[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12798-12799]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        TROPICAL STORMS HIT GUAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. UNDERWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor having been absent 
all week from the deliberations of the House due to two storms which 
hit my home island of Guam. The first typhoon, the eye of the storm, 
passed over Guam on July 5, 2002, Chamorro Standard Time, with 
sustained winds of over 110 miles an hour.

                              {time}  1130

  Subsequently, Typhoon Ha Long was supposed to hit Guam on July 11, 
but, fortunately, it just veered a little bit to the south of the 
island. These storms, which frequent my part of the world quite often, 
of course, have caused a great deal of damage and a great deal of 
interruption of public services, and obviously I was not able to come 
back to the House this week as originally planned.
  I have just gotten off the phone with Mr. Joe Allbaugh of the Federal 
Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, and they have assured me that FEMA 
is on the ground in Guam. In fact, they have chartered a plane with 
some 300 people to come out to Guam to try to provide all of the 
services that are necessary, including individual services for those 
who were directly affected by the typhoon.
  Historically, Guam has suffered a major typhoon nearly every decade. 
There are some 60 to 70 storms which this part of the world generates 
every year, tropical storms, and sometimes they reach the level of 
typhoons. Typhoon Chata'an is the first major storm to hit us since 
Typhoon Paka directly hit Guam also in 1997.
  There are a number of issues that always pertain to typhoon recovery, 
including power and water situations, and, of course, the vast majority 
of Guam is still without power. Those areas which have been powered up 
are the hospital, the two hospitals, the Guam Memorial Hospital and 
Naval Hospital, and the water system is basically inoperable at this 
time, so that those areas that are getting water are required to boil 
water if they want to use it for consumption, as opposed to just 
bathing or taking care of the bathroom facilities. This situation is 
likely to continue on for at least 2 to 3 more weeks.
  It is important that as we try to learn the lessons of typhoon 
recovery, which are indeed painful lessons and lessons which I hope 
many of the Members of this body and the people they represent never 
have to undergo, they really have a capacity to strain human relations, 
have the capacity to generate feelings about maybe people are not 
pulling their share of the load.
  But I am happy to report that the people of Guam in general are in 
great spirits. The people of Guam understand, as they have so often in 
the past, that at a time of a typhoon, the time of typhoon recovery is 
a time to pull together, a time to act together and a time to rebuild 
together, and the people of Guam will rebuild their island, will 
rebuild the utilities and the services which most other Americans take 
for granted on a day-to-day basis.
  Chata'an, which is in Chamorro, means rainy day, means having a bad 
day, but indeed it was a bad day. Chata'an also had affected the Island 
of Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia, which is the area where 
the storms generate. At that time it was still under 75 miles per hour 
so it was only called a tropical storm, but it caused a number of 
landslides there and killed over 40 people. So Chuuk in the Federated 
States of Micronesia has also suffered greatly, perhaps not as much in 
damage as the people of Guam have, but certainly more in the sense of 
human loss and the effect on families.

[[Page 12799]]

  Both the Federated States of Micronesia, which is an independent 
nation in free association with the United States, as well as the 
Territory of Guam, will be fully eligible for FEMA. I thank Mr. 
Allbaugh's recognition of this in our phone call just a few minutes 
ago, indicating that he will make sure that Guam is treated fairly and 
that it will receive all the services it needs, just like any other 
American community, and that as a result of the special relationship 
with the Federated States of Micronesia, also the FSM will be afforded 
the same treatment.
  Typhoon Ha Long, which was supposed to pass directly over Guam 2 days 
ago, fortunately passed about 50 miles south of Guam. The people of 
Guam today are, in the main, without power, are without water, and they 
continue to deal with their conditions in the spirit that has always 
sustained them for centuries, and that is understanding we are always 
at the mercy of natural events, but that it is our own spirit, our own 
intelligence and our own capacity to work together, to collaborate 
together, which will see us through.

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