Brian Murry Joins Houston Morning News, July 9th, 2024

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Waiting for floodwaters to subside, streetsto reopen. Brian Burray joins US Harris
County Office of Emergency Management. Isis you take a look at the damage
around Harris County? Brian, wheredo you think we're at here as far
as the recovery mode? You know, I was listening to you talk about,
you know, looking out the windowand you know, the sun was
out and the sky was blue yesterdayafternoon, and unfortunately that's part of our

(00:21):
problem. We don't really know yet. We haven't had the opportunity to be
out in the community. That's goingto start today, Harris County Engineering will
have teams out assessing damage around thecounty. That's going to go to formulating
the county's damage assessment, which wewill then forward to the state, which
will then eventually get forward to thefederal government and that starts that whole ball
of you know, applying for federalaid rolling. I'm not sure how that's

(00:42):
going to turn out yet, butyou know, we will begin that process
today with doing the initial damage assessment. What is what is it that you're
assessing? Are you assessing the byways, the drainage down, what are you
assessing exactly as a county a littlebit of everything. It's a little bit
of every thing. You know.Obviously, we're you know, looking for
damage to county facilities. We're lookingto damaged infrastructure, whether that's roads,

(01:06):
whether that's drainage, whether that's watersystems. Then we're also looking at what
does the damage look like on ahousehold basis? You know, are we
seeing houses that are destroyed partially destroyed? You know, maybe that's a tree
on the roof. You know,what does that look like? Because all
of those things are considerations when determiningexactly how badly we've been hurt. We
know we have residents who are sufferingthat all of that relief stems from starting

(01:32):
to understand where we are hurting.Let me ask you this, how can
you help people individually? I mean, you've got a tree on your house.
You assess that damage, and youyou start getting state help, But
the immediate need is to get thattree removed. Is that something that the
county does or is this really yourely on? My neighbors were out with
hack saws yesterday because they didn't havepower for power selling. So the most

(01:53):
amazing things to me about Harris Countyresidence is that tend to be pretty resilient
in most of those cases, andnot only that, they tend to be
pretty generous. So every time afterthe disaster, whether it was the direction,
and I'm sure we saw this yesterdaytoo, you know, people will
be out with chainsaws taking care ofdamage in their yard and probably their neighbors
too if they need to. Thosewho do not have those resources or neighbors

(02:14):
who can do that, you candial to one one. That's the United
Way of Greater Houston. They're goingto be able to hook people up to
the different volunteer networks that can helpwith those things. I don't know where
they are right now. Obviously yesterdaywas kind of a blank day, not
a whole lot was able to happen. But we should see those things start
taking off today a little more inearnest. You know. One of the
things I'm often struck by is howmany flooding issues that we have on our

(02:37):
roads. And we know that weknow we have the infrastructure problems that we
have, but we really have notadequately addressed those. I'm sure we've gotten
federal aid in the past, hasthat aid gone to where it's supposed to
go in order to be able tofix these problems going forward. You know,
I think we saw following Hurricane Harveythe bond issue there was a massive
federal dollars that is still coming in, So, yes, it is going

(03:00):
to address the drainage problems. Wehave a big part of our problem,
honestly, is we're a lot ofconcrete. There aren't as many places for
the water to soak into the dirtanymore. So you know, that's a
problem we're probably stuck with. Butyou know, the Hairsunty, flod Control
District, Harris County Engineering, alot of our partners in the region,
we've all been investing in different mitigationprograms to try and you know, help

(03:22):
that water flow out as opposed tointo our homes. You're pretty to an
emergency management service obviously, and wewould think that that would used to be
central command where you had a verygood eye on what was happening all across
the county. Were you suffering somepower problems too, and just getting information

(03:43):
in yesterday? I mean it waspretty wild. I think it was,
you know, the lack of havingeyes in the field that was probably hurting
us for a little bit yesterday Imean, if you were looking out the
window between about nine am, eightam and noon yesterday, you know,
the wind was blowing extremely hard,was coming down horizontally. There was not
a fit place for people to beout. We started getting a little more

(04:05):
information, you know, in theafternoon, but it's frustrating for us share
We really do depend on knowing what'sgoing on, and yesterday was a little
tough for us. Okay, well, and it's gonna be tough for the
next few days. We tried toget the power back and things back under
control. But thank you for joiningus. Appreciate you. Thanks Brian,
Brian Murray. He's with Harris CountyOffice of Emergency Management. It's five fifty seven