Three federal workers were injured in the collision of a semi-truck and another vehicle in a motorcade carrying Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on a tour of hurricane damage on the Texas Gulf Coast, said the Texas Tribune. Perdue, who was in another vehicle with Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and U.S. House Agriculture Committee chairman Michael Conaway, was not injured.
“One USDA and two House Agriculture Committee staff members have been taken to a local hospital to be checked out,” said the USDA. The House Agriculture Committee said the three were discharged later from El Campo Memorial Hospital. The accident occurred as the group left a meeting with farmers at the Rice Belt Warehouse in El Campo, 70 miles southwest of Houston. The Tribune said the third vehicle in the caravan “pulled onto the frontage road of Highway 59 in El Campo and collided with a semi-truck.” The momentum carried the vehicles across the highway.
Perdue was scheduled to visit the Houston Food Bank on Thursday afternoon and to speak, along with Conaway, to the Southwest Council of Agribusiness in Lamesa, Texas, on Friday. Before the accident, Perdue posted photos on Twitter of his meeting with the Texas producers and damage to cotton fields as well as a video of a cotton gin back in operation. “What #Harvey left behind. This cotton crop was under four feet of water,” he said of one photo.
The Tribune said, “Food banks, pantries, and other food access advocates are bracing for increased need in communities that struggled with food insecurity even before Hurricane Harvey — and planning how to meet needs in the months of recovery still ahead.”