Trump to visit victims of unprecedented floods in Texas and Louisiana

President Donald Trump says there is still “so much to do” for Texas to recover from Hurricane Harvey.

“Yes, it was a very serious storm, historic, unprecedented, but the city of Houston is open for business”.

Late Saturday night, Trump tweeted “Just got back to the White House from the Great States of Texas and Louisiana, where things are going well”.

Recovery will center on removing debris and “housing, housing, housing”, Turner said. “I can’t speak to specifically whether or not the EPA is on the ground”.

Trump has proposed federal hiring and budget plans that raise questions about his promised recovery effort. Turner said his Saturday meeting with Trump, the first since Harvey’s landfall, was a productive one.

Ratings agency Fitch last week said Harvey was unlikely to trigger ratings downgrades of individual property and casualty insurers or reinsurers.

A German team of experts on natural disasters said Thursday that for Texas alone the damages should rise to $58 billion. “I think that you know, because this is Texas, you’ll probably do it in six months”, Trump said. We should all agree there’s no room for political shenanigans.

Greg Abbot said his state will need federal relief money “far in excess” of that total.

Insurance law expert Nick Bradley of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said only a small proportion of homes in the U.S. have insurance covering flood damage, and suggested there was scope for the insurance industry to innovate more to offer products protecting communities from such catastrophes. But given the damage of that storm and concerns about a new one, Hurricane Irma, that appeared Tuesday to be headed toward the Florida coast, Congress is all but certain to commit more funds to the program.

Green, a Houston Democrat and a flood insurance policyholder himself, has seen several hurricanes blow through Houston in his 25 years in the U.S. House.

In Houston, which was devastated by record-setting rainfall, many residents whose homes had flooded returned over the weekend to begin removing soggy drywall, soaked carpets and ruined possessions.

Meanwhile, Houston officials ordered mandatory evacuation of areas around the Barker Reservoir, as flooding from that basin, and the nearby Addicks Reservoir, continued to pour into neighborhoods on the city’s western edge.

“FEMA has received more than 427,000 registrations for assistance”, an agency spokesperson told AFP.

Earlier he said Harvey “has profoundly affected our entire nation” and praised what he called “heroic efforts” in the wake of the devastating storm.

The fundraising started with a goal of raising $200,000, but then grew to what it is now.

The Baptist Hospital in Beaumont city is evacuating patients and shutting down emergency services because the city is without a working water supply.