[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 8221]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           LADIES OF THE GULF

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Mr. Meek for allowing me to 
make some additional comments with my friends, Mr. Brady from southeast 
Texas, and Dr. Charles Boustany from Louisiana.
  The area of the State of Texas that I represent, Mr. Speaker, borders 
Louisiana, and also borders the Gulf of Mexico. And today we had 
another storm hit not Texas, but Washington, DC. Individuals from 
southeast Texas and east Texas, government leaders, community 
activists, chambers of commerce presidents, came to Washington to make 
the case for what occurred in the last 6\1/2\ months in southeast 
Texas.
  By way of review, the ladies of the gulf came into the Gulf of Mexico 
last fall. The first of those, Katrina, came through, became the sixth 
largest hurricane, most powerful hurricane to ever hit the gulf coast. 
And when that occurred, 450,000 people from Louisiana went west. They 
crossed the Sabine River into Texas. Many of them came into my 
district.
  Many of those people are still there. Several thousand kids are still 
in school in Texas from Louisiana. So many people are in Texas from 
Louisiana that we have a mayor's race in New Orleans this Saturday, and 
the two candidates campaigning for mayor in Louisiana have billboards 
all over the Houston area soliciting votes from people in Louisiana 
that happen to be in Texas.
  Katrina was mainly a water-damage hurricane. The waters rose, caused 
damage, the waters stayed a long time. One of the towns of course hit 
was New Orleans. The national media focused on Katrina day after day 
after day. But 3 weeks later, another lady of the gulf came. Her name 
was Rita. She became the fourth most powerful hurricane to ever hit the 
gulf coast. She hit western Louisiana and east Texas, part of the area 
that I represent.
  The largest evacuation in American history took place in Texas 
because of Hurricane Rita. Over 2 million people evacuated their homes. 
In Beaumont alone, 8,320 people were airlifted out of hospitals, in the 
middle of the night with C-130 transport planes, to 14 different 
States.
  The first responders before Hurricane Rita hit loaded their police 
cars, their emergency equipment, their fire trucks, their front-end 
loaders, and even helicopters on two enormous cargo ships that were in 
the Port of Beaumont. Those ships deploy cargo to the war in Iraq and 
Afghanistan.
  The community, because of Hurricane Rita, was left without 
electricity for over 3 weeks; 75,000 homes were destroyed. Several 
thousand homes to this day have not been repaired, and people are still 
living under blue roofs.
  That part of the gulf coast, Mr. Speaker, is a petrochemical area, 
refinery area. Eleven percent of the Nation's gasoline is refined out 
of that small area in southeast Texas. Thirty percent of the Nation's 
aviation fuel is manufactured there. And the Port of Beaumont, as I 
mentioned, that deploys one-third of the military cargo going to Iraq 
and Afghanistan.
  But this hurricane was not a water-damage hurricane, although there 
was a storm surge. It was a wind-damage hurricane, and people lost 
their homes not to rising water, to losing their roofs and water coming 
in because of rain.
  And that whole issue is being dealt with, or not being dealt with, 
with the insurance companies because of their refusal in many cases to 
even pay for the damage because it was not water damage, it was wind 
damage.
  But be that as it may, the devastation affected the rice industry. 
This part of southeast Texas is a rice-growing area. As with Dr. 
Boustany and his area, this part of the Nation supplies a lot of rice 
for not only the United States but other nations.
  This year the rice farmers lost their second crop, that is the crop 
that they make money on. And now, rice season is back upon us. But to 
show you the devastation from Hurricane Rita, I talked to the owner of 
two John Deere stores there in southeast Texas that supply the farm 
machinery for the rice farmers.
  He says he has not sold one piece of farm machinery this year because 
the rice farmers cannot afford to buy them. Those rice farmers now, 
many of them will go out of business and that land will be turned into 
something else. But be that as it may, Hurricane Rita was not one of 
those issues that caught the National attention, because local 
officials, many of them that were here today, took care of business as 
soon as Hurricane Rita showed up. There was very little loss of life.
  And because there was no loss of life, that was not a story for the 
national media to portray. Mr. Speaker, we just hope in the 
supplemental that two things occur: that the people of Louisiana are 
treated not unfairly, but the people in Texas are treated equal to the 
people in Louisiana.
  Rita was a hurricane just as powerful as Hurricane Katrina, and that 
the funding be the same, and that the line between Louisiana and Texas, 
the Sabine River, not separate fairness; that fairness go across the 
river and treat all Americans the same.

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