Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts

This is Senator Barack Obama and today is Thursday, September 8th, 2005. Welcome to my first podcast. You know in the future we are going to be discussing a wide variety of issues and answer questions from constituents, but today, I think like most of you, I've spent a lot of time thinking about Hurricane Katrina and so that is going to be the focus of today's first pocast.

You know on Monday I had the opportunity to visit the Houston Astrodome in the Reliant Center where the people who had been trapped in the New Orleans Superdome and the Convention Center are now being housed. And I have to say that the city of Houston and the entire state of Texas has done a terrific job in making sure that these folks are being accommodated. You know as I wandered around I had a chance to meet mothers who had been separated from their babies, adults who were mourning the loss of elderly parents. I heard about the descriptions of the heat and the filth and the fear that people had experienced while they were waiting to be evacuated and people had an overriding sense of relief to be in a safe and stable place. They were also a little bit shell shocked. And then I had a chance to talk to one woman and she said "You know, we had nothing before the Hurricane and now we have even less." I think that really describes in so many ways what we've been witnessing unfold over the last several weeks.

This was a crisis for everybody-- throughout Louisiana, throughout Mississippi, which has been tremendously hard hit and hasn't gotten as much attention, parts of Alabama. All people, rich and poor, white and black, have been adversely effected by this crisis of biblical proportions. What did become apparent last week though, I believe was the degree to which the poor were especially hard hit. It's no accident, I think, that those who we saw in the Superdome were folks who mostly were below the poverty line. They didn't have SUVs that they could fill up with $100 worth of gas and drive to a hotel and check in with a credit card. They just didn't have those resources available. And, so in some sense, they represented communities that had been abandoned before the Hurricane. And that's something that I think we're going to have to reflect on over the long term.

How do we close this divide between the wealthy and the poor? How do we make certain that those who don't have resources have the resources to respond to any crisis, not just this one. In the short term though we've just got a lot of work to do to help families get back on their feet. We're going to have to give them the help they need in terms of housing, making sure that they've got employment opportunities or at least have some basic income to support themselves, that their children are in school and that the entire Gulf Coast region rebuilds. Congress has already allocated 10.5 billion dollars. That money will have been used up as of today and I think that gives you some sense of the magnitude of the crisis that we're facing. It's been announced by congressional leadership that we are going to try to allocate another 50 billion dollars over the next week. The costs ultimately are going to be astronomical. And that's why it's going to be so important for private organizations to fill in some of the gaps even as government tries to catch up with the crisis that has occurred.

One of the things that I have been encouraged about in the midst of this tragedy has been the outpouring of generosity and support from volunteers. In the state of Illinois we have already indicated that we are going to be accepting at least 10,000 families that have been displaced. We are identifying housing now and getting airlifts to bring people into Illinois. This Saturday I will be going down with a chartered plane to take some doctors to provide services in Mississippi, an area that's been devastated and where there just aren't a lot of medical facilities right now. I was with President Clinton and former President Bush down in Houston to help them announce a Katrina fund and we're going to be working really hard to make sure that we raise money for these organizations.

And so I hope that everybody who's listening has dug deep into their pockets to make sure that they can support these relief efforts. If you haven't already given or you can give some more, I would like to see people make a contribution to either the Bush-Clinton Katrina fund which is at bushclintonkatrinafund.com or the American Red Cross at redcross.org. Those are two organizations where contributions can immediately be made.

Let me just make one last point that I think is going to be critical and that is the fact that like so many of you, I was horrified that we seemed so unprepared for a disaster that had been predicted for decades. It's going to be absolutely critical to make certain that over the next several weeks, months and over the next year that we examine how the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA are coordinating disaster relief. This was their first test and I don't think it's partisan to say that they failed that test. We did not have a plan for a disaster of this magnitude that was acceptable and although not everybody across this country is vulnerable to hurricanes, we're all vulnerable to terrorist attacks. If this is how we respond to a situation where we've got four or five days notice of a hurricane coming, how are we going to respond it there was a dirty bomb planted in Chicago or New York or Los Angeles? How can we make sure that law and order is maintained? How do we make sure that communications systems are operable? How do we make sure that everybody, not just those who can leave on their own, but everybody is able to get to safety? Those are questions that we are going to have to be asking and I think that it's going to be a independent investigation that is going to be required in order to do the job. But, in the immediate term, we are going to have to just make sure that we stabilize the situation. You can help. I have enormous confidence in the American people and their ability to come together at times where unity is needed and I hope that this is one of those times. Thanks very much.