[House Hearing, 109 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD: A FIRST LOOK AT LESSONS LEARNED FROM KATRINA ======================================================================= HEARING before the COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ SEPTEMBER 15, 2005 __________ Serial No. 109-85 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/ index.html http://www.house.gov/reform ______ U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 24-205 WASHINGTON : 2006 _____________________________________________________________________________ For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800 Fax: (202) 512�092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402�090001 COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut HENRY A. WAXMAN, California DAN BURTON, Indiana 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 GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee DIANE E. WATSON, California CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland DARRELL E. ISSA, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland JON C. PORTER, Nevada BRIAN HIGGINS, New York KENNY MARCHANT, Texas ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia Columbia PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina ------ CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina (Independent) JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director Rob Borden, Parliamentarian Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel C O N T E N T S ---------- Page Hearing held on September 15, 2005............................... 1 Statement of: Harrald, John R., professor of engineering management, George Washington University and director, Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management; and James J. Carafano, senior fellow for national security and homeland security, Heritage Foundation........................................ 210 Carafano, James J........................................ 216 Harrald, John R.......................................... 210 Perett, Constance, administrator, Office of Emergency Management, County of Los Angeles, CA; Ellis Stanley, general manager, Emergency Preparedness Department, city of Los Angeles, CA; Robert C. Bobb, city administrator, District of Columbia; David J. Robertson, executive director, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments; Tony Carper, Jr., director, Broward Emergency Management Agency, Broward County, FL; Chief Carlos Castillo, director, Miami-Dade County Office of Emergency Management, Miami-Dade County, FL; and Marc Morial, president and chief executive officer, National Urban League, Inc., former mayor of New Orleans, LA................................... 105 Bobb, Robert C........................................... 125 Carper, Tony, Jr......................................... 156 Castillo, Chief Carlos................................... 169 Morial, Marc............................................. 180 Perett, Constance........................................ 105 Robertson, David J....................................... 145 Stanley, Ellis........................................... 116 Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by: Bobb, Robert C., city administrator, District of Columbia, prepared statement of...................................... 127 Carafano, James J., senior fellow for national security and homeland security, Heritage Foundation, prepared statement of......................................................... 219 Carper, Tony, Jr., director, Broward Emergency Management Agency, Broward County, FL, prepared statement of.......... 158 Castillo, Chief Carlos, director, Miami-Dade County Office of Emergency Management, Miami-Dade County, FL, prepared statement of............................................... 172 Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the State of Missouri, prepared statement of................... 87 Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from the State of Maryland, prepared statement of............... 103 Davis, Chairman Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State of Virginia, prepared statement of................... 5 Harrald, John R., professor of engineering management, George Washington University and director, Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management, prepared statement of....... 213 Issa, Hon. Darrell E., a Representative in Congress from the State of California, prepared statement of................. 45 Maloney, Hon. Carolyn B., a Representative in Congress from the State of New York: Article dated September 15, 2005......................... 248 Information concerning lessons learned................... 48 Memo dated August 30, 2005............................... 245 Prepared statement of.................................... 64 Miller, Hon. Candice S., a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, prepared statement of............... 253 Morial, Marc, president and chief executive officer, National Urban League, Inc., former mayor of New Orleans, LA , prepared statement of...................................... 182 Perett, Constance, administrator, Office of Emergency Management, County of Los Angeles, CA, prepared statement of......................................................... 108 Robertson, David J., executive director, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, prepared statement of... 147 Ros-Lehtinen, Hon. Ileana, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida, prepared statement of................ 76 Sanders, Hon. Bernard, a Representative in Congress from the State of Vermont, prepared statement of.................... 36 Shaw, Hon. E. Clay, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida, prepared statement of.................... 96 Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State of Connecticut: Prepared statement of.................................... 32 Prepared statement of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals................................... 198 Stanley, Ellis, general manager, Emergency Preparedness Department, city of Los Angeles, CA, prepared statement of. 118 Watson, Hon. Diane E., a Representative in Congress from the State of California, prepared statement of................. 79 Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the State of California: Catastrophic plan........................................ 10 Prepared statement of.................................... 25 BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD: A FIRST LOOK AT LESSONS LEARNED FROM KATRINA ---------- THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2005, House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform, Washington, DC. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Davis (chairman of the committee) presiding. Present: Representatives Davis of Virginia, Shays, Ros- Lehtinen, Gutknecht, Souder, Platts, Duncan, Turner, Issa, Brown-Waite, Porter, Marchant, Westmoreland, Dent, Foxx, Waxman, Owens, Sanders, Maloney, Cummings, Kucinich, Davis of Illinois, Clay, Watson, Lynch, Van Hollen, Ruppersberger, Higgins, and Norton. Also present: Representative Shaw. Staff present: Melissa Wojciak, staff director; David Marin, deputy staff director/communications director; Jennifer Safavian, chief counsel for oversight and investigations; John Hunter, counsel; Rob White, press secretary; Drew Crockett, deputy director of communications; Grace Washbourne, Shalley Kim, and Mindy Walker, professional staff members; Teresa Austin, chief clerk; Sarah D'Orsie, deputy clerk; Jay O'Callahan, research specialist; Phil Schiliro, minority chief of staff; Phil Barnett, minority staff director/chief counsel; Kristin Amerling, minority general counsel; Karen Lightfoot, minority communications director/senior policy advisor; Robin Appleberry, Jeff Baran, and Michael McCarthy, minority counsels; David Rapallo, minority chief investigative counsel; Earley Green, minority chief clerk; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk. Chairman Tom Davis. The committee will come to order. Welcome to today's hearing, which marks this committee's first look at lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina. Two months ago former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich testified before our Federal Workforce Subcommittee about the need to move the Government to an ``entrepreneurial'' model and away from its current ``bureaucratic'' model so that we can get Government to move at the speed and effectiveness of the Information Age. ``Implementing policy effectively,'' he said, ``is ultimately as important as making the right policy.'' Indeed, a policy that can't be implemented effectively is no policy at all. We are here today because, in the tragic aftermath of Katrina, we are again confronted with the vast divide between policy creation and policy implementation. Confronted with the life-and-death difference between theory and practice. Confronted with the daunting challenge, as some of our witnesses will discuss this morning, of understanding that we both did things wrong and did wrong things. We have all spent much of the past 2 weeks examining the aftermath of the catastrophic disaster. It has become increasingly clear that local, State, and Federal Government agencies failed to meet the needs of the residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Now it is our job to figure out why, and to make sure we are better prepared for the future. First and foremost, our thoughts and prayers go out to the hurricane's victims, their families, their friends. The loss of life, property, livelihoods, pets, and dreams have been enormous. And we salute all Americans who have stepped up to the plate in any way that they can. At this stage, we agree we need to conduct our oversight in a manner that does not interfere with the rescue and relief efforts. We agree that many questions need to wait. No one wants to take people away from the massive job at hand. But I also think some issues can and should be looked at right now. Our Members want to begin doing oversight, and the American people are demanding it as well. We can begin contributing to the dialog this morning by looking at the emergency plans in other major metropolitan areas--places that potentially face, and in fact have faced, similar catastrophic events, natural or manmade. This review serves two purposes: it can help make sure others are better prepared, and it can guide and inform the subsequent work we will be doing specific to Katrina. Whatever the threat, Katrina has forced officials across America to take another look at disaster plans that may not be as solid as they previously thought. This process of reevaluation will be the focus of the committee's first post- Katrina hearing. Later, when it is appropriate, we can turn to the myriad of other questions that are literally begging for answers. This is not the time to attack or defend government entities for political purposes. This is the time to do the oversight we are charged with doing. Our goal should be to investigate aggressively what went wrong and what went right. We will do it by the book and let the chips fall where they may. It is hard not to point fingers and assign blame in the aftermath of this tragedy. I understand human nature, and I understand politics. But I think most Americans want less carping and more compassion. And I think most Americans want a rational, thoughtful, bipartisan review of what went wrong and what went right. I think most Americans want to know that we will be better prepared the next time. They need that assurance. In his letter to me last week requesting hearings, the committee's ranking member, Mr. Waxman, raised many important questions that need to be addressed: whether FEMA has been organizationally undermined and underfunded; whether evaluation plans were adequate; whether opportunities to better safeguard the New Orleans levee system were missed; why relief and medical supplies and support were seemingly slow in arriving; and several others. I think the letter also overlooked many other questions that also need to be asked, and prematurely faulted the Federal Government for all the shortcomings. In fact, local and State government failures weren't mentioned. That is also a part of our oversight review, because we are the committee on federalism here, and the coordination between Federal, State, and local is a very critical component in implementing any policy. We undoubtedly need to figure out why the evacuation plans and emergency communication systems were woefully deficient. We don't need to prematurely paint the picture that these are solely or primarily the responsibility of one entity or the other. And the worst lesson to be gleaned from this disaster is that all answers to shortcomings in emergency preparedness can somehow be found in Washington. But we can and should lead the way when it comes to questions. It remains difficult to understand how government could respond ineffectively to a disaster that was predicted for years, and for which specific dire warnings had been issued for days. If this is what happens when we have advanced warning, I shudder to imagine the consequences when we do not. If ever there were a time for leaders at all levels of government to come together and review and coordinate their emergency plans, it is now. So let us focus on the task at hand. Let us focus on how policy implementation became so wildly divorced from policy creation. On why there was such a depth of government hesitancy at all levels. On why we confuse getting the government ready with getting people ready. It is true and important to emphasize that Katrina's scale and scope were unprecedented. But the cities and counties represented here today face the possibility of similar catastrophic events. In fact, they previously adjusted their plans in response to past hurricanes, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, and angry men on tractors. I am sure they have begun adjusting again. They are here today to discuss whether they are better prepared than New Orleans, and why. What triggers full-blown action and who do they talk to first? Are they further along in developing clear and realistic evacuation plans that meet the needs of all residents? Will they hesitate to issue mandatory evacuation orders? Is there an agreement on what mandatory means? Would they better be able to inform the public about what to do and where to go? Do they know who will communicate with whom, and are they sure everyone will be speaking the same language? Do they understand the weather advisories they get from forecasters? Do they expect Federal officials to wait for specific requests, or will they be able to gather the information needed to make them? The questions are many and the answers are few. Today we begin the process of clarifying failure and searching for improvement. Perhaps the biggest problem with Katrina is that many people didn't listen before the hurricane arrived, and communication was impossible after. I hope we can start communicating more clearly this morning. [The prepared statement of Chairman Tom Davis follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.003 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.004 Chairman Tom Davis. I would now recognize our distinguished ranking member, who has also taken a lead in this and who I am proud to work with on this, Mr. Waxman, for his opening statements. Mr. Waxman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Hurricane Katrina was a disaster of monumental scope. It destroyed an American city and forced a million Americans from their homes. The financial costs will be immense and the human costs incalculable. As the Nation confronts this disaster, we in the Congress have two major challenges. First, and most important, we must care for those who have been harmed and uprooted. They have been through a horrible ordeal, and we need to provide assistance with housing, medical care, and schooling, and we need to begin the process of rebuilding. Our second challenge is to find out how this could have happened. The committee recently received an extraordinary document. It is a FEMA document from May 2004, and it predicts that a hurricane striking New Orleans could cause ``a mega- disaster.'' Over a year before Katrina, FEMA was predicting that a Category 4 hurricane could hit New Orleans, flood the city, and force a million people to evacuate. FEMA recognized that such a hurricane would ``create a catastrophe with which the State would not be able to cope without massive help.'' The document then states: ``The gravity of the situation calls for an extraordinary level of advanced planning.'' And I want to ask, Mr. Chairman, that this document be made part of the record. Chairman Tom Davis. Without objection. [The information referred to follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.005 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.006 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.007 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.008 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.009 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.010 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.011 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.012 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.013 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.014 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.015 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.016 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.017 Mr. Waxman. As this remarkable document shows, Katrina wasn't a surprise. This wasn't a disaster that no one could have predicted, as the President said. Over a year ago, FEMA new that a Category 4 hurricane could cause a mega-disaster, that the State was not prepared to cope without massive Federal intervention, and that an extraordinary level of advanced planning was needed. Yet, apparently, FEMA--and the rest of the Government--was caught unprepared. Now, Congress has a responsibility to find out why our Government failed so miserably, when the stakes for so many Americans were so high. There is a dispute in Congress about how to conduct an investigation. The House and Senate Republicans, their leadership, proposed a bicameral investigation committee. But they want Republicans to control the committee. And they didn't consult with the Democrats in developing the proposal. Now, the Democratic leadership is rightly skeptical and has proposed a truly independent commission. As the principal oversight committee in the House, we on this committee have an obligation to conduct our own independent investigation. And if we are serious about this, as the chairman indicated he is, there are two steps we should take right away. First, we should request basic documents from the agencies. I have given the chairman drafts of letters that should go to the Department of Homeland Security, the Corps of Engineers, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the White House, that seek information that any credible investigation must have. These letters ask basic questions, such as what was the plan for responding to the hurricane and how was it implemented. I hope that we will be able to announce today that we have reached a bipartisan agreement to proceed with these document requests. Second, we need to hear from Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff. These are the two Government officials most responsible for the inadequate response, and the committee should call them to testify without delay, and, if need be, subpoena them to come in. Today's hearing is entitled, ``Back to the Drawing Board: A First Look at Lessons Learned from Katrina.'' Well, I look forward to hearing the testimony from the witnesses today, a very distinguished group. The chairman has called you all together. And I especially want to hear from the people in Los Angeles. But I don't want to be so parochial that I only want to hear about Los Angeles. But I must admit that I am perplexed by the timing of this hearing. It is going to be hard for D.C., Miami, and Los Angeles to learn what lessons to draw from Katrina until we fulfill our obligation to investigate the disaster in New Orleans and find out what went wrong and why. It is too early to know what the lessons of Katrina are, but it is not too early to learn lessons from the waste, fraud, and abuse that has characterized the reconstruction in Iraq and in the spending of the Department of Homeland Security. Over the last 5 years, the record of this administration's handling of Federal contracts has been one of persistent and costly mismanagement. Under the administration, the value of no-bid contracts have skyrocketed, oversight of Federal contracts have been turned over to private companies with blatant conflicts of interest, and when Government auditors and whistleblowers do flag abuses, their recommendations are often ignored. In Iraq, billions have been appropriated for the reconstruction effort, yet, oil and electricity production remain below pre-war levels. Waste, fraud, and abuse by Halliburton and other contractors have squandered hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars, and domestically the record is no better: the FBI spent $170 million on a virtual case file system that does not work, the Department of Homeland Security spent another $200 million on a border monitoring system of cameras and sensors that also doesn't work, and the contract to hire Federal airport screeners has been plagued by poor management and flagrant abuses. As we prepare to pour billions into the relief and recovery effort in the Gulf Coast, we cannot allow these mistakes to be repeated. We need contracting reforms, and more and better oversight. The taxpayer cannot afford to give another blank check. One of the fundamental Constitutional obligations of Congress is to oversee the executive branch. Despite the efforts of the chairman, who has asked more questions than most of his colleagues, Congress has too often failed to conduct meaningful oversight, and the consequences have been perilous. When we fail to insist on accountability, we reward blunders and we invite abuse. We must not travel down this road again. As the entire Nation now knows, Government incompetence and a failure to insist on accountability can have dire consequences. I am pleased we are holding at least this hearing. We have to do much more than this hearing. And I just hope that the Republican leadership in the Congress isn't trying to set up a bicameral commission to study and then a select committee that is on the floor today and Republicans trying to control everything so that we don't really find out what is happening. If there is ever a time for bipartisanship--and this committee has demonstrated more than most committees along those lines--the time is now. And if there is ever a committee that ought to be doing its job, as our committee has done in the past, the time is now as well. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.018 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.019 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.020 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.021 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.022 Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Waxman, thank you very much. Mr. Shays. Mr. Shays. Wow. If there ever was a time for bipartisanship, I didn't hear it in the last speech. The bottom line is, if you want to be a partisan Democrat, you just focus on FEMA and what the Department of Homeland Security should have done, and if you want to be a partisan Republican, you just focus on the outrageous failure on the State and local governments. And if you want to be bipartisan, you focus on all of it. My sense is that a bipartisan, bicameral committee--that will probably have a fairer makeup than the Contra aid funding hearing--will do its job, and Congress can do its job. This committee has been bipartisan and it has conducted investigations of this administration with vigor, and I salute the chairman for calling this hearing. Our fellow citizens in the Gulf States endured a horrific natural disaster of unprecedented, but not unanticipated, magnitude. Hurricane Katrina destroyed so many lives. The storm also blew away overconfident assumptions about post-September 11th preparedness and laid bare lethal inadequacies in response, planning, and execution at all levels of government. We owe it to both victims and survivors to salvage the hard lessons left in its wake. In assessing response capabilities and vulnerabilities, it is essential to begin, as we do today, at the local level. That is where disasters happen, and that is where State and Federal help will have to flow to support local first responders. That help has to get there in time and on a scale to match the crisis. So we need to know where else in the disaster response process might the intergovernmental levees break to swamp untested plans and unproven capabilities. Yesterday, the 9/11 Commission pointedly and appropriately reminded us of the unfunded, unfinished agenda that, if addressed, might have saved lives last month. Radio spectrum needed for interoperability communication has not been made available. A unified incident command system is not being used across all jurisdictions. We remain unprepared to protect critical infrastructure because we haven't decided what is critical. Without clear priorities, resources are apportioned based on politics and demographics, rather than risk. Oversight of security strategies at chemical plants and nuclear facilities confirms a systemic weakness that brought tragic consequences in New Orleans. Many evacuation plans seem unrealistic and, frankly, criminally negligent given the fragile condition and constrained capacity of roads, bridges, and transportation systems, and the public health system has almost no surge capacity. In fact, as one of our colleagues wryly observed, most emergency rooms are not prepared for the walk-ins on an average Saturday night, much less a tsunami of the sick and worried well that would stream through their doors in the event of biological attack or natural pandemic. Nature sometimes gives warnings; terrorists will not. When the crisis comes in the form of an undetected dirty bomb, a smuggled improvised nuclear device, or a sudden disease outbreak, the lessons of Hurricane Katrina could save many thousands of lives if we heed them. A serious thorough post mortem of Katrina to glean vital lessons begins with hearings like this, and, thank you, Chairman Davis, for having this hearing. I look forward to a frank and constructive discussion. [The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.023 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.024 Mr. Waxman. Would the gentleman yield? Mr. Shays. I yield. Mr. Waxman. I was taken by surprise and disappointment by your reaction to my statement. To raise questions and to make statements of facts I don't consider partisan. Mr. Shays. Reclaiming my time. It all focused on the Federal Government. Totally focused on the Federal Government. And we are going to look at all three levels of government. I yield back my time. Mr. Waxman. Well, I agree that we need to do that. We need to do that. And I didn't focus just on the Federal Government, but we have the major responsibility. Chairman Tom Davis. We have a momentous task ahead of us, and I appreciate everybody's comments. We want to move ahead on this, if we can. Everybody's statement will be put in the record. You will have 7 days to do that. We have time, for Members who want to say something now, but we do have a time limit. We do have some people testifying that have time limits on this, as we get close. We have former Mayor Morial of New Orleans here today. He has a very tight time slot, so I will have to make arrangements, as we get through, to accommodate them. But we will move ahead and ask people to be as brief as you can. Your complete, entire statement will be included in the record. Mr. Sanders, you are recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. Sanders. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I would hope that it goes without saying that there should be an independent September 11th-type commission to look at the problems that surfaced at Hurricane Katrina. It is inconceivable not to support that approach. Thomas Keane, who is in fact the formal chairman of the 9/ 11 Commission, this is what he said just yesterday: ``This is not a terrorist attack incident, but it brings into play all of the same issues and shortcomings that we saw in September 11th. What makes you mad is that it is the same things that we saw on September 11th. Whoever is responsible for acting in these places hasn't acted. Are they going to do it now? What else has to happen for people to act?'' In other words, what we are not just talking about is the tragedy of Katrina; are we prepared for a terrorist attack? What have we learned? No. 2, when we talk about lessons learned, I would hope that we all agree that when we are talking about emergency management, when we are talking about saving lives, we want competence at the top of the ladder. You don't want somebody whose experience is based on Arabian horses; you want somebody who knows something about how to save lives in an emergency. Third, what we also need to know is that poverty in America is a serious problem, and poverty in America is a growing problem. And maybe it didn't dawn on the White House, but somebody should know when people live day to day and have no money, you can't get into a car because you don't have a car; you can't go to a hotel because you don't have money to go to a hotel. You don't have anything. You don't have anything on any day, and you certainly don't have it in the middle of a flood. So maybe we might want to pay attention to the fact that millions and millions of people in this country are barely surviving on a good day, and what is going to happen to them in the midst of an emergency. And maybe out of Hurricane Katrina might come an understanding that you can't continue to ignore environmental degradation. Global warming is real. We just passed an energy bill which is still studying whether global warming is a problem, and the U.S. Government is one of the few institutions left in the world that doesn't understand that global warming is real. We are talking about the destruction of wetlands, which played a very important role in terms of the damage done due to Hurricane Katrina. We are talking about the rising of the sea level. And maybe we shouldn't be passing legislation which still does not understand that. Hurricane Katrina was not only predictable, it was predicted. Read Scientific American. Read the Times-Picayune of New Orleans. It was there for all to see. So the question is whether we are going to be running policies on competence, on scientific basis, or whether we are going to be running agencies based on cronyism and ignoring reality? So let me simply conclude. My friend from Connecticut indicated that this committee has dealt with some of the important issues in the last few years. I respectfully disagree. This committee has ignored many of the major problems that the American people want answered. We are supposed to be doing oversight; in many ways we haven't. I would hope that Hurricane Katrina becomes a wake-up call that there are huge issues in this country that have to be addressed. I hope this committee is serious about doing that. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Hon. Bernard Sanders follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.025 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.026 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.027 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.028 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.029 Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Turner. Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I join my colleagues in expressing my deepest condolences to the families and friends of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. I also join my colleagues in admiring the many acts of bravery and selflessness of our citizens in helping those individuals who have been impacted by Katrina. I can understand why our Democratic counterparts continue to call for an independent commission. It is because they can't even get through a congressional hearing without being partisan and us hearing from individuals that have great information and expertise for us. The reason why we had a bipartisan independent commission in September 11th is because the issues were much more complex than just the manner of the Federal Government's response. We had questions such as who was responsible for September 11th, how did they get here; what did they do when they were here before September 11th. These are not questions you have with a hurricane. We all watched it come. We know how it got here; we know what it did. The issues of what the Federal Government, local government and State government's response are to be is a function of government, and this committee and this Congress ought to have an ability to undertake that review, the acts of governance, without issues of such high partisanship. There have been problems and inadequacies in the response to Hurricane Katrina, and it is important for us to understand what went wrong and what went right. In order for this process to be most effective, we must gather the facts in an unbiased, nonpartisan manner. The questions raised about our response to Hurricane Katrina are simply too important. Mr. Chairman, as the former mayor of Dayton, OH and now chairman of this committee's Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census, I am keenly aware of the many issues raised when Federal, State, and local entities are all involved in responding to a crisis situation. Our first responders are our mayors, police, fire, and emergency personnel. State and Federal resources support initial local efforts and are ultimately engaged when the task exceeds local resources. But let us be clear, the President of the United States is not responsible for evacuating our cities, whether it is Clinton, Bush, Carter, or Reagan. To claim otherwise is wrong. Like all Americans, I was horrified to see the pictures of low- income and African-American residents of New Orleans that were not evacuated before the storm. They were not left behind by this President, this Congress, or our American people. The fact that our disaster response was insufficient at the local, State, and Federal level is clear. Determining what we need to fix is our task. Mr. Chairman, we need to work together to look at the issues of bureaucracy, the barriers that did not allow relief aid and the workers to do their jobs in the disaster areas. The bottom line is that these hearings are about people and families, and saving Americans' lives in a disaster. I look forward to the testimony of each of our witnesses before us today. I am particularly interested from our witnesses and how they have addressed their plan of similar problems and what lessons they believe that we are already learning from Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Chairman, I commend you for holding this hearing today. By working together as Members of Congress, by doing our jobs, we can plan a proactive and non-partisan role in helping to understand the response to Hurricane Katrina and learn and implement lessons from this response. I yield back. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mr. Owens. Mr. Chairman, I will be very brief. Indeed, the fact that each level of government continues to pass blame back and forth among each other shows how important it is to have a September 11th type commission appointed as fast as possible. The fact that there was no transport for poor people was almost a criminal neglect. The inability to communicate with the first responders, the police and fire to communicate with each other, was a major problem in my city of New York at the time of the World Trade Center catastrophe. Everybody knows that there were a number of firemen who died after they had been told to evacuate. There were a number of firemen still going up the stairs to prepare to fight a fire after they were told it was necessary to evacuate, because the communication equipment was not working. The police and fire communication equipment was not in harmony. Why, after all this time, haven't we at least solved those problems? Why hasn't there been a mandate from Homeland Security to make certain that communication systems are workable? I salute the police of the city of New Orleans and the other firemen and first responders there. But we have a built- in institutional corruption in some cities, like New York City. The first responders--who are the police and the firemen--half of them live outside of the city and would not be able to reach the city if there was a disaster requiring that they be there. First responders ought to live within 30 minutes, at least, of the assignments that they would have, and that is a built-in piece of corruption of the process that needs to be addressed. Davis Bacon and affirmative action are two items that the President has acted rapidly on. He has quickly moved to suspend requirements of Davis Bacon for contractors operating in the reconstruction and reclamation of New Orleans and the Gulf region. He has quickly moved to suspend affirmative action. Why do we act so rapidly on those two items? Are they in the way of the process of rebuilding, the process of reclamation? I don't think so. They run counter to the needs that everybody has expressed: to have the people who live in the region be given first priority in the jobs, as they try to reconstruct their lives. They should have priority of the jobs. So don't reduce the amount the jobs pay. Davis Bacon already would tell you that in the area that salaries of workmen in the construction industry is lower than most other areas of the country. And affirmative action certainly would not hurt anybody. It is a city of more than 60 percent minority. And why should you worry about affirmative action to the point that you suspend it for contractors? It should be doubly reinforced in order to guaranty that priority is given to those people who want to come back and resettle. Those are my quick comments, Mr. Chairman. I would like to hear the people. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mr. Issa. Mr. Issa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank the chairman and the ranking member for holding this hearing. Certainly, it is timely. And I will ask that my entire statement be put in the record. Chairman Tom Davis. Without objection. Mr. Issa. I think, out of turn, I would like to apologize to all of our witnesses today for what you are seeing here. What you are seeing here is the reason that many of you who are involved, particularly my Los Angeles friends. You need to count on yourself, because you can't count on Congress to be there for you. There is some debate about whether or not FEMA reacted properly, whether or not it can be reformed to act in all emergencies properly. But every year the Congress does one thing right, which is we send dollars your way specifically earmarked for the kind of disaster preparation that we are talking about here today. And if there is one lesson of Hurricane Katrina that we should all understand is you have to be your own first line of defense. And the work you do, the money that we give you and the matching money that the cities and the States need to dig deep for is very important. The next natural disaster quite likely will not be a hurricane. It will probably not be weapons of mass destruction. It will very unlikely be an airplane flown into a building. It will most likely be an earthquake, a wildfire, or a flood of some other sort. Today we are going to hear from you about many things, but I am particularly interested in hearing about the lesson--contrary to what you heard from some of the other Members--the lessons you have already heard from Katrina. You don't need to know everything that went wrong. You need to realize that your plan may be flawed, but only you can determine the way in which your preparedness is flawed, and for what circumstances. Hurricane Katrina is a terrible event, but it is only the sequel of an event that occurred in 1969 in New Orleans. It was foreseeable. It was something that was in the basic disaster plan for Louisiana. It wasn't something that they didn't know, that levees would breach, that it could be flooded, that pumps would shut down. So I ask you very much today, when you are making your statements, when you are responding to questions, please look at this body and say do you want the men and women on this dais to be there running your next disaster, or do you want to be in charge of it? And if you do, help us today to understand that you are ready, or at least you know how to get ready, with the kind of assistance we are good at. And the kind of assistance we are good at is passing laws that enable you to do what you need to do and sending you appropriate money to match the money that you are spending locally. Hopefully, that will be what this hearing is about, because as you can rightfully see, if you want us to run your next disaster, it starts when we arrive. With that, I yield back. [The prepared statement of Hon. Darrell E. Issa follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.030 Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mrs. Maloney. Mrs. Maloney. Thank you very much. The people of New York continue to send their thoughts and prayers to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. And, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for calling this hearing. We must ask the necessary questions and make the necessary changes, and we must not stop until this government can respond to disasters as quickly and effectively as possible. It is clear that the response to Katrina was simply unacceptable. Some have described it as disastrous. Some people drowned, but others died because the rescue effort did not reach them in time. There were reports that people waited for 4 days for food and water. I want to know why the National Guard was not called out immediately. And I want answers to why support that others were offering from other States was turned down. We are calling this ``A First Look at Lessons Learned from Katrina,'' but we have no one here from the Federal Government. And I sincerely do not believe that it is a partisan statement to request a representative from the Federal Government. And I don't think anyone in Congress on either side of the aisle wants to interrupt in any way the important work that is taking place on the ground. But certainly former FEMA Director Michael Brown has time on his hands. He is no longer in the position. He has time to be interviewed by all the newspapers. Here is one headline: ``Ex-FEMA Chief Tells of Frustration and Chaos.'' There is another article about him attending a spa for treatments. And I could put them in the record, but---- Chairman Tom Davis. Mrs. Maloney, that is not the committee's fault; we tried to get him here today, just for the record. Mrs. Maloney. Well, my point, Mr. Chairman, is we should get him, even if we have to subpoena him. Also, the paper reports today that Daniel Craig from FEMA has resigned, as well as Patrick Rhode, the Deputy Director, is also out the door. And I think that they should be here to answer questions. As one who represented New York City, that suffered greatly under September 11th, FEMA was wonderful. They were there that night; they stayed there every day; they responded to people; they helped people. They were important. When we reorganized the Homeland Security Committee, there was a democratic amendment to keep FEMA separate, because it is disaster recovery; it is very important. Yet, its budget was slashed and people suffered because of it. We learned many lessons after September 11th. One of them, and the most tragic, was that our communication system did not work. The radios did not work. The Federal Government shipped down walkie-talkies the next day. I know, because I called Congressman Young. He sent them down from the military. But the same thing happened in Katrina, no communications. And there were many other problems that were the same problems that we confronted. In the consideration of time, I would like to place in the record a document that was prepared by the New York delegation in the best sense of commitment and friendship to our colleagues that are facing the same challenges that we faced. It is 22 recommendations, 22 descriptions of problems that we confronted in the recovery. And we feel that it is something that can help the legislators and the people on the ground in the Gulf region. And I request permission to place this in the record. Chairman Tom Davis. Without objection, it will go in the record. [The information referred to follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.031 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.032 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.033 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.034 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.035 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.036 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.037 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.038 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.039 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.040 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.041 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.042 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.043 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.044 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.045 Mrs. Maloney. Mr. Chairman, if I could close by saying, in defense of Ranking Member Waxman, I do not in any way consider raising concern for taxpayers' dollars as partisan attack. The fact that he suggested that contracts be carefully reviewed, competitively bid, when applicable, and that taxpayers' money be watched, while we are helping people and trying to save their lives, I respectfully say this is not a partisan attack, this is a concern, one of the major concerns of this committee, along with getting an appropriate response to help people in disasters such as Katrina. I yield back the balance of my time, place my comments in the record, and, as I said, request permission to place in the record the 22 recommendations from the New York delegation for disaster response. [The prepared statement of Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.046 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.047 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.048 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.049 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.050 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.051 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.052 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.053 Chairman Tom Davis. Well, I thank the gentlelady for her remarks, and I say to my friend on the FEMA amendment on the House floor, I went back and reviewed that, because I think that is an appropriate issue for Congress to review, should FEMA be separate, how does it work with Homeland Security. It wasn't a partisan amendment, it was very jurisdiction-driven. The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee thought that. It came out of that separation. Part of it was jurisdiction. I think that is wholly an appropriate deal. But that was very bipartisan on both sides, if you go back and review the voting on that. And I think that is an appropriate item for discussion as we move forward here, and that would probably be within this committee's jurisdiction. So we look forward to that. We tried to put together a hearing today, despite opposition from some of our leaders and others, that would make some sense, that would give assurance to the American people. We have learned some things that other jurisdictions that are targets one way or the other. You know, we are working on this. There were some lessons learned. There are a lot of questions we still have to ask. We tried to find Michael Brown to get him here. And this is not the end of it. But I just appreciate everybody's participation today. We are going to now move to Mr. Duncan. Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Obviously, we all know this is not going to be the only hearing that we will have on this, and there were other meetings in which we can have other Federal officials here. I thank you for calling this hearing and I thank the witnesses for being here. While they are not from the affected areas, they are experts in being prepared for the types of problems that we found there. I will be very brief. Let me just say everything looks easy from a distance. It is awfully easy to criticize. The response by President Bush, no President in the history of the world probably has ever devoted more time, effort, and resources to any natural disaster than the President has. No country in this world has made such a concerted effort and response as has the United States of America. No other country in the world would have responded in the way that this country has to a major natural disaster. As horrible and tragic as these events were, a lot of good has already come out, and even more good and positive things will happen. We should be very proud of this country and the way it is responding, not only through the government, but also millions of private citizens. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been donated. There is probably not a police or fire department or sheriffs department in this country that hasn't sent people down to help out. A lot more good will happen in the days and weeks and months ahead. Were mistakes made? Yes. Did some people do bad things? One news report I heard said one-third of the New Orleans Police Department had deserted, but two-thirds of the department were there doing heroic deeds. Were mistakes made at the State level? Yes. One report I heard said that Governor Blanco, when the President and the mayor were ready to act, she wanted 24 more hours to make up her mind. But has she done good things? Yes. Has the Federal response been good? Some of it people made mistakes, but most of it has been just amazing. So I think we need to keep those things in mind. As I said when I started, it is easy to criticize. Everything looks easy from a distance. But I will tell you this, I think we should keep in mind that no other country in this entire world could have or would have responded in the way that we have and are, and I thank you for calling this hearing. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Mr. Kucinich. Mr. Kucinich. Thank you very much. I want to thank the chairman and the ranking member for holding this hearing, although I will say that it might strike some people in this country--maybe those in the Gulf Coast area--as being somewhat curious that Congress is holding one of its first hearings on Hurricane Katrina by talking about Los Angeles, Miami, and D.C. It would appear that if you want to hold a hearing about Katrina, you would be talking about Louisiana, Mississippi. This first hearing that is being held in the House of Representatives, while noteworthy and gratefully received in the context of the way things are here today in Washington, nevertheless, still will leave unresolved questions that, if they were answered today, would shed light on the predicaments some of the representatives from these communities might have. It is curious that we say we want lessons from Katrina without actually studying Katrina here in this committee. This means that we really don't want to look at Katrina. We prefer to talk around it, which is exactly why it happened. There is a larger question here, of whether or not a certain type of philosophy of government has been at work that set the stage for the disaster. Bernie Sanders is right when he talks about how in the world can we ignore global climate change in the context of talking about Katrina, because if we ignore it--and we have-- what relevance does that have for people from Miami, from Los Angeles, and from the District of Columbia? How in the world can we ignore--as we have--issues of poverty, which inevitably confines people's mobility at a moment of disaster? What implications does that have for Miami, Los Angeles, and the District of Columbia? Yes, it would be interesting if we had the tables turned and members of the panel had the chance to ask us questions about what we are doing about the basic elements that we already know gave rise to the tragedy. This question goes far beyond partisanship. To lay this question on a partisan basis is to do a disservice to our role as Members of Congress. This goes to the legitimacy of the Government itself. Government ends up being a huge scam if it doesn't do anything to protect people's basic right to shelter, to clothing, to food, to protection in an emergency. This committee has a real opportunity to set the stage for real hearings which get into deep analysis of what happened and of what we can do to truly help Miami, Los Angeles, and the District of Columbia, and all the other communities who are waiting to see if the Federal Government will shift its perspective and take real responsibility for creating the circumstances that helped provide a buffer for any community hit by a disaster. Thank you. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Let me just say to my friend that we wanted to look at everything involved with Hurricane Katrina, but we didn't want to pull people off the job. We will be sending members of this committee to New Orleans on Sunday, and the Gulf Coast and Mississippi, where we can look first- hand at this, get briefed, and, I think, be in a better position to discuss these issues. But it was our position that we didn't want to drag people away from that, to have to come back at this point. We are looking for others. I have tried to work with your ranking member, make this as complete as we can. We felt it was important we move ahead. And we do have the former mayor of New Orleans that will be here today talking, as well. So we are not ignoring Katrina, if it appears that way. Mr. Sanders. Mr. Chairman, will we bring FEMA officials and former FEMA officials before us in the future? Chairman Tom Davis. That is certainly our intention. Mr. Kucinich. I thank the gentleman. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you all. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Chairman Davis. And I agree with the comments of my good friend, Mrs. Maloney of New York. FEMA did do an outstanding job in September 11th, as did Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki, too. So let us make sure we recognize their contributions. And I would like to recognize two special witnesses that we have before us today, and I thank the chairman for inviting them: Mr. Tony Carper, the director of the Broward County Emergency Management Agency, and from my district, my good friend Chief Carlos Castillo, the director of Miami-Dade County's Office of Emergency Management. As director, Chief Castillo is responsible for coordinating the county's mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery for major emergencies, such as hurricanes. And south Florida, as all of us know, is no stranger to hurricanes. Chief Castillo is going to discuss the experiences of our area, as is Mr. Carper, in dealing with these natural disasters. In 1992, 13 years ago, Hurricane Andrew brought near total devastation to communities in my area of south Florida. And the questions posed by Miami-Dade and Broward County after Andrew are similar to those being addressed by the various Gulf Coast localities in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and I think that is why my good friend, Mr. Kucinich, would agree that is why we are here to discuss the experiences of these areas, such as what can be done to lesson the damage to life, to infrastructure, to property, as well as how to incorporate the needs of a diverse population into a unified response plan. What plans are in place for evacuations? Who imposes these orders? Who carries them out? Who brings food and water to shelters? Could what happened in New Orleans happen in other cities? Furthermore, with the international war on terror, new precautions must also be taken. And, as a result, counties and cities are now faced with the task of preparing for domestic acts of terror following a natural disaster. The lessons learned in the 13 years after Andrew have enabled us in south Florida to implement one of the most sophisticated emergency response plans in our Nation today, so it is important to hear from these officials. And I visited the emergency management facilities in Miami as recently as this Monday. Hurricane Katrina adversely impacted our residents in south Florida, with hundreds suffering damage to their homes and businesses. And we are asking FEMA to provide individual assistance to those who were hurt by Katrina, but FEMA has refused to do so. Our entire Florida congressional delegation, including our two Senators, in a bipartisan manner, we have been pleading with FEMA to change its decision and provide us this individual assistance. Many lost their homes. We were fortunate to have an effective local response plan so that damage assessment and cleanup could occur immediately. And we need to learn from the mistakes of local, State, and Federal agencies that have remained in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina so that we can be better prepared for the future. And I think south Florida can provide us with some of those lessons learned after Andrew. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, again, for their invitation. [The prepared statement of Hon. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.054 Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Ms. Watson. Ms. Watson. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for being brave enough to hold this hearing, but it is premature. I look on the agenda and I find two of our finest from the city of Los Angeles. I just sent my staff down to find out if they have been in New Orleans. As I look at the briefing memo, it says ``Back to the Drawing Board: A First Look at Lessons Learned from Katrina.'' Yet, no one is here from FEMA from Katrina. Unless the people at the table have been there, what can you tell me went wrong? Now, I know we plan in California, because we are prone, as I found out none of you have been in New Orleans, but you have sent people, and I appreciate that. This particular hearing says the purpose of the hearing is to investigate. Now, investigate means that you go and you get the people who were involved, and you speak to them about what happened. It is to investigate the emergency plans. Now, we have been planning for decades, and the rest of the people invited come from Washington, DC, and New York. No one but Marc Morial--and he is not here--at least his chair is vacant. Is he in the audience? Chairman Tom Davis. As I announced earlier, he will be joining us for a limited period of time. Ms. Watson. He is not here at this moment. Chairman Tom Davis. That is right. Ms. Watson. He is not here at this moment. So it should be clear to most Americans that we have serious problems with our Federal--get that, Federal--emergency response mechanisms. There is one thing we have to do, and that is to respond to a disaster that is sprung upon us without warning. But we were warned. I remember the weekend before the hurricane hit, listening to a newscaster on the Weather Channel, Channel 8, saying if it hits as a Category 5, it will change the topography of the Gulf States. That really was striking to me. I said, wow, is he harsh. And he said that he saw a sign that said ``Leave or Die.'' And, for the life of me, I did not know why that did not inspire the President to issue a disaster declaration on Saturday, the 27th. FEMA waited until Monday, the 29th, 5 hours after Category 3 Katrina made landfall. And they waited to even submit a plan to respond. Now, all of you can tell us what you would do in a disaster, but I want to find out why we didn't move quicker. By then we had lost our best chance to save the most lives, organizing a robust evacuation of the threatened area. And in reality, Mr. Chairman, we did have much more than 2 days to prepare. Almost exactly 1 year before Katrina, FEMA organized an exercise wherein a fictional Hurricane Pam hit New Orleans head-on. They studied who needed to do what to save lives. They developed a plan to protect Americans. Now, this was not the massive failure of imagination of September 11th, this was a failure to carry out their own plans and responsibilities. But the most tragic result of this disaster, Mr. Chairman, is how so many Americans were victimized, and most of them were poverty-stricken. For many poor residents of the Gulf, both inside and outside New Orleans, Katrina was the only immediate cause of their misery. The truth is they live constantly on the edge of disaster. And when it came, they, more than others, lacked the resources to protect themselves and their communities. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Ms. Watson. I will submit the rest of my comments. Chairman Tom Davis. Without objection. The gentlelady's time has expired and her testimony will be put into the record. Ms. Watson. Thank you. And I hope the press will get it. [The prepared statement of Hon. Diane E. Watson follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.055 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.056 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.057 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.058 Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Platts. Mr. Platts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for holding this important hearing. I also want to thank you for taking care to structure this hearing in a way that does not disrupt the ongoing relief and recovery operations underway in the Gulf States. I commend you for working to ensure that governments at all levels--Federal, State, and local--do right by our citizens in the event of a catastrophe. Each of us who serve the public bears shared responsibility for this task. I would like to share a quote from the founder of our nuclear Navy, Admiral Rickover. The Admiral stated, ``Responsibility is a unique concept. You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you.'' Admiral Rickover's quote should be our guiding principle in this challenging time. This hearing should be about meeting our responsibilities, and not about laying blame. I believe that as members of this committees charged with overseeing the operation and accountability of the Federal Government, we have a responsibility to look at how all levels of government coordinate operations from a broad perspective. We have a broad perspective to engage in substantive discussions with local and State officials to ensure that the systems and plans we have put in place over the years are as effective as possible. As we plan for disasters, we need to remember that these plans must be more than just a theoretical exercise. We can no longer afford to overlook the operational challenges that will inevitably come with the implementation of even the best laid plans. I emphasize to our witnesses today, especially those of you who serve on the front lines in local government, now is the opportunity to offer your candid assessment of efforts to coordinate emergency planning. Of course, there can be no responsibility without accountability. While we in the Congress stand ready to assist those who have been affected by Hurricane Katrina, we must diminish our disaster assistance funds responsibly. This money is too important to be misspent. Any dollar lost to fraud or waste is a dollar that does not make it to someone who is in need. With sound management, appropriate controls and accountability, we will have the means to continue to provide resources to those who are truly in need of our shared assistance. As I am sure we will hear from the witnesses today, financial actions at the Federal level have a direct impact on State and local governments, whether it is in the State matching requirements under the Stafford Act or the process for reimbursing local fire and rescue departments for their work, the appropriate distribution of Federal funds is integral to ensuring that we respond effectively to incidents of national significance in emergencies. Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing, for helping us to meet our responsibility to the American people. I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Mr. Van Hollen. Mr. Van Hollen. Well, Mr. Chairman, thank you and Mr. Waxman for holding this hearing. I am pleased, as others have said, that this is going to be the first of many hearings, because I do think that in order to learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina, of course, it is important to have the first-hand testimony of people and decisionmakers involved in that, and I understand that will be something the committee takes up. I do think, given the dialog and exchange we have seen this morning, and, more importantly, given the jurisdictional problems within the Congress between different committees and rivalry over who gets to talk about what, it is essential that we do have one commission that takes an overall comprehensive look at this issue. It should be an independent, bipartisan commission. We have heard everyone on both sides of the aisle wants to find the facts. No better way to find those than a totally independent commission that has the trust and confidence of the American people. That is not to say that this committee and other committees shouldn't pursue the areas of jurisdiction. We should; that is our responsibility. Let me just say, with respect to the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina, I was a little concerned to hear one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle from California advise the witnesses from Los Angeles that in the future you are on your own; don't depend on the Congress, don't depend on the Federal Government for support. And I can understand, looking at Katrina, why people would reach that conclusion. I think that clearly there were mistakes on all levels of government, but clearly FEMA failed in many ways. So I can understand some reaction on the part of local and State governments, saying we are going to have to plan this totally on our own. And I would encourage people to do everything possible they can on their own, but let us not kid ourselves. A disaster of the kind of magnitude we saw in Katrina, a disaster the magnitude of the kind of terrorist attack, a dirty bomb that you could see somewhere, is going to, in many cases, overwhelm local and State resources, and the Federal Government is going to have to be involved. So the answer here isn't you are on your own. The answer is let us make sure that we fix what happened at FEMA. Let us make sure that we fix what happened at the local and State level so that we can work together and have the Federal resources in the future the way they want to work. Now, I represent an area that is right here in the National Capital Region, and clearly, along with my colleagues from other parts of the country, what happened in response to Hurricane Katrina has raised a new urgency about whether or not we are prepared, and I am very pleased today to have two representatives from the District of Columbia here to talk about preparedness in the District of Columbia. I think this will also be an ongoing discussion in this committee. We have had hearings before where we had FEMA representatives and others talking about the preparedness in the National Capital Region, which clearly is on anyone's short list of a potential terrorist target. We have already seen that from September 11th. And the testimony we received in the past from both State, regional leaders, local leaders, and Federal leaders was, yes, we are ready, or we are getting much more ready. Well, I think, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we all need to take another look at the difference between concept and laying something out on paper, and being able to implement that under terrible conditions. So I look forward in the days ahead to doing that. Just to flag one issue, for example, as part of the reorganization of the Department of Homeland Security, they downgraded the position of the person over at Homeland Security responsible at the Federal level for the National Capital Region. It used to report directly to the Secretary. They have now downgraded that. I don't know what the consequences of that are, but it certainly raises lots of concerns with me. And I am looking forward, not just today, but in the days ahead, to talking about the different contingencies that we have in place in the National Capital Region and other places around the country that are at risk, whether it is from a natural disaster or a terrorist type attack. Mr. Chairman, again, I thank you for holding these hearings. I look forward to the testimony. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Van Hollen. Ms. Foxx. Ms. Foxx. Mr. Chairman, could you come back to me after the next person? Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Marchant. Ms. Foxx. Thank you. Mr. Marchant. Mr. Chairman, I will submit my comments in writing so we can get to the witnesses. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mr. Clay. Mr. Clay. Thank you, Chairman Davis and Ranking Member Waxman, for holding today's hearing. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it is essential that all of our cities evaluate their emergency and evacuation plans to ensure that no one is ever left behind. I welcome our witnesses and thank them for graciously providing this committee with insight into the steps they are taking to protect their citizens. While this is an important first look at the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina, it is imperative that Congress go a step further and establish an independent commission to study the Federal Government's response to this disaster. The disaster brought by Hurricane Katrina is indisputable. The failure of government agencies and elected officials to effectively minimize the suffering and death of the victims in the Gulf Coast is indefensible. History will record that the Katrina disaster is a turning point in this Nation's history. When the waters rose and the levees burst, the world watched as thousands of sick and elderly Americans, thousands of poor families with young children cried out for food and water. American citizens who trusted the advice of government were abandoned in an evacuated city without food and water, without plumbing, without law enforcement, without transportation, and without hope. The pictures we saw were nothing short of unbelievable. As a Nation, we can no longer pretend that all Americans have the opportunity to share in the wealth of this great Nation. The winds of Katrina exposed the truth to all Americans and to the entire world. The very least this body must now do is to abandon the partisanship that has stifled public policymaking for too many years. We are elected officials and our first responsibility is to represent the people, not to represent political parties. There should be no disagreement that whatever government did or did not do in response to this hurricane, we did not do our best. The mission failed, and it was not the failure of one person or the failure of one government agency or the failure of any political party, it was a collective failure. Now we must come together to do everything humanly possible to make certain that this never ever happens again. It is my hope that today's hearing will not only shed light on the policies of major cities, but will also encourage every city and State to ensure that adequate safeguards for the future are in place to effectively respond to future large- scale catastrophes. The people of this Nation expect nothing less. I yield back and ask that my written statement be included in the record. [The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.059 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.060 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.061 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.062 Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Clay, thank you very much. Let me just say we just confirmed with the White House that on Sunday there will be three committees involved--we will be the lead committee--in taking a CODEL to New Orleans. We will have three Republicans and three Democrats from this committee going. Mr. Waxman will name the three from the minority and I will name three members from the majority. I just want to announce that. I think that is an important part. We will be meeting with some of the people down there. I hope that answers the concerns of some of the Members. Mr. Westmoreland. Mr. Westmoreland. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank you for having this hearing and showing the leadership that we are not looking at New Orleans, we are not looking at Katrina; we are looking at some lessons learned. And I want to apologize to the witnesses for having to sit through all of these opening statements. I know that you are here to assure us that your cities and your leadership are prepared to handle either a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, or a manmade catastrophe. You know, back to the drawing board for me means that I had always been under the impression that government works best from the bottom up, not from the top down. And I think if we look at the drawing board of how our country is set up, how our States and our local governments are set up, it is the fact that local people helping local people is the best. They know their needs the best of anybody. I think the important part looking at what happened with Katrina, is the fact that there was no leadership at the local or the State level. I think that the main lesson learned is that our government does not function well when it is a top-down decisionmaking body that we have to do. I think that is a lesson that you didn't have to go to New Orleans to see. I mean, if you couldn't learn that from watching TV, then you may need to rethink what the lesson is, because you could just look at what was going on and compare it to what happened on September 11th, when you saw the leaders of the city walking through the streets, going to command posts, having the emergency services work like they did. And I did not see that happening in Louisiana. And I would just like to say that I heard some other people on the other side of the aisle talk about the fact that there was nobody here from FEMA. We are not investigating--and the chairman was very wise to do that--what happened with Katrina. And the fact that the speaker and the majority leader of the Senate announced that they were going to form select committees to work jointly to have hearings so these people would only have to be subpoenaed one time and not be taken away from the important business that they are doing in the recovery and relief and the reconstruction, they would only have to come up here once and be subpoenaed once, and they could work together. And, yet, the minority party issued a statement after that, that they wouldn't even participate in those hearings. But I am glad that they are here to participate in this hearing and hear how we can better help you. We want to make sure, if we are going to be blamed for it, I guess we need to make sure that every city is prepared to answer the call of your citizens when we come into a time of need. So I am very anxious to hear what you say, and I am very anxious to hear how you think that we can help you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mr. Davis. Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I will be brief. Let me, first of all, thank you for calling this hearing. And I appreciate all of the witnesses who have come to testify. I appreciate the representatives from the various jurisdictions who have come to share with us how well and what it is that they have been doing, and how they are prepared for natural, as well as, perhaps, even manmade disasters. However, I find it difficult to really understand how much we are going to glean from them in relationship to what our response was to Katrina. I guess what they can tell us is what is happening at the local level, their local levels. But I think it is pretty clear that the preparation, the planning, and the initial response from FEMA was a colossal failure. And if they can help us not go down that road again, then certainly their time will be well spent. I have been doing some research of my own, and I looked at the way that we handled the relocation of people after the 1994 earthquake in Los Angeles, and I certainly hope that we will follow some of that in terms of the utilization of HUD resources, to provide housing for people who were uprooted and dislocated. So I look forward to hearing the witnesses as they help us to prepare in such a way that, locally, we understand what we can do and how we can do it, but also recognizing that there has to be a responsibility beyond theirs and that the overarching responsibility for these kinds of disasters really comes from the Federal Government, and that puts us back at the hands and at the feet of FEMA. So I thank you very much and yield back the balance of my time. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Ms. Foxx. Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for having this meeting. I am afraid I am going to have to associate myself with my colleague, Mr. Westmoreland, and not with the comments just made by Mr. Davis. I think that we have a major problem in our country when we look to the Federal Government to solve all of our problems. The role of the Federal Government is to provide primarily for the defense of this Nation, and I think that our role in disaster relief should be to make sure we are always going to be ready to provide for the defense of this Nation. But I agree with Representative Westmoreland, the more responsibility we give to the Federal Government, the more we are going to have problems. It is obviously the role of the local and State units of government to take care of the people in their localities and their States, and I am interested in hearing, again, what other localities have done to be prepared for these eventualities. North Carolina gets hit by hurricanes many times every single year, and in most cases we deal with those issues at the local and State level. We ask for Federal help only after we can't deal with it. But to make it look as though the Federal Government is the first responder is a terrible mistake, and I hope that as a result of what has happened with Katrina, which is very sad, we will realign or help to realign people's priorities. It is like asking people to think that Social Security is their only retirement benefit. By looking to the Federal Government for disaster relief, we are not looking in the right place. So I hope you all will instruct us as to what you are doing at the local and State levels that can help us realign people's expectations, and certainly do the work better from the Federal level, but not look to the Federal level to be a first responder. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mr. Ruppersberger. Mr. Ruppersberger. Sure. First, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you and Ranking Member Waxman for your leadership in holding these hearings. I also would like to express my heart- felt sympathy for those who have lost so much in Hurricane Katrina. The President called the overall response to Hurricane Katrina not acceptable, and I agree. The response was a local, State and Federal failure. The system absolutely failed the people of the Gulf Coast. The way the system is set up now, if the local government can't handle the situation, if the State can't handle it, that is when the Federal Government needs to step in. But that didn't happen, and we need to know why. Thousands of residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida were ordered to evacuate, but when they reached the evacuationsites like the Superdome in New Orleans, they were abandoned. There was not enough food, water, and medical supplies to go around. As the flood waters rose, thousands of Americans were left behind to fend for themselves amidst chaos and lawlessness. But our job today is to find out what went wrong and why. The victims of Hurricane Katrina deserve to know why their Federal Government, their State government, and local government failed them. It is about teamwork. But let us get to the facts so that we can learn what went wrong and fix it. On Thursday, August 25th, Hurricane Katrina hit Florida, killing at least 11 people, and heads to the Gulf Coast. On Saturday, August 27th, the President of the United States declared a state of emergency in the areas of Louisiana, expected to hit hard by Hurricane Katrina, now a Category 5. The move paved the way for Federal aid once the storm made landfall. On Monday, August 29th, 2:05, the storm hit Louisiana with vengeance and headed toward Mississippi. On Tuesday, August 30th, two levees broke in New Orleans and water flooded much of the city. Thousands climbed onto their rooftops and attempted to flee their flooded homes. The ones who could made their way to shelters like the Superdome and Convention Center in downtown New Orleans. The crowd was estimated in the tens of thousands. Flood water and medical supplies were quickly used up. Violence, chaos, and utter lawlessness took over. The images were played out on national TV. The country stood by in shock and horror. Many of the people stranded at the Superdome and the Convention Center were people of color. Many were poor and didn't have the resources to flee the disaster. But the National Guard didn't arrive until 4 days later, on Friday, September 2nd; 4 days later. It took 4 days for the Federal response to start. Americans died because their government failed them. These victims--not refugees--were forced to endure horrific circumstances, and that is absolutely unacceptable. We need to find out what went wrong and fix the system to better respond the next time for all Americans. Now, we also need to stop blaming, stop all of the spinning, and get down to what we are elected to do, and that is to fix the problem and protect the American people. First, FEMA needs to be taken out of the Department of Homeland Security and restored to an independent agency. It must be headed by an emergency management professional with direct line to the President. FEMA needs the independence to address disasters without navigating through layers of bureaucracy. It is about leadership. As part of this committee, I believe we must investigate where the breakdown between the local, State, and Federal Government happened, and prevent it from happening again. We have brought this broad array of local and State experts together today to help to bring some insight into what went so terribly wrong, and this is just the start. I believe it is our responsibility as members of this committee and citizens of the country to proceed forward and totally investigate the matter. We must send a clear message to our country that whether you are Black or White, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat, your government is here to protect you. We must do this quickly and keep our country and our citizens safe. We cannot control when the next disaster will come, but we can control how we prepare for it. And as far as the issue of hearings, it is extremely important that we have an independent commission like the 9/11 Commission. When we were attacked, we came together as a country, a good commission. We have precedent. We need to do that. We need to have credibility with respect to the facts that we get and the decisions that we make. Mr. Chairman, again, I thank you for your courage and leadership, and you, Mr. Waxman, for coming together with this hearing, and this is just a start. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you, Mr. Ruppersberger. Mr. Shaw, you want to make an introduction at this point, and then we will still have a couple more statements, but we are almost to the panel. Mr. Shaw. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Waxman, members of the committee. I very much appreciate your allowing me to introduce Mr. Tony Carper of Broward County, FL. Tony serves as Broward County's Emergency Operation Coordinator, a position he has served in since his appointment in 1993. Prior to arriving in Broward, Tony served the residents of Brevard County, which is just north of Broward County, for 13 years. Currently, he is president of Governor Jeb Bush's Hurricane Conference and on the Board of Directors of the Florida Emergency Preparedness Association. As a resident of Broward County and a member of the Broward Congressional delegation for the past 24 years, I am extremely proud of the preparation and level of professionalism that Tony has demonstrated, as well as the wonderful county employees of the EOC. Tony has led our county through 14 hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and wildfires since 1995. Tony has a balanced and organized approach to each disaster, and has worked extensively with his local and State counterparts to ensure necessary resources are in place following a disaster. In south Florida, and Broward particularly, we take great pride in the level of public preparedness prior to and directly following a named hurricane. We all suffered through the tragedy of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Elected officials at the local, State, and Federal levels and the entire community rose to the occasion and committed themselves to achieve preparedness for future disaster. Under Tony's leadership, as a hurricane approaches Broward County, the Emergency Operation Center is fully operational at least 24 hours prior to landfall. As the storm makes landfall, Broward County officials use the county EOC as an emergency command center where public utilities and law enforcement are coordinated among other needs. Broward County has the means to get the necessary supplies to those in need in a timely manner. This success comes from direct communication and work with the Broward Sheriffs Office and the Florida National Guard. It has been made clear to us over the last several weeks that hurricane preparedness is critical. In Florida, whether it is Governor Bush or Broward County officials, residents of Broward County are informed of the impact of the storm and the need to evacuate from low lying areas near the coast and in and around the intracoastal waterways. Mandatory evacuations are handled in a prompt time period, allowing the maximum amount needed to move hundreds of thousands of residents from the coast, many being elderly. These quick decisions are all outlined in the county's Comprehensive Emergency Operations Plan. Mr. Chairman, as the committee hears from our Nation's first responders and the emergency coordinators, I trust you will take firm action to ensure that what we witnessed in the Gulf region can be avoided. I thank the committee for the opportunity that I have to introduce Mr. Carper, and I would like to say that I think Broward County's plan, as well as, I am sure, some other plans that you will hear from today, can be used as a template. We must learn from this tragedy. And I applaud you for having this hearing and I thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Hon. E. Clay Shaw follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.063 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.064 Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mr. Lynch. Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In order to be as brief as possible, I am just going to associate myself with the remarks of Mr. Ruppersberger. I would like to say, however, that the title of this hearing is ``Back to the Drawing Board: A First Look at Lessons Learned from Katrina.'' First of all, I appreciate all of the witnesses here, and I know several folks have come in from Los Angeles and we have some folks from Washington. But I think that at some point in these hearings--I hope there will be more--we should probably, I think, talk to some folks who were in charge in Louisiana and Alabama and Mississippi. I heard the comments of Mr. Westmoreland, my dear friend and colleague, that we all got to watch TV and see what was going on, but I think that we need to learn at a deeper level than just sitting on our couches and watching people suffer. And I have to admit that I did not recall that the hurricane hit California. I do not recall that the hurricane hit Washington, DC. I do not recall that the hurricane hit the Heritage Foundation. And that is where the great majority of these witnesses are from. And I don't see anybody who was actually in charge on the ground in either Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama. So I think if we are really honestly looking to get to the bottom of this and figure out what we can do to straighten out the problems, we ought to talk to some of the officials who were actually on the ground and had to deal with the disaster that occurred there. I think we owe that to the American people. And I yield back. Thank you. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mr. Porter. Mr. Porter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to share a totally different perspective, possibly, this morning. I know that there are many Members here that are rushing to judgment and there are many Members here with an open mind. I do believe that we are all here trying to do the right thing. But I had a call on Sunday morning, prior to the storm hitting, from a friend who had family in Mississippi, in Pass Christian and in Bay St. Louis, and a little community called Picayune. It was Sunday morning, probably 10 a.m., and they anticipated that their family that were living there were going to be in harm's way. So I decided to load up my little Suburban with a couple generators, some water, some things that I thought may be a challenge to pick up in Mississippi or Louisiana, drove cross- country, called my office early Sunday morning and ask them to overnight a satellite phone to me so it would be in Dallas by the time I got there. Well, to make a long story short, I was called by a friend that anticipated help, and I got to the beach in Mississippi, I believe, early Wednesday morning. Had picked up a U-Haul in Louisiana on the way and loaded it with water from our friends at Wal-Mart. I am troubled. Having been a mayor, a city councilman for almost 10 years of a small community, but also a State senator for 8, and now in Congress for two terms, I am troubled that I was the first responder on the beach 2,500 miles away. And I am not telling this story because of what I was able to do because a friend asked me. I think you probably would all do the same if a friend called you up and said I think I am going to have a problem. So it is nothing to do with my driving there, other than I don't really understand how I can drive in my little Suburban, with a U-Haul trailer 2,500 miles, and be the first person on the beach, and to be the first human that was seen on that beach, other than neighbors that were still alive and still well. And I am the first one to agree that we have very serious problems and the system is broken. And I know that we have members of this committee that have served as a mayor. I know Mr. Turner was a mayor of a community, Mr. Ruppersberger also represented local government. We have a lot of folks on this committee. But my perspective is that I think the most frightening part of what we are seeing today is that local, State, and Federal Government think and thought they were prepared. And I know we have a lot of experts here today that are going to talk about their experiences, but I question whether we have communications in this country where one city can talk to another city, or one firefighter can talk to a policeman, or a policeman can talk to a highway patrolman, or where a highway patrolman can talk to the National Guard. Some basic principles I don't believe are in place today. I am sure we have experts here that will talk about their communities, but is there any local agreements between Washington, DC, and Baltimore if there is a problem? I don't know. I expect that we are going to have that opportunity. But there are a lot of things happening beyond my fear that local, State, and Federal Government think they are prepared, and that is the hurricane and political destruction that is happening in the city. Literally, I am on the beach--and my friends, by the way, one home was totally gone, one home was under 6 feet of water, and another home was OK in Picayune. I am listening to my satellite radio to the news, and I hear politicians in Washington already blaming, while we are still rescuing people in New Orleans. And I am looking around thinking why isn't there a bottle of water here, a semi load of water coming from another city. Why isn't another community, through the National League of Cities or the National League of Counties or whoever, why are we not seeing a semi load of water? I drove 2,500 miles. I had a friend bring in 400 gallons of gas from California. He flew in to Arkansas, rented a truck. This was Saturday. He showed up with gasoline. He is from California. Now, again, I have served local government. I appreciate and respect that we have professionals out there that really believe that they are doing the right thing and that they have a system in place. But as this city is having its own hurricane of trying to get a one-upmanship on who is going to take the high road, it is going to be up to you, local government, to cut through all this. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Mr. Porter. Because we have our own destruction happening in Washington that is not productive. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Mr. Porter. So I thank you for being here. There are a lot of things we can do together if we do it together. So I thank you very much. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Mr. Gutknecht. Anyone else? Mr. Souder. Mr. Souder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A couple of brief points. First, I would like to build on Mr. Porter's point. I have had the opportunity, because we have had so many long statements, to basically read all of your opening statements, and one of my concerns is not that the paper plans aren't there. I am a senior member of Homeland Security, I chair the Narcotics Committee. I have been to Los Angeles and Miami in with your port facilities, in with your police people. It is a lot of the same old, same old. I hope we hear, at least in the question part, what did you learn, what are the differences? Because most of you are still saying we have interoperability problems with our radios, that is a goal; we hope we have plans to evacuate low income. The massiveness of this stunned us all, and it should be forcing you to reevaluate everything we have for major catastrophic type of plans. Clearly, New Orleans did not have a command and control center. And while there are multiple command and control centers, many of them are fairly archaic in our different cities, and they don't interact between the different centers. And are those protected if there is a catastrophic event? Is there a way to have it mobile enough for a backup system? I hope we will hear some of those kinds of questions today. And as we build it, because without command and control, this simply isn't going to work. Another question is I didn't see anything in my cursory examination of all of the testimony today, but clearly one of the things that is happening is the volunteers and charitable organizations have to be an integral part--not just an add-on, an integral part--of rescue efforts and assistance efforts. And we have had chaos up and down this region of people being turned away, of EMS people moving from four different places and only dealing with one person. Because the American people will do this, and clearly if we had multiple disasters simultaneously, we don't have the tax dollars to do it. This is going to strain our budget. We have to have the charitable and volunteer organizations as an integral part. I think another key, fundamental question is--and it has been raised several times. The New York Times, I believe, reported that the Governor turned down the Department of Defense taking over operations. At what catastrophic level do you say, look, our police system is wiped out, our systems are out, there has to be a command and control system because we don't have it? And that is a politically loaded question, but when we, as the Federal Government, already put $60 billion in down there, and looking at another $200 billion, at some point we are responsible for those tax dollars. And the question is when does command and control shift in authority. Those are very difficult questions, but I think some that we are hoping to hear, those of you who are now some of our most critical and at-risk areas of the country, to say what are you learning from this; how can we prepare when it is this level of catastrophe that is the biggest we have ever seen, similar to that, and then kind of mid-level, and then kind of the day-to-day more likely targeted neighborhood catastrophe or part of a downtown area type of catastrophe, which most of our plans are designed for. I yield back. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mr. Cummings, last but not least. Thank you. Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for calling this critically important hearing to assess the local emergency response plans to natural disasters at major U.S. cities. While today's hearing presents us with the opportunity to look at the road ahead let us not lose sight of the failure of all--all--levels of government staring at us in the rearview mirror. However, one need not be an expert to understand that national disasters of the scope and magnitude of Hurricane Katrina demand national leadership and resources that only the Federal Government can provide. Although we are reading from the right book with today's hearing, our focus should first be on a different page, one that directly asks the question what went wrong and why it went wrong in response to the Federal Government in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In the uncertain times immediately following a disaster, our citizens expect to find comfort in the certainty that their government will respond rapidly, decisively, and ably to meet their essential needs for food, water, shelter, and security. Regrettably, the American people's faith in that certainty has been shaken. The inattention, inaction, and ineptitude that characterized the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina gave way to disbelief as the images of American citizens--not refugees--struggling for their very survival filled our homes and our hearts with the same shame and grief. Americans from all walks of life are asking why so many of their fellow citizens were abandoned for 4 days without food or water; why the dead lay disregarded under the sweltering sun for days without the dignity of a proper burial; and why so many needlessly died and suffered because vital relief was slow to arrive. Mr. Chairman, the American people are also asking what if Katrina had been an act of terrorism. Four years after the attacks of September 11th, Hurricane Katrina demonstrated with abundant clarity that there is much work yet to be done to improve our national preparedness for both threats of human design and acts of nature. In clear and plain terms, the vulnerability that confronts all levels of government today is in part the result of poor choices that were made within the administration and the Congress. These policy choices not only hinder Federal response efforts, but they can undermine State and local plans to protect their communities. Let us keep in mind that while we do not have control over nature, we do have control over the policy choices that determine our capacity to lessen the impact of nature's mighty blows. For instance, the inclusion of FEMA within the Department of Homeland Security, coupled with funding cuts, seems to have weakened FEMA's ability to manage Federal emergency response and assist State and local governments in their disaster preparation and recovery efforts. I am not less troubled by the reduction of Federal funding for certain public works projects that are critical to safeguarding State and local communities. For example, and as I close, we must determine the extent to which an approximate 40 percent funding decrease between 2001 through 2005 for maintenance and repair projects for the New Orleans levy system contributed to the severity of the flooding. So too must we ask are we shortchanging other high- risk communities? I am also concerned with the administration's continued application of a flawed contracting strategy. As it now stands, the $62 billion of taxpayer money that Congress has dedicated for emergency recovery efforts to Katrina is veering dangerously close to being subject to waste, fraud, and abuse. Further, it seems contrary to common sense that while many of the displaced look for work, our contracting efforts have not sufficiently utilized the potential to employ them. The lack of substantive involvement of small businesses of all types, including those owned by women and people of color, in the recovery effort seems just as troublesome. In the end, let us collectively seize the opportunity to not only right the wrongs of emergency mismanagement that were so painfully illustrated during and after Hurricane Katrina, but the wrong of poverty that forces upwards of 37 million Americans to routinely weather the storms of failing schools, poor health care, and limited opportunities. And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. [The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.164 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.165 Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Any other Members wish to make statements? [No response.] Chairman Tom Davis. If not, let me thank our panel for their perseverance through this. We are delighted to have you today. Our panel will consist of the Honorable Mark Morial, who is going to come and has a short timeframe. He is not here right now. He is the former mayor of New Orleans and the chief executive officer and president of the National Urban League. We have Constance Perett, who is the administrator, Office of Emergency Management, the county of Los Angeles; Mr. Ellis Stanley, the manager of Emergency Preparedness Department, city of Los Angeles; Mr. Robert Bobb, the deputy mayor and the city administrator for the District of Columbia; Mr. David Robertson, the executive director from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments; Mr. Tony Carper, Jr., the director of the Broward Emergency Management Agency, who has been introduced by Mr. Shaw; and Chief Carlos Castillo, the director of Miami-Dade County Office of Emergency Management. It is our policy to swear you in before your testimony, so if you would just rise and raise your right hands. [Witnesses sworn.] Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much for being with us. And although a lot of Members have spoken and left, we still have a lot of Members here to hear what you have to say. We think it is important. I am going to start with you, Ms. Perett, and move straight on down. When Mr. Morial comes, I will swear him in immediately and go to his testimony. We may also have votes in the middle of this, but so far we have not. Please proceed. Thank you. STATEMENTS OF CONSTANCE PERETT, ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, CA; ELLIS STANLEY, GENERAL MANAGER, EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS DEPARTMENT, CITY OF LOS ANGELES, CA; ROBERT C. BOBB, CITY ADMINISTRATOR, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA; DAVID J. ROBERTSON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENTS; TONY CARPER, JR., DIRECTOR, BROWARD EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, BROWARD COUNTY, FL; CHIEF CARLOS CASTILLO, DIRECTOR, MIAMI-DADE COUNTY OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FL; AND MARC MORIAL, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, INC., FORMER MAYOR OF NEW ORLEANS, LA STATEMENT OF CONSTANCE PERETT Ms. Perett. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and honorable committee members. On behalf of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and our chair, Supervisor Gloria Melina, I want to thank you for allowing me to come and talk to you about some issues that are of great concern to all of us. You have my statement, so I am not going to belabor our preparedness. I am going to touch on a couple of highlights and then I am going to talk about some recommendations. Los Angeles County is no stranger to disasters. I lost count a long time ago. I have been an emergency manager for 21 years, and we have had so many disasters that I really cannot remember them all. During the 1990's we had 10 federally declared disasters in a 10-year period. We call it the decade of disasters. We have been very aggressive in preparing for disasters because we must. We are large, we are vast, we have 10 million people, very diverse. We have 88 cities, independent cities, and 137 named unincorporated areas in our county, and it is very complex. Multiple languages spoken, and we really have to have our act together. We do this under the Standardized Emergency Management System, which was chartered into law in 1995. It is an excellent system. It is based on incident command. We swear by it. We are able to coordinate very effectively. You see Ellis Stanley sitting beside me here. We work on a daily basis together with the city of Los Angeles, with our other 88 cities, and with our State partners. I want to emphasize how critical coordination is. We have public education programs; we have a state-of-the-art emergency operation center, and I don't see how any jurisdiction can operate without a state-of-the-art emergency operation center. I don't know how they can do their job. Let me move to some recommendations, if I may. They are not in any particular order, I just wrote them down as I listened to you and I thought about things. First of all, I believe that more resources absolutely need to be directed to the local level. You hear the expression that all disasters are local. Well, they are; they start in somebody's backyard. So local government needs the resources to be prepared. Many jurisdictions have one person doing emergency management, and maybe they have two or three other collateral jobs. You cannot get this job done if you are not devoting the resources to it. You need to emphasize mutual aid, because when you see a large-scale event, nobody is an island; they can't do this alone. Mutual aid needs to be strengthened throughout the United States. You need to also have strong State partners. We have that in California and we believe that it is critical across the Nation. I would like to see more focus on funding for the Emergency Management Performance Grant Program. That is the lifeblood of emergency managers. And just to say, first responders are critical, but first responders do not do the global overview of coordination and preparedness for disasters. You need to put funding into that if you want to see a coordinated, well planned and organized response. I would like to talk about FEMA and say to you that I believe with all of my heart that FEMA needs to be a standalone organization, it needs to be reporting to the President, and it needs to be cabinet level status. This is not a time for going through layers of bureaucracy, when you have to move fast and be nimble; it is too important. It is way too important for it to be buried in a large organization. I believe that FEMA needs some well defined protocols for how it is going to provide resources at the State and local level. I believe that, again, is an issue of coordination in advance and understanding when resource is coming, how do you receive them, how do you put them to use. It does no good to have the finest resources in the world if you don't know how to put them on the ground and people understand how to use them. I believe from a local level you need to engage your community-based and faith-based organizations. It is critical. They are actually the first on the street helping the public when something goes wrong. They are there handing out blankets and food and water, and they should be an integral part of any jurisdiction's preparedness plans. And I believe they should be getting some Federal support for what they do. They rely on donations, and when their regular stock of donations is depleted, where are they going to get the funds? It looks like I am running out of time. Let me also put emphasis on public education and the understanding that people have to know how to take care of themselves for a period of time, because government cannot do all these things for them. And I believe I am out of time, and I thank you very much for your attention. [The prepared statement of Ms. Perett follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.065 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.066 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.067 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.068 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.069 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.070 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.071 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.072 Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much for your testimony. Mr. Stanley. STATEMENT OF ELLIS STANLEY Mr. Stanley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. And to all of our representatives from the great State of California, thank you too for your support over the years and making sure that we continue to have a very aggressive emergency management philosophy not only in the city and the county, but in the State of California. I do think that there can be some lessons learned. Somebody a lot smarter than me once said, ``if we fail to learn from the failures of the past, we are doomed to repeat them,'' George Santayana. And I think that we have to take advantage of all the opportunities that we have to learn lessons from the misfortunes that we have seen around the world and now on our own soil with Hurricane Katrina. On behalf of our new mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, I thank you for allowing us to be part of this as well. It is important that you understand part of my background over the past 30 years started out in North Carolina as an emergency manager down on the coast of North Carolina, in Brunswick County, then moved to a larger jurisdiction in the triangle area of Durham, NC, then to Atlanta, GA for several years, and now in the city of Los Angeles, the second largest city in the country; 10 million people in the county, 4 million people in the city, 15 million people in the greater metropolitan area. That is only important because as Ms. Perett indicated, all disasters are local, and it is important that we start preparing at the local level. And on behalf of all of the finest, bravest, and best first responders in the country, we look at also the individuals, ensuring that we push preparedness down to the local level. We understand that when you talk about volunteer organizations, when you talk about private sector, when you talk about other not-for-profits, they have a role and responsibility, and it is important that we incorporate them into the planning process at the table before, during, and after emergencies. I have not been to the Gulf Coast States yet; however, during the days of its making landfall, I was in the command center of the Emergency Management Assistance Compact [EMAC], a compact of which all 50 States come together to look at what resources and how they can get them into the affected area. Fifty States that have resources, both hard resources and technical expertise. Our city and our community was one of the first to send urban search and rescue, to send swift water rescue, to make sure that they were on the ground very quick, very well trained, very well equipped to assist in this response. So we did learn lessons from that perspective. The other thing that we are doing or we are taking the opportunity to is look at the implications and the impact of standards. What are the standards around the Nation that all cities--whether it is a smaller jurisdiction that I worked in or now one of the largest jurisdictions--what standards are needed to make sure that we all are singing off the same sheet of paper that you, as elected officials, that my local elected officials, that the State elected officials understand how they measure preparedness in their community. The Congress has a tremendous role, as Ms. Perett indicated, the Emergency Management Performance Grants, where you could assure that every community, every community in this Nation has a trained professional emergency manager in that community. The Emergency Management Accreditation Program is a good tool, and we will be going through that program in Los Angeles to have an outside assessment; not what Ellis Stanley says, as the emergency manager, is our capability, but what an independent peer review can come in and make that assessment and look at it. We are doing that now in the capital region area, the Council of Governments, from a regional perspective, because we realize, even though it is local, we are not in this by ourselves; it impacts more than just our borders, and it is important that we work very comprehensively and very collaboratively with everyone else that we work with in disasters. We have a regular meeting of the minds, I dare say, with some of our larger cities: New York, Chicago, the District of Columbia, San Francisco, Miami, and Los Angeles. We meet regularly just to talk about what trends are happening, what things are going on; how are we now reaching a good public education program in our communities to help. My time is up, and I thank you so much for yours. [The prepared statement of Mr. Stanley follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.073 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.074 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.075 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.076 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.077 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.078 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.079 Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Ms. Norton. Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to introduce the next witness. The next witness, Administrator Robert Bobb, is the administrator for the District of Columbia, and I can understand why the chairman called him. It is not simply because he is a neighbor, it is because of his national reputation for managing tough situations, including tough cities. I am very pleased that Mr. Bobb has been called here today. He is the go-to man in the District if you want to get something done. I want to simply let every one of my members know that Mr. Bobb is overseeing the work that the District is now doing with 300 evacuees from New Orleans that the city brought up and has now at the D.C. National Armory. I want to thank him for that work and welcome him to this hearing, Mr. Bobb. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mr. Bobb, thank you for being here and thanks for the job you are doing. STATEMENT OF ROBERT C. BOBB Mr. Bobb. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking Member and members of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity to appear today to discuss emergency preparedness in the District and some initial lessons learned from Katrina. My name is Robert C. Bobb, and I am the deputy mayor/city administrator of the District of Columbia. And as we sit here today, we are hosting over 300 evacuees from the city of New Orleans, as well as the Gulf Coast area, as well as the National Capital Region is hosting over 3,000 evacuees. But before I begin, I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of Mayor Anthony Williams, the people of the District of Columbia, and the people of the National Capital Region to express our deepest sympathy and commitment to continued support and foremost consideration in our thoughts and prayers of the people of the Gulf Coast who have been affected by this tragedy. I am myself a survivor of Gulf Coast hurricanes as a native Louisianian, and I know the horrors firsthand of the devastation that they can bring to individuals and families. The initial lessons that we have learned from the Katrina incident, and while we have a high level of confidence in the District and the National Capital Region in our ability to manage a major event, be it of natural or manmade cause, nevertheless, as a result of the insights we are getting from Katrina, even while events are still unfolding in the Gulf Coast, we are taking a hard look at our plans and capabilities, and the assumptions that underlie them. The first major area we are reviewing is evacuation. The District has a disaster evacuation plan. We have designated evacuation routes, variable message signage, signal timing algorithms, buses for those without cars, and other aspects of traffic management in place to enable evacuation. And we have tested some of these elements to various degrees, most recently during the July 4th fireworks. But the tragic events of Katrina, especially as it relates to those who choose not to or were unable to evacuate have forced us to challenge some of the assumptions of our evacuation plans. Our ultimate goal is to have a workable plan in place to evacuate the entire District of Columbia in the unlikely event that such need arises. Although we recently funded a regional walkout plan, our evacuation planning is heavily automobile- based. We are now analyzing census data and information from our Department of Motor Vehicles to determine what areas in the District have high concentration of residents without cars. We will adjust our plans for the use and deployment of buses based on this analysis. We will also integrate other options such as water-based transport into our evacuation planning. Most importantly, we will much more specifically tailor our emergency preparedness, training and education to address neighborhood-specific issues so that individuals understand explicitly what they need to do in the face of an evacuation of their neighborhood. We will also work more closely with the National Organization of Disabilities and our Disability Preparedness Center, as well as other residents with special needs and the organizations that serve them, to ensure our evacuation planning is practical and makes sense for all District residents. We will review plans for nursing homes, hospitals, jails, halfway houses, and group homes to ensure that no one is left behind. Another area of major review will be our sheltering capacity and planning. We currently have plans in place that would enable sheltering a portion of the District's nighttime population. But based on our own experience with sheltering Katrina evacuees at the D.C. Armory, there are a number of small but important logistical issues we will have to work through that will improve future sheltering operations. We have worked hard since September 11th to improve our communications capabilities within and across governments and between governments and residents. We have achieved voice interoperability for first responders across the region and are developing full data interoperability, and we now have a regional alert notification system. But Katrina emphasized the importance of robustness and redundancy of communication systems, as well as their vulnerability, during a massive event. We are also doubling our efforts to sign up residents and the business community for our alert systems, and we are reviewing our capabilities for communications among second responders and support personnel. [The prepared statement of Mr. Bobb follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.080 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.081 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.082 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.083 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.084 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.085 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.086 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.087 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.088 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.089 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.090 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.091 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.092 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.093 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.094 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.095 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.096 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.097 Mr. Shays [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Bobb. The Chair would recognize Mr. Robertson. STATEMENT OF DAVID J. ROBERTSON Mr. Robertson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I am David Robertson, executive director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. And if I had just one message for the committee this afternoon, it would be that any significant emergency in any one city or county quickly becomes a regional emergency requiring a coordinated response. In the Washington metropolitan area, we have worked very hard to do just that. On many levels we certainly believe that we are better prepared, but certainly there is more to do. In the aftermath of Katrina, it doesn't mean that we need to abandon the good work and the planning to date, but evaluate that work against new scenarios and a higher standard of preparedness and response. To that end, the Council of Governments Board of Directors, at the initial request of Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan and other top elected officials, agreed to reexamine the extensive emergency planning that we have done over the past several years in light of the response to Katrina. This is not the first time that our region has stepped forward together to work on an issue of this magnitude. Certainly the terrorist attacks of September 11th caused significant reexamination of all plans at all levels--State, local, Federal, and regional. What we have done since that date certainly holds up, I think, to the standards that the Congress and the public have put forward. But more needs to be done. We have put forward a Regional Coordination Plan. We think that is important, as some of the other witnesses have said. Jurisdictions will have to rely on each other in terms of mutual aid, as well as look to State, Federal, and other assets in the event of a catastrophic emergency. We have also put in place communication mechanisms that allow elected officials, key decisionmakers, and others to communicate on a real-time basis in the event of an emergency. And we have built in redundant capacity to that system, with sites in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. Much of this is overseen by a Regional Preparedness Council that is hosted and staffed by the Council of Governments. It has extensive representation not only of local, State, and Federal officials, but the all-important private and non-profit communities as well. We have excellent relationships at the tri-State level, with the mayor and the two Governors providing tremendous leadership on homeland security in this region, and we are the only region in the country to have a special Federal office within DHS, the Office of National Capital Region Coordination, that is a partner. How have our plans worked? Certainly in the area of Hurricane Isabel, we fared fairly well. But as has been pointed out in this room previously, the tractor man incident showed the limitations of communication. Where are we going now for the Council of Governments and for our partners? We found a number of areas where we think there are areas of improvement that are warranted. Certainly, we need to reevaluate the plans to incorporate the lessons of Katrina. Those lessons will unfold in the weeks and months ahead, and we don't want to rush to judgment because more will be found out later as additional information comes forward. We need to better understand how mutual aid and State and Federal assets are applied to our unique region. We need to first--as some of the other witnesses have talked about--rely on each other first, apply State and Federal aid when it is necessary, and make sure that, as a region, that no one is left behind. We also need to look at coordinated public information system. I think one of the areas that has been most eroded throughout the country is the ability to communicate quickly and clearly with citizens. It is not going to be enough just to make sure that the decisionmakers are coordinated. We have to make sure that the citizen expectations are out there as well, and that we have provided coordinated information to them. We also need to examine the needs of special populations. Certainly those individuals that lack public transit are important, but there are a lot of other folks--the elderly and people that may be in universities or visitors to our region. That is going to be very important. The Council of Governments will accomplish, not by its own, but by working in partnership with State and local governments, the nonprofit and business community sectors, all around one table, sleeves rolled up, working together to make sure that we have the best prepared region in the Nation. The American people expect nothing less. Our citizens and visitors expect nothing less. And our elected officials have tasked this organization, the Council of Governments, with advancing this work program. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Robertson follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.098 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.099 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.100 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.101 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.102 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.103 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.104 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.105 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.106 Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Robertson. Mr. Carper. STATEMENT OF TONY CARPER, JR. Mr. Carper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon to you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Waxman and other honorable committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today on this important subject. I would also like to thank Congressman Shaw for his kind introduction to the committee. I am the director of emergency management for Broward County, FL. This is a jurisdiction in south Florida composed of the great Fort Lauderdale area. We are a very diverse community of 1.7 million residents and millions more visitors annually. I have been Director in Broward County since 1993, and before that had 13 years of serving Brevard County, FL. This is over 25 years in dealing with emergencies in my State. Since 1995, Broward County has declared 14 states of emergency due to hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and wildfires. During emergency situations, our county charter and State statute provide that our mayor and county manager have command and control authority of the situation. With the resources we have available, local efforts are geared toward holding the line until outside resources arrive. The bottom line is that catastrophic emergencies, whether they be instigated by terrorism or natural events, quickly overwhelm the resources of local and State governments. There is and always will be a requirement for an effective national response system to handle these types of events. However, adequate emergency planning by any local community is vital for the successful utilization of this assistance. Emergency planning in Broward County is contained in the Broward County Emergency Operations Plan. The plan is based on the principle that local governments bear the initial responsibility for response to any emergency. As a corollary to this principle, each level of government accomplishes the functions for which it is responsible, requesting assistance from the next higher level of government only after resources at that level are clearly inadequate to cope with the effects of the situation. Florida Statute Chapter 252, the State Emergency Management Act, requires that political subdivisions develop emergency plans which are consistent and coordinated with the emergency planning of State government. This Comprehensive Emergency Operations Plan fulfills that requirement and establishes a framework through which governments and agencies of Broward County will prepare for and respond to and recovery from and mitigate the impacts of a major or catastrophic emergency. The plan is strategically oriented and addresses the operational concepts and responsibilities of coordinated county emergency response, relief, and recovery. The plan describes the basic strategies, assumptions, and mechanisms through which the county governments and agencies will mobilize resources and conduct activities to guide and support their efforts. This plan is based on certain assumptions and the existence of specific resources and capabilities. Actual measures taken by Broward County to respond to each situation are tailored to each emergency. As such, a great deal of flexibility is built into the implementation of the plan. The bottom line is that our plan establishes the organizational concepts for an effective system of comprehensive emergency management which can respond to any type of emergency. Our plan makes the following basic assumptions: First, that the concept of operations outlined in this plan assumes that a major catastrophic event has occurred and immediate mobilization of emergency response forces are needed. The Broward County Emergency Operations Center will be activated and the State Emergency Operations Center will be activated to support our operations. The Governor of the State of Florida will request activation of the National Response Plan and Federal resources, coordinated through FEMA and the State, will be deployed to effective areas to provide assistance to local governments. The magnitude of the emergency may be such that effective emergency response and recovery may be beyond the capability of the county and its municipalities. If this is the case, it is assumed that State assistance will be requested. If the situation is beyond the capability of the county and State resources to manage, the Governor will request Federal disaster assistance. It is assumed that in addition to State and perhaps Federal assistance, prompt and effective emergency response will require mutual aid from other political jurisdictions throughout the State. One very important assumption--and I can't stress this enough--is that during a major and catastrophic emergency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will immediately task Department of Defense assets for immediate response for the emergency effort. During major and catastrophic events, our plan is intended to serve as the basis to provide support and assistance to our communities. It also provides the mechanism to receive and organize State and Federal relief efforts. The bottom line is that it is imperative that these activities commence immediately and expeditiously. Finally, we know disasters will strike. No matter how prepared we are, we know people will be hurt. And that means that an ongoing commitment to continually improve response and recovery is very important, and we are committed to doing this. Thank you very much for the opportunity. [The prepared statement of Mr. Carper follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.107 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.108 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.109 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.110 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.111 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.112 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.113 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.114 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.115 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.116 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.117 Mr. Shays. Thank you very much, Mr. Carper. Chief Castillo. STATEMENT OF CHIEF CARLOS CASTILLO Mr. Castillo. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members. My name is Carlos Castillo. I am the director of the Miami-Dade County Office of Emergency Management. Thank you for this opportunity to share Miami-Dade County's experience. I am especially proud to present before our own Member of Congress, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. I am joined today by Miami-Dade Police Chief Robert Parker; assistant county manager for public safety, Susanne Torriente; chief of staff to Mayor Carlos Alvarez, Denis Morales; and Eric Olafson from the Board of County Commissioners' Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Miami-Dade County spans over 2,000 square miles, hosts a major airport, Florida's largest seaport, a nuclear power plant, and has a resident population of 2.5 million people. The county has identified 18 potential hazard areas that could impact our community at any time. Therefore, our Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan encompasses an all hazards approach to prepare and protect our community. My comments today will focus on the impact of hurricanes. We have been recognized as a leader in emergency management from the unified message delivered by our elected officials in times of crisis to our facilities and staff experience. Following Hurricane Katrina's impact, FEMA and State assessment teams remarked how quickly roads were opened, debris was cleared, power was restored, and a preliminary damage assessment process was begun in Miami-Dade. We have had some practice. Last year Miami-Dade County activated its Emergency Operations Center four times for hurricanes in 6 weeks. We have activated for Dennis and Katrina so far this season. Our foreign and domestic disaster response experiences helped prepared us for Hurricane Andrew in 1992, one of only three Category 5 hurricanes to ever hit the United States. But there was much to learn, and Fire Chief David Paulison made sure that we did. As a county, we were on our own for what seemed like an eternity. We accepted this reality. We must be prepared to be on our own for the first 24 to 72 hours following a major hurricane. The fact remains that all disasters are local, and long after resources have left, the disaster remains local. This doesn't mean that we don't need assistance for any event that may overwhelm our local resources; clearly, we will. It is clear that the only way to ensure the prompt, coordinated response our community deserves is to develop preparedness partnerships with governmental agencies, private volunteer organizations, non-profits, and most importantly, our 2.5 million residents. Hurricane preparedness is everyone's responsibility. Clearly, there are different capabilities throughout the country. These differences should be considered when the Federal Government responds to assist. So what have we learned? One of the successes during Hurricane Andrew was the implementation of the Incident Command System. This enabled us to effectively manage the resources we had and were receiving. We continue to train and expand our use of the National Incident Management System, a proven management tool that has been practiced for many years. It became apparent during Hurricane Andrew that accurate and timely information flow was not occurring in the manner needed. As a result, Miami-Dade developed the Divisional Emergency Operations Center concept that divides 30 municipalities into a manageable span of control, one of the basic tenets of incident management. One of the hardest lessons learned was our assumption that by not hearing from parts of the county, they had sustained little or no damage. The reality was that the southern end of Miami-Dade was essentially gone. Out of that came Snapshot, a preliminary damage assessment tool which provides an immediate picture of which areas are most severely affected, allowing us to mobilize resources and focus on more definitive assessments and needs analyses. Following Andrew, Miami-Dade County took full advantage of the Federal Government's mitigation program. We believe this funding source is critical in preventing disasters. To date, the Miami-Dade Local Mitigation Strategy has completed mitigation projects of approximately $150 million. These include windstorm and flood abatement projects located throughout the county. Following Katrina, which dumped up to 20 inches of rain on Miami-Dade, areas that flooded for days in the past were essentially dry in less than 24 hours. Our Local Mitigation Strategy is used by FEMA and the State of Florida is a model program. Mitigation works. Without a doubt, much will be learned by communities affected by these recent storms, just as we have from Andrew and others since. The challenge is how to enable areas that have yet to be affected by a major hurricane to learn and improve their capabilities. Based on our experience, we respectfully offer the following recommendations: One, an all hazards approach must be utilized in order to prepare as a Nation. Two, a community hit by a major disaster that overwhelms its capabilities will need assistance as soon as possible to begin the damage assessment process which will lay the foundation for appropriate response and recovery efforts. Three, the National Incident Management System is important and must be utilized to manage assets both locally and federally, as well as assist in coordinating the humanitarian effort. And, four, FEMA must be an active partner with local governments in each aspect of emergency management-- preparation, response, mitigation, recovery, as well as in training and exercises--while respecting the role and input of local government in a disaster response. Once again, thank you for this opportunity, and I invite you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, to visit us at the Miami-Dade County Emergency Operations Center. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Castillo follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.118 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.119 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.120 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.121 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.122 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.123 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.124 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.125 Mr. Shays. I thank the gentleman. We have the honorable Marc Morial, who is the former mayor of New Orleans. Mayor, we are going to swear you in quickly, we are going to get your statement, and then we will allow you to give your statement. [Witness sworn.] Mr. Shays. Thank you so much, Mayor. Mayor, hopefully the chairman will be back to ask the questions once you have given your statement. Why don't you give your statement? STATEMENT OF MARC MORIAL Mayor Morial. Thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity to share with you and also the chance to be with all of these distinguished panelists. I want to offer a few thoughts, not having had the opportunity to hear the previous testimony, but certainly want to compliment the committee for its responsibility and its interest in both disaster preparedness and disaster response, which are two components of a very important subject. I do want to say that Katrina is an event of tragic, epic, and, in my own view, biblical proportions. We now have 1 million Americans who are displaced. Those Americans are not all poor, they are not all rich, they are not all middle income, they are not all Black, not all White; they are Americans of every hue and class who have been displaced. The pictures that we all saw in the press and on television were of the most disadvantaged Americans, the most disadvantaged New Orleaneans who didn't evacuate because many couldn't evacuate. And we saw their suffering and we were affected by their suffering. And I personally felt the emotions of sadness and anger, befuddlement and betrayal, courage and hope, because I had a chance to go to Houston and spend time with those who have been sheltered there and hear stories of personal courage, of rescue, of survival through many, many difficult, difficult days down in New Orleans. I want to offer several thoughts, some on disaster preparation and preparedness, and others on Katrina specifically. And we have been framing--and I shared this with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security yesterday--our thinking around the idea of the Katrina victims and survivors, that they need a bill of rights. The first component of that would be a victims compensation fund. And I want to let you know that so much of my thinking and our thinking around this has been governed by the standard that the Nation set after September 11th. One of the great moments in American history was the response of this Nation after a great and horrific tragedy. In that case, the Congress created a Victims Compensation Fund at the same time it provided financial relief to the airlines in the same legislative instrument. And that compensation fund was designed to compensate the victims. All tolled, after September 11th, it paid out $7 billion to a variety of classes of victims. I think in this regard we should strongly, strongly enact a victims compensation fund. Second, I do know that there has been considerable debate and difference of opinion on how to examine the many things that went wrong. It is clear that a lot went wrong. The mistakes and the fumbles have cost people lives. They have cost the massive destruction of infrastructure and property. State, city, and Federal officials, in my own view, all made mistakes. What they were, the specifics of what occurred in the first 3 to 4 days after Katrina can only be reconstructed, evaluated, and examined in a fashion that will give us lessons. I believe as if, while the Congress does conduct its oversight responsibilities, that there be an independent commission like the 9/11 Commission, and here is why. Disaster preparedness and response is a weighty science. Simply because you are a good manager, administrator, or leader doesn't mean you know disaster response or disaster preparedness. Because of the magnitude of this, because hurricane season comes every year, because manmade and natural disasters are something we have to live with everyday, I think that the responsibility that the leaders of this Nation have to the people of this Nation can only be fulfilled if it is crystal clear the lessons that need to be learned; not just assign responsibility and blame, but to fix, to reform, to strengthen, to improve the system of disaster preparedness and disaster response, which is a sophisticated science with people who are experts in the field. So I believe that process would be augmented, would be helped if there were in fact an independent commission that looked at it. With respect to FEMA, one thing I think is quite clear with respect to FEMA--and then I will talk more specifically about Katrina--is that I think that Congress should consider writing the statutory qualifications for the Director of FEMA and the senior leadership of FEMA into the statute. We would never consider a non-lawyer to be attorney general, a non-doctor to be surgeon general. We should never even consider a non-expert in disaster preparedness and response for being the Director of FEMA. And Congress can ensure that by creating some statutory qualifications. Final point on sort of rebuilding and going forward is the serious need for there to be--there has been talk of a czar, some centralized authority. But there is a need for some centralized authority to coordinate and oversee, I think, the rebuilding, because this is going to be a massive undertaking by this Nation. So I would like to ask, Mr. Chairman and members, that I be given an opportunity to supplement the record with written remarks which I have not completed preparing. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Morial follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.126 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.127 Chairman Tom Davis [presiding]. Mayor, thanks a lot for being here. I know you are on a very tight schedule, and Members are just trickling in from votes. But we very much appreciate your being here. Mayor Morial. Thank you. Chairman Tom Davis. As you look at this from afar, and from your perspective as head of the Urban League, what is your impression? Just off the top? We will have weeks of excruciating hearings and detail on this. Mayor Morial. I think the most important thing is to keep the focus on the people who are displaced. The people who are displaced are traumatized. And when I say that, they run from a person who may have lost a considerable business with 3,000 employees to a person at the other end of the spectrum who may have been a renter, may have been unemployed or may have been in an entry-level position, to high school seniors who now face the prospect of not seeing their classmates and not graduating with their high school class at the school that they have attended for the last 3 years. There has to be a continuing focus on how we can help people rebuild their lives, understanding that a return to normalcy is not going to be immediate; it may not even be intermediate. It may take a long time for many, many people; not only in Louisiana, but in Waveland and Gulfport, in Biloxi and Bay St. Louis, those cities in Mississippi that were completely obliterated, not to mention the New Orleans region and southeastern Louisiana. Chairman Tom Davis. Obviously, the city had plans going back to your day, FEMA had plans, they had drilled on these. And the implementation at the end, do you think part of it was that the storm was more severe than probably people anticipated? People did not get out of the way that might have been able to leave. Any impressions? Mayor Morial. Well, this would be the observation. I mean the kind of framework, the inquiry, there has to be a look at the plans, but then there has to be a careful look at the execution and the implementation. What happened? Was there a central command structure? Was there a central communications system? And then also, and I think everyone who has been involved in disaster preparedness and response knows, in every case you must be able to make battlefield adjustments. Sometimes those adjustments are difficult to make, sometimes they are easy to make. And in my mind, it is the reconstruction of the events. Because to ask what in fact happened, what was the responsibility, and to whose responsibility fell the management of the shelters of last resort, what was triggered in the minds of Federal, State, and local officials when the levees broke, knowing that all the computer simulations indicated that if levees broke you had a second type of catastrophe, I think there has to be a careful, dispassionate reconstruction not only to look at the plans, but to look at the execution of the plans and to query whether battlefield adjustments may have been made at the Federal, State, and local levels. There seems to have been a breakdown in communications, the city had a mobile command center and I question whether it was utilized. There are a whole series of things. And I think reconstruction of the events is a very important part of this process to determine whether the plans were sufficient, but also, if the plans were sufficient, whether there was execution. Let me give you a case in point. After Georges in 1998, when I was Mayor, first time the city had to be evacuated, we realized that the city's emergency preparedness plan had a deficiency in that there were no provisions for ``special needs'' persons--persons in hospitals, in nursing homes. So there was an effort to modify and improve the plan that began in my administration, which ended better than 3 years ago, to do something for special needs. Second, working with the State, there were two problems with the evacuation. One was the capacity of the highways. That was corrected by creating a contraflow, where both sides of the highways went north. And second, there was an underpass in New Orleans that very easily flooded which would block access, and a new pumping station was built, which began sometime in 1998- 1999, to try to alleviate that problem. There were post-Georges modifications to the emergency preparedness, the sort of readiness state that took place at the city and State level. I do not know what continued after 2002. I understand there were simulations, there was a Hurricane Pam exercise. I think the committee and the public have to reconstruct all of that to see if the plans were adequate, one, but then second, whether the execution of the plan, in fact, met the standards of the plan. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Panelists, we are going to get to your questions. I think the Mayor has just got a few minutes here. We are going to try to grill him for a couple of minutes, and let him get on his way. Then we will get back to some of the issues that you have raised. Mr. Waxman. Mr. Waxman. Mr. Mayor. Mayor Morial. Congressman, good afternoon. Mr. Waxman. Thank you. Good to see you. Thank you for being here. Mayor Morial. Thank you. Mr. Waxman. I am going to ask the other members of the panel to respond to this question, but I want to ask your view of it. It seems to me that Hurricane Katrina was the first big test of our disaster preparedness and response capability since September 11th. Clearly, the Federal Government failed this test. There were also failures at other levels of government. This is not just my opinion, it is the opinion of that Commission that was set up to look at September 11th. The Chair of that Commission, Tom Keane said, ``This is not a terrorist incident, but it brings into play all of the same issues and shortcomings. What makes you so mad is it is the same things we saw on September 11th. Whoever is responsible for acting in these places has not acted. Are they going to do it now? What else has to happen for people to act?'' Now, Mr. Keane's essential point is that when it comes to preparedness and response, it does not matter whether we are dealing with a terrorist attack or a natural disaster, we are just not ready. Do you agree with that? Mayor Morial. Based on what I saw in Katrina, it is clear we were not ready for a natural disaster of the type of Katrina. So much went wrong. So many people suffered. It has been a very, very difficult time for the country. But it has been especially difficult for people who call New Orleans home, to see our friends and family members and neighbors in awful conditions or displaced in communities that they are unfamiliar with, some maybe displaced in a person's home. It is hard for me to respond to the question with respect to our readiness for terrorism. All I can say is I sure hope that we are ready, and the public needs to be able to trust that the leadership of this Nation is ready. Mr. Waxman. Well, when it came to Katrina we had some notice. We had at least several days notice that the storm was coming. A year before, FEMA had a report that indicated that if a hurricane of this magnitude hit New Orleans it could do exactly what it did do--drive a million people out of their homes and bring about such enormous disaster. We would not have notice with a terrorist attack. Mayor Morial. That is correct. Mr. Waxman. A lot of people, and I certainly include myself, are very critical of the Federal Government response. Many people are also critical of the local response. You were the mayor. Are you critical of that local response? Do you think the city---- Mayor Morial. I am critical of the local, State, and Federal response. You know, these responses to be effective have to be seamless and coordinated. We do not know what went on behind the scenes. There are press reports that are trickling out about what went on and what did not go on behind the scenes. And I have heard some things anecdotally through hearsay about what did not go on behind the scenes in those immediate days. And yes, I think---- Mr. Waxman. Well, if you had been mayor and you had to deal with that kind of terrible tragedy, would you believe that your local people were equipped for it without the support from FEMA? Mayor Morial. You had to have FEMA support at a point, particularly in the post-Katrina response. Because once it got to a situation of needing both supplies and rescue, rescue with helicopters, rescue with amphibious boats, neither the city nor the State have that equipment, nor have they ever had the resources to buy that equipment. The city and its local agencies might own a handful of boats, no helicopters, no trained search and rescue people to do the kind of search and rescue necessary. So FEMA and the Federal Government's involvement post-Katrina, when the situation exacerbated, was essential. The other thing is the Federal Government's assistance in providing supplies, food and water, after an immediate period of 24 to 48 hours, perhaps. Because I would think that the Astrodome would have sufficient food onsite to be able to accommodate people, I know in 1998 it did, for 24 to 48 hours. After that, there was a need for military supplies in order to be able to take care of people. Mr. Waxman. Let me ask you one question, because my time is up, but just one question that will take a really brief answer. Before we learn the lessons of Katrina to apply to L.A. and Miami, New York, and other places around the country, do you not think we need to do a more thorough investigation of what went right, what went wrong at all levels when it came to Katrina? Mayor Morial. I have testified before this committee, the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and I think I have been on record asking the Congress to create a bi/multipartisan independent commission like 9/11 that can operate in conjunction with appropriate congressional hearings. I think it requires the involvement of a fairly significant body of experts who understand and know disaster preparedness and response to avail the expertise of citizens outside of the Congress to work with the Congress on a process like this. I mean, there have been many commissions. The 9/11 Commission was all private citizens. I believe the Warren Commission included public officials, Members of Congress, I know T. Hale Boggs was on the Warren commission and he represented New Orleans in Congress for a long time. There are many ways to create it, but we need a dispassionate, careful look with recommendations, with a commitment I think from Congress and the executive branch that whatever those recommendations may be, we are going to implement them very, very quickly, as long as they are sensible. Chairman Tom Davis. Mayor, how much time do you have? Mayor Morial. I have to go do a conference call. I do not know how long you all will be. I will be happy to come back. Chairman Tom Davis. OK. If you need to go, we will dismiss you. We will be here for a while, if you have an opportunity. Mayor Morial. Thank you for the opportunity. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you for your comments. We are going to go back to the questions for the full panel at this point. Has everybody had an opportunity to testify? OK. We appreciate that. I was not here for all of it because I was voting, but I did read everything last night in preparation for the hearing. Let me just ask kind of a hypothetical question. If a terrorist sets off a bomb at one of your major sports arenas during a full house event in your jurisdiction, it is early rush hour, you have an international diplomatic conference you are hosting near the arena, you have demonstrators picketing that event, you have unknown chemicals, what is the plan? Just briefly, what is the plan in L.A.? Mr. Stanley. That sounds like an everyday event in Los Angeles. [Laughter.] With the exception of the bomb, we have those major incidents going on all the time. And when we have major incidents and those things that we know about, we are able to pre-plan, we are able to stage up, we are able to have our emergency operations center very active, we are able to put our contingency plans in place beforehand, and able to monitor the incident. The incident that you describe would give us that lead time and we would have the resources of not only having the city of Los Angeles, the greater resources of the L.A. County, the Sheriff's department, police, the State resources that come to bear with the military and all the other State assets, as well as the incident you describe would bring in Federal support from the FBI, from FEMA, from Secret Service and those things. So we would do that. Part of that pre-planning is to make those people aware that surround that area that this event is going on to properly equip them with information, let them know what is going on and what the actions should be if we have some major event there. Again, that is one of the lessons I think Katrina is going to bring to us very vividly, and that is how to speak with the power to influence human behavior when we have these major events so that we reduce the panic, we reduce the angst of ``I do not know what is happening. I do not know what my government is doing. I do not know what even they are supposed to be doing.'' So those are the things in the event that you describe. We would have good pre-planning, good resources, hospitals on alert, knowing where all the resources would come from, knowing where the victims would go and able to track those victims, and being able to get good, quick public information out so that we can reduce the panic in the surrounding area. Chairman Tom Davis. In the case of L.A. too, the earthquake is kind of the worst case scenario, is it not? Mr. Stanley. Earthquake right now is still our best seller. We do not know when they are going to come, but we know that we can have a very large incident. And we do planning. Our technology has increased so we can use the technology to know where the worst case incidents will occur even before the calls come in, and in most cases the phones are down, so we can start sending resources and assets to those areas. Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Bobb, Mr. Robertson, what about the District? Mr. Bobb. Obviously, there would be a lot of panic. Our first responders would go into service immediately. Our emergency operations centers will go into operations immediately. We had a similar event happen during the IMF World Bank protest where we had to evacuate RFK Stadium, and we were ready for that incident when it occurred. But we believe that we would be ready, we would have our emergency centers in operation, our first responders would be on the scene, we would have good communication, we would activate our entire Emergency Management Plan, we would communicate with our public, and we would bring in all of the Federal agencies that would be at the ready. So we would be in contact with our partners throughout the National Capital Region. Chairman Tom Davis. I think the thing that concerns us the most looking at the New Orleans situation, who is in charge? I mean, at that point, no one was sure who was in charge of what at that point. In the case of the city in a situation like that, does it become Federalized quickly? Do your local partners chip in? I just think of the incident here in D.C. in March 2003, regarding the tobacco farmer, Dwight Watson, AKA ``Tractor Man,'' when we left the Park Service in charge and it was in my opinion a disaster, where one guy driving a tractor on the Mall brought the city to its knees for a day and a half. You never want to have a recurrence of that. The command and control is very critical. How is that set up at this point? Mr. Bobb. The way it is set up in the District, clearly the Mayor of the District of Columbia is in charge. There is just no question as to---- Chairman Tom Davis. But on a Federal enclave, he was not. I know in the case of ``Tractor Man'' he was out of the loop, unfortunately. Mr. Bobb. When it becomes a Federal issue, and we work with Federal agencies all the time, then if it is a terrorism threat, something of that nature, then the FBI. So we have a list of protocols. But we are the first line of defense and so the Mayor initially is in charge and then will make the switch- over. Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Robertson, are we coordinated with all the local jurisdictions in terms of the first responders, bridge access, and everything else? Mr. Robertson. Certainly. In that scenario that you pointed out, the District of Columbia, as Mr. Bobb said, would be the Incident Commander but there would quickly be alerts that would go out for transportation impacts, any health impacts, emergency response impacts, a fair amount of extensive coordination, conference calling, to make sure decisionmakers were making the best local decisions but in a regional context. Chairman Tom Davis. And you have military bases nearby as well for additional troops, something New Orleans did not have, that is readily available. Mr. Robertson. Right. Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Carper. Mr. Carper. Yes, sir. The scenario the Chair outlines is one that I think our plan is geared to address. One of the points I tried to make in my testimony is the plan needs to be strategic and that it must identify the organizational concepts, the command and lines of authority, and those types of things to address any situation, no matter if it is the bombing scenario or a hurricane or anything else. Certainly, another point I think that needs to be made is that the scenario that the chairman outlines would be something that would quickly be a national incident and would probably need national resources and State resources as well to support the actions of local government. But the local government would be there and should have planning in place to handle the consequence management of the event, handle the victims, and handle the support of fire fighters, and law enforcement that are going to the scene, and be able to manage and organize that. Those systems have to be in place in order to be successful in any emergency. Chairman Tom Davis. And you have had a fair amount of experience down there in the Broward-Dade area. Mr. Carper. Yes, sir. Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Castillo. Mr. Castillo. Yes, sir. I would like to add to what my colleague said and also add that for us we enjoy an excellent relationship in south Florida with our counterparts, with Tony, with the different departments, police and fire rescue and other departments that would be involved in something like this. What you described is a planned event, except for the bomb, of course, but it is a planned event. So that creates a heightened sense of awareness for us, but also we try to clearly delineate roles and responsibilities in a unified command scenario where at the lowest appropriate level command and control would be elevated as needed, thinking ahead of time. And as was said, in something like this, it would definitely require outside assistance. Chairman Tom Davis. Let me ask each of you, how good is your communication with the Federal Government on terrorist intelligence? Ms. Perett. I think we have an excellent communication. In Los Angeles County, we have the Terrorism Early Warning Group. It was established quite a bit before the events of September 11th. It is multidisciplinary, and although it is chaired by the sheriff, it has representation from the FBI, LAPD, and many others. They have been working long and hard and have wonderful connections in terms of their ability to rapidly get information and basically vet it, assess it, and let the rest of us know what they believe is important for us to know in terms of our reaction. Chairman Tom Davis. OK. Mr. Bobb. Mr. Bobb. I would say in the National Capital Region and in the District of Columbia, in particular, our relationship on intelligence information, is very good, our working relationship with the Federal authorities in that regard. Chairman Tom Davis. OK. Mr. Carper. We have excellent ties to the Federal intelligence system. In fact, the person in charge of that within our county is a former special agent in charge for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and he certainly has a network, the lines of communication to keep us up to date in those issues. Chairman Tom Davis. Go ahead. Mr. Castillo. For us, we are part of the Joint Terrorism Task Force with representation local and Federal as well, and the Miami-Dade Police Department has a lead role in that for us as well. Chairman Tom Davis. OK. Thank you. Ms. Norton. Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to ask a question first off about real-time exercises. Every jurisdiction in the country, beginning with the Federal Government, has paper plans up the kazoo, as they say, and there are groups and task forces of Federal and local and State officials and everybody looks like they have done their homework. I am not talking about you, I am talking about everywhere in the country. Every time there has been anything even approaching an incident, I have seen no indication that all of this paperwork amounts to something happening on the ground. I will give you an example. In this region, you remember out in Virginia when there was a scare involving anthrax and there was total confusion. We remember when the first plan flew over and there was very little coordination between the District and Homeland Security. To its credit, the District tried something that I have never heard of in any large city, and I want to know from each of you if you have tried anything like this. The District, on I believe it was July 4th, tried literally an evacuation plan involving cars, I think, as it was supposed to, and the use of lights in the street. It did not work as well as the District would have liked. And there are lots of ways it could be improved. But I gave the city credit for doing a real-time exercise involving an entire city when it was crowded on July 4th when everybody comes here. I would like to know if any of you have done any real-time exercises to see if any of these paper plans amount to anything more than a bunch of paper plans. Ms. Perett. If I may. It was not an entire city, but a number of years ago we did do a large earthquake exercise that included an evacuation component. The city of Torrence cooperated and had probably about eight blocks of the city evacuated as part of that exercise. I also wanted to mention, with the question that the chairman asked a moment ago, just last November we coordinated a major dirty bomb exercise at the Forum and brought together over 500 first responders plus about 700 volunteers who played the disaster victims in the Forum, and it involved multiple agency response. So we do do very large scale evacuation throughout the county on an annual basis. Mr. Stanley. I would like to add, too, from the city of Los Angeles' perspective, we are doing exercises all the time. You are exactly right, the plan is a requirement, but unless you exercise that plan it really means nothing until you have put it in effect to see if there are any holes. And the key to that is to have time to go back and address those holes and gaps. And there is nothing wrong with the plan falling on its face, that is where you want it to fall on its face is during an exercise so that you can fix it. We just had an exercise this weekend with the sign language folks so that they could be integrated well into the process and know their roles and responsibilities. We have one coming up very shortly on anthrax and how we move people, and this will be getting the people involved to move them through a process of giving them prophylactics. We have not tried to evacuate a 500 square mile, 4 million population as a full- scale exercise, but we are doing now neighborhood plans. We are working with our neighborhoods to get them involved and we are doing different full-scale exercises in the neighborhoods. Mr. Bobb. Yes. We conduct a number of exercises in the National Capital Region, table top exercises, which are coordinated through our Homeland Security advisor's office. Just 3 weeks ago, we exercised against the National Response Plan and that exercise was conducted with the Department of Defense, the FBI, local authorities, and the exercise centered around a terrorist incident involving the potential for radiological as well as a dirty bomb. So we have the plans in place and we do exercise against those plans. We have not yet exercised against, other than the one exercise of July 4th of last year, this year with respect to mass evacuation of the city. In our most recent discussions, we are now, as a result of Katrina, we are now looking at other ways in which we can broaden the exercises that we are doing against our own internal plan as well as the National Capital plans. Ms. Norton. Does anyone else have anything to say on real- time exercises? Yes, sir, Chief Castillo? Mr. Castillo. Yes, ma'am, if I can. We have conducted several full-scale exercises, not just within our jurisdiction but on a regional basis that have task forces that have been established throughout Florida through our regions, including the county's administrative building. But I want to point out, we have planned for evacuation, and for an emergency manager that is clearly the toughest decision to recommend because for hurricanes, if you make the decision too early, then the storm may turn off and the next time that you ask for an evacuation many people will not leave, but if you wait too long, it is impossible to get everyone out safely. And that is something that is only realistically tested in an actual situation. Unfortunately, we had that opportunity last year with two of the activations that we had of the Emergency Operations Center. Mr. Shays [presiding]. The gentlelady has another 30 seconds we will extend her. She has been here so long and this is her area. We will then go to Mr. Gutknecht. Thirty seconds. Ms. Norton. The emphasis, Mr. Chairman, on evacuation is understandable. It also worries me a lot that we may be fighting the last war. When I said D.C. tried to evacuate, people were in the city. It was not trying to evacuate people who lived here. It was the people who come for July 4th. It seems to me that the situation we had in Katrina is so atypical that is not even the best word for it, and that in most instances, particularly even a terrorist attack, you are not trying to get everybody out of Dodge, as they say, and that the opposite may be the problem, that you want people to stay in place and they think, particularly looking at Katrina, everybody should up and run. I am very worried about all this talk about evacuation. For example, the District is now trying to see what would happen if there were an evacuation and so forth. But to where? I mean, can you imagine with everybody who gets on the road now, because so many people come in, two or three times our population, trying to get out, then you add to that 600,000 people who live here to get out. I wonder what you think about evacuation in the first place, particularly since for the most part will we really be talking about something that takes a whole city down, like a flood that comes out of Noah's ark, or are we not far more likely, particularly if it is a terrorist incident, to be talking about a targeted incident on only one part of the city where evacuation is necessary? Mr. Shays. Thank you. I think that is a question that some of you may answer later to other questions as well. At this time we will recognize Mr. Gutknecht. He has the floor. Mr. Gutknecht. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the witnesses for being here today. These are issues I think we are going to have to sift through over a long period of time. I would just maybe start out, and I mean this in a sense of fairness, I think these exercises, just pursuing what the gentlelady from Washington, DC, just raised, that is, I think it is good to have the plans, I think it is good to have the exercises. But have you ever put your exercises to the test either in actuality or even computer modeled it in a situation where all of the telecommunications was down, where there was no electricity, where none of the public services were working, when many of the rescue people themselves could not--I mean, you put all of that in play and I wonder how any city would respond to something like this. In the exercises you have done, have you done this without the use of telecommunications? Ms. Perett. Sir, we did it quite some time ago, not to the scale that we do exercises now. It has been a very long time since we have basically tried to do what I would call a manual operation. But I would like to go back to the Incident Command System and the Standardized Emergency Management System. Those are such well-defined response structures with such common terminology and protocol that it will serve somebody well out in the field and they will be able to operate as a component under the Incident Command System and do their job. And that can be going on in many places when you have a well-defined and orchestrated system in place. So although I think you presented huge challenges for us with your very question, I do believe it is possible to function, each cell, so to speak, being independent until such time as they can be brought together. Mr. Stanley. Sir, if you noticed the TV this week, we did that exercise earlier this week when we lost all power in the city of Los Angeles. We only lost it briefly, we only lost it for an hour, and we actually had our Emergency Operations Center activated as we were dealing with a resettlement plan for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. But it did allow us to assess whether our backup generation power worked, where we might need additional backup generation, how the communication elements played, how the 4,000-plus traffic lights in the city interacted, those that were automatic, those that had to be dealt with manually, etc., at a time when we were in a position to do a very good assessment and then go back now and see what we need to do to fill those gaps. Mr. Bobb. We had a large-scale exercise in the National Capital Region several months ago that took down the entire transportation system. So we did exercise a worst case scenario with respect to our transportation system. We have not conducted an exercise wherein all of our power, etc. would be out. But what we have done on the communications side is we have purchased throughout the region large caches of radios, interoperable radios for our first responders so that we would be able to communicate in the event the telephone, other communications systems are down. Mr. Robertson. One additional point is that the RICS communication system that we use to support our decisionmakers in this region has a built-in redundancy in that we not only have facilities in the District, but in Fairfax County, VA, Montgomery County, MD, the Maryland State Emergency Agency in Reisterstown, MD, and then the Virginia Emergency Management Agency in Virginia. So that if there were an emergency or incident that took one or any down, there is going to be that backup capacity to make sure that you do not lack the key decisionmaking communication at a time when it is most needed. Mr. Carper. That type of scenario that you outline is something that we faced repeatedly last year in Florida during all the hurricanes. During Hurricane Frances, for instances, we had an evacuation for over 300,000 people just in Broward County alone and there were over 500,000 people without power, our telecommunications systems were severely impacted and we had to provide work-around. So there is experience at that level. Mr. Castillo. For us in Miami-Dade, part of what we learned from Andrew is the need, because the south end of the county was separated in part through communications, just the lack of communications, we decentralized our decisionmaking process and allowed for some autonomy if there is no communications, primarily in the fire and emergency services, to be able to work independently if needed, but as soon as possible be part of the main system. Mr. Gutknecht. If the Chair would indulge me just one more question, because I think it is the question that most of America wants to know. It is this. We all sat in frustration, in fact, somebody said at one of our briefings, I think a member of the cabinet said the problem was we were all looking through the same soda straw and we saw the same particular things, particularly at the Convention Center and at the Astrodome. And one of my colleagues said, well that may well be true, but everybody that had a television set in the world was looking through that same soda straw. And it reminded me of something that used to be in the Union Pacific Railroad Engineers Manual. It said that if two trains should approach each other on the same track, both shall come to a complete stop and neither shall advance until the other is passed. Literally, for 3 days we watched as it seemed like no one was getting the needed supplies of water and things into the people there. Just from your experience, and this is not about fault- finding but we have to make sure this never happens again, particularly here in the United States, what should have happened then? Was that ultimately the Federal Government's responsibility, the State's responsibility, the local government responsibility? How do we make sure that does not happen again? Mr. Shays. I think what we will do is we will leave that question open because it would take another 5 minutes to respond to it. But I will ask that question in my time if we do not get an answer before then. We will go now to Mr. Owens. We are being a little more generous with the time because we have so many people to respond to the questions. Mr. Owens. I apologize if my questions are redundant but I want to make sure it is on the record. Do you all have systems in place now where there is standardized communication between the first responders, where the firemen can talk to the policemen and the police can talk to the firemen on the same radio frequencies? Can we assume that is a fait accompli in all of your areas? Mr. Bobb. Yes. Mr. Owens. Is there anybody who does not have that? Because I am not certain New York City has it even now after losing so many firemen in September 11th. I am almost certain that they do not have it yet completed between the firemen and the police. In D.C., you have Park Police, Capitol Police, D.C. Police, Secret Service, etc. Are they all on the same radio frequency? Can they all communicate with each other? Mr. Robertson. Let me just add one point to that. I am from the Washington Council of Governments. The one point I would make is with the Federal funds that were made available to this region we purchased I believe 1,000 interoperable radios that have been cached in various parts of the region and have been regularly made available, basically dispatched to first responders so that every jurisdiction can have that level of intercommunications. Mr. Owens. So you can say authoritatively that they can communicate with each other, D.C. Police, Park Police, Capitol Police, Secret Service, etc.? Or you do not know? Mr. Robertson. When they are using the interoperable radios they certainly can. Mr. Owens. They all have purchased the interoperable radios? Mr. Robertson. They all have access, yes. Mr. Owens. Does anybody else want to comment? Mr. Bobb. We have about 1,250 800 megahertz radios and we have those cached in different parts of the region. Those radios gives us an opportunity to provide those to all of those law enforcement agencies over which they can, in fact, speak to each other. Mr. Owens. Has the Department of Homeland Security taken any steps to standardize communications, vehicles, mechanisms across the country? Are they moving in that direction? I can buy a light bulb in New York and know that if I screw it in in California it is going to work. Any electric appliance bought anywhere in this country, you can know that if you plug it in it is going to work. So is it so difficult to get standardized communication equipment? Are we on our way to some kind of national standardized version of all this equipment, so that if you may be called upon to help in some other area your radio equipment works? In New Orleans, it seems they did not have any equipment at all at one point; nobody could communicate with anybody, which is most shocking. But anyway, is there any movement in that direction that you know of to standardize it so that across the country first responders, people in emergency situations can talk to each other? Mr. Bobb. I am not aware of any standardization that would place a D.C. first responder on the same frequency as one in California wherein we can talk back and forth. Mr. Owens. You do not know of any workshops, forums, anything underway by Homeland Security to reach this goal? Mr. Carper. In the actual National Preparedness Goal for Homeland Security there are requirements for interoperability that most of the funding streams that have grants related are requiring that type of interoperability to occur. Now are they there yet? Mr. Owens. That is mandated? Mr. Carper. That is a standard and that is required. But are we there yet? I would think for most jurisdictions, no. Mr. Owens. Thank you. Ms. Perett. Sir, may I comment also. I just wanted to tell you that in Los Angeles County we have a Regional Tactical Communications System and it does include the sheriff, the Association of Fire Chiefs, the Association of Police Chiefs, LAPD, L.A. City fire, L.A. County fire, Department of Health Services, the California Highway Patrol, and Federal representation, the U.S. Secret Service. What we are doing right now---- Mr. Owens. Did you mention firemen? Ms. Perett. Did I mention firemen? Yes, sir. We have a cross-talk capability and we also have a mobil unit that can actually go out and patch together communications now. I would liken it to the Volkswagen--we would like to have a Cadillac to do this but we have a Volkswagen and it does work and they are able to communicate with each other. Mr. Owens. On first responders, do you have first responders? And I again want to salute the first responders in New Orleans because they were in a situation where if they lived in the city, and it looked like the majority did live in the city, their families were involved in the catastrophe and most of them kept working. I want to salute them. But if you had a similar catastrophe in New York, most of the first responders do not live in the city of New York. Do you think it is fair to ask that first responders live no more than 30 minutes away from their assignment? Mr. Bobb. When we look at the lessons learned thus far from New Orleans, one of the things we are doing as part of our planning going forward is to ensure that the first responders' families are in fact taken care of, such that our first responders can then take care of literally thousands of other people. Mr. Owens. Do you have a city requirement that people live within the boundaries of the city who are first responders, firemen and the police? Mr. Bobb. No, we do not. Mr. Owens. So they may live more than an hour away? Mr. Bobb. We do not have a residency requirement for our first responders in the District of Columbia. But part of our plan is that we will have X number of persons available to us in the event of an emergency. But we do not have a residency requirement. Mr. Owens. Los Angeles, do you have one? Mr. Stanley. No, we do not have a residency requirement for our first responders. Mr. Owens. Is this not a built in weakness that stands out in terms of first responders that we depend on to be first responders? If they are not there, how can they respond? Mr. Stanley. As Mr. Bobb indicated, we do have those that are on shift and working and we know what the capabilities are there and we know how to get people in. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the disaster, they actually respond better from outside. So it is not a one size fits all. Mr. Owens. They respond better from outside despite traffic jams and so forth? Mr. Stanley. Well, we have ways of getting them in. That is why, as Ms. Perett was talking about, we reach out and liaison with other jurisdictions we assist in getting those resources into the area that is needed. Mr. Owens. Thank you. Mr. Shays. The gentleman's time is expired. I thank you. I think of Los Angeles as so big that, heck, everybody would have to live in Los Angeles. Mr. Van Hollen, I am going to give you the floor, but I would first ask unanimous consent that the testimony of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA], presented by Daphna Nachminovitch, director, Domestic Animal and Wildlife Rescue and Information, be submitted for the record. And without objection, so ordered. [The information referred to follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.128 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.129 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.130 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.131 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.132 Mr. Shays. Mr. Van Hollen, you have the floor. Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all again for your testimony. I think we all know that the best laid plans can sometimes go awry when you are actually in a particular situation. The best way to test that is to, as best we can, have simulations. Obviously, we can never simulate the exact thing, but at least in terms of the first responders, we can do so through exercises for preparedness. So I hope going forward that will be something that all of our jurisdictions around the country, especially those most at risk, prepare for. Let me just ask the gentleman from the District of Columbia, Mr. Bobb, first of all with respect to the communications systems. Are your communications systems all interoperable with, for example, the National Guard if they were to come in? I mean, how far down the line does the interoperability work? Mr. Bobb. What we did in the National Capital Region is we purchased a cache of radios that are interoperable and those radios, in the event of a major disaster, will be distributed to our first responders and they will be able to communicate. And those radio caches are located in two separate areas throughout the National Capital Region. Our goal is that we can get those radios to our first responders within 2 hours. Mr. Van Hollen. Mr. Robertson, there was a meeting, as you know, of COG yesterday, you testified about that, it was reported in today's paper about how the National area would organize differently possibly based on lessons learned from Katrina. And the statements were that, you know, FEMA's response was so disastrous in the Katrina area that we could not rely in any way on FEMA going forward. Can you comment on what is coming out of COG these days, and I do not know if there was consensus within COG about how to move forward. Mr. Robertson. I think there is some consensus from COG on how to move forward. And I think some of the other panelists touched on it best, in that when there is an emergency or incident the local folks are the first responders, the incident commanders. If that capacity is overwhelmed, Federal and State resources trigger in or cascade in at the appropriate levels. What the Council of Governments is planning to do, working with the local, State, Federal, and in many cases the private sector partners, is to re-examine the plans, assess whether or not those requirements are being fully met against perhaps the scenarios that perhaps were not considered previously. A lot of the emergency exercises and incidents that we have had in our region have looked at a number of incidents, oftentimes terrorism, and we have seen some real life examples with Hurricane Isabel in our region. But as we have seen in New Orleans, there is the capacity to have something that is truly catastrophic that not only taxes the ability of one jurisdiction but surrounding jurisdictions. We do not have that mutual aid capacity in a place like New Orleans that you would have in an area such as the Washington area where, for example, in Arlington County on September 11th there was tremendous mutual aid capacity for those adjacent jurisdictions to support Arlington. So you did not have that total regional situation where there was just a breakdown of the ability to support that. What we propose to do is not necessarily to assume that the plans in place are no longer valid, but to test those, remeasure those, recalibrate those aligned with the new expectations. If there are situations, as some have said, that FEMA may not be able to provide support as quickly or as comprehensively as possible, then that is something folks need to know and account for. I think the effort, and this came out certainly in so many of the statements earlier today, is that it is the expectation to improve FEMA and to make sure that they can provide that level of support that the localities and the States are looking for. Mr. Van Hollen. Let me just say I think the lessons learned from Katrina are where FEMA's response was inadequate. We need to obviously beef up FEMA. There are some kind of events that are so catastrophic that they do overwhelm the ability of State and local officials to respond, where you need national assets, you need the National Guard. I am sure as COG moves forward, and this is obviously the National Capital Region, we have a huge Federal presence, they are going to be involved in disaster response and that coordination is critical. Let me just ask you before my time is up. There is a proposal by Secretary Chertoff, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, to rearrange the position of what is now the regional coordinator within the department for the National Capital response. Right now, he reports to the Secretary. They would have him reporting to an Under Secretary. We have heard with respect to Katrina about the layers of bureaucracy slowing things down. This would put the person within the DHS who is responsible for the National Capital Region under one more layer of bureaucracy. I do not know, first, if are you aware of the proposal, and second, do you have concerns about their proposal and its implications? Mr. Robertson. Certainly, the Council of Governments was one of those agencies that called for and was grateful for the support of our delegation to have this special office. There are now two folks that have had that position. They are very much part of our regional planning process at all levels in our National Capital Region. And we look to that office particularly to help marshal the Federal family, to make sure the many Federal agencies and resources are applied to our region and speak with as much as possible one voice. So we certainly would want that office to be as strong in support of our National Capital Region as possible. Many of our officials at the local and State level have raised some questions about that particular action. Mr. Bobb. Our views are pretty strong in that regard. That is, this office is critical to the coordination of all of the Federal resources and in time of disaster helping to coordinate the Federal assets that would be available. To have that position report to someone other than the Secretary I think diminishes the power, the authority, the position's ability to influence other Federal agencies. So from our perspective, we think it diminishes the strength of the National Capital Region as opposed to uplifting it and giving us the ability to coordinate with other entities. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mrs. Maloney. Mrs. Maloney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As the world watched the disaster of Hurricane Katrina unfold in New Orleans, one of the most heard comments by people on the street, by the emergency responders, and even former FEMA officials was where is the Federal Government? The head of FEMA, Michael Brown testified before Congress in 2003 and he said that he was taking steps ``to ensure that FEMA's disaster teams could respond anywhere in the country within 12 hours and could deliver equipment and supplies within 24 hours.'' A quote from former FEMA Director Michael Brown. But in New Orleans, tragically, it took more than 3 days. The mayor of New Orleans issued a desperate SOS for Federal assistance. The head of the Office of Emergency Preparedness publicly begged for troops, food, water, please come, please help. And a former FEMA official wondered publicly what in the world was going on. I would like to get the perspective of the local officials here today on what you saw in New Orleans. I would like to start with Mr. Carper. Were you surprised at how long it took FEMA to respond? Mr. Carper. I believe there are three things that happened. One was, there was certainly a lack of adequate planning for the scope of the emergency; two, there was a lack of resources to respond to it; and three, there was just not enough on the ground soon enough. Looking at the whole system, it was disappointing to see FEMA respond in as much as we have planned for these catastrophic events time and time again and knowing that you are going to need these overwhelming amount of resources on the ground quickly. We saw this in Hurricane Andrew where it took a while to ramp up. But once the military got on the ground, things began to stabilize. And that is just the way it works in the large-scale events. Mrs. Maloney. But when did the military get on the ground? Mr. Carper. After Andrew, it was several days. Mrs. Maloney. Several days. They were on the ground that night in New York. When I went back to New York--they blew up our emergency headquarters, they created another one, military was there, FEMA was there, everyone was there, and we moved forward. The former FEMA Director under President Reagan, General Julius Beckton, Jr., and he served from 1975 to 1989, he said Secretary Chertoff ``does not have a full appreciation for what the country is faced with, nor does anyone who waits that long.'' I want to go back to one of the biggest lessons learned from September 11th and it has been mentioned here today, we have had hearings on it, a number of us have had bipartisan legislation on it, and that is the communications system. They were warned that this was coming. Yet in September 11th one of the biggest tragedies is that the police and fire could not communicate. We know that hundreds of firefighters could have been saved if we could have communicated. Congress appropriated money to the Justice Department to find appropriate technology and to sponsor coordination. The National Institute of Justice has sponsored many meetings, funded projects. And we saw in Hurricane Katrina they resorted to the ancient Greek's method of running by foot from one place to another to give them information. I just want to ask you about this. Just from the lesson in September 11th, our phones were down, no one could communicate, and they asked a number of us get us phones from the military, from the Federal Government, and in a bipartisan way we had phones down the next day so people could communicate. Yet it was days and days and days--I do not even know if they can communicate now. Have they gotten the government walkie-talkies or are they still using the ancient Greek way of running around with messages. Do you know, Mr. Carper? Mr. Carper. From my experience, what happens is that you begin bringing in mobil towers and mobil handsets of things of that nature, especially in an area that may have not had these resources at their disposal generally in some areas in and around the New Orleans area. Those are the types of things that they are doing at this particular point. Mrs. Maloney. But at the warning of Katrina, which was a serious storm and all the warnings, should they not have gotten that equipment down there knowing that the phones were not going to operate and were not going to be coordinated with the various police, fire, and other emergency workers. Is that not a natural reaction? Mr. Carper. Ideally, yes. Mrs. Maloney. My time is up. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Mr. Shays. Mr. Shays. Thank you all very, very much for being here. I would love a quick answer to your response when you saw the tragedy. Were you saying, my God. Thank God I am not the one. Or were you thinking, boy, if they had only done this. Do you get the gist of my question? Were you just riveted, saying what lessons can I learn? Because I have heard questions here we cannot learn from you and I am learning a lot from you. Even without knowing everything, you did see breakdowns and you must have said I am going to do something different. So just tell me your reaction, and maybe tell me something you think, my gosh, we better check up on a little better. Just a lesson you learned just watching this. We will start with you, Ms. Perett. Ms. Perett. Thank you. I had a couple of those feelings. First of all, I was heavily involved in the Northridge earthquake response and having lived through that. And at the time, it was the largest natural disaster in U.S. history and it was grueling and agonizing. And it pales in comparison. Mr. Shays. I need you to answer my question. I only have 6 minutes here. Ms. Perett. I am so sorry. Yes, I felt, oh, my God, I am glad it is somewhere else and not me. And then second, I was utterly appalled at the lack of support for the victims. Mr. Shays. And did you place that on local, State, or Federal, or all three? Ms. Perett. I was not in a position to judge that. But a lesson from the whole thing? I think we need to take a much closer look at our vulnerable populations and our economically disadvantaged populations to make sure we are taking care of them. Mr. Shays. I do not want you to punt on that one. Did you feel like that would have been your responsibility at the local level to take care of these folks? Ms. Perett. Yes. Mr. Shays. OK. Mr. Stanley. Mr. Stanley. Yes, I do believe it was our responsibility at the local level. One of the things that I saw immediately is that with the first load and quick load of water and food into the shelters is to get some radios so they could actually communicate and know what is going on. The world was hearing everything. They had no information and that just adds to the stress of the incident. Mr. Shays. So you learned a lesson from this? Mr. Stanley. Absolutely. Mr. Shays. Mr. Bobb. Mr. Bobb. I guess a quick lesson for me, knowing that area really well, is what was the mayor's authority to in fact execute the emergency declarations and then to take actions pursuant to that to save people and to seize assets if necessary. Mr. Shays. Implicit in your comment is you need someone truly in charge, no doubts, no questions, you can turn to, you can get authority from him or her who is the chief executive and you can go using their name if they have the authority. Am I reading too much? Mr. Bobb. No, you are not. It is like take the emergency declaration, you know there is an emergency heading your way, it is going to happen, execute, put your emergency powers in place immediately. Mr. Shays. And know who is in charge. Mr. Bobb. Yes. Mr. Robertson. I think a quick initial lesson learned is the difficulty and the confusion of supporting the initial evacuees in places like the Superdome and other areas, the breakdown in the ability to support them with food, shelter, and basic law and order. Mr. Shays. I cannot imagine a local official though sending folks to a facility like the Superdome without water, without food, without police protection, without backup electricity. That is kind of a basic thing. You would not do that, right, at least you like to think you would not? Mr. Robertson. That is pretty basic, yes. Mr. Carper. Certainly, what you have outlined in terms of my reaction, I was absolutely horrified. And also being a student of hurricanes, I was telling myself this is going to be one of the worst case scenarios for a hurricane impact. And I think that was self-evident a day or so out before the storm hit. I just thought to myself they are going to need to mobilize everything they have as quickly as they can get it there. Mr. Shays. And what did it tell you about what you need to do? Mr. Carper. It makes me want to re-examine it as to what we can expect in the immediate aftermath and how long do our assumptions about relief, when are they valid. And that is what we will certainly take a look at. Mr. Shays. Chief. Mr. Castillo. For us, Hurricane Katrina, we got sort of the warm-up punch. It affected Miami-Dade before it crossed the State and went into the Gulf. I remember thinking the same feeling that we had, although we knew Katrina was going to be a Category 1, with the same feeling we had when we were watching Andrew barrel toward us and knowing that it was going to be a major impact. You clearly go through all the plans that you have. You second guess yourself on did you do everything possible that you had in your plans and did not have in your plans, and ask for as much assistance as you could? The fact the magnitude of what was to be expected would cause me to question myself just to make sure that we did everything. Mr. Shays. With the last minute I have, not all of you because we would not have time, but let me ask this question: Please tell me how reliant your locality has been on the National Guard during an emergency event you have experienced. Did you have sufficient manpower and equipment and other resources for your needs? Really what I am asking is this, is there any doubt that you need the National Guard? The National Guard is basically under the jurisdiction of the Governor. It is not the Reserves, it is not the Army. Is there any doubt that it is under the jurisdiction of the Governor? Mr. Castillo. I can tell you for us, the State of Florida, after having been hit so many times last year, has done a lot to increase the State's level of preparedness at the same time we were. We received a lot of assistance through the State with the National Guard for us to help especially in the south end of the county with water and ice delivery. Mr. Shays. The National Guard is the militia. Do you view the National Guard as being a State resource or as a Federal resource? Mr. Bobb. In the case of the District of Columbia, it is a Federal resource. Mr. Shays. In that case, clearly. For the others? Ms. Perett. It is a State resource. And we used it quite a bit during the Northridge earthquake and during the civil unrest. Mr. Shays. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Mr. Lynch. Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. While I certainly think that this panel has suffered enough, I cannot resist just one last question. Given the fact that the local government in this case, because of the breach of the levee, was suddenly under 18 feet of water or 22 feet of water with the surge, if they were here, let us turn it around, sort of what Mr. Shays was asking but I would like to turn it around. Since the officials on the ground and responsible in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast are not here, you all do have relevant and important experience that we can learn from. What questions would you ask the folks who were on the ground in control or certainly with positions of authority when Katrina was coming and after it had struck. If we could just go right down the line. What questions do you think were very important to ask? Because eventually we hope to have people from New Orleans and Mississippi and also Alabama here at some point to ask them what did go wrong. Ms. Perett. Let me make sure I understand your question. What we would ask of those officials, or what should have those officials been asking? Mr. Lynch. If you were trying to get to the root of what actually went wrong, lessons learned, the title of this hearing, what would you ask the folks who were in charge on the ground, whether State, Federal, or local? Ms. Perett. I think I would ask them if they had in place in advance a well-understood protocol for how the local city level was going to get resources from its next level of government, and how that next level of government was going to get resources. And then, in turn, did they know how to bring them back down and integrate them. Mr. Lynch. OK. Even if they are under 18 feet of water? Ms. Perett. That makes it hard. But I still think that is what I would want to know. Mr. Stanley. I would ask if they were here if they planned for the worst case scenario of what was the problems in the implementation of that plan. Mr. Lynch. Thank you. Mr. Bobb. I would ask the same question, why you did not implement your worst case scenario. You had a hurricane coming, it has crossed Florida at Category 1, it enters the Gulf of Mexico, the warm water of the Gulf is like fuel for a hurricane, it has been predicted you are going to get a Category 4, potentially a Category 5, plan for the worst, put the worst scenario plan in place, and then hope for the best. Mr. Lynch. Especially with the levee situation. I used to live in New Orleans, actually in Metairie, but worked at the Shell Oil refinery in Norco. This is back more than 20 years ago and they were worried about the levee back then. So it is not exactly a surprise to people that the structure, being as old as it was, that there was a breach in the face of a Category 4. I am sorry. Mr. Robertson. Mr. Robertson. Just a variation on what has already been said. What level of information was available to them when they made the decisions that they did? Mr. Lynch. Do you mean were they watching the Weather Channel? Mr. Robertson. Well, that would help. But certainly what level of information they had, because there are decisions that are going to be made that are going to be triggered by a certain level of information and information exchange. And perhaps that information exchange did not happen. Mr. Lynch. OK. Thank you. Mr. Carper. Mr. Carper. Certainly that is a very good point there. Also, what their plan was in responding to the situational awareness. And also what the chronology of events were and who was talking to who in terms of the local to the State and the State to the Feds, and how was that being documented and what the responses were. That type of thing. Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Carper. Chief. Mr. Castillo. When they were under 18 feet of water, if I had the opportunity to ask them, if they could ask for and receive anything they wanted, what three things would they have asked for? I assume the first one would have been a boat, obviously. But what other things could they have asked for if they could receive anything they wanted at that time. Mr. Lynch. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. I just want to thank this panel. I know it has been a long day for you. We very much appreciate your testimony, your responding to our questions. It has been very helpful for the inquiry. Thank you very much. We will take a 1-minute recess as we move to our next panel. [Recess.] Chairman Tom Davis. The committee will be in order. We have with us Dr. John R. Harrald, the professor of engineering management at the George Washington University, and he is the director for the Institute of Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management; and Dr. James J. Carafano, who is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Thank you both for your patience in staying with us. If you would rise please for the administration of the oath. [Witnesses sworn.] Chairman Tom Davis. Dr. Harrald, we will start with you, and then to Dr. Carafano. You have heard a lot of the comments today. If you can stay within the 5-minutes, great, but it is just us. And we appreciate you being here. STATEMENTS OF JOHN R. HARRALD, PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY AND DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR CRISIS, DISASTER, AND RISK MANAGEMENT; AND JAMES J. CARAFANO, SENIOR FELLOW FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AND HOMELAND SECURITY, HERITAGE FOUNDATION STATEMENT OF JOHN R. HARRALD Dr. Harrald. My written comments have been submitted. And I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to testify. As you stated, I am the director of the Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management at George Washington University. I will preface my remarks by saying I have not been down to New Orleans but my colleagues have. Two of my colleagues are the medical officers for both the Montgomery County and Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue Teams. We work closely with the American Red Cross and one of my colleagues is directing chapter operations in Pascagoula, MI. We are monitoring the operations here but also keeping in touch with what is going on down on the ground. We can explain much of what we have witnessed during the last 2\1/2\ weeks but we cannot accept that this is the best that we can do. In Louisiana and Mississippi the heroic efforts of many men and women were not enough to compensate for the breakdown of our national response system. In order to understand the lessons from the failed initial response to Hurricane Katrina and to use this knowledge to improve the preparedness of other metropolitan areas at risk, we must be able to separate systemic failures from issues of individual preparedness and competence. Did we choose the wrong strategies, structures, and policies, or was this just a failure to professionally and competently execute? I believe if we ignore the systemic issues and simply replace people or reassign responsibilities, we may simply fail again in the not too distant future with a different cast of characters. Prediction, planning, preparation, capacity, and capability are all essential if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences from a natural or technological disaster or a terrorist attack. We have done well with prediction, a scientific and technological task. We have also done reasonably well with the bureaucratic task of producing emergency plans. We have however, in my opinion, confused preparing the Government with preparing the society at large. We have identified the problems we will solve and the capabilities we will need to respond to and recover from catastrophic events, but we have failed to make the investments and take the actions necessary to build this capacity and capability. Appropriate scenarios have been used as the basis for Federal, State, and local catastrophic incident planning. As an example, the Catastrophic Incident Annex to the National Response Plan published by the Department of Homeland Security has clear assumptions. It assumes, for example, a catastrophic incident may cause significant disruption of the area's critical infrastructure, such as energy, transportation, telecommunications, and public health and medical systems. All of these infrastructure were lost in New Orleans. It assumes the response capabilities and resources of the local jurisdictions may be insufficient and quickly overwhelmed. Local emergency management personnel who normally respond to incidents may be among those most affected and unable to perform their duties. In New Orleans, the leaders, emergency managers, and first responders and their families were, indeed, victims. The police and firefighters that responded were themselves homeless and were not reinforced by State and Federal resources for days. The plan assumes a detailed and credible common operating picture may not be achievable for 24 to 48 hours, or longer. As a result, response activities must begin without the benefit of a detailed or complete situation and critical needs assessment. The failure to obtain the situational awareness during Katrina is well documented, as is the failure to act creatively and quickly based on incomplete information. The total breakdown of emergency communications was a key part of this failure. Federal support must be provided in a timely manner, the plan assumes, to save lives, prevent human suffering, and mitigate severe damage. This may require mobilizing and deploying assets before they are requested via normal National Response Plan protocols. FEMA did, in fact, coordinate a massive mobilization effort. The need to actually deploy and execute assets, other than the search and rescue teams, was apparently not recognized. The plan assumes that a catastrophic incident has unique dimensions, characteristics requiring that response plans and strategies be flexible enough to effectively assess emerging needs and requirements. The Department of Homeland Security has spent years developing a common national approach to incident management, at the direction of the President, through the creation of the National Response Plan, the National Incident Management System, and the National Preparedness Goals that have been mentioned by others. Did this emphasis on structure and process diminish our ability to react creatively and adaptively? The scale and scope of Hurricane Katrina is, in fact, unprecedented. However, as we have heard in the previous panel, other metropolitan areas are at risk to similar catastrophic scenarios. We have worked with a number, as I have stated in my written comments, a number of these localities. I believe that the examination of the preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina is a critical national issue. An independent and expert review must assist us to: Focus our efforts on reducing the vulnerability of those in harm's way in our major cities at risk; improve our ability to warn and to communicate, to identify and meet the immediate needs of potential victims following a catastrophic event; improve the agility, the mobility, the capacity, the self- sufficiency, and creativity of our National Emergency Management System; provide an integrated national approach to mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery; provide resources and information to elected and appointed officials to enable them to become better managers of extreme events. It is not just the emergency management community, as we have seen, that gets involved in these events, it is all appointed and all elected leaders. Where do they get the skill set to do that? And to recognize that social and economic recovery requires a strategy for housing our citizens and recovering the local and regional economy. Thank you very much. [The prepared statement of Dr. Harrald follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.133 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.134 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.135 Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Dr. Carafano. STATEMENT OF JAMES J. CARAFANO Dr. Carafano. Well, the President was absolutely correct when he said that the national response to Katrina was inadequate. And I think Americans certainly have the right to ask hard questions: what happened, why it happened, who is responsible, what can be done better. I think it is premature to answer all those questions. I think this committee can play an incredibly important role though in providing a framework for conducting that assessment and in assessing how far we have come as a Nation in preparedness since September 11th. Just four points on context which I think are important to establish when we do this evaluation. The first is scope. This is unprecedented. Over a million people at risk, 90,000 square miles. I think we have to have a realistic discussion of over how quickly and how soon you could get resources in, and how come we were so successful at saving hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lives during the event. The second is I think there needs to be a clear distinction made in the character. There are two different kinds of disasters. There is the normal disaster, what the chiefs talked about, where you have this cascading of resources of local, State, and Federal, and normally massive Federal aid does not show up for days. Catastrophic disasters are totally different in character. Tens or hundreds of thousands of lives are immediately at risk, and, more importantly, the State and local capacity is virtually wiped out. So you have created this 72-hour gap that you have to fill that you do not have to do in a normal disaster. The other point I would make is everybody needs to understand that we got what we paid for. Since September 11th, we have been investing a lot of money. Most of it, virtually all of it has gone into building up for normal disasters. Very little of it has gone in to preparing for catastrophic disasters. Everybody wanted a piece of the pie, everybody wanted grants, everybody wanted something. So they gave money to New Orleans and now it is under 6 feet of water. So we have not been preparing for this kind of disaster. And the final point is the one thing we know already that Katrina tells us is this Nation is not prepared for a catastrophic disaster. The irony is that in the area where we are least prepared, which is medical preparedness for a catastrophic disaster, the system was not stressed here. So our greatest weakness was not even apparent in this really terrible exercise. You asked me to look at what State and local governments are doing now to deal with this kind of thing. There are three major points I would like to make that we know already. Federalism works. I think it is the best system. This notion of who is in charge was the problem, I think, is bogus. The mayor is in charge of the city, the Governor is in charge of the State, the President is in charge of the Nation. There is one thing we should not do--we should never change that balance of leadership and responsibility. The second is virtually every city in this country has built an all-hazards response system. We build one system. If it is a fire, you send a fire truck; if it is an explosion, you send a fire truck; if it is a terrorist attack, you send a fire truck. That is the right system and the one thing we should never sacrifice is our all-hazards approach. The third is preparedness at the community level really has to be a bottom-up driven exercise. The research on this is very, very clear and strong. If the members of the community are not strongly involved in doing these plans and preparing, the plans are just not effective. Quite frankly, most of the communities in the United States are top-down. Emergency managers say this is what we are going to do. But the best plans and the most successful plans are the ones that start and build bottom-up. There are things the Federal Government can do right now to help. I would just like to list those very quickly. Secretary Chertoff released a Second Stage Review. He talked about spinning off the FEMA office as an independent agency in the Department, eliminating the layer of bureaucracy, consolidating all the preparedness activities in under secretaries so the States and local governments really do have a one-stop-shop. I think that is exactly right and I think Congress should support that. The House has passed an excellent bill, the Faster and Smarter First Responders bill to make the grant system focus spending on national priorities rather than just frittering it around the country like we have been. I hope in conference with the Senate that the strong leadership that the House has shown in this area prevails and it becomes law. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 required DHS to set up a regional framework. That still has not happened. I really, truly believe that if we had this regional framework in place it would have helped in coordination with the mayors and Governors and it would have alleviated a lot of problems we experienced. That is simply unconscionable. It needs to be fixed. We need to reorganize the National Guard. Everybody acknowledges the National Guard is important. But the National Guard of the United States is not structured today to close the 72-hour gap. It is not structured to get there in under 24 hours and provide massive amounts of aid. And if we want the National Guard to respond to catastrophic disasters, we are simply going to have to structure it differently than it is now. Finally, I will just finish with this. The Federal Government should really be focusing on two things. Only the Federal Government can mobilize a national system to respond to catastrophic disasters. So No. 1, the Federal Government should be building the national response system. And where it should be giving money to States and focusing its resources with them, it should be on the things that help build that system that allows State and local governments to plug into that system, and those things are training, education, planning, information sharing, interoperable communications, and intelligence. That is where the Federal Government should be making an impact at the State and local level. Beyond that, the Federal Government should be spending Federal dollars on preparing Federal assets to respond to catastrophic terrorism. I will just finish with this very quickly. Everybody has talked about interoperable communication. The Coast Guard, in its Deep Water modernization program calls for building a medium cutter. The Coast Guard saved 33,000 people. It was the only people that could have provided an integrated air picture, an integrated air command and control in Katrina. But you know what? That medium cutter is not off the ground yet. We are not building it. This House voted to cut $200 million from the Coast Guard's modernization budget. So we are all screaming at interoperable communications and in the one area where the Federal Government could step in and could help, they have undercut their own ability to respond and do their mission. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [The prepared statement of Dr. Carafano follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.136 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.137 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.138 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.139 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.140 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.141 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.142 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.143 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.144 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.145 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.146 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.147 Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. You got a lot in there. Dr. Carafano. I am a New Yorker, we talk quick. Chairman Tom Davis. Let me ask a fundamental organizational question. Dr. Carafano, you allude to it in your written statement, and that is the role of FEMA. As you know, this Congress took FEMA out of being a direct report to the President and put it in the Department of Homeland Security as part of the Homeland Security Act. You can argue I guess whether we did the right thing or the wrong thing. It seems to me that whoever is in FEMA ought to have that direct pipeline to the White House. That is what is important. If there is an emergency, people on the ground should not have to have go-betweens where they can get the call. Because there are calls on this thing nationalizing this that can only come from the White House. Is this an organizational problem? What is your reaction to that last question? Dr. Carafano. I do not think so. Quite frankly, I think if we had left FEMA out, then FEMA still would have failed because it could not draw on a national response system that could mobilize this kind of response. And then we would be sitting here saying, oh, the problem was we did not put FEMA in DHS, and gee, if we had just done that, it would have all been better. I do not think it is an organizational issue. I think, quite frankly, it is a bogus issue. The National Response Plan clearly has the means for FEMA to talk directly to the President. The notion that the Director of FEMA cannot call up the President in the middle of a crisis and get what he needs I think is silly. I think FEMA is way better off inside DHS. There are thousands of people now in DHS who are mobilized in support of FEMA. If it were a little tiny separate agency, as it was before, it would not be able to turn around immediately and draw on those assets. The Secretary of Homeland Security has one of the largest Federal agencies in this country. He has a lot of horsepower that he can draw on and bring in in support of FEMA. I think the Secretary fixed the problem. He had an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy by creating an Under Secretary over FEMA. He said let us strip that away, create an independent agency and have FEMA focus on FEMA's primary core competency and primary mission, which is exactly this. Every day the FEMA Director should get up and think about what am I going to do when the next Katrina strikes? And then what he said, and I thought this was brilliant, he said to take all the preparedness stuff out of FEMA, which really has nothing to do with responding to Katrina, which is really administrative stuff--it is planning, it is prep stuff, it is going to meetings, it is eating donuts--and said let us consolidate all that in one place with the critical infrastructure, preparedness, with the grants and have one guy do that in an Under Secretary so the FEMA guy can concentrate on FEMA. And the model for this, the military has exactly the right model for this. The combatant commander in CINCOM is fighting the war in CINCOM; that is his only job, he is fighting the war. It is not his job to conduct boot camp training, that is the service's job. So you have the support function and you have an operational function. You put all the support function in one place and say you are the support guy, you work on the preparedness and everything. And then when the button hits, you have a field general, and that is the FEMA Director. Chairman Tom Davis. Dr. Harrald. Dr. Harrald. I agree with most of that and disagree with little. As academics, we have to pick a little bit of that. I think one of the misnomers is that FEMA responded to this. The Federal Government responded through the National Response Plan. The primary Federal official, as appointed by Secretary Chertoff, who by the National Response Plan is the incident manager, he quite correctly appointed the Director of FEMA. And the primary Federal official is now the Chief of Staff of the Coast Guard. It is not a FEMA response, it is a national response. So the question, as I was saying, there are two systemic issues in there. One that was mentioned in the prior panel, which is you have created these response positions in the National Response Plan, what competencies do you expect to have to fill them. And I was part of the review process for the National Response Plan when this was being put together. I ran the State and local groups and a lot feedback from State and local groups that when bad things happen there is the black hole of communications. We know this happens. And what has to happen is the creativity, the adaptability on the response. And so I have this fear that we have this as the water was rising from the south, the bureaucracy was descending from the north. Chairman Tom Davis. That is a double whammy. Dr. Harrald. When they meet, you really want a creative aspect. Now on as far as the organization within, I do not quite agree on the separation of the preparedness. Because one of the things we are losing in what is done is the integration on natural disaster massive events of mitigation, vulnerability reduction, response and recovery and the tradeoffs that involves. I know there is concern within FEMA, there is concern of people who work the mitigation programs, who work for the States and cities that the preparedness becomes terrorism preparedness and we lose the focus on mitigation. Chairman Tom Davis. Let me just ask one other question. Nationalizing the National Guard, what is the protocol on that? Do you need the permission of the Governor in a case? Can a President come in? What is generally the protocol on that? Because one of the problems in New Orleans that I think the world was shocked at is looking there and just seeing anarchy there in an American city. Dr. Carafano. The National Guard can operate in one of three modes. It can operate under State control, then it can do anything the Governor wants within the laws and the constitution of the State. Chairman Tom Davis. That is normal. Dr. Carafano. Then it can operate under a Title 32 status, which means that the Federal Government writes a check but they are still under the control of the State and they are not subject to posse comitatus. Or they can operate under Title 10 status in which they are Federal troops and they respond to the President. One of the things I would hate to see lost is that system, because what that system gives you is enormous flexibility in how you can have the National Guard respond to many, many different situations. That is one of the great virtues and strengths. And I know John would agree with me on this, if you have seen one disaster, you have seen one disaster. No two disasters are ever going to be exactly alike. And if we plan to do the next Katrina perfectly, we will fail. You want to have that flexibility of Federal or State control always to have the options. The genius is in the leadership, to pick the right mix. It is like the guy in Mission Impossible at the beginning of the show when he would go through the cards and pick out exactly the right people for the mission. The genius is to pick the right command and control structure to fit the crisis, not to try to codify in law a very rigid decisionmaking thing that you have to do this or have to do that. Chairman Tom Davis. But looking back at New Orleans and seeing the anarchy, how did that happen? What should have happened? Dr. Carafano. Again, I think the failure there is the 72- hour gap. Nobody expects people to roll in in under 72 hours, particularly where you have wiped out the infrastructure and everything else. Chairman Tom Davis. The place is flooded, 80 percent under water. Dr. Carafano. Right. I think the issue really here is the structure of the National Guard, that it is not structured to do these missions. I have always recommended that we ought to build a National Guard structure that could respond to the catastrophic disasters which only the Federal Government can do, and that one-fifth of that force would always be on active duty and working for NorthCom 24/7/365 and on strip alert like the 82nd Airborne. Because that is the only way you are going to amass that amount of resources and get it into a disaster in under 24 hours. Chairman Tom Davis. And I just would say I think one of the most shocking things, and there were a lot of them that came out of this, was just seeing the helicopters coming in, help coming in and having citizens fire on these people. We went back and resorted to the state of nature almost. Dr. Harrald. I think the sequence of events of, one, not evacuating New Orleans and having 150,000 or more people there, then what is the impact of that on the decisions of people outside. And I think we were continuing on with our plan without the new information. That afternoon before the levees broke and after the storm had gone through, we were working closely with the Red Cross and I was in the Red Cross Disaster Operations Center when the report was received that the levees had not failed yet, etc., and Joe Becker, who is the vice president for Disaster Services, who has been to many disasters and has been a local chapter manager, leaned forward, and the picture of the hurricane was still on the screen up there, and he said to everybody, just kind of kicking back a little bit, and said, ``Look, because we have not heard anything does not mean good things, it means bad things, No. 1. No. 2, look at the size of that storm, calculate the number of people underneath that footprint, and be prepared to deal with the worst thing we have ever dealt with.'' And at that point in time, for his position, I think that is what you want to see. I do not think that happened in the State. I do not think that same thought process happened within the deployed FEMA region. Most people were kicking back and waiting for the information to come to them. Chairman Tom Davis. Interesting. Good point. Yes, Dr. Carafano. Dr. Carafano. If I could just go back to the National Guard. The other key point there I think is that when you get to the catastrophic, no State is ever going to have within its own National Guard the resources it needs to respond. They all have different kinds of units. For example, the major unit in Louisiana was an armor brigade. If it had been home, it would not have been much help because it had all the wrong kinds of equipment. And that the other problem is that they are in the State, they are in the target area, so they might well be either victims, their equipment could be destroyed, or the infrastructure could limit their ability to respond. So when you have a national response, you are going to need the ``National'' Guard to respond, not the individual State Guards. Chairman Tom Davis. And they were not prepared to do that. Nobody was prepared. Dr. Carafano. We are prepared to do that. We always do that. If you look at these disasters, the Guard always draws on units from around the country and sometimes they draw on Federal forces. But the point is we always do it in this kind of very methodical, slow, deliberate way. We do not drop in the 82nd Airborne in the first 18 hours. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Mrs. Maloney. Mrs. Maloney. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I would like to followup on your line of questioning because seeing such havoc and catastrophe, by some reports it took the Guard 3 days, other reports 4 days to appear. In September 11th, both the Governor and the President called up the National Guard. They were, by some reports, the first people to get to September 11th following police and fire and they stayed there literally for months. So my question to Dr. Harrald, and I think it is a question we on this committee need to look at, is when was the National Guard called up? Why did it take them so long to respond to this tragedy? Dr. Harrald, there were a lot of reports on television that it was a Category 4 hurricane. For days they were saying to evacuate, evacuate, everyone must leave. Are you aware of any realistic plan that was put in place to help those residents evacuate who did not have their own car? You saw hundreds, thousands of people who were not able to leave. Their response was, ``There was no way for us to leave. We did not have a car. We did not have a bus. We had no transportation.'' It appears to me, with a Category 4 hurricane coming, you would be thinking about how to send in some type of force to help the poor, to help the sick, the frail, the residents who were in hospitals, of babies who died in incubators. You were telling the world this is a Category 4, yet it appears from watching this that no plans were put in place to help the frail, the elderly, the babies, the sick, the poor leave the catastrophic area. Were you aware of any effort in that area? Dr. Harrald. Well, yes. By coincidence, we are working as a partner with the Hazard Center at the University of New Orleans. Professor Laska, who you can go on the Web and get. She has worked the simulations and the predictions of this event. Her home and her university are now flooded out. So that is one of the ironies of working on this. One of the things that she was working on and seeking money to do, in fact we were partnering to work with this, and I was just talking to Barbara Childs-Pair, the director of emergency management for the District, my comment that I made earlier that preparing the government is not preparing the community and the ability to communicate with the community--people did not leave because they did not hear, they did not believe, they could not, they did not trust. But they are there and we knew they were going to be there. Professor Laska was working with the city government of New Orleans to develop the plans, different than preparation, there were plans, there were concepts, there were ideas, but nothing---- Mrs. Maloney. There were plans, but were there buses sent in to take the sick out of the hospital, to take the poor out of the nursing homes, to take the frail and elderly that were stuck there? Moving to another point, and it appears there were plans but no one implemented those plans, is what I am reading. Dr. Harrald. Preparation is not planning, that is right. Mrs. Maloney. Since I would say 2002, there have been reports of FEMA employees with considerable expertise and experience being replaced with politically connected novices and contractors. We read in the paper today that Michael Brown, even though he was invited to testify before us, according to one paper is at a spa, and Joe Albaugh, his predecessor, was the chief of the campaign for election of President Bush. Do you agree with these reports that FEMA has been losing its talent and experience to political appointees? And do you believe there should be a requirement that the Director of FEMA have some experience in managing disasters, have experience in management and types of plans and being prepared? And I want to give this question that has really galled me. All these reports are coming out that everybody is so surprised, ``Oh, I am shocked, absolutely shocked that the levees broke in New Orleans and that there was a flood.'' Yet there were many, many reports of a Category 4 hurricane. I just want to know, should people, Federal officials, or political, or professionals, or whatever, been surprised that the levees breached as a result of a Category 4 hurricane hitting New Orleans? Dr. Harrald. Given the situation of the water in Lake Pontchartrain and the rain, no, I think this was certainly a scenario. And the Army Corps of Engineers was very well aware, so again, it is the Federal family, so that if the Corps knew then FEMA knew. But to your earlier set of questions, I will try to leap in and answer the pieces of it that I can. As I said earlier, these are important jobs, both the political appointed jobs and the career civil service jobs. These are the people that we are trusting to lead our Nation's response to catastrophic events. They are no less important than military jobs. My background, it may be in my resume, I am a retired Coast Guard Captain and I spent 26 years in the Coast Guard. To see that we expect leaders in some positions to have extensive experience and leaders in similarly complex positions not mystifies me. FEMA has had, as all agencies do, but FEMA particularly, and some of this is just timing, retirements and people leaving. It has been pointed out that Bruce Baughman, who was the Director of Operations for FEMA for many years, left FEMA and became the chief emergency manager for Alabama where he has been very successful. Charlie Hess, who replaced him, left to work in Iraq. And so a number of very key people have left over the last couple of years and there has been an experience drain. Whose responsibility is it to monitor that? Whose responsibility is it to ensure that we have the leadership capacity to deal with these events I think is a legitimate question. Mrs. Maloney. FEMA used to be a cabinet level position. Yet under the reorganization with Homeland Security, it has now become a sub-department. It used to be independent, it is no longer independent. So, Dr. Harrald, do you believe that FEMA has lost some of its focus on natural disaster preparedness and response after it was absorbed into the Department of Homeland Security? Dr. Harrald. I think as a Nation we have lost the focus on natural disaster preparedness, mitigation, and response. We respond as a people to the last problem, and, as you are very well aware, the last problem was September 11th and the Congress and the administrative part of the Federal Government has put that as a priority. I think there is a tradeoff. FEMA as an independent agency is a very small agency. That access depends on the administration. It has gone through a history of being very effective, very ineffective in cycles. I think, as Dr. Carafano says, there is at least the potential of strengthening and networking within the Department of Homeland Security. But the thing that is missing is really the ability to focus these efforts in a catastrophic situation. Mrs. Maloney. My time is up. But from your testimony it seems clear that the flooding threat to New Orleans was well known, predicted that the levees would break with a Category 4. Dr. Harrald. Dr. Laska and I participated in a briefing with Senate and House aides last June. We did a briefing on the simulations up here on the Hill. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mr. Shays. Mr. Shays. Thank you. Both of you are outstanding witnesses. Dr. Carafano, nice to see you for the second time this week. I mean no offense by this, but there is a saying that someone said to me one time, they said, ``You may not be right, but you are never in doubt.'' [Laughter.] You are the most confident person when you say all that you say, and I find I agree with 90 percent of it. But I am surprised that my colleague from New York, who I work so closely with, talks about failures but it is always the Federal Government. It is not true that about 90 percent of the first responders are State and local? Are they not the ones who have the first response, and are they not about 90 percent of the response? And then does not the Federal Government step in to provide financial assistance? Dr. Carafano. Well, that is true. FEMA basically writes checks and lets contracts. They do not show up with a lot of material support. Mr. Shays. Do they command an army? Dr. Carafano. No. Mr. Shays. Do they control the National Guard? Dr. Carafano. No. I think the best way to answer this question is I think the one greatest mistake that we could make is to compare September 11th to Katrina. In September 11th, at least Rudy Giuliani had a pile to stand on. Mr. Shays. And I would like to point out that Joe Albaugh was the head of FEMA at the time, who happened to be the former Chief of Staff of the President, and he did a heck of a good job. So with all due respect, he was there, give him some credit. Dr. Carafano. In September 11th, you had intact infrastructure, you had a very small geographic area, you had a mayor who could easily command and control the city, he could turn to major cities around and draw all kinds of assets. So, in a sense, it was the perfect storm for the kind of a disaster like that. Katrina is totally different. State and local capacity is almost wiped out. So now you are looking at a different set of core competencies for State and local leaders. In a normal catastrophe, the core competency in State and local leaders is to use the resources at hand effectively, organize them, do a methodical assessment, and then turn to the Federal Government and say this is what I need. In a catastrophic disaster, State and local leaders have to go in and establish ad hoc command and control, do some kind of rapid assessment, and then somehow try to work with the Federal people to get in resources in a very, very quick way. And again I will go back to my basic point, our National Response System is not designed to get massive amounts of national aid in, whether Federal or from other States, in that very few hours. Mr. Shays. Thank you. Dr. Harrald. Dr. Harrald. In a sense, the primary Federal official, which in this case was the Director of FEMA, does command an army under the National Response Plan. The defense assets, he or she can task DOD for military assets as determined at the scene. Mr. Shays. Let me be clear on that because that is important to know. Does he command them, or does he say---- Dr. Harrald. He tasks them. They will be under the command of their commander. Mr. Shays. And tasks, meaning what? We need you? Dr. Harrald. We need you, we need these assets, we need boats, we need helicopters, we need whatever. So the determination of need. One of the things we have done---- Mr. Shays. So he determines need. Dr. Harrald. He determines need. And the National Response Plan, the successor to the Federal Response Plan, allows him or her to task the appropriate agency, appropriate emergency support function to get those assets. I somewhat disagree with Dr. Carafano, because the whole effort over the last 2 years has been to take the Federal Response Plan, which was admittedly slow with the 72-hours aspect, and particularly as we get into the catastrophic incident planning, to close that window. And I think one of the messages of Katrina is we have not done it. Mr. Shays. Who has the capacity to close that window, that is what I need to know? Dr. Harrald. Well, I think that is a Federal Government responsibility and a State responsibility. Mr. Shays. Within the Federal Government, would that have been head of DHS? Dr. Harrald. Yes. Yes. Mr. Shays. Do you want to respond? Dr. Carafano. I think the answer to the question is the National Guard. Again, I think one of the biggest mistakes we could take away from this is that to catastrophic response we need to stockpile lots of stuff all over the country. Because what will happen is the stuff that is stockpiled, you know, build it up in the State and local governments, all that will happen is that no matter how much you buildup, if it is a catastrophic disaster, it might get all destroyed and you still have to move stuff in. And it is enormously inefficient to have State and local governments and the private sector stockpile masses of big things for catastrophic disaster. Mr. Shays. I am going to ask you--in my mind, the chairman can do a crossword puzzle while he is talking with you, I have to think a little longer. You spoke too quickly when you started running down all the different categories of National Guard. I want to know, in my simple mind, the National Guard is a militia under the Governor. The Governor instantly can call in the National Guard, does not need permission from anybody, just does it. I have been led to believe that it is possible the President could nationalize the National Guard within a State, but I am not quite sure how that happens. So walk me through slowly, and I may interrupt you. Dr. Carafano. It has happened before. President Eisenhower, for example, when the Governor was ordering the troops to keep Black children out of the school, the President nationalized the National Guard and said you now work for me, take the children to school. Mr. Shays. Let me ask this question directly. It would be false to say that the President needed permission from the Governor in order to empower and command the National Guard to take action? Dr. Carafano. No. I actually think the law is very flexible on this point. The President does have authority where he can go in and where he wishes he can usurp the sovereignty of the Governor and send forces in. Mr. Shays. If any time demanded it, in my judgment, that was the time. Dr. Carafano. Well, that is the tough question. It is---- Mr. Shays. It would not have been tough for me. Because you basically had a Governor saying help, help, help, and a mayor saying help, help, help. In fact, they were doing more than that. They were going after the Federal Government for not being there. So if I were President, in my own mind I would say, fine, let us do it. Dr. Carafano. There are two problems with that. One is that to know that the Governor and mayor have failed may not be immediately apparent and may take days. And if you want to argue the mayor and Governor failed in this case, go back and look at the chronology and when were we sure that the mayor and Governor had failed. And the answer is probably, if you believe that, it is probably going to be in the 72-hour range. Well, quite frankly, by that time the Federal stuff is getting there anyway. Mr. Shays. OK. Walk me through it. The National Guard, the Governor can do it right away, the President, on the other end of the extreme, can nationalize it. So the Governor can empower it as the Governor, the President can nationalize the National Guard. What is in between? You gave about four categories of how you do it. Are those the only two ways? Dr. Carafano. There are three ways. The Governor can do it under his own authority but he has to pay for it. He can basically have an agreement with the President to do it, they are still under his authority but the Federal Government pays for it, which is Title 32. Or the President can do it under his authority. Again, I think when the analysis is done we are going to find who the National Guard was working for to me is not going to be the crux of the problem. To me, the crux of the problem is going to be the time-space distance and how quickly we can mobilize and deploy forces there and get it done. We may find that we may have lost an hour or a day in making the decision to ask for the forces. But I still think that we would never have been able to close the 72-hour gap with the National Guard as we have them structured today because they cannot close the time-space distance. Mr. Shays. I will just say, and I am going to conclude, it would strike me that as soon as we saw a disaster, as soon as we saw the incredible flooding, the National Guard in region probably was in a pretty desperate circumstance, and I would have thought that we would have been mobilizing the National Guard from around the country and sending them down. Now I think we had testimony from the military that they did that among the standing army; they just did it. Could I indulge you, Mr. Chairman, one last point? Chairman Tom Davis. Sure. Mr. Shays. Does the President have the capability to send standing army down there under his command? Dr. Carafano. Sure he does. And also it is in the law that local commanders can respond without any authority whatsoever. I was at Fort Sill, OK during the Murrah Office bombing and General Dubia was the Commander at Fort Sill, OK, he had troops on the road within 30 minutes. Mr. Shays. Standing army, not National Guard? Dr. Carafano. Yes, active duty. And the way the law reads is if it is imminent threat of loss of life or people are in danger, the military can just put people on the road and execute and then worry about the thing later. Mr. Shays. Did you want to make a comment? Dr. Harrald. I think one of the aspects of the National Guard is recognizing that in each State the relationship between the National Guard and emergency management is slightly different. The resources that the National Guard have in a State are different and in many cases they are kind of core function. For example, the National Guard is the logistics of the emergency manager in North Carolina. And so stepping in and taking that away could, if a State was near to failure, you could really push it over the edge by taking control over the National Guard away. Dr. Carafano. Could I just make one quick comment? A resource that we never talk about, the Constitution authorizes every State to have guards and militias that are not the National Guard. New York, for example, has a naval militia which actually did terrific work on September 11th and was a real lifesaver. Some States have them, some States do not. Some of them are OK, some of them are coffee clubs. There is no national standard. And it is another layer of volunteer group and a backup to the National Guard that might be useful. The National Guard in the past has not liked them because they do not want to compete for resources. Mr. Shays. Thank you. Let me just say I find this fascinating and there is lots to be looked at. Both of you were excellent witnesses. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mr. Gutknecht, followed by Mr. Marchant. Mr. Gutknecht. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try to be brief. I just concur with my colleague from Connecticut, your testimony has been excellent. Dr. Carafano, I really want to reiterate that it bothers me sometimes when people compare what happened in September 11th in New York City, where you are essentially talking about an eight square block area, relatively easy to confine, there was no breakdown in communications or command and control, and at the Pentagon the same circumstance, you are talking about a relatively small area, as bad as those national catastrophes were. To compare that to an area that literally has devastated the size of the State of Wyoming, it just amazes me sometimes that even the national media gives that credibility. They are two entirely different kinds of things. I do want to reiterate also, and I do not necessarily have a question so much, that one of my observations is that once the National Guard and the regular forces were on the ground with adequate command and control, with the supplies that were needed, it seems to me things started to get better a lot faster. And the one thing that I hope will ultimately come out of this--and I think, Dr. Carafano, you just made the point that there are differences between the State militias and guards or whatever terms that they use--but it may well be an obligation of us at the congressional level and the Federal Government ultimately to put in place as part of the Guard some kind of emergency response packages, if you will, pre-positioned around the country that we can get into some of these places. Because this will happen again. It may be Louisiana next time, and it might be Florida next time, it could be North Carolina, we do not know. But these kinds of things are going to happen and we have to make certain that we can respond and get the stuff on the ground, not in 72 hours necessarily, although in some of these cases we are talking longer than that. So I do not have a question. You may want to respond to that. But again, I think your testimony has been excellent, and we thank you for coming. Dr. Carafano. I just have two very quick comments. One is, one of the reasons why we have not better prepared the National Guard to respond to catastrophic terrorism is that is what a lot of mayors and Governors did not want and a lot of fire chiefs and police chiefs did not want. They all stood up and said, no, no, we are the first responders, we need the money, give it to us, if this happens we are going to be the guys, we are going to take care of this. When you look at the scenarios, you never write a scenario in which you fail and have to call in the National Guard. And I kept telling people, I said, look, what is going to happen is that we are going to get to a scenario like this and we are going to collapse and they are going to turn around and scream where is the cavalry at, and they are going to scream that you are not there. That is part of the reason why we have not moved this forward, because people have not demanded that we structure the National Guard to do that. The other thing I remind people of is if you remember during the Gulf war when we made the pause in the road to Baghdad and everybody was screaming how come people are not getting MREs and gas and everything. It is because it was a war zone, and there was a time-distance problem, and it was destroyed infrastructure, and there was a lot of confusion. You just cannot magicly make things appear in there like you beam it down on Star Trek. That is the exact same problem you had here. Again, one of the terrible things I hear is, geez, if we had just turned it over to the military everything would have been solved. Because they see, like now, the military finally gets there and they set things up. And I absolutely agree that in a catastrophic disaster the military in that first 72 hours is the best resource to throw at the problem. But if we want to throw the military at the problem in the first 72 hours, we are going to have to structure a National Guard that can do that. And it is not a trivial problem. The National Guard we have today cannot do that, just like the Army cannot drive from Kuwait to Baghdad through a war zone in 20 minutes. The National Guard cannot move halfway across the country and deliver cases of Avian in 26 hours. Mr. Gutknecht. Let me just pursue that because I think that really is ultimately the task of the Congress to sort this out, who is responsible for what, and who can do certain functions the best. And what we do not need is several layers all trying to say that they can do it and then ultimately finding out that when you have everybody saying that you can do it, nobody is getting it done. That is the problem. And I think this is an issue that we have to spend some time thinking about, bringing in some outside experts, and really beginning to define in these kinds of circumstances who is going to be responsible for what and knowing that in advance so that everybody is on the same page. Dr. Carafano. I just think it is inefficient for anybody other than the military to buildup a response to catastrophic event because for everybody else it is inefficient for them to hang on to those massive amounts of resources that may sit around forever and do nothing. But the thing about the military, whether it is medical, or security, they can use those for other things. If there is no catastrophic disaster, there are lots of things we can always use our military to do with those kinds of resources. Dr. Harrald. If I can add. One of the things that will come out of Katrina is just the matter of scale with it. We were sitting at the Red Cross yesterday looking the number of shelter days and meals fed compared to everything else that they have done. The Coast Guard Air Station, New Orleans, rescued more people last week than they had done in the entire history of the Air Station, which has been about 60 years. The scale of this is truly beyond the charts. And we have done the planning assumptions and the issue, but nobody has stepped up and said what resources really do we require if we have a million people we have to feed tomorrow. And I would suggest, yes, the military have the mobility and agility. The other alternative is to bring some of that back in to the emergency management forces and to the non-government agencies. Because the military does not bring in a focus on the customer, a focus on the victim, that is not their job. They can move resources, they can move people, they can bring things, but that is not the end game. Mr. Gutknecht. Thank you. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Mr. Marchant. Mr. Marchant. Yes. My question is, have you both examined the major disaster and evacuation plans of the top 10 cities in the Nation? Dr. Harrald. No. The only evacuation plan I have examined in general specifically is Washington. We have done some work in San Francisco. Basically, the issue was not evacuation in that because you are not going to go anywhere in a major earthquake. And I have looked at historical evacuations, yes. I have a student doing that very issue right now. Dr. Carafano. I have not looked at any specific plans. I have talked to emergency managers in some major cities like Washington, Kansas City, and San Francisco. I have also looked at the historical data, on which there is an enormous amount. This is actually a global competency. Lots of governments evacuate masses of cities, a lot of them do it a lot more frequently than we do. So there is actually a lot of data on this issue. Mr. Marchant. Is a key part of any of the plan a gathering place, such as the Astrodome, that every city has that is at least a primary or a secondary gathering point? Dr. Carafano. Correct me if I am wrong, John, but I think if you have seen one mass evacuation plan, you have seen one mass evacuation plan. They are all different. Dr. Harrald. Washington, for example, is doing what people in New Orleans were trying to do as the next step, is more local gathering places where people knew churches, community halls, places where people would go locally and resources would come to them. That seems to be the planning. I think that is the way to go. Dr. Carafano. Could I just make a point. There are three problems I just wanted to highlight in any mass evacuation plan. One is the send in/send out problem. One of the things New Orleans did to aid mass evacuation, it is a lesson learned from its first exercise, is it counterflowed all its roads so that everybody was headed out. So the problem of why did you not just send in trucks to go get the other people, well the problem is you were so focused on the outflow of the traffic, trying to inflow additional resources to evacuate people is more of a problem. The second one, and this is almost unique to hurricanes, any time you move masses of people you put them at risk. This is the reason why in war most of the people who die in war are civilians and most of them die when they are displaced from their homes and they die of dehydration, disease, and other things. So the last thing you ever want to do if you do not have to is take people out of their environment and make them a refugee. Because you are always more at risk when you are a refugee. So it is always a very, very difficult decision whether to move people or not. The problem with storms always is if they change the path in the last minute, you might actually be creating victims by unintentionally moving them into the storm path. So it is always sort of a Hobson's choice. And then the other point, that was pointed out in the first panel, is there is the cry wolf syndrome. People react to risk communications that they believe are understandable, credible, and actionable. So if they understand this is a message meant for me, if it is credible and they really believe it is something they should do, and if it is actionable and there is something they can do to make themselves better, the data tells us they will do that. The problem with an evacuation order is the understandable part is no big deal, the actionable part for some people is a big deal, but the credibility thing, and mayors are always worried about well if I evacuate and nothing happens, are they going to believe me next time. Mr. Marchant. The question I have is if the evacuation is ordered and they are given a place to go, and it is known ahead of time that is the place they are going to be told to go, why there is not some planning for water, some MREs, and just some rudimentary survival tools that are in place year round for that to take place? And since September 11th, there have been hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars given out across the country to cities to first responders, and I think justifiably so. Mr. Chairman, I think maybe if we had some information about the major cities in the United States that have received first responder aid and---- Chairman Tom Davis. I think that is something we need to compile. Unfortunately, I think you will find some minor cities as well that have gotten the aid. Mr. Marchant. Yes. And what they did with the money, did it go all toward terrorism, was it toward this kind of disaster? Thank you. Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mrs. Maloney, do you want to do a followup question before we go to markup? Mrs. Maloney. Just as a balance here. The gentlemen mentioned the National Response Plan, and you are both familiar with it, and a key part of that plan is when you make a decision that it is an incident of national significance which then triggers the Federal coordination. But it appears that this designation was not made until 36 hours after Hurricane Katrina struck. This is according to a memo issued by Secretary Chertoff, and I would like to put this in the record. Chairman Tom Davis. Without objection, it will be in the record. [The information referred to follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.148 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.149 Mrs. Maloney. Thank you. I would like to ask Dr. Harrald, based on your experience, what do you think about this 36-hour delay? Dr. Harrald. Well, unfortunately, history does repeat itself a little bit. I was on Hurricane Andrew, which happened a week after the Federal Response Plan came out and that was still in shrink wrap at the time, and an awful lot of State and local and even national officials really did not understand how that worked. The National Contingency Plan arguably failed at the Exxon-Valdez and was rewritten and revised after. One of the things we have to look at is systemically did this plan fail. Was it too centralized? Was it too bureaucratic? As I said, I worked with the State and local. You are looking at the top, but look---- Mrs. Maloney. But my question was about the delay, the 36 hour delay. Dr. Harrald. I think people did not understand clearly the significance that designation had on authorities and actions. It was either a miscommunication or a misunderstanding. Mrs. Maloney. Should the designation have been on August 27th when the National Hurricane Center predicted the hurricane and that it would strike---- Dr. Harrald. When the declaration of emergency was made, it would have made sense to make that, yes. Mrs. Maloney. Now in this memo from Secretary Chertoff, he designates Michael Brown, the head of FEMA, as the principal Federal official in charge of the Federal response under the National Response Plan. And if Mr. Brown was not designated as the principal person in charge until after August 30th, who was in charge of the Federal response under the National Response Plan for the 3-days before that? Dr. Harrald. The Secretary. Mrs. Maloney. So it would have been Secretary Chertoff. Today's paper has an article in it where they are quoting Mr. Brown. In it, he describes his frantic calls to the White House asking for help, saying the locals have been overwhelmed, that we need more support, we need more help. I would like to place that into the record, too. [The information referred to follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.150 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.151 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.152 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4205.153 Mrs. Maloney. I guess some of the questions that you really do not have the answer to is: Why it took them so long to call up the National Guard? Why they were not aware, even though all the scientists were predicting, the levees would break, that there would be water, how that did not come into account? And why they did not evacuate the poor, the sick, the children, the elderly that could not get out? Dr. Harrald. These are the questions I think we will have to look at. The only thing I can add to that is that the closer you get to the center of a major incident, the less you know. You know what you can see at some point. And the situational awareness, the ability to make the leap that Joe Becker of the Red Cross did, that this is really big, and I do not know what is going on but it is bigger than anything I know and I have to get everything moving, that sort of thought process did not happen at a number of levels of government. Mrs. Maloney. Even though CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, all the cable shows were saying level 4 catastrophic emergency, evacuate, take care of people. Yet the Federal Government, the local government, the State government was not there. Chairman Tom Davis. Mrs. Maloney, thank you very much. Thank you. It has been a long day for you. This has been very, very helpful. Your testimony is excellent. We appreciate your efforts. The record remains open for 7 days for Members to put their testimony in the record. We will now adjourn this hearing. [Whereupon, at 3:13 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] [The prepared statement of Hon. Candice S. 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