[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 15]
[House]
[Page 21955]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                            HURRICANE FLOYD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call attention to a 
devastating storm that hit eastern North Carolina just in the last few 
days. People in North Carolina urgently need the help of this Congress 
to respond to one of the worst disasters to hit our State in recent 
memory.
  Hurricane Floyd devastated much of eastern North Carolina from I-95 
east, and some even west of it. Much of it was in my district, but some 
was in four other congressional districts in eastern North Carolina.
  Tonight people are in shelters. Their homes are under water. For some 
of those people, they have lost everything that they own. Some of them 
are living on the edge. Others have lost their crops, all their crops 
for this year.
  I have had the occasion to visit farms. I went into homes today, I 
went into one home of a lady where everything she had was on the 
street. She was inside her house seated in a lawn chair. That was all 
she had left. She had lost everything she had.
  I went to a businessman who had worked all of his life, today. He had 
five feet of water from a stream that was not in the flood plain. He 
had paid his taxes all of his life, and tonight he has lost everything, 
but he was there cleaning out his business.
  It is time for this Congress to face up to our obligations. We have 
helped people around the world. We have helped others in America. We 
now call on this Congress to help the people in North Carolina and 
along the Eastern Seaboard who have suffered one of the worst disasters 
in recent years.
  Some parts of our State had as much as 20 inches of water. Tonight 
that water is still rising in eastern North Carolina. Some Members may 
have seen on national TV the carcasses of dead animals floating, and 
homes under water. It is not over. As many as 1 million poultry may be 
dead and floating, and they are saying now there may be 100,000 or more 
hogs.
  Some of the finest prime farmland in America is in eastern North 
Carolina. There happens to be a large portion in my district, and a 
large portion in the district of the gentlewoman from North Carolina 
(Mrs. Clayton), the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. McIntyre) who 
spoke a few moments ago, and the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. 
Jones).
  Just yesterday we had the opportunity to travel over eastern North 
Carolina with the President and a number of his cabinet members, the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), the gentlewoman from North 
Carolina (Mrs. Clayton), and others. We saw the utter destruction and 
the anguish on people's faces. Yet, they still have hope. They are 
waiting for us to act.
  The latest numbers I have show that we have over 40 people that are 
now known dead. Yesterday we heard, as the gentlewoman will remember, 
in one of the conversations that people went out in the boat checking 
houses and heard a knock on the roof. They cut a hole in the roof of a 
house and rescued 11 people and saved their lives. We may find many 
others who are dead.
  That is unfortunate, but the loss in agricultural commodities and to 
the farm life of our farmers is extensive.
  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, it was a source of 
encouragement to our State for the President to come to North Carolina 
yesterday, as the gentleman has said, and to have Secretary Rodney 
Slater there from the Department of Transportation, to have our small 
business administrator, Ms. Alvarez, with us; to have, from the 
Department of Agriculture, the chief of the National Resources Service, 
Pearlie Reed.
  The President brought a message of hope and of solidarity, pointing 
out that we are all in this together. This is the kind of disaster that 
makes us realize we are all one community.
  As the gentleman said, the agricultural aspect of this is 
particularly devastating. The U.S. Department of Agriculture there on 
the scene in North Carolina has come up with some preliminary figures, 
now well over $1 billion in damage estimates. That includes everything 
from housing to community facilities to watershed protection efforts to 
emergency conservation programs and crop disaster assistance. It comes 
to $1.19 billion, the estimates from North Carolina at this moment. And 
of course the water has not even receded yet.



  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, that number does not even approach the 
number, if we look at the houses that are lost, the businesses that are 
under water, and it is still rising.

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