Brock Long: Harvey Is a ‘Wake up Call’ for Local Officials; People Can’t Depend Solely on FEMA

MARGARET BRENNAN: Now when it comes to Harvey thirty-three trillion gallons of water dumped on U.S. soils has been called a one-in-one-thousand-year event. Do we need to be prepared for more extreme weather like this and— and is the onus on the states rather than the federal government?

WILLIAM “BROCK” LONG: So I think that’s an excellent question. And I need state representatives, state legislative officials, and local elected officials to— to listen up, it’s— this is a call. It is a wake-up call for this country for local and state-elected officials to give their governors and their emergency management directors, you know, the full budgets that they need to be fully staffed to design rainy day funds, to have your own standalone individual assistance and public assistance programs. This is a wake-up call. People cannot depend solely on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to, you know, be responsible for a majority. You know states do a lot of work. They do a lot of work, but I think that we all have to collectively sit down after this event and figure out how to collectively improve as we all—

MARGARET BRENNAN: Are you saying— are you saying there, Sir, that Texas should have done more to prepare?

WILLIAM “BROCK” LONG: No, no. Texas is a model. Governor Abbott, Chief (INDISTINCT), those guys are a model. What we need are for elected officials at all levels of government to hit the reset button, sit down, evaluate where their programs are with their state emergency management directors as well as their local emergency management directors and make sure that they have everything they need to increase their levels of self-sufficiency. We— we— this is a partnership. But this event is one that we’re all going to have to sit down and hit the reset button on and figure out how we collectively improve.