美国第一夫人就水灾情况答记者问

(I/we) wanna urge people who want to volunteer, and who have the ability to be able to come to Louisiana or any of the Gulf 1 Coast states that were affected 2 and volunteer to try to do that. And if you can't do it this week, there will be next week and the next week, and it's gonna go on for a long time. So we want to make sure that volunteers continue all through the months that it's gonna take to let people be able to get back into their own homes, and back into their own city. They are registering children for school all here. They are actually in this center. You can register for school and the children from New Orleans who will go to the Lafayette schools will start on Wednesday, so I think that' s very important. It's very important to get your children in school, give children a sense of normalcy, and so I want to urge people, ah, who wherever you are around, ah, the country if you've left New Orleans or left any of the affected areas on the Gulf Coast to go ahead and enroll 3 your children in schools. It's very important for them. Ah, I heard a great story about a little boy from New Orleans, who, ah, went to school today at the Texas school district and youthin high school but he's sort of thin and small and two great big football players, sort of adopted him and walking him around the campus and welcoming him to their school. So I know school districts everywhere will be welcoming. And I want to thank the people of Texas, and Houston, and Dallas, and San Antonio that have opened their, big arenas 4 like this, to take in, ah, take people in, the people who have been displaced because of the storm, and, and those school districts are also opening up. So it's really important for parents to keep their, let their kids keep going to school, getting them in school, don't let them get behind and also give them a sense of normalcy for their day. I think this is a really wonderful example of what happens when a community comes together. Of the logistics, even, ah, of which, a community has to put together to try to, ah, have this little city within a city over 6,000 people here in one place to meet their needs, their needs for hygiene 5, their needs for food obviously, and water and in a safe place for people to be, it's really, really amazing those logistics are and now I wanna congratulate the people of Lafayette for being able to do this in such a very quick and such a humane 6 way. I'm really helping 7 people not just giving them the basic needs but also trying to give them the emotional support they need right now at such a very difficult time in their lives.

I think what happened is what always happens in this kind of disaster. This is probably the largest disaster our country has ever had, natural disaster we've ever had. And when you have that many people displaced out of their homes, when you have that big urban area flooded where people can't go back into it. You know, it's not like a hurricane whether water washes in and washes out, you know, it's still standing 8 there, then that's what you see. It had, it just, you know, that's just how what happens in a, this terrible of a disaster, and the fact is, many times as we know from watching tornado 9 coverage 10, or any other natural disaster coverage, the poor people usually are in the neighborhoods that are the lowest, are the most exposed, are the most vulnerable, and their housing is the most vulnerable to a natural disaster. And that's just always what it happens.

Well, I know that the federal government is doing every single thing they possibly can, but the president said today, I think that he had (was not with me this morning, that was, he came over from Texas) said that, you know, it's not adequate. This response is not an adequate response. This is not the kind of response the federal government wants. We know that we can do it better and that we can get it, ah, better, and that's what every single person, not just the federal government but the local governments everywhere are working on. And not just the local governments in the affect, in the affected areas, but governments local governments a long way away, Pittsburg, I think, called the mayor today, and Youngstown Ohio was sending trucks, ah, of, of things, and you know, people wanna help in whatever way they can.