Bill Nelson: “to follow up on one of the things we did accomplish in the Senate, passing last night the Department of Homeland Defense…”

“to follow up on one of the things we did accomplish in the Senate, passing last night the Department of Homeland Defense appropriations bill, I want to call to the attention of the Senate three amendments this Senator from Florida had attached to the bill which were passed. They regard FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This, of course, has been extremely important to the Nation, but particularly to my State of Florida, having gone through the experience of four hurricanes last year within a 6-week period. Originally, FEMA did a very good job. A lot of that was as a result of the lessons we had learned from a decade previously from the monster hurricane of 1992, Hurricane Andrew, when one level of Government was not talking to another level. Those lessons learned were applied. Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of those four hurricanes that hit Florida within that 6-week period, FEMA responded, and responded well, working with the State of Florida and the local governments, which in this case for those four hurricanes included most of the counties of Florida. Little did I know, going into August a year ago, I was going to end up visiting almost every emergency operations center in the State of Florida. But that is the fate that befell our State. But then, in the long run, FEMA started dropping the ball. It was not because they did not have enough money. We appropriated $13.5 billion-- that is with a ``B''--for hurricane relief.…”