John Campbell: “I stand here before you as a Member of Congress not from Florida; in fact, from California. But I support this bill. If…”

“I stand here before you as a Member of Congress not from Florida; in fact, from California. But I support this bill. If a tsunami were to hit Honolulu, there is not enough insurance base in the entire State for all the types of insurance there could possibly be to cover the effects of that kind of disaster. I come from California, which is not a small State. It is in fact the largest State. But we have earthquakes. After the Northridge earthquake, you could not buy earthquake insurance pretty much from anywhere at any price in the entire State of California after that earthquake. So even in a large State like California you can have problems getting disaster insurance for various disasters, even today; and it has been a number of years since we have had any significant number of earthquakes in California. The earthquake insurance, currently there's a State program to cover earthquake insurance and it vacillates between not providing very much coverage and being not actuarially sound. So I support this bill because we do need to look at tsunamis in Hawaii, earthquakes in California, hurricanes in Florida and tornadoes in Kansas, and ways that we can pool those risks.”