Laken Riley Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I rise today to address the Senate on behalf of the people of California. And I thank my colleague Senator Padilla for his leadership during this time of incredible difficulty and strain for our fellow constituents.

The unimaginable has happened, and our hearts are broken--a city encircled in a blaze and a perfect storm of fire and wind and with a system stretched beyond its breaking point. A natural disaster so immense in size and scale it will dwarf any recovery and rebuilding effort since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.

It is that immense and impending recovery effort that I am asking--I am pleading--for your help with today.

Already, the support that you and the President have given California have helped firefighters battle the flames, helped save lives, and helped those who lost everything find shelter.

I want to express my particular appreciation for President Biden and what the administration has done, the almost immediate declaration of a disaster which unlocked important FEMA and other funding, the commitment to match--to provide, really--100 percent of Federal funding for the first 6 months of these fire mitigation efforts.

I am very grateful for what the Congress and the President have done.

This recovery is going to be measured in years, not months. Even so, we must bring a sense of urgency to the recovery and not let it linger.

When the flames are finally out, the cleanup begins in earnest, and the rebuilding moves forward with all haste. After the attention of the world has turned away from the raging inferno and its aftermath, ours in this body must not because the loss is immeasurable--lives lost, homes lost, businesses lost, neighborhoods lost, pets lost, memories lost, neighborhoods simply gone in an hour. Entire communities burned to ash. Families brought together in grief. Churches and synagogues have burned down, but their members still gather as one because amidst the darkness and destruction, we have seen rays of hope. For when one part of our State is hurting--literally on fire--we all come together.

First responders from all across our great State and so many others rushed to Southern California. A woman I met at a Red Cross at the Pacoima evacuation site, so grateful, despite everything, for the assistance that she was receiving, for the dignity with which she was treated by these Red Cross workers--she told me she plans to set up a $10-a-month donation from her monthly Social Security disability check. People are dropping off clothes and supplies by the thousands, so much that some of these centers are overwhelmed with people bringing material by.

That is the California way.

This is deeply personal for Senator Padilla and myself. We know so many families impacted by these fires because they are our neighbors and friends.

I represented Altadena in the House of Representatives for decades. It is a vibrant, diverse community, a city of families, of places of worship, and of deep culture and history. When I drove through Altadena just a few days ago, the destruction was complete--entire city blocks razed. Homes, small businesses, schools gone in just a few minutes like some post-apocalyptic scene.

Driving around that area at night in which small fires still dotted the landscape amidst the rubble, it was hard to recognize what I was seeing. The place where my wife and I got married burned to the ground. So many other community institutions vanished: the Altadena Community Church, gone; the Pasadena Jewish Temple, gone, still smoldering, that temple, when I saw it, and burning inside like an eternal flame, a symbol of God's presence even amidst the unimaginable; the mountains above Altadena, once the scene of such beautiful greenery and nature, now charred beyond recognition.

Just like Altadena, much of the Palisades are just gone. Fire ripped through this community leveling entire neighborhoods. One bakery owner in Topanga described the fires that tore through her community simply as ``Armageddon,'' charred cars, burned-out furniture block after block.

These were generational homes and neighborhoods--neighborhoods people are proud to be part of and raise their children in, now forever changed.

In Altadena, Victor Shaw was found in his house holding a garden hose. He died trying to save his home. His sister Shari barely escaped as the house went up in flames.

One man, Zaire, was separated from his sister who lived next door. Amidst the chaos, he was able to evacuate his baby and elderly mother. The next day when he returned, he found his sister's car outside her home and found her remains in the rubble. ``Evelyn, why didn't you leave,'' he asked.

``[W]hy didn't you leave?''

One father refused to leave the side of his son who had cerebral palsy, fighting to his last breath. The last words he said to his daughter were, ``Baby, I'm getting ready to evacuate, I love you . . . Baby, I got to go, the fire's made it to my yard.''

Anthony Mitchell is a hero.

Edgar McGregor is well known in Pasadena for his daily trash pickups in the foothills. But now, to the community, he will be known for something more. In a Facebook group post, he alerted residents 2 days before the fires to pack go-bags. When it mattered most, he typed two words: ``Get out.''

``Get out.'' His simple post may have saved lives.

People are surviving now but only barely hanging on.

I spoke with Patricia at one of the shelters on the West Side. She stayed a couple of nights in a motel but could no longer afford it, and her asthma was making it hard to breathe.

One firefighter, Jonathan, had been battling the blazes in the Palisades since the first night. I remember talking to this L. A. Fire Department firefighter, and he had told me he wasn't sure he was going to make it out when he was there during the early hours of the fire. I asked him what that was like. He said: Well, there were flames in front of me and flames behind me. The water was running low. My communications were going out. He said it was ``the closest thing to hell I can imagine.''

One family in Altadena who all lived on the same street lost three homes. What was once a dream to live so close to each other had turned into a nightmare.

Over the past week, we have seen firefighters--exhausted and yet unyielding--waging war to save communities and lives and property.

And in the last few days, we have seen some hopeful signs as the level of containment--particularly of the Eaton fire--has increased; more slowly, the containment of the Palisades fire. But we are not out of the woods.

We have seen neighbors helping neighbors. We have seen Angelenos opening their doors to strangers left with little more than the clothes on their back.

These are the angels who remind us that even in our darkest hours-- through smoky skies and uncertain times--we do not stand alone because what makes this city of Los Angeles so extraordinary--what makes California extraordinary--is that we are not defined by our tragedies; we are defined by our response to them.

In Los Angeles, resilience is a way of life. It is what has allowed the city to rise from the devastation of earthquakes and floods and riots and fires time and again. And we are stronger, more resilient, more united, more compassionate.

This is a moment when we can and must call ourselves to the better angels of our nature--the angels that are all around us: the paramedics who rescued and evacuated seniors from a nursing home at the edge of a fire line, the volunteers I met who showed up at a shelter ready to help before anyone even asked, the father who stayed behind to try desperately to keep his son alive.

In the coming weeks, after the fires are extinguished, we will seek answers. We must not do so for partisan gain or seeking fault; in fact, just the opposite because only with the truth about what went right and what went wrong can we arrive at solutions.

I remember talking to one woman who lost her trailer in the Palisades. She wants answers about the lack of water to fight the fires. I want to know that too. I want to know if the Federal and State resources we are fighting to procure will be enough to stop the next potential megafire. I want to know what we can do to rebuild and rebuild with speed so the neighborhoods that we lost can be reclaimed by the neighbors who have been displaced, and communities can come together once more.

I am grateful for the Governor's efforts to streamline the permitting process so people can begin to rebuild and rebuild quickly. And I want to know if there is anything more that we can do or could have done to save more lives and more homes. We should all want that.

We should all want to rebuild because Los Angeles is one of our Nation's great cities. And to rebuild, we will need your help without fanfare or partisan rancor.

We need your help. Just like we worked together to help rebuild New Orleans and Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, we must do so again here. Just like after countless hurricanes struck Florida and the South, we rushed in aid. Just this year, after Hurricane Helene, FEMA is still on the ground in North Carolina helping those in its destructive path. And we won't leave--we can't--until the job is finished. That is what we must do here.

During my time in Congress, I have seen a lot of disaster aid bills. Never in my time have I ever considered whether an area votes red or blue. When people need help, we get them help. When people are fighting to rebuild, we help them rebuild, period. It cannot and should not change no matter who is President, no matter who is in charge of Congress, no matter who the Governor is or who their Senators are.

That is my urgent plea today. We need your help desperately.

Southern California, we will rebuild. We will. But whether we can do so quickly will depend on the actions we take in the next few months.

This big and beautiful diverse city is not just made of steel and stone but of people--people who stand together when the skies turn dark and rise together when the smoke clears.

We are going to rise again because it is who we are.

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