Senator Rises to Senate Floor to Make Case for Disaster Relief Aid on Behalf of NJ

Says "A piecemeal recovery is a stalled recovery, and - in all likelihood -- a failed recovery"

CLICK HERE for Video of the Senator's Remarks

WASHINGTON - During the United States Senate's consideration of the emergency appropriations bill, which would provide $60.4 billion to states effected by Hurricane Sandy, U.S. Senator Menendez (D-NJ) spoke on the Senate Floor to urge his colleagues to pass the Sandy Relief Package quickly and in its entirety.

Menendez, who will frequent the Senate Floor throughout the week to work with his colleagues to pass the package, said "just because scenes of the damage are no longer showing in living rooms across the country, doesn't mean that the recovery is over... now is not the time for the federal government to walk away."

Text of the Senator's Full Remarks As Prepared for Delivery are Below:

*** Note: the photos referenced below can be found in this gallery HERE. For high-res photos, please contact Menendez Press ***

I rise today for the people of New Jersey whose lives have been turned upside down by Super-storm Sandy.

I rise for families and small businesses still trying to recover; for homeowners in Little Ferry; shopkeepers in Moonachie; for every family who lost property and possessions and homes in Union Beach, in Seaside Heights, and all along the Jersey Shore.

[PHOTO #1]

I rise for this resident in Pleasantville who - you can see from this photograph - pretty much lost everything, but he was optimistic and hopeful that he would be able to rebuild.

This Sandy Relief package is for him. And I rise today, M. President, for the 40 New Jerseyans who lost their lives in this powerful, devastating, destructive storm.

As we come to this floor in the face of that tragic loss of life, I know all of my colleagues join me in offering our thoughts and prayers to the loved ones of the victims of Super Storm Sandy.

I hope all of my colleagues will join me in casting a vote that tells those families that they are not alone; that we're all in this together; a vote that says that we are ready as a nation to help families, businesses, and communities recover.

I join with Senators Lautenberg, Gillibrand, and Schumer - and every Senator from affected states -- to thank the President and the Administration for the request of $60 billion in aid to help our states begin the rebuilding process.

The Sandy Relief Package before us is not enough, but it is a start. A good start.

The damage we saw after Hurricane Sandy is difficult to describe. In part this is because this was not only a powerful storm, but it was an incredibly massive storm.

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We felt the greatest impact in New Jersey and New York, but as you can see in this photo the storm obscures almost all of the Northeast in this satellite photo.

The numbers are staggering across the region. In New Jersey we lost 40 people in the storm. Based on preliminary estimates over 300,000 homes in New Jersey were damaged and over 20,000 homes were destroyed or made uninhabitable, but we fear the final numbers will be much higher.

The preliminary damage estimate provided by the state is now up to $36.9 billion in damage, but everyone expects that this number will rise.

These are the numbers. They may be a way to quantify the damage, but they fail to paint a picture of what we have seen throughout the state: the level of destruction, the faces of the many thousands of displaced people who find themselves homeless and with basically nothing left from their homes - their possessions, their keepsakes gone.

Entire neighborhoods -- where several generations of families lived in close-knit communities -- gone.

Thousands of decades-old small businesses ruined, their owners unsure if they will have the ability or the means to rebuild.

We are getting more damage numbers, but the human toll is truly incalculable.

The sheer scope of the damage is also difficult to fathom, but to get a better sense of that we have compiled some pictures that I would like to show you. I want to thank the Star Ledger, New Jersey's largest newspaper for helping me compile these images to tell the story of the devastation Sandy caused to our great state.

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This is the Mantoloking Bridge which crossed Barnegat Bay and connected Brick with Mantoloking before the storm.

And here it is after the storm.

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As you can see in this picture the storm surge ripped a gash right through Mantoloking.

The relief package we're debating today will help us repair this bridge, as well as the some of the surrounding homes that were clearly lost and part of the highway that will need to be rebuilt.

And it will help us defend this community from the fear of this happening again -- of part of the town literally being ripped out.

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While much of the damage was on the Jersey Shore, northern New Jersey communities like Little Ferry and, as seen in this photo, Moonachie saw extensive river flooding when a berm failed. Private property damage to both towns has been estimated to exceed $15 million. This bill will help these people rebuild and provide the state the resources it needs to build the berm back stronger.

In Sayreville, this is the third time in three years they have experienced severe flooding. In this picture Mei Zhu surveys the damage inside her home.

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The foundations of some homes were ripped away, causing fear of physical collapse. Other homes were condemned, and residents were told to leave. According to construction officials, the borough has a list of 39 homes with collapsed foundations and 246 other homes that were severely damaged.

After these repeated floods many are now asking for their homes to be bought out, but an additional $55 million is needed to allow these residents to move on. This bill has the resources needed to allow the state to fund these buy outs and allow Sayreville to deal with the new climate realities.

Here are two pictures of Union Beach New Jersey a working class town that could not afford the local $30 to $40 million match for an Army Corps beach engineering project.

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In this first photo, you can see the storm devastated entire neighborhoods. Rebuilding defenses only to the standard that existed before the storm will just give us more of the same in the next storm. If we don't do things differently, we shouldn't expect anything different.

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In this next photo, you can see houses were crushed by the storm surge.

Yes, we'll help these homeowners rebuild, but if we don't rebuild smarter, better, and with stronger coastal protections, we'll be back here again after the next storm paying the same price both in terms of human suffering and federal funds.

This storm proves what the Army Corps of Engineers, academic studies, and local community officials have been telling us for years.

Beach engineering works.It protects lives, protects property, and saves us money in the long run.

This next image is what you can see by helicopter all up and down the Jersey Shore. This is Ortley Beach where many homes were destroyed and others were encased in sand.

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Hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans had their commutes disrupted because of the storm -- every single NJ Transit rail line was affected. Most service has been restored, but even today the Port Authority's PATH terminal at Hoboken is inoperable and will not be back on line for some time, affecting the commutes, the lives, and the pocketbooks of 30,000 passengers who use that station every weekday.

This closure has hurt many local small businesses and is forcing some workers to take a 6:30 bus every morning instead of taking an 8AM train.

Super Storm Sandy caused an estimated $7 billion in damage to transit systems across the region, disrupting not only people's commutes but taking time from them to spend with their families.

[PHOTO #10]

Here is a picture from a security camera showing how corrosive sea water rushed into the PATH station at Hoboken.

The salt water has been pumped out and the silt has been dug out, but electrical equipment will need to be replaced and rebuilt before we will see the tens of thousands of riders who rely on this station there again.

Other than the destruction wrought by the storm surge itself, arguably the biggest impact of the storm was the loss of power.

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At the outage peak, approximately two-thirds of the state was without power. Ten days after the storm, ten percent of the state was still without power. Without power, these customers did not have heat despite temperatures in the low 40's.

Of the 40 New Jersey deaths, about half were directly related to the loss of power including oxygen machines shutting off, people falling in the dark, carbon monoxide poisoning from generators, and hypothermia.

Fully restoring power was a herculean task requiring utility crews from as far away as Oklahoma and Quebec to help local line workers.

The Jersey Shore was the epicenter of the destruction caused by Super Storm Sandy, as the storm made landfall near Atlantic City. From Sandy Hook to Cape May, tens of millions of people visit the Jersey Shore every year, providing an annual $38 billion in revenue to thousands of businesses annually.

Here you can see the tremendous damage at the iconic Casino Pier at Seaside Heights.

[PHOTO 12]

This photo shows more than just a mangled roller coaster. It symbolizes the destruction of an entire community...the small businesses that rely on this attraction and fuel this shore community.

New Jersey small businesses suffered a combined $8.3 billion in damages, according to preliminary analyses. Here in Seaside Heights many shore businesses were devastated.

[PHOTO 13]

Here in Bay Head, a salon has its flood-damaged furniture piled out front awaiting removal.

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And here is a business owner cleaning up after flooding at the Elsy Auto Repair in Newark.

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I wanted to walk through these photos to give my colleagues and fellow Americans a sense of the damage we have seen throughout my home state, but what I have shown you still does not do justice to the full impact of the storm or the devastation people went through. Every part of New Jersey was affected by the storm and we need your help to recover.

Unfortunately, there are those who are saying the cost to help families rebuild and recover is too much; that it should be reduced; that in this emergency, unlike many other similar emergencies in the past, we should do something smaller and wait to do the rest later.

Those who make such arguments could not be more wrong.

You can't rebuild half a PATH station -- a little now, and a little more sometime in the future.

You can't permanently repair half the Mantoloking Bridge - half-a-bridge is not a bridge at all.

You can't hire a contractor to rebuild half a house or restore half a community.

You need the money in place to rebuild entire projects and entire areas to ensure that families and businesses devastated by the storm can recover.

Right now there are tens of thousands of small business owners trying to decide whether to reopen or pack it in.

They need to see a full federal commitment right now to know that they will have the resources and the customers they need to make it.

Half a loaf, or a wait and see commitment is simply not good enough.

I don't want our small businesses to pack up and move on. I know Governor Christie doesn't want them to move on either. We want them to recover and stay in New Jersey.

Disaster reimbursement from FEMA and agencies like the Department of Transportation only flows when a project is completed. That makes the spending seem slow, but actually the rebuilding happens more quickly.

Local communities are able to budget and contract for a project knowing the money will be there at the end.

If we wait -- if we don't put up the money, thensome of the rebuilding will also wait. A piecemeal recovery is a stalled recovery, and - in all likelihood -- a failed recovery.

The need is clear for passage of the Sandy Relief Package for my state and for all the states this devastating storm left in ruin in its wake.

We have just gone through an election at the heart of which we debated the role of government in our lives.

I would submit we need to focus on what government does to help build the spirit of community that we have seen in action in the aftermath of this devastating storm.

Americans across the country were riveted by the stories of the immediate aftermath of the storm -- the pictures of entire communities under water, homes moved blocks down the road, homes and train cars blocking federal highways, hospitals closed, gas lines miles long, people waiting hours for fuel to run generators and keep their homes heated, weeks of fuel rationing, and no transit or Amtrak service for the entire region for people to get to work or visit their families.

Without a doubt, those were trying times for New Jersey.

But now, just because those scenes are no longer showing in living rooms across the country, doesn't mean that the recovery is over.

Thousands of families are still displaced from their homes and will be for months to come.

Transit lines are still out. Community infrastructure still has to be rebuilt.

Now is not the time for the federal government to walk away.

It's more crucial now than ever for the federal government to help devastated communities rebuild, to help families get the assistance they need to repair their homes and put their lives back together.

And I for one will not rest until the rebuilding is done.

This is one country -- the United States of America -- that's why when there was destruction along the entire Gulf Coast with Katrina, or a tornado in Joplin, Missouri, or crop destruction in the Midwest, we have come together to support these communities.

The only difference now is the location and extent of the destruction. Now it's time for my fellow Americans to stand with New Jersey.

New Jersey has been battered, but we are not broken. We are stronger and more united in our efforts to work together to recover, rebuild, and recommit ourselves to uniting around our common concerns and shared values -- rather than remain divided by our differences.

That is the lesson we learn, and together we will rebuild. And and the Garden State will bloom once again.

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