Pete Sessions: “Hurricane Katrina was a colossal natural disaster. Every hurricane is different. They bring different stresses and…”

“Hurricane Katrina was a colossal natural disaster. Every hurricane is different. They bring different stresses and different damages. My home is in the city of Mobile, Alabama, right on the gulf coast. We were without power for 3 days. Trees and houses were damaged. Portions of the city were flooded that have not been flooded before. We experienced the highest surge of water up Mobile Bay driven by this storm that we have seen in anybody's lifetime there. The surge in the fishing communities of Bayou La Batre and Coden were unlike anything they have seen before--my best estimate is 5 feet deeper than we have ever seen before. I spent 3 days in that community working with and talking to the people. Many of them lived in small framed houses, some in mobile homes and things of that nature, that they have lived in for quite a long time in areas that had never flooded before but flooded this time. I will share a story of heroism that is symbolic of what happened, I am sure, throughout the gulf coast. It is regarding a young State trooper a corporal, Spencer Collier, also an Alabama State legislator, a wonderful young man, my wife and I have come to admire him so much whose house flooded, as did most of the leaders of the town of Bayou La Batre. The town began to receive 911 calls at the height of the storm. He and a marine resource officer and others, got in a vehicle and drove down to where the water was rising with 100-mile-per-hour winds blowing.…”