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We think in Alabama Hurricanes on the coast,
we didn’t think that we would have 60 tornadoes
across the state and destroy sixty-four hundred
square miles of territory. We have right now the
greatest rebuilding effort in the state of Alabama
since the Civil War. We had a pretty good idea it
was going to be bad. Did not have any idea it was
as bad as it ended up being. I certainly expected to
see destruction. Places in the state that looked like
a nuclear bomb went off. We had people who lost
their houses and they are calling in, and they’re
saying I walked out of the storm shelter and I don’t
have a house anymore what am I suppose to do?
It’s very remorseful and our prayers and thoughts
are always with the families of the victims.
You know we’ve lost a tremendous amount of lives
throughout the state, due to these storms and that
always has to be at out forefront. That has been our
purpose from day one, when the federal partners
came in, is to do all we can to prevent that from
ever happening again. We have been able to assist
those survivors affected by the tornadoes in
temporary housing units. We continue to work and
place them in permanent or they are trying to
rebuild their lives at the sites they previously lived.
But again, we’ve provided rental assistance we’ve
provided funding, grants to help them move on so
it’s been a great effort. We were able to, through
FEMA, to disperse over 70 million dollars
individual assistance grants. We were able to
process over a hundred million dollars in Small
Business Administration Loans, that’s phenomenal.
We’ve not seen that in Alabama in any of our recent
disasters, or any disasters in our past, that amount of
SBA assistance given to the citizens. We’ve met our
initial priority which is to meet the needs of the
citizens. Having that Presidential Operation Clean
Sweep assisted us in removing debris faster from
those private property along with all of our partners
like the Corps, the Army Corps of Engineers, who
did fifty percent of the removal there were 9.6
million cubic yards of debris. It has been a
tremendous effort by everybody in removing the
debris which is the first thing we have to do in order
for folks to rebuild their lives again.
We had
957 Identified grids under the clean sweep program
and by facilitating a quick and expedited private
property debris removal mission it allowed us to
attack housing, it allowed us to focus our efforts on
the immediate needs of the citizens outside of the
processes, if you will, that have to take place in
order to get private property debris removal
reimbursed. One of the things out of a tragedy like
this is the awareness increases and it’s an
opportunity to inform and allow the rebuilding
effort to be improved. Better compliance with
standards, increased techniques to help the structure
survive. In this house we have a system of
redundancy we’re using metal devices and we’re
using the wall sheaving with an increased nail
pattern to prevent over turning and uplifting. As we
move forward, that’s the Key, Build Stronger and
Building Safer. We continue to work with the State
and its Mitigation program in providing assistance
and funding so safe rooms can be built. We are
committed, very intensely over the next, let’s just
say, twelve to eighteen months, helping the State
make this transition from the planning phase, into
the project development and implementation phase.
In the Long term recovery arena, we’ve got 11
communities that have signed on to work with our
state and federal partners on building
comprehensive plans. All of our affected
communities are now, you know, sitting at the table
thinking of ways to do things different. It might be
small or it might be big but it fits their local needs.
When I first got here you could drive through the
Communities and they were devastated. You could
see the volunteers passing out food passing out
water, clothes I mean it’s been a tremendous effort.
Without the partnership of these faith based and
non-profit organizations we could not do our job so,
it’s been, I’m telling you Alabama has done a great
job. We’re hard working people and we know it’s
going to take hard work but we’ve never shied away
from that and we’re not going to do it now.