William H. Frist: “I am pleased to report that hour by hour, day by day, we are making steady progress in the rescue and recovery efforts…”

“I am pleased to report that hour by hour, day by day, we are making steady progress in the rescue and recovery efforts in response to the natural disaster witnessed now a week and a half ago. As I speak, there are 20,000 Active military personnel on the ground, along with 50,800 National Guard, 4,000 Coast Guard, and 8,900 FEMA responders. There are over 1,000 uniformed commissioned public health personnel on the ground as we speak. Law and order in New Orleans has been completely restored. Power is back for most of the city's central business district. City hall has running water and electricity. The Army Corps of Engineers reports that the city will be completely drained by early October. Hundreds of city engineers have been working around the clock, even sleeping on the floors of their pumping stations, to drain the toxic flood waters out of the city. Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, is seeing continual progress. In his words, we are feeding more people, we are recovering more people, the infrastructure is more improved, we are clearing more roads, we have more power--every day more victories. Meanwhile, the Federal Government remains committed to helping shoulder the burden. To date, Congress has allocated more than $62 billion in aid for rescue relief and recovery efforts.…”