‘Thank God It Didn’t Hit Us’: Hawaii Governor Josh Green Says 'We Survived The Tsunami'

In a video released to social media, Gov. Josh Green (D-HI) spoke about Hawaii making it through the tsunami.

Transcript

00:00Hello everyone. Here we are for the weekly update. I wanted to share that we came through something

00:04somewhat scary and somewhat difficult, but we came through with flying colors. Thank you everyone.

00:09We survived the tsunami. What happened was there was an 8.7 magnitude earthquake, which is a huge

00:15earthquake off the coast of Russia in Kamchatka. And I'll show you where Kamchatka is. Kamchatka,

00:22for those who love the game of risk, is right over here. This is on the far side of what's the

00:30former, you know, Russian empire, right? And so that earthquake occurred and it sent a wave all

00:37the way through the Pacific. And thank God it didn't hit us because it could have been an enormous

00:44and damaging event, but people were responsible. I hope our team stepped up to everyone's

00:49satisfaction. We made sure that we had FEMA on board. Federal government was right there

00:54supporting whatever we needed. I did declare an emergency briefly and the waves came in,

00:59you know, between like two and five feet, but we didn't have significant damage and no one was

01:03harmed. So we were able to stand down. So that worked out great for us. Also this week, I went

01:09through the National Governors Association meetings and I was able to negotiate $50 billion with the

01:17feds to go into rural health. We will get more than our share. Every state will get at least a hundred

01:22million per year. And then there'll be other sources like to do loan forgiveness like we've been doing

01:27and that could go national now. We're making sure that those who need protection against chronic disease

01:33or need health care when they have been homeless can go into this kind of a program. So I'm working

01:38with everybody to try to make sure we have a better health care system and really a better country.

01:42But that's the work I'm doing on Medicaid. 399,000 of our citizens out of 1.4 million are on Medicaid.

01:49That's 29 percent. Working hard with the team to make sure people don't lose their coverage

01:54and that we improve the program. And I guess I'm going to be on the executive board at National

01:58Governors Association and I'll chair the Western Governors Association next year, I suppose, because

02:03some of this work. But thank you again for trusting me. And, you know, we got through a tough one

02:10yesterday. But there are great days ahead. Aloha.