[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 166 (Tuesday, October 30, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H12189-H12191]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    CJ'S HOME PROTECTION ACT OF 2007

  Mr. DONNELLY. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the 
bill (H.R. 2787) to amend the National Manufactured Housing 
Construction and Safety Standards Act of 1974 to require that weather 
radios be installed in all manufactured homes manufactured or sold in 
the United States, as amended.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The text of the bill is as follows:

                               H.R. 2787

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``CJ's Home Protection Act of 
     2007''.

     SEC. 2. CONGRESSIONAL FINDINGS.

       The Congress finds that--
       (1) nearly 20,000,000 Americans live in manufactured homes, 
     which often provide a more accessible and affordable way for 
     many families to buy their own homes;
       (2) manufactured housing plays a vital role in providing 
     housing for low- and moderate-income families in the United 
     States;
       (3) NOAA Weather Radio (NWR) is a nationwide network of 
     radio stations broadcasting continuous weather information 
     directly from a nearby National Weather Service (NWS) office, 
     and broadcasts NWS warnings, watches, forecasts, and other 
     all-hazard information 24 hours a day;
       (4) the operators of manufactured housing communities 
     should be encouraged to provide a safe place of shelter for 
     community residents or a plan for the evacuation of community 
     residents to a safe place of shelter within a reasonable 
     distance of the community for use by community residents in 
     times of severe weather, including tornados and high winds, 
     and local municipalities should be encouraged to require 
     approval of these plans;
       (5) the operators of manufactured housing communities 
     should be encouraged to provide a written reminder 
     semiannually to all owners of manufactured homes in the 
     manufactured housing community to replace the batteries in 
     their weather radios; and
       (6) weather radio manufacturers should include, in the 
     packaging of weather radios, a written reminder to replace 
     the batteries twice each year and written instructions on how 
     to do so.

     SEC. 3. FEDERAL MANUFACTURED HOME CONSTRUCTION AND SAFETY 
                   STANDARD.

       Section 604 of the National Manufactured Housing 
     Construction and Safety Standards Act of 1974 (42 U.S.C. 
     5403) is amended by adding at the end the following new 
     subsection:
       ``(i) Weather Radios.--
       ``(1) Construction and safety standard.--The Federal 
     manufactured home construction and safety standards 
     established by the Secretary under this section shall require 
     that each manufactured home delivered for sale shall be 
     supplied with a weather radio inside the manufactured home 
     that--
       ``(A) is capable of broadcasting emergency information 
     relating to local weather conditions;
       ``(B) is equipped with a tone alarm;
       ``(C) is equipped with Specific Alert Message Encoding, or 
     SAME technology; and
       ``(D) complies with Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) 
     Standard 2009-A (or current revision thereof) Performance 
     Specification for Public Alert Receivers.
       ``(2) Liability protections.--No aspect of the function, 
     operation, performance, capabilities, or utilization of the 
     weather radio required under this subsection, or any 
     instructions related thereto, shall be subject to the 
     requirements of section 613 or 615 or any regulations 
     promulgated by the Secretary pursuant to the authority under 
     such sections.''.

     SEC. 4. ESTABLISHMENT.

       Not later than the expiration of the 90-day period 
     beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, the 
     consensus committee established pursuant to section 604(a)(3) 
     of the National Manufactured Housing Construction and Safety 
     Standards Act of 1974 (42 U.S.C. 5304(a)(3)) shall develop 
     and submit to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development 
     a proposed Federal manufactured home construction and safety 
     standard required under section 604(i) of such Act (as added 
     by the amendment made by section 3 of this Act). 
     Notwithstanding section 604(a)(5)(B) of such Act, the 
     Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall issue a 
     final order promulgating the standard required by such 
     section 604(i) not later than the expiration of the 90-day 
     period beginning upon receipt by the Secretary of the 
     proposed standard developed and submitted by the consensus 
     committee.

     SEC. 5. STUDY.

       The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall 
     conduct a study regarding conditioning the applicability of 
     the requirement under the amendment made by section 3 of this 
     Act (relating to supplying weather radios in manufactured 
     homes) on the geographic location at which a manufactured 
     home is placed, but only to the extent that such requirement 
     applies to new manufactured homes and new site-built homes. 
     In conducting such study and making determinations under the 
     study, the Secretary shall take into consideration severe 
     weather conditions, such as high winds and flooding, and wind 
     zones and other severe weather data available from the 
     National Weather Service. Not later than the expiration of 
     the 18-month period beginning on the date of the enactment of 
     this Act, the Secretary shall complete the study and submit a 
     report regarding the results of the study to the Committee on 
     Financial Services of the House of Representatives and to the 
     Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs of the 
     Senate.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Indiana (Mr. Donnelly) and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus) each 
will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Indiana.


                             General Leave

  Mr. DONNELLY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their 
remarks on this legislation and to insert extraneous material thereon.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Indiana?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. DONNELLY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 2787, CJ's Home Protection Act 
of 2007, introduced by my colleague and friend from Indiana (Mr. 
Ellsworth). H.R. 2787 would require that weather radios be installed in 
all new manufactured homes manufactured or sold in the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, this legislation passed the Financial Services Committee 
unanimously on September 18 of this year. It would ensure that 
manufactured homes continue to provide the highest level of safety to 
their residents in the event of devastating weather conditions, such as 
hurricanes and tornadoes, which many regions of the country, including 
my home State of Indiana, are all too familiar with.
  In Indiana, and in my congressional district, we have a proud and a 
strong tradition of providing first-class manufactured housing for 
Americans and providing quality jobs for Hoosiers. Manufactured homes 
house 22 million people in over 10.5 million homes. These manufactured 
homes have continued a tradition of quality and safe construction over 
the years. They present a high-quality, affordable housing option for 
families, and will continue to do so for years to come.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a thoughtful and deeply personal piece of 
legislation, and I commend Mr. Ellsworth for working together with 
manufacturers and advocates alike to craft a bill in H.R. 2787 that 
works for everybody. I urge Members to vote in favor of this 
legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, I am glad to yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Ellsworth).
  Mr. ELLSWORTH. I would like to thank the gentleman, my good friend 
from Indiana (Mr. Donnelly).
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of CJ's Home Protection Act. 
Nearly 2 years ago, a killer F3 tornado struck my district in southwest 
Indiana. The tornado hit a manufactured housing community after most 
people had gone to bed on a Saturday night, and it took the lives of 25 
Hoosiers, 20 in my county and five in Warrick County next door, lives 
that might have been saved if the victims knew a storm was approaching.
  CJ Martin, an energetic, smiling 2-year-old boy, was one of the 
victims that night. He and the other 24 victims are the reason I am 
here today, as well as the victims who have suffered the same across 
our country. His picture is a reminder of the destruction that comes to 
families and communities when severe weather strikes without warning.

[[Page H12190]]

  Mr. Speaker, I was the sheriff of the county back in 2005, and I 
oversaw the recovery effort in the wake of this storm. The picture 
doesn't do it justice. The horror and devastation the storm left behind 
is something I will remember for the rest of my life. That is why this 
bill is so important to me.
  I met Kathryn Martin, CJ's mother, right after the storm, and in the 
months afterwards she took that pain and suffering and turned it into 
an effort to pass this same legislation in the State of Indiana, which 
she was successful in doing.

                              {time}  1415

  Kathryn was successful in getting the bill passed, and because of the 
awareness she raised about weather radios, the people in my hometown of 
Evansville, Indiana, have the most weather radios in households per 
capita.
  When I met Kathryn, I promised her that if I ever got to Congress, I 
would introduce a Federal bill that did the same thing she was trying 
to push in our State. This bill before us today fulfills that promise. 
CJ's Home Protection Act amends the Federal Manufactured Home 
Construction and Safety Standard to require that each manufactured home 
delivered for sale shall be supplied with a weather radio inside the 
manufactured home.
  One might ask, not every area in this country suffers tornadoes. You 
are right about that. A tornado took CJ's life, but it could have just 
as easily been a fire like in California, flash flooding and even 
tsunamis. An added bonus of this bill would be that weather radios are 
also used to put out AMBER alerts.
  The radio must be capable of broadcasting emergency information 
related to local weather conditions, equipped with a tone alarm and 
specific alert message encoding, and comply with Consumer Electronics 
Association standards for public receivers.
  Like a smoke detector, these inexpensive devices can provide families 
with the warning they need to take action and protect themselves when 
severe weather strikes. This bill is about improving public safety, 
plain and simple. It is not about demonizing the manufactured housing 
industry. Kathryn and John Martin and the other residents of this 
community love their homes, and the manufactured homes provide 
affordable, high-quality homes for thousands of American families.
  In fact, when my wife Beth and I were first married, we agreed to buy 
a manufactured home as our first home. Unfortunately, the manufactured 
housing park told us we were too young to move there so we had to make 
other arrangements.
  I continue to be a strong supporter of manufactured housing. I see 
this legislation as adding one more feature to enhance the safety 
features of these structures. This bill is sponsored by the American 
Red Cross, the International Association of Firefighters, and the 
Michigan Committee for Severe Weather Awareness.
  Before I close, I want to thank the chairman of this committee, 
Barney Frank, Spencer Bachus, Congressman Dennis Moore and 
Congresswoman Kay Granger for their support and being supporters of 
this bill, as well as Congressman Joe Donnelly. I would also like to 
thank my staff for their tireless work on this effort.
  Severe weather does not distinguish between Republicans and 
Democrats. It doesn't care whether you live in Indiana, California, 
Alabama, or Kansas. This is public safety legislation, and for a mere 
$30 to $80, we can perhaps save the next 2-year-old boy from this type 
of devastation.
  Mr. DONNELLY. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of CJ's Home 
Protection Act of 2007.
  Congressman Ellsworth said a picture is worth a thousand words, and 
he held up a picture of CJ Martin. When the Congressman brought CJ's 
mother, Kathryn Martin, to my office, he brought that picture with him. 
It brought back memories to me of another picture, of not a little boy 
but of a little girl, and I have that picture with me today.
  This is a picture of Whitney Crowder. Now, unlike CJ, I am happy to 
say that today she is an eighth grader in a Tuscaloosa city school. She 
is doing well, but she has had a lot to overcome. Just like CJ, she and 
her family lived in manufactured housing.
  Let me tell you, manufactured housing in the South has replaced a lot 
of substandard housing. It provides affordable housing for a lot of 
Alabamians. As many as one out of five Alabamians lives in a 
manufactured house. It is affordable. It is clean, and it provides a 
very good home.
  Whitney was living in one of these manufactured houses. An alert went 
out that said a tornado was 30 miles off. She had approximately 20 
minutes; but the TV wasn't on. She didn't have a weather alert radio. 
And although the TV stations were able to track that storm and to tell 
within a quarter mile where it was going and when it would arrive 
there, she and her grandmother and the rest of her family didn't have 
the TV on. Some people say why don't you require these in cars. Why 
just manufactured housing? Well, in fact studies show when people are 
in cars they have the radio on and more often than not they receive an 
alert.
  But as is the case in Alabama with this storm and another storm that 
took 32 lives a few years before that, people were asleep. I think the 
Martins were asleep. They had no idea that a killer tornado was bearing 
down on them, even though warnings were going out.
  As I said, although I am happy to say that Whitney survived the 
tornado, her brother Wesley, 16-month-old, and her father did not. They 
were killed.
  We have come to a time in our country where we really have no excuse 
not to do the few elementary things we can do to prevent the death or 
at least lessen the likelihood of the death of CJ Martin in Indiana or 
Wesley Crowder and his dad, Whitney's father, in Alabama. Technology 
today in an F-5 or F-4 storm gives 30 to 40 minutes' warning. With that 
warning you only need two things: You need shelter from the storm, you 
need a place to go, and you need to receive that warning.
  Now, in 2003 this Congress passed the Tornado Shelters Act, which 
allows communities to use community block grant money to build 
shelters, a shelter from the storm, a shelter that could exist for the 
Martins or the Crowder family, and a mobile community.
  I am happy to report in my district, the Sixth Congressional District 
of Alabama, we now have six of these shelters in or near manufactured 
housing communities. But people don't have to go to those. If they are 
in manufactured housing, they can go to a nearby building with a 
basement or interior room. Manufactured housing, a mobile home as some 
of us call them, they don't have basements and interior rooms. It is 
not wrong; it is just something they are not designed to have. But 
there are permanent structures nearby, whether it be a school, a 
tornado shelter that we authorized in 2003, or maybe even their 
parents' house. The Crowders had an aunt and uncle that lived only 
about 400 yards away in a site-built house with a basement. They would 
have been safe from that storm. The technology was there to warn them. 
The shelter was there to receive them, but there was no weather radio.
  Now, what's the cost of a radio? Some people have talked about the 
cost that you are imposing, although the manufactured housing industry 
as far as I know has said they support this bill. Well, Wal-Mart just 
came out with a weather radio for $12. So that's the cost if you buy 
them in bulk. You can put them in for $12 in a mobile home, 
manufactured housing. $12. What is the cost of not acting? For the 
Crowder family there are all sorts of costs. The greatest cost was the 
loss of two individuals, a little 16-month-old boy, Whitney's little 
brother, and her father. Also the cost to Whitney and her mother and 
the 12 other people injured by this storm. The cost was several million 
dollars in health care costs.
  Now, we are not here to save money; we are here to save lives. But 
this bill will not only save lives; it will save money. A killer 
tornado like this hit Oak Grove at night, and among the things it did 
was paralyze a man. That man is still paralyzed to this day and his 
cost of treatment is, as we all know, hundreds of thousands of dollars 
a year. One radio in that gentleman's manufactured housing home could 
have saved him a life of paralysis. But, instead, it took 30 lives and 
denied him mobility for the rest of his life.

[[Page H12191]]

  As the Congressman from Indiana said, this is not about Republicans 
or Democrats. There are certain things we ought to say, it is time to 
do this; and technology has reached that time. When 40 percent to 50 
percent to sometimes as many as 60 percent of the deaths every year 
from these killer tornadoes are in mobile homes, manufactured housing, 
and families live in these houses, whether they be our grandparents, 
our parents, our children, our neighbors, our loved ones, or people we 
don't even know, you see the devastation here. There were site-built 
homes here. This is a manufactured house. Twenty-seven manufactured 
housing units in this area, a mobile home community, no longer existed.
  As the gentleman from Indiana said, looking at this picture really 
doesn't do it justice. People actually commented when they came upon 
this area which was about half a mile long and 400 yards wide, it 
looked like a garbage dump. You couldn't tell there had been a 
community there. It looked like there were a few junk cars because the 
cars were rolled over and over.
  We can rebuild these communities; but CJ, we can't bring him back. We 
can't bring Whitney's little brother and father back, but we can do our 
best for literally pennies to prevent some of these deaths.
  I think that is why 55 TV stations throughout this Nation have made 
this their cause. They visited us in Washington last year. They said, 
Look, we will get the warning out and there are shelters available. But 
please require the installation of a $12 radio so we can bridge that 
gap between warning and safe shelter.
  That is what we are here to do today. In this House where we 
sometimes are in conflict and at loggerheads, can't we this time come 
together in a united way in an effort that will cost almost nothing and 
which the manufactured housing industry said we are willing to do this, 
and require these radios. And not only when a tornado comes or when a 
devastating flood comes like came to Texas and people were asleep in a 
mobile home community and several of those homes were swept away. This 
will save lives.
  So I commend CJ Martin's mother. That's what America is about, 
someone saying I lost my son but I don't want it to happen again. It is 
about the Crowder family who wrote me a letter, a grandmother saying 
please push this bill.
  We will never go back and know whether CJ could have survived had 
this legislation been passed. We will never know whether Wesley Crowder 
and his father would survive, but we do know by talking to people 
throughout the United States that these radios have in many, many cases 
already saved lives and will save lives if we install them in 
manufactured housing.

                              {time}  1430

  We have a shot at significantly reducing over half the deaths from 
tornados simply by taking the step together united, Republicans and 
Democrats, and passing this legislation.
  I commend Chairman Frank for expeditiously moving this legislation, 
and I commend the Member from Indiana for his thoughtfulness and his 
care and dedication to this issue.
  Mr. DONNELLY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the ranking member for his 
thoughtful and eloquent remarks; Congressman Ellsworth for his tireless 
effort on behalf of this, and the manufactured housing industry for 
their assistance.
  Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back 
the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Donnelly) that the House suspend the rules 
and pass the bill, H.R. 2787, as amended.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the 
rules were suspended and the bill, as amended, was passed.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________