Jeb Hensarling Quotes

I sympathize with the victims of Hurricane Sandy and believe that those who purchased flood insurance should have their claims paid.

You buy a house and you get it checked out and you feel like you've kind of made your mark here in some way. And then an act of God just comes up the coast and has the potential to just completely wipe it clean. Weather like that is certainly humbling.

If a hurricane strikes, we can blame the president for not being there; we can blame Congress and FEMA; we can blame the state governments; but in the end, it's the mayors and the local city governments that have to be prepared for emergencies and be prepared to act.

NBC News found that FEMA has redrawn maps even for properties that have repeatedly filed claims for flood losses from previous storms. At least some of the properties are on the secret 'repetitive loss list' that FEMA sends to communities to alert them to problem properties.

FEMA says that it does not factor in previous losses into its decisions on applications to redraw the flood zones.

The devastating Hurricane Katrina, which revealed to the entire world the great helplessness in dealing with the destruction caused by this hurricane, because of the tremendous attrition of the American army's resources in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This was the most anticipated natural disaster in history.

Flooding is the costliest and most common cause of property damage, which is why federal flood insurance should be affordable and accessible to all.

In New York, FEMA granted the Mamaroneck Beach & Yacht Club's request to be remapped from the high-risk flood zone in August 2012 - just two months before the club was damaged and its outbuildings destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, which stacked up yachts at its docks like pick-up sticks.

I've never seen a tornado and I've lived in Oklahoma City basically my whole life. It's not like we're infested with them on a continual basis. But you learn to live with the warnings. And you learn what to do if one is coming your way. And then you cross your fingers and make the best judgments you can.

I did live through Katrina and also Hurricane Rita, which hit Lake Charles. Interestingly, when Katrina hit, they evacuated and Lake Charles was one of the evacuation destinations. We opened up the civic center of the city to the evacuees and provided them free medical and psychiatric care there.

Ladies and gentlemen, I wish I had better news for you but we are facing a storm that most of us have feared. This is a threat that we've never faced before.

We're lucky, real lucky. Our friends lost their house. We just had some burning embers put holes in the screens.

But I warn my colleagues that we will fail in our efforts to protect the homeland if we do not take additional steps to avoid a trade-off between protecting ourselves against terrorists attacks and preparing for and responding to natural disasters.

I think we're in good shape, but the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina is in some small way mitigated by the fact that we now have more people talking about it, thinking about it and working on it, so that we will be more vigilant and ready.

While natural disasters capture headlines and national attention short-term, the work of recovery and rebuilding is long-term.

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.

One of the things government should be around for is to deal with catastrophes. It should do that well. To me, that's a government function, and we shouldn't be playing political games with it.

So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped.

Second, there are two problems with respect to mobile homes in particular. One is we obviously don't want to put them in a flood plain, because if there's another flood, you're going to lose the mobile home.

I can only hope the federal aid made available today will be sufficient in our recovery efforts, and pray that our citizens continue to be safe from the fallout of this dangerous natural disaster.

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.

Homeowners and business owners across the country agreed to pay premiums, communities agreed to adopt building codes to mitigate flood dangers, and the Federal Government agreed to provide insurance coverage to policyholders after a disaster.

The fact is that it is reasonable for us to say that there is going to be an emergency that happens in this country that we cannot budget for. Katrina is an example.

The bottom line is that weather events not only threaten private property and family budgets, but they also can decimate public resources and government coffers.