[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
COMBATING TERRORISM: PREPARING AND FUNDING FIRST RESPONDERS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 9, 2003
__________
Serial No. 108-111
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
92-127 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 2003
____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia Maryland
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Columbia
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas CHRIS BELL, Texas
WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota ------
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Peter Sirh, Staff Director
Melissa Wojciak, Deputy Staff Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Philip M. Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International
Relations
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio
DAN BURTON, Indiana DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio TOM LANTOS, California
RON LEWIS, Kentucky BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Maryland
WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota CHRIS BELL, Texas
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Lawrence J. Halloran, Staff Director and Counsel
R. Nicholas Palarino, Senior Policy Advisor
Robert A. Briggs, Clerk
David Rapallo, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on September 9, 2003................................ 1
Statement of:
Plaugher, Edward, chief, Arlington County, VA Fire and Rescue
Department................................................. 57
Rudman, Senator Warren B., chairman, Independent Task Force
on Emergency Responders, Council of Foreign Relations; and
Amy Smithson, senior fellow, Center for Strategic and
International Studies...................................... 15
Thompson, Adrian H., chief, District of Columbia Fire and
Emergency Medical Services Department...................... 51
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Kucinich, Hon. Dennis J., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Ohio, prepared statement of................... 6
Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from
the State of New York, prepared statement of............... 11
Plaugher, Edward, chief, Arlington County, VA Fire and Rescue
Department, prepared statement of.......................... 60
Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Connecticut, prepared statement of............ 3
Smithson, Amy, senior fellow, Center for Strategic and
International Studies, prepared statement of............... 23
Thompson, Adrian H., chief, District of Columbia Fire and
Emergency Medical Services Department, prepared statement
of......................................................... 53
COMBATING TERRORISM: PREPARING AND FUNDING FIRST RESPONDERS
----------
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2003
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats
and International Relations,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in
room 2203, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher
Shays (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Shays, Turner, Murphy, Kucinich,
Maloney, Dutch, and Tierney.
Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and
counsel; R. Nicholas Palarino, Ph.D, senior policy advisor;
Robert A. Briggs, clerk; Chris Skaluba, Presidential management
intern; David Rapallo, minority counsel; Michael Yeager,
minority deputy chief counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority
assistant clerk.
Mr. Shays. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on
National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations
hearing entitled, ``Combating Terrorism: Preparing and Funding
First Responders'' is called to order.
Well before September 11, 2001, this subcommittee heard
testimony from first responders and other experts expressing
frustration over the extent and pace of Federal
counterterrorism equipment and training programs. They told us
fragmentation and duplication hobbled a multiagency,
multibillion-dollar preparedness effort that failed to answer
the fundamental question, ``Prepared for what?''
Since the September 11 attacks, much has been done and much
more has been spent to consolidate and focus Federal support
for first responders. But a growing body of analysis and
commentary suggests increased activity still may not be
producing enough measurable progress toward the elusive goal of
actual preparedness.
One recent report of an independent task force sponsored by
the Council of Foreign Relations [CFR], concluded the Nation's
emergency responders remain, ``dangerously ill-prepared to
handle a catastrophic attack on American soil.'' While
acknowledging some improvement in counterterrorism capabilities
the CFR report says Federal funding for first responders may
fall $98 billion short of meeting basic needs for training and
equipment over the next 5 years.
Just as ominously, the report says any effort to quantify
the cost of preparedness will be confounded by the lack of
agreed-upon measures for success. ``Without establishing
minimal preparedness levels and equipment and performance
standards that the Federal Government and State and local
communities can strive to attain, the United States will have
created an illusion of preparedness based on boutique funding
initiatives without being systematically prepared.''
These are not abstract policy considerations. Without
standards, time and money will be wasted on a dangerous and
costly illusion while police officers, firefighters, emergency
medical teams, public health providers, and emergency managers
confront terrorism without the tools they need. Nor can we
afford to wait for a national consensus on standards to emerge
before funding critical first responders initiatives. The
threat is now, the threat is real, and local emergency
responders need to be prepared to meet it.
Next Monday the city of Stanford, CT, will conduct a
regional table-top exercise of emergency response capabilities
against a weapon of mass destruction scenario sponsored by the
Department of Homeland Security. The simulation will help
emergency responders to assess and improve readiness against
terrorist attacks. To sharpen our focus on the needs of our
first responders, the subcommittee will be there to observe the
exercises and take testimony from participants on the scope and
impact of Federal efforts to enhance local preparedness.
This morning, we are joined by two distinguished expert
panels of witnesses. We appreciate their time, talent and
dedication, and we are very grateful for their continued
contributions to our oversight work.
At this time the Chair will recognize the ranking member,
Mr. Kucinich.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2127.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2127.002
Mr. Kucinich. From a Midwest region, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for your ongoing efforts
on this very important concern that all Americans have about
preparing and funding first responders. And I want to thank the
witnesses. Senator Rudman, thank you for your consistent
leadership on these matters and, Dr. Smithson, for your
participation and your testimony.
And I welcome this hearing today on preparing and funding
first responders. As our witnesses today will point out, the
fire, police, and emergency medical personnel who need to
respond to catastrophic terrorist attacks are underfunded and
they are unprepared for a wide range of threats. Firefighters
around the country only have half the radios they need to equip
a shift. Two-thirds don't have the breathing apparatus they
need to work in hazardous conditions. Police departments don't
have protective gear to secure a site following an attack with
weapons of mass destruction. Public health officials are
overwhelmed by requests for tests but still don't have the
basic equipment to identify chemical or biological agents.
The Council on Foreign Relations released a report earlier
this summer concluding that we are spending as little as one-
third of what we need to develop adequate first responder
capabilities. To meet this need, the Federal Government would
have to increase its current spending, $5.4 billion, five times
to an annual contribution of $25 billion.
This past Sunday the President told the American people,
quote, ``This will take time and require sacrifice.'' He said
without a trace of irony, ``We will do what is necessary, we
will spend what is necessary to achieve this essential victory
in the war on terror.''
From the President's words, you would think he was talking
about giving firefighters and EMTs the basic equipment they
need to do their jobs and that could save their lives in a
terrorist attack. You would think he would request $87 billion
additional to meet this need. But the focus of his attention in
Iraq to pay for the war that we didn't need and that didn't buy
us one iota of security from terror has created greater
concerns among the American people. The President and his
administration were not forthcoming with the American people by
suggesting that the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror.
Iraq had nothing do with September 11. There was no connection
between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. In fact, the war on Iraq
has produced the opposite effect and created a vacuum where al
Qaeda, which was not operating inside Iraq before the war, is
now targeting our men and women.
Mr. Chairman, much of the report that prompted this hearing
calls on Congress to increase funding for first responders,
require minimum national standards for preparedness, and create
a sensible system to allocate resources. Congress should step
up to the plate. It should do it, first, by rejecting the
President's request for funding of the war, and should instead
cause us to bring our troops home. For the safety and security
of our troops, I say bring them home. And for the safety of our
first responders, let's start funding police, fire, and EMT to
levels that they need to protect this country. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank the gentleman.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Dennis J. Kucinich
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2127.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2127.004
Mr. Shays. At this time the Chair would recognize the vice
chairman of the committee, Mr. Turner.
Mr. Turner. Mr. Chairman, thank you for your continued
leadership in focusing on the issue of preparedness of our
country in responding to terrorist attacks and for holding this
important hearing on the funding and policy priorities for our
Nation's first responders. This is an appropriate time for us
to examine the needs of our first responders during the week of
the second anniversary of terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon and after the recently published
report, ``Emergency Responders: Drastically Underfunded,
Dangerously Unprepared.''
I want to thank our witnesses for being here today. They
are certainly preeminent experts on homeland security and first
responders. As a former mayor of Dayton, OH, I am especially
interested in examining the Federal role in aiding first
responders. Dayton, OH was one of the few cities that had a
weapons of mass destruction preparedness exercise prior to
September 11, exercises that Attorney General John Ashcroft had
attended.
Federal assistance to local first responders became even
more crucial and valuable since the attacks of September 11,
2001. Police officers, firefighters, and EMTs are being asked
to train and prepare for events that are even more terrifying
and destructive than the acts of crime and violence that they
see on a routine basis. It was local first responders who
bravely answered the call on September 11, and it will be the
local teams who respond to future attacks. And I am pleased
that we will hear from two fire chiefs whose departments
responded to the Pentagon attack on our second panel today.
The Council on Foreign Relations report, ``Emergency First
Responders: Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously Unprepared''
identifies many areas where the Federal, State, and local
governments need to increase their funding, improve their
cooperation and communication, and invest in training and
equipment.
The threat of terrorism is unknown, incredibly difficult to
prepare for. This report is the first of its kind, an attempt
to account for across-the-board first responder spending. I
look forward to hearing how Congress can effectively assist
first responders and how the Federal Government can efficiently
maximize the dollars it spends on first responders and homeland
security. I am particularly interested in the issue of how the
Federal Government can assist in coordination and benchmarking
the needs of individuals and our people who are on the front
line, our first responders. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. At this time the Chair would thank the gentleman
and recognize the distinguished lady from New York, Mrs.
Maloney, who just recently returned from Iraq.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Yes, with your leadership there on the issues that we were
confronting in another problem area. And I thank very much the
Honorable Senator Rudman and Dr. Smithson for joining us today
to discuss the critical issue. And as chair of the Democratic
Caucus's Task Force on Homeland Security and as a Member who
represents Manhattan and Queens and one who lost, I should say,
500 constituents on September 11, you are obviously talking
about an issue that is very close to our hearts. In fact, the
safety and security of our homeland is something we can all
agree on, and it is truly a bipartisan issue because we are all
advocates of tough homeland security and we should all
celebrate the successes and work together to fix the
vulnerabilities.
I truly applaud the Council on Foreign Relations for
working in a bipartisan vein to help all of us better
understand the holes that must be patched and for really
changing the debate about homeland security. Your report has
had a tremendous impact on the thinking of Members of Congress.
I have met with Jamie Metzl, the members of my task force,
and in fact he addressed the entire Democratic Caucus on the
findings of the report and the importance of it. And we thank
you. Many people were awed by the report's estimate that we
must spend almost $100 billion more on emergency responders. It
is a very important report that really hit the mark and we do
thank you for it.
My home city is New York and we are target No. 1. When the
rest of the country is orange, we are red. And today we are
just 2 days before the second anniversary of September 11. And
this is the news from New York: Just last week the city
received its very first Federal homeland security grant of $30
million. That's $30 million to prepare New York City for
another attack and $87 billion to rebuild Iraq. Our mayor tells
us that we spend $23 million a week just making sure that New
York is safe, and we applaud him and the police and responders
for having thwarted some attempted attacks to New York.
And here's another story that's almost unbelievable. The
firefighters in New York City, they told me that they are less
prepared today than they were before September 11. They say
that the famous communication radios that didn't work on
September 11 still don't work. The city has closed six
firehouses this year. I'm gagging when I give you this
information. And there are 530 fewer firefighters on the street
at any given time in New York City today than there were on
September 10, 2001. That is hard to believe, but those are the
facts given to me yesterday from the New York City Fire
Department.
Our task force has been learning more about the needs in
hometowns across the country from the men and women on the
front lines. They say that homeland security is a strain on
local governments; that there has been a lack of guidance from
the Department of Homeland Security and that there has been a
lack of money from the Federal Government. It is one thing when
people in Washington are talking about homeland security needs.
It is another when the men and women dedicating their lives to
making ours safe from terrorism say over and over again to
anyone who will listen that they need more help.
So, I am very very thankful that you are here today. I look
forward to hearing your comments. I have read your report many
times and I am deeply grateful for the tremendous leadership
role
that you have played in focusing debate in a bipartisan way on
homeland security needs. You have not gotten enough
appreciation from the public or from Congress for your hard
work and so I thank you for having this hearing today. It's
important.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2127.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2127.006
Mr. Shays. You don't think he's gotten enough appreciation?
Mrs. Maloney. No, I don't. I don't, because it certainly
hasn't been translated into a direction of policy or dollars or
the bottom line of taking the recommendations and turning them
into action.
Mr. Shays. Let the day begin here.
Mrs. Maloney. OK.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Ruppersberger.
Mr. Ruppersberger. OK. Mr. Chairman, first thing, I want to
really applaud the Council on Foreign Relations for the
bipartisan approach to deal with this issue. During the
September 11 incident, I was a county executive and understand
the needs of putting your first responders, your police, your
firefighters, your paramedics, and spending the overtime and
the money that is necessary. But what really a lot of this
comes down to in my opinion, and I hope that we can develop
this issue today, is the matter of priority of funding.
There's no question that once our Commander in Chief, the
President, decided to go to Iraq that we had to stand behind,
and I think that we have to do what we have to do--and we won't
get into that issue now--with respect to our military and give
them the resources that they need. But our first responders
need the resources also.
In the Second Congressional District of Maryland that I
represent, we have NSA, we have two Army bases--Fort Meade and
Aberdeen. I have BWI Airport and the whole port of Baltimore.
And there are a lot of issues involving the resources that are
needed to detect any weapons of mass destruction, but also to
deal with issues involving the intelligence that is needed,
working with the State, Federal, and local authorities.
So from my perspective from being in local government and
now coming into the Federal Government, it's a matter of
priorities. The tax cuts just aren't working. We need to
reevaluate our entire situation now. We have never in the
history of our country been at war--and we are at war with
Iraq, we are at war with Afghanistan, and we are at war with
terrorism. We must reprioritize and give the resources to first
responders. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman.
And we have just been joined by Mr. Murphy. Mr. Murphy, do
you have any statement before we begin?
Mr. Murphy. Not yet. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. OK. Thanks for being here.
And Mr. Tierney. I'm sorry, the Chair would recognize Mr.
Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. Good morning and thank you for being here with
us this morning. I just have some brief remarks about local
preparedness. I have just had the opportunity to meet with most
of my chiefs of fire and police and other first responders and
to do a bit of a survey on how they felt the Federal Government
was dealing with the situation. And I think it's pretty clear
that they have done what they have been asked to do. You know,
they have planned--immediately after September 11 when we
gathered everybody together, they were told to put their plans
together, those that hadn't already done that, and they did put
their plan together. They have expended tremendous amounts of
resources on overtime, personnel and training, and what
equipment they could gather in some pretty difficult times and
climate in their own States and localities.
They could certainly use, they tell me, some minimum
national standards of just what it is that they might be
expected to do in particular situations, and they look forward
to some guidance on that end of it. Particularly I think one of
my chiefs mentioned to me that when it goes from yellow to
orange, what? You know, just what are they supposed to do? And
what is enough security at a nuclear power plant or what is
enough security at a chemical manufacturing plant? And just
some minimum guidelines there would be extremely helpful to
them.
They need a better communication system, obviously. And I
think that's something that we have had a great deal of
conversation with. I know that there are plans in the works now
to put an interoperable system together. We have had some folks
out of Cambridge, Professor John Donovan and others, working on
that. And they have a prototype going on the military side of
things. We'd like to see one done in a couple of districts so
that we could get an idea of how it works and then bring it up
to scope and scale so that everybody is on the same page when
an incident occurs as to what is going on and how people should
react and be able to do that.
So they need the resources. They would prefer it without
State bureaucracy getting between the Federal distribution and
them. They feel that they're really constrained on flexibility.
If it comes down and they're not allowed to use it on overtime,
sometimes it isn't of as much valuable to them. Or if they need
equipment and it's only limited to personnel, those type of
issues still remain unresolved. So all of those things have
come to their attention.
They have needs of overtime, personnel constraints,
communication, and some guidance. And I hope that in the
context of your testimony this morning, you will touch on those
points and let us get back to them with how we might be doing
in that area and move together toward resolving these issues.
I agree with my colleague here that we are spending
enormous sums of money to secure Iraq and to give people there
a sense of security. I think we should have put a comparable
amount of attention to making the people in this country feel
secure as they move forward, and I think we can do that and I
look forward to your cooperation in doing that. Thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman. Before recognizing the
panel, let me just deal with two housekeeping measures. I ask
unanimous consent that all members of the subcommittee be
permitted to place an opening statement in the record, and the
record will remain open for 2 days for that purpose. And,
without objection, so ordered. I ask further unanimous consent
that all witnesses be permitted to include their written
statements in the record. Without objection, so ordered.
We are very fortunate and I think you're seeing this
reflected in the participation of the membership, both on the
issue and in terms of our participants on our two panels. We
are fortunate to have Senator Warren Rudman who is chairman of
the Independent Task Force on Emergency Responders, Council on
Foreign Relations. This is the genesis of what this hearing is
about. He's currently a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind,
Wharton and Garrison. And he's a two-term Senator from New
Hampshire and this committee has known him in particular for
his outstanding work on the Hart-Rudman Commission. As many
will remember, there were three commissions, the Bremer
Commission, the Gillmore Commission and the Hart-Rudman
Commission. They all agreed on understanding what the terrorist
threat was, developing a strategy to respond to it, and to
reorganize to implement that strategy. But the Hart-Rudman
Commission believed we needed the most radical reorganization,
and ultimately that's what this Congress decided to do with the
Department of Homeland Security. Great to have you here,
Senator Rudman.
We are also joined by Dr. Amy Smith, senior fellow, Center
for Strategic and International Studies as of last week, and
previous senior associate at the Simpson Center's directed
chemical and biological weapons nonproliferation project.
If I could get you to stand up. As you know, this committee
swears in our witnesses and then we'll hear your testimony.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. Note for the record that the witnesses have
responded in the affirmative.
Senator, we're going to start with you. You have as much
time as you may want. We're going to turn the clock to 5
minutes, and then do another 5. Bottom line, we want to hear
from you. Senator, you're on.
STATEMENTS OF SENATOR WARREN B. RUDMAN, CHAIRMAN, INDEPENDENT
TASK FORCE ON EMERGENCY RESPONDERS, COUNCIL OF FOREIGN
RELATIONS; AND AMY SMITHSON, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR
STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Senator Rudman. Well, Mr. Chairman, thank you; and members
of the committee, thank you all very much. I have to tell you I
have testified on the Hill now since Hart-Rudman probably 30
times before a variety of committees, and I am going to be very
blunt with you. I am really quite taken with your opening
statements. I mean, most opening statements are, if you will
pardon me, in the Senate and the House opening statements. What
I have heard this morning is a keen understanding of this issue
which is not surprising when I'd consider the personal history
of some of you on the panel who have served in State
legislatures, as mayors, as county executives. You obviously
have taken a lot of what I was going to say and put it in your
statements, and I appreciate that because this is an issue that
has nothing to do with partisanship whatsoever. This is an
issue that really we have to get our hands around, and we
haven't.
Now, as you know, and we testified here over a year ago,
Senator Gary Hart and I originally did a study for the Council
on Foreign Relations and it ended up saying America's still
unprepared, still in danger. It was subsequent to that, the
council asked if I would move forward and chair another panel.
The reason Gary Hart didn't was at the time he was considering
running for President and obviously you can't have anybody in
that role who is going to cochair an independent task force.
And so I undertook it. If you look at the people on the task
force, it's a remarkable assembly of people: two former
chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff, head of the FBI and the
CIA, the head of the National Football League and the National
Basketball Association--why? Because they deal with huge
numbers of people in very large, very threatened venues--as
well as a Nobel laureate and a number of other very
distinguished Americans. The result of that report you have all
looked at, obviously, and you are all very familiar with it.
And I would start out and I'm going to summarize very
briefly the key recommendations by simply making a statement
that I have found no one who could disagree with and that is
this: When we sent our young men and women into Iraq--and they
are still there--we made sure, to the extent that the
technology was available, that they had everything they needed
to protect them from any threat that they might face, whether
it be chemical, biological or radiological. The Defense
Department, with the full support of the Congress, made sure
that they had what they needed.
Now, contrast that to the following situation. When
something happens in this country, and unfortunately, most
people predict it will, it is not anyone in Washington or in
the Armed Forces that will respond to that. It is your local
police, your local fire, your local EMS people and your
hospitals. They will be the front line at least for a while,
depending on the extent of the damage. The other thing you have
to consider, and this is a rather interesting statistic which
was pointed out to me not long ago, and Congresswoman Maloney,
I'm sure this will strike home with you, the ratio of people
that are killed or injured is normally heavily skewed to
injury: Usually 7 to 12 to 1. Not so with the World Trade
Center. It was so catastrophic. You had nearly 3,000 people who
were killed, and a relatively small number of people who could
be taken for treatment.
It is unlikely that kind of a scenario will repeat itself.
And so you truly need emergency responders who are able to
ameliorate and minimize the kinds of damage that will be caused
to maybe thousands of our fellow citizens, depending on the
kind of attack, whether it be chemical, whether be it
biological, dirty, or conventional nuclear, or even as
threatening--large amounts of explosives which are detonated in
heavily populated areas can cause enormous damage.
We need only look at what happened in Oklahoma City, to
look what happens in Israel, unfortunately, every other week,
what happened in Iraq on several occasions, to recognize that
it not necessarily only high-technology weapons that cause the
threat.
Now, let me point out, as we put out in the report, that
this report does not criticize the administration or the
Congress. We understand that this is a relatively new issue
facing us. This all started in terms of government response on
the 11th, although I must say that there were warnings from
several groups, including Hart-Rudman and Bremer and Gillmore
before the events. Having said that, the government has moved
at its usual pace. It's taken a while to get the Department of
Homeland Security put together. It is obviously not fully
functioning yet, nor should we expect it to. But I'm sure it
will.
Congress has the very difficult decision of prioritizing,
and so let me start out by saying what I think is the single
most important recommendation that we made. If you look at the
history of the Department of Defense, the thing they've been
very good at is doing threat assessments, and then based on
those threat assessments, deciding what capabilities were
needed in the various parts of the Armed Forces to meet what
those threats were. Then they come up here and they tell the
Congress, the House and the Senate, what they think their
priorities are. Then you apply your wisdom to it. You negotiate
with the administration and you come up with a set of funding
priorities.
Now, the problem we have right now is we don't have that.
And Dick Clarke and I--who is unfortunately ill this morning
and was supposed to be here--testified before the Senate last
week and told them what I'm going to tell you here. What we
need is a mandate for national minimum standards for homeland
security for first responders. Now, we all understand that
there are three parts of homeland defense. There is prevention,
which is intelligence, and other law enforcement means of
preventing. There is protection, which goes to airports and
cyber structure, infrastructure, chemical plants, nuclear
plants. And there is response. We are dealing only with
response in this. But we think it is probably the single most
important minimum standard.
We work, by the way, with some remarkable people. You've
got two fire chiefs going to testify here, just terrific people
we work with from the National Association of Firefighters, the
Police Chiefs Association, the National Emergency Responders
Association. We work with the National Hospital Association,
all the public health officials.
So this report is not a report from 12 or 14 Americans who
got together in a room and talked about it. This is what your
constituents told us, and we have put together a report which
reflects what they think. Now, it is up to you to decide how
you want to prioritize.
Congressman Kucinich before he left said you shouldn't
spend any of the money on Iraq, you ought to spend it all on
homeland security. I'm sure there are many who disagree with
that. What you have to decide, because you're elected to decide
as I once was, what are the priorities? But you cannot
establish priorities until you know what the standards are.
What should be the standard in the city of New York for its
police, fire and emergency responders?
Now, having said that, let me just go through a few of the
points which some of you have already touched on in your
opening statements. Some of the findings that we came up with
are unequivocal. About half of the fire departments have enough
breathing equipment for half of their shifts. That simply means
that--or one-third of their shifts. That simply means that two-
thirds are totally unable to move into an atmosphere of
chemical or biological contamination. But let me point out to
you something that we learned in New York. These police and
fire people go where they can save lives, even if they put
themselves in jeopardy. I think it's terribly unfair to them
and their families to send them into jeopardy improperly
equipped.
Communication, you all know the story about communication.
It's still relatively inoperable. That is not an expensive fix.
It ought to be done. That certainly would be one of the
standards.
And most of the public health laboratories told us that
they do not have the equipment, the expertise, or the personnel
to deal with even finding out what we're dealing with. And that
is just unacceptable at any level.
And on hazmat, hazardous materials, some of the cities do
rather well, but many do not. There have to be standards which,
by the way, exist in that area as to what ought to be done.
Now, where are the funds needed? There are huge amounts of
funds needed for a national emergency 911 system to be able to
get data collection and dispatch, and done accurately and
quickly. FEMA has to have money to enhance its urban search and
rescue responsibilities, to train local departments to do that,
which in a normal kind of an attack would be far more important
than it was at the World Trade Center because of the
catastrophic collapse of those two buildings.
To foster interoperable communication systems, to enhance
the public health laboratories, we believe there ought to be
some regional emergency operation centers for local public
safety. We believe there ought to be protective gear for WMD
remediation equipment to firefighters and police. We think that
the national exercises of the type that are going on in
Stanford have to be vastly increased so when people have to
respond they can respond. We believe that there have to be much
better emergency agricultural and veterinary capabilities to
deal with contaminated food supplies, and we think there has to
be a surge capacity in the Nation's hospitals if there are
major attacks.
Now, what were our recommendations, our key
recommendations? I'll give you four or five of them.
No. 1, we believe the Congress ought to establish a system
for allocating scarce resources based more on addressing the
needs rather than on any political basis based on population
alone. To do this, you have to consider population density,
vulnerability, threat and presence of critical infrastructure.
We believe the House of Representatives ought to transform
the House Select Committee on Homeland Security into a standing
committee, and we believe the Senate ought to do the same, and
it already has a standing committee. But we believe that the
consolidation of all of these issues ought to be before the
Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.
We believe that Congress ought to require DHS to work with
our Federal agency to streamline homeland security grant
programs, something that Congressman Tierney talked about. And
we heard this over and over again. I mean, you don't
necessarily have to fund grants through States or even through
counties. There are places where you know what you need, and
you can fund it directly to a community with a specific rule
for what it will do.
And by the way, the oversight is very important. One of the
things that we have seen with block grants in the past is you
give a block grant to a community and it goes to supplant their
own spending. That's not what this is for. This is to add to
what their spending is going to be.
Let me just say, by the way, about the $90 billion figure,
we don't know if that's right and we say so. But the reason we
don't know is there are no national standards. Once you
establish the national standards and then you can determine how
much money is being spent at the local, county, and State
level, then you can decide what the Federal increment can be.
I'm sure it's a great deal of money. It may not be $90; it may
be $60, it may be $45. But until you do a set of standards, you
just don't know.
We believe that all future appropriations bills that fund
emergency response should include strict distribution time
lines. There has been just too much delay in getting the money
out that's already been appropriated.
Finally, I would say these three are fairly important. We
think that you ought to require DHS and Human Services to be
part of the standard-setting procedure. They both have
important roles to play.
We believe there ought to be an Institute of Best Practices
established by DHS to work with State and local governments and
other professional associations.
And finally, we think that Congress ought to make emergency
responder grants for fiscal year 2004, and thereafter on a
multiyear basis, to facilitate long-term planning and training.
I do not envy those of you who sit where you sit. I was on
the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Intelligence
Committee, a couple of other committees, and I have never seen
a situation where prioritization facing appropriators and the
Congress in general is as difficult as this one is. I mean, you
have major problems in Afghanistan. You have major problems,
according to the President, in Iraq. You have a deficit of
preparedness that is serious.
And let me just close by saying this. You know, I've been
in politics for some time, both at the State and the national
level. I think I understand something about the response of
individual Americans to individual actions. I come from a small
State which is roughly a million or 1.1 million people. You
tend to get a feel for people pretty well in a State like that.
Probably you do in the House. Probably less so in the Senate
where you come from a large State.
Mr. Shays. There's no doubt about that, Senator.
Senator Rudman. Well, you only represent half a million
people, right?
Mr. Shays. I just want to say, there's no doubt about that.
Senator Rudman. Well I said it, so you're agreeing with me.
I'll make this observation: that if there's another
attack--and I think there will be, it's only a question of
time--and we have a catastrophe, we are unable to help our
citizens after all of the warnings we have received, I will put
it bluntly, there will be hell to pay for those people who are
policymakers, including all Members of Congress, whether you
did the right thing or you didn't do the right thing. And so
from a point of view of doing the right thing and what's
politically right, this is high priority, and I get the sense
talking to Members of Congress on both sides of the Capitol
that people recognize it. So you're going to have to decide.
Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you for that very thorough and helpful
statement and thank you for all your good work.
[Note.--The report entitled, ``Emergency Responders:
Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously Unprepared,'' may be found
in subcommittee files.]
Mr. Shays. Dr. Smithson, you're recognized. If you
compliment this committee, the clock becomes irrelevant.
Dr. Smithson. Delighted to hear that.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. Like
you and certainly like the council's task force, I've spent a
great deal of time learning from America's first responders of
all disciplines. Perhaps that's why I'm in such agreement with
the council's report on emergency responders.
After domestic preparedness programs were initiated by
Senators Nunn, Lugar, and Domenici in 1996 to start addressing
this problem, I began research on how these programs were
working. In fact, I interviewed responders from 33 cities and
25 States. My research was presented in October 2002 in a
chunky report called ``Ataxia.''
In the last few years, far too many from the front lines
continue to tell me that they have yet to see a dime of the
money that the Federal Government is spending on terrorism
preparedness. Since the key to domestic preparedness--and I
think I'm hearing agreement on this--lies in improved local
response capabilities, I applaud the council's recommendation
to increase dramatically Federal spending to locals. In fact,
to find a major point disagreement with the council's task
force, I have to do something slightly unfair, and my
apologies, Senator Rudman. I have to resort to their 2002
report which recommended tripling the number of National Guard
Civil Support Teams. Given the astuteness of their other
recommendations, the council's backing of this politically
popular placebo program is somewhat disappointing.
Here's what the frontline responders, including those
serving in the National Guard, had to say about these teams.
And I convey their views with utmost respect to our men and
women in uniform. Frontline emergency professionals have an
unmistakable message about these teams. They have minuscule, if
not negative, utility in disaster response, and the resources
that they consume could be much better applied locally. Though
stocked with top-of-the-line equipment, Civil Support Teams
have practically zero actual emergency response experience,
which explains why frontliners can regale me with tales of how
these teams have botched it during exercises.
One deputy emergency manager bluntly told me, ``The good
thing about these teams is that it takes them as long as it
does to get here.''
On that point, Congresswoman Maloney, the New York Civil
Support Team arrived at the scene roughly a dozen hours after
planes struck the World Trade Towers and initiated monitoring
that was already being done by New York City and U.S.
environmental authorities.
The dynamics of chemical disaster response are such that
the Guard's teams cannot arrive in time to save lives.
Moreover, their four-person medical component will barely
register in a biological disaster.
Consider that the combined $9.4 million that it costs to
stand up and equip a Guard team with chemical and biological
gear could instead be used to purchase 6,600 emergency power
generators, or to buy level A personal protective gear for
3,700 firefighters so that they could safely enter hot zones.
With the $176 million required to maintain all 55 Civil Support
Teams each year, over 586,600 police officers could be equipped
with high-performance masks that would enable them to stay on
duty if terrorists use unconventional weapons.
My point, as the chart in my written testimony amply shows,
is that were these moneys instead invested in equipment for
frontline responders who would be at the scene of a disaster in
minutes rather than in hours, America would be better prepared
to grapple with terrorist attacks.
Washington can continue to go about this in an expensive
and inefficient way, or Congress can get America on the smart
route to enhance terrorism and disaster preparedness. I think
we're all in agreement about the need to get money to the front
lines. But Congress should also direct that exercises be
conducted on a no-notice basis and that the after-action
reports from these drills be exempt from Freedom of Information
Act requests. Doing so would allow response deficiencies to be
identified and corrected, and that's not what's happening with
the process as it currently exists.
Furthermore, I would encourage Congress to mandate that the
executive branch get swiftly and diligently to work with local
responders, professional organizations, and Governors to
develop and institutionalize preparedness standards, just as
the council recommended and as I did a few years ago. You
should also insist that burden-sharing arrangements be crafted
between Federal, State and local authorities so that
preparedness can be sustained.
You're not the only ones that have heard already we're
beginning to backslide on the advances that we've made in
preparedness. So in chapter 7 of ``Ataxia,'' I made several
recommendations for cost-sharing alternatives. By formally
consolidating congressional oversight and exercising these
responsibilities vigorously, you can eliminate redundant and
poorly designed programs.
I have a number of recommendations and information from the
front lines about how we can get more effective communications,
and I would also let you know that the council's recommendation
to have first responders get ready access to best practices is
actually being put into play by the Memorial Institute for the
Prevention of Terrorism. Until recently, I participated in a
project that's about to launch to share best practices and
lessons learned.
In closing, if you haven't already, please drop by your
local fire station, police station, emergency operations
center, hospital or public health lab and ask frontline
responders how to streamline Federal programs and get this
country better prepared. They'll give you an earful. They'll
tell you what programs are clunkers and what's working right. I
urge you to listen to them closely to heed
their counsel before you cast votes on homeland security issues
in the days, months, and years ahead.
Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Smithson follows:]
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Mr. Shays. At this time we'll begin with our questions, and
given the number of Members, I think we'll just do 5 minutes
and we can go on to a second round. It's going stay up there.
Mr. Turner, you have the floor.
Mr. Turner. Thank you. I'm asking a question about the
standardization process. As I said in my opening statement,
serving as a mayor of a city, a city that had a weapons-of-
mass-destruction exercise prior to September 11, the issue of
standardization is an issue that I think is going to be a very
difficult process.
Let me tell you the story of Dayton. We had a weapons-of-
mass-destruction exercise at an arena. We even closed part of
an interstate highway, went through a mock decontamination
process. But the most important thing that we learned during
all of that was the coordination between the different
organizations throughout the region--the FBI, we have Wright
Patterson Air Force Base, the military, the county and the
State officials--so that when September 11 happened, we were a
community that went and dusted off our books as to what our
plan was, and deployed it, and it was a marvelous thing to see
because we didn't run around saying, who's in charge, what
should we do? People knew what streets to close. They knew who
they needed to coordinate with. That's one aspect of
preparedness.
When we talk about standardization of preparedness and what
first responders need, Senator, I found your comments
interesting about the difference between the population and the
actual needs of the community. To give you one example, in my
district there's a small town, Wilmington, OH, that has
Airborne Express in its back yard. Over a million packages go
through a sorting facility there every day. And the--in
Wilmington, OH, their hospital does not have sufficient
emergency response equipment to respond if something should
happen at that facility. So they're trying to come up to speed.
If you did a strictly population-based analysis, you would get
to Wilmington, OH sometime in 2020.
And then if you look at the various other communities that
are around, they all have differing needs. You know, St. Louis,
with the arch, has different needs than Wright Patterson Air
Force Base in Dayton, OH. How do we go through a
standardization process that actually advances our
preparedness, that we don't get caught in a quagmire of trying
to overanalyze, but at the same time that we don't miss a
bunch?
Senator Rudman. Yeah. Our answer would be generally as
follows. First, a threat assessment done properly from the
Federal Government, on down through the various States,
counties, cities, would identify high-threat targets. And
you've mentioned one. That's a place where something bad could
happen in one of these packages that's being delivered. So you
have to first decide where the threats are.
Now, obviously, Congressman Maloney is right. New York
City, Washington, it's very obvious for a lot of reasons. There
are other major cities as well. However, there are smaller
places that have critical infrastructure of various kinds that
have to be identified. So you have to put those in the matrix
of where the threat assessment comes out. Once you do that, the
kind of equipment required for various places varies on what
the threat and the population and the mobility is in a
particular area. For instance, the State that I come from, New
Hampshire, could probably have a series of regional units that
could combine under certain circumstances, whereas a large city
like Dayton or Syracuse, NY, or Bridgeport, CT would probably
need much of that equipment. The standardization of the
equipment for these people is not hard to come up with. We
already have been told by them what they think a minimum
standard is, and that will have to be studied in depth to see
if they're high or low.
The point you're raising is how does the threat assessment
combine with that equipment need. And my answer would be,
thinking about it here this morning, that would depend entirely
on what the minimum standard would be, and then do certain
communities need more rather than less? But in terms of the
police, fire, and emergency responders, the basic kind of
equipment they need to be able to do their job is a standard
that should not be hard to set. The hardest thing will be to
decide what you need in a particular community, and that will
take a lot of work by a lot of people. But we think it could be
done in a 6-month to 1-year timeframe.
Dr. Smithson. Congressman, you're right. The effort to
create standards is going to be rather complicated. But, there
are several professional organizations that have a running
start on this. And if you just ask the locals and do some
exploration as I did, you'll find a number of professional
practices that are emerging that can grapple with some of the
tough response issues. If we can get agreement on these
professional standards, the way to move this thing forward is
to put these standards, to have the Governors agree to put
these standards in local police and fire academies, and to get
medical schools and nursing schools to change their curricula
so that future generations are taught, and we're not always
behind the wheel here. Otherwise, a decade from now, we'll
still have defense contractors out there teaching various
practices here and there. We need to do this in a way that is
cost effective and that gets this information promulgated
across the country. These military teams that won't get there
first. I think you already recognize that. It will be the
neighbors next door that get there first to help you. And these
are the very people that need the standards in their academies
and in their colleges and universities.
Thank you.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman. I thank the witnesses.
Mrs. Maloney.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What about your
time?
Mr. Ruppersberger. He'll get time. He's the chairman.
Mrs. Maloney. OK. Senator Rudman, the only comment I have
heard from the Department of Homeland Security about your very
excellent report is that the money that you call for would be
used to buy gold-plated telephones. And to your knowledge, have
they gotten in touch with you or with anyone on the council to
discuss your very thoughtful report in depth?
Senator Rudman. Congresswoman Maloney, let me just respond
to that comment. You know, unfortunately--and I don't mean to
be hard on the public relations profession--but every
government agency and, quite frankly, every congressional
office has a spokesman, and they're capable of putting out the
most incredible dribble. That's the only word that I can use. I
mean, their natural response is not to even look at what
somebody said but to immediately go into a full defensive mode.
Secretary Ridge was pretty hard on that statement on ``Meet the
Press,'' and I'll take that as being the final word. That was a
stupid statement. We weren't looking for gold-plated
telephones. We'd like the New York City fire and police
departments to be able to talk to each other.
Mrs. Maloney. Has he reached out, regardless of the
inappropriate statement, has he reached out to speak with you
in the Department about the report?
Senator Rudman. Some of our staff have talked to some of
their staff. They have not contacted me personally. Nor did
they after the last report we did.
Mr. Shays. Will the gentlelady yield? You know that will be
a good basis for us inviting some people from the Department of
Homeland Security in to just talk about this report, and maybe
if someone from your staff wants to participate, we would allow
that as well.
Senator Rudman. We would be happy to do it. I mean the fact
is that I have met at great length with John Gordon, who's now
got Tom Ridge's job in the White House, General John Gordon,
retired four-star. We've talked about the report a great deal
from the White House point of view. I have not personally
talked, but people from our group have talked to staff at DHS.
Mrs. Maloney. I would like to go back to one of your
comments on fairness and going where the threat is. And press
reports this year highlighted the unfairness, really, of the
homeland security grant distribution program, and one report
showed that under the latest version passed by the Senate,
Wyoming would be getting $32.25 per person, while New York
City, by all accounts, by all analysis, target No. 1, would
only get $4.60 per person. And we've heard talk from the
administration about changing the formula. As Secretary Ridge
has publicly said, he does not support this. He thinks it
should go where the threat is. But we've seen nothing really of
substance besides rhetoric.
And what is your opinion of this grant distribution
formula? And what is your advice on how we can get it changed
in a way that really focuses on where the threat is, because
everybody says, ``Oh we should.'' But when you look at the
paperwork that's moving through Congress, they're not. They're
going on a formula that really is more of a political formula
than a threat formula.
Senator Rudman. We totally agree with you. I believe
Secretary Ridge agrees with you.
Mrs. Maloney. He does publicly.
Senator Rudman. And we have laid out in our report the
metrics of how we believe you ought to proceed. It is based,
first, on a threat assessment and then based on the standards
that you set, and then apply those to the various communities
to see what they need. Obviously, you need a higher density of
expenditure for New York City then you do for Manchester, NH.
It's a whole different situation. And it cannot be done the way
it's being done presently, because then you will be essentially
putting more money where it's not needed and less money where
it is needed. So----
Mrs. Maloney. So you would start off with a threat
assessment.
Senator Rudman. The threat assessment, the standards, and a
distribution formula based on that.
Mrs. Maloney. Threat assessment, the standards, and
distribution base on that.
Senator Rudman. And I might tell you that this government
is very good at doing that. I mean, there are plenty of systems
analysts who are employed in this government who know exactly
how to do that. But this appears to me to be a very hastily
thrown together formula for distributing money.
Mrs. Maloney. It's a political formula.
Senator Rudman. I believe it is.
Mrs. Maloney. It's not--and we were speaking yesterday with
Doug Duncan, who is the Montgomery County, MD executive, and he
told us that in order to prepare his county for terrorism, he
has had to cut the budget of education and other social
services. And have you heard similar stories around the country
and does it surprise you?
Also Dr. Smithson, I would love a copy of your report. I
haven't read that one, although I've read this one several
times.
Senator Rudman. We have heard that and I would also point
out something that has not been mentioned here this morning. I
don't know if you're aware of this or not, but we now have less
policemen in this country than we did on September 11. Now,
that's hard to believe. There are less police due to budget
cuts across the country than there were on September 11.
Mrs. Maloney. Based on whose stats?
Senator Rudman. We have the statistics from the National
Association of Chiefs of Police and other places.
Mrs. Maloney. I'm out of time.
Senator Rudman. And I believe New York is one of those
places.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, police and fire are less than what they
were.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. Mr. Murphy.
Mr. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator, I am particularly interested in this report, some
of the issues involving hospital and health care providers,
because I think that when we talk about first responders we
usually think paramedics, police, and firemen and getting to
the scene. But, of course, the next step is getting them to the
hospital in a coordinated way. And I know in my region around
Pittsburgh, some of the concern is how we communicate with tens
of thousands of nurses and physicians, tell them where to go
and how to get there and what to be ready for when they do get
there. Now--and thinking how to use paging systems, BlackBerry
systems, personal devices, phones, etc. Now, when we look at
this other level of what happens if there was a power grid
meltdown, how do you get ahold of anybody? Any suggestions of
what should be done in that sort of a preparedness?
Senator Rudman. One of the things that you will find in the
report is a section on exactly the point you're talking about,
public hospitals. They are absolutely a part of this whole
emergency response team. They have to have not only surge
capability, but they have to have communication capability with
people that they've never had the necessity to have that kind
of communication with before.
My suggestion would be that you have to get some people who
are really skilled in the area of communications to answer that
question. I'm not in a position to answer it. I mean, if you
get a major attack on a city that takes out cellular telephone
facilities and relay facilities for pagers, you have a serious
problem responding.
Now, there are communities that have a plan that in the
event of an emergency, emergency workers at hospitals are told
if there is an emergency and you hear about it, here's what you
do. So they don't have to be communicated with. It's kind of a
standard operating procedure for what you do if something
terrible happens downtown, and I think that is something that
most good hospitals probably already have in place. I don't
know that for a fact.
Mr. Murphy. Well, I know some of the ones that I used to
work at are doing that very thing. But they had also hoped to
recognize that sometimes if there is what's a biological or
chemical attack, obviously there are chemical issues, and they
also have to be told how to get there and other routes to take
and how to not be caught up.
But one of the things we learned from September 11 is that
so many people were trying to use pagers and cell phones that
the system shut down. I know around here they thought, well,
BlackBerries worked, but now we know that if you overload that
system, that shuts down too. And so we do have that other
issue. And I am wondering in terms of other funding aspects if
there's any direction we should be looking at here to help with
the communication network.
Senator Rudman. I think when you have to--when you set
national minimum standards, that will be part of the issue:
What are the minimum communication requirements for a reliable
system under adverse circumstances? Nobody seems to know that
yet. We've got--now here in D.C., there is an interesting
experiment going on with the use of different kinds of software
that means you don't have to replace all of the equipment. And
that's a very interesting approach. It's being done here and
I'm sure there are people in the D.C. Police Department and the
Park Service that can tell you about what they're doing.
Mr. Murphy. Dr. Smithson, do you have any comments on those
issues?
Dr. Smithson. Yes. In the aftermath of Aum Shimrikyo's
attack in the Tokyo subway on March 20, 1995, physicians at St.
Luke's Hospital, which received a flood of patients within
minutes of this event, were reduced to shouting down the halls
at each other in order to communicate.
New York City on September 11th and some of the other
things that we've seen transpire tell us that we've got a
communications issue. Having traveled so many places and talked
with so many jurisdictions, I can, unfortunately, tell you that
there are only a few that are making real progress on regional
hospital planning. This is a very, very tough nut to crack
because of the privatization of U.S. health care.
And that is why Federal assistance in this regard will be
so crucial. We need to get hospitals in the same room with each
other to plan and we need to develop plans to reach out to
these medical health care providers.
And if communications go kerflooey, do you know what will
save the day? People will be well trained if we have standards.
They will know where to go when disaster strikes and what to
do. Unfortunately, absent standards and absent sufficient funds
for regional hospital planning, there are only a couple of
places in this country that I know that have a shot at that
right now.
Mr. Murphy. In the few seconds that I have left, one other
issue that hospitals have brought to my attention is with HCFA
confidentiality standards. They wonder, will there be allowance
to let a lot of it be thrown out the window in the case of an
emergency and they don't have to jump through hoops to protect
all kinds of things that they are trying to get information
quickly across whatever methods that they have.
Dr. Smithson. Actually, I will use New York City as an
example here. They have made tremendous strides with something
called syndromic surveillance, which I think is rather
misunderstood. This has great potential to provide us with
leading-edge indication that there is a disease outbreak in
communities.
And one of the things that they and others are working on
is how you get crucial information without revealing sensitive
information. I think they have made some good strides there.
Mr. Murphy. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Congressman Ruppersberger.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I am probably going to make more
statements than a question, but I will get to a question.
First thing, I think the premise is, if we cannot protect
our first responders and give them the resources to do the job,
then they can't protect us.
Now, Senator, your opening statement and Dr. Smithson's
were excellent. I think--let's get to the bottom line as
quickly as we can, and hopefully this won't be another hearing
that we have and we all waste our time and nothing occurs.
The bottom line is this, that we have not made this a
priority--we have not made homeland security. I would not want
Governor Ridge's job. I mean, Governor Ridge is trying to take
Customs and immigration officers and make them sky marshals,
two entirely different disciplines.
Why does he have to do that? Because he is not getting the
resources.
The administration--believe me, this is not partisan. Many
friends of mine on both sides of the aisle are very much
concerned about the priorities of moneys and resources going to
first responders, and that has to be dealt with.
And I don't want to get, because it is really a side issue,
but the fiscal policy right now is not working. You alluded to
it, whatever it is, whether you are in favor of the tax cut,
you are not in favor. But we have to reevaluate. If we are
going to be out there taking the offensive on terrorism,
dealing with homeland security, dealing with issues, Iraq,
Iran, North Korea, we have to have the money.
And this deficit is looming out there. And as long as it is
there, I think the administration is going to be extremely
reluctant--they have showed it already--not to give the
resources.
Now, if you are going to give somebody money, you have to
hold them accountable for it. So the bottom line is that I
think that your assessment for a national program is great.
However, it is going to be very difficult, in my opinion. You
can't tell me that--I described my district in the opening
statement with an airport, a port and Army bases, versus in the
middle of Utah, which I have traveled, and there are a lot of
rocks out there. But you can't have both. And so it has to be,
I think, looked at from a regional perspective and looked at
where the priorities are.
Second, you have to look at who is doing it well now. Now,
I know in the State of Maryland, I happen to be vice chairman
of our shock trauma system, which is a regional--rated one of
the top systems in the world. It is very good. I don't mean to
be parochial, but there is a system that works. They have had a
lot of training exercises. It works from the training of the
paramedics to the communication, all over.
And there are other areas in the country that have this
too. We need to take the ones that work well and look at what
we are doing, so we don't waste a lot of money in training, in
developing where we need to go.
Now, from--the general question, because I have to get to a
question now, the question basically is, where do you start?
And I think we have to be--from a public relations point of
view, so the administration will listen and give us the same
resources that Rumsfeld is getting, because, you know, sooner
or later, as you say--I am on the Intelligence Committee. I
know where we are. I can't tell you where we are, but I know
that there are a lot of issues out there.
Al Qaeda is for real. Terrorism is for real. They are very
patient. We have to be ready. Right now, you don't even have to
be a terrorist if you want to go into a subway situation. And
then there needs to be a response to that. That takes
communication, it takes medical, it takes first responders, all
of this coming together.
So my broad question is, how do we get the attention of the
administration to reprioritize where the resources need to go?
Because that is bottom line.
Senator Rudman. I have a very straight and simple answer to
that, Congressman, that is, that you have to have a crash
program mandated by Congress. There is a lot of support for it
in both Houses, to set national minimum standards for first
responders.
Because, until you do that, you cannot go to the
administration, you cannot go to the appropriators and, with
any sense, say, we need X amount of money. Because then you are
going to get the same answer that you have gotten over the
years on many other subjects: Well, there is going to be waste
and fraud and mismanagement.
But if you can point specifically to, here are the national
minimum standards, and you take the fire, police, emergency
responders of 100 of the largest cities in America and say,
here is the standard and here is what they have, then the
message starts to sink in.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Let's get down to the basics.
Mr. Shays. I hate to interrupt the gentleman. I will give
him more time.
Dr. Smithson, do you agree with that?
Dr. Smithson. I do agree with that. Pardon me for being a
bit uppity here, but you guys write the laws and you control
the purse strings.
Mr. Ruppersberger. That is what my next question is going
to be. You are talking about Ridge--well, I am in the minority,
though, and I am a freshman. So I have a chairman who is very
strong.
Senator Rudman. That is not a disability, Congressman.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Getting back to the issue, Ridge. You
have made a recommendation. How would you implement that
recommendation?
Senator Rudman. I would pass legislation, and there are
people in the Senate who are willing and able to do that. I
would make this a key issue. I would raise it--elevate it to
high visibility, and I would get legislation on the books which
mandates the administration by a date certain to establish
national minimum standards for first responders for homeland
security.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Well, if you are going to do that, don't
you think you should have a recommendation on what those
standards should be?
Senator Rudman. No, I don't think you can do that. Because
I don't think anybody truly knows. The expertise to establish
those standards is out there in the country amongst your
constituents, and together with Federal officials they can
establish those standards.
I mean, we have standards now. I mean, you talk to the
International Association of Fire Fighters, talk to the
insurance companies. There are standards for fire departments,
depending on the kind of a city you are in, for fighting fires.
There have to be standards for homeland security first
responders across the board. Until do you that, you can ask for
money until the cows come home, Congressman, and you are not
going to get that.
Mr. Ruppersberger. You know it.
Another thing that is very disturbing now, and we have had
this in other committees: Because of terrorism, there are so
many of the resources that the locals are taking away from
other areas. There is another issue out there, which we are
going to have to get on top of, that so much money is being
taken from drugs; and that is still is our No. 1 threat. And
so, you know, this is an issue that has to be dealt with.
I agree with you. I am sure Chairman Shays is a very
forthright, aggressive person. Maybe we can develop something
to that effect.
Senator Rudman. I want to make one response to what you
said. And I think you will understand this very well, knowing
Baltimore and Baltimore Airport.
The attack took place with airplanes. What was our
response? To pour an enormous amount of resources into
airports. I don't know how many billions it is now. But we have
done all of this with airports. Now, maybe that was the right
thing to do. But you always have to ask yourself the question,
was that prioritization or was that responding to what we saw
as an issue? Maybe a little bit of both.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Well, there are a lot of ridiculous
stories.
Mr. Chairman, the Port of Baltimore that I deal with, a lot
of issues we have in port security. Baltimore happens to be a
ro-ro, which is a lot of vehicles coming on and off. Because
they are not a container port, 50 percent are ro-ro; we are not
getting as much money as the container ports.
I mean, it is just--that is what I am talking about. I am
very much concerned about the standards. It is going to be very
difficult to pull these standards together.
Senator Rudman. But it can be done.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank the gentleman.
Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. I am not as nice as my colleagues,
unfortunately, and I guess I don't really mean this to be
partisan, but I do mean it to be a difference between the House
and the Senate and the White House.
There is--there is policy, and then there is execution, and
whether it is a Republican or a Democrat in the White House--
and I hope we can see beyond that or whatever--there has been
no execution.
Back in October 2001, there was a bipartisan letter that
went to this administration, to Mr. Ridge and to the White
House, asking them for a threat assessment. October 2001. There
have been calls made, there have been individual letters sent.
We have been haranguing and harassing this White House and this
administration for a threat assessment since the very outset,
after September 11th.
And I think that your recommendations are excellent, both
of you have made them for some time now. I think that members
of this committee, both Republicans and Democrats, have heard
them. This chairman has been excellent on this issue; he has
been a leader in the true sense of the word on this issue, and
not hesitant to get on board a bipartisan effort; and he sees
beyond the idea of whether or not this is political and
understands the gravity of the situation in this country.
We simply have to, as a Congress, get beyond that. We have
to sit here and decide whether or not we are going to do what
the Senator recommends, and think Dr. Smithson also agrees with
that recommendation, that we have to raise the level, put up
the temperature here and demand some execution.
We should have had this threat assessment by this time. And
I note that one of your recommendations, Senator, is, by the
end of 2007 we have a threat assessment like that. That would
be great, but that would be too late. It is probably the best
that we can do in this scenario, but it is an unbelievable
disgrace that despite the efforts of this Congress, this
administration has failed to execute on that level. And we have
just got to increase the pressure and work together on this.
And I know it is going to be more painful for my colleagues
on the Republican side than it is for us, because of the party
that is in the White House, but this is beyond that, as you
have said, eloquently; and I think we all agree here, we have
to demand those standards.
There are people out there that can do it. We can start by
just asking the two of you to identify people; in about 5
minutes we would a list well worth going to. You have RAND, you
have other institutions out there that do great work in these
areas. There is no excuse for not having it done.
I think that if we look at just some of the recommendations
in your testimony, and this Congress can do it, this committee
can start doing it, by demanding that DHS and HHS put in their
next budget a detailed methodology of how they are going to
determine--it, in answer to my colleague's question, is
probably best that they set forth a methodology of how we are
going to get this information, then go about getting it and
have a time line on that.
I think we do have to have a system that is more
transparent and fairer about how we are going to distribute
these moneys, and we can do legislation along that line, or put
some constraints in our budget, requiring that these things be
done.
Also, the most important one that I see in terms of my
local responders here is some adamant statement about a
distribution timeframe. You know, the next time that we put an
appropriations bill out, I know we can do that. So I don't have
a question here, but I don't think it is necessary. You have
had an eloquent discussion of the issues here, and the
recommendations from both of you individuals, I thank you very
sincerely for laying it out so plainly and making it clear that
these things are not just on the table today; they have been on
the table for some time, and it has been a case of inactivity.
And while I think that this committee and Congress have
acted, I don't think we have acted forcefully enough. And I
think it is time to set aside the timidity and set aside the
partisan aspects of it, and recognize this as simply a
prerogative of Congress to kick the White House in the backside
when it is necessary to get it to execute on these things.
I hope that we can work together to do that, to get the
assessment, to get some timeframes on when distribution is
going to get out there, and to get a real fair formula for that
distribution and get moving. So I am happy to work with my
colleagues on that.
I want to thank both of the witnesses again for their
excellent testimony and all of your service to this country.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman for his comments. And
just--this may seem a little off subject, but it really relates
to what you have said, Mr. Tierney. I think that the challenge
for the majority party, frankly, is to be demanding a little
more accountability on the part of the administration.
And we have done a disservice to the administration,
because the number we are seeing for our needs in Iraq--if we
had asked sooner and demanded a number sooner, I think they
would have been better prepared today than they are. And I
think that it does now also relate to your whole issue of what
the threat is.
Before we had reorganization, Mr. Tierney was saying, don't
we need to know the threat before we reorganize our government?
And I felt we could do them in tandem. But I did feel we needed
them, and I joined him in his desire to learn that. But we
still don't have a threat assessment, which is, to me, pretty
astounding, given that all three commissions said, know the
threat in specific ways, then design your strategy around the
threat, and then reorganize.
What I want to ask you about is that my first reaction when
you came out with your number was that it seemed to be a
contradiction; and you really answered it, which I wanted to
state. And that is, if we don't have a way to evaluate what we
need, how can we then come up with a number that says we need
this?
What it appears is that your number was really an
expression of what was requested on the part of local
communities and States, and that it was a real estimate, but it
was also kind of, I view, as a wake-up call. In other words, we
need something far more than what we have now, and that is how
I reacted to it.
Is that the way I should have?
Senator Rudman. Not quite. Almost. We got numbers from
virtually all of those originations. Curiously, although they
tried very hard, the police chiefs association could not give
us--they just weren't comfortable giving us a number.
The fire gave us a number. We did not take these numbers as
they were submitted.
Mr. Shays. Let me just say, parenthetically, we had a hard
time getting the police departments to come. I asked, why are
we just hearing from fire? And the police departments and the
people we contacted just didn't want to step forward at this
hearing and deal with this issue.
Senator Rudman. I have no explanation for that. We
certainly had their cooperation. We couldn't get a number from
them.
The fire departments across the country, we got good
numbers from them and the responders. We adjusted those numbers
somewhat. We did not just take the numbers we were given.
Now, the other thing that was very difficult, and I am sure
the chairman will understood this was to get a number that
truly reflected what the delta is of expenditure by city,
State, counties on terrorism-related expenses versus their
normal budgets. So, for instance, you take the Arlington fire
department--and you are going to hear from the chief of the
D.C. department--what is their foundation budget, and what is
it that they are spending on homeland security issues, first
responder preparation, above that?
We did a lot of work in that area. That is why if you look
at the report you will find we worked with two of the best
budget organizations in the city to help us put the numbers
together, private organizations that are budget related. We
therefore established a range, which is why in my opening
remarks I said that we cannot tell you an exact number; but you
can find out that number if you have a threat assessment and
then mirror against that threat assessment what national
minimum standards are for first responders. Then you will have
the number.
Mr. Shays. And I am going to ask Dr. Smithson to respond to
the fire-police issue.
But what I am struck with is, there may be a reluctance on
the part of the administration to do this because it may set a
standard that they don't think they can reach.
But wouldn't you agree that even if we knew that we needed
to spend a certain amount, and we, setting priorities, thought
we couldn't reach it, that would be better than doing what we
are doing right now?
Senator Rudman. We say, set the national minimum standard,
and then decide how many years it is going to take you to get
to that standard.
And, most importantly, when you decide that, the decisions
on where to start first cannot be made politically. Every
congressional district gets a pro rata share. You take a look
at where the threat assessment is, and you make sure that is
where the money goes first.
Obviously, if I were king and you asked me, what would you
do first, I would make sure that the 100 largest cities in
America, the 100 largest cities in America, had chem-bio
equipment for their first responders and first-rate
communications and surge capacities for their hospitals.
If you would give me my priorities, based on working on
this now for 7 years, since I have been involved in this issue,
that is where I think the money should go. But can I tell you
how much? No, I cannot tell you how much that would cost. But
that is a question of multiplication, once you decide how much
people need it.
Mr. Shays. When I was just making reference to the police
and the fire, there are two different cultures here, you
started to appear like you were going to respond to it.
I would be curious to know what your comment is.
Dr. Smithson. One of the reasons why training has not
propagated as widely among the police is, basically, that their
workday differs from those in the fire service.
Fire service, you know, when the bell rings they go out.
But a considerable amount of their time is spent in the
station. For police officers, they are in the station for a
brief period of time for roll call and morning news or shift
news, and then they are out on patrol.
So it has been much easier to get training propagated to
the fire services. That is why I kind of, you know, made a face
about the cultural differences there.
Listen, we are all waiting for this threat assessment, But
in the absence of a threat assessment--and I don't know when it
is going to appear--what we need to decide to do is to do the
most good for the most people, and that means going by
population density. Institutionalizing standards will bring the
rest of the boats up with the tide.
And as for the recommendation that you go with the 100
largest cities, fine, but let's define ``city,'' because when
the domestic preparedness program was implemented, they went to
the 120 largest metropolitan areas; and that meant the same
training trooped to the same locations three different times.
Mr. Shays. I don't know what you just meant. What do you
mean the same training went to the same----
Dr. Smithson. The same training went to the larger Denver
area three times; it went to three different jurisdictions in
the larger Denver area three times.
What we need to do is to get the Denver area--sorry to make
an example out of them--working regionally. And that means
putting--making some type of a calculation to get the funds
working on a regional basis.
I know that is going to be tough, but if we think about
this, we can get this done. And therein you will reinforce the
mutual aid system; people will know who to call when it hits
the fan, instead of wondering where the help is next door, and
what it is that they can do to help.
So that is why a regional approach is really advisable
here.
Mr. Shays. Let me just say I would be happy to give another
round to whoever wants it.
Mr. Tierney. If I might, I just want to make--I think we
have some responsibility to deal with the unease of our
citizenry. And the way to deal with it is to plan, is to have
the things that we are talking about.
It is just incredible that since September 11th our
population, our constituents, from the fire fighters and the
police officers all of the way down to the average person,
regular person on the street, are in less than a comfortable
situation. They sense great unease, because no one is telling
them what the plan is.
I think they can deal with it if we haven't got to the end
of the plan yet, if we are moving in that direction, if--the
uncertainty and the great feeling of unease come from the fact
that, as the government, we have yet to give them an outline
that we know, what we can identify as the problem; and we have
to plan to get there, to some solution in a reasonable period
of time.
I think that is our charge. And thank you again.
Mr. Shays. Any comment on that? Any other member?
Mr. Ruppersberger. Yes.
First, I think the regional approach is right. Again, we
are asking for limited funding. We need to be held accountable
for the results.
And the regional approach is not duplication of effort; and
if you want to have money, a requirement should be that the
region comes together with a plan.
Most of your counties and regional areas are larger than
the cities in the middle. But the cities are the focal point.
Because you talk about--again, I will be parochial to
Baltimore. There are 2 million people in the Baltimore
metropolitan area. Baltimore City has 630,000 people. But you
just say ``Baltimore.'' It has to be a region.
But that needs to be part of a plan. That is why I am
concerned. I agree with everything that you said, and hopefully
we will get something out of this hearing. I know that the
chairman is a very proactive person, and he will run with this.
But, bottom line, it is still about what type of plan are
you going to put together and then get the votes for? I mean,
we might need a vote of somebody out in Utah. But we need the
vote of other areas.
And you are saying basically, you do the regional approach
where you can help the most people, and then you will bring it
up the other way through the standards, the national standards;
and that is how you will justify getting the money, correct?
Dr. Smithson. Yes.
Mr. Shays. Just before we have you all go, the other area
that I wrestle with, I totally buy into your point about a
crash program; and I know, Dr. Smithson, you do as well. But I
have a hard time understanding how we allocate Federal, State
and local. There are certain things that--frankly, I have my
fire and police come to me, and I say, with all due respect,
that is Bridgeport's responsibility or that is the State's
responsibility, and don't use terrorist issues to try to get
that money.
How do we deal with that issue?
Senator Rudman. Well, this is a personal opinion having
been in State government in New Hampshire for many years. I am
not a great fan of money going to States. I just never have
been. It is another layer of bureaucracy.
Mr. Shays. You want it to go straight to local?
Senator Rudman. Yes.
If you are talking about the--let's say the Washington, DC,
region, whatever that means, Washington metropolitan area, and
I agree it shouldn't be the 100 largest cities, the 100
metropolitan areas, find those areas and decide what the
standards are, and make sure that every police, fire and
emergency responder organization starts to meet those standards
with the money that is available.
I don't think you need another State planning organization.
You start getting competition with Governors, whom I respect a
great deal, but that is not their issue. It is not the State
that responds to this; it is the local governments that respond
to this. And so I truly think, if you start looking at State
grants--now, you may need State grants for certain activities,
but if you talk about what we are talking about, the first
responders don't work for the State, they work for communities.
Now, that is my opinion. Others are free to disagree.
Dr. Smithson. On this issue of burden-sharing, I couldn't
agree with you more, which is why I made it a focus of Chapter
7 in Ataxia.
I have yet to meet the politician----
Mr. Shays. Chapter what? I'm sorry.
Dr. Smithson. Chapter 7 in Ataxia. You will see a series of
proposals in there for how burdens can be shared between the
Federal Government, the State government, and local
jurisdictions. Who is going to pay the bill here is a big part
of this discussion. And if we don't get that straightened out
soon, we will see additional backsliding in the preparedness
gains made to date.
Mr. Shays. Right.
Dr. Smithson. I have yet to see a politician who likes to
talk about higher budgets or new taxes. But there are formulas
that are available out there. And I agree with you, we should
be going with the models that work.
In this particular case, locally, I will urge you to look
at what has happened in Florida, which passed a disaster fund
bill, and how at the State level, this is done with a tax. They
have local moneys going into disaster preparedness. And they
are getting better prepared with each passing year that this is
involved.
There is definitely a part of this burden that the Federal
Government should carry. But locals will be the first to tell
you that all emergencies are local, and they need to carry
their part of the burden.
Mr. Shays. Great point. Let me just ask, in this national
minimum standards--when we do that, would we also allocate to
Federal, State and local how we think the resources--where they
should come from?
Senator Rudman. I think that it is a wholly different
process altogether. I think, first, you set the standard, then
policymakers have to decide how you are going to prioritize the
distribution of whatever money is available against that
standard.
Mr. Shays. OK.
Mr. Murphy.
Mr. Murphy. Mr. Chairman, I just want to echo Senator
Rudman's comments on the way things work.
I know with fire companies in my district and other first
responders who have received some Federal grants, oftentimes
they sit around scratching their heads, trying to guess what is
going to be funded. And it appears to me that the self-
contained breathing apparatus and radios seem to be the magic
thing. Yet many of them say, who are these faceless, unnamed
people in some Federal bureaucracy somewhere deciding what we
need, when we know what we need in our communities? Then they
have to guess.
And those who are lucky enough to guess that they needed
some breathing apparatus got it; and those who already had all
of those things, but needed something else to help with
response, didn't. It is an absurd way to run things. I think it
works much better if there are established community standards.
Knowing that happens in my district, which probably happens
in many other districts around America, is there are so many
fire departments, and every town and hamlet wants their own
police department, police chief, as everyone else--that each
one wants a full complement of equipment for everything. When,
if they really look at what was needed regionally--for example,
I have a strip of highway, 3 or 4 miles long, that I think
there are seven fire departments within that area. Each one has
to have their own everything. And getting them to coordinate
that effort is very difficult, and much better if there is a
standard. Say, here is a standard; if someone within this
stretch needs that equipment, it must be shared.
If we don't set the example on the Federal level, then it
kicks back to the States. The States won't take a stand on it
either.
So I am in absolute agreement that we need to do that.
Senator Rudman. I want to comment.
That is absolutely right, and if you look at the cell, you
will find there were certain types of equipment that you don't
need every department to have, certain types of chemical
detection equipment. As long as you decide how-many-mile radius
it is, then it can be deployed.
Mr. Tierney. I was wondering, Mr. Chairman, if Dr. Smithson
could make available a copy of her report for the committee?
Dr. Smithson. I would be delighted to. It has also been up
on the Web since October 2000.
Mr. Tierney. At?
Dr. Smithson. Www.stimson.org. I have it on CD-ROMs. More
than happy to make it available.
Thank you, sir.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. And you came by the name of that
document how?
Dr. Smithson. Ataxia. It means confusion, and I think there
is a great deal of confusion about the nature of the terrorist
threat. It means lack of organization. And, well, I would argue
that we are still not as organized as we could be. And last,
but not least, it means involuntary muscle spasm. Since the
research was principally about chemical and biological
response, well, you can see where that one came from, too.
Mr. Shays. I wondered that, too.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you.
Mr. Ruppersberger. We have had a lot of hearings, but I
want to congratulate both of you. You have been focused,
forthright, and you have come to recommendations that we can
move forward with.
I was in local government for over 18 years. I can tell you
whether or not--it is not partisan, but as a county executive,
when I got money from the COPS Program, as an example, it came
directly to us right away--putting cops on the street right
away.
Anything else that, when you had to go through the State,
the Federal bureaucracy, the State bureaucracy, half the money
is gone before you ever got it. Now, right now, we have a
program, that fire fighters grant program, it is the most
popular program right now, where the money goes directly to the
fire departments. Why can't we use that program now, as a role
model, to move forward? It is a direct program. It is just like
the COPS Program was.
They are changing it?
Mr. Tierney. They are moving it out.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Here is an example of--we--I think there
is agreement on this panel that we have to do something. And if
we don't do something, something is going to happen, then we
are going to be scurrying all over the place. But at least--and
you can't conquer Rome overnight.
The only thing I am concerned about, I keep getting back to
this national program. If you are going to accomplish
something, it can't be broad; you have to be focused with it.
I am just concerned that if we come out with a national
program, just say, here it is, we have to kind of, I think,
tailor it from a recommendation point of view. If we are going
to try to get votes from our colleagues, I just think we need
to have a little more specificity.
Can you help me there at all?
Senator Rudman. I don't think there ought to be a lot of
partisan debate about setting, A, a threat assessment, or, B,
national standards. Now, once you have that done, then you are
going to have some discussions about distribution.
Mr. Ruppersberger. How long is it going to take to do that?
Senator Rudman. I don't think all that long if you want to
get the right people to do that.
Mr. Ruppersberger. You can put in the bill a timeframe.
Mr. Shays. But the gentleman--but what Mr. Rudman is
saying, let's just know the reality; then we will deal with the
politics after that.
Senator Rudman. Nobody knows the reality right now. No one.
Mrs. Maloney. But once we get to the politics, and we are
dealing with the politics now in the high-threat areas, and if
we direct to it 100 regions, we don't have the votes to pass
it, because my colleagues will say, I live in a desert
someplace, and we have--we are afraid of desert rats or
something.
Senator Rudman. Congresswoman Maloney, let me just respond
by quoting Winston Churchill, when he said that democracy was
the worst form of government, except for all of the others that
have been tried.
Mrs. Maloney. Very finally, your comment on your response
to the airports, where we went in and made that the top
priority, and it may not have needed to be the top priority.
Can you elaborate? Do you think we made a mistake in putting so
many resources in one area?
Senator Rudman. My own personal opinion is that some of
that money should have gone to port security, because I think
that is a larger threat to major metropolitan areas.
No question, we had to do a lot with the airports. But when
you look at the number of billions spent, it was a crash
program; there were no standards really thought about. It was
done, it was hurried through Congress, there were fights about
whether there would be privatization of the force and so forth
or ended up public.
My own personal opinion, having looked at this for a long
time, is that some of that money would have been better spent
in port security on America's major East Coast, West Coast and
Gulf ports.
Mr. Shays. Let me just quickly ask, because this committee
is going to act on this, the national minimum standards that we
would ask to be set up, are we asking DHS to do that?
Senator Rudman. Yes, you are. They have--right within FEMA,
they have the capability to do it. And they have all of these
groups around the country that they have liaison with, who are
more than willing to sit down and help.
Mr. Shays. Time frame we should give them is how long?
Senator Rudman. I would not give them probably more than 9
months.
Mr. Shays. OK. We do appreciate both of you being here.
Thank you.
Our second and final panel, that is, Adrian H. Thompson,
who is the chief of D.C. Fire and EMS Department in the
District of Columbia; and Mr. Edward Plaugher, fire chief,
county of Arlington, VA, International Association of Fire
Chiefs.
Does that mean you are the head of it or are you just part
of it?
Chief Plaugher. Part of it.
Mr. Shays. We are also joined by Deputy Chief Sellitto, who
is with Chief Thompson. We will have two statements, but all
three of you, we will swear you. If you would stand and raise
your right hands, please.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. Note for the record, our witnesses have
responded in the affirmative.
We will start with you, Chief Thompson, and appreciate that
both of you are here. I would love to have you be able to
incorporate any part of your statement into what you have
already heard that you feel inclined to make, as well, in your
statement.
And we will do a 5-minute, and then we roll it over 5
minutes.
STATEMENT OF ADRIAN H. THOMPSON, CHIEF, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
FIRE AND EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES DEPARTMENT
Chief Thompson. Thank you. First, I would like to say good
morning, Chairman Shays, members of the Subcommittee on
National Security, Emerging Threats and International
Relations. I am honored to be here to present today.
I am Adrian H. Thompson, chief of the Washington, DC, Fire
and EMS Department. With me is Michael Sellitto, deputy fire
chief of special operations, and my acting assistant fire chief
for operations, Chief Doug Smith.
The District of Columbia Fire and EMS Department has been
participating in the State Domestic Preparedness Program
administered through the Department of Justice, Office of
Domestic Preparedness, and is continuing to receive funding
through this source. Although there is a delay from submission
to receipt of funds, the appropriated funding eventually
becomes available. We are also making use of Fire Act grant
programs and are currently awaiting a decision on a possible
award.
The Department also submitted requests to the Federal
Government for financial assistance in 2001, immediately
following the terrorist attacks of September 11th.
Specifically, we requested support in those critical areas
where we judged we might have a shortfall if an event were to
occur which caused loss of personnel or response equipment.
We made requests for additional fully equipped fire
apparatus, because having a ``ready reserve'' fleet is
essential for sustained response during a major event or
multiple-site incident that would otherwise strip the remainder
of the city of essential services. The request also included
additional technical rescue and hazardous material equipment,
which would allow us to operate in the most effective manner.
The funds were appropriated and expanded in accordance with our
request.
One important issue is the development of nationwide
equipment standards so that emergency equipment can be shared
across jurisdictional lines. Depending on finalized standards,
the equipment bought earlier may have to be replaced to meet
them. In addition, with the purchase of many highly technical
pieces of equipment comes the added maintenance cost of this
new equipment. It is hard to project necessary operating budget
funding for this purpose, especially since much of this
equipment was obtained after the fiscal year budget was
finalized.
Another major area in which we saw a need was an inadequate
number of personnel with the necessary specialized training to
perform the tasks involved in technical rescue and hazardous
materials incidents. To fulfill these needs, we made use of the
many Federal programs, including: Department of Homeland
Security, Office of Domestic Preparedness programs; FEMA,
Emergency Management Institute programs; and Fire
Administration, National Fire Academy programs.
These programs are all worthy of continued funding, as they
are the standard by which all other training is measured. All
of the above offer free training to agencies such as ours.
However, this agency incurs overtime costs whenever we send
members to training. Since our agency operates on a 24-hour 7-
day-a-week schedule, overtime is necessary to maintain adequate
staffing while members are in training. Our September 2001
request asked for specific language permitting use of
appropriated funds to cover this expense. This request was
honored, and as a result, we have achieved a major
accomplishment in the area of specialized training. We now have
a greater number of trained individuals, and in many cases, the
individuals have been trained to higher levels than they were
capable of in the past.
Unfortunately, government training programs do not cover
all areas of technical training, and it was necessary to
contract out with private and institutional vendors for some of
this training. The increase in numbers of personnel with
specialized training will result in a corresponding increase in
recertification costs to maintain the numbers at the new levels
in the future.
All training and procedures must be practiced regularly to
ensure readiness. Training drills and exercises are now
multiagency events. There should be a mechanism to encourage
participation from local agencies which serve a support
function during emergencies. These support agencies have
limited funds to participate in these exercises, and as a
result, full participation is not always possible.
In regards to some of the shortfalls that we foresee in our
agency in the city, in terms of equipment needs, to keep the
latest technology available in areas of emergency medical
services and biological and chemical field testing, continued
funding for upgrades should be provided.
To address our equipment maintenance needs, consideration
should be given to allowing a percentage of our future funding
to be allocated to equipment maintenance and upkeep.
To address our training needs, it is essential that
training requests be funded with specific language allowing us
to use the funds for overtime purposes for backfill positions.
In addition, first responder agencies should be allowed to
contract with the private sector to fulfill needs unmet by the
Federal programs and to use the training funding to support
recertification as necessary.
Finally, funding for training exercises must be available
to pay the overtime costs for support organizations to ensure
their participation in an exercise.
I must point out the District of Columbia is unique, in
that appropriated funds do not have to go through multiple
layers of State, county, and local government to get to the
point where the first responders can use appropriated funds.
Unfortunately, our colleagues in surrounding jurisdictions have
told us that funding no longer comes directly to them, as in
the past, and must filter down to them through the middle
layers of government, thus delaying the receipt of funds as
well as decreasing the ultimate amount that they may receive at
first responder levels.
I would like to thank you for this opportunity to present
our views, and am prepared to answer any questions you may
have.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, Chief Thompson. We will have
questions.
[The prepared statement of Chief Thompson follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Mr. Plaugher.
STATEMENT OF EDWARD PLAUGHER, CHIEF, ARLINGTON COUNTY, VA FIRE
AND RESCUE DEPARTMENT
Chief Plaugher. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of
the subcommittee. I am Edward Plaugher, chief of the Arlington
County, VA Fire and Rescue Department.
I appear today on behalf of the International Association
of Fire Chiefs, which represents the leadership and management
of America's fire and emergency services. I am a member of the
IAFC's Terrorism Committee and chairman of its Legislative
Subcommittee.
I have submitted for the record a prepared statement from
which I will highlight a few of the key areas during my opening
remarks. The stated purpose of this hearing is to review the
recent Council on Foreign Relations' report entitled,
``Emergency Responders: Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously
Unprepared.''
The IAFC, the International Association of Fire Chiefs,
participated in the development of that independent task force
report and agrees with many of its recommendations. I will
begin with a quotation taken directly from the Council on
Foreign Relations task force report, found on page 11:
``enhancing responder capabilities will require inputs on
multiple levels. Providing response equipment is only one
aspect of improving overall preparedness. Without appropriate
staffing, training of personnel, and sustaining equipment and
capabilities over time, new equipment may contribute only
marginally to greater preparedness. Wherever possible, the all-
hazards approach should be followed to ensure that, to the
maximum extent possible, resources devoted to responding to a
terrorist attack, can enhance underlying emergency preparedness
capabilities for addressing natural disasters.''
I continue, ``With whatever capabilities they have,
however, America's local emergency responders will always be
the first to confront a terrorist incident and play the central
role in managing its immediate consequence. Their efforts in
the first minutes and hours following an attack will be
critical to saving lives, reestablishing order, and preventing
mass panic. The United States has a responsibility to provide
them with the equipment, training and necessary resources to do
their jobs safely and effectively.''
The fire service--as was alluded to earlier today during
this hearing, the fire service is the only entity that is
locally situated, staffed, trained and equipped to respond to
all types of emergencies. America's fire service is an all-
hazards, all-risk response entity.
I can appreciate that the Federal Government's focus on
terrorism is by preventing terrorist acts from occurring and
enhancing the ability of emergency responders to mitigate an
attack when it occurs. That is why maintaining and enhancing
the current Assistance to Firefighters grant program, now in
its 3rd year, is critically important to terrorism preparedness
and response. And Chief Thompson was just talking about their
application for the Fire Act, and they are waiting anxiously,
as are a lot of us, for the results of that request.
Only when the baseline needs are met can departments
enhance their capabilities. The Assistance of Firefighters
grant program, we call it the Fire Act, is specifically
tailored to accomplish this goal. Although funds in the Fire
Act can be used to purchase specialized counterterrorism
related equipment, the program is directed at addressing basic
needs.
In the report, they found that approximately one-third of
the fire fighters on a shift do not have self-contained
breathing apparatus, and that 57,000 fire fighters across the
country lacked turnout gear. It is important to note that all
of these items are so basic to emergency response that in
addition to enhancing a department's basic readiness, they will
certainly be used in the event of a terrorist attack.
The IAFC strongly supports the Fire Act and urgently
recommends that it be kept as a separate and distinct program
under the U.S. Fire Administration. Under management by the
USFA, a part of FEMA, the program has been an unqualified
success. The reasons are, first, that the Fire Act grants are
made directly to local jurisdictions after undergoing a
competitive, peer-reviewed process which measures and ensures
that money is being spent in a productive, responsible manner;
second, the grants are needs-based, whereby the local fire
departments must demonstrate an actual need for the proposed
equipment or training; third, the grant program requires a
copayment for the need from the local community by ensuring a
``buying-in'' from local officials for the specific equipment
purchased through the funding; and, last, the law has a
``maintenance of expenditures'' provision which means that the
Federal grant can only supplement, not supplant, local fire-
fighting funds.
The important point to be noted is that the Federal funds
are channeled directly to the fire departments for the purposes
they are intended.
The IAFC also supports the terrorism preparedness block
grants administered by the Office of Domestic Preparedness in
the Department of Homeland Security. While this program plays
an important role in enhancing response capabilities to certain
elements of the first responder community, it has not proven
effective for the fire service since we lack centralized
representation at the State level. We have neither a State fire
chief nor a secretary of fire safety within any of the 50
States.
Mr. Chairman, in closing, I would like to quote my friend,
the late Chief Jack Fanning of the Fire Department, city of New
York, who died at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
In testifying before a Senate committee earlier that year on
terrorism preparedness, Chief Fanning said, ``The emphasis must
be placed on the most important aspects of the equation, the
first responder and the first responder teams. If lives are to
be saved and suffering reduced, it will be up to them to do it.
At an incident, whatever the scale, fire fighters and other
responders will be there within minutes, some quite possibly
becoming victims themselves.''
Chief Fanning's testimony ended with these words, ``They,
the first responders, will do what they have always done, act
to protect the public they serve. Knowing this, let us provide
them with the tools they need to perform their duties safely
and effectively.''
Mr. Chairman, the subject of your hearing is of great
importance to America's fire and emergency service. There is no
question that the Federal support is required. The key issue is
effectiveness of that support. That is why we are solidly
behind keeping and enhancing the current Assistance to
Firefighters grant program as a separate and distinct program.
The current program administrator, FEMA, has done an
outstanding job which we, the IAFC, fully support.
I appreciate this opportunity to appear before the
subcommittee, and will be pleased to respond to any questions.
And, Congressman Shays, I go back several years ago when we
were also in a committee--subcommittee meeting prior to
September 11, when we were talking about this very same issue,
which was emergency responder preparedness. And the focus of
that was a lot of what is contained in this report and what we
needed to do at that time.
So, again, I am ready for your questions at any time.
[The prepared statement of Chief Plaugher follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. We will start with the vice
chairman of the committee.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The discussion that we have had here today has clearly
identified huge holes in what our response has been since
September 11th. And how to close it, it seems as an issue
that--I am not quite certain, after having heard your testimony
now in contrast to what we have heard before.
Having been a mayor, my view of communities is that they
are separate and distinct and that the needs that they have are
going to be both individual, based upon the experience, the
investments that they have made to date; what equipment that
they do have; and also the actual threat that specific
community might have.
Also, their metropolitan areas are organized differently,
and we had the discussion here, do we go through a major
metropolitan area or do we go through cities. Some cities are
very small geographically, but have very large metropolitan
areas; some cities actually encompass their entire territory.
In talking about the issue of national standards, I mean,
to recognize that there are some things obviously that we need
to look at for national standards; and you mentioned some of
those. Obviously, that goes to protective gear that first
responders are going to have. That goes to not only saving
their own lives, but also their ability to function and save
others. So some of those are pretty easily identified as items
that we need to undertake.
When you look at both then, States or a national threat
assessment, I do get concerned as to how some of these issues
might be lost. What are your thoughts--you heard the testimony
in the first round--about a national threat assessment; and
then some of the mechanisms that you have just discussed, a
peer review and more local participation in identifying our
threats?
Chief Thompson.
Mr. Sellitto. We were lucky enough to participate in a
pilot program with the Department of Homeland Security where we
have just done a threat vulnerability, capabilities and needs
assessment. It is part of a new computerized program that they
have; and participating in the pilot program, I think that is
the way they need to go.
Apparently, it is now expanding out to other States. And
they are trying to capture a lot of that information that we
were just talking about--the threat, the vulnerability, and
everything else--to try to come up with a comprehensive package
that I believe is going to lead to how we are going to allocate
some of the additional funding in the future.
Mr. Turner. So you did participate in a threat assessment
program with the Department of Homeland Security?
Mr. Sellitto. Correct.
Mr. Turner. And it was tailored to your individual
community? It was not--in other words, the process was to
identify your specific threats and your specific needs rather
than looking at the national level?
Mr. Sellitto. It was looking at the National Capital
Region. It was a regional effort.
Mr. Turner. You thought the program was a good one that
they had?
Mr. Sellitto. It probably needs a little bit more
development. Like I said, it was a pilot. But I think it was an
excellent start; it is moving in the right direction.
Chief Plaugher. We also participated in that assessment,
and we found several areas that needed improvement. It was a
program that was--as the Chief was saying, that was brought--it
was a computerized program that they asked the communities in
the entire Washington metropolitan area to respond to various
questions. Large numbers of actual elements were in the
program.
What we found troubling about the system and the program is
that prior to us taking that assessment, they didn't sit down
and say, what would you think would be the key areas needed to
be prepared for? They just kind of dumped it on you and said,
here is a program, fill it out. And it was troubling from that
standpoint. Because we said, what about these six or seven
other key areas? And they said, well, it is not included in
this assessment.
Well, that is kind of troubling, particularly since in your
first do, and particularly my first do is the Pentagon, when we
have a huge national target there. And why wasn't some of that
focused into this assessment tool, and why weren't some of the
other things that we thought critical?
So I think the chief is absolutely right. They need to go
back and revisit the assessment tool.
They also need to get some direct local government input
into that instrument, and also as part of that instrument allow
for separation, national group and then a regional group.
Mr. Turner. Do you know how the assessment was put
together?
Chief Plaugher. They just bought it from a contractor and
sent it out to us. And I have a real problem with the
contractor too, but that is a whole other issue. It could be
part of my bias. So I have to admit that.
Mr. Turner. Thanks.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to just keep it focused on one issue, because
you have articulated most of the other, much to my
satisfaction, and others I am sure.
The Fire Act and whether or not it continues to be
administered the way it has been since its inception, or
whether we allow it now to be changed so that the money no
longer comes directly to the end user, I would like your
comments on the wisdom or lack of wisdom in making the change;
and what you think has worked about the program, having been
funded the way it has been to date; and if you think it would
be an improvement to go the other way, why.
Chief Thompson. In regards to the city itself and the fire
grant appropriations that we apply for, I think our biggest
concern is the copays that we have to pay. Our budget is
limited, as it is. If you apply for a grant for $1,000, you
have to come up with a matching or a copay with it. Your budget
is tight as it is, when they are first drawn up; so if you have
to apply for the fire fighter grant, you have to squeeze some
money out of someplace else just to match the funds. It makes
it kind of difficult on the rest of the year for the budgetary
process in terms of making sure we are where we need to be just
in terms of the money we allocated initially.
Also, streamline the turnaround time in terms of getting
them back us to. We got a request in for a grant for PPE gear
for our EMS workers. It has taken a while to get it back. In
that time, we could have had a major catastrophe in the city--
where would we be on the PPE gear, that kind of thing.
Chief Plaugher. The basic aspect of the Fire Act that is,
we think, key, is the fact that it is direct to the local
governments. And I understand the city's perspective, and
obviously the match is of concern to all of us.
But it is a two-tiered match. It is based upon population,
but it shortchanges all of the bureaucracy of the States that
was alluded to during this session, and that is, that every
time you add a layer, you add not only delays, but also groups
that take slices of the money away from the intended purpose,
whereas this is pretty straightforward.
Congress sets, in this particular year, $750 million. It
goes to the U.S. Fire Administration. They have a small
administrative overhead portion of it. The rest, a group of
fire chiefs and other fire officials sit down and they go
through each grant in its own separate category, and then they
make awards; and then the awards come to the city through a
notice, and you go about doing what you need to do to
accomplish what the grant set out to do.
So it is not cumbersome, it is straightforward. Just
exactly the opposite of that are the terrorist grants or the
homeland security grants. They are, first off, almost
impossible to figure out where they are and how you get them.
And, second, they are extraordinarily cumbersome. You know, you
have to do a whole host of things to prove that, a, you are
buying an item off of an approved list, and, b, that it is
something that fits into a program yet to be determined. And so
it is--you know, there are so many parts that are very, very
vague and difficult and hard to administer.
I know in the Commonwealth of Virginia which--we have been
very fortunate, and nobody is criticizing Congress for how the
Commonwealth of Virginia is being treated. We have received
$204 million of homeland security grants, and that is a large
amount of money. And, you know, very large State, very large
population.
However, out of the $204 million, and I am talking about
out of grand total sum of $283 million----
Mr. Shays. What is the population of Virginia?
Chief Plaugher. About 7 million. Arlington County, out of
that $204 million, we are going to eventually receive about
$600,000. And we were talking about before, about the threat,
the nature of threats and obvious concern for certain items.
You would think that our needs would be addressed first
because of the nature of what we have in our area. But that is
not how the program is run. Strictly by population, each
community gets a sum of money, and then they add a certain
amount per capita on top of it.
So it is turning out to be a very difficult thing for us to
administer and to provide what we think is necessary.
Mr. Tierney. Thank you. You have put on the record for us
exactly what I thought you were going to put on, but I think it
is important that we do that.
My fire chiefs have made this extremely clear. At my
request, they have forwarded communications to Secretary Ridge
and the White House. I suspect that the fire units across the
country are doing that. I thank you for that. And maybe we will
get some results there.
Chief Thompson, just let me wind up by saying that we have
made a couple of attempts during the appropriations process to
see if this administration would be willing to waive the match
on a 1-year or 2-year term, whatever; try to get some of these
grants out, because I know of the tremendous amount of
expenditures on overtime that happened after the anthrax scare
and the immediacy of September 11th. We have not had success so
far, but we have not been that far away.
I think that we might be able to get some cooperative
effort to keep trying to do that, at least to give you some
breathing room between your problems that you have had because
of the immediacy of it and after that.
So thank you very much.
Mr. Shays. Thank the gentleman. Mr. Ruppersberger.
Mr. Ruppersberger. In the previous testimony that we talked
about, the resources of money, and there's just not a lot of
money there and we have to make sure that whatever we get we're
going to make sure we get the best bang out of the buck, and
there was an issue of regionalism. Now, you know, we have both
the two departments connected I guess to each other, and it
seems to me that if we could develop a formula where we could
come and maybe apply for this money on a regional basis so
there wouldn't be duplication of effort and especially in
training, I mean there's certain moneys that you need.
Equipment. But even with equipment if you all decide and there
is a standard of the type of equipment that you need, maybe for
biological and chemical as an example, what--how do you think
that would work in the Washington Metropolitan Area. Is there
that cooperation now? Does it need to be better? You know,
putting together a program that the entire region asks for. And
I think we'd all have a lot better chance. A region, wherever
we are in the country to pull the regions together to get the
resources that we need. Can you respond to those, both?
Chief Thompson. Actually working with Mr. Mike Burns, the
National Capital Regional Director for Homeland Security, he's
met with our COG Group, Council of Government Group in the
jurisdiction area quite often in terms of our needs and what I
think our necessities are for operating in case of an incident.
He's been very supportive of what we're trying to do in terms
of regionalizing our efforts in terms of equipment
standardization and appropriation of funds to get the needed
equipment, those kind of things. In addition, working with
Chief Plaugher through the COG chiefs, we all sit down often at
meetings and discuss the regional issues of operations and
equipment. Communications gear being one of the primary things,
being able to communicate at all with other jurisdictions in an
incident of any magnitude or size. As evidenced by the Pentagon
incident where if you have radios and don't have
interoperability of them you have trouble communicating with
the incident commander other than the old face to face or relay
type, tag team type of thing. And we also coordinate efforts to
make sure thats smoothed out, everybody's on the same frequency
and same channel with the same type of radio to operate
properly to stay safe.
Chief Plaugher. I thought the previous testimony was
absolutely right on target about a couple of things, one of
which is the standards. I think it's absolutely critical that
we establish a set of national standards by which departments
can judge their preparedness level and then it actually should
be a very open process where you communicate back to your
citizenry exactly where you are on this preparedness scale and
the standards should be well established, well researched and
they also alluded about it should be done quickly. We shouldn't
now 2 years later still be trying to figure out what our
standards are going to be in this arena. The fire service
services are standard driven. We do almost everything by a set
of standards and we have found a long time ago that 's the best
way to protect our communities across this country.
The earlier testimony also talked about regionalism and
about the need for that. One of the things that they did not
however talk about during regionalism, and I fully support what
they said about regionalism, was the fact that regionalism is
how you leverage sustainability and long term success. If I am
in a regional partnership with the chief here, there is no way
that I'm going to let my relationship with him slip. So I'm
going to guard that regional relationship with everything that
I have and communities will do that, where our pressures will
push and pull if it's a single community. If it's a single
focused or single governmental entity other forces will push,
pull--you were a county administrator, you know how that
occurs. Push, pull, and the choices are then made.
However, regional efforts don't seem to take that same kind
of beating. They seem to be sustainable. You can also then
leverage through a regional effort where otherwise you cannot
get. There is no need for every community or every fire
department to have one or two or three of the widgets. Make
sure that there's enough of the items that are around, enough
trained people and that the region then has the capability to
adequately respond within a reasonable and necessary timeframe.
So I think the earlier testimony was right on target. And so I
fully support the whole regional effort.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Here's--but you need to talk about
implementation. Because when September 11 hit our Governor
pulled all the county executives of the seven major counties
together and asked for a list of inventory that we needed so we
could make a request. Well, some of us were right on and we
came with what we thought was what we needed. Some others came
with five times as much. Just that really hurt the process. So
my--what I'm going to ask is that first you have county
executives and the mayors that you have to deal with, it seems
to me, and ask if you would consider going back to your first,
your fire regional group that you meet on a regular basis and
talk about the testimony today and let's talk about
implementation and the possibility of coming up with some type
of plan where you could agree maybe on the same type of
communication equipment, maybe the same type of training, you
know, whatever that may be. And I would hope we could do that
with the police departments. Now, again, if it's going to work
the boss has to be--the top person has to be for it. But if you
could pull together and say this makes sense, that would help
us, at least this committee with the leadership of Chairman
Shays, to move forward and to try to do something about what
we're talking about here today.
Do you think there's a possibility you could do that?
Chief Plaugher. Through our Regional Council of Governments
those efforts are currently underway.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I'm aware of that. And then you have
Montgomery, you have Prince George's. I'm aware of that. But
you know you get too bureaucratic sometimes if you get a lot of
people involved.
Chief Plaugher. We're also very fortunate in the fact that
we do have a coordinator. Mike Burn is our coordinator for the
National Capitol Area and a lot of these regional efforts are
being facilitated by his effort as well as the funding that is
available.
Mr. Ruppersberger. But would you all consider taking this
back to your groups?
Chief Plaugher. Absolutely.
Mr. Ruppersberger. As you're coming up with some type of
formula on what you could at least agree to in the region and
maybe the region beyond just Washington, Virginia and Maryland
because you do have a national connection of governments, that
might go a long way in setting a model or at least help getting
forward to get what we need, because there's just never going
to be enough money.
Chief Plaugher. Absolutely.
Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman. In determining what the
threat is and how we allocate resources, we would look at
standards versus flexibility and we would look at all hazards
versus threats specific. And one of the reasons you all like
the fire grant is it basically is pretty general in nature and
you can apply it where you want. But if we were basically to
determine the threat assessment and we were going to allocate
resources based on that there would be very specific things we
would want you to get and other things we wouldn't allow to be
part of that grant. Is that basically logical and acceptable or
have we spoiled you in this general, you know, grant that you
can apply to anything?
Chief Plaugher. Well, we also think there needs to be a
baseline of capability in every community and so that's our
starting point and that's what the Fire Act is so good at.
Because there's a limited funding within the Fire Act, there
hasn't been enough to move it past its basic categories that
it's now funding and so that is why they're still buying--it
was talked early about buying a lot of breathing apparatus,
protective clothing, and also one of your committee members was
talking about if departments had known that and they applied
for it, they got the money, and that's still because we're just
trying to cover the base front. We haven't moved past that. The
needs were huge.
The first year of the Fire Act there were 19,000
applications and billions of dollars worth of requests and
that's because the baseline piece hasn't been done. You have to
then overarch that with preparedness for terrorism, and that's
why this council's report, Council on Foreign Relations report
says that the number is so huge is because we first have to
cover the baseline and then we have to on top of that apply our
ability to respond to a terrorist attack.
Mr. Shays. Let me just followup with you then. I mean my
reaction is if--what should be Connecticut's responsibility for
needs in Virginia or what should Virginia's responsibility be
for needs in Connecticut? I basically conclude that it should
be for the terrorist aspect of it. But I'm not sure it should
be because you need a certain equipment that you should have
anyway. That's kind of what I'm wrestling with.
Chief Plaugher. Yeah, the economic reality, however, is
that our State and local governments are facing very, very
tough economic times. And if we're going to provide protection
for terrorism across the citizenry of our country, we've got to
do a few basic things. And so I think that it would be an--in
an ideal world, Mr. Chairman, it would be an ideal world to be
able to take your approach and say every local government has
to pony up for X number of baseline equipment and capability.
But that's just simply not happening. So we can't get to the
other end where we need to be, which is full preparedness,
without that. So I think the assistance program, that's why
it's called the Fire Fighter Assistance Act. It is there to
just kind of nudge communities along and try to get them to
focus on this issue. I think it needs to be in concert,
however, with our standards making process, as well as our
preparedness levels. Right now they're kind of in two separate
tracks and they're kind of separated.
Mr. Shays. We asked both of you because you are right in
the center of the storm. I'd like to know how well prepared you
feel right now for a terrorist attack, be it chemical,
biological or serious conventional or radioactive materials. I
mean, tell me, in your mindset, do you think you're 20 percent
of the way there, 80 percent of the way there or is it even
impossible for you to respond to? Chief Thompson.
Chief Thompson. I'll speak very briefly. First, in all
issues in terms of city preparedness, we're better prepared
than we were 2 years ago, especially in terms of our first
responder ability for EMS and fire suppression or HAZMAT
mitigation or for biochemical attacks. Before we had access to
funding we were woefully inadequate in terms of training and
equipment. We have come to a certain level now. As the chief
said, the baseline. We've got the baseline now. We've just got
to maintain where we are and be prepared to go beyond that in
terms of training and equipment issues that come about, new
training issues that come about.
Are we ever fully prepared? Never that, because you can't
prepare for any contingency. I mean, things happen that you
don't expect but we're better prepared than we were previously.
I'll let Chief Sellitto speak more to the issue of preparedness
from his side, special operations side.
Mr. Sellitto. Again, when you say you know how prepared are
we, are we ready, you know, again, we don't really have
something to measure it to. We've made leaps and bounds since
September 2001 through the use of the Federal funding that we
were lucky enough to receive quickly. We got the money. We were
able to use it. In all areas, the training, the apparatus, the
equipment, we're a lot further ahead than we were on September
11.
If you look at it, like I said, where do we have to be and
what's the local responsibility compared to the Federal, I'm
just going to give some rough numbers. We have roughly 1,200
firefighters, with roughly one quarter of them on duty at any
given time. So we have about 300. We had about 350 masks,
breathing apparatus on September 11, which on any given day is
more than we need to operate, OK? But now you take a scenario
like September 11 where we recall hundreds of men and maybe
lost hundreds of those units in an event, is 350 enough? No. So
we've gone out and purchased another 200 and again we got
funding to do that. So we're sitting a lot higher than we were.
Is that enough to cover every event? I can't say.
Mr. Shays. And they're trained to use that equipment?
Mr. Sellitto. And we're trained to use it. And again we had
over $4 million just for training and again that was----
Mr. Shays. And you've had a number of table top exercises?
Mr. Sellitto. Numerous.
Mr. Shays. Chief.
Chief Plaugher. I think we're as prepared as any Fire
Department in the United States, and I am talking about the
Arlington County Fire Department, because of the work that
we've been doing since 1995 for chemical attacks. So in that
one arena I feel like we've made tremendous progress since
1995. The other areas of preparedness, and I'm talking about
the full family of first responder preparedness, our colleagues
in law enforcement, our colleagues at the hospitals, public
health officials, those sort of things, they are woefully
inadequately prepared for these and we're in the process of now
of applying the few funds that we were able to receive from
Homeland Security to that arena, buying protective clothing for
police officers, hospital employees and that sort of thing. I
think that when it comes to other key areas such as was
addressed earlier this morning about hospital preparedness and
hospital surge capacity, we haven't even begun to prepare for
that. And we are, again, in sad, sad shape because again, the
nature of the problem, as Dr. Smithson was talking about, is
that it's such a difficult problem with the private sector and
nonprofit piece of the hospital pie that's there as to
preparedness.
So, again, to answer your question, Mr. Chairman, it
depends upon preparedness for what arena. And so it goes across
the entire scale of maybe the seven to eight for chemical
preparedness and there's still room for improvement and
resources can be applied all the way down to a negative
something when it comes to hospital preparedness because we've
not done well.
Regionally, we're nowhere near where we need to be. We're
trying to embark upon a major effort in the Commonwealth of
Virginia through the State police divisions. I'm forced to work
through my Commonwealth of Virginia. The laws of my State say
that I have to apply time and energy working through
relationships within the Commonwealth of Virginia. That's where
our funnel is for request for equipment and the systems that we
have. And that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing to have a
State relationship.
So again, we're preparing in a multiple of fronts. We're
preparing in the regional, COG regional effort with our
partners in both the District of Columbia and Maryland suburbs
as well as we're preparing within the State arena. So there's a
lot to do. But the regional pieces are nowhere near where they
need to be.
Mr. Shays. I realize we just have firemen here, but, and I
mean just in the terms of my question. Dr. Smithson was very
clear that--and I spend nights with--in fire houses, which is a
lot of fun for me. For one, I've never gone to a better
restaurant. But two, just great people to talk with. But there
is a lot of opportunity to train because you have--when you're
not putting out a fire and so on and so, it's something I
hadn't really focused on but you just tend to think in terms of
training a little, I think more clearly. But we really did not
have a lot of police departments say they wanted to come to
this hearing. Is that because their basic first response is
going to be crowd control and they feel they know that anyway?
Or, I mean in your dialog with police chiefs, how do you guys
view your various roles? I mean----
Chief Thompson. Well, in terms of city function with MPD
and how we coordinate and liaison together, pretty much they're
the law enforcement end of security, securing a site,
protecting a site and making sure that we have access to a
site. They also have the capability, MPD does now, of if an
incident occurs and it's of a criminal nature; they have
equipment to go in and make the investigation possible by
special equipment they have purchased recently. We work very
well together with them on incident command systems in terms of
a large incident or a small incident, how we coordinate our
efforts together and definition of roles and who's got
responsibility for what.
From my standpoint with Chief Ramsey and his group, MPD
side, they understand their role is primarily to secure the
site if a law issue is there, MPP would be there to handle the
law end of it without any suppression mitigation of the
incident.
Mr. Shays. Obviously if they went to a site they might need
equipment to protect themselves from chemical exposure and that
type thing?
Chief Thompson. Based upon if they arrive on the scene of
the incident first without any prior knowledge, quite naturally
they'll call us. But then again if they come on the scene,
we're there, they got pre-knowledge of equipment they may need
to bring. They have the equipment that they have purchased for
their use, yeah.
Chief Plaugher. We work daily with our colleagues in law
enforcement, both with the police department and our sheriff's
department, are two key elements within our ability to respond
as an emergency team. They are in the process of being better
protected. Each one of our law enforcement officials has been
trained for basic knowledge and has some protective equipment.
But they have a huge role to play in maintaining the civil
order of our community in the event of any terrorist attack and
their visible presence as well as their knowledge and ability
to respond to the citizenry's questions about what is going on
and what actions the citizens should take or not take is
absolutely vital. You don't want that blank look on a police
officer when a citizen comes up and asks them what to do. They
need to be able to articulate exactly what the plan is and how
things are to be unfolding. In the event of a bio attack, I say
that the law enforcement slice of our community will be vital
and their ability to adequately respond to a bio attack is
monumental. The need to provide for security of our medical
facilities, the need to be able to adequately maintain civil
order I think is high on the order, and that's going to mean
protecting those law enforcement officials themselves as well
as their participation within our incident command structure
and systems that the chief was talking about earlier.
So I think it's unfortunate that they're not here. It's
unfortunate that the International Association of Chiefs of
Police aren't here to talk about this report because my
estimation is that they would be saying that this report is
also very much on target.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. Anything?
Mr. Ruppersberger. Just one comment, Mr. Chairman, and the
question you asked, and maybe I got it right or wrong, but the
issue of whether or not the resources that would come would
just be dealing with the issue of first responder terrorism and
would that really be the focus of it. And it seems to me that
everything that you're talking about, whether it's biological,
chemical, we have HAZMATs, you know, things like that, that
these resources you'll get could also be used in natural
disasters. I mean the training, it's about a system. It's not
about just given this. It's about the system you create that
works, from the first responders, the paramedics, whether it's
the suppression, the police coming together and then taking
victims to hospitals and how we get to the hospitals, your
communication systems.
So in the end, I mean I have always believed if one door
shuts another opens, you know. In the end if we get this
together we will be better for this years to come, if we can
ever get it together right now, and that's what we're talking
about here today. Do you agree?
Chief Thompson. Absolutely agree. Sure.
Chief Plaugher. I think all hazards and the all hazard
approach is absolutely vital to our preparedness. If you're not
prepared for a hurricane you're not prepared for a terrorist
incident. If you're not prepared for a terrorist incident you
can't be prepared for a hurricane.
Mr. Shays. Right. The issue that triggers to me though is
you should before September 11 have been prepared for some of
these. And where does the Federal Government step in to make
sure that we have a protected system around the country for
this new revealed phenomena, which is terrorist attack; in
other words, the human-induced crisis?
Chief Plaugher. Well, the Oklahoma City attack, which was
obviously an early warning from my perspective, an early
warning event for this country, should have moved us further
along in the preparedness and I allude to earlier hearings that
were held here and you know you were having a hard time getting
people to even talk about the subject back in those days. And
so I commend you for your efforts. You made a great deal of
effort to try to move us along on that scale and we're now
starting to see a diminishing of interests in this arena and we
just simply cannot let that happen because we're not there. We
are not there on the natural level and we're not there on the
mandate level either.
Mr. Shays. I hear you, and we need to do that. What I'm
wrestling with is I ask myself if this had been a Democratic
administration, what would I as a chairman of a committee be
asking for, and I think I would be asking for more than I have
been asking, you know, which is a good wakeup call for me.
Mr. Ruppsersberger. Well, I'm glad you said that because
that's leadership.
One other comment I could make. The police aren't here, but
I think it's important, another role that we haven't talked
about, but if resources are going to go to our police
departments there's a lot more resources that need to go into
intelligence because if you look at what really in my opinion
has deterred another September 11 incident, is the--not only
the intelligence but the cooperation between the CIA, the FBI,
the NSA, the State and locals, including educating the public
because a lot of leads will come from the street. So that is
another area that from this committee point of view we're going
to get resources where we have to put in money into this.
Chief Plaugher. And when you do that look real hard at the
fusion center concept because they are absolutely critical,
that we build fusion centers and we build a regional team of
fusion centers so that we can maximize any and all intel into a
workable product and that it goes across the entire spectrum of
the response community. In other words, that it has an
opportunity to feed all fire EMS as well as law enforcement
communities and that nobody gets missed in the product of a
fusion center. And I think they're going to be vital. I don't
see how we can do it without it.
Mr. Shays. This is where you use the classified and the
every day information and put it all together?
Chief Plaugher. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. Yes, I have the view that had we done that we
would have probably known about September 11.
Chief Plaugher. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shays. Thank you all very much. Any last thing on the
comment before we adjourn? You have been a wonderful panel, and
thank you.
Chief Thompson. Just like to say one thing, particularly in
terms of issues we've discussed here in terms of
standardization of training and equipment across the country.
We interact with the COG group as a COG group with the other
jurisdictions in terms of equipment and purchase of equipment
and how they'd be compatible for use. But if Chief Plaugher's
group goes down to somewhere in Loudoun or in Richmond and the
equipment is not so much as standardized on a national level,
they operate in a vacuum because they can't work together. They
just can't do it. It's almost impossible, to work together.
Then you have a catastrophe to respond to an incident they
can't be prepared for, they're not prepared for. You need
national standardization of training and equipment. It's as
simple as that.
Mr. Ruppersberger. And communications.
Chief Thompson. And communication, absolutely right.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:26 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]