During hurricane season our operations personnel are constantly monitoring storms in the Atlantic. The Friday before the storm hit, we were tracking the storm.

I can't see the political storms aligning to allow that, ... I wish them well, but the view from the man on the street is, 'Why rebuild something if it's just going to flood again? Why not let it return to nature?'

We were getting a little nervous in February. It would have been grim if the storms didn't come back this year. But we've had a great winter.

Had we not had these soldiers and airmen deployed and they participated in the relief efforts of a storm of this magnitude, we would have had to have outside help anyway. I don't believe there is a state in this county that could have conducted hurricane relief efforts on this scale to adequately respond without help from other states.

The military police were there to provide support to local law enforcement , and the engineers were used for search-and-recovery mission support and evacuation support ,

We were able to respond to this hurricane and begin our support missions as quickly as we always have,