A 30-Foot Wall of Water
We are talking Helene as we face Milton on today’s agriculture news, specifically getting the impact report from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack who recently toured the damage in the Southeast. Vilsack says in all his years in agriculture, he’s never seen this level of devastation…“As a former governor, I have seen a lot of tornado disasters in my state. I’ve been to a lot of disasters during my previous stint as Secretary of Agriculture during the Obama years, but I hadn't quite seen anything like what I saw yesterday. A community in Florida was devastated by a wall of water that was, at times, 30 feet high. Just think about that 30-foot-high wall of water coming at your home.”
Even homes that are still standing have a high level of damage…
“If your home still stands, and some do, there's nothing in the home because the water took all the furniture, took all the pictures, took all the books, took everything in the house, and pushed it a quarter of a mile away.”
The U.S. hasn’t seen many storms as large as Helene…
“The storm was 500 miles wide with recorded winds of 140 miles an hour. I headed to Georgia and saw a family farming operation - up here, we call a peh-KAHN farm, but down there it's a PEE-can Farm – 40 percent of their trees are probably destroyed, and these are trees have been around for 40, 50, 60, or 70 years. It’s tough. Very tough.”
Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack.