[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 113 (Monday, September 20, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9368-S9370]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             HURRICANE IVAN

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I want to share a few thoughts at this 
time with the Senate concerning the damages we received from the 
hurricane, ``Ivan the Terrible.''
  It was a major hurricane. It did tremendous damage to properties and 
houses, timber, and agricultural crops throughout the State of Alabama 
and even into our region of the United States.
  I had the pleasure yesterday to travel with President Bush as he went 
down to Orange Beach, AL, and the Gulf Shores areas, and we examined 
the losses that occurred there. They are quite significant. I had flown 
over the area earlier, and it already looked a little better to me 
yesterday than it did before. The tides are still high. The water level 
in the Gulf of Mexico remained higher than for the highest tide for 
maybe 24 hours after this storm hit because the hurricane had pushed so 
much water in. The water went over the beachfront areas into the 
lagoons and flooded houses on the lagoons. It blew homes down. Some 
well-constructed homes stood up well. Most of the condominiums that are 
multistory condominiums seemed to hold up well, but the net effect was 
a major loss for many people. The homes and buildings will have to be 
structurally examined--all of them--to make sure there is not some 
structural damage that is not anticipated today. I am proud of the 
people there.
  The numbers I have received indicate there were 70 deaths in the 
Caribbean as a result of Hurricane Ivan and that, according to the 
Associated Press, there were 52 deaths in the United States. We had 
four deaths in Alabama. That is a very large loss of life. It is 
something we need to think about, to

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see if we can anticipate in the future these kinds of problems and 
minimize the loss of life.
  I want to say how proud I am of the people in Alabama, from the 
sheriffs, the fire chiefs, the emergency management people, FEMA, and 
every agency of Government that participated in the preparations 
leading up to the hurricane for the success we have had to date in 
Alabama where the storm hit.
  Governor Riley, early on, recognized the danger of this storm. He 
insisted that we have evacuations from the dangerous areas. People do 
not like to leave their homes. They think they can ride these things 
out. They may remember one several years ago that was not so bad. But 
when a major category 3 or category 4 hurricane hits, like Ivan was, 
nobody is safe on the beaches and the low-lying areas of our State. The 
Governor pushed hard, and people listened and moved out. For that, we 
are most grateful and thankful. It could have been so much worse.
  First of all, I want to say, President Bush made absolutely clear 
that the Federal Emergency Management Agency will do whatever it takes, 
complying with the law, to help our people in the State of Alabama.
  Mike Brown, the Administrator at FEMA, was down. He traveled with us. 
He has been down several days. He is going back today, I believe, to 
visit some of the smaller towns off the beach that suffered badly also. 
We have had a good response from the Federal Government. We find there 
are some problems. Somehow we can't get things done quite as well as we 
would like. Of course, FEMA is dealing now with its third major 
hurricane in just a matter of weeks, so they are stretched to the 
limits, but they are responding well. Most people are pleased with 
that.
  We have to have ice. We need to have the electricity on wherever 
possible. Some areas need water, and making that available is critical 
to the health and welfare of these communities.
  I want to mention a couple things I believe are worth noting.
  Mr. President, our colleague, Trent Lott, called me Saturday and told 
me that he had an individual from Pascagoula, MS, who had two 
truckloads of ice he was sending over. I tried to figure out how we 
were going to pay for it, and he said he is not asking to be paid. He 
said: This is from Mississippi with love. We love you. We are sending 
this ice to you because we care about you. We know you are hurting. It 
could have been us. We are thankful for that. We want to give this to 
you. So I salute Mark Mavar, an individual who cared enough to send a 
large and valuable amount of ice to the people of Alabama.
  Groups have come from around the country to help. I was with the 
mayor of Atmore on Friday, and he talked about people coming there from 
around the country. Today, the mayor told me that Volunteers of America 
had served 6,000 people in his small town, and I think then 10,000 
people yesterday, and that maybe they would feed as many as 15,000 
today. As is the case with other towns, the whole town of Atmore for 
days has had no electricity, zero, anywhere in town.

  One farmer told me he had gotten his diesel fuel tank and filled it 
up with gasoline to go around town to provide gasoline for the power 
saws. People could not get gasoline for their power saws. The gas 
stations that were opened had lines sometimes with 100, 200 cars. In 
Monroeville, where I went through Saturday, people were lined up with 
probably 100, 200 cars at one of the gas stations there. They are just 
beginning to get electricity in Monroeville. Just maybe a quarter of 
the town had it, or less. One of the fast food restaurants had it, and 
there were probably 100 cars out there.
  Electricity is so important to these individuals and communities. All 
of the food in their refrigerators and freezers is spoiling. It will 
have to be thrown out. In normal conditions, you would just go down to 
the grocery store and buy more food or you would go down to the fast 
food restaurant and get a hamburger. But when the whole town is out, 
and it may be 30, 40, 50 miles before you can find gasoline or fast 
food--and the lines are so long you cannot afford to spend the time 
there--it becomes a pretty serious crisis for the people.
  I was able to go with my friend, Bob Sharp, who is a former president 
of the Alabama Forestry Association, and he showed me and explained to 
me how our timber stands have been damaged. That is a big deal. We had 
agricultural loss--cotton, peanuts, pecans--but I do not think anything 
is going to show the damage and losses as much as in the timber 
industry. He had a stand of pines. He said he bought the property from 
a paper company. The trees had been planted, and he had thinned them 
not long before the hurricane hit. There were substantial losses. Trees 
were down throughout that area. He was going to manage that timber, as 
he knew how to do, and hopefully he was going to be able to, over time, 
make payments on that, and it was going to be his retirement.
  He talked about a friend of his, who is the same age, who had driven 
out and looked at his timber losses and just had to sit there and cry 
when he saw those trees, so many of them, down. It is a real economic 
hardship for a lot of good people, but they are responding well.
  Mayor Shell, at Atmore, is such a fine leader. He was an engineer at 
one of the companies there. He is now retired. He gives his time so 
well to lead that community.
  I met Mayor Anne Farrish in Monroeville. She is such a wonderful 
mayor. Eddie Everett is the fire chief, and Tommy Tate is the sheriff. 
We sat down and talked about all the trees they had lost. It is not 
just power lines being down, but a tree on top of a tree on top of a 
tree, all on top of a power line. Power poles are broken. It is going 
to take some time for them to recover.
  I have to say another bit of good news. Alabama Power Company today 
announced they expected to have 99 percent of the power restored in the 
State of Alabama by Friday. That is better than I would have expected. 
That is something to be proud of.
  As I went through Monroeville, on up the road to where I grew up, to 
the little family house I grew up in, trees were all across that road. 
They had been cut and moved off the road to a degree. Sometimes you had 
to curve around them. This is a State highway, and the sheriff, Tommy 
Tate, told me one of the people in the timber business there took his 
own equipment and spent the day going up and down that road clearing 
that road so traffic could go through there.
  It took a day or two to get that done. That is the kind of spirit of 
which I am proud. As I went through my community, I passed a company 
working on the power line. I stopped to thank them and asked them where 
they were from. They were from Indiana. They were a cable TV company. 
They had a crew that could handle clearing and improving lines. They 
were down in rural Alabama helping. From all over, Oklahoma, other 
places, these companies are there.
  Nothing is more important to the recovery of a community than getting 
electricity on. We should salute and thank the people who have come 
from around the country, as well as the Alabama Power Company employees 
who are working their hearts out to get that power back on. We have 
electric cooperatives that are also doing the same thing.
  It is not just the Alabama Power Company. So many companies are 
helping. I salute them. I thank them.
  When I was talking to that company from Indiana, way out there in the 
rural areas of Alabama, I asked them: How long are you going to be 
working today? They said: There is a substation down the road, and we 
are going to try to get there by midnight tonight. They are working 
until midnight.
  That is the kind of hours people are putting in. There is no place 
with electricity for them to spend the night or to get a hot meal, 
unless somebody in the community provides it. They are performing at an 
extremely high level which makes us all proud.
  We are going to come out of this. We have a long way to go. People's 
homes are damaged all over. At the home I grew up in, a big oak tree 
crashed down on the little garage there and smashed it flat and knocked 
a couple of holes in our house. That was small. If you go out further, 
you see a huge pine tree cutting off a part of a house, and people are 
thanking the good Lord they were not injured. You see people there who 
had 6 inches to 8 inches of water in their house and flooding during 
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rain that came with this hurricane. You begin to count your blessings. 
They were counting theirs. They weren't complaining.
  People whose home flooded had a young child there. The tree hit their 
roof. They were thankful. I saw a person who was working in the yard, 
and I went up to him to speak and said: Do you live here?
  He said: No, this is my friend, and we didn't have any real damage at 
my house, just lost some shingles, so I am here helping him.
  I saw people with power saws cutting trees. A timber company had 
cherry picker equipment that was lifting one of the logs off a house 
for no charge, just to help a neighbor be able to seal up the house so 
the rain won't do damage to it.
  Those are the kinds of things that make this a great country. It does 
not require the direction of somebody from Washington, DC. It does not 
require direction from Montgomery, AL, or even the counties. But in the 
very communities and neighborhoods of our country live some of the 
finest people the world has ever known. They know how to stand up and 
make decisions, utilize equipment, take care of their neighbors, and 
help one another who are in need. They do that on a daily basis in this 
crisis.
  I am proud beyond words to represent them. Yes, the Federal 
Government has a role. We expect them to fulfill that. The State of 
Alabama has a role, and the county and city governments have a role. 
They are working hard. I have talked to those mayors. I have talked to 
the leaders in the communities, and they are working hard. They are 
intense. They are alert. They are insisting that things be done. They 
are insisting that if they need some equipment and it is available, 
they get it. I am proud of that kind of leadership. That is perfectly 
legitimate.
  Fundamentally, the people are responding well. The power will be 
turned back on. FEMA will come around, under the supervision of the 
Corps of Engineers, and pick up all the limbs and trees that are there. 
These are not just small trees. Some of them are huge, representing 
many loads just to haul off the wood product of one major oak tree or 
one big pine tree. It is going to take months to get all that done. But 
the system has been proven. We need to refine it and make it better. 
But it will work. This relief will apply not just to the people who 
have houses on the beach but to every town and community in the State.

  I was pleased to see Mr. Brown make that comment just today on the 
national news media. I talked to him about it. It is not just the 
people on the beaches who were hurt but in Atmore and Brewton and 
Monroeville, Frisco City, Evergreen, Greenville, and Camden, my 
hometown where I went to school.
  I talked to Mayor Henrietta Blackmon there today. She is struggling 
to get some electricity. They just got a little bit in town, and they 
are excited about that. They will be able to have gasoline provided. 
Some of the restaurants have electricity so people can get a hot meal. 
That was good news. That is the kind of thing they are doing.
  They are worried about the nursing home. Generators are keeping that 
going right now so far. Her husband is a doctor there, and the hospital 
is getting by on a generator. Linden, Thomasville, Jackson, all these 
communities were hard hit. Birmingham, much further up the State, had 
substantial power outages, and the storm continued on north. We have 
had flooding in West Virginia and many deaths.
  Whatever else a storm such as Ivan teaches us, it teaches us that we 
don't control our fate. We are just here a short period of time in this 
life; our lives are but a vapor, the Scriptures say. We can't control 
the winds and waves, as my daughter e-mailed me. That is controlled by 
a higher power. We are called upon to love our neighbors, take care of 
our communities, and help one another. I believe that is happening in 
my State to a degree that makes me very proud.
  We are going to get through it. We are going to stay together. We are 
going to be a better State when it is over.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Dole). The Senator from Wyoming.

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