[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

[[Page 254]]

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.