30-Something Working Group

Floor Speech

30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP -- (House of Representatives - October 26, 2005)

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, it has been stressful, and that is the mildest word I can use, last several days. We both rode out the storm in our houses in south Florida.

I have to say, if I had not been impressed by looking at the aftermath of Andrew, and I live in Broward County and so Andrew did not devastate Broward County like it did Miami-Dade County, we got grazed, but if I did not appreciate the kind of power Mother Nature has after observing the aftermath of Andrew and Hurricane Katrina on TV, I can tell you, being hit by an category 3 storm is awe inspiring.

When you are cowering with your kids and husband and your family in your home and you are boarded up in your house, it feels like God is literally throwing bowling balls on the roof. It is an emotional, stressful situation. For those of us who live in structures that have been built under the south Florida building code since Hurricane Andrew and have a sturdy structure in which to live, where we were not worried about our homes caving in around us, and then yesterday when I had an opportunity to ride with FEMA on their preliminary damage assessment review and saw the mobile home parks in my district and across south Florida spanning the gentleman's district, and literally see that the walls caved in around the foundations of these homes and just furniture was left. Massive trees fell, falling completely over or snapping in half and falling on people's houses. We can urge people to leave their homes as much as possible, but human nature often motivates people to stay with their belongings and protect their home base.

I just could not believe what might have happened. The fact that we avoided a huge loss of life is just a miracle. It really is. I have to say, the insensitivity on the part of the Governor as well as the President, both spanning from Hurricane Katrina to Wilma is just shocking. Governor Bush literally said today in our newspaper that he did not understand, and I will quote him: ``We had a lot of people standing in line yesterday that we did not like to see. That is why we tell people to have 72 hours of food and water so you do not have to stand in line.'' That was Secretary Paulison. Then the Governor said he did not understand why people did not heed the warning and get 72 hours' worth of food and water in advance of the storm. That is an easy thing to do.

Well, I do not think Governor Bush was in south Florida for the several days, 6 or 7 days' progress that Wilma made across the continent and saw the lines in advance of the storm. And you know what, if you do not have money, if you cannot buy gas for your car or get to a store, it is going to be a little difficult to stock up on 72 hours' worth of food.

When I went on this preliminary damage assessment, I will be honest, I am quite certain that a lot of these people could not afford to buy 72 hours' worth of food and water. So the insensitivity between the Governor's comments and the President's comments after Hurricane Katrina. The President said something similar after Hurricane Katrina. He said in advance of the storm, we warned people and it is our responsibility to get people prepared; but if they did not listen, there is not too much we can do about it. I guess like brother like brother.

But what is the most disappointing, really, as someone who went through the storm myself and now have had literally thousands and thousands of constituents whose lives are affected who are sitting in the dark tonight as we speak who cannot hear our voices unless they are listening to C-SPAN Radio, honestly, it is just unbelievable that last week when we had our Florida delegation meeting, to listen to the supposedly organized and well-prepared preparations that FEMA and the State of Florida were putting in place to pre-position supplies that people needed.

You would have thought that there would not be a kink in the works after the hurricane went through. Honestly, the reports that I am getting are so disturbing, price gouging of over $6 a gallon for gas in our districts. Where is the accountability? Where is the protection from the State government?

We have trucks that have been lost for 2 days that they still cannot find, that they bragged to us last week that they were pre-positioning ice and water and meals ready to eat in Jacksonville and Homestead, but then they lost the trucks because the only means of communication they had available to contact the trucks was cell phones. Maybe they did not notice, but cell phone towers are tall; and the tall things in south Florida when they got hit by a category 3 hurricane fell down or were damaged.

So that means communication went down. No water, no ice, no diesel fuel. Senior citizens older than 85 years old in Hallandale Beach stuck in their condominiums, the glass blown out of their places, no power, no food. The generators operating their power running out of diesel fuel. The mayor of Hallandale Beach had to call an emergency session of the city council and declare a state of emergency within her city so she could get ready to commandeer gas from a gas station to help those people.

This is the model State for natural disaster preparation. If we are the model, and we have already seen what the model is not, if we are the model, we have a lot of work to do.

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MEEK of Florida. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is so right, and his comments have brought up so many different things that I want to say.

But let us go back to what we have been talking about on this floor lo these last few weeks. We have been talking about the three or four Cs that are the real issue in this administration and in this government. We have been talking about corruption. We have been talking about cronyism. We have been talking about competence. I think what has happened in our community in the last few days just points arrows in the direction of every one of those C words.

Let us talk about competence. The Governor can say, golly gee, our goal was to get up and running and be ready with all this water and ice and response and trucks and generators in 24 hours, and we will just have to work a little bit harder. Honestly, if they point to themselves as the model, if FEMA points to Florida as the model, and says that we are the most prepared State in terms of natural disasters, then they are owning up and saying, ``I am competent.'' We are competent. We are ready to do the job.

I think if we traveled through South Florida tonight and asked people on the street, whom the gentleman and I have talked with, and asked them if they think their government is competent, I think the answer would be a resounding no, because these are some of the things that our constituents are having to deal with tonight, that our families are having to deal with tonight. the reality of getting hit by a Category 3 storm and not having the government respond to their needs is that in Broward County there is no potable water. The entire county is under a boil water order, which means that when I had to give my 2-year-old a bath the other day, I could not pour water over her head because the water could give her pinkeye. That is what I was cautioned about. We have to make sure that our children do not rinse their toothbrushes with the water because it can make them sick.

We have a myriad of issues. We have water and ice and food needs. We have people in high-rises who have had windows blown out. We have trucks that have been lost. How could the trucks get lost? If they prepositioned them in strategic portions of the State so as to ensure that they could be moved out and sent to places that they know they are going to be needed, how is it that they could not find them and in some cases still have not been able to find them?

Today in Miami-Dade County, which we both represent, although now I am told that Miami-Dade County does have drinkable water, except for Miami Beach, which I represent about half of, these are the water and ice distribution centers, Mr. Speaker, that we were supposed to be set up and fully equipped with water and ice. So let us peruse the availability of the supplies today.

This is for the model State in terms of preparation and the prepositioning of hundreds of trucks to be able to be distributed as soon as the storm is over.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. And over 2,000 FEMA employees there prior to the storm.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. In advance of the storm, 2,000 FEMA employees who were supposed to be ready to be dispatched to get this stuff distributed. We had the Miami Beach distribution center supplied. Metro Zoo in South Dade, no water, partial ice. Homestead Sports Complex, which is near where the trucks were prepositioned, no supplies. None. I mean, in Homestead they did not have water or ice, and the trucks were right there to start with. The Orange Bowl was supplied, but we had massive chaos in terms of the thousands of people that showed up to try to get access to that.

We have Miami-Dade College North, which is in the north part of the county, no water, partial ice. Miami-Dade College Kendall, which is more towards south Dade, partially supplied, meaning they did not have enough water or ice for the people that showed up. And let us keep in mind that what they were distributing to people when they were able to get it were six bottles of water and a bag of ice. I mean, that is what people were able to take home while they are sitting in the dark with no ability to cool their food and keep it fresh.

A.D. Barns Park, no supplies. Tamiami Park, no supplies. The Mall at 163rd Street, in both your and my district, no supplies. And Landmark Property, no water, partial ice. This is the model State for natural disasters.

Let us talk about the IA, the granting of individual assistance or lack thereof. Why did the State of Florida, why did Governor Bush, not request automatic individual assistance for both the East Coast and the West Coast? He asked for that assistance immediately in advance of the storm for the West Coast, as if Wilma was going to hit a wall when she crossed over the West Coast and not cross over southeast Florida too.

I mean, it took literally until 7:30 last night with the gentleman talking to Secretary Paulison, me talking to Secretary Paulison, who, by the way lives in my district and is a constituent, and obviously knows the devastation, and he was in Washington, and much to his wife's dismay, he told me. But we even have the acting director of FEMA living in our area, and they still were not able to get individual assistance granted.

They literally went out on preliminary disaster assessments yesterday, as if you had to drive through a neighborhood to see the devastation. I mean, it was just so frustrating. This is what people are talking about when they say they do not feel their government is responsive to their needs, when they are frustrated beyond belief with the red tape.

I mean, it is so simple. It is very difficult to respond to natural disasters, there is no question about that. We lived through the chaos in the last few days. But, come on, if you are going to hold yourself up as a competent model and you are going to say that you are the example to which all others should be held, then you have to live up to that example.

Before I turn it back over to the gentleman, I just want to make sure we are not only talking about the one C, competence, we are talking about the cronyism too.

I was interested to come across an article today that talked about how Mr. Brown, ``Brownie,'' who was ejected because of his incompetence from FEMA, Secretary Chertoff, the Homeland Security Secretary, extended Michael Brown's contract for another 30 days. For what?

The gentleman is on the Committee on Homeland Security. We had this partisan, dependent committee asking the right questions, supposedly, or at least that is what it was set up to do. How are they letting this happen? That is why we need an independent commission. If we had an independent commission, this would not have happened because there would be some accountability.

Our constituents want answers. I want to go home and make sure that FPL has the ability as much as they can humanly do to get those lights turned on. They are telling our people they are not going to be able to get those lights turned on possibly until November 22 at the earliest.

The other thing really disturbing that I heard and read in the Governor and the State and FEMA's comments today was that they did not anticipate the intensity of the storm and they made a mistake in their calculations. The director of the State EOC, Emergency Operations Center, said today in the paper that they made a mistake in their calculations and did not account for the size of our population in South Florida when calculating how much ice and water was going to be needed.

We have the biggest media market in the State. There are more than 6 million people, 7 million people that live in our three counties, if you count Palm Beach too?

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, 3.8 million in both of our counties.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to tell you, being a part of the solution is what we do. We are a part of the solution, Mr. Speaker, and I think it is important that even when it comes down to the individual assistance, I mean, you just had to turn on the television and see that there were over 800 homes damaged in Florida. That would automatically allow the people of the State of Florida to be able to call FEMA for individual assistance. But, no, we watched the sun rise and set twice in Florida.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, let us not even let people believe that now that individual assistance has been granted and that it is being supplied. They do not even have the registration sites set up now.

I was driving through the district with the FEMA folks yesterday and people were coming up with their houses crushed in saying, I have got to have some help here. I have a baby. I have a grandmother who needs medicine. When is FEMA coming?

The poor guy who I was riding with, he does not know what to tell people. He said, ``This is why we are doing this assessment, ma'am. I understand we are going to try to get help to you as soon as possible.''

Now we are 72 hours out. Every day the Governor says it is going to get one day better. It does not feel that way.

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, we absolutely need accountability. There are people's lives at stake here. We are not here to be partisan.

I remember a few weeks ago when Katrina hit and after Katrina hit, and you and I and the gentleman from Ohio had been on this floor day after day, week after week, and talking about what the government's response needed to be and should have been and what our process should have done, which is establish an independent Katrina commission so that we could get some of these things resolved. Because it is very nice that the President is going to come down and land his helicopter or fly Air Force One or whatever he is going to do because the airports have not been open so, hopefully, he is going to have a place to land. That is very nice. I remember the movie ``The Candidate,'' and Robert Redford's character is running against another guy for the U.S. Senate, and there is a big fire, and his opponent flies the helicopter down into the disaster area to survey the damage. And you know, the whole thing is a fiery mess and the guy flies in, surveys the damage, and flies out, looks important and impressive, and that is great. But what help did he provide to the people who were there? Did he grab a hose and start spraying?

I am glad that the President is coming because he is the symbol of the United States of America, and there is one person in this country who everyone looks to, but it is only helpful if, when he sits down at the hurricane center and goes through that briefing, it is only helpful if he learns something, if the Federal Government and the administration learn something and change it for the next time. Because we were on this floor weeks ago offering our advice and our suggestions and our opinion about the aftermath of Katrina and how disturbed we were, because we said, and I remember using these words: there but for the grace of God go I, and now we have. Now it has happened to us. So it is our responsibility.

Mr. Speaker, there are those on the Majority side of the aisle that will accuse us of doing this on a nightly basis to be political and to be partisan. No. It is the fact that particularly with natural disasters, natural or manmade disasters, you just know that at some point, especially where we live and in other parts of the country that are more prone to natural disasters, you just know it is going to happen to you at some point. I have talked to constituents, I have read constituents' comments in the paper, that it is all well and good that they come in and they do this review and this assessment, but it is only good if they learn something.

One of the things, when I was at the Broward Emergency Operations Center yesterday, Tony Carper, the director, was talking about how they are trying to find generators, both the big generators that can help run the power grid while they are trying to get the power lines up and running again, and the small ones that people are going to need to run their facilities, and I asked him, I said, why, if we knew this storm was coming for so many days in advance, why did we not get those in position ahead of time? He said, because we do not have enough flexibility in our homeland security funding, because we get a lot of money for terrorism, but they are not able to use that money to respond to natural disasters. Well, we are much more certain on a regular basis that we are going to get hit with natural disasters than we are, God forbid, going to get hit by a manmade disaster.

That is the kind of responsiveness that could have been fixed several storms ago. I mean, we have our eighth storm in 15 months. How is it that that was not fixed already? How is it that we still have people sitting in the dark? How is it that we were denied individual assistance after Katrina in Florida, when you had people looking through the roof at sky, both in Florida and in Louisiana, and then the very next time that we get hit by a storm, we have to fight to get individual assistance granted when all you have to do is walk out your front door or turn on the television and you can see 100 or 800 homes damaged, severely damaged. Do they not care? I mean, have they no shame? Have they no heart?

It feels like that. It feels like they are up on high in the White House and Capitol Hill and it is not me, it is them. They are 1,100 miles from here and: my roof is not caving in, so I am okay. And I have money, I have water, I have ice, my kids are not going to get pink eye when I give them a bath and run water over their heads. I just, I do not understand. I do not understand why we had to spend the last 72 hours pounding on people, pounding on this government to get our folks some help. It is just inexcusable. It is incompetence. It is corruption, it is a crisis. We are going to have a whole collection, a whole necklace full of seeds by the time we are done with this year. God forbid. I hope that somebody decides to read the book, ``Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten'' and start remembering that we need to care about each other and that we need to be responsive and put partisan politics aside. It is not about the next election; it is about taking care of each other.

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Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, if I can close us out by saying that their priorities are wrong. It is not an independent Katrina Commission; it is Katrina, Wilma, Rita. We have got to do better.

Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I want to let you know that we did not try to pass the time. But we want to thank the Democratic leader and thank you for your indulgence here.

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