[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 114 (Tuesday, September 21, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9419-S9420]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   THREE MAJOR HURRICANES IN FLORIDA

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, my family has been in Florida 
for 175 years, and I do not remember in all of the history books where 
major hurricanes have happened back to back. It has happened with 
lesser hurricanes, but I think the record book was shattered when three 
large, major hurricanes in a row have battered our State over the 
course of a 6-week period: first Charley, then Frances, and now Ivan.
  As I flew in a National Guard helicopter last Friday with the 
Governor over the Barrier Islands, I saw there were no sand dunes 
anymore in the Barrier Islands of Pensacola Beach. The sugary white 
sand of the beaches and those sand dunes had been washed across the 
entire Barrier Island from the Gulf of Mexico to Pensacola Bay. And 
from the air, it appeared as if the entire Barrier Island was washed in 
white. There were structures standing, but the structures were usually 
the newer ones built according to the new building codes. And as we are 
hearing in the reports out of Alabama, those structures were even 
uprooted on their foundations and have to be destroyed. If it was an 
old structure, that old structure is history.
  For not only the howling winds of 138 miles an hour, but the tidal 
surge of the water that came with the hurricane winds--water that then 
washed up into the very large Pensacola Bay, even taking out major 
sections of the Interstate 10 bridge--we did some quick mathematical 
calculations and figured that a wall of water at least 40 feet

[[Page S9420]]

high would have had to hit that bridge, positioned some 12 miles from 
the gulf up Pensacola Bay. It would take 40 feet of water to have 
enough pressure to raise the sections of Interstate 10's bridge off of 
the pilings and deposit them in the bottom of Pensacola Bay. And in 
many other sections of the bridge, the same effort moved it 3 and 4 
feet on top of the pilings.
  Even at the end of Pensacola Bay, some 20 to 25 miles from the Gulf 
of Mexico, the wave of water was so fast and so furious that as to the 
four-lane highway, US 90, that rings the shore of Pensacola Bay on that 
far northern end, two lanes of those four lanes were washed out at the 
bridgeheads and thus, is complicating the rescue efforts, the 
rebuilding efforts because of traffic not being able to get to 
Pensacola, with only two-way traffic open on one of those lanes that 
had been spared.

  We are finding out once again, because we keep coming with emergency 
appropriations for Federal disaster relief, that hurricanes can be 
quite costly, as we have known over the years. It was my freshman year 
in the Congress in 1979 that I voted for my first disaster relief, 
which was in response to the eruption of Mount St. Helens in the State 
of Washington covering so much of that State with soot and ash. But 
that is in part what a Federal Government is for--to respond in times 
of emergency and disaster.
  So, too, we have seen the President request $2 billion for the first 
hurricane and disaster relief--that won't take care of all of the 
relief for Charley--and another $3.1 billion was requested for Charley 
and Frances. That certainly won't take care of those two storms because 
there is another billion dollars of agricultural relief that is going 
to be needed that the President did not request. But we haven't even 
gotten to the third hurricane, Hurricane Ivan. As we speak, those 
calculations are being made. This Congress is going to have to respond.
  Last week I had a colloquy with the chairman of the Appropriations 
Committee, the distinguished Senator from Alaska. He assured me and 
gave me his commitment that he would proceed on the agricultural relief 
with regard to Hurricane Frances and Hurricane Charley in the 
conference on the Homeland Security Appropriations bill. Huge parts of 
the $65 billion-a-year agricultural industry in Florida have been 
destroyed--citrus, both orange and grapefruit; the nursery industry, 
including the fern industry, of which Florida is one of the major 
growers of ferns; vegetables; fruits; cattle; dairy cows that dried up 
because they could not be milked since there was no electricity to 
operate the automatic milking machines. You can go on down the list of 
all the agricultural commodities that were hit as well as the equipment 
those farmers owned.
  But now with Ivan in the panhandle, we are going to have additional 
agricultural losses, particularly from cotton and peanuts. I dare say 
that will be shared with the State of Alabama, perhaps with Georgia, as 
Ivan raced across the southern United States after it had made landfall 
at the Florida-Alabama border.
  It is interesting that in our State, having been put in hurricane 
mode for 6 weeks, people began to recover from one blow and then here 
comes another blow. In fact, the people in the center part of the State 
on the first two storms were hit twice where the two storms passed and 
happened to cross--Charley from southwest to northeast, Frances from 
southeast to northwest. And they crossed their paths in the center of 
the State.
  Then along comes Ivan. At one point we even thought the State of 
Florida might be spared. It looked as if it was going to be bearing 
down on, Lord forbid, New Orleans, which is lower than sea level, or 
Mississippi where so many of the establishments there, including the 
gaming industry, are on floating boats. You can imagine the wreckage 
that would have caused.
  But it shifted to the east, bearing down on the Florida-Alabama line, 
with the winds coming off in a counterclockwise rotation off of the 
Gulf of Mexico, in its most fierce fury, on to the shores of that 
southern Alabama coastline and northwestern Florida coastline.
  That is a part of our State that has a great deal of the national 
assets of our U.S. military. Ninety percent of the buildings at the 
Pensacola Naval Air Station had severe damage. At Whiting Field, where 
Navy pilots and Marine pilots and Coast Guard pilots and Air Force 
pilots, both fixed wing and helicopter, are trained, all of the hangars 
sustained major roof damage with the roofs being ripped off of those 
large structures. So, as we have responded after the other two 
hurricanes with special appropriations to fix up those military 
facilities so they can get back in the business of training our young 
men and women so they can defend this country, so, too, we are now 
going to have to address those particular needs even as far east on 
that Florida panhandle as Eglin Air Force Base which had its major 
tower completely taken out of commission.
  The Senate will hear me, over and over, advocating and trying to 
articulate the needs for a State that is in crisis, a State that has 
been hit not once but three times by the hard and savage blows of 
Mother Nature.
  Floridians are a hardy lot. Floridians have endured hurricanes 
before. Floridians will do it this time. In the meantime, let's have 
the Government do one of the things that it does best--respond to the 
needs of its people when the needs of the people are so desperate.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that time 
charged under the quorum call be divided equally.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Crapo). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the 
Senate for not more than 10 minutes as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The 
Senator from Arizona is recognized.

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