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Remembering the Victims and Heroes of Hurricane Katrina


by Rep. Steny Hoyer
Sunday, August 27, 2006

Thursday marks the one year anniversary of the most devastating natural disaster in American history. This week, I will travel to New Orleans to join Gulf Coast citizens in prayer and reflection, but also to offer a plan to help rebuild the region. Nineteen of my Democratic colleagues and I will host a town hall meeting to discuss insurance claims and coverage, a complicated hurdle in the rebuilding process. We will also host a policy forum with local elected officials and experts to discuss the challenges the people of the Gulf Coast still face a year after the disaster. The issues to be discussed will include housing, health care, transportation, fisheries, environment and education.

As a leader in Congress, I believe it is important to be on the ground and experience first-hand the challenges our fellow Americans face in rebuilding their lives and communities. My colleagues and I pledge to work with the citizens of the region and push for a new direction that rejuvenates and restores the Gulf Coast in its entirety.

As Marylanders who have faced hurricanes and the September 11th terrorist attacks, we recognize the vital importance of the federal government’s ability to respond quickly and effectively in the face of disaster. It is critical that we use the experiences of Katrina to better prepare ourselves for the next disaster.

The federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina brutally exposed our failure to prepare for the type of catastrophic devastation that could be wrought not only by nature but by terrorists. Even more disturbing is that officials were able to prepare for Katrina, tracking her path across the Gulf via satellite for several days, while terrorists would strike our people without warning. In our region and across the country, we can and must do better.

Democrats have spent the last year fighting for Katrina families. We supported creating a HUD emergency housing voucher program which has been successfully used after other major disasters – but instead witness the creation of a disastrous, waste-filled FEMA housing program. We also were blocked in our efforts to ensure health care for families who had lost everything due to Katrina.

While much of the response to Hurricane Katrina was immersed in negatives, it did bring about some heroic efforts. In true American fashion, people all over the country opened their hearts and homes to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Children from the affected regions attended our local schools, and many were housed by local charities and chapters of the Red Cross. Hundreds of rescue workers from Maryland went to Louisiana and Mississippi to assist in relief and rescue missions.

Here in Southern Maryland, Joe St. Clair, Tom Jarboe, and Donald Cropp, founders of the St. Mary’s County Hurricane Relief Fund, started an “Adopt a Kid Campaign” to ensure that the children of D’iberville, Mississippi had the resources they need, facilitated stationing a medical team there, sent educational supplies to Sacred Heart Catholic School, sent eighty first aid kits to a healthcare clinic, and worked to fulfill the needs of the community as requested by D’iberville officials.
They followed this up with “Operation Mississippi Christmas,” an effort to guarantee that no child in D’iberville went without a present.

The giving spirit of the volunteers and the resilience and determination of the victims has truly been an inspiration, particularly in the face of such a lackluster federal performance. It is now incumbent upon our federal government to demonstrate its own determination and commitment to moving forward on a plan to properly prepare our nation to respond to future disasters. The American people deserve nothing less.




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