On the recordNovember 14, 2024
Mr. President, I come to the floor today, and I am ultimately going to be offering a unanimous consent for the body, but beforehand, I want to talk a little bit about what happened in North Carolina with the storm of Hurricane Helene. It actually starts a couple of days earlier when a weather system came into Western North Carolina and dumped inches and inches of rain on several--more than a dozen--major river basins and saturated the land. Now we have Hurricane Helene come in through the Florida Panhandle, through Georgia, through South Carolina, and into North Carolina. It largely maintained the integrity of a category 1 storm, tropical storm, a couple hundred miles inland in a mountain range. It is a first-of-a- kind storm that is the most deadly in North Carolina history--and, folks, we have been hit by Florence, Matthew, Hugo; I can go through a long list--over 102 people dead, some still missing. We have families who are disconnected and will likely not even have electricity. There is a community called Big Creek. Asheville is without drinkable water today. Businesses are suffering. The Small Business Administration is out of money. They are telling people who have had claims processed that ``Your claim has been approved'' and that as soon as the Federal Government replenishes the Small Business Administration account, then they will get the money. Think about that.…





