10th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina
Floor Speech
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Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. I appreciate the gentleman from New Orleans for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise for two reasons--one, to talk about what it is to be in the eye of a hurricane and to be without basic necessities for over 10 days because of a hurricane and, two, what it is that our government should do when those situations occur at the Federal, State, and local levels.
In my comments, initially, I will talk a little bit about what happened in August of 2005--how, in fact, so many people were impacted as well as what we have done as a government, what we didn't do, and what we should do in going forward.
As the gentleman from Louisiana has said, for the most part, both Hurricanes Rita and Katrina ravaged Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and a little bit of Florida, but I will limit my comments to Katrina. In Hurricane Katrina, there were over 1,800 people--from Florida to Texas--who died.
In my home State of Mississippi, 238 individuals died. Basically, what we had after that is over 1.2 million housing units damaged, and in my home State, almost 120,000 were completely destroyed. In southern Mississippi, that meant that over 60 percent of the single family dwellings were either destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, and the statistics were worse for rental units. Along the Gulf Coast--the beautiful Gulf Coast where we have the largest manmade beach in the United States--there were over 1 million people displaced. One month after the storm, 600,000 families were still homeless, and, ultimately, 114,000 were housed in FEMA trailers.
Mr. Speaker, I don't have to tell you what happened with the FEMA trailers. It was a mess. The government's
response to the temporary housing situation could only be characterized as a mess. We fixed it, but during that time, we put people in trailers that had basically been pieced together and shipped to the good people of the Gulf Coast. Many of them had Chinese drywall in those trailers that let off formaldehyde, which, ultimately, impacted the health of everybody we put in the trailers, ostensibly, for temporary housing. We created a bigger health problem.
Obviously, we passed legislation to address some of it in terms of the health costs and other things. Ultimately, a lawsuit provided some relief to the families. What we have done in correcting that temporary housing situation is to direct FEMA to not just be the response and recovery agency. We want you to also understand that, when people are in trouble, not only do you come, but you come with the right resources to make sure that you don't create and make life worse for them. After our Katrina experience, we have a more nimble operation, and we have far better individuals who are trained so that, when disasters come, we can respond.
The problem that I have goes back, Mr. Speaker, to the comments that a speaker on the other side made.
When you are in a disaster, whether it is a hurricane or a flood or a tornado, the last thing you want is for somebody to ask, ``Well, who is going to pay for it?'' These are citizens of the United States of America. The only thing we should say is, ``In your darkest hour, in your time of need, your government will not let you down.'' I would hope that people understand that we are a great nation because we take care of all of our people, especially when the chips are down and when they have no other place to turn. So I would hope that we would not talk about issues of deficit spending when people are being plucked off the roofs of their homes or when they are being dislocated hundreds of miles from their residences simply because they can't get back into their neighborhoods.
What I also want to talk about is the fact that, since Katrina, we have made sure that first responders can communicate with each other. There were a number of stories about individuals who wanted to help but who couldn't talk to each other. Hopefully, we have started fixing that interoperability issue so that those individuals can communicate with each other, whether they are paid firemen, volunteer firepersons, or whether they are law enforcement at the State, county, or local level, because, when we are involved in any natural disaster that is federally declared, the constituents who need our help don't want us to get bogged down in the territories. They just want the help. Part of the help is making sure that these individuals can communicate with each other.
We had nonprofit organizations. The Red Cross, most specifically, was severely criticized because of its response to Katrina. A substantial number of citizens who were impacted were in low-income, minority communities, and we started getting responses such as: ``We don't know what to do in those areas''; ``We are afraid to go in those areas.'' Yet, if you are part of the national preparedness system, you go and help; you don't try to qualify that help. Part of that agreement we have with an organization like the Red Cross is that you will do better, that you will respond when other organizations don't have the capacity.
We are continuing to work on the Red Cross' response to natural disasters in this country. Sometimes they do a good job, and sometimes they don't. What we have to do is make sure that, every time they respond, they respond in a manner that is helping someone. Regardless of people's socioeconomic statuses in life, they are still American citizens. I look forward to continuing to work on that.
The other thing we have to work on, Mr. Speaker, is in making sure that the moneys that are sent to the devastated areas don't get diverted to other areas.
In my home State of Mississippi, our Governor at the time diverted over $600 million, which was directed to low- and middle-income housing problems, to a port expansion, which had nothing to do with housing, but the flexibility to do it was there. We had a number of people who lost everything they had, and they didn't have any means to come back. The moneys that we sent from Washington to attempt to make those individuals whole and to reintroduce them to the communities from which they had been displaced had been sent to the Port of Gulfport. It is a worthy project, but you shouldn't have to take moneys to do that which were intended by Congress to go for low- and middle-income housing.
As of this date, the requirements for that money still have not met the satisfaction of not only the HUD officials, but also of members of the communities. We should not take moneys in times of emergency and fund pet projects. If those projects are worthy to be funded, then let's fund them out of traditional sources and not out of emergency sources. I am concerned that we do that.
I want to pay a special tribute to the Mississippi Center for Justice, which has done a wonderful job in pursuing the expenditure of these funds consistent with the intent of those funds. I want to pay a special tribute as well to the Mississippi Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. They have provided witnesses and testimony at hearing after hearing as well as documentation about the questionable expenditures around Hurricane Katrina.
As I said in the beginning, as one of those individuals who experienced Katrina firsthand, our government has to step up and help these people in their time of need. What we have done in the last 10 years is
to attempt to fix everything that we have identified that didn't work. We have solved our interoperability problem. We have provided training for first responders. We have provided evacuation routes for individuals so that they know how to leave as well as routes for vulnerable populations or whether they are handicapped in some form. We have even created opportunities so that pets won't be left alone when evacuations occur. All of those things are very important because it goes to who we are as a people. So how we treat the least of them in their most desperate hours goes to the character of who we are as a nation.
As we mark this 10-year anniversary of Katrina, Mr. Speaker, I want us to understand that it is still a work in progress and that it doesn't matter whether you live in a house on a hill or if you live in a house around the corner that is at a dead end--you are still an American citizen. When things like a Hurricane Katrina happen, you should rest assured that your government will be Johnny on the spot.
As I step back from my microphone, I want to compliment the gentleman from Louisiana for leading this Special Order, because we should really understand how difficult Katrina has been for those individuals who were in the brunt.
Let me also take a point of personal privilege to talk about the good job that the men and women of the United States Coast Guard did in response to Katrina. They really did a tremendous job in working and in managing a lot of the recovery and response to Katrina.
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In August 2005, nearly ten years ago, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Mississippi and ravaged the Gulf Coast.
The storm pummeled everything in its path.
Over 1800 people from Florida to Texas died, including 238 from my home State of Mississippi.
After what felt like an eternity, the storm died down.
We inventoried our losses, and the painfully slow recovery process began.
1.2 million housing units were damaged, and 120,000 were completely destroyed.
In Southern Mississippi, more than 60 percent of single-family dwellings were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable--and the statistics were worse for rental units.
Along the Gulf Coast, over 1 million people were displaced.
One month after the storm, About 600,000 families were still homeless, and ultimately 114,000 were housed in FEMA trailers.
The recovery process was slow and wrought with mistakes at the Federal, State, and local level.
At the Federal level, chain-of-command and coordination failures complicated the quick and efficient delivery of Federal resources, undermining both response and recovery efforts.
Opportunities to pre-stage important resources were missed.
Interoperable emergency communications challenges and lack of qualified, well-trained, and well-funded emergency response personnel--capability gaps first identified during the response to the September 11th attacks--persisted.
Ineffective and underdeveloped disaster housing and disaster procurement policies dragged out recovery efforts and drove up costs.
States appeared to lack capacity to drawdown Federal recovery funds quickly or effectively.
For example, my home state of Mississippi was awarded $3 billion in Katrina related infrastructure grants, but by January 2009, it had only drawn down a little over half of those funds ($1.7 million).
FEMA allocated $156 million in hazard mitigation grant funds to Mississippi, but the State had only drawn down $40 million two-and-a-half years after the storm struck.
My governor at the time diverted $600 million in CDBG funds initially intended for the construction of low and middle income housing to a port expansion project.
Parts of southern Mississippi are still feeling the impact of that ill-advised decision to this day.
In the aftermath of the storm, Congress overhauled the national emergency management infrastructure by enacting The Post Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, or PKEMRA.
The legislation sought to address preparedness, response and recovery gaps identified through oversight activities carried out by this Committee, including:
(1) apparent uncertainty regarding who had authority to coordinate and direct response and recovery efforts under the National Response Plan;
(2) ineffective coordination of Federal, state, local, private sector response and recovery efforts;
(3) inadequate Federal coordination of preparedness planning, including lack of effective evacuation and temporary housing plans to meet the needs of all of those in a community;
(4) lack of operable and interoperable communications to support response and recovery efforts; and,
(5) lack of effective emergency alert and warning systems to notify the public of potential threats to health and safety.
Nationally, we have made progress on addressing these gaps.
For example, we have saved lives by getting people out of danger's path with the Integrated Public Alerts and Warnings System.
Our planning and exercise programs have improved relationships among Federal, State, and local responders to facilitate quicker, more effective response and recovery efforts.
And we have honed the national doctrine on preventing, protecting against, mitigating the effects of, responding to, and recovering from natural and manmade disasters.
But significant challenges with long term recovery efforts remain.
For example, the Federal government's failure to have adequate disaster housing plans in place before the storm struck resulted in last-minute scrambling to find long-term recovery housing for the displaced.
We ended up with botched FEMA trailer contracts that cost taxpayers millions of dollars, and ultimately provided Hurricane survivors with formaldehyde-laced dwellings.
A class action lawsuit from 55,000 Gulf Coast Residents against over two dozen mobile home manufacturers was finally settled for over $42.5 million in 2012.
Despite this difficult lesson, as we saw in 2012 after Hurricane Sandy, developing viable disaster housing options for regions across the United States continues to be an elusive goal.
Although we have made progress on achieving interoperability, gaps continue to hinder effective responses.
Despite the horrific loss, survivors demonstrated inspiring resilience.
And the American people proved once again their commitment to helping those affected by disaster by sending resources and flocking affected areas to aid recovery.
Over the past decade, Gulf Coast residents, with Federal support and the help of volunteers from
across the country, have rebuilt much of what was lost.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the important work of the Mississippi Conference of the NAACP and the Mississippi Center for Justice.
Both of those organizations traveled to and opened offices on the Coast to offer legal services to the thousands of Gulf Coast area residents who needed an advocate to help make them whole.
Notably, they filed a lawsuit on behalf of community groups and individuals against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development resulting in a landmark settlement of $132 million dollars for low-income households in nine Mississippi counties.
The Mississippi Center for Justice has continued to spearhead numerous Federal and state policy battles to demand and restore safe and affordable housing to Hurricane Katrina's most vulnerable survivors, including thousands of children.
The Hurricane Katrina recovery, in many respects, has become a story of American perseverance and generosity--and I am glad we are here to commemorate and honor it this evening.
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