A former response commander during Hurricane Katrina addressed the response to Hurricane Harvey on Monday, recommending that officials "scale it up."
"It's going to get worse before it gets better," former Joint Task Force Katrina Commander Russel Honore said on Fox Business Network Monday. "At the same time the good Samaritans, what we call in Louisiana the 'Cajun Navy,' citizens have stepped up and after every disaster, regardless of what people tell you, more people are saved by neighbors and citizens than they are by first responders."
Honore addressed the amount of responders to the disaster, recommending that federal officials "scale it up," and referring to his experience during Hurricane Katrina.
"In terms of scale, we had 40,000 National Guard troops in Katrina … we had 20,000 federal troops, over 245 helicopters and B-5s … right now this is a lot bigger area, a lot more people than Katrina and the challenge is going to be bigger."
He added that one of the first priorities when rebuilding after the storm should be the electrical grid and the infrastructure supporting it.
"A lot of these small, rural areas did not take the grid down, so you watched over the weekend and transformers popping and when that happens, that entire system has to be built."
The longer it takes Texas to restore the electrical grid once Hurricane Harvey subsides, the worse small businesses in rural areas will be hurt.
"You know the old numbers, 40 percent of small businesses don't survive these events because the grid doesn't come up, they don't have the workers and the people that they used to work for are not open. So the quicker they can find a model to get businesses up, the quicker people can get back and get the schools up. But we've got to find a different way of doing it."
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