Hurricane Harvey resulted in the worst flooding disaster in the United States, House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul said Wednesday, but the response has been "one of the best-coordinated recoveries that I've seen."
"First of all, my governor submitted a disaster [declaration] to get FMEA pre-positioned on the ground early on to respond to this enormous, devastating event, that I think the state has never seen before," the Texas Republican told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" program, noting that he has been in his House position through Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Sandy as well.
McCaul noted that the National Weather Service has had to add a new color code, pink, to designate 50 inches or more of rain, a matter that's never been contemplated before.
"I'm traveling from Austin to Houston to see the devastation," said the lawmaker. "It's important to remember a lot of people are hurting right now and out of homes, flooding in homes, massive. It is going to go out to Port Arthur, Beaumont and now Louisiana."
Flooding closed the nation's largest oil refinery Wednesday in Port Arthur, Texas, and McCaul noted that overall, the industry's Texas refineries provide a third of the nation's energy supply, making the hurricane a matter of national security.
"There are a lot of moving parts here but I have to say very well coordinated response to a very massive disaster," said McCaul.
He said he thinks moving forward, the city of Houston and its capability to handle floods will be examined, but at the same time "we've never seen a hurricane that's hit multiple times feeding in the ocean and returning and hitting again with this massive amount of rain."
The lawmaker continued that he's never seen a situation like in Houston, where people are chest-deep in water in the streets.
"There have been 7,000 rescues, though," said McCaul. "I have to say very important the fatality rate, we don't want to see one life lost, but its relatively low compared to, say the 1900 hurricane, where my grandfather was in where they lost 10,000 people during that hurricane."
McCaul said he met with President Donald Trump in Texas on Tuesday, and was happy to see him there, and glad that he stayed out of the way of the recovery efforts, and that he promised to give the state what it needs to recover.
Moving forward, the lawmaker said there will be many ways for people to continue helping Texas recover from the disaster.
"This won't be a matter of days or months," he said. "It will probably beaa year recovery. I think the volunteers will be very important ... we're still in the rescue and recovery operation. And I've had outpouring of calls all across this great nation to help this great state of Texas and I'm very appreciative."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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