(thoughtful music begins) - The sidewalks, the road.

They were completely upheaved.

There was McAdam road.

Whether it was a, a concrete base from years ago or what, The dyke was gone, the dyke had broken exactly where they stopped the mental pilings The house was split.

The bricks were torn apart.

There was a separation between the ceiling and the walls in the baby's room.

And it just...

It looked like somebody dropped a bomb.

My husband said we'd never be able to live here.

It would never be fixed.

I was sure it could be fixed, that he was just being pessimistic.

This is a staircase that I thought would've been perfect for somebody's wedding.

I mean, it just looked like it should have a bride walking down the stairs.

(music box plays sad tune) (sad lullaby continues) (machines whirs) (wood crunches) (glass breaks) (wood crunches) (machine whirs) (glass breaks) (wood crunches) - The government was not equipped to meet a disaster of this sort.

That's hindsight but it's a simple fact.

I could tell you about my own ignorance.

I think that if anything comes out of this, one of the things I hope and pray will come out of it is a capacity on the part of government at all levels to deal with this kind of situation for our fellow Americans in a much more constructive fashion than we have dealt with it, uh, in this case.

Even though we didn't have all the answers I feel it was terribly important for us as government officials to talk to the flood victims who were struggling with the aftermath of the flood that struck Wyoming valley in Pennsylvania.

These people had received emergency help from the government, a variety of grants and loans, trailers to live in temporarily.

But the really important problems had to do with what had happened to their homes and to their neighborhoods and how this would affect the rest of their lives.

- If I understand correctly that the people whose properties had to be bulldozed will get pre-flood equity and those whose properties were damaged, but didn't have to be bulldozed will receive nothing but SBA grants or loans rather?

Is that what you're telling us?

- I'm saying that under the provisions of the legislation, only those properties, which are acquired by the local redevelopment authority will be paid to pre-flood value because in all other cases, there is not a-- (audience clamors) - Ultimately, development does not take my house.

And I have nothing to go back to.

What do you want me to do then?

- My home doesn't look too bad on the outside.

It's filthy dirty, but the inside all I have in there is two by fours.

- I think that, uh, how the house looks on the outside is no measure of the extended damage.

- Would you tell me what your recommendation-- - Well, I put down that demolition is at the discretion of the owner.

To rehabilitate the house would be very costly.

- Well, I'm going to board it up and it can sit here because I don't have it, the money.

And I don't feel that, that I should put that kind of money into a house that's so badly damaged that was worth at the pre flood market.

Let's say 27 or whatever.

And then to put 30,000 into repairs and still be in the same house.

(thoughtful music plays) (thoughtful music continues) (thoughtful music continues) - The odor of the oil is still so strong that, um, you can't breathe in the house and we've scrubbed it down and we've washed it down.

And after we did that, all the walls fell down and the ceilings fell down and it's, it's just one big, awful mess.

- Tell about the walls and the front.

- Well, we have everything growing on the walls, on the, um, it's the beans because there are no walls and ceilings left.

- Oh, there's a lot of people.

There's a lot of people just on our street that just got up and walked away and they're living elsewhere and they haven't done anything to their property.

They just shut the, I couldn't shut the door because when it happened, when the army went in when we had to break our front door down to get in the house and we went in there was such a gas odor that the army was afraid that the house was gonna blow up that they smashed my windows and doors upstairs and downstairs and everything was floating.

It was very sad.

- I just hope they knock it down.

It's awful.

- Is it your home?

- Yes.

What's was our home.

It was a pretty nice home.

One time.

Believe it or not.

Added on and everything else.

Right, Hope?

- Why do you wanna knock it down?

- Because I don't like it.

The condition is awful.

What, what they want now to just fix it as it is I could get a brand new home.

- Well, I don't know what to do.

I really don't know.

If I do knock it down, then what?

- Then what?

- We've lost everything in it, but we can still re repair it.

And only thing I want to know, can I go and rebuild it or I don't wanna invest anymore money and lose it.

This is the point.

- How would you lose it?

- Well, if redevelopment comes along and I spend money in it, and then they come and take the property as I understand, we lose what we put in it after.

- Now, the flood came along.

And in many instances that I know of, they either have 80, 90 or a hundred percent damage.

Well make for an assumption 90% damage, $27,000 repair bill to get the home back to pre-flood usability.

That's not pre-flood value.

So you'd have to have the 27,000 to repair it.

It you'd have the, the two $20,000 mortgage the fellow has.

So you have a $47,000 obligation.

And then he is lost all his furnishings and all he's personally worth, at least $10,000.

So you're talking he's in for $57,000 and he more than likely after the added expenditure will have assets that will be worth a maximum of the 10,000 new and personally taking the $30,000 home and depreciated by 20%, so that'd knock you down around $24,000.

So now they have $34,000 in assets with a, uh, mortgage of $67,000.

Tough to come out of it.

He's trapped in.

He's locked in.

He now has the $67,000 obligation to the United States government.

He--there's no way he can get out from under it.

He can't even declare a bankruptcy to get out from under it because SBA does not forgive.

Even in bankruptcy.

This, this follows you to the grave and beyond because your heirs inherit, your estate pays it.

So I mean, you, you, you're not, there's no way you can get out from under.

You're stuck.

So more than likely his entire life, his economic life, his social life, his family life, Everything's locked in.

As a result of something that happened that one day.

It's, it's like being in prison for life.

It's a hell of a thing to sit back and say, I can't move.

I'm done.

But the designs of the present legislation is that we're all going to become, or many of us, will become the tenants of the federal government, because basically the federal government's going to own our homes.

So entitled paper will own the home, but really we're we're captives and now all tenants of the federal government.

Now I think that you could return these people to their free state by giving their equity back to them.

And it's minimal equity.

It's something that probably they've paid in taxes over the years of the federal government anyway.

So you're, you're just underwriting the sureness that they'll be as free economically to make their decisions as any other American is - Well up to now.

We've, we've assumed the position that we will only acquire those properties that are structurally unsound or obviously damaged.

You can recognize 'em they're off their foundations.

We've identified them.

And our position is that we will acquire those properties that we will expend a great deal of money to, uh, to improve the area its public facilities, its streets, its playgrounds.

We will make land available for new residential development and provide ground for uh, necessary schools and other facilities, and through the SBA process and possibly through our own rehabilitation program encourage property owners to uh, fix up their properties, to, to return, to continue to live in that neighborhood.

- Well, but we shouldn't have ground level homes living right on a flat flood plane where the normal course of the river did travel at one time.

I mean this, the breakthrough at, at Riverside drive that's where the river natural flow was.

It, it was perverted and changed and, and, and moved away from its natural course.

When it makes the big turn, the actual straight flow is where it should have gone.

And yet we had thousands of people living, you know, in that area.

- Because you're talking about thousands of people that lost their homes and that lost their lives and I don't think that anybody should have to go through this again in their life.

And I don't think anybody should even have to worry that the possibility exists that they should have to go through it again.

And that's all I have to say.

(audience applauds) - I understand, all right, but the answer to what you're saying probably is a dyke probably about, uh, 50, 55, 60 feet above the low water mark.

- If we can't be guaranteed a dyke, why should we continue to remain here?

What motivation do any of us have for, for living in a city and remaining in a city, that can't guarantee us the peaceful life?

That we have to worry about a flood?

- This is our, one of our better neighborhoods.

It generates a great deal of leadership in this community, as well as, as taxes.

And just, the importance of the people that that have lived there.

We don't want to through any public program encourage it to become a wasteland.

- And our federal programs and state programs have a tendency to act in a bureaucracy and it's very dehumanizing.

You get everyone to a certain level.

You start involving yourself in what their income levels are, how they're going to live.

And then you, you give them the master plan of living.

You tell 'em that they have to do this.

They have to do that.

They have to go here.

Uh-- - You see that, you know, the possibility exists that people will just by, by taking advantage of these these overtures would simply take their money and leave the area, leave the neighborhood, leave the city.

- The authority is open about this.

They're not trying to deceive anybody because they don't want to lose the population and the economic base.

And the politicians don't want to lose the political base and the public administrators don't wanna lose the tax base.

- I know that you all know there's nobody going to go in the Riverside park, 75 feet away from the dykes and build another house.

We all know that.

Except we're going put down there a tombstone, maybe, could survive.

A house, never.

Nobody gonna build there.

(audience claps) Now I'm tied down to this house, in looking at tombstones as death, been killed in a crematorium.

Am I gonna live now in the United States on a cemetery?

And I am against it, and I'm sure everybody who has lived in Riverside park is going to live in a cemetery from now on.

(audience claps) - Thank you very much.

- And some of us were taken into parking though.

And the judge ruled that the house should be lowered into the ground, whether we liked it or not.

And nobody said what you would ever get for that house except that you have to pay your mortgage because the bank must survive.

Even if the homeowner doesn't survive.

The bank must get everything that-- (audience member claps) - That's the way we run our communities today And I don't agree with that.

And neither should you.

(audience claps) And that's the final point I want to make and that is important to the community.

Who pays the taxes and who's paying for all of this?

Nobody is giving us a damn thing.

We pay for it all ourselves.

(audience claps) - That this is kind of a makeshift business that we're in on this, you know, that's perfectly evident, I'm sure, to everybody in this room and the reason, uh, I make the point is that it--it's my view, and I think the view of the state administration that the real answer to this problem is uh, to cut out a lot of this red tape and a lot of this bureaucratic business and pay uh, and develop a national catastrophic insurance program that would be retroactive.

(audience claps) In the same way, for example, it, that social security, when it first went into effect was retroactive to people who had reached the, the retirement age.

There's nothing new--so startling or new about the idea.

It, it's been done in this country and in other countries before with respect to other kinds of programs.

And there's no reason that we couldn't have a national catastrophic insurance program.

- That disasters will probably occur much more frequently than they have in the past.

And there are signs that they are recurring more, that they are occurring more frequently.

And so it seems to us that no community ought to go hand, hat in hand to the federal government or the state government and seek relief.

But it's going to require some long range planning - Disaster insurance.

You, if we, if we could fund, if we had 50 million dollars we can probably bail out everybody who wants to get out from the burden.

What's $50 million?

I'm talking about the landowner.

Now, you know, the homeowner.

I'm not talking about necessarily the businessman or, or or this problem, but that's fundable.

They, we have those programs.

I'm talking about the poor guy that's now stuck.

- Governor Shapp has been uh, very concerned about every aspect of of this disaster from the outset.

He's been concerned about flood plain zoning, about being sure that the flood victims got everything that they're entitled to and that the laws both at the federal and state level were interpreted as broadly and as openly as possible to maximize the benefits.

He has indicated to Congressman Flood and others in a very strongly worded letter that he favors national catastrophic insurance.

- And we think that a national disaster program be developed uh, in which every income tax payer in the country might with just some, some small surcharge make his contribution to that kind of a program.

'Cause we know that many of the cities in California are on a fault line there in which there can be a recurrence of earthquakes.

And so why shouldn't we plan for it now rather than wait for that earthquake to take place?

(thoughtful music begins) - Almost every citizen is exposed to one type of natural disaster or another.

We have a new atomic generating facilities that open up the door to possible disaster.

There's the disaster of droughts on farmers.

Floods.

Certainly there's a great concern about the possibility of earthquakes.

Every citizen of this country has a stake in in national catastrophic insurance.

(peaceful music) (peaceful music continues) (music ends)