[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
HOW DO WE ENSURE A ROBUST FEDERAL RESPONSE TO A CATASTROPHIC
EARTHQUAKE IN THE NEW MADRID REGION?
=======================================================================
(109-49)
FIELD HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 24, 2006 (ST LOUIS, MISSOURI)
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman
THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin, Vice- JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
Chair NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia
SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland Columbia
JOHN L. MICA, Florida JERROLD NADLER, New York
PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan CORRINE BROWN, Florida
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan BOB FILNER, California
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
SUE W. KELLY, New York JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD,
RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana California
ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
JERRY MORAN, Kansas ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
GARY G. MILLER, California BILL PASCRELL, Jr., New Jersey
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania
HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South Carolina BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania JIM MATHESON, Utah
SAM GRAVES, Missouri MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota RICK LARSEN, Washington
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania JULIA CARSON, Indiana
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York
JON C. PORTER, Nevada MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine
TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
TED POE, Texas ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado
CONNIE MACK, Florida JOHN BARROW, Georgia
JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New York
LUIS G. FORTUNO, Puerto Rico
LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr., Louisiana
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
(ii)
Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency
Management
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas, Vice-Chair Columbia
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine
JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New York LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
DON YOUNG, Alaska JULIA CARSON, Indiana
(Ex Officio) JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
(Ex Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
TESTIMONY
Page
Burke, William C., Director, Illinois Emergency Management
Agency......................................................... 24
Pawlowski, Michael S., Federal Emergency Management Agency...... 7
Reynolds, Ronald, Director, Missouri Stste Emergency Management
Agency......................................................... 24
Schweig, Dr. Eugene "Buddy", U.S. Geological Survey............. 7
Talent, Hon. James, Former U.S. Senator from the State of
Missouri....................................................... 36
Van Uum, Betty, Assistant to the Chancellor, University of
Missouri....................................................... 1
Wilkinson, Jim, Central United States Earthquake Consortium..... 7
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Burke, William C................................................ 41
Pawlowski, Michael S............................................ 43
Reynolds, Ronald................................................ 53
Schweig, Dr. Eugene "Buddy"..................................... 58
Wilkinson, Jim.................................................. 78
HOW DO WE ENSURE A ROBUST FEDERAL RESPONSE TO A CATASTROPHIC EARTHQUAKE
IN THE NEW MADRID REGION?
----------
Friday, February 24, 2006
House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Economic
Development, Public Buildings and Emergency
Management, Committee on Transportation &
Infrastructure, Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met pursuant to call at 9:00 a.m. At
University of Missouri, One University Boulevard, St. Louis,
Missouri 63121, Bill Shuster [chairman of the subcommittee],
presiding.
Mr. Shuster. The subcommittee will come to order. First I'd
like to recognize Betty Van Uum from the University of
Missouri. Betty.
TESTIMONY OF BETTY VAN UUM, ASSISTANT TO THE CHANCELLOR,
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI
Ms. Van Uum. Thank you, Mr. Shuster. I'm Betty Van Uum, the
Chancellor's Assistant from the University of Missouri, and I
bring you greetings on behalf of our administration. We think
this is a great honor, Mr. Shuster, and we're very pleased to
have a congressional hearing on our campus. It's a great
learning experience for our kids and a great honor for us.
So we thank you very much for coming. We welcome your
colleagues. We welcome all of you who are going to testify. I
hope you have a productive morning. I only have one little
announcement. We have coffee and donuts in the hall at the--in
the room at the end of the hall. So if any of you need that to
stay awake--no. If any of you would like that, please feel free
to help yourself. And welcome.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. I really
appreciate the University of Missouri for hosting us here
today, and I've got to make sure I say this up front. When I
look at the New Madrid line--I want to say Madrid, takes me
back to my Spanish. So if I fall into calling it Madrid, please
overlook that, and you know what I'm talking about.
I want to thank Mrs. Emerson for her work on this issue,
including assembling a congressional working group for the New
Madrid Seismatic Zone. I know she has a strong interest in
ensuring that the Federal Government has learned the hard
issues, hard lessons of Katrina, and is prepared to respond to
a catastrophic earthquake in the New Madrid region. I welcome
your participation here and thank you for having us.
I also want to thank Mr. Carnahan for his participation
today. Both of you have shown a great deal of interest in the
response to Hurricane Katrina and reforming the current
emergency management system. I look forward to your
contributions here today also.
I want to ask unanimous consent that Mrs. Emerson and Mr.
Carnahan be permitted to sit with the subcommittee at today's
hearing and offer testimony and ask questions. Without
objections, so ordered.
I also want to thank our witnesses for being here today. We
are meeting this morning to receive State and local input for
improving emergency management capabilities and readiness at
the Federal, State, and local levels.
Hurricane Katrina revealed problems in the emergency
management system at all levels of government that have to be
addressed--and you have a role in guiding the efforts to fix
those problems--after all, you are the end users.
Unfortunately, this hasn't always been a collaborative
process. Too often the Federal Government has failed to take
into account your views. There has never been a greater need
for your professional advice and expertise. We have to get this
right, and we need your help to do it.
Like Hurricane Katrina, a catastrophic disaster in the New
Madrid region would destroy the infrastructure, leave tens of
thousands homeless and paralyze the region.
The New Madrid "seismatic" region stretches from Arkansas,
Mississippi, north through Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, and
Illinois. Since 1974, over 4,000 earthquakes, most too small to
notice, have been recorded. The large metropolitan areas of
Mississippi, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri are located in
the New Madrid region.
Because this region lacks widespread seismatic building
codes, it is estimated that a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in the
region will cause a direct economic loss of over 70 billion and
the destruction of over 60 percent of the buildings in the
region. Without reforms to the current emergency management
system, we will have another disorganized Federal response like
that in the gulf coast.
I was on the House Select Committee that investigated the
response to Katrina, and our key findings for the Federal
failure were the plan was flawed and the execution was
ineffective. There was confusion over who had the authority to
make decisions; response capabilities were deficient. In some
places it took weeks before the Federal Government even
arrived.
Is the New Madrid region prepared for a week or even
longer? The conventional wisdom says you only need to be
prepared for 72 hours. The House Select Committee report found
the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina was slow because key
decisions were made late, ineffectively, or not at all.
Today these decisions about how and when to engage Federal
response assets are no longer in FEMA. They are with DHS. Also,
DHS and FEMA responded to Katrina with a business-as-usual
attitude. Business as usual means sitting back and waiting for
the State to request assistance instead of proactively getting
supplies into the field prior to the formal request. Business
as usual does not work in a catastrophic disaster.
Following a catastrophic earthquake, the State and local
government may need Federal assistance before there is a clear
operating picture. If Federal assistance is needed immediately
to save lives and prevent suffering, should the Federal
Government wait for the State to follow protocol? Can the
people of the New Madrid region wait for help while the Federal
Government demands that the State follows bureaucratic
procedures? We cannot afford to get it wrong again.
Additionally, the report found the government failed to
effectively execute response plans and authorities. This
failure can be attributed to an inadequate Federal disaster
workforce.
At the time Katrina struck, FEMA had 500 vacancies, which
is about 20 percent of their workforce. This is a small agency
within a big Department. They cannot afford to be without that
many people. Without the right number of the right people, this
will never work.
If we are to successfully respond to a catastrophic
earthquake, we must enhance State and local emergency
management capacity.
One of the important lessons of Katrina is that the Federal
Government's ability to respond to a catastrophic disaster is
often dependent upon the quality of State and local disaster
systems.
Disaster management is a shared responsibility, and State
and local governments need to be able to handle most disasters
on their own and be prepared to integrate Federal systems into
their operations during larger events.
Despite spending over $10 billion on first responders since
September 11th, it is very difficult to see where these dollars
resulted in improved capabilities or readiness in our response
to Hurricane Katrina.
The report found that inadequate capabilities and readiness
resulted in the Federal response being overwhelmed in critical
areas such as logistics, communications, situational awareness,
and command and control. It is truly staggering that we have
spent so much on preparedness and have so little to show for
it. We have to do better.
These are systemic failures. Clearly, the system needs to
be reformed. We are here today to hear about the specific
challenges you face and your recommendations for reform at the
Federal level.
At the end of the day, if the Federal Government fails to
reform itself, then the State and local governments will have
to face the next disaster and its consequences largely alone
for the first week or longer. I look forward to hearing from
you today. And thank you.
And I'd like to recognize Mr. Carnahan, if you have an
opening statement.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you Mr. Chairman. It's good to be here,
and I want to thank you for your efforts and your leadership on
this issue and to the committee on which I'm honored to serve.
I also want to recognize Congresswoman Emerson for her
leadership in the Congress on this issue. She has been a very
key figure in trying to get this to the attention of the people
that are potentially harmed in this region but also in the
Congress.
Also, my friend, Congressman Marion Berry from Arkansas
who's also been very active in the earthquake preparedness
caucus in the Congress.
I wanted to share something I learned, actually, this
morning over coffee at home. I'd gotten my neighborhood
newsletter from the Compton Heights neighborhood where I live
in South St. Louis, and I learned a bit of earthquake trivia I
had not known before.
And that is, back at the time of the last earthquake in
1812, that area of St. Louis was a common field, and there were
settlements around it, but it was a common field used by the
community. And it became one of the first Federal Government
resettlement areas after the New Madrid earthquake.
So I did not realize that the very neighborhood that I
lived in had been impacted in the aftermath of that 1812
earthquake.
I want to welcome those from out of town--particularly the
Chairman--to St. Louis and also want to say that I think the
time is especially appropriate that we assess how prepared the
Federal Government is to respond to an earthquake in the New
Madrid region.
As we have all seen and as we have discovered through a
series of investigations, the level of preparedness and
subsequent response to Hurricane Katrina was inadequate. FEMA
and the Department of Homeland Security failed to protect the
lives of the very citizens they were charged to protect. And I
think we are all about trying to learn from the mistakes that
were made so they don't happen in the future. We need to ensure
that a similar response does not occur; Not if, but when, we
are struck with the next damaging earthquake.
Unlike in 1812, when there were very few people that lived
in this region, now over 75 million people live in 39 States
directly vulnerable to a serious earthquake. Moreover, because
my entire district is contained within the New Madrid Seismic
Zone, every one of my constituents is subject to losing their
homes, or worse, their lives, when an earthquake hits our
region.
Much of our rich historic infrastructure that makes St.
Louis such a great place to live--we have more historic brick
homes and buildings than just about any region in the country--
also makes us especially vulnerable.
Being prepared for natural disasters is one of the major
functions of FEMA. However, since the subcommittee is in St.
Louis today, I'd like to take just a short moment to address
another one of FEMA's major functions: disaster recovery.
As the Chairman is aware, the St. Louis region was damaged
in 1993 by a record Mississippi River flood, and now more than
12 years later, many parts of this area are still recovering.
In particular, some of the recovering area in south St. Louis
County has been placed under the jurisdiction of FEMA's Hazard
Mitigation Grant Program.
Due to this placement, the land is deed restricted, and
further development on it has been stalled. As a result, I'm
seeking assistance to obtain an easement from FEMA to construct
a priority transportation improvement project in south St.
Louis County.
This project would facilitate thousands of jobs and
revitalize a devastated area. Members of the Transportation
Committee have been generous with their advice, from Chairman
Young on down, and for that I am truly grateful.
Our country has faced many natural disasters, and as this
hearing today proves, there is great potential for more. As
such, we must begin to pay attention to FEMA's ability to
facilitate long-term recovery. I ask the subcommittee to begin
to consider this project in south St. Louis County.
Chairman Shuster, once again, thank you for your
leadership. I look forward to working with you, Chairman Young,
Ranking Member Oberstar and the entire subcommittee on these
important issues.
And I also want to apologize. I do have to go to another
meeting at 10:00, so I will step out in a few minutes. Thank
you.
Mr. Shuster. We appreciate you being here today, and thank
you for having us into your--well, I guess it's close to your
district.
Mr. Carnahan. Right next door.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much for being here today. Now
I'd like to recognize Ms. Emerson for an opening statement.
Mrs. Emerson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really want to
thank you very much for coming to Missouri and to participate
in what is a very important issue, critical issue for all of us
in the State as well as all the contiguous States around us,
and I'm very grateful to you.
I also want to thank my colleague, Russ Carnahan, for being
part of our congressional working group, as well as for all the
work that he has done and will be doing in the future to help
us try to meet the expectations that we have in preparing for
any kind of a natural disaster.
I also want to thank all of our witnesses for being here
today and for the work that they continue to do. It isn't easy,
but it is very, very necessary.
Having been to New Orleans, Mr. Chairman, 1 week after
Hurricane Katrina befell that city, and then having been to New
Orleans 2 weeks ago this week, I haven't seen a lot of
difference. I mean, obviously, some of the cleanup has been
done, but it's very, very disheartening to see that our
agencies have not been working together at any level in the
system.
And so this is very important, and I'm very proud of all of
us in Missouri and all of the States contiguous to us who
understand and realize that we have so much work to do to
prepare for any kind of a natural disaster. And the fact that
you are as interested as you are in it gives me great hope.
You know, having read at least the executive summary of the
House Select Committee's report "A Failure of Initiative," it
is very dismaying and disheartening. And the fact that the
report concluded that "The preparation for and response to
Hurricane Katrina show we are still an analog government in a
digital age," is really something and so very, very true.
And I sit on the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the
House Appropriations, and with all of the billions and
billions, hundreds of billions of dollars that we have given to
the Department of Homeland Security, it's really shocking to me
that we still have failures along every step of the way.
I know that the Department has endeavored to modernize it's
preparation, mitigation, and response capabilities through
reorganization and restructuring, but I think almost everybody
can agree that more work still needs to be done to ensure that
our emergency managers and first responders at all levels are
properly equipped to handle the potentially catastrophic
situation that could occur in Missouri, Illinois, and nearly
half a dozen other States in event of a major earthquake in the
New Madrid region.
And while I am pleased to note that many initiatives
planned by FEMA, the U.S. Coast Guard, and other DHS agencies
to address preparedness in our area, "A Failure of Initiative"
also showed that recognition of potential danger does not equal
preparedness for the danger.
We all saw the infamous Hurricane Pam model which obviously
showed us many dangers of a major hurricane making landfall in
the New Orleans area. But, really, relatively little was done
to truly prepare the region for such a disaster. And we cannot,
we must not make that same mistake twice in preparing for a New
Madrid disaster.
As you may know, I, along with Senator Jim Talent, have
requested a formal exercise that should include FEMA, Coast
Guard, Corps of Engineers, Department of Defense, State and
local law enforcement, health care volunteer agencies and
response agencies.
Mr. Chairman, a major earthquake along the New Madrid fault
could have a devastating effect on commerce and infrastructure
in the entire Midwest. I am so grateful to you for holding this
hearing today so that we can draw even more attention to this
important issue, and I look forward to hearing the testimony of
the witnesses.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much. I'd like to ask unanimous
consent that all our witnesses' full statements be included in
the record. Without objection, it's so ordered.
Since your written testimony has been made part of the
record, the subcommittee would request that you limit your
summary to 5 minutes.
We have three panels of witnesses today. On our first
panel, we have three witnesses representing the various
organizations involved in disaster planning from the New Madrid
region:
Dr. Schweig and Mr. Wilkinson are going to provide a
presentation that will demonstrate the likely consequences of a
catastrophic earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone.
We'll also hear from Mr. Pawlowski. Did I get that right?
My Spanish is better than my Slavic.
Mr. Pawlowski. Pawlowski.
Mr. Shuster. Pawlowski, who will discuss ongoing efforts to
plan for an earthquake in the region. Just as the consequence
of a Category 4 storm hitting New Orleans were well-known, I
believe it is important that we fully understand what we could
face here at a moment's notice.
Dr. Eugene Buddy Schweig is the U.S. Geological Survey--is
with the U.S. Geological Survey, and Jim Wilkinson is the
director of Central United States Earthquake Consortium.
Michael Pawlowski is the acting chief for Incident Response
Section of the Response Division at the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
We'll hear from all of our witnesses on the panel before
opening for questions.
TESTIMONY OF JIM WILKINSON, CENTRAL UNITED STATES EARTHQUAKE
CONSORTIUM; DR. EUGENE "BUDDY" SCHWEIG, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY;
AND MICHAEL S. PAWLOWSKI, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY
Mr. Shuster. Dr. Schweig, you may proceed.
Mr. Schweig. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the
committee, for this opportunity to appear before you to testify
in the likelihood and potential effects of a worst-case
catastrophic earthquake in the New Madrid region.
Now, it's certainly true there are fewer earthquakes in
this part of the country than there are in California or in
Alaska, but by some measures, the hazards that they pose are
actually as great as many parts of California and Alaska.
And pardon me in advance. The projector has washed out some
of these slides so they're a little difficult to see. The first
thing I want to show you is this map here.
This is one of the earthquake hazards maps made by the U.S.
Geological Survey; in fact, the one that feeds into many of the
building codes that we have in use by many States and many
municipalities.
The reddish colors are the higher hazards, and as you see,
the New Madrid Seismic Zone in the Mississippi Valley there,
and it's an area of hazard that, although much smaller than the
large area of high hazard in the West, is still as high as many
parts of California.
One thing that drives the fact that we consider the hazard
high is the 1811 and '12 earthquakes. During that sequence we
had three earthquakes that were between magnitudes 7.5 and 8,
although, of course, there weren't any instruments around at
the time, and then thousands of aftershocks following. And the
earthquakes continue to this day, and those earthquakes are
known as the New Madrid Seismic Zone.
During the, during the--excuse me. During the earthquakes,
the effects were dramatic. Vast tracts of land sunk and were
uplifted. This is the Reelfoot Lake in northwestern Tennessee.
Other areas in Arkansas and Missouri were the same.
River banks caved all along the Mississippi River. Areas of
the river were unnavigable for weeks. Islands disappeared; new
islands formed. Landslides occurred along the bluffs all the
way from northern Mississippi into southern Illinois and
Kentucky.
One of the most dramatic things that remains today are the
sand blows in southeastern Missouri. And these are areas of
sand that erupted during the earthquakes. They stand out
starkly against the Mississippi muds. They can be 100, 200 feet
across, very dramatic and still visible today.
And they're important not just because they tell us about
the earthquake, Because these are a phenomenon that is related
to what's called liquefaction, and this happens during every
almost large earthquake. You have strong shaking water
pressure, increases in the sands that you have below the
surface soils until the sand turns into a liquid, and the soil
itself loses its ability to bear weight.
Many of you may remember the earthquake, the 1989 Loma
Prieta Earthquake in San Francisco in which buildings in the
marina district tilted and foundered into the muds. That was
due to this phenomena of liquefaction. And it's a great hazard
in this part of the world as I'll show you in a minute.
This is a little washed out, but it's just supposed to show
a picture of one of these sand blows in a drainage ditch. And I
just want to mention that they're not only a major hazard, but
they've provided a key record of past earthquakes.
In fact, by studying these prehistoric sand blows, we've
been able to show that the 1811-12 earthquakes were not just a
one-time event. We've had similar earthquakes in 1450, 900 AD,
and other ones as well.
And perhaps the most important thing is that not only do
the earthquakes happen repeatedly through time, but each time
we have an earthquake, they appear to be sequences, just like
in 1811 and 12. Not one earthquake and its aftershocks, but
sequences of many earthquakes in a row.
Another problem that we have that drives the high hazard is
that earthquake waves travel much farther in this part of the
country for the same size earthquake like shown here, the New
Madrid Earthquake, as opposed to the similarly-sized 1906 San
Francisco Earthquake. You often have around 20 times the area
of damage in the central and eastern U.S. Than you do in the
west due to the crust of the earth.
But we sort of have a double whammy because we have these
Mississippi Valley sediments shown in the darker color there,
and these Mississippi Valley sediments also amplify the
shaking. So we have two causes for the shaking for the same
size earthquake here to be much greater than it would out west.
USGS research is focusing on understanding all these effects so
they can be mitigated cost effectively.
One thing we're doing is we have the Advanced National
Seismic System which provides realtime ground shaking, and it's
focusing mainly on vulnerable urban areas, about 26 urban
areas, including Memphis and St. Louis. There's about 35 of
these new instruments already in place here.
We're also making urban scale hazard maps. We've completed
a map in Memphis, Tennessee. We have just begun one in St.
Louis, and we're working on another one in Evansville,
Illinois--Evansville, Indiana.
We have community intensity maps where people, when they
feel things from the earthquake, they can go onto the Internet,
describe what they felt. It's very useful to us and makes them
feel a part of the process as well, a very popular Web site.
And, of course, we also do our earthquake notification
systems where we let people know what has happened as it's
happening.
I just--now, this is very washed out, but I think I can
still describe it. This is a scenario intensity map, shaking
map, for just one magnitude 7.7 earthquake on that southernmost
arm on the New Madrid Seismic Zone stretching from southeast
Missouri into Arkansas.
And what this is showing is the amount of shaking you would
expect from that earthquake. And this doesn't include the other
earthquakes that would be expected to follow. And it ranges
from that outer green color is light damage, and the central
color around the fault is heavy damage, significant damage even
to well-built buildings. And you see it covers many, many
States.
For the other earthquakes that would be expected to follow,
that same pattern would exist, but we'd be shifted more towards
the north.
I just want to mention again liquefaction and landslides.
We tend to think of shaking, which is what that picture was
showing, but liquefaction and landslides would be expected to
cause failure of the bluffs, failure of Earth and levees, local
loss of navigation on the rivers, failure of bridge supports
and approaches over a very large region.
Roadways would often be impassable in the low-lying areas
along, for example, I-55, rupture of pipelines and cables
crossing the Mississippi River and other rivers and buried
tanks floating to the surface; many of the same effects that
you had in New Orleans, as a matter of fact.
And these are the kinds of things that would take the--
would cause economic loss, not just to our area but much of the
eastern United States.
What does such a scenario mean in terms of total losses?
Well, this is a map done with FEMA's HAZUS program, with a
little additional information done by the U.S. Geological
Survey. It's a county-by-county estimation of losses.
The lighter green color towards the outside, each of those
counties has about 25 million or less losses. Shelby County,
Memphis, in southwestern Tennessee, there has about $19 billion
in losses just from one earthquake, the southwesternmost arm.
Total losses from one quake is about 70 billion, perhaps as
high as 77 billion. Similar analyses on the other earthquakes
that would be expected to follow also are in the $70 billion
apiece range.
The last slide I want to show you is probabilities of large
earthquakes in the next 50 years. This is important to know. By
looking at the record of prehistoric earthquakes and smaller
earthquakes we have now, and our understanding of how
earthquakes work, we believe that a repeat of what happened in
1811 and '12, magnitude 7.5 to 8, a sequence, is about 10
percent in the next 50 years. And some people might consider
that low. To me that seems actually quite high.
The probability of a magnitude 6 or greater, which could
cause damage over a local area, is between 25 and 50 percent
over the next 50 years.
And I believe that's the last slide I have, so thank you
again, Mr. Chairman and Committee.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much, Doctor.
Next, Mr. Wilkinson, you may proceed.
Mr. Wilkinson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Committee for
taking the time to come to the central U.S. And look at this
issue. My name is Jim Wilkinson, and I'm going to try to cut
this down. I've been told we have 5 minutes instead of 10, so
I'm going to run through this pretty quick and try to leave
time for questions.
First, I want to set the stage for why we're even looking
at planning and preparedness in the central U.S., look at the
regional approaches being taken to address this, and then
finally conclude with some of the things that are being done
here in the central U.S.
First, as stated earlier, we had a very small population in
the central U.S. Back in 1811-1812, and today that's not the
case. We have about 11 million people at risk. Of that 11
million, approximately 7 million fall within the small rural
areas of the central U.S. Most people think of St. Louis and
Memphis as the major areas, and they are as concentrations of
population, but we still have a significant number of people
scattered out throughout our rural smaller areas which needs to
be looked at.
As was pointed out just a moment ago, we have been looking
at potential losses in the central U.S. CUSEC, along with FEMA
and the USGS has done a loss estimation on the region looking
at potential losses from a magnitude 7.7. This is based on a
recommendation from USGS that that would be the magnitude we
ought to use for our planning, and it's not the worst case.
We then did a modified Level I, which means we added some
additional data to the model to give us a more robust view of
the losses. And then we did model each of three segments of the
seismic zone. And as was pointed out, this does not reflect the
cumulative effect of the earthquakes. These are each individual
effects.
There's a lengthy document that goes into all sorts of
statistics about losses. I've just summarized it here looking
at building, transportation, and utility losses. The totals for
each of those three segments of the seismic zone looking at
anywhere from 60--68 billion to 77 billion in losses on each of
those three arms. And, again, this is available on our web
site, and I have a hard copy to leave with you as well.
What's driving these losses is the fact that we do have a
lot of these unreinforced masonry structures, as mentioned
earlier, in the central U.S. We have a high percentage of
buildings that just weren't built for seismic consideration,
and only recently have building codes brought in the seismic
issue. So basically, 1992-3, seismic considerations started
showing up in the building codes. We've got a lot of buildings
out there that just weren't built to resist the effects of
earthquake.
We also haven't had a significant earthquake since 1895. We
have had earthquakes that have caused limited damage throughout
the region, but not on the scale that we expect to see in the
magnitude 6 range, which means, again, we've got a very large
inventory of vulnerable structures out there that are
susceptible to damage.
And there's more pressing issues, unfortunately, that it's
not being focused on the seismic hazards, and this hearing
today is a good step in helping to bring that awareness to the
issue.
So what is being done on the regional approach, regional
hazard here in the central U.S. Is that we've taken a regional
approach to this. Back in 1983, FEMA, along with the seven
states that originally formed CUSEC, sat down and looked at the
complications of dealing with a hazard that did affect all
these States. And there wasn't a mechanism for addressing that,
so we were formed. We're a nonprofit organization that was
established to look at the issue and address the commonalities
that these States share, at the same time to augment the State
earthquake programs of each of those States.
I have a board of directors made up of the seven Emergency
Management Directors of their States; actually, it's eight now.
Alabama was just added. We have nine associate States which
surround those original States serving as a backup to those
States.
The board of directors sets the policy for the
organization, determines the direction we're going, the
priorities for addressing the hazards; and then, day to day, we
have earthquake program managers that carry out the work,
putting on the workshops, activities that go on in each of your
States.
We have a number of associations that are also umbrellaed
under us which are very effective in helping us address the
hazards. Our State Geologic Surveys, our State Transportation
Task Force were all initiatives that were brought on by the
board of directors in looking at this hazard and bringing their
expertise to the table.
We also have four FEMA regions that we fall in, which adds
to that complexity of dealing with this hazard when you have
those overlaps of different jurisdictions and how they
communicate and they interact with each other with these
States.
My organization is very small. We have five staff persons,
myself and one other work in the field, and then the rest are
support. So, you know, it's a challenge there to address the
needs of all those States when you have sort of a small
organization.
Just to give you a graphic view of where we represent, blue
states are the founding states; the light blue are the
associates states; and there are three other consortia that are
supported by FEMA that cover the western part of the U.S., the
northeastern part of the U.S.; and then there's one in the
Seattle area that looks at just the Cascadia region.
So pretty much every State is represented by a consortia.
We enjoy a very strong working relationship with FEMA, and I
think it has worked in the earthquake program and is something
that we look forward to trying to continue.
Just to quickly summarize, we have four basic goals that we
operate under: public awareness, which drives all the other
three; mitigation, multistate planning, and the application of
research. That's our founding goals which we have stuck with.
It gives us a balanced approach to addressing this hazard,
where we're not looking at just one area but all areas.
The States have adopted these same areas for their
earthquake programs. I'm not going to read these to you, but it
gives you some idea in each of those program areas what we are
engaged in in working with the States.
And finally, some of the current activities we're involved
with. This is not a complete list, obviously. We have
earthquake program managers workshop coming up in which all of
your State earthquake program managers are getting together and
looking at the regional State issues. We've got training that's
been going on. We were in Kentucky two weeks ago doing the ATC
20. We've been in Missouri quite a bit here lately, Arkansas,
Kentucky, doing earthquake town hall meetings. Earthquake
awareness week just concluded for these States.
So we're very active, and as you're about to hear, we're
also engaged in catastrophic planning that's about to kick off
with FEMA and the eight States. And we just wrapped up a week
conference in Memphis looking at the Spills of National
Significance exercise which will focus on the hazard and
looking at testing these plans we've been working on currently.
Basically, we can't do this alone. It's a partnership
approach. We have to have your help. We have to have the help
of a private sector, all the State agencies, local and Federal,
to make this work. It's a huge undertaking in addressing this
hazard in the central U.S. The good news is we know what we
need to do. It's prioritizing what we need to do and setting a
course. Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much.
Mr. Pawlowski.
Mr. Pawlowski. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of
the committee. On behalf of the Federal Emergency Management
Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, I would like to
thank you very much for the opportunity to brief you on the
catastrophic disaster readiness program for the New Madrid
Seismic Zone.
My name is Mike Pawlowski. I'm the Instant Response Section
Chief within the operations branch of the response division of
FEMA.
We have a significant concern that there is a potential for
a catastrophic earthquake, equivalent to those in the 1800's,
centered on the New Madrid zone. I would like to begin by
stating that DHS/FEMA has taken the lead on the Catastrophic
Disaster Readiness Program for the New Madrid Seismic Zone.
This project is a cooperative multiFederal agency,
multiState and local government, private sector and tribal
nation effort that incorporates examination of the effects on
the critical infrastructure.
This is a large-scale project involving the synchronization
of efforts of a number of entities and their activities. FEMA's
goal is to apply the results of the Catastrophic Disaster
Readiness Program for the New Madrid Seismic Zone to earthquake
planning efforts in other parts of the country.
The response division at FEMA is addressing and
coordinating interagency and intergovernmental efforts in such
areas as command and control, search and rescue, evacuation,
emergency sheltering, hosting, transportation, address special
needs populations, temporary medical control--medical care,
access control, and reentry to impacted areas, commodity
prestaging and distribution, donations and volunteer
management, and working on other identified regional, State,
local, or tribal nation concerns.
FEMA's Recovery Division is developing guidelines that
would be used to assist host communities in planning for
accommodating large numbers of the evacuees, mass care,
temporary housing, and other long-term issues.
Obviously, in developing those guidelines, we will apply
the lessons that we have learned over the last year from
Hurricane Katrina and looking at the 125 recommendations made
by the White House yesterday.
Our approach and assumption for this readiness effort is
focused on a no-notice event, an earthquake, but the results of
this initiative can also be applied to a no-notice terrorism
event.
Our planning venues will present a wide range of
intelligence sharing, commodity prestaging, resource
deployment, special needs evacuation, transportation and
routing, and address the critical infrastructure.
I'd like to point out that this would be a cooperative
business, industry, and government partnership with many
players involved from the Federal, State, local, tribal nation,
and the private sector.
We recognize that there have already been some individual
initiatives that have taken--that have been involved in doing
prior planning in the New Madrid zone. For example, CUSEC has
been involved in prior planning, the Spills of National
Significance 2007 exercise is now ongoing as a cooperative
interagency effort with FEMA, the U.S. Coast Guard.
The National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center
will be involved in this project as well as the Environmental
Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Defense NORTHCOM,
Fifth Army North, and the American Petroleum Institute.
Other partners, such as the Department of Homeland Security
Preparedness Directorate, are also going to be involved as we
move forward. To assure overall coordination of the
Catastrophic Readiness Program, an interagency,
intergovernmental steering committee will be formed and is
expected to be in place by late February.
A project of this magnitude requires synchronization of
activities across government, across regions, across State and
local government and tribal nations.
Our requirements to manage this project is to establish a
Web portal for maintaining all the active in-process planning
and information sharing. We will utilize the Homeland Security
Information Network to accomplish this. The uniqueness of the
New Madrid Seismic Zone poses many challenges for the
Catastrophic Disaster Readiness Project.
We initially started coordinating this project with the
States at a CUSEC, at the Central United States Earthquake
Consortium meeting in December of last year in Gatlinburg,
Tennessee. We have initiated planning with our regional
interagency steering committee in February of this year. The
project, as you know, involves eight States, four regions. A
lot of synchronization, a lot of coordination will be required.
Our planning will examine extreme weather conditions such
as flooding, snow and ice that could exacerbate the problems of
the affected population. There is a variety of potential
economic impacts from an event in the New Madrid Seismic Zone
that require a strong business, industry, and government
partnership which includes the critical infrastructure.
We know there is a historic precedent for such an event. If
you were to analyze just a 10-day disruption of the local
economies of the areas structurally damaged by a 1985--by an
1895 earthquake, due to the fallen power lines alone, the
impact would be $50 billion but would not be centered
specifically in the New Madrid region. Two thousand--two-thirds
of that impact would affect the infrastructure across the
country. Commodity flows, pipeline, rail, highways, barges
would be significantly affected.
How do we go--how do we expect to go about on this project?
We have already coordinated with the States and CUSEC with a
strategy to initiate a series of workshops within the area to
do the planning that's required.
We expect to conduct workshops in two urban areas and one
rural area. The two rural urban areas identified would be St.
Louis and Memphis. The rural area would be Cairo, Illinois;
Wickliffe, Kentucky; and Charleston, Missouri.
Potential impacts to be addressed at these workshops
include command and control, saving lives, search and rescue,
temporary medical care, access control reentry, business,
industry, and government partnerships, private sector
coordination, and the critical infrastructure.
We will conduct an overall assessment of the earthquake
impact in the area, and we will address the social
vulnerability, identify the social and economic consequences of
both the short-term and long-term effect on the impacted area.
We have established a schedule for completing this
Catastrophic Disaster Readiness Project. In the first quarter
fiscal year 2006, we already established initial coordination
on this project. By the end of this quarter, we will have
established our steering committee, and by the third quarter of
2006, we will have established the workshop design team and
specific scenarios and objectives to be accomplished in each of
the workshops. In the fourth quarter of 2006, we will conduct
preworkshop meetings and initiate functional workshops at the
city level.
We will expect to have a complete regionwide coordinated
response plan that integrates the effects of all the regions,
States, all the Federal agencies to be in place by fiscal year
2007.
We will participate with the Spills of National
Significance Exercise as part of this effort to assure that we
have strong coordination among all the partners in this effort,
and we will be able to address any other areas for improvement
that may be identified as a result of conducting this exercise.
I will be glad to entertain questions at this point.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much, Mr. Pawlowski.
I'm going to recognize Mr. Carnahan first for questions,
since he has to depart. Mr. Carnahan.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the
panel. I have really two brief questions. The first I want to
ask, and I'll ask of the panel. I understand there's a historic
cycle of how these earthquakes have happened in this region of
the country, but can you talk to us a little bit about the
science, the current science of monitoring and prediction of
these cycles and what the better monitoring has done in terms
of activity that might signal a quake coming?
Mr. Schweig. Yeah. The U.S. Geological Survey working with
various universities in the region, particularly St. Louis
University and the University of Memphis have been supporting a
seismic network in this region for quite a few years, actually,
since the '70's, and that network has done a number of things
for us.
First of all, it helps us locate much more exactly where
the earthquakes have occurred and are likely to occur. We
couldn't even see this pattern of earthquakes until the
instruments were in.
The other thing, and I think this is one of the most
critical things for preparedness and response, these
instruments that we have in the ground are--they allow us, when
we have a moderate earthquake in the region, they allow us to
understand how buildings will shake in the case of a large
earthquake.
So without these instruments, we would not have the ability
to appropriately build buildings in the region, cost
effectively build buildings in the region to withstand larger
earthquakes.
Now, we're not using--although we'd all love to be able to
predict earthquakes, that's not what we're generally using
those instruments for. We're using the instruments to assess
the hazard so that we can cost effectively prepare for
earthquakes.
We consider right now, forecasting the likelihood of
earthquakes and what they're likely to do, a much better use of
funds than actually trying to predict them, although, of
course, there's always background research going on, and we'd
all love to be able to predict earthquakes.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you. The other question I have is to
the extent that you have worked with architects, engineers, and
scientists and groups like the Transportation Infrastructure
Security Partnership in developing industry standards for new
buildings or retrofitting buildings and the type of incentives
that could be put in place to help those be implemented in a
better way.
Mr. Wilkinson. Well, we do work very closely with local and
State building code officials in trying to get the improvement
of the building codes. It's a very difficult situation because
you're going--in this area, as I pointed out, we didn't have
seismic codes until the early '90's. And, so, when you're going
from something that's nothing to something, you've ultimately
got cost issues involved with that.
The Memphis Shelby County area right now is dealing with
that very issue, western Kentucky. So what we're trying to do
is to generate these improvements in the codes so that we are
reducing our vulnerability but at the same time trying to
factor in the economic aspects of community development in the
region and at the city and county levels so that, you know,
we're not going backwards.
We're improving the situation but still helping the
community be healthy economically as we address those very key
issues about the cost of this because, as was pointed out in
the science part of this presentation, there are some
comparable measures to the California threat.
And whether or not our code should reflect a comparable
code to what California is under or not is a debate that's
going on right now. And we work very closely to try to address
both sides of that issue because, you know, from a preparedness
side, which I represent, you know, obviously, we're looking for
the strongest, safest buildings we could have, but at the same
time you've got to factor in the economics of all this.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Carnahan. Thanks for having us
here today, and also we look forward to working with you on
that situation you have out here in Missouri, and we'll be in
touch. Thank you for coming.
I'd like to also now recognize Mrs. Emerson.
Mrs. Emerson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I've got several
questions, but Dr. Schweig, just let me ask you one question.
It's a science question, too, just to follow up.
When you talk about the tendency for seismic events to
occur in sequences, how does that--I mean, just because I don't
understand it very well--how does this tendency complicate
potential response and relief efforts in the region? And then a
scientific question is, are those sequences likely to occur
along the same epicenter?
Mr. Schweig. Maybe I'll answer the latter part first
because it's a science question. The--we're not really sure
about whether they tend to always happen along the same parts
of the New Madrid Seismic Zone, but the science seems to
suggest they do.
By looking at the pattern of these prehistoric sand blows,
we actually can see that they seem to line up in clusters in
1450 and 900 AD that are almost identical to what we see from
1811 and '12. That would suggest that these three arms of the
seismic zone, that we really didn't have time to talk about,
probably each go off, maybe not in the same order. We really
can't tell that. But they each seem to go off each time.
And maybe Jim might better address the issue of response,
but the things that are obvious to me are that if you know or
if you strongly suspect that additional large events are going
to be happening over the next days to weeks, that's going to
strongly affect the kinds of structures that you're going to
put people into, where you want to take them, where you want to
evacuate them to, etc. I don't know if you have anything
additional to say about that.
Mrs. Emerson. OK.
Dr. Pawlowski, one of the shortcomings of Hurricane Pam was
that the workshops had not been translated into operational
procedures. How are you all going to make sure the planning
translates into increased readiness and capabilities this time
around.
Mr. Pawlowski. Well, our objective is to review all the
State plans, all the local plans to make sure there is
synchronization across the board. We will have the opportunity
to exercise them.
We will make sure that that, that those plans are
coordinated with not only the local communities, the State
communities, regionwide amongst the Federal agencies who would
have a role to play, and all the external Federal agencies that
would come out--come in providing assistance.
The procedures will have to be exercised, and through those
exercises, we will be able to identify what are the strengths
and what are the areas that need to be improved upon.
And we will use the reports that have been--the after-
action reports from Katrina to guide us in making sure that we
bring the best of the recommendations to help us in that
matter.
Mrs. Emerson. Will this have been the first earthquake
exercise that FEMA has ever been involved in.
Mr. Pawlowski. We've done catastrophic--we had an
earthquake that was called Catastrophic 97, I believe, which we
were involved in. But this is a significantly larger effort
because you're talking about an effort that's going to involve
the eight States, the four regions coordinating, and also the
other Federal agencies from the top down.
Mrs. Emerson. OK. I do have a follow-up question to that
that I want to ask. Is that all right, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Shuster. Sure.
Mrs. Emerson. And then I'm going to ask our State director
the question as well. In preparing for these exercises and for
the workshops, are you going to be requiring, if you will,
major assessments, to have major assessments done of where you
might place emergency equipment, and, like, you talked about
commodity prestaging and that sort of thing, in areas that can
withstand and/or in structures that can withstand, let's say, a
Level 7 earthquake? You know, how do you determine all of that?
Mr. Pawlowski. That's part of the planning that we will be
doing.
Mrs. Emerson. OK.
Mr. Pawlowski. But we will also be looking at
transportation requirements. If the infrastructure is
disrupted--this week we met with a special transportation
working group that's looking at the roadways through the
system. We will be addressing the airports.
If you have roadways and you have bridges, which ones have
been seismic--have been taken--have taken the seismic design
into account so that they will be able to survive and provide
you support for flowing commodities into and out of the region.
Mrs. Emerson. OK. But just for an example, say I've got--
I'm in a small town. Let's say I'm in Sikeston, Missouri, for
example. That's a little north of where Charleston and where
you're going to have one of the workshops. What happens if, you
know, my public safety department, which is police and fire,
and they have a brick building or a cinder block building in
which all of, you know, all of our emergency, our ambulances
and all of our emergency response vehicles are housed, are you
going to be--are you going down to that detail in these
assessments so that we would know that that is not a good
prestaging area, for example, if it's in a cinder block
building because we wouldn't be able to get at those emergency
vehicles to get people out of their homes, etc.?
Mr. Pawlowski. That would be our objective because we want
to make sure that we have command and control and continuity of
government, continuity of services.
Mrs. Emerson. Right. So you will know down to the last
building which, you know, which can or cannot be prepositioned
with equipment or commodities or the like. Is that correct.
Mr. Pawlowski. Our objective is to make sure we have
communication with every community. Part of our problems with
Katrina was losing communications capabilities and having a
command and control infrastructure.
So our objective is to make sure when we look down to the
lowest level as a result of this comprehensive planning effort
that we do have a capability to communicate; that there is
command and control down at the local level; that there is a
facility that, either the facility there or some alternate
facility, that local government can operate from.
Mrs. Emerson. OK. I wasn't specifically talking about
communications. I was talking about prestaging, whether it's
water, commodities, whether it's ambulances, school buses,
whatever you're going to do to get people out. You will be
assessing those buildings, and that's the infrastructure, if
you will, of where they would be housed.
Mr. Pawlowski. Yes. In terms of temporary sheltering of
population and commodities that you're addressing.
Mrs. Emerson. And equipment to get people out and the
ambulances and the like. So we will know all of that down to
the local----
Mr. Pawlowski. That is our objective.
Mrs. Emerson. OK. I want to come back and ask a follow-up
question. How are you going to make certain that all happens,
and, you know, what is the accountability requirement that you
will demand? Jim, do you want to answer that.
Mr. Wilkinson. Well, I'd like to add to that. On the
mitigation side, which is a requirement at the State and local
level, they are identifying those vulnerable areas in all those
communities and, a part of the mitigation plan, to reduce that
risk.
So there is a planning effort in all the communities to
look at those structures and determine which ones are
vulnerable so that mitigation dollars can come in to strengthen
those buildings that may be vulnerable. So that detailed look
is taking place, but it's on the mitigation side, not on the
response preparedness side.
I guess the objective here is to make sure that mitigation
and preparedness are talking and making sure the planning
efforts are coming together like they should be, but that is
happening through the mitigation directors.
Mrs. Emerson. I don't think I'm articulating my question
very well. Forgive me. I guess when you prestage emergency
response, whether it's food, whether it's ambulances, whether
it's buses to move people, whatever, is, obviously--well, I
would hope that you take into consideration the place where you
stage is not a vulnerable place, if you will. That's what I'm
trying to say.
But, I guess, is there going to be one agency designated
that is going to know all of this information, one data base of
information so that everybody can talk to each other, or are we
going to have split responsibilities in such a way that we
can't have--can't know all of the things that we need to know
to do in just one simple database?
Mr. Wilkinson. Well, I can tell you for the State of
Tennessee, and I think in talking with Director Reynolds last
night about Missouri, they are looking at specific sites to
predeploy and store resources.
In Tennessee's case, they're looking as forward as they can
get to the area before they start getting into the areas
suspected to be impacted. So they are looking at, I guess what
you're getting at, is a site in which things are predeployed,
stationed, and ready to go in the event we have an earthquake.
Again, I can't speak for the other States at this point, but I
do know those two States are looking into that.
Mrs. Emerson. Thanks. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Pawlowski. I'd like to add to that by stating this is a
cooperative local, State, and Federal effort. There will be
local prestaging, State prestaging. The State will do its own
planning in terms of what it needs to do, and we will be
looking at what would be the requirement to support the State
in that effort. So it has to be a coordinated look at sharing
information, databases for logistical support.
Our objective is to get down to the detail. It's dependent
upon how close we work with the States, and our objective is to
work very closely to make sure that there is that connection
from the bottom up.
Mrs. Emerson. OK.
Mr. Pawlowski. And we will be using the Homeland Security
Information Network as the central portal where everybody will
have access to the information, the plans, the locations for
logistical support, prestaging of supplies and equipment.
It will be a significant coordination effort to make sure
that that is managed properly, and we decided the best way to
do that is using the Department of Homeland Security
Information--Homeland Security Information Network portal set
up for catastrophic disaster planning.
Mrs. Emerson. So everybody will know the same thing.
Mr. Pawlowski. Correct.
Mrs. Emerson. Have you all determined yet whether, if there
is a--is there a minimal or a maximum level? For example, if we
have a 7.5 on the Richter scale earthquake, would that
automatically prompt military involvement? Are we going to, you
know, decide that because I noticed that, you know, yesterday
Ms. Townsend said that, in response to Hurricane Katrina at
certain levels we may have to have DOD take responsibility.
Have you all made any kind of determinations with regard to
that.
Mr. Pawlowski. We are doing joint planning with NORTHCOM.
NORTHCOM is a partner to this effort. They're participating in
SONS '07. This bill is of National Significance, the '07
exercise, so this is a cooperative effort.
We will be looking now as we review the historical basis
for--we will be coming up with different scenarios that need to
be looked at from the standpoint of planning, reviewing the
State plans, the local plans, the national response plans, what
the responsibilities are of the Federal agencies, and how we
would provide coordinated assistance in this effort. There is
going to be an involvement in the military, yes.
Mrs. Emerson. But it may well be after you've done all
these that you would decide that, let's say we have a 7.5 or 8
Richter scale earthquake, that we might just call in the
military immediately. I mean, is that a possible scenario? I'm
not saying that is. Is that something you all would consider if
everything else is, you know----
Mr. Pawlowski. The Governor is responsible for his or her
State, and if the local community determines by a request that
they need assistance, they go to the State, and then the State,
through the Governor, would determine what type of assistance
the Governor wants to bring in under a Presidential disaster
declaration.
Mrs. Emerson. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you. And my question, I think, follows
up to Ms. Emerson's. I think you get an answer to what her
question is if you held the exercise that she's requested. We
had a Hurricane Pam exercise. We pretty much knew in New
Orleans what was going to happen and probably what would be
needed. We didn't learn the lesson from that exercise.
So my question is, she's requested an exercise here in the
New Madrid region. What's the status of her request? Are we
moving forward with doing an exercise? How far away are we from
doing something?
Mr. Pawlowski. Currently, we're coordinating, all the
planning that we're doing will lead up to the Spills of
National Significance exercise, but----
Mr. Shuster. When will that be, approximately?
Mr. Pawlowski. That's in 2007, June of 2007. But in the
meantime, we will be looking at all the individual plans. We've
just initiated this effort.
Mr. Shuster. Right. Exactly. But I think that gets to the
core of what she's asking. If you have that exercise, you're
going to be able to see that, "Oh, my goodness the State is
going to be--not going to be overwhelmed where it's going to
take a DOD response. It's going to take, you know, just other
States coming in." Go ahead, Mr. Wilkinson.
Mr. Wilkinson. We are engaged in exercises on a smaller
scale between now and '07 because each of these various work
groups are looking at different parts, whether it's
transportation, sheltering, evacuation, and testing that in a
small way leading up to this monumental exercise which will
involve, you know, all these four regions, the States, Federal
Government.
So, you know, there's a big undertaking to pull something
like that together. But that's not to say that other things
aren't going on between now and then.
Mr. Shuster. Right. Yesterday in Los Angeles, Dr. Jones
from the USGS said that a major earthquake in the Los Angeles,
southern California, would cut off people's ability to drive
out of that area unlike in North Ridge, I guess, when the
earthquake was in '93 or '94. People drove 5 minutes, 10
minutes, and they could get water and things they needed. But
southern California, it would be completely cut off, so you'd
have millions of people trapped there.
A significant earthquake in this region, what would the
scenario be? Would you cut people off from getting out, or
would they be able to get out of the regions?
Mr. Schweig. I think it's still necessary to do some more
assessments on that. But I think even right now we know that
some areas will be cut off. There are only a couple of the
bridges crossing the Mississippi River. The highway bridges are
prepared for the large catastrophic earthquake we're talking
about. I believe most of the railroad bridges are not.
And then there's a problem. We were looking at a study a
couple of weeks ago here that many bridges have been built
that, smaller bridges with overpasses, built to modern
standards and may themselves survive; but the approaches to
those bridges may not survive. So they'll stand up, but you
won't be able to get to them.
So I think that's a major issue in this part of the country
that needs to be assessed further.
Mr. Shuster. In southern California, the San Andreas fault,
virtually every highway, pipeline, rail line goes across it. So
if you get the big one out there, there's only one way out, and
that's north of Los Angeles.
The scenario here would be, I saw you have different sort
of regions, different scenarios that would seem to me, and this
is a question, but it would seem to me that you're not going to
be cut off as you would in southern California. Is that----
Mr. Schweig. Well, I think there's a good chance that you
would be cut off in the sense that, at least in isolated
communities, and I'm not saying anything about how big those
communities are. But it's certainly possible that approaches in
all directions to certain communities could be down. You can
think of communities, you know, in southern Illinois that have
the Ohio River on one side and the Mississippi on the other and
then just one access out after that.
There's a lot of situations like that throughout the region
that are somewhat analogous to what you have in Los Angeles.
Mr. Shuster. Do you have an estimate of how many people you
might have to support for three weeks in the region?
Mr. Schweig. I don't, no.
Mr. Shuster. Anybody? Mr. Wilkinson, you talked about
public awareness, and I think that that was a problem in
Katrina. A lot of people didn't heed the warnings. They said,
"Oh, we've been through this before. It's not that bad."
What do you think public awareness is concerning the New
Madrid fault line and the potential? Are people educated? Are
they well aware of it, or is it still a long ways to go?
Mr. Wilkinson. Well, I think they're anecdotally where, you
know, the 1811-1812, they talk about the river running
backwards and some of the things that are, you know, sort of
grandiose. But as far as the details and expectations of what
would happen, I don't think they're aware as what they need to
be.
We've been holding these earthquake town hall meetings, and
we try to get a sense of the concerns that communities have
with respect to earthquakes, and it's clear that more needs to
be done you know, from our elected officials all the way down
in understanding what we're up against.
You know, we've got an active program with our--we have a
working group with our public information officers to help get
information out to our schools, to our communities, working
through our State earthquake program managers.
It's--as I mentioned in my presentation, we have these four
goal areas that drive my organization. My board of Directors
made public outreach and education our number one goal because
that's really what's going to help improve loss reduction and
preparedness if we really understand what we're up against.
Mr. Shuster. Is the media engaged, local media here, do you
think?
Mr. Wilkinson. You know, I hate to say it, but hazards
compete with each other, and the earthquake program nationally,
as well as in the region, has not been a priority. It's been
low. After Katrina, I had media that I've never seen before
showing up on my doorstep right there in the Memphis area where
I'm headquartered saying, "Well, we didn't even know you were
here." I was thankful they found us. They seeked us out.
So there's a switch. There's a lot more focus happening and
sort of perpetuating itself. I'm seeing a lot more interest
from all sectors of society.
Mr. Shuster. Mr. Pawlowski, from FEMA's viewpoint, I think
that New Orleans was the number one fear we had at FEMA on the
national level in the Category 5, 4-5 hurricane, would
overflow, that the levees wouldn't hold and would flood the
city. Where does the New Madrid sort of fall on that scale of
priorities, if you will?
Mr. Pawlowski. New Madrid is at the top right now that
we're concentrating our Catastrophic Disaster Readiness Program
on New Madrid. That is our primary objective. We have concerns
because of the fact of expectations. How fast can we provide
assistance to meet the lifesaving requirements and property
saving requirements for the public?
Realistically, an event such as New Madrid, you are going
to have areas that are isolated, to address your concern. And
how fast can we get in based upon the critical infrastructure
being immobilized to move, to take care of special needs,
medical evacuation, temporary housing and shelter of the people
in the area until we can provide additional assistance?
It's going to be a monumental challenge. That's why we are
working at it on a coordinated basis to bring as many partners
together to address this, not just the government, but the
private sector as well as local government, State government,
and the Federal Government in a partnership.
Mr. Shuster. One last question. The Mississippi River. If
we have a, say, 7.7, 8 earthquake. The Mississippi is important
to the national economy. Is there going to be a period of time
that you're not going to be able to navigate on the
Mississippi, and how long do your models predict that to be?
Mr. Wilkinson. Well, I can answer part of that, and then
Buddy Schweig can answer the rest of it. You know, as he
pointed out, a lot of the bridges and infrastructure that cross
the river weren't built for seismic. They're going to most
likely be in the river.
Landsliding issues putting a lot of debris, trees,
vegetation into the river, that's going to cause it to be
unnavigable.
Charleston, Missouri; Wickliffe, Kentucky; and Cairo that
we're looking at in the rural area, that was picked for two
reasons. One, because they're rural, they have unique
situations that need to be looked at in dealing with rural
communities.
Secondly, it's the crossroads of the Ohio and the
Mississippi Rivers. You've got major interstate systems going
through there. We've got rail, industry. Everything that could
go wrong as far as infrastructure is right there. So we're
really trying to get a sense of what that impact would be
because, from the commerce point of view, every day is millions
of dollars lost, whether you're talking about the trucking,
waterway, air.
And trying to reroute traffic or, in the case of river
traffic, you don't reroute it. It's stuck. What can we do to
address that? I mean, we don't expect things to move for some
time because you don't just pick a bridge up out of the river.
So it could be, you know, months, years.
Mr. Shuster. And is it debris is going to be the main
reason? I saw some of the those photographs where the banks
spill over, and so you've only got very shallow water. Is that
part of the problem?
Mr. Wilkinson. Debris is part of it, including bridges and
infrastructure, pipelines that are in there. A big part of the
exercise in '07 is looking at Spills of National Significance,
and we've got major pipelines carrying oil and gas under the
rivers. You know, there's no reason to think that if we rupture
those that, literally, the rivers could be on fire.
So, you know, how we deal with those sorts of things are
being folded into the scenario in the catastrophic planning and
in trying to get a better picture of how we address this.
Mrs. Emerson. Mr. Chairman, may I also respond to you if I
could? And I do want to say that the bridge between Charleston,
Wickliffe, that area would not be--would be gone. It's probably
gone now, but we can't afford any new bridges across the
Mississippi at least right now, I guess.
But just so you know, we have I70, I57, I40 that, in that
whole area of very, very major highways. We have one
seismically-designed bridge between St. Louis and Memphis.
That's our new Bill Emerson bridge in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
And, you know, obviously, a real question is what other
kind of bridge would handle a 7 event other than the Emerson
bridge, which we know will.
We also have six major pipelines from Houston and the gulf
coast carrying fuel to the entire Midwest. River transportation
would, I would assume, and I think you all could probably
attest to this, that river transportation would be disrupted
for weeks if not months because the bridges are going to be
down. You've got to haul the bridges out. Obviously, you've got
your river banks falling.
I mean, we had river barges--well, we had the barge
industry and transportation up the Mississippi, or down the
Mississippi for us, from New Orleans totally disrupted for
several days after Hurricane Katrina, which had a huge impact
negative ripple effect on our agricultural commodities, I mean,
our agricultural economy because we couldn't send our recently
harvested corn and other grains down the river. And, you know,
just think of that was just, I mean, 5 to 8 days.
So I guess I just want to be certain that our study
exercise is going to take all of this stuff into account. And,
you know, the Missouri River, the Mississippi River, I mean,
it's just really very critical to the economy of our region,
and, really, of the whole country.
Mr. Pawlowski. We're going to be looking at different
scenarios, and we are going to be looking at the total
infrastructure, as I said. And the points that you brought out
are some of the, one of many points that we will be looking at
and different concerns because whatever happens here will not
only have an impact here, it will affect the whole nation. And
that is our concern. That is why this is a priority planning
event for us.
Mrs. Emerson. Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you three gentlemen for appearing before
us today. You certainly have shed light on the situation, and
we need to make sure that we're--and I have been and need to
urge other members of Congress to get out and talk to the folks
in the regions around the country to learn about the various
disasters that could occur.
Prior to my chairmanship of this committee, I didn't
realize there was such a thing as the New Madrid fault line and
the seriousness of it. So it's something that we need to--
obviously, public awareness here is critical, but across the
Nation.
So, again, thank you very much. The committee now calls
before it the second panel for today's hearing, which is
comprised of two officials. We'll take just a short, probably
less than five-minute break so you guys get situated. So the
committee stands in recess.
[Recess.]
Mr. Shuster. Committee will come to order. We'll have our
second panel now today. Today joining us is Colonel Ron
Reynolds, Director of the Missouri State Emergency Management
Agency, and Mr. William Burke, Director of Illinois Emergency
Management Agency and Chairman of the Central United States
Earthquake Consortium.
Since your written testimony has been made part of the
record, the subcommittee will request that all witnesses limit
their oral testimony to 5 minutes. There will be time for
questions after you have given your prepared remarks.
TESTIMONY OF RONALD REYNOLDS, DIRECTOR, MISSOURI STATE
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY; AND WILLIAM C. BURKE, DIRECTOR,
ILLINOIS EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY
Mr. Shuster. I want to start off, probably the way I'll end
up today is stressing the importance of having folks like you
come before your Members of Congress, whether they're Senate or
the House, to educate them on your needs.
Right now in Washington there's going to be a great debate,
and it looks like the administration, the White House, and the
Capitol are going to be different sides of the issue as to
where we go after Katrina with FEMA and DHS. And it's
absolutely critical that State and local voice is heard in
Washington, and you need to engage your Members of Congress. If
you don't, if something comes out of it that you're not pleased
with, if you're not engaged, you can only blame yourselves
because I think that as we move forward, you're the largest end
user customer of FEMA, and we need to hear from you. And I have
some concern that the States are not being heard as they should
be as we go through this debate.
So, again, I'll encourage you to talk to your Senators,
your Congressmen, Congresswomen around, around your States to
educate them because Members of Congress, there are--the way
Congress is set up, we sort of become knowledgeable in
different areas. There are not many members of Congress that
understand emergency management.
And prior to me becoming Chairman of the subcommittee, I
had little knowledge, so I've learned a lot. But I've learned
it from the folks that are out in field, the first responders
at the local level and the State emergency management people.
So if I'm going on and on about this, it's that important
that you two gentleman understand that as we go forward.
So first, Colonel Reynolds, would you proceed?
Mr. Reynolds. Can I defer to my colleague from Illinois?
Mr. Shuster. Sure. Absolutely. Is it Burke or Burke?
Mr. Burke. It's Burke.
Mr. Shuster. Burke, OK. All right, Mr. Burke.
Mr. Burke. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the
Committee. It's really my pleasure to come before you and talk
about emergency management in Illinois and especially about the
subject of the New Madrid earthquake fault. Maybe in questions,
but perhaps in my remarks, also, I'll make some comments about
the issue of DHS/FEMA, not from the standpoint of FEMA being
standalone or should it be in DHS, but the importance that,
that based on its missions, of course, that it has the proper
structure and also the proper interoperability with the whole
overall DHS structure, and that includes the military since
there was mention of the military stepping in.
Before I get into kind of how we're approaching things in
Illinois, I guess I'll continue down that track that the
military is a great organization. I, too, am a retired Colonel,
lieutenant Colonel in the military, but I, for one, would tell
you that, unless there is the proper structures in place at the
local and State level, that the military can't come in and
start from zero and be a rescuer.
The military needs to be considered a resource that's
available at the Federal level just like any other resource
that's available and come in and become part of the unified
command structure within the State and understand what has
occurred and what are the priorities that the State wants to
address and utilize their resource and expertise within that
framework.
And in order to do that, they have to be an integral part
of the unified command at the Federal level, whether that
unified command is within the Homeland Security operations
center or one of the other centers.
But I think one of the things that the members of Congress
and the Senate need to be impressing upon DHS and the whole
Federal structure is that, while their specific expertise can
emanate from a particular operation center, that there has to
be liaisons or the decision-makers in one central location so
that the information that is being synthesized and the
operational and logistic needs that they're going to be
meeting, they're being met from a standpoint of, you know,
informed knowledge; and that people are not trying to second-
guess, and they understand what are the barriers or the
problems that might occur based on what some other agency that
has to assist them in that process and the coordination and
also the linkage down to the States on what's going to occur.
I'll move on. In Illinois, we're taking the issue of
earthquake preparedness very serious. While we, like many
States, have a all-hazard approach, we have decided that
earthquake has some unique aspects, and so I do have an
earthquake preparedness officer that's working specifically
with the, about 37 counties in southern Illinois on the issue
of earthquake and looking at things like communication,
transportation issue, and mass care.
Fortunately for us in Illinois, kind of how we're
structured is emergency management is not just my agency. We
have a system, is the way I try to describe it, and it
includes, you could say it's our Homeland Security System or
you could say it's our emergency management system. Because we
feel that we are getting two for one.
While we have utilized the Homeland Security dollars within
the guidelines established by DHS, what we have done is create
a capability around a strategy for the State of Illinois.
And since we have the city of Chicago, and that being a
prime focal point for terrorism, what we've done is we have
created a capability that what the city of Chicago has, in a
smaller basis, that same capability is available in any locale
within the State of Illinois.
We created 19 regions where--and we created, excuse me, not
only interoperability, but mutual aid across all the First
Responder disciplines. We have mutual aid with about 40,000
firemen, all the fire departments. We have mutual aid with
about 30,000 law enforcement. We have all the public health
agencies in the State with a mutual aid agreement, and we have
all of the certified emergency management organizations in a
mutual aid agreement. And then we have an independent Illinois
Medical Emergency Response System, 1,200 doctors and nurses
that are available.
When we declare a State disaster, while they have
agreements, community, that are outside of the State, if we
declare a State disaster, all these assets, if we ask for them,
become a State asset to help us address a disaster.
We know it works. We sent 900 firemen and 105 pieces of
equipment to Louisiana, 300 police officers. Fifty of our
medical emergency people ran a field hospital in the Maravich
Center and treated five, six thousand people. And that same
system is what we would utilize within Illinois.
We have--because communication is so important, we have
communication, mobile communication equipment that's satellite
capable but would also allow for temporary cell phone and data
transmission that we're putting in 13 different locations
around the State, and then also 10 command vehicles to help us
have command and control.
Next month I'm having my earthquake planner. We had an
earthquake conference last year, and we had, in 2003 with
NORTHCOM, an earthquake tabletop. But next month in my Region 8
in southern Illinois, on March 2nd and 3rd, we're going to do
an earthquake conference; and then in Region 11 on the 7th and
8th of March; and Region 9, the 15th and 16th of March. And the
issues that we're going over is transportation, mass care, and
evacuation.
Since Katrina we're seriously looking at being able to
establish sites, preidentified sites around the State, and
especially in the earthquake area, but all around the State
that we would use for mass shelter and mass care, plus also
trying to identify sites for prestaging of equipment.
And the final thing I'll say, and then I'll be open to your
questions. They mentioned about trying to identify what are
some of the damages that would occur if we had an earthquake.
We are working with the Mid America Earthquake Center, which is
headquartered in the University of Illinois, but it's made up
of about 12 universities from around the country that are
working on various aspects of earthquake.
And they've developed an information model that also is
compatible with hazards. And what I'm having them do in
Illinois is do a risk assessment model for me where they're
going to also add in the GIS data for local communities, and
based on a certain seismic event, tell me what kind of damage I
should expect in that community in terms of damage to the
infrastructure.
But because they also are doing sociological and economic
impact studies, provide data that would allow us to be able to
interact with the local community and really tell them what
they should expect. And this, we believe, will allow
communities----
You know, it's more than about having a plan. It's about is
your plan realistic? And, you know, that's even before you get
into exercising and things of that nature. And, you know, does
the resources necessary to implement that plan, do they marry
up?
And so we feel that this will allow us to really more
seriously get the attention of local communities, but also
provide us data where we can start to work with private
businesses about their emergency plans and what the impact
potentially of an event might be and get away from is it going
to be 50 years from now or 10 years from now? But we can then
systematically, based on funding and other priorities, start to
work toward building, you know, capabilities to mitigate
against that event.
Subject to your questions, that's all I have right at the
moment.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Burke.
Mr. Reynolds.
Mr. Reynolds. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for
allowing me to come here today, and the members. It gives us an
opportunity to let you know where we stand and the direction
we'd like to go.
Missouri State Emergency Management Operation Plan was
developed in accordance with the FEMA State and local
guidelines of 1996. It was in an all-hazards. We followed the
National Incident Management System, NIMS, and the National
Response Plan. During a catastrophic event, our incident
commander would be our governor.
After Katrina, we took a look at our all-hazard plan, and
we realized that, as far as the earthquake portion of the
catastrophic event, we needed to take and make some changes. So
what we did, we developed some working groups to look at
several different areas, and I'll go over those. Direction and
control, mass care and sheltering, critical sources and
logistics, evacuations, health and medical, interoperability
communication, hazardous material, donation management, and law
enforcement, and special need population.
On those working groups, our subject met experts from the
Federal level, State and local and nongovernmental
representatives. Our volunteer organizations are very much
involved on our working groups. What we're looking at is those
things that need an immediate change, those things that we will
exercise leading up to the SONS exercise.
One of the things that we're doing, also, is going around
and trying to get input from the local jurisdiction. There's
about 47 counties in the State. A little over less than half of
our State could be impacted by a New Madrid 7.7 earthquake.
We've been able to get information, the desires, concerns, and
let them know the planning procedures that the State is
planning.
We're also working very closely with our bordering States
to the west. We feel very strongly that's where most of our
support would come from, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. So that's
what we're looking at as far as prestaging things. Some of the
things and evacuations may be evacuated all the way to Iowa,
Kansas, so we are working and talking to those States about,
you know, sheltering needs that we would have.
Earthquake, it's not like a hurricane. You know, you have
no notice. It just happens. What we're looking at now is an
automatic respond concept. It was something our National Guard
had in their plan where, if it's a 6.4 or higher, we
automatically, whether we get a phone call, once we know that's
what it is, we are supposed to report to our EOC, stand that
up, and we start coordinating with the local, and we ask--if
they've been able to contact us.
Now, if they don't contact our EOC, we feel that probably
there is, you know, communication breakdowns. A lot of the
tires will go down, several tires. So we have an automatic
response plan that we'll be initiating across the entire
States.
Certain trigger points. One of the first things we will do
is coordinate with the National Guard and our Missouri
Department of Transportation to see what highways are available
to, you know, in and out of the area.
We'll also look at the bridges, you know, if they can be
used or if they're ones we need to get someone on the ground.
We have fixed wing as well as rotary wing that will be used for
this.
One of the things we're doing to get some input from our
local jurisdiction, the 47 counties, we sent out a web-based
survey to get input. And we wanted to know as far as the things
that could help in the area, capacities that they can store
supplies, you know, the accessibility in the building itself.
We are asking that type of input. You know, we want some items
that will cost money to be stored in the local communities and
then have other areas outside the impacted area to make sure
that we have areas that we have to evacuate, move people out of
the area.
One of the things that we use very much is we have area
coordinators. We have nine regions across the State, nine troop
areas, and we have coordinators who will work with the local
jurisdiction as far as their plans. We're training in the
things that we need to get information on.
One of the things that we plan on using quite heavily is a
structural assessment and eventual evaluation. There is a group
of about 1,000 professional engineers and architects who
volunteer their services and would be available to look at the
structures, you know, after the earthquake. That helps us to
know if those buildings would be able to keep people in them,
or would you have to take and evacuate because they could not
go back in them?
So we actually exercise with these folks. You know, we have
a list of phone numbers. We activate their phone calls, and we
make sure that they're still active. We're still growing that
number. You know, we've used those before in hurricanes--not
hurricanes, but tornados, and it was quite effective.
One of the other things that we use and we will continue,
and that's our Community Emergency Response Teams, CERT teams.
They're trained in first aid, triage, and light search and
rescue. We have over 6,000 of those across the State. We're
about fifth in the Nation as far as CERT teams in the country.
We talked about prepositioning earlier. The conversation
was what we're looking at doing, and it will cost money, is
prepositioning some items in the Midwest. If you look along the
gulf coast, you've got items, critical items that's
prepositioned there. We really think that something needs to be
looked at with New Madrid. We don't have the three or four days
when you have a hurricane coming to shore. With an earthquake,
again, it just happens.
So we would encourage at any level, and someone listen to
this, you know. We've talked to FEMA and will continue to talk
to them because I think we're going to submit a formal request
because we think it just makes sense to have items within our
State within close proximity, if not in our State, where we
could get those in very short notice.
Subject to your questions, that's all I have.
Mr. Shuster.Thank you very much, Colonel. As I mentioned
earlier, I served on the Katrina committee, and there were
really five general reform principles, and I just want to run
over them and then try to get some of your feedback on what
your thoughts are.
First was that catastrophic disasters require early
Presidential involvement to engage Federal resources.
Second, large disasters require DOD support, and we're
talking catastrophic disasters.
Three, disaster preparedness functions need to be closely
integrated and managed with response functions. And today
preparedness and response have been split at DHS.
Four, FEMA's essential response capabilities must be
restored and enhanced, professional work force, a 21st century
logistics capacity as well as communications that can survive
and are interoperable.
And five, tension between the Nation's all-hazards
emergency management system. And terrorism preparedness must be
resolved.
A couple of those, the first one, the Presidential
engagement in a catastrophic event; and I wanted to ask you,
when you have a disaster in Illinois or Missouri, do you have a
direct access to your Governor? There's nobody in between you?
You're going to the Governor?
Mr. Burke. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shuster. That's in both cases?
Mr. Burke. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shuster. Which I think we saw in Katrina, that wasn't--
that didn't happen the way it should have. Mr. Burke, you
mentioned about DOD. I think we're in the same accord. DOD,
although they did a great job in New Orleans, it still takes
them time to move such a large animal, so to speak.
I think one of the real success stories down there were the
EMACs and Florida. The National Guard of Florida came right up
the coast right behind Katrina, so there were 6,500 Florida
National Guardsmen in Mississippi as soon as the storm cleared
out.
So what are your thoughts? Can you explain a little bit on
DOD? I think they've got to be part of the solution.
Mr. Burke. I don't want you to misunderstand, Congressman.
Certainly, utilization of DOD should be absolutely considered
in a major disaster. However, this thought or trend that seems
to be out there saying that they should automatically come in
and like take over, I certainly, as an Emergency Management
Director, don't subscribe to that, and I think it's potentially
asking for more chaos. As I indicated that the system is a
bottom-up system, and DOD should be considered a resource.
And if there are failings at the lower level--and the
reason we talk about unified command, that means that, like in
my State, FEMA comes into--even for Katrina, while we were, you
know, as part of EMAC, supporting specifically Louisiana quite
a bit, but also Mississippi, well, a representative from
regional FEMA came into my EOC to liaison and understand
exactly what was taking place and what we were, you know,
confronting.
So that if I asked them for some kind of assistance for
information or something from the Federal side, they
understood, you know, very well what it was, and then they
would feed it back to their regional people, and I'd leave the
answer to come back to me, you know, from that individual.
So all I'm saying is that if the military comes in, as far
as I'm concerned, my Governor, we have a tag, and the National
Guard is an integral part of our emergency preparedness
operation. When we activate the EOC, there is a liaison that
sits there, and any military assets we need, we give that
mission to him. They fill the mission, and they control, you
know, how they're going to fill the mission, but they have all
the information as to if they need law enforcement assistance
and routes or if they need medical emergency assistance. We
know that because we collaborate. You know, everybody is there
with all the information, so when it's passed on, they have
that.
An example is I mentioned sending 900 firemen and 100-and-
some pieces of equipment. This was by truck convoy. But the
reason they were able to do that is, I mentioned mutual aid.
These firemen not only have interoperable equipment, but they
train together. The special teams train together, even though
they come from disparate fire departments. They were from, I
think, 105 different fire departments, like two, three, four
people. But the command structure is because it was together.
So for the military, they need to be prepared to not think
that they are the single rescuer but that they are a part of
the resources that are going to, you know, come and help us get
the situation under control and get to the recovery stage.
Mr. Shuster. Mr. Reynolds, or Colonel Reynolds, you were
fairly critical of the FEMA when it came to all-hazards
approach. I think you said somewhere in there something to the
effect that they paid lip service to it. Can you talk a little
bit more about that.
Mr. Reynolds. Well, what I would say is it wasn't FEMA. It
would be the Homeland Security, would say, all-hazards.
Mr. Shuster. ODP.
Mr. Reynolds. Right. I mean, the definition, you know, it
sounds, you know, OK, it should cover terrorists as well as
man-made. Well, a good many opportunities, you know, I think
what we could have had training or had something done using
those dollars, that was not allowed because it didn't have a
terrorist scenario with it. So I think those things are
changing, and I think it's about time because I think we can
better spend our dollars.
Mr. Shuster. That's changing, in your view, since Katrina.
Mr. Reynolds. That's right, sir.
Mr. Shuster. OK. Mrs. Emerson.
Mr. Reynolds. One thing I'd like to say, if I could.
Mr. Shuster. Sure.
Mr. Reynolds. In reference to, you know, what my colleague
from Illinois. As far as the military, the military, they
definitely have a role, but that role should be well
coordinated with the State. You know, our Governor and our
Adjutant General, they work hand in hand, we work hand in hand.
And to say that we're going to send in NORTHCOM without a
request in Missouri, we don't think that would ever be the
case.
Mr. Shuster. Mrs. Emerson.
Mrs. Emerson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Colonel Reynolds. In
case of a catastrophic earthquake, do you at the State, as
Director of the State Emergency Management Agency, feel like
you have the one critical phone number that you need to call
for more help, the one critical phone number to a, a
department, an agency that would be responsive? Do you have
that number right now?
Mr. Reynolds. And you're talking about outside the State.
Mrs. Emerson. Yes, sir.
Mr. Reynolds. I do. And I have a very good working
relationship with our Region 7 FEMA director, Mr. Dick Hainje.
And we talk, you know, and I can tell you our relationship is,
when something happens on the news, if it's something in
Missouri he thinks is going to impact me, I get a phone call
from him, or I can call him for something. So I do have that
point of contact.
Mrs. Emerson. You know, and to you, Mr. Burke, I mean
really to both of you, the scary thing about an earthquake as
compared to a hurricane is you don't quite know exactly what to
anticipate. You know, I don't suppose that we even have a map
with critical assets locations as well as transportation
infrastructure that would be standing.
I mean, we don't even really know what would be standing at
this point in time after a major earthquake, do we? Other than,
obviously, I know that my new courthouse in Cape Girardeau,
which is being built to earthquake specifications and the
Emerson bridge, but I mean, we don't know that stuff yet, do
we?
Mr. Burke. Well, in Illinois--I'm sorry, Ms. Congresswoman.
Mrs. Emerson. Yes.
Mr. Burke. In Illinois, our Department of Transportation,
as far as transportation, they've been retrofitting and looking
at bridges for the last ten years.
The question specifically of what would still be standing
is, you know, I don't want to uncategorically say that the
bridges that have been retrofitted will absolutely be standing,
but they feel, based on the steps that were taken--they've put
cables so that spans won't drop, and they've actually wrapped
piers so that the concrete and stuff won't crumble and add
anchoring systems.
And so we, much like my counterpart, we have the engineers,
volunteer engineers, but engineers from IDOT, they already have
an inspection plan that they would implement to actually tell
us what transportation systems would take, you know, what kind
of loads.
If, in fact, a structure is still up, we would expect in
very short order to be able to determine, like could we have
one lane of traffic as opposed to four. And so, I mean, we
certainly are looking at that and understand that to be
something that's very important.
I mentioned the May Center, and I don't want to overstate
their capability, but they are really now starting--they,
meaning the consortium of the university, has come forth with
outcomes that I think States can use and even independent
universities or other universities in some of the CUSEC States
are starting to do earthquake research.
The reason I did this mitigation contract with the May
Center--which was funded by FEMA, mind you, after we told them
what they were going to do and the capability of what could
come out of it. As I mentioned, we hope to use this information
because it's supposed to be able to tell us, once we put the
GIS in there, it's a software simulation that, say, at 6.8 tell
you what kind of damage would occur based on the geographic
information in the system. So we should know what kind of
damage to buildings, you know, also, what kind of economic
impact for that particular community.
And as I mentioned, we want to use that so that communities
really look at in terms of the damage that may occur, what is
it that they need to be doing to kind of take care of
themselves, say, even until we come, but for us to also
understand at the State level, you know, how quickly even we
may need to get there.
But we're looking at like, say, the State buying and
prepositioning certain aspects and perish--nonperishables. We
already prepositioned some medical supplies, but we may
actually increase that so that in that community, we have, or
within a region, we have a better response capability.
Right now, absent transportation systems totally breaking
down, we can take the same capability that exists in the city
of Chicago to anyplace in our State in 60 minutes. And, you
know, that may be hampered. But we want to also look at, if
we've got to bring in some of our stuff by air, you know, what
potentially would be the locations for us to do that, you know,
a helicopter. I mean this, just, like you say, is something
that is unexpected.
So we're trying to, I guess, mind map as much as we can and
try to think through what are some of the unexpected things
we're going to have to confront.
Mrs. Emerson. Thanks. Colonel Reynolds, let me just ask you
a quick question. You mentioned in your opening remarks, we
have 47 critical counties in the State of Missouri that would
be impacted and that you had also sent a web-based survey to
all those first responders.
Do we have communications equipment--or let me say it a
different way. Does the first responder community in each of
those 47 counties have communications equipment that can talk
to you and vice-versa under any kind of a situation? And,
obviously, Web-based probably is not going to be applicable at
that point. Is there some way for us to talk on some
interoperable system to everybody in the case of an emergency?
Mr. Reynolds. Right now what we have in place, ma'am, is a,
there's, I think it's the number, I think it's around 37, 38
satellite phones throughout that area. We'll rely heavily on
that. And we understand that's not a cure-all, you know, but
right now we think that is our best opportunity.
Highway Patrol is the lead for it, interoperability
communications in the State. What they're looking at is some
different radios, and I'm not a radio person so I can't tell
you those, but they're looking at those. Once, you know, we get
those on board, you know, that would probably be, our probably
the most surest way of communicating. But right now satellite
phones is what we rely upon.
Mrs. Emerson. So is that one per county.
Mr. Reynolds. I don't have the breakdown on that, ma'am. I
can get that and get it to you.
Mrs. Emerson. OK. I was just wondering because what happens
if that one person or the one place in the county that that
phone is housed, if you will, something happens to that person
or that building?
Mr. Reynolds. I understand completely.
Mrs. Emerson. So redundancy, I guess, is really critical.
Mr. Reynolds. Again, you know, there's a cost for every----
Mrs. Emerson. I was just going to ask you.
Mr. Reynolds. I would like to think that we would be able
to do that, but it's a very good situation, and we probably
need to have more radios there because you don't have
redundancy if there's one in the county or one in the city.
Mrs. Emerson. Well, hopefully, once you all get your
assessments completely done, you know, then we'll all lobby the
State legislatures from both of our States to provide you all
with the funds that you need to be prepared. That's the only
thing we can do, I guess.
Mr. Burke. I would have to comment because, as a matter of
fact, my colleague's, some of his staff was over in my EOC
discussing some of this with my folks. I'm sure they're going
to make some of these recommendations back to Missouri.
What we did is we put--we offered 4,000 Starcom 21 radios
to every emergency management or, actually, every first
responder, including hospital organizations, in the State.
Twenty-three accepted them. You know, a few organizations
didn't.
But what that does is that gives us 800 megahertz radio
capability by satellite so that they can at least communicate
with our EOC. Now, within their own city or town, they'd have
to use what system they have. But at least we would have, at a
central point, information where they could feed into our EOC.
I think that's something that probably all--I don't want to
say all, but many States in the country, whether they've
implemented it right at this point, are going to be looking at
because that's like the kind of bottom line rudimentary system,
800 megahertz, that you would use if all else failed or in the
interim while you were waiting.
In Illinois, one of the things we were able to do for
Katrina, we have some mobile emergency communication equipment
that will give you voice and data, and we did set that up down
in Baton Rouge. But that, you know, you've got to transport
that and get it----
Mrs. Emerson. Sure.
Mr. Burke. But in the interim, you know, we would look to
800 megahertz. But we're trying to make sure that all of the
first responders and hospital organizations have at least one
radio. Now we're providing one. They can buy more for, if they
want to spread them around their organization if they think
their current infrastructure is not enough.
Mrs. Emerson. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Reynolds. One thing. Amateur radios, ham radios, and we
have a good many of those, and they actually exercise. They're
volunteers throughout the regions, and they will use those. So
I did forget about those. But, yeah, the ham radios, that is an
old system, but it still works.
Mrs. Emerson. Excellent. Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. My next question to ask you--first of all, how
long have the two of you been involved with emergency
management so I gauge how I ask this next question? You've been
involved for----
Mr. Burke. Three years. I've been the Director for 3years.
Mr. Shuster. Before that, did you have experience within
emergency management.
Mr. Burke. My military experience, but I was the regional
administrator for general services, and I logistically
supported a number of Presidential disasters.
Mr. Shuster. Mr. Reynolds.
Mr. Reynolds. Just a little over a year and prior military.
Mr. Shuster. OK. My question that I've been asking folks,
but you guys don't have the--I was going to say 10 years ago,
how did you think FEMA reacted, and how was it operated? So I
guess my question, and I think Mr. Reynolds you've already
answered you've seen a change since Katrina in FEMA.
What about you, Mr. Burke? In your 3 years have you seen,
from FEMA--you would have started in emergency management just
as FEMA came into DHS. What's your sense of how it's worked?
Mr. Burke. My regional relationship, I think, is excellent,
and my regional director is, you know, a very, very talented
guy. I have no complaints about how that relationship has
worked with them.
I would certainly say that the Federal response--and I
won't put it on one organization--they asked us to be NIMS
compliant, and it has certain principles; and they asked us to
use unified command, and it has certainly principles. I think
it's imperative for the system to work that they also use
unified command. And if they do that, I think that coordination
will help us all to perform better.
Mr. Shuster. Do you have any more questions? I appreciate
you being here today with us and educating us, and Colonel
Reynolds, go ahead.
Mr. Reynolds. One thing that's not been discussed today,
and we've talked, you know, about the four different regions of
FEMA that kind of, it has operations control over the CUSEC
States. Should there be a point, you know, a massive
earthquake, there's a lot of competing resources, you know,
from all the districts, you know, from all the regions.
I think as a Nation, we need to look at that, and it
concerns me because I'm not sure if Region 5, 7 is competing,
Region 3 to 5 competing. Tough decisions are going to have to
be made for critical assets and resources.
Mr. Shuster. I think that's why it's so imperative that we
have an exercise to be able to, if we have an 8, an earthquake
8 point on the Richter scale, what's going to happen? Where do
things come from? Do we immediately call DOD in so they're on
the move as soon as that hits because everybody has been
overwhelmed.
So I think you're absolutely correct, and I think that that
exercise goes a long way. I think Mr. Wilkinson said earlier
there's other smaller exercises that are going on to try to
piece that together, but that major exercise is critical, which
we saw down in New Orleans, that Hurricane Pam exercise. It
told us what was going to happen. Fortunately, the devastation,
the loss of life wasn't as great as Pam said it was. But you're
absolutely correct.
And I appreciate you being here today, and I'll say again,
as I started off, it's absolutely critical that you engage your
Members of Congress in the Senate or in the House to bring them
up to speed on what your thoughts are on FEMA because if you
don't, you're going to get something coming out of Washington
that may not please you, may not work as well for you. So
engage them. Let them know.
And structure is important. I think Mr. Burke said earlier,
somebody said earlier, structure is important, whether it's in
Homeland Security or outside. I don't know if that's as
important at making sure that FEMA is not----
Mr. Burke. Functions.
Mr. Shuster. Exactly. And I think Secretary Chertoff points
out, rightly so, that the Coast Guard did a great job down in
Katrina, but the Coast Guard, while it's housed in DHS, it's
almost an autonomous, it's walled off from the competing for
funds and manpower and those things. So the Coast Guard would
have functioned well in DHS or outside of DHS because of its
walled-off status.
So, again, thank you all very much for being here.
Appreciate you sharing with us. The committee now calls before
it its third panel, our esteemed colleague from the Senate,
Senator Jim Talent, who, working with Congresswoman Emerson,
has been leading the effort for a major preparedness exercise
in the New Madrid Seismatic Zone. That would include State and
local entities.
Mr. Shuster. Senator Talent, are you ready to launch?
TESTIMONY OF THE HON. JAMES TALENT, FORMER U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF MISSOURI
Senator Talent. Sure. And I know your time is short, Mr.
Chairman, and I have a statement, which I'm going to submit for
the record, and with your permission I'll just offer some
observations, I think, in addition to that statements. And I
want to focus a little bit on the request that Congresswoman
Emerson and I have made for this exercise because I think the
various investigations and the results that have been published
and that we've seen show, again, the need for an exercise of
that kind.
And let me just make the point, particularly with regard to
New Madrid, when we're dealing with so many jurisdictions and
so many different States, it's essential that we do the smaller
exercises that are necessary to--for us to know what, to know
what capacity we have, where we have adequate search capacity,
where we have infrastructure that is earthquake-ready, all the
things that we need to know, and then to do the bigger
exercise. And to do it, I think, confronting the real issue. Do
a worst-case kind of scenario up and down that river and up and
down that fault so that we know what it is we're confronting,
and the problems are problems that come up in a dry run.
And let me just point out a couple areas where I feel that
would really help deal with some of the problems that we saw in
these investigations.
The first is the whole chain of command/leadership issue,
which I think all of us had a gut sense was a problem with
regard to Katrina. And it's easy to point fingers here and
there.
I don't know whether the Incident Command System and the
structure that's set up through that is adequate. I think it
would be good to test it with this kind of a dry run. It is
essential that everybody up and down the system, those at the
top and the players near the bottom or on the ground, know who
is in charge of various responsibilities, know what decisions
they are supposed to be making, and then I would add this, feel
comfortable or reasonably comfortable making those kinds of
decisions.
You know, we don't send a general out in the field to
command a division in battle without having put him or her
through a number of scenarios where he's had to deal with the
kinds of things that are likely to come up because we want him
to understand and anticipate the decisions he has to make, and
we want him to feel as comfortable as possible in that context.
And yet we have been in situations in the past where we've
had political appointees or politically elected officers, and
even in some cases people who are professionals in the area,
tossed into situations where they know they have to make very,
very difficult decisions. They've not been in that--you know,
they've not been in any kind of a dry run or scenario like that
before. And the natural instinct of human nature at that point
is to temporize, is to not be aggressive in reaching out and
making decisions because you're unfamiliar. You know a lot
turns on the decision that you make.
Now, sometimes you get an actor who is such a natural
leader, like Rudy Giuliani is, that, you know, he gets in that
situation, and he just reaches out and decides it and does it.
But, you know, I think it's human nature to sort of be a little
bit tentative in those kinds of decisions. And I think I just
ask everybody to examine whether that isn't what happened in
some of these places with Katrina.
Well, if we have this kind of a dry run that Congresswoman
Emerson and I are talking about, and of course, we want it for
the New Madrid situation, but other regions should identify the
worst-case scenarios in their situation as well.
Not only is it going to give the, you know, the first
responders the opportunity to run through what it is they're
going to need, but it's going to give the decision-makers the
opportunity to do that. They'll see the other decision-makers
who are involved in this. They'll have presented to them the
kinds of decisions that they have to make.
So if there aren't enough helicopters, they've thought
about, well, where should the helicopters go first? And if
there's an issue with search capability or interoperability,
they've at least confronted those issues in some kind of a
context.
So I think the whole leadership issue, which is, I think,
underlying a lot of the problems we have, we can help resolve
with this kind of a dry run. It's especially important in
earthquake context because you have no warning.
I mean, some of this stuff, and this is an issue we all
wonder about with Katrina, and the reports may differ, we could
see that coming. At least you had several days where people
should have been able to prepare. If we have an earthquake
here, Mr. Chairman, as you know, you don't have time to
prepare. That just hits. I mean, under some circumstances, you
might get some idea if you have some preliminary type of
quakes, but you certainly, you certainly can't count on that.
Another issue that we have been concerned about and that my
testimony deals with is communications. And we're all concerned
about the problem because we have, every different first
responder department has different kinds of radios, analog,
digital, and how do they communicate with each other?
Again, what we could do with a dry run or an exercise like
this is explore what's happened in other States where they have
set up interoperability type systems over the Internet,
Internet protocol-type systems that permit people with
different radios to communicate with each other by, in essence,
going through this Internet protocol, which is a kind of
switchboard.
That can be set up on a State-by-State basis and then a
regional basis. The Department of Commerce is exploring that on
a Federal level, and I want to push in that area. And I just
would urge the subcommittee to look at what we can do to help
deal with this interoperability of communications issue short
of going out and buying everybody a new radio system that's
interoperable.
I mean, that would be great, but the cost estimates I've
seen are like $17- to $50 billion. And that's a lot of money to
spend, and it's not going to happen overnight. So we've got to
look at what we can do in terms of mutual aid bands and this
sort of thing to help people communicate absent that.
I have some other points of a more minor nature I make
regarding logistics, etc., in my statement, but really what
I've seen from the reports just reinforces my sense that what
we need to do here and in other places is do the best we can to
set this system up, analyze what our weaknesses are with regard
to individual first responders or cities or localities, and
then put together the kind of exercise that Congresswoman
Emerson and I have asked for so that we can deal with these
problems and anticipate as many of them as we can.
And, again, I will just relate to the military context. I'm
on the Armed Services Committee, have been now for 12 years,
and we would never throw military officers who are trained to
make these kinds of decisions, we would never throw them in
these circumstances without trying to anticipate and re-create
these decision-making matrixes for them as much as we can. And
we should not put our top leaders or our leaders on the ground
in that circumstance, either, without having these exercises.
Mr. Shuster. Well, I think you hit the nail on the head.
The exercise that we're talking about, the New Madrid exercise
is critical. If we would have learned the lessons and had
probably more experienced leadership at DHS at the time of
Katrina, we would have taken those lessons and been prepared to
push forward.
I think that not only can you have these major exercises,
but I think what we've done in Homeland Security with FEMA is
not having four pillars of emergency management, of
preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation. They've all
got to be working together. We have two teams. You've got a
practice team and a game team. If they're not one and the same,
on game day they're not going to work together.
So I just have one question for you: If you've come to a
conclusion or what your thoughts are on, do you think it's
better if we leave FEMA in DHS or take it out? What are your
general thoughts on that?
Senator Talent. I always appreciated--I'll answer that
question, Mr. Chairman, against the background of my experience
with FEMA. And my first year in the Congress was in 1993 when
we had the terrible floods of 1993, and my district suffered
the biggest commercial disaster in that flood. I had a whole
north half of one of my counties was under water. And I
appreciated FEMA's response at all levels.
And I thought--the first time that I saw FEMA fail on a
fundamental level was after it had been incorporated into the
Department of Homeland Security. So speaking for myself, I'm
going to exercise the benefit of the doubt in favor of going
back to a scenario where they're outside.
Now, I know that works against the bureaucratic logic of
having everybody in the same organization so they can work
together. But I just don't know whether you can get an
organization that is so big that it becomes more difficult to
do that. That's how I would approach it.
But I'm open, and I don't know that we've reached a
definitive conclusion, and if the Committee and the other
committees of jurisdiction study it and reach the opposite
conclusion, I'm not going to fight you to the death.
Mr. Shuster. I couldn't agree with you more. It's against
the bureaucratic logic, but I think sometimes we need to get
ourselves into more of a corporate or business logic. If you
look at many of our companies, they look at their core
competencies and say, "OK, we're building cars. We're not going
to build tires. So let's put that into another company."
And I think that's a situation where the core competencies
of DHS should be terrorism prevention as law enforcement is
really what they are. They're not an emergency response
organization. So I appreciate your views on that.
Senator Talent. Yeah, I think--I mean, it's pretty hard not
to conclude, if you look at the experience that when FEMA was
more or less on its own, it had a higher profile, a higher
visibility, and probably got more attention across the board,
and I never had a problem with how FEMA operated.
Now, in fairness, the Katrina thing was, disaster was, of
course, bigger than they ever had to deal with, so we have to
judge that as well. I just think--and I will add this, Mr.
Chairman, the exact bureaucratic setup is probably less
important than these other--I mean, probably either one will
work if we do the other things that we need to do.
Mr. Shuster. Well, I don't know if you were here when I
made the earlier statement. The Secretary points out, quite
frequently, how well the Coast Guard responded. But the Coast
Guard, although its within DHS, is really walled off from the
competition, the funding. It's all appropriated and authorized,
and they don't have to fight those battles of terrorism
prevention versus emergency response. So, with that,
Congresswoman Emerson.
Mrs. Emerson. Thank you, Chairman. I will admit to agreeing
with both of you on the issue of separating FEMA out. Anyway,
Senator Talent, I just want to thank you so much for taking the
lead in the United States Senate on the whole issue of what
this region needs to do to prepare for an earthquake. And
you're doing a great job, and I appreciate it more than you
know.
My one question to you is--excuse me--if you had to
prioritize, what single asset would be the most critical in
response to a humanitarian crisis, whether it's earthquake-
related one or widespread flooding, what would you identify as
the critical component?
Senator Talent. I'll give you a caveat. I have an answer to
that, but I'm going to give you a caveat. I'm a big believer
that in something like this, you don't--you want to believe
what you see as you prepare rather than going in deciding
you're going to see what you believe according to your
preconceptions.
And the whole point of these exercises and the rest of it
is so that we can see what the situation is, and that might
very well change the answer I'm going to give you. OK?
But I think it's this whole communications situation,
addressing it in some way, shape, or form. We have such good
people involved in the first responder organizations. I mean, I
am sure you all have seen this as you go out and about. I mean,
if you're going to be a firefighter or a public health
authority or a law enforcement person or in the National Guard
or any of these areas, you probably have a vocation of wanting
to help people in these circumstances.
They're ingenious. They have, most of them, a tradition of
mutual aid and protection. If they can communicate with each
other on the ground, it can make up for a lot of sins. I mean,
they can jerry-rig things quickly if they can talk to each
other.
So my feeling is that I don't know going in, without having
these exercises, where the greatest need is, but if they can
talk to each other, they may be able to jerry-rig a solution no
matter where the need is. That's the reason I specifically
mention interoperability. Where we can, we get the new
equipment so they can talk directly; but where they can't, we
have to have and concentrate on other solutions. That would be
my answer subject to what we might find out in an exercise.
Mrs. Emerson. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Shuster. Senator, do you have anything else to add?
Senator Talent. No. Just to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
your interest in this whole subject and also for your interest
in what we're struggling with here in the New Madrid fault, and
I hope you will take back and talk to the other colleagues and
tell them that this is a very significant potential disaster.
There's no other way to put it.
And we don't know when that fault is going to go off. We
know that eventually it's going to. And, you know, if it
happens and we're not ready, it will be the absolute perfect
storm. All these different States and jurisdictions, we have
rivers in this context, I mean, it just--we have to be
prepared.
I can't think of a potential disaster around the country
that could be worse than this, so I appreciate your interest
and hope you will communicate to the other colleagues about it.
Mr. Shuster. Well, I certainly will. Thank you for being
here today, and I thank you for your leadership on bringing
this to light. Additionally, I want to thank the other
witnesses for being here today. Your discussion has been very
informative and helpful.
And I would ask unanimous consent that the record of
today's hearing remain open until such time as all the
witnesses have provided answers to any questions that may be
submitted in writing and unanimous consent that during such
time as the record remains open, additional comments offered by
individuals or groups may be included in the record of today's
hearing. Without objection, so ordered.
If no one else has anything to add, then the subcommittee
stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:15 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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