fbi is now investigating how the small company white fish energy landed a $300 million contract to rebuild the island s power grid. a contract that is now in the process of being canceled. nbc s gabe gutierrez remains in san juan. craig, good afternoon. fema administrator brock long saying the call this hurricane season historic is an understatement. he says nearly 4 million hurricane survivors have registered for fema assistance and that is more than hurricanes katrina, wilma and sandy combined. there are questions still being raised about white fish energy. that controversial $300 million contract that has drawn so much scrutiny here in puerto rico. the governor on sunday asked for that contract to be canceled. the power authority is try to cancel it in the next few weeks. but there are still congressional investigations under way as to how that company was able to secure this
of course. and i think everybody here recognizes there s a lot of work to be done in puerto rico, but with your leadership sir and everybody here, we re committed to achieve thag in the long run. in the last 50 days though to put this in the context for america, from the virgin islands to california, we ve been working in 20 different states, disasters in 20 different states. in the last 50 days under the president s administration, we ve registered close to 4 million americans for individual stance. that s more than katrina, rita, wilma and sandy combined. it s been a tremendous effort. mr. president, is this bigger than anything we ve seen and yet i think our response was better than anyone has ever seen. again, we were given an a plus by the man who did this. did what you were doing for the clinton administration. and while i don t know him, i would like to thank him for what he said.
with those obstacles, we ve gone about 15,000 d.o.d. personnel in puerto rico, about 2,000 fema personnel, hhs and others. the response is there. do we need to do a lot more? of course we do. i think everybody over here recognizes there s a lot of work to be done in puerto rico. with your leadership, sir, with everybody over here, we re committed to achieving that in the long run. brock, in the last 50 days, though, to put this into context for america, from the virgin islands to california, we ve been working in 20 different states, disasters in 20 different states. in the last 50 days under the president s administration we ve registered close to 4 million americans for individual assistance. that s more than katrina, rita, wilma and sandy combined. it s been a tremendous effort. mr. president this was actually bigger than anything we ve seen. and yet i think our response was
more on the recovery efforts. reporter: this recovery effort will be ongoing for months and years to come. right now, the stage that we re in is the piles of trash that you see in neighborhood after neighborhood where we are as an area northwest of houston, a neighborhood called nor chester, and if i could, i want to point out right over here, this home was built up, specifically so that the flooding would not hit it. it was built up several feet, but like all of the other homes in this neighborhood, it still got water inside. the latest numbers from fema are that 573,000 people, more than a half million, have requested assistance, that s for their homes, that s for their cars, and other things. i believe near 200,000 have been approved. this is going to be ongoing for months. and for years. we know that congress, the aid is pending there. they ll need more than that. 190 billion i think was the latest estimate that the governor gave, which would be, like, katrina and sandy
says his city is 95% dry and mostly operational. still floodwaters from hurricane harvey could take another two weeks to fully recreed in some areas. the storm killed 38 people and tens of thousands are still living in temporary shelters. the. graphic size is far larger than katrina and sandy combined. we have over 5 million people affected in this, it s the swath all the way from corpus christi to beaumont. so it s going to need more than what was funded for katrina. people in southeast texas are returning to their homes to look at the damage. one woman got a welcome surprise amid all that devastation.