[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 108 (Monday, September 13, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H7047-H7052]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            HURRICANE SEASON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kline). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny 
Brown-Waite) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
majority leader.
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, since the early weeks 
of August, Florida and its residents have endured the unrelenting and 
unsympathetic wrath of Mother Nature. Through the harsh design of fate, 
Florida was dealt the unfortunate circumstances of bearing the brunt of 
not one but two hurricanes, and it appears more dark clouds are poised 
to visit the Sunshine State.
  This map very carefully tracks the two hurricanes that hit Florida. 
The first one in orange is Hurricane Charley. It was upgraded to a 
tropical storm at 5 on August 10, continued raising havoc in Jamaica, 
and in Jamaica it became a hurricane on the 11th, and it hit Punta 
Gorda, Florida on the 13th, exactly one month ago today, at 4:30 p.m.
  Frances became a category 4 on the 28th of August. On the 2nd, it was 
in the Bahamas, and Frances made landfall in Stewart, Florida, at 1 on 
September 5. So Florida has been hit twice and based on the latest 
weather forecast, it appears that the Panhandle will be hit again with 
Hurricane Ivan.
  It is not the first time that Florida has been devastated by three 
hurricanes all at once. The State has experienced such occurrences 
before. Actually in 1964, three storms hit Florida within an 8-week 
period. The hurricanes were named Cleo, Dora and Isabel. Regardless of 
what we name them, it does not make living in a State with so many 
hurricanes a lot of fun. Those hurricanes slammed the State. Thus, 
Floridians are not bewildered by the sheer numbers of hurricanes that 
threaten to trounce the State.
  With regard to the power and force of these menacing natural 
disasters, well, before Hurricane Charley came ashore the people of 
Florida have understood and respected the potential power that a 
hurricane wields. I recall in 1992 when Hurricane Andrew hit the State, 
and it hit the Homestead, Florida, area and had a devastating effect 
there.
  We have a few photos of some of the examples of the kind of 
destruction that a hurricane can do. Obviously this house as a result 
of the hurricane was damaged and would have to be completely torn down. 
Again, we have more destruction. This is an area that certainly as we 
look at the picture we say, how could people go back and say I want to 
rebuild. But wanting to rebuild and having the courage and the strength 
that so many Floridians do to face the hurricane and the destruction 
that goes along with the hurricane and yet have the spirit, the human 
spirit that says we are going to stay, we are going to rebuild and make 
the community even stronger.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Keller) from 
the Orlando area.
  Mr. KELLER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I have just returned from Florida where I took a 
helicopter tour of the greater Orlando area and saw firsthand the 
extensive damage which has literally turned upside down the lives of 
several hundred Central Floridians. I have empathy for those who have 
suffered such severe damage because my own mom, Laura Keller, 
completely lost her home in Hurricane Charley.
  Despite these temporary heartaches, I am optimistic about central 
Florida's future. Last Tuesday, we passed legislation in Congress to 
immediately provide $2 billion to FEMA to help our citizens in Florida 
recover from Hurricanes Charley and Frances. The very next day, 
President Bush signed this legislation into law. Together we acted with 
near-lightning speed to provide immediate relief. This $2 billion will 
be able to help Central Florida families with things like temporary 
lodging, food, water supplies, medical care, and will allow roofs to be 
repaired. I know that I speak for all central Floridians when I say to 
my congressional colleagues all across the country, thank you for being 
there and voting for this important relief package.
  But after taking this helicopter tour, I can tell Members this $2 
billion we have already provided is only a down payment, and I say that 
regretfully because I know how tight money is around here these days. 
Fortunately, President Bush agrees more money is needed. Earlier today 
the White House requested that Congress provide an additional $2.5 
billion in hurricane relief for Florida. I will strongly support this 
much-needed appropriation.
  Mr. Speaker, our citizens have suffered enormous out-of-pocket costs 
which should be taken into account by FEMA. For example, imagine that a 
person has a $300,000 home and he has suffered $30,000 in property 
damage as a result of these two hurricanes. Now some people outside of 
Florida may mistakenly think no problem, you have insurance, insurance 
will pay for it.
  Actually, it is a big problem and here is why. Since many of these 
Florida insurance policies have 5 percent deductibles and these two 
hurricanes are viewed by insurance companies as two separate and 
distinct events, it is entirely possible that the individual will have 
to pay the entire $30,000 bill himself, 100 percent out of pocket. I 
believe in this type of circumstance, if the person is not eligible for 
a FEMA grant, he should at least get a zero percent loan from FEMA to 
cover the out-of-pocket cost. It is patently unreasonable for us to 
assume that the average citizen has $30,000 lying around in his 
checking account just in case he unexpectedly gets blind-sided by two 
hurricanes.
  Mr. Speaker, these people need help, and it is up to those of us in 
Congress to try to help them. Rest assured that Congress, especially 
those from Florida, will continue to work very closely with President 
Bush and Governor Jeb Bush over the next few weeks to help rebuild 
Florida as quickly as possible and in a way that makes Florida stronger 
than ever before.
  I urge all of my colleagues in Congress to support this $2.5 billion 
hurricane relief package. It is the right thing to do and now is the 
right time to do it.
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, earlier I mentioned 
Hurricane Andrew, and Hurricane Andrew came around the fall of 1992 
when I was just elected to the Florida Senate. I served at the time 
with the very distinguished gentleman now in Congress with me, the 
gentleman from the Palm Beach, Florida, area (Mr. Foley).
  Mr. FOLEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for organizing this 
opportunity for us to come to the floor and let the rest of the country 
know what Florida has been living through.
  I came to Florida from Massachusetts at the age of 3, and I remember 
waking up early one morning in 1960 to a storm that we had never known 
in Massachusetts, and that was Hurricane Donna. We went about putting 
masking tape on our jalousie windows. That is what we were told to do 
for safety. My, how things have changed.
  The people of Florida are storm weary and they are fatigued. Their 
resilient nature and strong character have been tested over the last 
few weeks. But as we have done before, Floridians are banding together, 
helping their neighbor and slowly rebuilding their homes, their 
businesses and their communities.
  Never in our Nation's history have two storms brought this much 
destruction back to back to one State. Unfortunately, the people of the 
16th District have weathered the worst. Hurricane Charley reached 
landfall on August 13, 2004, and blasted its way

[[Page H7048]]

through southwest Florida with winds of upwards of 145 miles an hour 
and 10-foot storm surges.
  This is Hurricane Charley as it originated off the African coast. It 
was upgraded along the way, became a very, very distinguished storm in 
intensity. We heard it would probably go to Tampa. I can remember 
watching that storm at 3 in the afternoon in West Palm Beach, my home, 
and watched as that storm made almost a right-hand turn into Punta 
Gorda and increased in velocity and intensity.
  That was a Friday afternoon at 4:30. At 7 a.m., Governor Bush and 
FEMA Director Mike Brown and I hit the tarmac at Fort Myers airport to 
begin a very telling and shocking look, an aerial observation of death 
and destruction. It is hard for anyone to quantify the feeling you have 
when you watch somebody who is about 80 years old walking out of a 
totally destroyed mobile home park with nothing more than a pair of 
white dress shoes. That was all she could find. I watched that repeated 
home after home in beautiful Punta Gorda, Florida, never before known 
to many, now known to all. The names Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte 
have been replayed on every national news broadcast as the scene of 
just total and complete devastation.

                              {time}  2115

  Hurricane Frances reached landfall 3 weeks later on September 4, 
2004, and battered Florida's East Coast and central region with 105-
mile-per-hour winds and up to 17 inches of rain. Again another storm, I 
must tell you, coming from a similar track and a similar trajectory, 
coming towards us at quite a bit of speed. Fortunately it started to 
slow as it approached the Bahama chain and clearly then stalled off of 
West Palm. I remember watching from the emergency operations center at 
West Palm as that storm seemed to set there for an incredible amount of 
time. It finally made landfall again in the 16th District in Sewells 
Point, Florida, which is located in Martin County close to the city of 
Stuart, and proceeded to do damage and destruction as it virtually made 
an X across Orlando. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Feeney) will be 
talking a little bit about how it impacted his district, which has 
Brevard and I believe Osceolo and Orange Counties, but he will tell you 
how it basically made an X over Orlando as if they were charted and 
plotted to take that trajectory.
  Twenty-seven people lost their lives from the wrath of Hurricane 
Charley to date. Eighteen people lost their lives from the devastation 
caused by Frances. Insured property losses for Charley are climbing in 
excess of $7 billion. Hurricane Frances damages are estimated up to $4 
billion. More than 20,000 farms were in the path of Hurricane Frances 
and damage estimated to Florida's agricultural community exceeds more 
than $2 billion. The travel and tourism industry faces millions of 
dollars in lost revenue. Power outages have affected more than 6 
million people and, boy, have we heard it. At times I felt like I was 
the service representative for the power company, we had so many calls 
coming to our office. Believe me, I understand your aggravation because 
I too was without power for a significant part of last week.
  Florida's Governor Jeb Bush took immediate action to declare a major 
disaster for the entire State of Florida and deployed necessary 
resources to deal with the crisis. The Federal Emergency Management 
Agency, FEMA, has more than 2,700 agency workers helping with the 
recovery effort. The National Guard was quick to mobilize more than 
4,100 troops to help in the relief efforts, both to provide security 
for people in the region as well as provide humanitarian relief for 
those impacted. $2 billion has been requested and granted thanks to the 
hard work of the Florida delegation, including its chairman, Mr. Bill 
Young, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Chairman Clay Shaw of 
the entire delegation, and $2.5 billion of emergency moneys is now 
being forwarded to this Chamber by the White House.
  Some reforms are in the process. We filed a bill that would allow 
one-time penalty free withdrawals from IRA accounts for people living 
in natural disaster areas. We have asked for the potential halting of 
cement tariffs so we can quickly rebuild our communities. We have asked 
to consider the insurance disaster relief reserve accounts that we 
think would stabilize and make insurance companies more financially 
sound to weather these storms and the burdens they place on those 
companies' reserves, regional emergency energy reserves to look at the 
coordination between Federal-State agencies bringing fuel supplies to 
regions most impacted to run the diesels, the power, the waste 
treatment plants, and, of course, to review our energy repair efforts 
after a disaster.
  And now Ivan is somewhere stirring in the coast and we are praying, I 
have prayed more in the last 4 days than I did in 10 years of Catholic 
school, hoping that Ivan would not do the destruction that was 
contemplated just several days ago. We pray for all those in the 
Panhandle. Our colleague Jeff Miller and I were speaking today and 
worried about its potential impact on the Panhandle, of course, New 
Orleans, any of those areas. We just hope maybe the storm loses its 
steam and subsides. But you see now why Florida and even areas in 
Virginia were hit by hurricanes.
  But I just want to thank again my colleague from Florida for 
providing this opportunity to kind of let people know how difficult it 
has been the last 5 weeks in Florida but how strong the people have 
been and how I know with the help of the Federal Government and our 
colleagues in this Chamber that we will do our best to remedy. We will 
not be able to right every wrong or every problem people have suffered, 
but we are certainly going to work on trying to make their lives at 
least better as we prepare to deal with these back-to-back tragedies.
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. We both had experiences both with 
Hurricane Andrew and these hurricanes that we have had this year. I 
have noticed a marked improvement in FEMA and with the coordination of 
FEMA and the State agencies. Having been involved and had people who 
suffered through both of those hurricanes, I see a much more rapid 
response on the part of FEMA this time. I know that is exactly what is 
happening in the Tampa Bay area and I am sure it is happening in your 
area. If you would like to take just a moment to address that, I would 
appreciate it.
  Mr. FOLEY. It is interesting you mention that, because last night I 
saw Joe Allbaugh, who was the former FEMA Director under President 
Bush, the first FEMA Director under this administration. He told me how 
President Bush during his term as Governor had suffered 14 hurricanes 
in Texas over the course of those 3 years. One of the things they 
talked about is the plan that they put in place to rapidly position 
rescue efforts, relief efforts, water, ice and other things in staging 
areas so that we would not repeat the tragedies of years past, Andrew 
being one of them, where it was a week before even then Governor Chiles 
asked for even Federal help.
  So it is interesting as we watched particularly in Charley, if I can 
take you for a minute to that day, Saturday, when we were aerial above 
the community. Hundreds of trucks moving in on the highways. Very 
little other traffic. But these relief trucks were already there. The 
winds had only stopped blowing a few hours before and they were making 
their way into Florida to try and remedy the damage. I know we have not 
got everything right. There are still some kinks, but the difference in 
the way they have approached restoration of basic utilities, of water, 
of the basic provisions, including two visits by President Bush to 
Florida, helping hand out supplies himself. We are all touched by these 
storms and we cannot work miracles, but I can tell you and I thank you 
for bringing that to the attention of our colleagues, because FEMA and 
its response through its lead agent, Mike Brown, has been tireless, 
relentless and has been thorough. I salute them because they are under 
a lot of pressure, as you can well imagine. Constituents are upset, 
mad, aggravated, tired, hot. Every emotion you could possibly have has 
been felt in Florida. But FEMA really has stepped up to the plate.
  The other person is Governor Bush. You have got to give him credit. I 
have known Jeb probably since 1982, when he was a Secretary of 
Commerce, a young real estate lad in Florida and now obviously our 
esteemed Governor. I do not think he has taken his eye off the ball

[[Page H7049]]

once in the last 5 weeks. It has been an incredibly focused effort, 
hourly updates. You cannot imagine what I Blackberry him about. I am 
wondering when I am going to get the Blackberry back fully. Take a nap. 
But he responds. He is getting the problem solved. It has been a very, 
very wonderful thing to watch. And he does not have an election before 
him. He is in his second term. He cannot run for reelection. The kind 
of effort he is putting through, I have heard a few people say, oh, 
it's all politics. He is not running for anything. He is finished. He 
has done his two terms. He is working hard on behalf of the people 
because he feels their pain. And he was in Andrew. He was in Miami at 
the time. He remembers the lack of response and he is not going to let 
that be repeated to the citizens of this great State.

  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Without a doubt, there has been 
rapid response. Part of the redesign of FEMA is that they have so many 
people on standby, whether it is a retired nurse or a doctor who will 
take time off to go exactly where they are needed. We must always 
remember, too, that the National Guard has been of great assistance. I 
know they have been in several of the counties that I represent. As I 
went around the counties, people are saying it is much better 
organized. If I could wave a magic wand, just as you have said this, 
too, wave a magic wand and have everybody's power put on, but we do not 
want to have those power companies out there endangering the lives of 
their crew either. This is difficult sometimes for people to realize. 
Nobody likes to be in the dark sitting there by candlelight but overall 
between FEMA and all of the mutual assistance that came in from the 
other States from utility companies, it was a much more rapid response, 
much better coordinated.
  I agree with you that our Governor has done a wonderful job. He is 
there at the emergency operations center up there in Tallahassee, he 
has toured around the State. I know we have been in touch with him 
about some snafus. Between FEMA and Governor Bush, the problems get 
resolved very quickly.
  Mr. FOLEY. Let me expand on one thing, if I could. You mentioned the 
persons that are part-timers. That is a very significant new part of 
FEMA. From around this great country of ours, there are people standing 
ready in reserve, that have other jobs, other lives. They may be 
firefighters, nurses. You mentioned those trades. They are ready to 
receive the call at a moment's notice. A bag is already packed in their 
home. They get the call. I met several of them in Punta Gorda. They are 
coming from Oregon, Washington State, Texas, you name it. These are 
people that give up 2 weeks of their own lives to come help, aid and 
assist, not as a volunteer, they are paid for their 2 weeks, but they 
leave their own homes to come provide the relief, which means the 
Federal Government does not have to have all these full-time employees.
  That was one of the most incredible things I had seen. They had set 
up a MASH unit in the parking lot because we lost all three hospitals 
in Punta Gorda. Those people were in there that were medical doctors, 
surgeons that came from their communities to give their 2 weeks. It is 
just one of those things that you realize we are not in this world 
alone no matter what problems we face. This country rises to the 
challenge and the people that are part of this great Nation are up to 
the challenge of remedying whatever is thrown in our way.
  I want to thank the gentlewoman for the chance to discuss, and I know 
our good colleague from Florida (Mr. Feeney) is here. I thank the 
gentlewoman for the opportunity to be part of the special order 
tonight.
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. I thank the gentleman for being 
here. I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Orlando (Mr. Feeney).
  Mr. FEENEY. I thank the gentlewoman for organizing this hour and our 
colleague from Florida (Mr. Foley) whose district really took the brunt 
of both the one-two punch from hurricanes one and two. My district 
fortunately is a little bit more inland for the most part although I 
represent from Kennedy Space Center up to Daytona Beach on the beach. 
We also got hit with a one-two punch. By the time the storm hit us, it 
was significantly diluted from, say, where the first storm hit Punta 
Gorda but it was still significant. We got hurt bad. We had people 
without power for a week. We had an enormous amount of damage done, 
trees and debris all over, kids lost a week of school. But what is 
remarkable as you live through the awesome fury of Mother Nature is how 
resilient the people of Florida and their leaders have been in this 
response to these two disasters that have really hurt us very badly.
  I want to share an experience. One of the things that I did after the 
first hurricane is to take a little tour with our sheriff of Orange 
County, Sheriff Kevin Beary. Senator Bill Nelson joined us on that tour 
with some other local public officials. I will never forget going to a 
mobile home area that had been mandatorily evacuated, but there was a 
gentleman that decided to send his family out. He was going to ride out 
the storm. Within the first 5 minutes of 130, 120-mile-an-hour winds, 
the entire roof of his mobile home blew off. Within the next 5 minutes, 
most of the walls had blown off. He only survived the storm because he 
was able to take all of the food out of his refrigerator and pull the 
door shut. I guarantee you by the time Frances came around, that same 
gentleman had evacuated what was left of his mobile home.
  One of the lessons that we have learned is that if people will listen 
to their leaders as a disaster comes through, we are getting much 
better at predicting the path of hurricanes. Obviously they change 
their minds at the last minute and you can never know for sure, but it 
is an enormous amount of help in a State like Florida. We have got only 
a couple of major arteries, transportation arteries and interstates 
that people can evacuate on. If everybody from Palm Beach, Broward and 
Dade County decided to leave within the same 2 hours, we would have 
nothing but a parking lot for a week on I-95, for example. What we have 
learned to do is evacuate in stages as our intelligence becomes better 
and because of that, we are talking about tens of billions of dollars 
lost, but thankfully we are not talking about thousands or even 
hundreds of lives lost in large part because of our great Governor Jeb 
Bush and the leadership he has shown. We can eventually clean up the 
streets, the debris, we can rebuild the buildings and we can replace 
most of the property that has been lost over time.
  We will rebuild a healthy, thriving, economic Florida, although it 
will take time but obviously if you make a decision that costs you your 
life, that is a decision you can never recover from. The casualties 
given the awesome fury that these storms have invoked on Florida so far 
have been thankfully, and we thank the Lord for this, have been 
thankfully relatively minor, especially considering some of the storms 
in the past.
  One of the great things that we have learned to do at the National 
Hurricane Center is to do a much better job in long-term forecasts, 
meaning 4- or 5-day forecasts in terms of where these hurricanes are 
going. It is the reason that we can plan, it is the reason we can 
evacuate, it is the reason we can board up the proper pieces of 
property. It is the reason that we can get people into safety. It is 
the reason that we can get supplies in before the storm hits rather 
than waiting for weeks afterwards. It has obviously saved not only a 
lot of lives, but it has done a great job in reducing the property 
destruction and it has stopped aggravating an already frustrated group 
of Floridians throughout the State in virtually every county that has 
been touched one way or another by this incredible storm.

                              {time}  2130

  The 5-day forecast is run out of the Naval Operations Center in 
Norfolk, and they have done a terrific job in making sure that we can 
define as narrowly as possible which areas are most likely to be hit by 
the storm. And as Craig Fugate, the Director of the Florida Division of 
Emergency Management, observed, ``All Floridians should welcome the 
increased awareness that the 5-day forecast has provided.'' We are 
grateful for that.
  The other thing that I did immediately after the storm was to call 
the sheriffs in our area. I happened to be at the Emergency Operations 
Center in

[[Page H7050]]

Tallahassee on 9/11, the day the terrorists attacked. I spent that day 
as the Speaker of the House of Florida with Governor Jeb Bush and other 
leaders as we made decisions about how to respond to attacks that we 
did not know when they would end. We did not know whether Florida might 
be a target as well that morning on 9/11.
  But what I learned there that day is, all of the private agencies, 
from Red Cross and other charitable organizations, from the Federal 
agencies, including FEMA, from all of our departments at the State 
level, transportation, health, we have learned remarkably to respond in 
a regional and Statewide way to disasters that heretofore, before 
Andrew, were really thought to be a local problem by and large.
  And it is the remarkable coordination by all levels of Government and 
agencies within the Government that not only hopefully will help us 
with these nature-ordained disasters but will help us deter and 
respond, if we ever should need to, to manmade attacks, namely 
terrorism.
  I want to tell the Members that FEMA has done a much better job, as 
the gentlewoman was just saying with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Foley). In the aftermath of Andrew, we had literally weeks where we did 
not have certain equipment, certain supplies, certain emergency 
necessities.
  In this situation, that has not been the case, with the exception of 
power. In some cases, we have had people down for a week or two without 
power. That is an enormously challenging, frustrating, maddening 
experience. I can tell my colleagues when it is 110 degrees outside, 
and the kids are hot, and they do not have the ability to go anywhere, 
to relax, to take a cool shower, it is very difficult to function.
  But with the exception of power, we have had, within a day or two for 
the most part, gas supplies back up and running. We have been able to 
get the debris cleared up in the roads so people could get to and from 
their shopping centers to buy fresh food, to replenish supplies. So the 
response in Central Florida has really been amazing.
  Already FEMA assistance in Florida has reached more than $162 million 
as of today. Approximately $100 million of that is in emergency 
housing, people that literally would not have any shelter if it was not 
for the work of FEMA. Everywhere I went, my sherifs, my local law 
enforcement, my local fire chiefs, my local mayors and county 
commissioners all remarked that FEMA was giving them everything that 
was humanly possible to provide in a fairly organized and reasonable 
manner, and they were very grateful.
  One of the issues that has already been touched on by the gentleman 
from Florida (Mr. Keller) when he was first here was, in the aftermath 
of Andrew, we had really had a crisis. We had 11 property and casualty, 
i.e. homeowners' insurance, go bankrupt. Even State Farm in Florida 
literally went belly up. And only because of the good graces of the 
other 49 State Farms in the various States decided to bail out the 
State Farm program were they able to pay claims and stay in business.
  If, in Florida, we lost all of our property and casualty market, that 
is, if insurers no longer wanted to write homeowners' insurance 
policies, Americans everywhere need to be aware of what the effect 
would be on Florida's economy and ultimately on the United States' 
economy.
  The truth of the matter is that real estate is one of our key 
economic drivers in Florida. We do not have a big manufacturing base 
like many States in the Midwest, for example. But we have an awful lot 
of thriving commercial and homeownership in the real estate area, and 
it is one of the things that drives not just the Florida economy but 
ripples and has a positive effect on the entire U.S. economy.
  If we do not have the ability to have insurance, lenders will not 
lend to buy property. Not only will the lenders and the mortgage 
brokers and mortgage bankers go out of business, but the people that 
work for title companies will go out of business. People that build 
houses, subcontractors, people that build pools, people that sell 
lumber, people that survey property, we would literally have dozens of 
industries wiped out potentially for a significant period of time.
  As a consequence, we did a couple of things that were very important. 
It is the reason, after two horrible storms, the Florida insurance 
property and casualty market is still relatively healthy. It would not 
have been true if we had not done some of these reforms.
  One is, we provided a catastrophic policy that all companies are 
obligated to pay into to prepare for an event like this. That 
catastrophic insurance has only used about half of its reserves at the 
last count, which means that we are still able to function and 
hopefully the insurance market will still stay relatively healthy.
  We upgraded all of our building codes. A building permit to build a 
new home, especially in coastal areas, means that one has to have a 
seriously upgraded plan in civil engineering that will protect their 
property from most winds below 100 or 110 miles an hour. Mobile homes, 
before the Andrew event, often were put together in a very cheap and 
slipshod manner, and they literally were just standing like a house of 
cards on a concrete floor.
  We now tie down those buildings. We now make sure that they are much 
better produced and manufactured and secured in a way that most of the 
mobile homes that were built after Hurricane Andrew, in 1993, survived 
the storm in relatively good shape. So we are very grateful for that.
  The last thing that I wanted to mention before I turn it back to the 
gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite) is that all of us have 
some unique damages here. I have a lot of ferneries and nurseries as 
part of the key agricultural businesses in Congressional District 24. 
Under the Department of Agriculture's emergency plan to help farmers 
and agricultural leaders through a disaster like this, if they have a 
product that is consumed, they are eligible for some relief.
  We are trying, with the good work of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Putnam); of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley); of the gentleman 
from Florida (Mr. Young), the Committee on Appropriations chairman, to 
see to it that we cannot get some relief for folks that produce the 
ferneries and the nurseries because they are just as severely impacted 
by the potential loss of all of their income.
  The last thing that I wanted to mention is that, right before I came 
up here, this Saturday, I spent the better part of the mid morning with 
Jim Kennedy, the Center Director at Kennedy Space Center. I will tell 
the Members that we believe that Kennedy has had about $120 to $140 
million worth of damages at this point. There are some 14,000 workers 
that have been off work that started back to work today. They are 
enthusiastic. They are determined that we are going to continue the 
leading manned space flight in the history of the world.
  Fortunately, the three shuttle orbiters that were all there at the 
Center at the time were safely preserved in their buildings. All 
Kennedy Space Center personnel are safe and sound. But there have been 
a couple buildings seriously damaged, including the famous Vehicle 
Assembly Building.
  Until a few years ago, the largest indoor-contained building in the 
world, this is where the Space Shuttle components are assembled and 
then moved to eventually the launch pad. By the way, the launch pads, 
gratefully, are also preserved intact. But over an acre of the south 
wall, 4-foot-by-16-foot aluminum panels have blown off, including part 
that make up the beautiful American flag, which is probably about the 
size of two or three football fields. So this is going to need to be 
repaired. It is going to take some significant time.
  The Thermal Protection System Facility lost half of its roof. It is 
the place where the outside tiles and the thermal blankets inside 
protect the Shuttle crew from the intense heat, and literally the top 
of the building was peeled off like a can opener.
  The Florida Space Authority was asked immediately after the storm 
whether it had any room to possibly continue the production of these 
very critical tiles for return to flight on a timely schedule and the 
blankets, and thanks to Winston Scott, the Executive Director of the 
Florida Space Authority, within seconds, he told Jim Kennedy that 
absolutely they were going to be able to use the facility that the 
Florida Space Authority had.
  Within 3 or 4 hours, components of the tile and the blanket 
manufacturing

[[Page H7051]]

and processing team was moving into this new facility. So we had very 
little interruption in what could have been a very significant 
challenge.
  Finally, the diligence of the men and women in the Kennedy Space 
Center team, including NASA and the private contractors, has made this 
such that, like a lot of us, we are going to have some damages to 
repair. We are going to have some streets to clean. We are going to 
have some buildings to put back in place. But, fortunately, in my 
district, the Kennedy Space Center came through with the type of harm 
that could be fixed, fixed very rapidly, and we are anxious to get back 
to work and get back to normal in Florida.
  The last thing I will say is, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida 
(Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite) for her leadership here, but we know, having 
been through two of these now just in the last month, that our thoughts 
and our prayers are with the folks in the Panhandle of Florida, the 
folks in Alabama, the folks in New Orleans. We are thinking about them.

  And if there is anything good that comes out of these horrible 
events, it is the way we bond together as communities and as families. 
I do not think I will ever forget teaching my two small boys, Tommy, 
who is 12, and Sean, who is 6, as we literally pulled out mattresses 
from some of the other bedrooms. We pulled them into Mom and my room. 
We were there with our blankets and pillows. We had our transistor 
radios. The power was, of course, out. We had a cooler, and we had 
everything that we needed as a family there during about an hour and a 
half of real horror during Charley.
  But families bond. Communities bond. States bond, and we are grateful 
to the people of America for thinking about and helping Floridians
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Without a doubt, Mr. Speaker.
  Reclaiming my time, the gentleman was in the State legislature, and 
he had mentioned this, the change in the State building code. And it 
was very difficult to pass because it did raise the cost of home 
building in Florida. And I remember that, at the time, and I am sure 
his constituents complained also, it was causing the cost of home 
construction to go up, and the builders were very upset, too.
  As he looks around his district, I am sure he can differentiate the 
homes that were built to the newer, higher wind codes as opposed to the 
older homes, where the wind actually came in and did the substantial 
amount of damage. And in retrospect, I am sure that all those people 
who had to pay a couple hundred dollars more, and it did end up being a 
couple of hundred dollars more, are very glad that Florida did impose 
stricter building codes.
  And it was a tough sell at the time, as I remember, but it truly was 
as a result of Hurricane Andrew, but also it was because, when a 
hurricane comes, Florida is usually the first place that it hits.
  Mr. FEENEY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman will yield.
  I have a friend who is a civil engineer, and his primary job is to 
certify each and every set of plans, which is now required since the 
1993 changes. I remember asking him at one point, because he designs 
dozens or hundreds of homes, Why would he have to certify each set of 
new plans for each new home? Why could he not just certify a model? 
Would that not be a lot less expensive, cheaper? And his answer was 
that every location and every building is a little bit different and 
that, absent this, some day we may regret that we did not require the 
diligence that the gentlewoman is talking about. That is in the design 
stage.
  Obviously, we required more substantial materials in places. We 
required storm shutters in certain areas. We have allowed those people 
to take discounts from their insurance if they would go out and 
purchase storm shutters. All of that investment was some of the best 
money ever spent by individual home buyers and home builders in 
Florida, and I think we are all grateful that we changed, and we were 
adaptable, we were flexible after Andrew.
  There will be lessons learned from Charley and Frances and Ivan, but 
thanks to her leadership and the policymakers that are forward thinking 
in Florida, I think we will be in even better shape the next time we 
face one of these horrible events
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, the other thing that I 
wanted to share with the gentleman is, just before I came down to the 
floor, I was handed a list of agricultural losses, and these were 
compiled obviously from the very hardworking members of the 
agricultural industry.
  And the loss for the fern industry, which I know is very large in the 
gentleman's area, was anywhere from 65 to 75 million. So, as we proceed 
with a supplemental bill to assist those who were devastated by the 
storm, certainly, we are hopeful that we will be able to help out not 
only the nursery industry, the ferns, but I have a large dairy industry 
in my area. And so we want to make sure that we are able to help so 
many of the very hardworking members of the agriculture and aquaculture 
industry, too.
  Mr. FEENEY. Right, Mr. Speaker.
  And again, we appreciate her leadership on that. As I took the 
helicopter ride, we deliberately went over some of the nurseries and 
ferneries, and they have a lot of glass and plastic buildings that they 
use to soak up the sun and provide the right amount of water. They do a 
terrific job, but they have been devastated in many respects. And they 
are sort of caught in the middle. If they are a typical business, they 
are eligible for a very low-interest Small Business Administration loan 
if they are subject to a disaster attack. If one is an agricultural 
farmer that grows products for consumption, they are covered by 
emergency processes in the Department of Agriculture's contingency 
budget.

                              {time}  2145

  But if you grow ferns or other nursery products because your product 
cannot be consumed, you are at this point considered eligible for 
neither business assistance nor for agriculture assistance. So it is 
one of those things that we will work with the administration on to try 
to fix as rapidly as possible.
  I yield back to the gentlewoman.
  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, when we remember 
Hurricane Frances, we have to remember that it was so large that at one 
point it obstructed nearly the entire State of Florida on satellite 
views. The hurricane actually was estimated to measure twice the size 
of Texas.
  As I went around my district, and my district goes from the coast, 
from the west coast to just bordering on the gentleman from Florida's 
district in the Orlando area, as I went around my district after the 
hurricane struck, I would see homes and stop and talk to the owners. It 
is amazing, as I mentioned to him, the difference between the older 
homes and the newer homes. The newer homes did not sustain as much 
damage because they were built to better safety codes; they were better 
designed, higher wind loads for the roof. All of those facets made 
those homes sustain the storm a whole lot better.
  While Frances may have ripped roofs off stores and homes, flattened 
gas station canopies and slammed moored boats against each other, it 
did not dampen the spirits of the people of Florida. I had a mother 
come up to me and say, you know, it has always been difficult to turn 
off the TV, to get the kids to turn off the TV. She said, I never 
thought I would say this, but we were able to have the television off, 
and we actually played some board games. She found this to be a great 
time to get closer to her children. She now has her power restored, and 
I am sure that television is back on. But overall, people found this a 
time of great reflection and a time to pray that their friends and 
neighbors and that their own family members would remain safe.
  Mr. Speaker, there is still a lot of repairing that needs to be done. 
I know, as I was driving Saturday evening around my district, there 
were piles of debris along the road. And right now, there are still 
some 213,000 Floridians still without power. When we put that into 
perspective, there are some people who do not have a home anymore. They 
do not have the family heirlooms; they do not even have photographs, 
because all of those were destroyed in the storm. So people can put 
this lack of electricity into perspective, because in Florida it gets 
hot and very, very muggy; but at least they still have their homes. A 
woman pointed that out

[[Page H7052]]

to me because she had a friend in another part of the State who lost 
everything, absolutely everything.
  Mr. Speaker, Floridians have hope because they know that we as public 
servants will not forget them. They know that we will work to the 
fullest of our abilities to see that they receive the relief that they 
so desperately need.
  I would like to take a moment to certainly applaud FEMA, the SBA, the 
Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and so many other organizations that 
have coordinated relief efforts in our State. There is a wonderful 
group in my district that is called the Christian Contractors of 
America, and these are very dedicated, skilled workmen who go out and 
assist people. I had one constituent who had a tree land on her house 
and somebody misinformed her that FEMA would take care of the tree. 
Well, FEMA does not go around cutting down trees. But this great group 
of Christian contractors we were able to call and, without a doubt, 
they are there to help. They were there long before the storm, helping 
people, helping people living in substandard housing. I can think of 
another example where they helped a battered spouse who had all the 
windows knocked in.
  Organizations such as this, certainly the Salvation Army, the Red 
Cross, all of the church groups that opened up their doors if they had 
power and they provided food and they provided air-conditioning and 
they provided shelter and respite, and a place to come where the 
community could all come together.
  Mr. Speaker, we must answer the needs of Florida and other States. It 
is not just Florida that gets hit by hurricanes, as Alabama is about to 
find out, as North Carolina found out last year. I joke with my sister; 
she lived in North Carolina in Morehead City and she was tired of all 
the hurricanes hitting there, so she decided to move down to the 
panhandle of Florida. Well, guess what? She is about ready to be hit by 
another hurricane.
  All of the members of the Florida delegation, regardless of which 
party we belong to, do not forget our commitment to our constituents. 
Florida must be helped, and I am sure that Congress will take action.

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