Hi, I'm Brad Harris.  I'm the Recovery Manager for the Hurricane Ike Recovery Office here in Texas. We've been working with the citizens of Texas and the victims of Hurricane Ike as well as the communities and the state of Texas addressing the needs of the people and the communities devastated by the hurricane.
We're commemorating a special event here in Bridge City. In the community site here at Acadian Village where we had originally 40 units of temporary housing that we provided to victims of the hurricane, and as they have each found a more permanent housing solution, they have moved out, bought a unit or had one donated through a voluntary agency, or somehow moved to a better and more permanent housing solution for them. And today the last unit is departing and we're turning this unit back and this whole facility, the land and everything, back over to its original owner.
At the height of the response FEMA has provided over 37 hundred units for victims of Hurricane Ike to reside in disaster housing.
In this temporary disaster response we've immediately starting working with those individuals and families to find a more permanent home, and since then, in the 17 months since Hurricane Ike's hit the coast, we have reduced that number drastically to where it is now, for example in Bridge City, starting with 13 hundred families that were housed there, we're down to under a hundred and thirty still looking for a more permanent solution, and we're working the same across Orange County and into Galveston.
So FEMA will be here until the very last one of those families finds a more permanent solution, and we're proud of the effort that they've made, and the counties and the state in helping us, and the voluntary agencies provide these more permanent housing solutions for those victims.