    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [February 14, 1996]
    [Pages 253-255]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to Workers and Volunteers at the Flood Wall in Portland, Oregon
    February 14, 1996

        Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Jim McKune, for your fine
    words and, even more, for your fine work.
        I want to say on behalf of all Americans, having had the opportunity
    now to fly over the areas of Oregon and Washington which were damaged by
    the flood and many of which are still under water, our country has been
    watching you and pulling for you and praying for you. We have a lot of
    admiration for the incredible work that has been done, and we're proud
    of the contributions made by all the groups and all the individuals who
    have worked so hard.
        I want to thank especially, on behalf of the Federal Government, the
    Federal Emergency Management Agency and its Director, James Lee Witt,
    who is here with me today; the Corps of Engineers, who used their night
    scopes to make sure the dikes along the Columbia were holding strong;
    the Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena, who is also here today. I
    want to thank the National Guard, which has done about everything it
    could to help, and I understand they even air-dropped hay to cattle cut
    off by water on Sauvie Island.
        I want to congratulate and thank Bill Long and Steve Barrett for the
    tour I just got of the wall and the work they did to build it and all
    those who did it so well. And let me say a special word of appreciation
    also to Governor Kitzhaber and my good friend Mayor Katz, Senator
    Hatfield and Senator Wyden, and Congressman DeFazio and Congressman
    Bunn. We're going to need them all in the next few weeks because we
    don't have enough money right now in the Treasury to meet all the
    demands for the problems that Oregon and Washington and your neighbors
    in Idaho have gone through, and we're going to have to go back to
    Congress and ask for a little help. But I'm sure it will be there. And I
    thank them for their support.
        I want to say a special word of thanks, too, to the United States
    Marine Corps members who worked on this wall. I understand some of them
    worked all night long.
        I won't keep you here long. I just wanted to come here and listen,
    and in a few moments we'll be going to kind of a roundtable where I'll
    be hearing about where you are now in the flood recovery efforts and
    getting some suggestions about what else needs to be done. But I do want
    to point out something. If you look at this wall behind us, it seems to
    me that it is a symbol of what our country does when everybody pulls
    together and works together and

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    forgets about their differences and focuses their attention and their
    hearts and their minds.
        I understand it was exactly a week ago when Mayor Katz learned that
    the seawalls might be no match for the river, and that you would have to
    get an emergency wall up before the river was expected to crest on
    Thursday night. Crews worked overnight, but there were too few of them
    for such a big job, and without outside help, clearly the wall couldn't
    have been ready. So the mayor called on the people of Portland. I've had
    enough experience with the mayor to know that she's hard to turn down,
    but with the aid of the river coming down, I suppose that focused the
    attention of the citizens.
        Within minutes, 1,000 men and women from all over the area cast
    aside what they were doing to come to build the wall, to hammer the
    boards, to wrap them with plastic, to pile the rock, to pass sandbags
    hand to hand. Restaurants donated food, carpenters lent equipment,
    AmeriCorps volunteers--young people learning construction skills--put
    their education to work, and as I said, there were even 60 marines who
    pitched in and finished the wall on time. When the river finally
    crested, it was about where you built the wall.
        I have seen similar stories of courage and teamwork all around this
    State. We know that a lot of the places hit by this flood were in very
    small towns and rural areas, places that often get overlooked but places
    that are really the backbone of our Nation, places from Tillamook
    County, where dairy farmers sought to save their cows, to Sherman
    County, where wheat farmers saved the battle of their fields, to Marion
    County, where kids volunteered around the clock to help in shelters.
    There are individual heroes everywhere: a tugboat crew rescuing a man
    stranded on top of his house; a police officer jumping into a debris-
    filled river to save a life; rescue workers evacuating people from their
    flooded homes; neighbors helping neighbors move cattle to higher ground.
        But I also think we know that all of these individuals together
    really is what made this such an extraordinary, remarkable experience.
    This wall will never obscure the triumph that the people who lost their
    homes and their lives in the Pacific Northwest--there were four lives
    lost, dozens of people injured, thousands more evacuated; a lot of
    farmland was ruined; a lot of livestock was destroyed. That is a
    tragedy. It can never be obscured. The roads, the homes, the businesses,
    the powerlines that were swept away in the mudslides, the avalanches,
    and the washouts, they are many.
        And let me say to all of you, the people who experienced these
    losses, a lot of you have rallied to their side in the last couple of
    days, and I applaud you for that. But I can tell you, from years of
    experience long before I became President, as a Governor with whole
    communities flooded out and whole towns leveled by tornadoes, the going
    will get tough again for these people in a week or 2 weeks or 3 weeks.
    Many of them are almost in shock now, but they will have to come to
    grips with the dimensions of their losses.
        And so I ask you all, everybody who put a shoulder to build this
    wall and everybody who has done anything else in the last few days, be
    on the lookout for your friends and neighbors for the next few weeks,
    because a lot of them will have to come to grips with enormous personal
    loss and anxiety and pain, and they will need you then as well.
        I want to thank you for doing your part, for pulling together. You
    will have our help, I assure you of that, in the job of cleaning up and
    rebuilding. And we will help you until it is finished. Today I'm going
    to survey the damage, as I said, talk with Members of your congressional
    delegation, with your State and local officials, with the citizens who
    are dealing with this. We want to know what more we at the national
    level can do to help.
        I want you to understand that I know that this is not just an
    emergency for a few days or a week. We have been committed. We are still
    working on the hurricanes that hit Florida years ago. We have continued
    to work on the terrible floods that hit the Middle West a couple of
    years ago. We are trying to finish the work of dealing with the
    aftermath of the earthquake and the fires that hit California. We know
    that we have to be your partners until the complete work of rebuilding
    the lives, the economy, and the communities that were damaged by this
    flood is over. And I look forward to that.
        When I became President, one of the things I promised myself I would
    do is to at least see that the Federal Government did a good job when
    disaster struck. I had lived in a State which had the highest per capita
    incidence of tornadoes in America, and I know what it's like when you
    need help and it's not there.

    [[Page 255]]

        I am proud of the fact that, where it used to take a month or more
    for families who were hurt in disasters to get checks, now you can call
    an 800 number and get it within days. Already more than 3,500 Oregonians
    have registered for help, and the first checks were mailed to them
    today.
        The Small Business Administration will do everything in its power to
    get Oregon's small business communities up and running again. And I am
    pleased to announce today emergency grants from other Government
    agencies. The Department of Transportation is today committing $10
    million to help repair highways damaged by the flood. The Department of
    Housing and Urban Development is speeding $10.3 million for community
    development and housing assistance. The Department of Labor is providing
    $2 million in emergency funds for dislocated workers.
        And today we are opening two disaster recovery centers in Tillamook
    and Clackamas Counties. Residents can go to the center and meet with
    representatives of all the Federal and State agencies that are taking
    part in the recovery. So those who can't get everything they want or
    need over the 800 number will be able to go in and deal with someone
    face to face. I know that it takes time to get this done. But let me say
    again, we can do it.
        I hope you will never forget this wall behind me, and goodness
    knows, I hope you never need it again. But I hope you will always
    remember for as long as you live what the people of Portland did in one
    remarkable day. And I hope that all of us will find in our minds and
    hearts the wisdom and strength to be a little more like the people of
    Portland were on that one day every day of the year. If we had that kind
    of cohesion, that kind of common commitment, we'd really be in pretty
    good shape.
        When I was up in Washington a couple of hours ago, I went to the
    home of a man, 70 years old, hard of hearing, lost everything he had in
    his home including his hearing aid. And all he did the whole time I saw
    him--he and his wife were there, and their two daughters had come in,
    their granddaughter trying to help them deal with the aftermath of
    losing everything in a home they had lived in for decades--and all he
    did was crack jokes the whole time I was there--[laughter]--trying to
    keep everybody else in a good humor.
        And he said, ``You know, it's amazing how all these total strangers
    showed up to help me.'' He said, ``People were going down into my
    basement, which I turned into an indoor swimming pool--[laughter]--and
    really risking getting hurt pretty seriously trying to help me save the
    few little things I've accumulated in my life.'' And he said, ``I'm real
    grateful, but I just wish we could all be that way every day.'' And
    that's a pretty good pearl of wisdom from a man who, at the age of 70,
    is looking at a future without anything that he had just a couple of
    days ago.
        Let me close by asking you to remember that today is your State's
    birthday. On February 14, 1857, the people of the Oregon Territory
    decided their bond to each other was strong enough to sustain a State.
    The spirit that brought statehood was alive and well again here last
    week. May that spirit heal the wounds of recent days, and may it
    continue to grow and flourish for another 139 years and beyond.
        Thank you, happy birthday, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:30 p.m. in Waterfront Park. In his
    remarks, he referred to Jim McKune, volunteer carpenter; Bill Long,
    supervisor, bureau of maintenance; Steve Barrett, structural engineer;
    Gov. John A. Kitzhaber of Oregon; and Mayor Vera Katz of Portland.