Political Quotes

“I want to talk about one of the strongest storms in many, many years to hit my State. It was called Typhoon Merbok, and it hit western Alaska late last week and into the weekend. It brought gale-force winds, massive flooding, and loss of power, water, and communications. It has wreaked havoc. I have just a few photos here. You see a house literally floating away into the ocean; whole communities completely flooded; a giant wave system--again, communities completely flooded in western Alaska. This is an area of our State dotted with dozens of small villages, nearly all of them, the majority, Alaska Native communities. Roughly about 21,000 people live in these communities in western Alaska with a coastline of roughly 1,300 miles. That is just one little, small part of my State, but that is just about as many miles of all the Florida coastline combined just here in western Alaska. They got hammered. There are very, very few roads. Alaska has over 200 communities that are not connected by any roads at all, and so it presents many challenges in terms of relief. Unfortunately, the very small number of roads that we have, many were washed away in these communities. The storm knocked out lines of communication, prompted evacuations, and wrenched homes from their foundations, as I mentioned, floating in the water.…”