FEMA Director Brock Long sought to assuage any fears of a poor response from the agency similar to the one blamed for the disaster in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina as Hurricane Harvey poured rain on southeastern Texas.
In an interview with ABC News, Long said the agency was very different from the one that bungled the response to Katrina in 2005.
“FEMA is vastly different than the days of Katrina; we learned a lot from that event. Congress passed meaningful legislation through PKEMRA (the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act) to allow us the ability move forward,” Long said.
“We’ve been in the state for over 48 hours ready to help our state and local partners.”
FEMA Adm. Long on Hurricane #Harvey: “The biggest concern I have right now is the isolation that many Texas citizens are gonna face” pic.twitter.com/YPcTOp9kJt— ABC News (@ABC) August 26, 2017
Harvey made landfall Friday night as a Category 4 storm, and the National Hurricane Center reported Saturday morning the storm surge coming toward the Texas coast is a “life-threatening event.” The storm surge could be as high as 12 feet in some areas.
The storm has slowed down over land and could become a tropical storm later on Saturday, according to the center.
Harvey is expected to produce between 15 and 30 inches of rain in most areas it affects, with some areas seeing as much as 40 inches of rain.
The National Hurricane Center warned “Harvey moving slowly over Texas producing torrential rains … catastrophic flooding expected over the next few days.”
The storm may finally clear up by the middle of next week.
Long said Texans are in for a long and deadly few days.
“Unfortunately, the citizens of Texas are about to endure a very long and deadly inland event,” he said. “This system is, this is just the beginning. We’re going to see over the next 72 to 48 hours devastating rainfall; we recognize that.”
He said his biggest worry is people who chose to remain in their homes and will be isolated from the world for the next few days until water recedes.
“The biggest concern I have is the isolation many Texas citizens are going to face,” he said. “We have not built a true culture of preparedness in this country, and we got a lot of work to better prepare our citizens. Unfortunately, what scares me, or what keeps me up at night right now, is many of the citizens in Texas are going to be isolated in their houses or in their dwellings for multiple days.”
