“All across the board, from the White House to the federal administration to FEMA, they’ve been very helpful.”
Gov. Abbott gives Trump administration `A-plus’ for response to Harvey
Gov. Greg Abbott gave the Trump administration, from the president on down, an “A-plus ” for its swift response to Hurricane Harvey.
Speaking on “FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace,” Abbott said, “I’ve talked to the president several times, to his Cabinet members, such as secretary of homeland security, such as the FEMA administrator, such as Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services. All across the board, from the White House to the federal administration to FEMA, they’ve been very helpful.”
On President Trump’s personal engagement, Abbott said, “It’s been extremely professional, very helpful.”
“He called and said, `Governor, whatever you need you’ve got.’” Abbott said. “And this is the quickest turnaround I’ve seen from the time that a governor made a disaster declaration and getting that granted. What that means for the lay person out there is that, because the president so swiftly granted my application for disaster declaration, it means it triggered all the resources of FEMA to help Texas and what you will see over the coming weeks and months is a tremendous rebuilding from all this damage and a large part of that will be because of FEMA helping out.”
“So we are very appreciative of the way the president and the White House has responded to this catastrophe,” Abbott said.
Appearing on “ABC This Week,” Abbott was asked by George Stephanopoulos whether the president’s plan to visit Texas to inspect hurricane damage would help or hinder the response and recovery.
Abbott said that depends on where the president visits and the course of the storm, which he said has been difficult to predict, but that Corpus Christi was already in the clean-up phase and if the president visited there it would not hinder that effort.
Appearing on the same show, Thomas Bossert, the president’s homeland security adviser, said the president would only visit when it would not interfere with the state’s response to the hurricane.
On “Face the Nation,” Bossert praised Abbott’s leadership working in tandem with federal officials before the storm hit, paving the way for a disaster declaration even before landfall.
Abbott, who also appeared on “Face the Nation,” said this may be the worst flooding in Houston history, and, while he could not verify the figure, “there may be as many as ten million people under flash-flood warnings that could be in harm’s way.”
He said that overnight, the state has provided “high profile military vetches that will be manned by the National Guard. We are also providing water rescue boats as well as helicopters. Both state and local agencies are providing every resources possible to everybody in need.”
“This is an all-in all-resources-across-the-state effort,” he said.
Abbott said Texas was also receiving help from the neighboring states of Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico and “even as far as Gov. (Andrew) Cuomo of New York.”
Wallace asked Abbott about Harvey’s impact on oil production, noting that the Gulf Coast is home to about a fifth of the nation’s crude oil production and almost half of its oil refinery facilities.
“I’ve spoken with leaders of some of these companies and, listen, they are very experienced in dealing with challenges like this,” Abbott said. “There are hurricanes and tropical storms that pass through the Gulf region all the time. They were very well prepared for it. They were hunkered down for it, and contained their facilities, and they have the ability to ratchet it back up fairly quickly.”
“This will be probably a one or two-week downturn period for them,” the governor said. “But they were prepared for this and they are prepared to ramp up very swiftly.”
“We were able to see this storm coming a week or more in advance and get a lot of pre-positioning taken care of whether it was the federal assets or the state assists or the local assets,” Abbott said. “When it comes to preparation, we have never been more prepared for a storm than we were this time.
