Political Quotes

“I rise today to discuss the thousand-year flood that hit my State of Louisiana a few weeks ago. It is not named, so we call it the Great Flood of 2016, in which 13 people lost their lives and $8.7 billion in damage occurred in just a few days. As an example of the enormity, here are the power outages that followed the flooding. This is baseline before the flood. The lights went out, and all of this reflects homes substantially flooded. There is no substitute for witnessing the aftermath of the disaster yourself, but I will try to paint a picture of the damage of this terrible event and the situation from which my constituents are currently trying to rebuild. Again, it was an unprecedented weather event. The National Weather Service deemed it a once-in-a-thousand-year event. There was no way to prepare. It was not as if there was a storm system off the coast of Africa that was proceeding across the Atlantic Ocean. Less than a quarter of the population had flood insurance and not because they were supposed to and didn't. Most weren't supposed to because it wasn't supposed to flood, and they were not required to have flood insurance. Again, the flooding occurred in areas more than 50 feet above sea level where folks were told they were not in a flood zone or were at low risk. That is one example.…”