Pandas module¶

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(2001, 21)

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parties: R
speeches: Mr. President, I wanted to follow up the remarks of my senior Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Specter], and talk about the problems that we are having in Pennsylvania today. The first thing I wanted to do was make sure the record is very clear in my use of the word \"liberal.\" I suggested that FEMA be more liberal than what they have been to date, as of early this morning, in declaring counties in Pennsylvania eligible for individual assistance, for emergency disaster relief funds. I think that was an appropriate call given the fact that the Governor of Pennsylvania, who knows a little bit about the Emergency Relief Act that is in place here because he helped write it several years ago and knows it cover to cover, declared 58 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties disaster areas and was seeking Federal grant recognition for, if not all, certainly a great majority of those counties.
Senator Specter, I know, has been traveling the State extensively, as have I. We have seen the tremendous damage done by this heavy snowfall and subsequent quick melting and floods and then freezing again, causing ice jams and horrible damage on our Commonwealth's rivers and streams. We do believe that several more counties should be included in the list that are eligible for individual assistance, and obviously the process will commence to determine whether those counties and municipalities will be eligible for public assistance, for reimbursing municipalities and counties for the cost of cleanup and dealing with the problems of this horrible storm.
I understand that the senior Senator has already talked about how today James Lee Witt, the head of FEMA, has been up to the State of Pennsylvania and he has added to the list of 6 counties an additional 19 counties, bringing to 25 the number of counties that will now be eligible for some assistance.
We were in Harrisburg this morning. I know he mentioned we saw some of 
That has really made this disaster a lot different because Harrisburg was hit back in 1972 with very severe flooding as a result of Hurricane Agnes. In fact, the mayor and others have been telling us that while the flood levels were not as high as Hurricane Agnes, although in some areas they were almost as high, the damage, they believe, actually will be more because of the ice. Literally, Senator Specter and I were walking around an area that was 5 feet underwater just 24 hours before, and sitting there all over the place were boulders of ice almost my size and probably bigger, with trees frozen to them. It was really a rather gruesome picture. You could actually see the water level because on the houses and the fences and on the trees you could see where the ice had frozen around the tree, around the houses, sort of jutting out from the houses. So you could pretty well tell everywhere where the water levels had risen to.
We were through that area and saw the damage that the ice had caused to streets and to houses, the buckling effect of having water there and then freezing and then unfreezing. It looks almost like an earthquake on some of the roads; they are just sort of warped, with big sinkholes and things like that as a result of this freezing and thawing and freezing again and the amount of water pressure.
In fact, Senator Specter and I met with Mayor Reed of Harrisburg, whom I have to commend; he has done a tremendous job in rallying the troops in Harrisburg, one of our hardest hit cities, and is doing an outstanding job personally. He is someone whom I have known for quite some time and know he puts every ounce of his person in his job. I am sure he has not slept for days. He met us in boots and blue jeans and looked like he had not been able to get into his house, probably even to eat a meal, in a few days. He has really just been on the go.
They had a horrible fire in this area I was talking about that was 5 feet under water. They had, unfortunately, a fire break out last night that destroyed four historic town homes. And luckily no one was injured. The area was evacuated obviously and no one was injured as a resident. But several of the firefighters, they had to cut their way through the ice and wade through water, waist high at that time, and fight the fire without obviously any fire hoses. They had to string them literally blocks to get fire hoses there.
My understanding is that a dozen firefighters were carried from the scene with hypothermia — a horrible situation. I know Mayor Reed was there the entire time working on it. He showed us the Walnut Street bridge, which is the oldest — I am not going to get this right — it is the oldest of some type of bridge having to do with metal construction. That bridge was expected to collapse during the 1972 flood when actually the river went up over the platform of the bridge.
In this case it was several feet below it. But a section of the bridge — you may have seen on television — was knocked away. The reason was not because of the water flow. Again, it was the ice jams. An ice jam had a large amount of ice collected at this one abutment, and eventually with all the pressure it was knocked over, was knocked into the river. They expect another one of those pillars to fall relatively soon.
So there has been a severe amount of damage. Senator Specter and I are very concerned about the Federal response to the damage across Pennsylvania. We believe that in some instances the response was delayed. I know the President would like to see all the people and communities that have been severely hurt by this storm to get the kind of assistance that they need to begin to clean up and rebuild their lives.
I am hopeful that we can move forward. As Senator Specter said, initially only six counties were listed as qualifying for this assistance. One of the counties that did not qualify originally, and did not qualify until this afternoon, was a county where there were 6 people known dead, 75 people missing from an area that was a large housing development that was literally just swept away. Water rose rapidly. People were given no warning. The consequences were terrible. Yet that county was not listed originally on the disaster list, which amazed many of us and frankly was very discouraging.
I had occasion to talk to people up in Williamsport, Lycoming County. And they were very discouraged. Somehow they were suffering to this degree, and in fact accounted, from my understanding, for over half the deaths related to this storm in the Northeast, and yet were not listed as a county eligible for disaster assistance. That caused some legitimate uneasiness to where actually their needs and concerns were being paid attention to. I am happy to report they were listed in the second round.
There are other counties that we need to look at that I believe have legitimate needs to be met. Hopefully we can do that, we can do that expeditiously. I want to join Senator Specter in congratulating Secretary Pena and Director Witt for being up in Pennsylvania today to survey the damage, to see the extent of what seemed to be just a flood.
I remind you the compounding effect of the ice is something I do not think anyone recognized. I was in Lancaster County, which unfortunately has yet to be declared a disaster county.
I was in Marietta which was flooded, at least the parts nearest the river were flooded. Their big concern right now is the freezing that is going on. They were flooded. They have something like a dike. It is actually a railroad track that runs between the river and the town that is very high up and serves like a dike. But they got flooded through their storm sewers, and the water reaching its level filled up both sides of the dike. Now they are concerned with the storm sewers. Because of the very cold temperatures, they are now frozen. If they get any more rain, which is anticipated tomorrow, or any other precipitation, they will have the same problem all over again.
Many counties and many cities, they have that same problem with either frozen surface areas that prevent water from draining or the infrastructure underneath the ground itself containing ice and frozen debris is going to cause a real problem with drainage.
So we are not out of the woods yet. There is unfortunately still a lot of snow on the ground. The possibility exists, with the warm weather today, we could even see some more problems. So I want to congratulate Governor Ridge and Lt. Gov. Mark Schweiker for their tremendous role in responding to this emergency. They have been all over the State, have been very aggressive in trying to seek aid, and have also been very aggressive in trying to help municipalities trying to deal with the problems that have beset them.
I think we have seen a very good effort on the part of locally elected officials, and the Governor and Lieutenant Governor. I think — at least I hope that we can be proud of the Federal role that is being played in Pennsylvania. I think we are coming along a little slowly, but maybe today with some fly-arounds and other things that are going on, we can impress upon officials here in Washington and in the regional office that this is a true emergency, a disaster that needs to be attended to, and the Federal Government has a role to play in helping those individuals and municipalities that were affected by it.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.