Bigger recovery job than Katrina
Proposed $8B in initial relief for Harvey-hit Texas is ‘just a down payment,’ governor says
WASHINGTON— Two days after President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Congress for $8 billion (U.S.) in initial relief for Harvey, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said his state may ultimately need more than the $120 billion that the U.S. spent on hurricane Katrina recovery.
“When you look at the number of homes that have been mowed down and destroyed and damaged, this is going to be a huge catastrophe that people need to come to grips with,” Abbott said on CNN’s State of the Union. “It’s going to take years for us to be able to overcome this challenge.”
Abbott said Trump and Congress made it clear that the president’s initial request for $7.85 billion “is just a down payment.” The governor said more than five million people were affected by the storm, and both the population and geographic size involved is larger than that of Katrina, which hit Louisiana in 2005, and superstorm Sandy, which hit the northeast in 2012, combined.
House Republican leaders plan to vote this week on Trump’s request for initial disaster relief. During Trump’s Saturday visit to Texas, the president said he hoped it would be a “quick process” to get the first sum of relief money to the areas affected. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday that Congress should combine an initial relief package with a boost in the country’s debt limit, but it’s unclear if House Republicans will go along with the plan.
More than 311,000 Texans have already applied for federal disaster relief funds and more than $530 million has already been granted, VicePresident Mike Pence told reporters on Thursday. About 100,000 homes were damaged by the storm, White House Homeland Security adviser Tom Bossert said Thursday in a briefing.
As efforts proceed to respond to Harvey, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is deploying assets to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico in preparation for hurricane Irma, the agency’s administrator, Brock Long, said Sunday.
“We’re shifting focus to Irma as well as maintaining the effort to make sure that we have recovery command established in Texas and Louisiana,” Long said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
“Individual assistance that’s offered up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency is basically just a ray of hope,” Long said. “The bottom line is that it’s not going to be enough to make anybody whole.”
Those in the area that didn’t have flood insurance may be eligible for federal funds to cover home repairs and other costs, he said.
Authorities went door to door Sunday in parts of storm-battered Houston, warning that more flooding was coming, while a nearby city that lost its drinking water system struggled to restore service and officials kept watch on a crippled chemical plant that’s already triggered explosions.
Nine days after Harvey ripped its way across Texas, areas of west Houston braced for more water — not from the storm, but from controlled releases to relieve swollen reservoirs. Crews were urging resi- dents whose homes had already taken on water to flee, and that they were shutting off power in some areas.
“If you have water in your homes, I have issued a mandatory evacuation for them because it’s dangerous for those who are choosing to live there,” Mayor Sylvester Turner told NBC’s Meet the Press.
“But also, it’s very, very dangerous for our public responders, first responders, who are needing to be out there, trying to provide protection to them,” he added.
Meanwhile, officials in Beaumont, population almost 120,000, worked to repair their water treatment plant, which failed after the swollen Neches River inundated the main intake system and backup pumps halted.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sent pumps, and an ExxonMobil team built and installed a temporary intake pipe to try to refill a city reservoir. Exxon has a refinery and chemical plants in Beaumont.
In Crosby, outside of Houston, authorities continued to monitor the Arkema plant where three trailers of highly unstable compounds ignited in recent days, sending thick black smoke and tall flames into the air. A Harris County Fire Marshal spokesperson said there were no active fires at the facility, but six more trailers were being watched.
Elsewhere, people began burying the dead and taking steps toward recovery.
The storm is blamed for at least 44 deaths.
Harvey came ashore Aug. 25 as a Category 4 hurricane, then went back out to sea and lingered for days off the coast as a tropical storm. The storm brought five straight days of rain totalling close to 1.3 metres in one location, the heaviest tropical downpour ever recorded in the continental U.S.