so, mr. president, thank you. thank you. welcome to texas. i appreciate it. it s so nice, governor, and it s really my honor. this is a very special place and a special state, and senator cruz and senator cornyn, thank you very much, senator cornyn, for being here. we appreciate it. i know it was hard to get here for both of you. you were trapped in various locations, but we e appreciate you both p being here. i want to thank my staff, my cabinet. we have quite a few of our cabinet here, ben carson, obviously, from hud and tom price and linda mcmahon, small business, which is now big business because when you add them all up you ll be helping a lot of the people in texas and doing a fantastic job. thank you very much. we have had a tremendous group of folks, our acting director, thank you very much, for the job you ve done. and a minute who s really become very famous on television in the last couple days, mr. long, we
coast guard. mr. president, good afternoon, sir. this is where your coast guard is at its best. we have a bias for action. we are here in the state of texas to support the state of texas, the federal emergency management agency. we have coast guard men and women from across the country, capabilities, response, management specialists and they re on deck, sir, to get after the task at hand. it would be remiss for me not to tell you that. you look at landfall, phase one, we ve seen local folks. we ll speak more about that. up in houston, we are all ware of the challenge there. dealing with the weather in the next couple days will be a challenge. average rainfall for the year is 50 inches. we know what that looks like. i can tell you the coast guard, department of homeland security team, the dodd, national guard has e spent sunday and monday with the governor in different locations. we are getting better at every
puts in excuse me. disasterassistance.gov. i apologize. disasterassistance.gov, the fema individual assistant system. there s ways, looking to volunteer in nboad.org. also within the state of texas, one star foundation dot org. also and leave it at that, or redcross.org as well. thank you, and at this time this concludes the press briefing. thank you very much. thank you. all right. there you have it. the president briefed by federal officials on relief efforts in texas after hurricane harvey. you saw the fema administrator there and other officials, coast guard officials as well. back out to see how things are on it s ground in the houston area. ed lavandera is live in galveston. ed, yesterday we saw you traveling around with the national guard troops. so what are you seeing today? it still looks pretty bad where
and those who just love meat. oscar mayer deli fresh. sweet! thousands of rescues happening in parts of texas under water because of tropical storm harvey. south of houston, the levee at columbia lakes breached and residents told to get out. you can see the notice on-screen right there. our meteorologist is at the severe weather center in atlanta. what did you tell us about what we re seeing right now? this is a dire situation. when you have levees breached. absolutely. a slow motion disaster. when you see flooding events. of course, historic rainfall has already come down. we ll see sunshine come back in
this is a situation that people have grown up in texas have never seen in their lives. this is new. as governor greg abbott said, it is going to lead to a new normal for a living them as part of the country for some time to come. trace: it has affected everybody. it has affected your sports teams. it has affected the culture. i mean, this thing has run through your state with reckless abandon. yeah, it s terrible. in the face of that, you know what some of the are still smiling, and it s the spirit, i m telling you it s a spirit of texas. we are going to get through this together and emerge even better than we were before. trace: greg onofrio, good of you to join us, sir. thank you so much. i appreciate it, trace. trace: large swaths of texas are underwater and the rains could continue, as you just heard, days, right? the winds of tropical storm