Tom Rice: “I hail from the Seventh District of South Carolina, and for 3 days in September the Nation was rapt as Hurricane…”

“I hail from the Seventh District of South Carolina, and for 3 days in September the Nation was rapt as Hurricane Florence stalled directly on top of my district. I have eight counties in my district. All eight counties were declared disaster areas. The inland counties were inundated, as North Carolina was, and all the rain that fell in North Carolina and those inland counties comes through five river systems out Georgetown County, South Carolina. My district was overcome by a slow-motion, rolling disaster. And if that wasn't bad enough, that was the third storm in 4 years. Hurricane Matthew hit us 3 years ago. With Hurricane Matthew, the Federal Government awarded us $95 million to rebuild 1,350 houses for indigent families. And, at the speed the Federal Government moves, as of now, 2\1/2\ years after the storm, about 400 of those 1,300 homes have been rebuilt, so we have got about 1,000 indigent South Carolinians either gone or living in substandard housing. Now, in this storm, 12,163 homes were ``moderately damaged.'' I asked the definition of ``moderate damage.'' They said that means that there was water inside the house but it was less than 2 feet deep. My friends, we also incurred $200 million of agricultural damage. In these last two storms, our agricultural department didn't even ask for help from the Federal Government, but the farmers are at their wits' end.…”