[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 20135-20141]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     RESPONSE TO HURRICANE KATRINA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Price of Georgia). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being recognized to have 
the opportunity to address the Speaker before this House.
  This Nation has undergone the most serious natural disaster, the most 
costly natural disaster. Possibly not in the measure of lives but in 
the measure of treasure, it certainly has, and we pray for the recovery 
of those victims that are yet to be found. We pray that that number can 
stay as low as possible, and we know that, regardless of the number, 
each loss of life hurts and pains each family deeply.
  This Congress has addressed Hurricane Katrina, done so quickly. We 
had a unanimous consent agreement after a conference call on Friday 
after the storm struck in its fury and the wind began to die down on 
Monday, the previous Monday. We appropriated $10.5 billion, Mr. 
Speaker, and we did so under a unanimous consent agreement. We did that 
because we knew that we needed to get resources into the hands of the 
people who were saving lives, lifting people off of rooftops and 
pulling people out of houses and bringing boats down through the 
communities, and we needed to make sure that the resources were there.
  We needed to make sure that there was food, there was water, there 
was shelter, and this Nation watched on television as the disasters 
that were there brought people together in the Superdome, in the 
convention center, other locations around New Orleans, other locations 
around Alabama, Mississippi and, of course, other places in Louisiana.
  This Nation has watched transfixed as we reacted and we deployed 
resources into the region and began to recover from this disaster. Each 
of us have different opinions about what was done right and what was 
done wrong, but Mr. Speaker, my position is that we are not done saving 
people. We are not done helping people get relocated. We are not done 
helping their lives get put back together, and they are not finished 
building for their future. Once that path is determined and once they 
start down that path and once we can see that we put a plan together 
that is going to help people get relocated, and at least in the short- 
and mid-term future, we will have seen to the needs of the many, many 
needy, then that will be time enough and plenty time enough for us to 
meet together in this Congress and to put together a chronological 
order of what happened, who knew what, why did they know it, what they 
did not know and why, what communications did they have, what decisions 
were made that impacted on the rescue operations and the recovery 
operations. What did they know and when did they know it, Mr. Speaker, 
is one way to ask that question and what did we learn from this 
disaster.
  Time will come and that will be soon enough, and perhaps in this hour 
I will go back and talk about how I think we should put together the 
system here in Congress to take a good look at this, but, right now, we 
are recovering from this disaster.
  Congress appropriated $10.5 billion that Friday following the storm, 
and it was emergency spending. It was a special session, emergency 
spending money, $10.5 billion. Our report was that FEMA was spending 
$500 million a day. By the end of that day, the report was $750 million 
a day. So that was a calculus to get us through Labor Day weekend, 
appropriate $10.5 billion.
  I asked for an accounting of that spending. It did not come early in 
the week. It did come later in the week, and the accounting came with 
the request for another $51.8 billion, and the calculus for the $51.8 
billion was not readily available to us. The answer was simply we know 
we are going to spend more than another $50 billion, so let us 
appropriate it.
  So this Congress laid out a blank check, and in that appropriation 
there was a single line item. First, there was $1.8 billion in there 
for the Department of Defense, and they spent a lot of money down there 
and poured a lot of resources in. That is fine, but I believe the 
largest single line item ever passed in this Congress and appropriated 
without strings attached, without guidelines, without congressional 
direction was the $50 billion that went to FEMA.
  I asked for an accounting of that money. I wanted to know, first, how 
was FEMA spending, and now the number went from $500 million a day to 
$750 million a day to $2 billion a day, and where was that money going. 
I happen to think in those terms of unit prices, how many meals, how 
much water, how much ice, how much fuel, how many rental units, how 
many people are on payroll, how many contractors are coming in that are 
contractors that are being paid, how do these contracts all add up, how 
does it divide out, how does it average out.
  I thought it would be something that would be a calculation that one 
could track, and when I did get a look at those numbers, it had $3.3 
billion there for 200,000 trailer houses, 30,000 of which were 
available and 170,000 of which were back-ordered. So it is hard to 
define that $3.3 billion as emergency spending when you spend the money 
to purchase a contract for future construction of trailer houses not 
available, and I say that is not emergency spending.
  In addition, in the $50 billion that came for the second 
appropriation there was another 100,000 trailer houses in there for the 
tune of $1.6 billion. So now FEMA has had the authority apparently to 
purchase 300,000 trailer houses for the cost of $4.9 billion, $400 
million of it will go for the 30,000 trailers, and that is rough 
numbers. Those trailers are available, but 270,000 trailers are back-
ordered for a cost of about $4.5 billion, declared and deemed to be 
emergency spending, the kind of thing that is going to help save lives, 
recover people, and, in fact, it took resources away that could have 
been better used in the recovery process.
  In addition, in that appropriation there was $650 million that was 
declared to be emergency spending, dedicated to mitigation of future 
disasters. Mitigation of future disasters cannot be characterized as 
emergency spending and cannot be characterized as something that helps 
disaster victims today in the gulf coast. It is money that could have 
gone to help people, but it is pigeon-holed. It is earmarked, and it is 
committed to other projects. We do not know what they are. Congress was 
not apprised of that, and yet we have an oversight responsibility.
  All appropriations must start in this House of Representatives, Mr. 
Speaker, and those appropriations then flow through here over to the 
Senate and from the Senate then probably back, not often back to 
conference but to the President.
  We start the appropriations process. The Founders were very clear in 
our responsibility and our duty here. You cannot spend money without 
the House of Representatives initiating this, and the House of 
Representatives approved one single line item, $50 billion.
  I simply asked that we cut that down and appropriate $10 billion for 
the second week. It got us through the first week of intensity. The 
second week should have done the same. In fact, it

[[Page 20136]]

would have nearly met the $2 billion a day that FEMA said they were 
spending, but we could not bring that up in those increments because 
the Senate was busy with their confirmation of Justice Roberts and did 
not want to be bothered to walk out of the Senate judiciary chambers to 
vote yea or nay on a $10 billion package that could have passed the 
Senate under a unanimous consent because, in fact, not a single Senator 
stood up against the $50 billion anyway.

                              {time}  2200

  So that did not hold very much sway with me from a rational 
perspective, Mr. Speaker, and so I voted ``no'' on this appropriations 
process. Because although I want to help people, we have an obligation 
for oversight and there was none; and, furthermore, we have an 
obligation to devise a plan, and there is none. Now, it does not mean 
there is not a plan to reach out and help people and that the system is 
not working. It is, Mr. Speaker. So I do not want the wrong 
implications to get in there.
  But maybe you have heard the story about how the fellow went in to 
drain the swamp and he found himself up to his ears in alligators and 
it took his mind off of draining the swamp. That is kind of what 
happened down there in New Orleans. Everybody is so busy fighting off 
the alligators that the overall plan that needs to come into play to 
take care of the billions of dollars that likely will be coming from 
the taxpayers of this country has not been put in place, it has not 
been articulated, or it has not even been speculated to this Congress 
in any large way. And it is our job.
  If there is no plan that comes to us that we can support, it is our 
job to devise a plan that we can support. In fact, it is our job to 
consider many, many alternatives and put our best foot forward, our 
best brains forward and husband the resources. We need to do the wise 
thing, the right thing, and position New Orleans, the gulf coast, for 
the long term, the best long term for this entire country, Mr. Speaker.
  So after that vote, as I asked questions and tried to get answers, I 
think really it was just there were not answers out there. Everybody 
was busy working to save people, and they should have been; but there 
was not an eye on what are we going to do with 300,000 trailer houses 
when or if they ever get built and where will they go. Will they go 100 
miles north of New Orleans, up someplace maybe north of Baton Rouge 
where it gets a little higher ground? Will they go in there and trench 
in water lines and lay in sewer lines and build a sewer plant and bring 
in electricity and put in electrical lines and put in streets and 
driveways and set these trailer houses in there row after row after 
row?
  Imagine how big a trailer court it would be if it had 10,000 trailers 
in it. Now think of 100,000. And even though they probably will not all 
go in the same place, think in terms of 100,000 trailers all rowed up. 
Now think in terms of another hurricane, a windstorm. What happens? Do 
people want to live in those trailers in perpetuity? And I will say, 
no, not very many.
  And what is the life expectancy of a trailer when we put $4.9 billion 
into 300,000 trailers, and many months from now the last trailer is 
built? Maybe even more than a year from now the last trailer is built 
and wheeled into site. Where are the people going to be that will come 
to move into those? The displaced people will have found a place by 
then.
  So I contend, Mr. Speaker, that that is not a solution. It is not a 
wise solution. It is a distraction from the solution. It has happened 
without deliberation and without debate. It was an administrative 
decision, and I have not found the individual that will stand up and 
say, yes, that was my idea, I liked it, and we are going to stick with 
it. No, there is not an answer on that, Mr. Speaker, because the public 
knows at least intuitively that that is not a long-term solution. In 
fact, it is not a short-term solution. The trailers are back ordered, 
Mr. Speaker.
  So as I watched this unfold and had my difficulty in getting answers, 
I began working the phones last Thursday. I had two staff people that 
worked diligently into the night on Thursday and started again on 
Friday and worked until 11:30 at night on Friday night trying to come 
up with contact numbers so I could make a phone call and talk to a few 
of the people that were in the region down in the gulf coast that could 
give me some of the answers and what the real plans were, if there are 
any; what kind of definitive answers and responses could we get.
  We were not able to make contact in any meaningful way; and so along 
about Saturday, in fact about half time at the Iowa State-Iowa game, I 
made a decision to jump on a plane in Ames. I left at the end of the 
third quarter. It was hard to do, but Iowa State was ahead 23 to 3 at 
the time, so I went down to the airport, jumped aboard a little Bonanza 
airplane, a little single-engine, and we flew our way towards New 
Orleans.
  We stopped in Little Rock that night and stayed out of the area. 
There was not a room to be had anywhere in that close region from Baton 
Rouge on south. In fact, even north of Baton Rouge. So we stayed in 
Little Rock, and then went back in the air at 5:15 in the morning and 
flew on into New Orleans and landed there about 7:26 a.m. Sunday 
morning. There was no commercial traffic going in or out of the 
airport. There were military air flights that were going in and 
helicopters moving around, but not the real intensity that you might 
expect to see, and I found out why.
  We pulled up there to the flight service, and they looked out and 
came out to greet us. Real fine folks there. They were very friendly 
and kind of wondered what we were doing there; and we said, well, we 
came down here to take a look and see what is going on. They said, 
well, we do not see too many people coming in here like that. So we 
walked into their office and they said, well, did you have something to 
eat? Here is some ice water, here is a little pop. We have a little 
food here. Here are some MREs, some meals ready to eat.
  Those MREs seem to be everywhere in that city. Every time you turn 
around, there is another boxful of meals ready to eat. That tells you 
they have been getting resources out for quite some time. Everywhere 
you go there is cans of water and bottles of water, and sometimes iced-
down pop and food sitting around. It is not always the finest cuisine, 
but it is nutrition just the same.
  So we had our conversation there and picked up the phone and called 
across to the military headquarters where the central command is that 
is planning and taking care and managing the disaster relief that is 
going on, and I told them I had just flown in in the morning and wanted 
to come over and talk to their commanding officer and get a sense of 
what was going on there. So they sent a car over right away to pick me 
up and brought me over to headquarters, and we had a good chat there 
for a while and a briefing on the maps on where the water was.
  In fact, I happened to recall that on the back side of this picture 
there is a map, Mr. Speaker. This is the map of New Orleans; and as it 
sits here, it is color coded according to the depth of the water. This 
is Lake Pontchartrain here, and there is some high ground up along the 
edge of the Lake. But once it gets over the levee, it goes too deep, 
and the brown is 9 to 16 feet of water. Now, this is after the flood. 
And then it goes to orange, and you can see the brown; the deepest 
areas would be right in here and here.
  This is the 17th Street Canal, I believe, right in there. And then 
there are two other canals that caused a problem. I believe this one 
had about three breaches in it about there. This one up here and this 
way started flowing water down into New Orleans.
  But the depth of this water, the dark brown, up to 16 feet deep, 9 to 
16; and the orange, you can see in some of these areas here and here, 6 
to 9 feet deep; and then in the green areas, the water was 4 to 6 feet 
deep; and then the blue gets a little more shallow, 2 to 4 feet deep; 
and the turquoise, or the lavender, about 0 to 2 feet deep. There were 
some deeper areas in here this far, as you can see; but this huge area 
out here was all water inside this shipping canal, here and inside the 
Mississippi

[[Page 20137]]

 River dikes and all around this way. So this is the bowl. This is the 
bottom of the bowl, Mr. Speaker; and this is the area where the people 
suffered the most.
  Listening to the briefing there, I want to say a few good words about 
the people that are on the front lines that have been working 
relentlessly for, I have lost track of the days now, 14, 15, 16 days. 
Maybe it is 16 or more days. Some of those people have worked 20 hours 
a day, some longer than that. Some did not leave duty and just nodded 
off a little in between from one crisis to another.
  As I began to walk around up there in their operations center and 
talking to different officers and talking to different people that were 
there, I began to find out a lot about what they had been doing. The 
82nd Airborne is the military unit that is taking care of the 
communications there. In fact, simply because of the service that they 
have provided and the communications system they set up, they finally 
linked together the rest of the agencies, the nongovernmental 
organizations and the Federal agencies that are there, linked them 
together in a communications system. And now, I believe that they meet 
every day at least once a day for a joint meeting where they all sit in 
the room. And they are all in that room, by the way, talking to people 
next to them and exchanging information. Instead of sending a message 
back to Washington, DC, and waiting for an answer in an e-mail or on a 
cell phone, they are right there with the people looking them in the 
eye. If they need a meeting, they can have that meeting on the spot.
  And I will tell you from my trips over into other parts of the world, 
particularly three trips into Iraq, that if there is any organization 
in the world that has an ability to bring order out of chaos, it is our 
United States military. And when we look at a natural disaster of this 
magnitude, this unprecedented magnitude, we see that it was difficult 
to get resources in there. It was difficult to coordinate those 
resources. From this same microphone, I believe it was the Secretary of 
Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, gave a good explanation of what 
happened in this hurricane/flood that was Katrina, and it was this:
  If you were going to do a military assault on a city, the first thing 
you would do would be to go in and cut off the power and the 
communications, which Hurricane Katrina did. The wind took out the 
power lines. The wind took out some of the cell phone towers. It took 
out the ability to make telephone calls. It took out the ability to 
turn on the lights and run anything. It shut down the communications. 
This city was shut down. No lights, no power, no telephones. Well, 
sporadic cell phone service that finally just sputtered and died out. 
That went on.
  That is the first operation you would do, would be to wipe out the 
communications and the power. The second thing you would do would be to 
cut off all the transportation routes to the city, which this flood 
did. Sometimes it just took out the access, or flooded the access to 
the bridges; and sometimes it took out, I believe it was Highway 10, 
where it blew parts of that out and dropped it right down into the 
water. But it shut down the transportation routes in and out of New 
Orleans.
  That is the second thing you would do in a military operation. First, 
shut off power, communications, and then cut off transportation, or 
access to the city. And then the third thing you would do after you 
immobilized the city would be to attack, and that is what the flood 
did. This flood poured over the dike through the 17th Street Canal, 
through this other canal, and then filled this deep bowl up here with 
up to 16 feet of water in these areas and drifting on out to this 
perimeter along this way.
  While that was going on, we had people that knew that there was a 
problem brewing. They knew the bowl was starting to fill, but they 
could not get over here to see how much water was coming in because 
there just was no transportation access to do that. So they could only 
speculate. And if you cannot see the water pouring in, you cannot tell 
how much water is coming in. You can have some degree of knowledge as 
to how fast it is; but when the power is out and it is at night, you 
cannot really tell what is going on.
  On top of that, as I had my conversations with the people over there, 
I found out that on Monday afternoon, by 3:30, there were looters out 
then, in force, in gangs, with guns, already stealing, already looting, 
and taking shots that were keeping our rescue people from going in.
  Now, when you think about going in in a boat in a swamp in an urban 
environment, we do not have any military trained to do that. We have 
never envisioned that kind of warfare, with a flooded city where you go 
in with a John boat and float on in there and try to rescue people 
while under fire. That is not part of what we have experience with or 
anything we have ever imagined. So the gangs intimidated, the shots 
were fired, and they kept the rescue operations and some of the 
recovery operations and some of the analysis operations from going in 
and seeing what was going on and being able to identify this problem.
  Meanwhile, New Orleans is filling with water, and it filled beyond 
any level it had ever been at before. Now you had the perfect storm. 
And I could talk about the weather forces that brought that out, and I 
think what I would do is just to give the quickest of answers. Most 
people, I think, Mr. Speaker, have watched this on television, and it 
was almost a perfect storm from the standpoint of where the eye of the 
hurricane was, how the wind drove and the counterclockwise spinning of 
the hurricane, where it sat over here to the east, or to the right of 
New Orleans, slightly to the right of New Orleans.
  That wind that came from the south and up in here in the outlet of 
Lake Ponchartrain off of the open gulf here drove water up into Lake 
Pontchartrain, a lake that is maybe 8 to 15 feet deep; but it is a huge 
lake. And it pushed so much water up into this lake that there was half 
again more water than there was before the storm. Eight to 10 feet more 
water in this lake driven by the low pressure center, which actually 
lifts water up that is in the center of a hurricane.
  And then driven by 150 or more velocity winds, pushed that water in 
and shoved an extra 10 feet up into Lake Pontchartrain, and then 
stacking that water over here on the north side.
  And when the hurricane moved further to the east, this 
counterclockwise motion turned that wind around from the south, 
southeast, where it was driving the water into Lake Pontchartrain, and 
brought it over to the top; and it was coming now down from the north. 
And you had 10 feet of water pouring down here with 8 to 10 feet of 
waves on top of it, and all that surge and splash went right up against 
here and breached the levee for the 17th Street, here and I believe 
there.

                              {time}  2215

  So it was the perfect storm, but it was a perfect storm that was 
predicted. It was actually predicted in The Times Picayune newspaper in 
late 2002, if I have my dates right. I have read all of the articles. 
It is extraordinarily informative. There is one that says, ``Worst Case 
Scenario.'' What I have just described was the worst case scenario.
  But, nonetheless, I sat in on that briefing, engaged in that 
briefing, gave a little talk to the people there working, giving their 
hearts out for the people in the gulf coast region. They are proud of 
the work that they do. They are humble people with an inner pride. As I 
stood and looked them in the eye, I could feel that commitment to 
Americans, dedication to Americans, all of us pulling together. People 
from all over the United States came down to work in the gulf coast 
region to provide relief as fast as they possibly could. They gave 
their all.
  The airport in New Orleans, the Louis Armstrong International 
Airport, was separated into several different areas. One concourse was 
a hospital and triage area. There were two other areas for the victims 
of the flood, the future evacuees. And then the troops and the rescue 
workers, they would find any place they could to

[[Page 20138]]

sleep. Sometimes there would be room. Sometimes it was a corner, if 
they slept at all.
  They went to work. They went to work to save lives. They peaked out 
there on one of these days at the rate of 10,000 lives a day being 
pulled out of New Orleans through the operations there at the airport.
  We know that the Coast Guard saved a high number. The last number I 
heard was 9,000. I expect it is more than that.
  The numbers of people now in shelters has been diminishing 
significantly. There is a steady rotation of people coming through. As 
flood victims, they are still giving up. Some people like to stay in 
their homes. They are realizing this is going to be a long time, so 
they are starting to come out. As they come out, there are people being 
placed in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and further up in the 
United States.
  I am happy to say that the Fifth Congressional District of Iowa has 
welcomed some victims of Hurricane Katrina. All of us are reaching out. 
What we are seeking to do in the Fifth District of Iowa is ask the 
county seat mayors to conduct a meeting. Many had those meetings, bring 
with them and ask to sit at the table the county emergency manager, the 
pastoral groups, representatives of the churches within the county, the 
school administrators and the top employers in the counties so we can 
get a sense of what jobs are available.
  What we want to do and are positioning ourselves, I call it the tour 
guide technique. I want to make sure that we have a household that is 
identified that is ready to receive a family. I want to make sure there 
is a place in the school for the children that might come. I want to 
make sure that house is ready, and the people know when they pull into 
town, whether on a bus or plane, they get off of their transportation, 
whichever mode it is, there would stand the mayor with a smile and a 
handshake and welcome them to the city. Also next to him would be a 
pastor of the faith of their choice, if they had a choice, and next to 
him or her would be a sponsoring family that will help them get 
acclimated to the community and any other resources they might need. We 
will help with job placement and interviews. That is happening all over 
this country.
  I would like it to be one-stop shopping within the county and 
determine how many families we can take within each county and set up 
that system so people do not go off into the unknown.
  The evacuees have lived in that region all of their life, and now 
they have to do something different. There is no housing available near 
New Orleans. Baton Rouge is full. There are no hotel rooms anywhere 
there.
  I had the privilege of using a Red Cross cot the night before last. 
They gave me a little place in the corner to lay down and sleep, and I 
am grateful for their hospitality.
  What I saw in that first day after the briefing, I hitched a ride in 
a helicopter. I flew around the city, a couple of laps around the 
Superdome and over along the top of Lake Pontchartrain, back around 
here, and there is another region that is outside of the picture. That 
entire levee dike is gone. They do not have any protection from the 
Gulf of Mexico from this way.
  We flew all of the way down here on the other side of the Mississippi 
River. Right here is the Corps of Engineers' headquarters where they 
weathered the storm right here on the banks of the Mississippi River. 
Right across from them is the grain handling terminals. I believe that 
is the largest one on the river. It appears there is not structural 
damage, and we have heard reports there is a fair opportunity within 
the next couple of weeks to see grain shipments get up near its 
previous volume that it had.
  We looked over this entire city and flew over the water and wind 
damage. Some places outside of the water you will see wind damage where 
it wiped out block after block, some houses into kindling. You can see 
where the footings were of the houses and the square spots. The numbers 
of devastation was by far the worst. In New Orleans the people suffered 
the worst, but it is not the worst place for damage, though.
  After the morning of traveling around and looking at New Orleans from 
the air and getting a sense of how this water sits here and how bad 
this damage is, then I went over to the Corps of Engineers and had a 
long and significant conversation with the colonel who was on duty 
during the flood, who was also in command at the Corps of Engineers the 
day I was there.
  He talked about the flood event and talked about the difficulties 
they had, and he talked about the hydrology. And since that is my 
background, doing drainage work and river channelization, we are always 
looking for ways to manage water in an efficient fashion. It is an 
interest in my life. It is a background in my profession. Because of 
that, I feel an obligation to understand New Orleans, and I think I do, 
at least in the broader text.
  I cannot say I have enough information to say that I understand the 
details yet, and I do not think anyone does. But I have most of these 
elevations memorized and committed to memory and most of the elevations 
along these levee district canals, so I have a sense what happens when 
the water goes up. We call it stacked water in Iowa, and they call it a 
surge down there. But I have a sense of how this all fits together, and 
where the pump stations are. They are scattered all over, and the Corps 
of Engineers had to go in and use their portable pumps to go in and 
pump down around them to work, renovate them, and get those pumps up 
and going again. That has been extraordinary work.
  As I listen to the volume of water that they are pumping and their 
prediction on where they would get, and knock on wood they got where 
they hope to be since I was there some time yesterday afternoon, but 
their prediction was within 36 hours they would have another three pump 
stations up online. If that happened, and they cautioned there are no 
guarantees in the flood recovery business, and I have been through my 
own floods, especially 1993, but if those pumps came online, there 
would be 27,000 cubic feet per second pumped out of this bowl that is 
New Orleans.
  I do not have the elevations on how far below sea level that is, 
except the water was 16 feet deep in the deepest parts. That indicates 
at least to some degree how far below sea level that is. The pumping 
that is going on at 27,000 cubic feet per second, and my recollection 
is that the Missouri River in the central part of the United States in 
Yankton, South Dakota, releases about 11,000 cubic feet per second 
during the winter time, the nonbarge season. I know how that river 
flows at 11,000 cubic feet per second, and those numbers would indicate 
that the Corps of Engineers and the city pumps for New Orleans are 
pumping not quite two and a half times the flow that comes down the 
Missouri River past Sioux City, Iowa. That is a tremendous amount of 
water.
  They will get ahead of this water. I believe they set a date of 
October 8. Lord willing and if the creek does not rise and it does not 
rain, they should get the water pumped out of New Orleans by about 
October 8. Given the volume, that is an extraordinary accomplishment. 
All of the lives that have been saved and all the people that have been 
lifted out are also an extraordinary accomplishment.
  The time will come to learn from what we have done here, but it is 
too early to point the finger of blame. It is too early to come in and 
say some people did not try hard enough because they had a bias. That 
is just utterly wrong. There is no division between Americans when it 
comes to a crisis. We look at each other and we see Americans, and that 
is as far as it goes.
  After the briefing at the Corps of Engineers, I hitched a ride on a 
different helicopter and went from there on down the Mississippi River. 
The Mississippi River dumps into the Gulf of Mexico about 90 miles 
south of New Orleans. Today, there is some question whether it is 90 
miles south or 75 miles south. The Gulf of Mexico has invaded and come 
upstream a ways. That is an indistinct line today because of the storm.
  We flew along the Mississippi River, and along that river there are 
two

[[Page 20139]]

dikes. There is a river dike. This would be well south of here, south 
all of the way down to the Gulf of Mexico, that 75 to 90 miles. There 
is a river dike that is approximately 25 feet above sea level. That was 
built by the Corps of Engineers to protect the boats for shipping up 
and down. The shipping was moving the day before yesterday, and there 
was a lot of traffic in the river. I could see it accelerating as the 
day went on. That dike was on one side.
  Approximately a half mile to the west is another dike, and that dike 
is approximately the same elevation. I do not know what elevation it 
is. It appears to be about the same given where the water stands, and 
that protects the other side of the dike and about that half mile wide 
strip in the middle from the surge and the storms and the hurricanes 
from the gulf.
  So you have a strip of land between two dikes, a dike on either side 
about 25 feet above sea level, half a mile wide strip in the middle, 
with a highway down the top of one of them. People think they have 
protection from the levees. They think, I have a levee on the front 
side, on the river and on the gulf side, and so how could you be more 
safe than down here in between them.
  Mr. Speaker, there is community after community along that 75- or 80-
mile stretch; and these communities do not look to have been very big. 
They look like there were approximately 300 people here, 700 people 
there, typical small communities in that flat-bottom ground, a little 
farming going on and not any big volume. Every once in awhile there is 
an oil refinery, and at one location there was a heliport to service 
the oil platforms out in the gulf.
  As we flew along that, and, remember, I had been desensitized by 
about 2 hours in the air over New Orleans, I looked at where trees were 
down, houses flooded up to the roof tops, roof tops with holes chopped 
in them that people had climbed through, and after seeing that for a 
couple of hours, you get desensitized. But as we went south along the 
Mississippi River, I found that the desensitization that had taken 
place and the numbness that sets in after seeing all of that 
destruction did not condition me for the condition of that strip of 
land between those two dikes.
  That is some of the most utter destruction that I have ever seen in 
my life, and it is the longest expanse I have ever seen. As you watched 
that, I began to piece together what happened. Down there, there were 
homes from an entire community that were just blown away. Sometimes the 
buildings were just shattered, and there would be just kindling stacked 
up against the dikes with all kinds of trash, boards and jugs, you name 
it. But entire communities were just plain footings there for the 
houses. Maybe a flat concrete pad was there. Community after community 
was like that. Sometimes there would be a church or school left 
standing. In one town, part of the school was left standing, but next 
to the school the water tower was blown down, crashed, bent, destroyed.

                              {time}  2230

  And I have seen some destruction in my life, and I have seen power 
antennas, towers go down. I saw telephone poles that were blown clear 
out of the ground. But I have never seen a water tower pushed down by 
the force of nature in my life. But that water tower went down. And we 
got a picture of the water tower, and I did not commit the name of the 
community to memory, but I can go back and look at that. And a number 
of those communities took similar devastation, but all of the rest of 
the water towers stuck together. That went down.
  There was one family location, and I think this is a time to look at 
a representative example, Mr. Speaker. This is a building location, and 
it appears to be a dwelling; but it may have been a dwelling and a 
shop. This is steel piling that has been driven down into the ground so 
that it can withstand hurricane-force wins. Hurricane-force winds, at 
least Category 4\1/2\ or so, blew that sheet metal clear on through the 
building, stripped it down just to the I-beams that were driven to the 
ground. And the rubble that is laying around, there is no such thing as 
a representative sample. It is just everything was its unique piece of 
disaster, and pieces of property of the family were scattered all over; 
but there was this time, who knows, hundreds of thousands all over in 
that region.
  There is no way, Mr. Speaker, that anyone can get a handle on the 
scope of this disaster without having flown over the region in its 
entirety, got down and talked to the people in the shelters and spent 
some time there, and I did not get to spend enough time there, and then 
go out on the ground and walk among this kind of disaster. But one of 
these places, very near where the water tower was blown down, there was 
a set of buildings that looked something like this. They were all 
shredded into this unrecognizable gnarly metal mass, and a flagpole had 
survived. There is no way that a flag would survive like this; but the 
flagpole, I guarantee it had been bent severely, but it had survived.
  And this poor fellow who did not have anything except a mass and the 
mess he cleaned up did not have value, had not started that project 
yet. He had to come in there on a boat, and he had to go over to that 
flagpole and he ran Old Glory up to the tip of that flagpole, and there 
it flew in all its glory. And I can tell my colleagues it catches our 
eye, Mr. Speaker, when we see something like that, that sign of 
patriotism, that sign of defiance, that sign of determination that 
says, Katrina, you did not get to me. This might slow me down a little 
bit. It is a bump in the road, and, in fact, it is a pretty severe bump 
in the road, but you cannot break people's spirit that is as strong as 
these people's spirit is. And I saw that spirit in the floods in 1993 
when we had those in Iowa when people pulled together, and I see this 
spirit down in the gulf coast today, Mr. Speaker.
  So as we flew over that disaster, we began to see piece after piece 
of costly damage by that storm. The water had surged up the Mississippi 
River. The wind and the low pressure had sucked the water up, and the 
wind had driven it up the Mississippi River. And when we think about a 
river that has got 25-foot high levees on either side, to push that up 
that high and have that splash up and over the top of the levee, and in 
a lot of cases the levee held, but the water spilled over the top but 
did not breach it.
  In that surge it lifted up grain barges; then put them up on the dry, 
some of them as high as clear at the top of the dike. And there is one 
tow there that I happened to notice, a tow being, Mr. Speaker, that 
when one ties a bunch of barges together, whatever size that is that 
they go down the river with, that is called a tow. And for us in the 
upper part of the Mississippi River, about 15 barges is a pretty good 
tow.
  Down there 40 is not too many, but I happened to see one that had 30 
barges in the tow; and of the 30, 25 of them were still tied together. 
The other five barges had gone off somewhere, and some had been pushed 
up on the dry. A couple were capsized, I could see. Some of them turned 
over on their side. But 25 of the 30-barge tow were all lifted up off 
the surface of that water. The water actually lifted them and floated 
them up and set them up on the bank, 25 barge tows all still tied 
together, all sitting up on the high and dry.
  Ships that were just pushed together and shattered; shrimp boats by 
the dozen, 15 of them in one cluster just shoved up against the levee, 
tipped over. Some completely capsized, a lot of them on their sides. 
There was one company, I think it would be a single company, that had 
what I call tender boats, and these boats were painted yellow and blue. 
They were all painted the same. They had nine of them that I could 
find, and who knows if there were others that might have been sunk or 
blown out to sea; but these boats are, I am going to guess, 75 or more 
feet long, maybe as much as 90 feet long; and I expect they are the 
kind that go out to lift the catch off of the smaller shrimper boats 
that were stacked up all along the levee, and most of them were 
destroyed.
  But these tender boats, these larger ones, the yellow and blue ones, 
of the nine that I counted the day before yesterday, Mr. Speaker, there 
were two of

[[Page 20140]]

them that were sitting side by side right on top of the levee, right 
dead center in the highway, one in one lane and one in the other lane, 
tied side by side 25 feet above the water. That storm surge had lifted 
them up and set them in the middle of the dike. And the other seven 
identical boats were all apparently tied together so that they would 
ride out the storm better, and they apparently stayed together.
  But of those, three were floating in the channel and four of them 
were up on the dry. So of the nine, six were up on the dry, two of them 
in the middle of the highway up on top of the levee, and four of them 
sitting up, I suppose, 10 or 12 feet above the water level. We take 
somebody's lifetime work and lifetime dream and see something like that 
happen to it, yes, they can put it all back and they can recover; but 
the magnitude, the awe, the power of this storm was, again, beyond a 
person's ability to comprehend unless we go down there and look at that 
and study it.
  But the water surged up the Mississippi and floated barges out on top 
of the dike and took ocean-going vessels and put them up on the dry, 
large ones; and that was powerful. The wind blew so hard that it just 
blew all of the buildings over and stacked them up against the levee on 
the other side, shattered them, and took tree after tree. And the trees 
that stood, the leaves were blown off of them. They stood there with 
just branches, and a lot of times the branches were not broken so much 
as the velocity of the wind just plucked the leaves off and left a 
forest there that looked like December in Iowa, not September in 
Louisiana. So, Mr. Speaker, it was a disaster beyond my ability to 
understand the scope of it until I went and took a look.
  By the way, that surge in the Mississippi River that floated things 
up over the levee, a surge also came back from the gulf side that did 
nearly the same thing or maybe even equal to the same thing from the 
gulf side. So they had water from both sides, a surge as high as 27 or 
more feet; and that water came so fast that actually last night I 
talked to a shrimper there in northeastern New Orleans who had five 
boats, three of which were up on the dry and mostly destroyed, and two 
of them survived. They were on the west of New Orleans. And he said 
that he had a friend that was in his house when that surge of water 
came, that wall of water came; and it was approximately 3 minutes from 
the time the water started to rise until he had to have a hole cut in 
his roof to get out through the attic when the water raised that fast. 
Only 3 minutes to get ready for that kind of a disaster because of that 
low pressure center and that push of that wind, Mr. Speaker. It was an 
awesome thing, and the scope of this disaster is also quite awesome.
  Then after we came back from there, I went over to the Red Cross 
headquarters, their center, and in that center I walked around and 
talked to some people, looked at the resources that they had. And it 
was very well presented by the Red Cross people. I know some of them. 
In fact, I ran into six Iowans down there that were hard at work, 
saving lives and helping people and doing so in a very friendly and 
warm way. I do think we can be proud of these rescue workers. They are 
working 20, 21 hours a day. Some of them snapped. Some of them pushed 
themselves to the point where they snapped, and they have got to be 
taken off duty for a day or so; otherwise they will not be good for the 
rest of this disaster.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I borrowed a cot from the Red Cross and laid down 
and got a little sleep. The next day was not a day to look at disaster 
from the air as I did here on the first day; but it was a day to go 
visit the centers, a day to visit the people, a day to have 
conversations with them and get a feel for what they had gone through. 
And as I walked through the gymnasiums that are the shelters for the 
victims of the hurricane, I talked to a number of the victims there, 
and found one that would like to come and be a truck driver, and he had 
a commercial driver's license. I think we can help a person like that. 
We carried some communications for some other people that were having a 
little trouble getting their communications out. I talked to people 
that were serving in the Red Cross center from places like Michigan, 
Ohio, I mentioned Iowa, Minnesota, California.
  And I want to say a kind word about Californians. According to their 
measure or some report's measure, perhaps more than 50 percent of the 
Red Cross workers at least in that region are from California, and that 
is an opportunity to say a word about that kind of an effort that is 
coming out of that State. There are California people all over helping 
people from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama.
  The military took some criticism, Mr. Speaker, because it was alleged 
that they reacted late. But yesterday when I was in Slidell, Louisiana, 
and that is a town right near the Mississippi border, one of the guards 
in the shelter there was walking through, and I stopped to talk to him. 
I remember his name. He is Specialist Cunningham. He was part of the 
311th Signal Battalion out of Mobile, Alabama; and I asked him when he 
came into the storm zone. And he said, Sir, we took off on Monday 
afternoon.
  I said, How did you do that?
  He said, Well, we came across Mississippi, coming to the west, and 
some of those places we could not get through the road. So they used 
chainsaws. They used Humvees. They used chains. They pulled trees out 
of the way. They cut their way through. In fact, General Myers 
announced to us that was how the National Guard got in. They chainsawed 
their way in. I met a specialist from the 311th Signal Battalion out of 
Mobile, Alabama that actually did that. And as I listened to him talk 
and the 300 people that are part of that battalion, that is the kind of 
heroism that did not just quite make it to the mainstream news media.
  And when we look at an area that is 93,000 square miles, the size of 
Kansas, and we have a mainstream media that is concentrating on looking 
for the story, looking for the hot spot, trying to find someone that 
will step up in front of the camera and utter a complaint about the 
service that they are not getting, that is one element of this, and I 
will not deny that some of that exists; but there is a whole huge other 
element out there in 89,000 square miles of that 90,000 square miles 
where we have thousands and thousands of heroes, thousands and 
thousands of stoic victims of this storm, and thousands and thousands 
of people whose lives will never be the same, Mr. Speaker.
  So as I met with them and listened to them, it reminded me of the 
times when I had seen lives shattered in other natural disasters, in 
particular our 1993 flood, and that touches a nerve and touches a cord 
with me because of my own personal experience with that storm, and I 
will save that for another time, Mr. Speaker, on my particular 
experience in the 1993 flood. But I believe that was the force that 
motivated me to go down there. That was the force that caused me to 
want to see this entire thing.
  So after meeting with the victims and the future evacuees and having 
a conversation around there with the people working in the shelter, 
seeing the resources that they had, the organization that they had, the 
dedication that they had, they need a few more cots and they need a few 
more nurses and they are squeaking by and they are able to provide, but 
it is an uplifting thing to see a look in the eye of people who are 
fulfilling a sense of mission, a sense of duty, a duty to their 
country, duty to their faith; and it gives everyone strength to be 
around the kind of people that will commit themselves in that fashion.
  Later on in the day I took a drive down into some of the worst 
damage, and that would be down along a levee that goes into actually 
northeast of the outlet of Lake Pontchartrain, south of Slidell. And 
down in there there are homes on the both sides of the levee. One might 
go for a half mile or a mile and not see a home intact, not see 
anything but the stubs of pilings where homes were where all of them 
had been blown away. And that disaster was so bad that we see the rare 
exception when there was a building that was held together that was 
intact.

[[Page 20141]]

  I walked through there and looked at some of the things that I found, 
and some of the things that we see bring it home. They bring home what 
kind of suffering there is, and some of it is symbolism, Mr. Speaker, 
but I do have a picture here that shows some kind of symbol that these 
are real people.

                              {time}  2245

  This caught my eye, Mr. Speaker. This would have been an anniversary 
gift that was given, probably from husband to wife. It has two doves on 
the top, and it says, ``Happy Anniversary,'' and it is laying in the 
rubble, just like that, that is untouched; I just walked up, and this 
was yesterday afternoon late, and I took this picture. I noticed that 
one of the doves is still in tact here on top of this material, but one 
of the doves is broken and laying here. When I saw that, I had to ask 
myself the question, do we know if a fallen dove is a fallen dove? Is 
one of this couple gone? Has one been blown away and lost to the storm 
and one is left to survive, or are they both okay and looking for each 
other? This kind of a scene, a scenario of families that are separated 
has been replayed over and over and over again, Mr. Speaker.
  So there is a lot of human suffering, and the breadth of this and the 
depth of this is not something that is understood yet by the American 
people or by this Congress, which is why I bring this message to the 
floor of the House of Representatives, so that America can take another 
step to begin to understand the damage down there.
  I will tell my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that I think we should do 
everything we can to rescue people, to help them recover, to place 
them, to make this next phase of their lives more comfortable, easier, 
give some sense of certainty and some sense of confidence. But, at the 
same time, those resources that go to that we cannot hold back, but we 
need a plan. We need an overall plan on, first of all, the question was 
asked whether we are going to rebuild New Orleans. And I want to hear 
from the people in New Orleans, the people in Louisiana and, of course, 
the people in this country. But as I look at it, I see a city that has 
a unique character and it has a spirit, and it sits there today awfully 
quiet with nothing going on, high-rise buildings, the Superdome, the 
core of downtown New Orleans simply standing there dormant, waiting for 
occupants, waiting for the water to go down and the services to go on 
and people to come in and occupy.
  If we rebuild New Orleans to the size and scope that it was and the 
population that has been driven from there does not come back to New 
Orleans, then we will have some services that are overbuilt for the 
numbers of people that it will be servicing. If we rebuild New Orleans 
and start rebuilding homes that were destroyed, bulldoze neighborhoods 
where every house was destroyed and go back in and start building homes 
again and the disaster hits again, that is good money after bad.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I propose that we put together a plan, a plan to 
save the city, a plan that would, I will say, construct the outlet of 
Lake Pontchartrain in such a way that a Category 5 hurricane cannot 
drive that water up into Lake Pontchartrain. Construct floodgates at 
the inlets of the canals, such as the 17th Street Canal, so that if 
something fails on the outlet, a hurricane levee protection of Lake 
Pontchartrain so that Lake Pontchartrain did fill it with water, that 
the flood gates will protect it so that New Orleans cannot be flooded 
again.
  And I propose, Mr. Speaker, that we go in to every one of those 30 or 
40 or more pump stations that are there and raise them up to an 
elevation high enough that no matter how severe the storm, that it 
cannot knock out the pumps and we would have a third way to protect the 
city.
  This is not cheap, but New Orleans is a shipping city; New Orleans is 
a city with a tremendously pivotal economic location. It will be a 
city; with or without Federal help, it will be constructed as a city 
again, but we need to put the mitigation in place, the fail-safe system 
in place so there are actually three places to protect the city. The 
hurricane wall and levee for the outlet of Lake Pontchartrain, the 
floodgates along the top of Lake Pontchartrain to keep the water out of 
the city, and then disaster-proof the lift stations, the pump stations 
that are all over that city so that they do not shut down, so that we 
can protect the city.
  And then, if perhaps 25 percent of the people do not come back to New 
Orleans, if they decide that they are going to make their future where 
they find themselves relocated, then those low grounds that I showed on 
the previous chart, that dark brown in particular, that area should be 
put to some other use other than houses so that we are not pulling 
people out of the water again. Perhaps it becomes a park. We will wait 
for some architect to come up with a good idea for that.
  But I am for helping people, and I am for a long-term plan to do the 
right thing. I do not think we need to be in a desperate hurry to 
rebuild New Orleans in the shortest time possible. I think this is a 
long-term event, and some of this damage that took place was to work 
that was done more than 100 years ago. We can put this work together in 
a fashion that is sequential to protect the city of New Orleans and 
build for the future, and it can be a more vibrant city than it has 
ever been before. It can still have its unique culture, and it can 
possibly have a culture that changes, but a unique culture. It can be 
economically viable and it can bring to this Nation the component of 
glory that it has given to us in the past and be a great city to visit 
in and live in, but we need to have an intelligent plan.
  It is Congress's job to do that, Mr. Speaker. It is our job to 
initiate appropriations, and it is our job to safeguard those 
appropriations, and it is our job to listen to the people of America 
and put a plan in place, Mr. Speaker. That is my message to the 
American people.
  I appreciate the opportunity to address this House of Representatives 
this evening, and I look forward to many discussions about how we are 
going to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

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