[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 137 (Tuesday, October 12, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H9879]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                THE CONTINUING IMPACT OF HURRICANE FLOYD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mrs. CLAYTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise again to remind my colleagues that 
the impact of Hurricane Floyd continues to affect the people of North 
Carolina and the people of the eastern shore, from Florida all the way 
to New York. There have been deaths even up as far as Vermont.
  But in North Carolina, that devastation is of untold proportions. 
There are more than 58,000 people now that have responded to the 
opportunity to call FEMA's intake line indicating they need assistance 
through FEMA. They need assistance immediately, and this government and 
this body needs to act.
  I want to say that the people of America have been just tremendously 
generous in responding and having compassion and showing sensitivity, 
and by giving of their own personal goods or their organizations or 
churches or relief organizations.
  But that is insufficient to respond to the needs of the 58,000 people 
who have lost their homes. Some have lost their income, the facilities 
or the infrastructure that they are accustomed to using, their 
wastewater system, their water system.

                              {time}  2015

  I met today in Greenville with farmers from around four counties. 
There were approximately 80 or more farmers who had come along with 
members of the agricultural community to talk about their loss and to 
recognize that as the relief funds now are constructed they are likely 
not to be included in that relief. If a farmer has lost his machinery 
or his livestock or his crops, how do we use that as a way of 
mitigating his loss? Only through now, as the law is constructed, only 
through a loan. Many of our small farmers are really on the fringes now 
of not knowing whether they will stay in business.
  I met with the grangers on Friday on the report from the North 
Carolina Grangers Society. There may be as much as 18 to 20 percent of 
the farmers going out of business now. I would say that many of the 
farmers were having problems before now, but if we compound the impact 
of losing 120,000 hogs, 2.5 million chickens, almost a million turkeys 
and livestock, we compound that with having low prices and calamities 
from the drought, one begins to get a sense of the devastation and the 
suffering and the uncertainty of tomorrow that these farmers are also 
experiencing.
  Not only farmers but small businesses, small businesses in Edgecombe 
County and Tarboro today said many of them in the downtown area, they 
were small businesses, they might have had 3 to 5 employees. They are 
not sure that a loan is what is going to help them. Many of them said 
when they look at their creditworthiness, meaning how much debt they 
have in relation to income, already they are at the margin of not being 
credit-worthy. So we have to begin to think about new structures to 
respond to both our farmers and our small businesses.
  I know the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Roukema) and the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Franks) and gentlewoman from New York 
(Mrs. Kelly) and the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Fowler) have begun 
to work, and I am working with that group, to see how we can ask this 
Congress to look at maybe a one-time effort to give some relief indeed 
to both small businesses and farmers. I just want to urge my colleagues 
to consider that.
  Finally, let me just say that we begin to think that this only 
affects people in North Carolina. Well, on Saturday night, there was a 
family that had come from this area, had come down to visit their 
relatives in the home county I live in, in Warren County, a young man 
who is a young professional, 41 years of age and into computer science, 
had come to visit his relatives and had gone a familiar road but did 
not see the sign or the sign was not very well displayed. There was a 
detour and the waters under that bridge were flooding above the bridge 
and that family of five in that van ended up in the water and the 8-
year-old is dead today and the other four members of that family, from 
this area, are now in serious and critical condition at Duke 
University. So the impact is tremendous.
  Mr. Speaker, we have an opportunity to respond to this tragedy. We 
have an opportunity to show that this government is responsive as 
Americans to us, and we will indeed do the right thing. I urge us to do 
a relief program that is responsive to the needs of all the people who 
are in the area of Hurricane Floyd.

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