us in North Carolina.

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