Dayton News - News
Governor’s Stop!
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| From left, Bill Buchanan, Deputy Hugh Bishop, and Sheriff Greg Arthur welcoming Governor Rick Perry to the Emergency Operations Center established for Hurricane Rita and its aftermath. |
By MIKE GEORGE
mgeorge@hcnonline.com
Texas Governor Rick Perry dropped in on the Liberty County Emergency Operations Center on Wednesday, Sept. 24 to thank all the elected officials at the local level and to all those who have worked to prepare for, deal with and help recover from the worst storm to hit the Texas Gulf Coast in modern history.
“We want to come by today and as much as anything just say thank-you to all the local officials and individuals here, particularly the emergency operations center and the men and women who have worked and coordinated with us as we’ve dealt with Hurricane Ike,” began Gov. Perry. “I don’t suppose there has been a storm of this size from the standpoint of the Gulf Coast – 600 miles wide and the damage that was done by this storm is just now being assessed.”
The governor added that he had asked the lieutenant governor to go to Washington the day before to represent the state and the initial request made by him to the federal government was for $10 billion on the damages side and his hopes were that “our federal counterparts” will approve that and start flowing some dollars back to Texas.
“I tell people that Texans work hard, we’ve created the best economy in the country and we’ve paid a lot of taxes to our friends up in Washington,” Perry stated, “and partly to prepare for an event like this that has occurred in Texas with Hurricane Ike. We know what our responsibilities have been. We have preplanned, we pre-deployed, and we executed an evacuation that was very well executed. We’ve had the largest search and rescue operation that the state of Texas has ever had and then we prepared for the re-entry and put our points of distribution in place pushing fuel, food, water and ice down to these pods so that people who were displaced could get into shelters, and et cetera.”
The governor went on to describe a different phase that was starting which is the recovering phase and that Washington would have a very important role and quite an impact on this phase. The governor also took the opportunity to thank the people of FEMA and the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development for the work they had done. The governor also wanted to be sure to thank some “visitors” to the state.
“There’s another group of people that have made a huge impact on this state, and that is citizens from other states, even other countries,” began Perry. “We’ve got, I know some electrical workers here from as far away as Canada – some 20,000 electrical workers working hard under less than good conditions and some dangerous conditions in some cases getting the electricity back on and getting the power back to as many Texans as fast as they can, and our hats are really off to those companies and those workers.”
The governor went on to add medical workers including a man from Virginia and a lady from Georgia and stated that we’d forever be grateful to them and many like them who have come to Texas to help during this time. This time, as the governor put it, things were different.
“Generally, the shoe’s on the other foot, whether it’s going into Louisiana or California,” said Perry. “Texas Task Force 1 – there are 73 members of that organization – and they were at Ground Zero after 9-1-1 out conducting search and rescue operations, so it’s with a great amount of pride that I get to be associated with men and women like that and it’s these local elected officials, the local first responders that I’m very proud of.”
The governor then introduced Steve McCraw of Homeland Security to explained the aerial spraying that would begin on Thursday, Sept. 25th, each night from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. McCraw advised that aircraft in some cases would be flying at altitudes as low as 300’ and people needed to be made aware of what they were doing – spraying for mosquitoes over the 29 counties affected by Ike.
Texas Governor Rick Perry dropped in on the Liberty County Emergency Operations Center on Wednesday, Sept. 24 to thank all the elected officials at the local level and to all those who have worked to prepare for, deal with and help recover from the worst storm to hit the Texas Gulf Coast in modern history.
“We want to come by today and as much as anything just say thank-you to all the local officials and individuals here, particularly the emergency operations center and the men and women who have worked and coordinated with us as we’ve dealt with Hurricane Ike,” began Gov. Perry. “I don’t suppose there has been a storm of this size from the standpoint of the Gulf Coast – 600 miles wide and the damage that was done by this storm is just now being assessed.”
The governor added that he had asked the lieutenant governor to go to Washington the day before to represent the state and the initial request made by him to the federal government was for $10 billion on the damages side and his hopes were that “our federal counterparts” will approve that and start flowing some dollars back to Texas.
“I tell people that Texans work hard, we’ve created the best economy in the country and we’ve paid a lot of taxes to our friends up in Washington,” Perry stated, “and partly to prepare for an event like this that has occurred in Texas with Hurricane Ike. We know what our responsibilities have been. We have preplanned, we pre-deployed, and we executed an evacuation that was very well executed. We’ve had the largest search and rescue operation that the state of Texas has ever had and then we prepared for the re-entry and put our points of distribution in place pushing fuel, food, water and ice down to these pods so that people who were displaced could get into shelters, and et cetera.”
The governor went on to describe a different phase that was starting which is the recovering phase and that Washington would have a very important role and quite an impact on this phase. The governor also took the opportunity to thank the people of FEMA and the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development for the work they had done. The governor also wanted to be sure to thank some “visitors” to the state.
“There’s another group of people that have made a huge impact on this state, and that is citizens from other states, even other countries,” began Perry. “We’ve got, I know some electrical workers here from as far away as Canada – some 20,000 electrical workers working hard under less than good conditions and some dangerous conditions in some cases getting the electricity back on and getting the power back to as many Texans as fast as they can, and our hats are really off to those companies and those workers.”
The governor went on to add medical workers including a man from Virginia and a lady from Georgia and stated that we’d forever be grateful to them and many like them who have come to Texas to help during this time. This time, as the governor put it, things were different.
“Generally, the shoe’s on the other foot, whether it’s going into Louisiana or California,” said Perry. “Texas Task Force 1 – there are 73 members of that organization – and they were at Ground Zero after 9-1-1 out conducting search and rescue operations, so it’s with a great amount of pride that I get to be associated with men and women like that and it’s these local elected officials, the local first responders that I’m very proud of.”
The governor then introduced Steve McCraw of Homeland Security to explained the aerial spraying that would begin on Thursday, Sept. 25th, each night from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. McCraw advised that aircraft in some cases would be flying at altitudes as low as 300’ and people needed to be made aware of what they were doing – spraying for mosquitoes over the 29 counties affected by Ike.
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