Billy Tauzin Quotes

You can't vote that water out of the city of New Orleans.

We owe it to the flood victims of New Orleans to give them truthful answers as to why this event took place and to assure our citizens that tragedies like this will never happen again.

After the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the shutdown of much of New York City by Sandy in 2012, and now the devastation wrought on Texas by Harvey, the U.S. can and should do better.

Whatever solutions there are for flood control need to be bipartisan.

For cyclone-proof energy infrastructure, we would definitely explore all possibilities, including international support.

State ownership of flood control efforts will not completely eliminate the problem but can substantially reduce it.

Do we pour $40 billion into grandiose Louisiana engineering projects or do we instead put up no trespassing- signs in the areas below sea level? All are hard choices with various merits and pains. The important thing, however, is for America to decide whether the current policy of inaction is really the way we want to deal with the worst natural disaster in our history.

Venice, Italy, survives 365 days out of every year in water; New Orleans can survive a few days of water if it has to.

New Orleans has to learn to live with water rather than in fear of water, and we need a master plan that shows us how to do this. It's so critical that we send a signal to everyone in the country that we're serious about rebuilding New Orleans.

The nation’s disaster mechanisms do not seem to be in the hands of those who know how to use them.

There must be an authority at the state level to coordinate flood mitigation projects in upstream watersheds. Additionally, this state entity could bring together multiple stakeholders to benefit all communities in the region.

It is difficult to conduct flood mitigation at the federal level because of the bureaucracy and inconsistent funding. Texans are better able to lead this effort at the state level rather than rely on the federal government.

Prosperous communities are much better able to survive hurricanes or other natural disasters because they have greater resources, both public and private, to fall back upon.

However deep you dig a well it affords no refuge in the time of flood.

Two thirds of federal disaster aid is weather related,and though we cannot prevent bad weather, we are getting better at predicting it. The Commerce Department's NDRI will help save lives and protect property. We will be working closely with FEMA, the Interior Department and other federal agencies, with state and local governments and with our nation's businesses.

First of all, I don't think that America is truly prepared for a biological or a chemical attack. However, we are moving in the right direction.

We've certainly learned a lot of lessons from Katrina, from Rita. Rita was better than Katrina. We're doing a better job planning. We're closer - more closely aligned with the Department of Defense. These things would be positive things if we were to have another attack.

In my view, it is important that our national government exercise leadership to improve the resiliency of the entire nation in the face of continuing extreme weather.

One of the essential elements of government responsibility is to communicate effectively to the American people, especially in time of a potential terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

I was a rust repairer. I was a rust repairer and full-time survivor. I survived all the major earthquakes, and the Titanic, and several air crash.

And one of the things we did here was we put the maximum amount of money up front in those cities that were at the greater risk, but that doesn't mean that we keep rebuilding the same security over and over again.

As a country in the path of typhoons and in the Pacific Rim of Fire, we must be prepared as the latest technology permits to anticipate natural calamities when that is possible, to extend immediate and effective relief when it is not.

We cannot stop natural disasters but we can arm ourselves with knowledge: so many lives wouldn't have to be lost if there was enough disaster preparedness.

Haiti is always talking about decentralization and nothing has been so obvious, perhaps a weakness, as the centralized nature of Haitian society as being revealed by the earthquake. I mean, they lost all these medical training programs because they didn't have them anywhere else.

For political and bureaucratic reasons, governments at all levels are telling far less to the public than to insiders about how to prepare for and behave in the initial chaos of a mass-casualty event.