The five living former U.S. presidents have teamed up to film a video that urges their fellow Americans to support relief and recovery efforts in Houston after Hurricane Harvey battered the city when it made its landfall last week.
The video, which was posted on the One America Appeal website, will be the first in a series of appeals the quintet will be making to the American public.
Donation campaign video released
According to CNN, the relief and recovery effort the five U.S. presidents are making to help victims of Hurricane Harvey will be making it easier for donations to be collected.
The George H.W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation will be leading the collection and distribution using a restricted account.
The office of former president George H.W. Bush will also be airing a new video during the opening game of the latest season of National Football League (NFL).
In the video, former president George H.W. Bush is seen making the appeal viewers to help the people in Houston. “We love you Texas,” he said in the clip. Former U.S. presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama also appeared in the Hurricane Harvey video.
This is not the first time that former U.S. presidents have worked together to raise funds and donations during natural disasters. The elder Bush and Clinton famously led an initiative to respond to Hurricane Katrina back in 2005.
The two Bushes have a close relationship with Houston and the state of Texas overall. The elder Bush was the very first Republican sent to the federal House of Representatives to represent the 7th District of Texas, which includes Houston. The younger Bush, on the other hand, served as the governor of Texas at one point.
Houston sinks
The collaboration between the five former U.S. presidents come as the extent of the damage Hurricane Harvey is only starting to surface. Independent reports that the water that has flooded Houston during the storm has caused the city to sink by as much as two centimeters.
Geophysicist Chris Milliner from the California Institute of Technology has observed the level of sinking after using some statistics in the Nevada Geodetic Laboratory.
The fact that the city sank may have explained the extensive damage the floods and the storm have caused. Thankfully, the dip will only be temporary and will be back to its normal level once the flood water is eliminated.
Currently, the state of Florida is bracing itself for Hurricane Irma which is now the strongest Atlantic storm in U.S. history. The said hurricane has devastated the Caribbean earlier this week.
