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CNN Sunday Morning
FEMA Begins Recovery Efforts in Flooded Houston, Texas
Aired June 10, 2001 - 08:25 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's turn back to the flooding and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is involved in the efforts to begin the recovery efforts in and around the Houston, Texas area. On the line with us right now from Denton, Texas, John McDermott with FEMA. John, bring us up to date.
JOHN MCDERMOTT, PUBLIC AFFAIRS, FEMA: Good morning, Miles.
Yes, we were activated yesterday afternoon when the declaration was issued by the president and we've been operating and we're going to be operating 24 hours a day until we get enough people down there and support. And we have people who have left last night and we have people who are leaving this morning to support the state and the counties and the cities to make sure that all the critical needs are met.
And we also activated our 800 number for teleregistration this morning. And that number is 1-800-462-9029.
O'BRIEN: All right, as we look at, by the way, some live pictures of, helicopter pictures of the situation in Houston, Texas, quite a scene there. I'm curious, Mr. McDermott, if you could -- if there are enough resources right now being used there on the scene there to help folks out.
MCDERMOTT: Well, there's enough resources and FEMA has plenty of resources to go around. It's just getting them right to the place where they're needed immediately. You know, we were communicating with the state. We were communicating with, the state in Austin has their emergency operations center going. We have, we're in constant communication with them. They're letting us know what shortfalls they may have and we're doing our best to deliver it as soon as possible and a good amount of it will be down there today.
O'BRIEN: And just going back to that toll-free number, which once again is 800-462-9029, that would be for people who might have some sort of claim?
MCDERMOTT: Yes. We're asking people who have the most serious claims to call that number right away. And that'll be open from 7:00 a.m. till 7:00 P.M. Central time. We also have a 1-800 number for the hard of hearing and that's 4 -- 1-800-462-7585. We want people to call who have the most immediate needs first. If it's a critical need, they should call their local officials, their local town who can help them first, the Red Cross or Salvation Army.
But once things settle down a little bit, they can call the 800 number and register with FEMA. And we would like them to have their name and a phone number they can be reached at if they're not in their house. And we'd also like them to have an address and their Social Security number and if they have insurance, we'd like to have that, too. So that's the basic information we'd like to get from them.
O'BRIEN: All right, John McDermott is with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, joining us from Denton, Texas. Thank you for your time, Mr. McDermott, and thanks to our affiliate KPRC for those live pictures as we were talking to him about the efforts there in Houston to recover from this flood in the wake of tropical storm Allison.
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