[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 137 (Wednesday, October 1, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H9105-H9110]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       HURRICANE ISABEL RECOVERY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bishop of Utah). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from North Carolina 
(Mr. Etheridge) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, this evening I will be joined here by a 
number of my colleagues from not only North Carolina but from States 
along the east coast that were hit by Hurricane Isabel with devastating 
force several weeks ago, and a number of lives were lost in my home 
State. More lives were lost, of course, as the storm made its way up 
the east coast through Virginia into the District of Columbia as it 
continued to move forward. And, of course, the amount of water that was 
dropped created flood conditions in some parts of the east coast that 
they have not seen for a long time.
  This evening, though, let me speak specifically about North Carolina 
and then we will cover some of the other issues. And my colleagues are 
going to join me in a few minutes. But I want to express my 
appreciation this evening, Mr. Speaker, to some hard-working folks who 
came to North Carolina really before the storm hit, from FEMA and the 
emergency management people in North Carolina, Under Secretary Beatty 
and Governor Easley, who really were planning in getting ready.
  We had a lot of advance planning and time to get ready for the storm 
when it was a category 5. Unfortunately, no matter how well you plan, 
you cannot stop the wind damage, nor can you stop the tidal surge. And 
that is what created tremendous damage. We have roughly 400 FEMA 
workers in North Carolina as I speak this evening helping door to door.
  I appreciate this opportunity to bring to my colleagues' attention in 
this House the issues as they relates to recovery costs from this 
devastating hurricane. I have to my right here a photograph of a road. 
You know, most of us think it hit the coast and that is where it ended. 
This was well inland. This really is a road here, and you see how it 
was washed out.
  I want to turn, though, to the next photograph. And I am going to 
leave this up and refer to it from time to time. This is a small rural 
village, the county seat, of Hyde County. It is not in my district, but 
I have a lot of friends who live there. When I was State superintendent 
of schools, I spent time with my friends there. And this small town is 
under water, or was under water.
  What is so sad and devastating about this situation is when Hurricane 
Floyd hit in 1999, they saw flooding, substantial flooding. They 
borrowed money through SBA and other sources and with the FEMA money 
razed their homes, did the things they needed to do. And now the whole 
town is flooded, not just part of it, the whole town.
  And I could cite stories all over the East, and my colleagues are 
going to talk about more of those this evening, so I will let them join 
me in just a minute. But as it roared ashore on Thursday, September 18, 
I could not help but think that Hurricane Fran that hit in 1996 came on 
a Thursday, Hurricane Floyd which was the 500-year flood, came on a 
Thursday, it seems like Thursdays in September are not the kind of days 
in North Carolina when you have got a storm coming you want to look 
forward to.
  But as this storm roared through North Carolina and into Virginia and 
Maryland, its effects were felt all the way up into West Virginia and 
Pennsylvania and finally ultimately in Canada. Although it lost its 
strength as it came inland, it was a huge storm. And the fury of this 
storm touched millions of people along the east coast. A lot of folks 
were without power for a week. I was told today that finally, after now 
roughly almost 2 weeks, all the power is back on in North Carolina.
  It destroyed homes, as I said. It destroyed whole towns, it flooded 
them, and it literally devastated crops. And I will talk about that 
more as the evening goes on with my colleagues.
  And I am sorry to say that in North Carolina we lost five of our 
citizens as a result of this storm. And as is the case many times with 
a hurricane or storm that moves inland, we lose more lives from 
freshwater flooding than we do along the coast.
  We asked our friends in North Carolina to send a photograph to us 
tonight to use to share with our colleagues, because many have seen the 
photographs or the things on TV as it relates to the Outer Banks and 
Hatteras and Ocracoke and others. This little small town is in a rural 
county; and, I dare say, no one has seen this photograph in Hyde County 
of Swan Quarter, a fishing village with some great people.
  So far, 26 counties in North Carolina have been declared Federal 
disaster areas. And we just got word that the declaration may be 
extended to several more counties, and it should be. And I trust the 
people at FEMA will do it quickly. Because there is a lot of debris.
  I talked this evening with a person who works for the State of North 
Carolina who works with our fishermen on the coast. And because of all 
the debris that has been washed on shore and clogged up the channels, 
many of our fishermen who would like to go out and earn a living, that 
even though the storm has passed, there is so much debris they cannot 
set the nets, their crab pots have been washed away. It is just 
devastating to their economic livelihood.
  Preliminary damage estimates indicate, and these are only 
preliminary, the numbers will change, that North Carolina local 
governments have incurred more than $55 million in damages, an 
assessment for individual losses thus far and is continuing to rise as 
those numbers come in.
  This is a State, as I said earlier, that was hit with Hurricane Fran 
in 1996 that created untold hundreds of millions of dollars, actually 
in the billions of dollars, of damage, a devastating flood in 1999, ice 
storms et cetera. I will talk about that more later. 1.8 million acres 
of three of our State's most important crops were heavily damaged: 
peanuts, cotton, and soybeans. And the shame of it is it comes to one 
of the areas of my State where there is very little manufacturing. 
Agriculture is the lifeblood of many of these communities. And it comes 
less than 1 year after our farmers suffered one of the worst droughts 
that we have faced in a long, long time.
  Sometimes those of us in North Carolina feel that our State has 
become a sort of disaster central. We get an awful lot of disasters. 
Some have said

[[Page H9106]]

that when you dial 911, it rings in North Carolina. They are really 
talking about when hurricanes head in. And they normally hit North 
Carolina because it sort of sticks out in the ocean, if you look at the 
maps.
  In the past several years, as I have said, we have had two major 
hurricanes, a major ice storm, and a drought. That is why the economy 
of our State is in such tough shape right now. Along with the 
manufacturing jobs we have lost, it has had a heavy impact. We have 
lost the second largest number of manufacturing jobs in the country, 
second only to Michigan.
  Fortunately, because of the advanced technology that we enjoy today, 
Isabel was one of the best forecast storms that we have had in a long, 
long time. We needed direction and they told us about where it was 
going to hit and it hit there, the approximate wind speed, and they 
were right. But as I said earlier, we could not control the waves; we 
could not control the wind. And a lot of damage was done.
  However, as these two photographs show, there is water in every house 
in this small town. The whole town is flooded. One thing that we can 
improve upon that we do not now have the ability to do is that we ought 
to be able to determine the hydrology of how much water is going to 
fall so we will know what the flood levels are.
  Most of our Nation's hurricane preparedness efforts have been focused 
on tracking storms, telling close communities to leave, and they did in 
this one. It saved a lot of lives, and we are grateful for that. But we 
cannot deal with the surge. With early warnings, communities can take 
necessary preparedness and protect our citizens and, in many cases, 
protect property as was done along the North Carolina coast to the 
extent we could.
  However, as was demonstrated by Hurricane Floyd in 1999, Tropical 
Storm Alison in 2002, and now Hurricane Isabel this year, we need to 
improve our ability to raise the awareness of our inland residents of 
the destructive nature of flooding.

                              {time}  2000

  And we can do something about it. A study done by Ed Rappaport of the 
Tropical Prediction Center shows that since 1970 fresh water flooding 
has caused 59 percent of storm deaths in the United States in all 
storms, whereas only 1 percent of the losses of life have come from 
coastal storm surges, and that is true in this storm.
  That is why in the 107th Congress my colleagues joined me as I 
introduced and we got passed the Tropical Cyclone Inland Forecasting 
Improvement and Warning System Development Act. That is a long title to 
say we need a little bit of money to find out where the flash floods 
are going to be, how high they will be, so when we tell a person there 
will be a flash flood, they will know whether it will be 6 inches or 6 
feet. There is a big difference in that to save lives.
  This law authorizes a small sum, only $1.15 million a year for 5 
years to provide the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 
or NOAA, with additional resources to enhance the science of flood 
prediction and, most importantly, develop an important, effective flood 
warning index that will really save lives. We can do it. We have the 
technology to do it. It takes just a few dollars to help make our 
citizens here in the United States of America, who are paying the 
taxes, safer and to save lives.
  We need to better understand the damage these storms can cause and 
better inform our citizens of the danger these storms pose.
  I am working hard with my colleagues and this delegation and others 
to provide the funding this year to bring the process of developing an 
inland flood forecasting and warning system that our communities will 
have so that when the next hurricanes come, hopefully we will have a 
way to deal with it and we will be better informed to share with our 
citizens.
  Mr. Speaker, it is now my privilege to yield to my colleague really 
from the Northeast, whose district encompasses a lot of the area that 
received substantial damage, a hard-working member who has really spent 
a lot of time working with his colleagues, working to make sure we get 
the money, to make a difference, to help his people back home, the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballance). I thank the gentleman for 
his hard work.
  Mr. BALLANCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina 
(Mr. Etheridge), my colleague, for organizing this special order 
tonight. And we thank our other colleagues who are going to join us, 
the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price) and others.
  I represent the First Congressional District of North Carolina, all 
or part of 23 counties. Most of these 23 counties were sort of in the 
eye of the storm, but there were about seven or eight who were actually 
hard hit and power was knocked out for more than a week.
  We are here tonight because we want to talk about this storm and its 
impact on the communities, the cleanup and recovery process that has 
gone on and is going on. Tragedies such as these kinds of storms bring 
out the best in our people, and we want to talk a little bit about that 
and congratulate all of the volunteers and those who worked so hard. 
People find that in these kinds of tragedies they can lean on one 
another and they can lean on their faith and they can have hope for a 
brighter future, even while they are sitting in the dark, maybe with a 
candle flickering as the only light in their household.
  As my colleague has pointed out, Hurricane Isabel made land 2 weeks 
ago, hitting North Carolina's coast and coming right across Greenville 
and Roanoke Rapids and Hoskey and on into Virginia and on up the coast 
and right across the District of Columbia. The resulting impact left 
entire communities in the dark for the better part of an entire week. 
As we learned today, the last out customer in Hartford County was to 
have their lights by dark tonight, and one customer in Washington 
County hopefully by midnight tonight.
  There may still be a few isolated power outages where the storm has 
damaged the home itself or the meter box, and the power companies are 
not able to turn the power on until those areas are fixed. But people 
were left without lights, without water, without the necessities. And I 
know that there are some people who depend on their telephone as a 
lifeline. At some point, after a day or two, in most of these areas, 
telephones were out, roads were out and impassable.
  I wanted to say a hearty thank-you to the thousands and thousands of 
volunteers, first responders who comprised about 95 percent of the 
relief operations early on in all of these communities. They, the 
firemen, were out there almost in the middle of the storm, the police 
officers, the sheriffs' departments. And then just individuals who knew 
that there were problems with trees across the highways and they went 
out with their chain saws, and they removed those trees so that people 
could get home; or if there was an emergency, they could get to the 
emergency relief.
  And as the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) has pointed 
out, we are pleased that almost all of the power in these communities 
is now back on.
  I want to talk about a few of the communities that I visited. My 
staff and I tried to go to every one of these 23 counties. It was a 
little difficult for me to get to all of them, but I got to maybe about 
eight or nine. But over in Northampton County, which was hard hit and 
out of power, we went to Jackson and to the emergency relief operation. 
They had just completed their building with help from the USDA rural 
development grant and loan and that building, they told me, was right 
on time. They had a generator there and they had power there, and they 
had some space for people to sleep. After about 24 hours, they needed 
about an hour's sleep and they could go in and get a little relief.
  Over in Martin County I was pleased to go by and ride with a county 
commissioner, Mr. Lilly, and he took me into areas of that county where 
trees had blown across the highways. And he told me how the fire 
departments, even in the dark of night and early into the next morning, 
were out there with their chain saws. I said, well, how did they decide 
whose jurisdiction they were in? He said, Well, they did not worry 
about that. They just decided they would get together and work and 
solve the problem.
  We went down to Bertie County, and the one thing that they were 
concerned

[[Page H9107]]

about, the county manager and the emergency personnel and the elected 
officials were all there at the center, and they said, We need 
generators because we are worried, they have a county-wide water 
system, we are worried about the water system. We have got some water, 
but we need generators to pump water into the holding tanks so we will 
not lose our water system, and they get contaminated.
  In Hartford County we had similar situations and one of the churches 
just opened its doors. The National Guard brought a generator down to 
Mount Nebo, and they fed for 5 days; and the church just picked up the 
tab itself until they got some other people who gave food and allowed 
them to feed people who had no way of preparing their own food and many 
of whom had run out of money.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, since the gentleman is talking about the 
number of meals, I was looking through my notes here, and I think it is 
a good point to share with my colleagues.
  As these things happen, it is amazing what happens with our neighbors 
and friends and our first responders. In many of these areas, 
especially in the gentleman's area and down east, almost all of them 
are volunteers. They are very few paid fire, rescue and other folks. 
They were out working 24 hours a day really in some cases. As a matter 
of fact, in Franklin County we lost a volunteer firemen who was killed 
as a result of being out that night, hit by a tree.
  My notes indicate, as of today, a note I just received from Secretary 
Beatty, the governor's person who is in charge of Emergency Management, 
Crime Patrol and Public Safety, that in North Carolina the volunteer 
groups and Red Cross and Salvation Army, the North Carolina Baptist 
Men, and I am sure a lot of these that you talked about in churches, 
probably are not in this number that had prepared meals. They had 
prepared 623,168 meals to people in eastern North Carolina.
  That gives you some idea what the devastation was. For many of these 
folks, not only are they living in shelters; FEMA has had to move in 
portable trailers because their homes are uninhabitable as they try to 
work through it.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back to the gentleman.
  Mr. BALLANCE. Mr. Speaker, this spirit of volunteerism, that was what 
impressed me most as I toured around these counties. And people who had 
trees to fall literally on top of their houses, well, I am thankful 
that it was not any worse than it was.
  That kind of buoyed my spirits because when you go in and see the 
people and look at the devastation, it just touches you, and you have a 
feeling of, what can I do to help?
  I am here because I want to let you know that those of us who 
represent you in Washington and those who represent you in the State of 
North Carolina and the Federal and the State and the local governments 
are all coming together to try to fix this problem.
  We went to Gates County, and over in Gates it is amazing. It was one 
of the hardest hit counties. They lost all of on their electric power. 
They lost their telephone power, and they even lost their radio power. 
The only way they could communicate for a while was by cell phone, and 
then they lost their cell phone power. It was amazing. The way they 
figured out to do it was they got some signs, and as people would ride 
by, they would have on the signs where they could go to get ice and 
water and food and help.
  I talked to the sheriff over there and he was telling me that he was 
so proud of not only his employees but every last person that came out 
and volunteered their time and said, What can I do to help?

  He did tell me, and I hope I am not stepping over the line to say 
this, at one point he saw some power trucks coming through his 
community to head down to the coast. He started to pick up the next 
phone to say that the next one that comes through, I am going to hijack 
them and make them help. But he did not do that. He said he knew they 
were directed where to go and they had an obligation.
  But for several days the community was cut off from the rest of the 
world, and they were left to their own devices of how they were to 
communicate. They were able to do it and they were successful. And 
after first striking out with DOT, they were able to get some of those 
battery-powered signs that they could put up and to help them with 
their communication.
  Over in Washington County, another county that was hard hit and the 
power knocked out, the story is told of residents who could not travel 
down the main highways, but they had to use, instead, dirt roads on the 
farmers' farms, and the farmers were on standby with their tractors 
just in case someone got stuck and could not get through. That is the 
kind of spirit that this hurricane brought out.
  But it was so devastating and there are still people who, even though 
they have their power, they have damage in their yards, to their homes, 
and it is going to be a long time before they can recover and get back 
to a normal life.
  But yet I want to say that the emergency management, FEMA people, 
everybody that I saw as I traveled through was working just as hard as 
they could. And the private insurance companies, I am told, I did not 
see them, but I am told they came in and tried to set up stations and 
do what they could.
  We have already talked about the agricultural loss, $168 million loss 
of prospects. We grow a lot of peanuts, a lot of cotton and corn. We do 
not know yet all of that damage that has taken place, but yet we are 
hopeful that we are going to come through. And we had eight counties in 
this district that were initially not declared, Greene, Lenoir, Vance, 
Warren, Nash, Granville and Wilson; and I understand they have been and 
are being added to the list and they can get some relief. That will 
take some of the pressure off of the local government.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to come back later and talk about one little 
community in Bertie County, Colerain, and the fishery that was 
destroyed down there, but I will yield to the gentleman at this time.

                              {time}  2015

  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I just have gotten a 
copy of a document from Department of Homeland Security and FEMA where 
those counties have now been declared part of this disaster area.
  I now want to yield to my colleague, the gentleman from the 4th 
Congressional District (Mr. Price). When he was talking about being 
without power, he and I remember very vividly, as busy as we were with 
Floyd, Fran hit us real hard, and I will never forget being out of 
power for a week. One of the things I always said, you really knew who 
your friend was then. It was the people who shared ice with you in 
September when it was really hot, but that being said, we need not 
forget tonight that a lot of these people in eastern North Carolina, 
even though we have got FEMA there working, all of our friends working, 
there is some insurance available, there is going to be a lot of hurt 
and need, and we are going to need to work together to make sure 
resources are available because, if not, some of these communities, as 
total communities, will have real problems continuing to exist, and a 
lot of our agricultural friends will not be able to make it. There is 
not enough insurance. The State's going to have to come up with about a 
25 percent match. I think these are the kind of times when our States 
face some tough times, but the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. 
Price) has been there every step of the way helping in this, and I want 
to thank him, and I yield to him now for his comments.
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding to me and for taking out this special order tonight. It is a 
real service, I believe, not only to the people of North Carolina but 
to our fellow citizens across this country to point out the dimensions 
of this disaster and to point out the human needs and to line out what 
we in the Congress, and in government at all levels, are going to need 
to do to meet this challenge.
  I also thank the gentleman from the 1st District (Mr. Ballance) for 
his words. He is a fine Representative for that part of North Carolina 
and has shown that once again in these recent days by being out there 
with his people, assessing the needs, offering words of support and 
comfort and coming back here to fight for the support that is needed.

[[Page H9108]]

  So we are facing, once again, a challenge. As the gentleman 
indicated, it is one that we have had some personal experience with. 
North Carolina has had more than our share, it seems, in recent years 
of these kinds of disasters, I believe, being days without power in the 
aftermath of Hurricane Fran, days without power in very cold weather 
last December with the ice storms. This time in our area it was only a 
little over a day without power; although I think most of us did spend 
most of our weekends, the last couple of weekends, cleaning up debris 
and getting our property back in order.
  The fact is that to the east of the 4th District and of the 2nd 
District, the devastation is far worse, and we understand that, and we 
understand the need for all the members of our congressional delegation 
to pull together and to look out after our friends and neighbors in 
eastern North Carolina, particularly the northeastern part of our 
State, an area which the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballance) 
represents so well.
  We are mindful also of the needs of our friends in Virginia, in 
Maryland, in all the States and counties along the path of this 
devastating storm, Isabel.
  Once again, we are facing the daunting challenge of recovering from a 
major hurricane. It has devastated our coast in North Carolina. It has 
caused major damage to homes and public facilities. It has displaced 
thousands of families. Preliminary damage assessments indicate that at 
least $55 million in damage costs have been incurred by local 
governments. The losses to individuals are still being determined, but 
that is going to be a very high number. Agricultural damages are over 
$160 million, and that number also is very, very likely to climb.
  Twenty-six of North Carolina's counties have been designated as 
disaster areas. We are almost certain that 10 more will be added and 
perhaps more after that.
  As with Hurricane Floyd and Hurricane Fran, the North Carolina 
congressional delegation is already working together to support the 
State's recovery efforts in every way that we can, and as my colleagues 
have expressed tonight, we are very, very grateful for the partnership 
that we have experienced with Federal agencies being on the scene, 
State agencies, local governments, volunteer groups, congregations, 
civic-minded individuals, people who have demonstrated once again the 
importance of reaching out to those in need, the importance of that 
value of community, that notion that we are all in this together and 
that when adversity strikes a portion of our community, we have all got 
to do our part to make the community whole.
  The Federal relief agencies, of course, we in the Congress pay 
special attention to, and I am happy to say that they have been on the 
job. This storm did give some ample warning. We had actually very 
accurate predictions this time of when this storm would arrive, and 
where it would go, and FEMA and other Federal agencies were on the 
ground as the storm approached. That is also true of our State 
agencies. They came in before the storm. They have remained in the 
State, and they have worked together cooperatively. I think we can be 
proud of the Federal-State-local cooperative effort, the public-private 
cooperative effort that this storm has brought forth. Once again, 
adversity sometimes brings out some of the best aspects of our 
communities, and we have experienced that.

  Most of the Federal assistance, Mr. Speaker, is going to come through 
FEMA's regular disaster assistance programs. They will pay 75 percent 
of the costs borne by the State and local governments associated with 
the disaster. In the worst hit counties, FEMA will make special 
assistance available to individuals. They will help make repairs to 
their homes and for other immediate needs.
  Congress replenished recently FEMA's disaster account by some $1.4 
billion through two supplemental appropriations bills. This funding was 
provided in response to an administration request based on disasters in 
other parts of the country earlier in the year. Unfortunately, the 
money that Congress has thus far provided does fall short still of the 
administration's request, and the administration's request itself was 
not intended to cover Isabel or future disasters.
  So, once again, we have a disaster coming in the period between two 
fiscal years, and we have some important questions we must address 
about the funding that is available from existing resources and also 
the funding that is available in the fiscal 2004 Homeland Security 
bill. That bill, by the way, was signed by the President today in a 
very impressive ceremony over at the Department of Homeland Security. 
That bill contains funding for FEMA, money that we are going to have to 
draw on.
  I am not sure the money in that bill will be sufficient to carry us 
through the next fiscal year. In fact, I am fairly certain that it will 
not be because there are surely more disasters to come, and we are 
still in the midst of assessing the costs for this disaster.
  I spoke last week on the House floor, Mr. Speaker, about the 
shortfalls that could occur in the disaster relief accounts and the 
impact of such shortfalls on disaster victims. Our colleagues know that 
when the balance of these accounts begins to shrink, FEMA is obligated 
to stop the flow of relief to ensure that they have enough funding to 
help victims of disasters that might be just around the corner.
  So I am determined, Mr. Speaker, that we are not in this case going 
to put either FEMA or the victims of Isabel in that kind of position. I 
am a member of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds FEMA, and I 
am already conferring with that agency about the status of their 
disaster account and whether or not it has sufficient resources to also 
cover the needs resulting from Hurricane Isabel, and we are going to 
assess that in very short order. We will be working with the 
administration and with the Congress to act quickly on any supplemental 
spending requests, if they are needed, so that the disaster relief 
account has adequate resources, and FEMA assistance is able to flow 
quickly and efficiently to North Carolina and to other affected areas.
  There are other disaster-related programs, Mr. Speaker, at the 
Department of Transportation, at the Natural Resources Conservation 
Service, at the Small Business Administration, and they are also going 
to need to be tapped. So we will need to keep an eye out for those 
programs as well.
  As we get more details about the agricultural losses, and I know that 
our colleague from the 2nd District is in a particularly good position 
to assess that, because of the nature of these districts and also his 
service on the Committee on Agriculture, we will need to work with the 
administration and our colleagues in Congress to provide relief to 
farmers, as we normally do following major disasters.
  So we have a lot of work to do. There is a lot to be heartened by, 
the kind of human sympathy and compassion that has been displayed in 
the face of this awful disaster, the kind of cooperation we have seen 
among governmental agencies and private organizations, but there is a 
lot of work yet to do.
  We are going to need to cooperate with Members from all over the 
country, but particularly with Members from Virginia and Maryland and 
other affected States, and we are going to need to work across party 
lines, with the administration and with each other, to ensure that the 
Federal Government is a full partner in this effort, that it does all 
that it can do and all that it should do to aid in this recovery 
effort.
  So I am appreciative, Mr. Speaker, of the chance here tonight to join 
with these colleagues and to highlight some of the needs and to serve 
notice that we are going to be working as hard as we know how and as 
cooperatively as we can possibly manage, to address these needs in the 
weeks ahead, and I thank my colleague for giving us the chance to make 
our case and to look toward the challenges facing us in the future.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for not only joining 
us this evening but, more importantly, for his leadership and his hard 
work on the Committee on Appropriations, as we work through other 
issues dealing with a host of other issues. I remember the challenge we 
had with Hurricane Floyd, which was one of the most devastating things 
we dealt with in FEMA, and you were there carrying a full load and a 
half, and we appreciate that and all your efforts, and I

[[Page H9109]]

thank the gentleman for his leadership in this area, and I know the 
people of North Carolina appreciate it as well and others across the 
country because I think you appropriately pointed out, and I thank you 
for that, it is really when one part of the country is affected, all of 
us as Americans are affected and as tax-paying citizens.
  I want to express again my appreciation to our friends in North 
Carolina at the Emergency Management. I was there on Wednesday evening 
late, and again Thursday morning for the briefings, and I would 
encourage my colleagues in the Congress, if you have not been to visit 
the folks, you ought to go by and visit them. It is kind of hard to say 
you ought to go when they are having an emergency, but when you have 
got an impending disaster, to see all these groups come together, FEMA, 
the power companies, the different areas, the National Guard, the Red 
Cross, all these different volunteer groups who are in the same meeting 
and they get all the briefings on the weather, et cetera, and each one 
has to report what they are doing, where they are throughout the day, 
as they get ready, as the storm is approaching.
  I did that on Thursday morning and then went down to Fort Bragg which 
was the staging area for FEMA where they brought in something like 19 
or 20 trailers loaded with fuel. That just happened to be one of many 
staging areas in North Carolina. They were ready for the storm to hit, 
and as soon as it hit and they could get in, they started disbursing 
things. It shows that I guess in North Carolina, we have been through 
it a lot, and they sort of know how to get ready, but so does a lot of 
other parts of the country. It is a great tribute I think to how we 
work together to get things done, Federal, State and local, and we can 
work together when we need to, and I appreciate that.
  I know on Friday morning after the storm had hit and such devastation 
was out there, I joined with the interim Agricultural Commission to fly 
around the State to take a look at not only the home loss and road 
damage, but also agricultural damage. And we flew over to Lewisburg and 
Rocky Mount, Roanoke Rapids over by Hoskey, landed in Elizabeth City 
where they had no power. Everything was being run by a generator. Part 
of the buildings were gone, as you can appreciate in a major hurricane, 
and back over Edenton, a beautiful city right there on the Sound and 
back into the Raleigh, and it almost breaks your heart to see these, as 
we know, the really colonial towns that took such a hammering in the 
storm.
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.
  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, the town of Edenton, North 
Carolina, is a beautiful town. At one time, it was capital of North 
Carolina. It took a devastating hit in this storm, and the previous 
high-water mark, I think, was probably Hurricane Hazel in the 1950s, to 
say nothing of Fran and Floyd later, and this storm in that part of 
North Carolina topped all of those. The damage was far greater, and so 
it is important to stress that while the Outer Banks are hurt very 
badly, and there has been a great deal of attention focused on that 
area, and that carries with it, of course, a lot of agricultural 
damage, those inland areas in northeastern North Carolina are hit fully 
as hard and have a huge challenge in this road back.

                              {time}  2030

  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague, the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), for all his hard work and 
for those remarks. He is absolutely correct.
  Mr. Speaker, I would now yield to my colleague, the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Ballance).
  Mr. BALLANCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding to me, 
and I too want to thank the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price). 
He mentioned the SBA. We know that 75 to 80 percent of all of our 
businesses in this country are small businesses.
  One of the problems that we are going to have in this devastated area 
is that a lot of these small businesses are wiped out and they are 
going to have difficulty cranking back up. Some of them did not have 
insurance. I want to just mention one. This is not necessarily a small 
business, Perry-Wynns Fish Company, out on the Chowan River, in a 
little town called Colerain, not far from Edenton. They had seven 
buildings there on the river, and every last one of them was blown 
down.
  Mike Perry was searching through the debris looking for his whistle 
he blew at the end of every workday, and he could not find it. 
Hopefully, by now, he has found that whistle. He said he had $2 million 
worth of property that was not insured, but he said he is going to 
rebuild. He is going to back up a little bit from the river and rebuild 
and start again.
  I think that is the spirit that we are going to see in a lot of our 
small businesses, whether they had insurance or whether they did not 
have it. The attitude that I saw is that we are not going to let this 
defeat us. We are going to get right back in the game. We are going to 
start our business back. We are going to serve this community as we 
have done in the past.
  One of the other items I want to mention is, as the gentleman has 
said, we were able to predict this storm with great accuracy. One of 
the things I think we are going to have to do in the future is to 
stockpile, at least in certain strategic areas, generators. Somebody 
mentioned to me that maybe firemen ought to have as part of their 
issuance in rural North Carolina a chainsaw, so that they can put it on 
their fire truck and have it as part of their standard equipment, 
because we have a lot of trees, a lot of pine trees and other trees in 
this area, and they need to remove those.
  But I want to close on the point of again saying how much I admire 
and still admire all of our citizens and all of our people in the 
community and all of our first responders and all of our FEMA people 
for the spirit that was displayed in the face of all of this 
devastation. Everybody was upbeat and ready to go and ready to help.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, and then I will yield 
back to him, because I think that is important to remember.
  The gentleman mentioned our firemen and others who used chainsaws. So 
many times when we think in terms of our first responders, emergency 
folks, the EMS people who save lives and go out, we fail to realize 
they do more than that. They are doing other things in the community, 
especially our firemen, and especially in rural parts of this country.
  I remember as a small child growing up in rural eastern North 
Carolina seeing a tobacco barn burn, because that is where I grew up, 
and I will never forget watching it burn. There was nothing my parents 
could do. And I am sure they did not have insurance on it. And the 
gentleman knows exactly what I am talking about, as he grew up there. 
What a frightening thing that was as a child. And I had no concept, as 
small as I was, that that was part of the year's income for the family 
and that was going to be devastating for the family in terms of the 
economic loss. But to see that fire as it moved, and there was nothing 
you could do, absolutely nothing.
  Then we started to form volunteer fire departments, and they had just 
trucks. And today we call on them to do more than that. In this flood 
they did not have to put out a fire; they were saving people from 
flooded buildings. They were going in with their heavy equipment where 
they could and getting people out of buildings, as were our emergency 
personnel. We call on them to do more and more. And we in this 
Congress, I think, beyond FEMA and the things we need to do, should not 
forget that we have a partnership with these local volunteers, Federal, 
State and local, to help them and their families. Because they are 
giving an awful lot of time in emergencies. They are at the table. They 
are called to be at the table.
  Our National Guard folks in North Carolina, we called them up, what 
few we had left. About half of them had been called up for Iraq, but we 
called up something like 800 to 1,000. And we still have tonight, I 
understand, somewhere in the neighborhood of 220, 230 still on duty in 
different places of the State, especially in eastern North Carolina 
where they are still trying to continue to move things before they are 
deactivated.

[[Page H9110]]

  And, Mr. Speaker, I yield back to my colleague.
  Mr. BALLANCE. Mr. Speaker, I join my colleague in those sentiments. 
Many times we do not even say thank you collectively to this group of 
people. They do not ask any questions. They are sort of like soldiers. 
When they see a problem, they just grab their equipment and go; and the 
community depends on them. We depend on them, and they save the 
government a lot of money. We hope that in some way we can figure out 
how to make available to them at least some types of equipment.
  I heard, as I mentioned earlier, I heard the word ``generator'' 
mentioned over and over again. Hopefully, we can figure out a way to 
make some funding available to these small towns, rural areas, to have 
generators available to them when these crises come into the community. 
They can at least keep the water system and the sewer system going 
until we can get the power back on.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Along that line, Mr. Speaker, as we were talking about 
our volunteers, we have a bill in, as the gentleman well knows because 
he is a cosponsor of it and which I introduced, to provide a benefit. 
This fireman that lost his life in Franklin County may have very well 
have been eligible as a volunteer for the death benefit for those who 
are saving people's lives or helping save lives and ultimately give 
their life in that regards. That is something this Congress can do. I 
think currently we have about 276 Members who have signed that piece of 
legislation. Last time I checked, it takes about 218 to pass it. I hope 
we will move it.
  Mr. BALLANCE. Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentleman again for 
organizing this Special Order tonight and thank him for that bill. I am 
very proud to be a part of it and am hopeful that it will come to 
fruition.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, my friend from the 
first district, for joining me this evening in this Special Order and 
to share with our colleagues here what North Carolina has gone through. 
And it is not just North Carolina when a hurricane hits. This one hit 
in North Carolina, but bad storms do not really know where county lines 
or State lines are; they just keep rolling. In this case, it rolled 
right through Virginia, where there was tremendous devastation in 
Virginia and in Richmond; and it rolled up into Maryland and the 
District of Columbia, where we saw power lines down, and we have seen 
here recently where people lost power and there was a fear that we 
would have flooding on a scale here in this city unlike what we had 
seen since the 1930s.
  So it was a devastating storm that caused immense damage and a lot of 
heartache and loss of life. And the loss of lives were substantially 
more in Virginia and Maryland as it moved up the coast. Lives were 
lost, and the storm caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to 
homes, roads, crops, and livestock. In North Carolina, I have to add 
beyond livestock, poultry too. We sort of think of that as being a 
little different.
  The truth is many of these people that lost, even though FEMA is 
there helping and they have some insurance, they will not be made 
whole. They are coming up short. And the shame of it is that for many 
of them they had the flood in 1999, some of them did, the drought hit 
them last year, and now they have gotten a real bad body blow this year 
with another storm. I have talked to a number of the farmers and the 
interim commissioner of agriculture, and he is afraid some of these 
people just will not make it. And it is not because they are not good 
folks, they are not good farmers, they are not good people. It is just 
the fact that nature has hit them hard.
  I hope that FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, the 
administration, and certainly this Congress, recognize the need to 
support these storm-damaged areas through recovery and rebuilding, not 
only just on the outer banks of North Carolina, as we suffered in our 
State, but in Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, and other 
places in Pennsylvania and up West Virginia, matter of fact, traveling 
all the way into Canada. I do not really think we are going to reach to 
Canada, but certainly we want to help our people here at home.
  The United States has an outstanding and a very commendable record of 
responding to disasters around the globe. We are usually the first ones 
there. But I think now we need to respond with the same kind of effort 
and the same level of enthusiasm when disaster hits here at home. These 
are our neighbors. They are our friends. They are taxpaying citizens of 
the United States of America. And as my friends and colleagues have 
pointed out, they are not looking for a handout. They do not want that. 
They want an opportunity to get back in business, to get their lives 
back in order, and to once again be contributing taxpaying citizens of 
America.
  They will do it. But they would do it a whole lot quicker if we could 
help them. North Carolina is suffering through one of the toughest 
economic times we have seen in a long time, and I commit to my 
colleagues that we are going to join hands and ask all our other 
colleagues from North Carolina and across the aisle, because these 
people in North Carolina need our help, and in Virginia and Maryland. 
It is our obligation, in my opinion, to make sure the job gets done.
  Let me thank my colleagues one again, the gentleman from North 
Carolina (Mr. Price) and the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. 
Ballance), from the first district, whose district really was hit hard. 
Very hard. I think I only have about three counties, well four, Vance, 
Franklin, Nash, and possibly Sampson may be put in that group that have 
been declared disaster counties. Others may be added. At least one 
more. But it is tough.
  I remember going through Floyd, when almost all of them were in it, 
and it is tough to see people lose everything they have. I remember 
when I went in the Rocky Mountains, and the lady was sitting beside the 
road trying to go through a family Bible. It was wet, and that was all 
she had been able to save because that had her family photographs in 
it. These are the kinds of things that happen. These are the things you 
cannot replace. But we sure can help them get their lives back in 
order.
  I thank my colleagues for their help in this Special Order this 
evening. We will keep our colleagues up to date on what is happening in 
North Carolina and with our friends in Virginia and Maryland.

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