[Senate Hearing 109-848]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 109-848
HURRICANE KATRINA: THE HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT'S PREPARATION AND
RESPONSE
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 15, 2006
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
27-032 WASHINGTON : 2007
_____________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800
Fax: (202) 512�092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402�090001
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio CARL LEVIN, Michigan
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
TOM COBURN, Oklahoma THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island MARK DAYTON, Minnesota
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico MARK PRYOR, Arkansas
JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia
Michael D. Bopp, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
David T. Flanagan, General Counsel
Jonathan T. Nass, Counsel
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Robert F. Muse, Minority General Counsel
Mary Beth Schultz, Minority Counsel
Beth M. Grossman, Minority Counsel
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
------
Opening statements:
Page
Senator Collins.............................................. 1
Senator Lieberman............................................ 3
Senator Warner............................................... 17
Senator Dayton............................................... 21
Senator Coleman.............................................. 25
Senator Pryor................................................ 29
Senator Bennett.............................................. 33
Senator Levin................................................ 35
Senator Chafee............................................... 39
Senator Akaka................................................ 40
Senator Lautenberg........................................... 43
Prepared statement:
Senator Voinovich............................................ 49
WITNESS
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Hon. Michael Chertoff, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security:
Testimony.................................................... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 50
Responses to questions submitted for the Record.............. 58
APPENDIX
Information for the Record submitted by Senator Levin............ 162
Exhibit 14 referenced by Senator Coleman......................... 172
Exhibit A referenced by Senator Lautenberg....................... 173
HURRICANE KATRINA: THE HOMELAND
SECURITY DEPARTMENT'S PREPARATION
AND RESPONSE
----------
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2006
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:25 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M.
Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Collins, Coleman, Chafee, Bennett,
Warner, Lieberman, Levin, Akaka, Carper, Dayton, Lautenberg,
and Pryor.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS
Chairman Collins. The Committee will come to order.
Today marks our 20th hearing on Hurricane Katrina. As this
inquiry nears its end, we turn our focus today to that
component of the Federal Government that bears ultimate
responsibility for a quick and effective response to the
disaster, the Department of Homeland Security. Our witness is
Secretary Michael Chertoff, who today marks his first
anniversary as head of DHS.
According to its mission statement, one of the fundamental
responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security is
``preparing for natural disasters and terrorist attacks through
planning, technology, and coordinated efforts. In the event of
a natural or man-made disaster, DHS will be the first Federal
Department to utilize a full range of State, local, and private
partnerships to alleviate the effects of a potential
disaster.''
Clearly, that mission was not accomplished. The Federal
Department that was supposed to lead, direct, and coordinate
the Federal response to Katrina was, time and again, late,
uncertain, and ineffective. A central purpose of this hearing
is to learn why, in a crisis that called for decisive and
speedy action, DHS was plagued by indecision and delay. If our
government failed so utterly in preparing for and responding to
a disaster that had been long predicted and was imminent for
days, we must wonder how much more profound the failure would
be if a disaster were to take us completely by surprise, such
as a terrorist attack.
The delays in DHS's response are both alarming and
unacceptable. The chasm that Hurricane Katrina exposed between
DHS and FEMA, one of its most important components, presented a
significant impediment to a coordinated, swift Federal
response. Concerns about this disconnect were expressed long
before Hurricane Katrina, and our investigation has revealed
disturbing conflicts about roles, resources, and
responsibilities.
But the problem within DHS goes beyond its relationship
with FEMA. The Department's overall lack of preparedness for
this catastrophe prevented both decisive action before the
storm hit and an effective response in its immediate aftermath.
After landfall, the Department far too often appeared to be
frozen with indecision and nearly paralyzed by ineffective
communications. Key decisions were either delayed or based on
faulty information. As a result, the suffering of Katrina's
victims was worsened and prolonged.
This lack of preparedness is evident throughout the
response to Hurricane Katrina. On August 30, the day after
Katrina made landfall, Secretary Chertoff named then-FEMA
Director Michael Brown as the Principal Federal Official for
the response effort. He did so despite Mr. Brown's hostility to
the very concept of a Principal Federal Official and his
disdain for the National Response Plan.
In addition to questioning the appointment of Mr. Brown, I
wonder why a PFO was not designated before Katrina made
landfall, when it was already evident that we were facing a
looming disaster that would require a direct link between
Federal operations on the ground and DHS headquarters. The
effect of this delay was much like having the general show up
after the battle had already begun.
From that evident lack of readiness come a great many
issues that we will explore today. Among them are, why was
situational awareness at DHS so severely lacking throughout the
Katrina response? While people throughout the Nation merely had
to turn on their television sets to learn of the levee failures
and the dire need for food and water at the Superdome and the
convention center, DHS was consistently behind the curve. The
delays in response to these crises were the direct result of
poor communications.
Why weren't the tremendous resources of the Department of
Defense deployed sooner? The delay in bringing these assets to
bear not only prolonged the suffering of the victims, but also
made the work of first responders even more difficult and more
dangerous.
The failure to resolve obvious issues beforehand led to
numerous other problems, from the poor information flow between
DHS and the White House, to the difficulties DHS encountered in
assigning missions to other Federal agencies, to the
unnecessary disputes with overwhelmed State and local
officials.
The examples are legion: The failure to promptly order the
buses Michael Brown promised; the failure to deliver essential
commodities for victims at the convention center until 2 days
after Mr. Brown apparently became aware of their plight; the
failure to quickly process requests for vital commodities
throughout Louisiana and Mississippi and to track their
delivery; the failure to field more search and rescue and
emergency medical teams at the onset of the flooding; the
failure to respond rapidly to a devastated telecommunications
system; the failure to appoint a single senior law enforcement
officer as soon as the need became apparent; the failure to
invoke the Catastrophic Incident Annex to the National Response
Plan, which would have permitted the Department to be more
proactive.
The list of critical tasks done either late or not at all
is staggering. And perhaps most crucial to understanding the
failures of Katrina is the fundamental question of whether FEMA
had adequate leadership and resources to respond to a disaster
of this magnitude.
As I said at our hearing last Friday, FEMA's response to
Katrina has to be judged a failure, and as a consequence, the
response of DHS must be judged a failure, as well, despite the
outstanding performance of the Coast Guard and of the
individual DHS employees.
As the third anniversary of the Department of Homeland
Security approaches, it is past time for the Department to
carry out its vital mission and meet its responsibilities to
the American people.
Senator Lieberman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Good morning,
Mr. Secretary.
The many hearings that we have held, the witnesses that we
have interviewed, and the documents that we have reviewed have
brought us to today's important hearing with our sole witness,
the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael
Chertoff. This Committee's Katrina investigation is moving now
toward conclusion, reckoning, and I hope, reform.
According to the law, it is the responsibility of the
Secretary of Homeland Security to lead the government's
preparations for and response to disaster, natural or
terrorist. The Secretary is the national official most directly
responsible for protecting the safety of the American people
here at home in times of danger. That is what the law creating
the Department of Homeland Security says, what Homeland
Security Presidential Directive No. 5 mandates, and what the
National Response Plan requires, and that is why today it is
our responsibility to ask Secretary Chertoff some tough,
direct, and critical questions based on the jarring lack of
preparation for Katrina that our investigation has found.
Among the most important of these questions are, Mr.
Secretary, why did you do so little in the months after you
became Secretary to make sure that the agencies of our
government, particularly your own, were ready to carry out
their responsibilities to protect the American people under the
National Response Plan and President Bush's Homeland Security
Presidential Directive No. 5?
How could you have left us with so many of those agencies
so unprepared that when Katrina struck, too many of them ran
around like Keystone Kops, uncertain about what they were
supposed to do or unable to do it?
Why, in the days immediately before Katrina made landfall,
as the National Hurricane Service and agencies within your own
Department warned over and over that this was the long-feared
hurricane that would break the levees and drown the City of New
Orleans, did you not mobilize more of the resources of the
Federal Government to protect this great American city and its
people?
With all the information coming into your Department's
operations center on the day that Katrina struck New Orleans,
that the city was flooding and people were trapped or drowning,
how could you, as Secretary of Homeland Security, go to bed
that night not knowing what was happening in New Orleans and
get up the next morning and proceed not to New Orleans to
oversee the response but to Atlanta for a conference?
Respectfully, those are some of the hard and perplexing
questions that have emerged from this Committee's investigation
that you, Mr. Secretary, and we have a responsibility to answer
so that the next time disaster strikes, as it surely will, the
Federal Government is totally ready to protect our country and
our people. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator Lieberman.
Our sole witness today is the Secretary of Homeland
Security, Michael Chertoff. He was confirmed unanimously by the
U.S. Senate exactly 1 year ago. I thank him for appearing here
today.
Secretary Chertoff, we are swearing in all witnesses for
this investigation so I would ask that you stand. Do you swear
that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
Secretary Chertoff. I do.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Please proceed with your
statement.
TESTIMONY OF HON. MICHAEL CHERTOFF,\1\ SECRETARY, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Secretary Chertoff. Thank you, Chairman Collins, and thank
you, Senator Lieberman. I ask before I give a shortened version
of what I submitted for the record that the full statement I
prepared be accepted for the record.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Secretary Chertoff appears in the
Appendix on page 50.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chairman Collins. Without objection.
Secretary Chertoff. I appreciate the opportunity to be
here. I have followed the hearings to a reasonable degree of
detail and am very interested in the perspective of this
Committee on one of the most difficult and traumatic
experiences of my life, which was the process of anticipating
and managing and dealing with the consequences of Katrina,
consequences which still continue to this day.
You can't escape the fact when you talk about Katrina that
this was a storm of unprecedented magnitude, not because it was
a surprise, because I don't think it was a surprise that a
storm like this could happen, but because in terms of prior
experience, at least as far as I know, nobody in living memory
recalls a set of challenges as difficult as those presented by
this hurricane.
And without dwelling on it, just a few things that bear
keeping in mind. Ninety-thousand square miles were impacted,
that is an area larger than Great Britain and three-and-a-half
times the area inundated by the great Mississippi flood of
1927. FEMA estimates that 300,000 homes were destroyed, six
times as many as the Midwest flood of 1993 and 11 times as many
as Hurricane Andrew. A hundred-and-eighteen million cubic yards
of debris was produced, more than double the amount produced by
four Florida hurricanes of last year, or 2 years ago, and six
times what was produced by Andrew. So this was an unprecedented
disaster.
And while I am here, I suspect, mainly to talk about things
that failed, I do think we have to acknowledge things that
succeeded. The U.S. Coast Guard rescued 33,000 people, six
times the number rescued nationwide in all of 2004. FEMA
rescued more than 6,500 and deployed all 28 urban search and
rescue teams for the first time. Forty-thousand rescued by two
agencies, which is seven times the number of people rescued in
the four hurricanes in Florida in 2004. And in the first 6
days, the Federal Government distributed 28 million pounds of
ice, 8.5 million meals, 4 million gallons of water, which
exceeded the combined total for the entire rescue operation in
Hurricane Andrew.
Now, as you pointed out, Chairman Collins, I am responsible
for the Department of Homeland Security. I am accountable and
accept responsibility for the performance of the entire
Department, the bad and the good. I also have the
responsibility to fix what is wrong.
If I can digress and step out of my official role for a
minute, I can tell you on a personal basis, probably the worst
element of this catastrophe personally is not criticism I have
received or criticism the Department has received by committees
and commentators, but the vision of people who did have their
suffering unnecessarily prolonged because this Department did
not perform as well as the vision of its performance suggested
it should have been able to do. And I say that without
suggesting I was naive about the challenges I assumed when I
was confirmed a year ago. In the 6 months that I was in office
before Katrina hit, I knew, and I said to this Committee, there
were many things to be done.
But I do want to talk about a couple of general
observations before I answer the specific questions about what
happened in Hurricane Katrina and about what we want to do
going forward.
First of all, I have to say that the idea that this
Department and this Administration and the President were
somehow detached from Katrina is simply not correct, in my view
and in my recollection of what happened. We were acutely aware
of Katrina and the risk it posed. We followed this hurricane
from the time it started to meander up towards the coast of
Florida, as it crossed over the Southern tip of Florida and got
into the Gulf. We knew, and certainly FEMA most of all because
if there is anything that FEMA is expert in it is hurricanes,
that there was at least a potential as the week before
hurricane landfall came that this would hit New Orleans with
potentially catastrophic consequences.
On the weekend before Katrina made landfall, that is August
27 and 28, the President took an unprecedented step, something
that has only been done to my knowledge once before, which is
to declare an emergency for Louisiana and Mississippi in
advance of a hurricane landfall, and I want to emphasize that
was an extraordinary event because the Stafford Act, which is
the Federal law that authorizes the Federal Government to come
in to act in time of disaster, is what I would say is the kind
of ultimate tool, the ultimate source of authority for the
Federal Government. And for the second time in memory, the
President took the step of invoking it before a hurricane.
This also, by the way, according to the literal text of the
National Response Plan, automatically designated this and
created this as an incident of national significance. So on the
weekend before hurricane landfall, as I recollect it, and I am
going to try very hard to separate what I know now from what I
knew then because I certainly know a lot more now than I knew
back then, but on that weekend, I had the assurance that we had
opened the legal and strategic floodgates to allow as much
resource and as many assets to be pushed into the theater of
engagement as possible.
There was a second major question I confronted in that
weekend. Were our incident commanders exercising their
authority properly? Were they using the tools? Were they
adequately considering the things they had to consider as the
operational commanders? And I want to make it clear that
although Michael Brown has got a lot of attention, Michael
Brown did not function alone at FEMA. In that weekend, Federal
Coordinating Officers (FCOs), who are statutorily designated
officers as part of the Stafford Act, were sent down to
Mississippi and Louisiana and other places, as well, to be on-
the-ground incident managers for FEMA and for the Department of
Homeland Security.
You saw Bill Lokey here. I think he was a witness. I don't
know if Bill Carwile testified. These are two very experienced
men. They were supported by the very experienced men and women
who are in the regional headquarters that support these States,
and they were supported by the very experienced men and women
who sat around the table at the National Response Coordinating
Center at FEMA in Washington who are the principal backstop,
the principal pool of talent that supports operational activity
in the field in the time of a hurricane, and I would venture to
say there were dozens, maybe over 100 years of experience fully
engaged that weekend.
I came in on Sunday and I sat in a video teleconference,
and that conference had at least 50 people who were either
sitting in that room at FEMA or were sitting at DHS or were
sitting in regional centers or were sitting on the ground in
the Emergency Operations Centers in the States. And the purpose
of that videoconference is to go around and make sure everybody
has considered and talked about all of the measures that must
be in place to anticipate what is going to happen when this
hurricane hits.
If there is nothing else that FEMA is an expert in, it is
hurricanes. This is the challenge--not on this scale, but this
is the challenge they have worked at, they have planned for,
and they have considered the core of their mission since they
were created.
And as I sat there, I heard a round robin go around,
hearing from, first of all, each of the emergency managers from
the States, the National Guard representative from the States
talking very specifically about their assessment of what needed
to be prepositioned, what was on the way, and expressing very
clearly their satisfaction with the state of affairs and their
belief they had prepositioned or en route what they needed to
respond. I then heard the regional officers go through the same
litany and again say they felt that everything was en route and
positioned the way it needed to be. I then heard the people
sitting around the table in headquarters talk about things like
transportation, urban search and rescue, logistics, and medical
teams.
At the end of that VTC--and I also heard Michael Brown say,
and I think he was quite accurate about this, we need to push
everything we can, jam the system, push the envelope, get
everything down there you need to get.
And then at the end of that, and I was conscious of the
fact that, although I am the Secretary, I am not a hurricane
operator, I do not have 30 years of experience managing
hurricanes, and I do not see myself in a position to contradict
or second-guess operational decisions by hundreds of years of
expertise, but I did want to get to the core issue, so I asked
two questions, and these are in the transcript that is
contained of that Sunday VTC, which I know you have.
First, I said, is there anything in this Department that is
not fully available to you that you need that you don't have
that I need to get to you--I am paraphrasing--because it is all
available, and Michael Brown said, I am in touch with the
components, the Coast Guard--I specifically mentioned the Coast
Guard. Everybody has been through this drill before. We are all
engaged and working.
And then because I knew that the Department of Defense had
unique resources and talents, I asked a second question, have
you reached out to DOD, the Department of Defense? Are their
assets ready? Do you have what you need from them? Are you
ready to go with them? And in the presence of the Defense
Department representatives sitting around the table, who I
could see on the screen, Michael Brown said, yes, we are here
with the Defense Department. We are engaged and we are working,
getting all the things that we need. That was what I needed to
know to believe that we were--that the experts saw us as ready
to move and be prepositioned.
Now, there are many lapses that occurred, and I have
certainly spent a lot of time personally, probably since last
fall, thinking about things that might have been done
differently. But I do want to talk about things that can be
done differently in the future very briefly.
First, I want to make it clear to the public, at least,
that in the first few months after I arrived, after February, I
knew that there were a lot of challenges in this Department. In
fact, I am sure in my confirmation hearing, I heard predictions
that I was getting into a department that was brand new.
Senator Bennett, I think, pointed out that the Department of
Transportation, it took them 5 years to get ready, and by the
way, this is no criticism of Governor Ridge, who with some very
able assistance had to stand up a department from scratch. But
I think it was a candid recognition that a new department,
barely 2 years old, had a lot of work to do in terms of
integration, in terms of building capabilities, and in terms of
building a common culture.
And after I did a review, I came back and I believe I
testified in this Committee, I certainly testified elsewhere,
and I said publicly in July, scarcely a month before Katrina, I
said that we were not where we needed to be in terms of
preparedness, and I said that because having gone through the
exercise of TOP-OFF and having looked and sat with the people
in the Department, I knew we had a lot of work to do, and I
started to propose some specific things to get ourselves turned
around, including getting FEMA to focus on its core mission and
making sure we unified all of our preparedness and our planning
and our grants and our training in a single focal point.
In accordance with the law and, of course, the
appropriations process, we targeted October 1 to reorganize,
get ourselves better situated, and then, of course, move
forward to start what is not a brief and, in fact, is a very
substantial process of getting ourselves prepared to the level
we need to be. Unfortunately, Katrina didn't wait until October
1.
So we come here now with a major set of challenges, and I
know this Committee is looking very carefully at the issue of
reform. I know that the Committee quite rightly wants us to
withhold making significant decisions about major reforms until
the Committee has had an opportunity to put its findings out,
and I agree that is appropriate. As a consequence, when I spoke
on Monday about some of the things we are doing, I deliberately
said I am not going to talk about more systemic reforms, which
the President also is going to hear some recommendations about.
But I do know there are some things we have to get done by
June 1 because hurricane season is not going to wait again.
First of all, we have to have a unified incident command.
Putting aside issues of personality, which at least emerged for
me last Friday when another witness testified, it is clear that
the whole idea that we need to pass information from a FEMA
operations center to a DHS operations center as if across a
gulf or a chasm makes no sense at all. We have to complete the
process of building out our operations capability. We have got
to have real-time, simultaneous visibility into operations in
both places.
Second, it is completely correct to say that our logistics
capability in Katrina was woefully inadequate. I was astonished
to see that we didn't have the capability that most 21st
Century corporations have to track the flow of goods and
services. I was more surprised to learn that the reason for
that is because we don't contract for that directly, we do it
through another agency, and that other agency apparently didn't
insert a requirement for such visibility in the contract. We
are going to correct that.
Our claims management was also something that fell short,
and again, to put it in context, we had never had the volume of
people whose claims needed to be dealt with. I think 770,000
people were displaced, approximately, many more than FEMA had
ever dealt with before, and I think, frankly, FEMA was strained
in past emergencies. So we are talking now about expanding
capability to deal with telephone registration, expanded
technological capacities, and a dedicated core of people who
are specialists to go out into the field to reach people when
they are widely dispersed as opposed to making them touch us.
Financial management--we are already implementing a plan to
bring better financial management tools into the Department.
Debris removal--I am aware of the fact that we still have a
lot of debris on the ground. It is not moving quickly enough. I
got a lot of complaints over the last few months about the Army
Corps of Engineers in terms of being expensive and in terms of
being not necessarily inefficient, and, of course, all they do
is turn around and subcontract out to others. That didn't make
a lot of sense to me. We have already taken the position that
we are going to try to equalize the incentive structure to
encourage local mayors and local officials to hire their own
local debris removers as opposed to going through the Army
Corps. We are going to work again this year going forward to
try to identify some contractors who can be available.
And finally, communications. We had not just a problem of
interoperability, we had a problem of operability. We are
already building teams in FEMA and DHS to get into the field
with better communications equipment and the ability to stream
back directly to where we are in Washington. We are acquiring
more satellite equipment and more communications equipment to
be able to deploy to our state and local emergency operators so
they can communicate with us.
One thing is clearly true. The foundation of any ability to
make significant and intelligent decisions in a crisis is
communication, and we have to get the equipment, and then the
second thing is we have to have the culture, a culture where
people view themselves as part of an integrated team.
So with that, I want to thank the Committee for the
opportunity to testify. I anticipate and welcome tough
questions. I am going to take responsibility for what the
Department did, but I am also going to take responsibility for
identifying solutions for the problems that we saw in Katrina.
Chairman Collins. Thank you for your statement.
Rev. Yearwood. Senator, but mothers and children are being
thrown in the street. Mothers and children are being thrown in
the street while trailers sit in the ground.
Chairman Collins. Sir, this is not a public hearing today.
Rev. Yearwood. This is not American. They are being
evicted. They are being thrown in the street. It is hard.
Chairman Collins. I understand that, and the Committee is
working on that issue. We have been to the area twice. I invite
you to sit quietly and allow us to proceed with the hearing.
Thank you. I would also invite you to talk further with our
staffs if you would like to, sir, and see if we can help any
specific concern.
Senator Lieberman. I want to repeat that the Chairman has
invited you to sit at the hearing if you would like, sir, so
long as you remain quiet.
Chairman Collins. Secretary Chertoff, I remain perplexed by
your decision to appoint Michael Brown as the principal contact
for the Department when he had such poor relationships with you
and with other senior officials. Assistant Secretary Stephan
has told us that Michael Brown did not fully understand a lot
of the responsibilities assigned under the National Response
Plan, that he opposed the entire concept of having a Principal
Federal Official, a PFO.
I am trying to understand why, in view of Mr. Brown's open
disdain for the Department, his disagreement with the concept
of the PFO, and his criticisms of the National Response Plan,
you would want to have that person as the Principal Federal
Official and how you would think that it would improve the
ability of the Department to respond to Katrina to have an
individual who was disdainful of the whole process.
Secretary Chertoff. Chairman Collins, when I answer that
question, I have to put out of my mind the events of last
Friday because I have to tell you it was astonishing to me to
hear the testimony of Mr. Brown concerning his decision,
apparently, by his own admission, as the PFO on the ground to
deliberately bypass the Department and not to deal with us. I
had attributed the problems I had sometimes engaging with Mr.
Brown to just the overwhelming pressures of the situation
itself.
I have to put myself back in the frame of mind of what I
knew at the time in August. It didn't surprise me to learn that
Michael Brown opposed the NRP. I think that there were many
people who were not necessarily satisfied or happy with
Congress' decision to create this Department, and my experience
in government, I have spent well over a decade in government,
and I saw when we tried to fuse intelligence and tried to get
the CIA and the FBI to talk together, there was a lot of
grumbling and there were a lot of people who bitterly opposed
those things. But one thing I saw, at least until this
hurricane, was the fact that these people put their policy
differences aside and acted professionally when matters of life
and death were at stake.
I met with Michael Brown. I heard his vision of what he
wanted to do with FEMA. I heard him address the issue of
preparedness and the lack of preparedness. I actually agreed
with some of his suggestions. I agreed we ought to align
training and grants and preparedness in one place.
I did disagree with him in one respect. I did not believe
that the solution was to put all of the grants and all of the
grant making and training under his authority as the head of
FEMA and as the Under Secretary in charge. I wasn't going to
give him more authority.
And after I decided that I was going to propose the
structure that I ultimately recommended to Congress in July,
the Deputy Secretary and I talked to Mr. Brown, and we said to
him, look, we know you are disappointed with the result of
this. If you are going to have a problem functioning as the
head of FEMA with this, let us know. It is perfectly creditable
to say, I can't go along with this. I want to leave. If you are
going to stay, though, we need to have your full commitment. He
told us he felt he had gotten a fair hearing and would give us
his full commitment.
I remember in August, before Katrina, for the first time
ever, we brought emergency managers and homeland security
advisors into the same room in a summit here in Washington
precisely to talk about their needs to be sure we were an all-
hazards agency, and we talked about the need to be integrated
and partnered on natural hazards as well as other hazards, and
Michael Brown was there and he endorsed it.
So, yes, if I had known then what I know now about Mr.
Brown's agenda, I would have done something differently.
Chairman Collins. I guess, as I look back at all the
decisions that you had to make, I can't help but conclude that
was one of your biggest mistakes. I have an e-mail in which
your staff is complaining to Michael Brown's staff that you
have lost all contact with Michael Brown for 2 days, and this
is a critical 2 days. It is the 2 days after landfall. Michael
Brown testified before this Committee that he found your phone
calls to be annoying, disruptive. It is just astonishing to me
that a person who seemed to not believe in the cause and a
person on whom you were relying for active, complete, and
prompt communication, which you didn't get, was placed in
charge.
But I want to go on to another issue. I know from talking
with you during the week of August 28 that later in the week,
you were in Louisiana. You were working night and day, around
the clock, to try to remedy the problems and improve the
response. But earlier in the week, your actions are puzzling to
me because, despite what you said in your opening statement,
earlier in the week, in contrast to later when you were clearly
fully engaged, you did seem curiously disengaged to me, and the
best example of that is on Tuesday morning, the day after
landfall, when you are aware of the significant failures in the
levees and you are aware that the City of New Orleans is
flooding rapidly, and yet you make the decision to continue
with your schedule and to fly to Atlanta with Secretary Levitt
to attend a conference on avian flu.
Now, avian flu is an important potential threat, but
Katrina was an immediate crisis. I just don't understand why
you didn't cancel those plans, return immediately to the
Emergency Operations Center, and take control.
Secretary Chertoff. I think I can address both of the
questions or the comments by talking a little bit about Monday
and Tuesday.
Let me begin by saying, and I encourage you to look again
at the Sunday video teleconference, going into the hurricane,
both in the words and in the demeanor, Michael Brown gave me no
reason to doubt his commitment to work and use all of the
assets available to make this response as capable as possible.
So I had no sense going in that whatever his personal feelings
were, there was going to be a problem.
On Monday, and I am sure we will get into this later, I was
concerned about the levees. The original projection, I think,
in Hurricane Pam, which actually projected, I think, 60,000
deaths, was for an over-topping, a single surge that would
overtake and flood the city, whereas levee breaching, which in
some ways presents a much more difficult set of challenges, was
not actually what was anticipated.
My focus in that on Monday, once the storm had passed
sufficiently to start getting reports from the ground, was to
tap into the Homeland Security Operations Center, either by
going back and forth or having people come up or by getting on
the phone to see what was the ground truth, what was the real
situation on the ground, and I remember specifically asking
about what are the conditions of the levees and hearing at some
point early in the afternoon an initial report that said there
may be some over-topping, there may be some loss of the, I
guess they call it rip-rap or something on top of the levees,
but no substantial levee breach.
I knew I was going to get a situational report at 6 p.m.,
which would give me a complete laydown of all the assets and
all the conditions on the ground. I think the situation report
is part of what has been submitted. I probably actually got it
a little bit closer to 7 p.m. And I remember quite specifically
that report said there was no--there are some reports of
breaching, but nothing has been confirmed. We are looking into
it.
So I was mindful of the issue of breaching because I knew
that if we had a substantial breach, I don't mean a small
breach, that would pose a second set of problems.
I am sure we will get into the question of why I didn't
hear about e-mails that came later that night, but I will tell
you at least when I went to bed, it was my belief, and it was
somewhat fortified by things I saw on TV, that actually, the
storm had not done the worst that had been imagined. I think it
actually moved a little bit to the east at the last minute.
On Monday, I thought about whether I should go down to the
hurricane area, and we actually had a discussion about that in
my office, about whether I ought to go down to Baton Rouge
where the Emergency Operations Center and Mike Brown was. I
determined not to do it because I was concerned about coming in
and actually interfering with the operators in the first 24
hours of the post-hurricane operation.
Now, I will tell you that I have a respect for the
difference between the operator and the person who is leading
the organization. The operator is very much involved in the
immediate decisions of what goes on. I have been an operator. I
was an operator on September 11, and I know the way I dealt
with the Attorney General on September 11. So I would try to be
sensitive to not getting in his hair, but also be supportive.
The decision I made was not to go to an avian flu
conference but to do two things on Tuesday, go down to a
meeting at the CDC about avian flu with Secretary Levitt, and I
want to make it clear, this is not a conference like you go to
in a hotel. This was a meeting among the top leaders of the
Department to kick-start our preparedness for avian flu.
But second, to go to the Emergency Operations Center in
Atlanta, which is where Region IV is located. Region IV had
half the responsibility for coordinating the response for
Katrina. My thought was that would be a way of my getting
another perspective and visibility on what was going on on the
ground, talking to operational people without getting into a
situation where Mike Brown felt someone was coming and now
actually creating a question about who's running the immediate
incident management in the field.
On Tuesday morning at around 7 a.m., I got the spot report
that indicated there had been a substantial levee breach. I
then tried--I made a determination, since I was going to go to
the operations center, I ought to continue with the trip. And I
need to make clear that the Federal Government spends a
considerable amount of effort providing me with 24-hour
communications. There is never a moment that I am not within a
hand's reach of a secure telephone, a secure fax, and literally
what I have in my office. So it is the hardware and the ability
to communicate, that full capability was with me every moment
that I went down, and I, frankly, spent a lot of time on the
phone and in communication back with headquarters during
Tuesday.
So with that capability in mind, I did take the trip. I did
ask the question immediately, is this an irreparable breach?
What is the area that is going to be flooded? And as reports
came in, as information came in, I became aware of the fact
that this was almost the worst possible levee breach because it
would submerge a large center part of the city. I don't want to
give a long answer, but I want to give you a complete answer.
I knew at that point that there were three immediate things
that had to be done. Search and rescue had to be accelerated
because you were dealing with potentially hours where people's
lives were in the balance. Second, we had to make sure there
was food and water for people who were stranded. And third, we
had to think about a second evacuation. Those needed to be done
in that order because saving lives in search and rescue is a
matter of hours. Food and water is a matter of hours.
Evacuation is a matter of a day or two. And really, from that
point on, I continued either by telephone or in person to
repeatedly pulse back at headquarters and in the field,
frankly, to see how we were doing on those things.
The last thing I want to add is the e-mail you read about
my conversation with Michael Brown occurred on Tuesday night,
and as part of my effort to get truth on Tuesday about now what
was the plan for this second evacuation--because by the way,
the Coast Guard, I got very good reporting from throughout the
thing. I heard that there were approximately 450 buses lined up
to come. I did not have a confidence that there was a plan that
was visible to me. I wanted to get the incident manager on the
phone. I had difficulty getting it. I heard that he was flying
around with governors and other people, that he was thinking
about a TV appearance, and I gave him a very clear message. Job
one is to get this thing done. Sit in the operations center.
Get with the relevant managers. Make sure you are taking care
of all these issues, and that is the Tuesday call.
Chairman Collins. Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Madam Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, in my opening statement I said that
according to the law, you were the lead Federal official in
charge of preparation for and response to disasters, and
obviously you were both a distinguished lawyer and a
distinguished judge before you assumed this position, so I
appreciate the fact that you said in your opening statement
that you understand that you are the prime Federal official
that has that responsibility and that you accept the
accountability for it.
Very briefly, pursuant to the Homeland Security Act,
President Bush issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive
5 in February 2003, which said that the Secretary of Homeland
Security is the Principal Federal Official for domestic
incident management responsible for coordinating Federal
operations within the United States to prepare for, respond to,
and recover from terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other
emergencies.
And then the National Response Plan issued in January 2005,
an update of the previous Federal Response Plan, among its
changes made one very significant change, and that was to take
FEMA out of the lead position in disaster management and give
it to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
That is a very strong legal premise for your
accountability, and I want to just make sure I understood that
though you accepted responsibility, at one point you said,
honestly, I am not a hurricane operator, and that is why in
some sense I gather you are saying you deferred to others.
Nonetheless, I assume, pursuant to the laws that I have
described, you accept ultimate responsibility.
Secretary Chertoff. I want to be completely clear. Not only
do I accept responsibility in a legal sense, I took seriously
my responsibility to make sure things were operating properly.
When I talk about being the operator, the example I use is the
person who actually makes the operational decisions about which
particular assets are deployed where, how you are to conduct
search and rescue, and the way the NRP works is----
Senator Lieberman. Wait a minute. Excuse me because I
accept that, and I have a limited time. I want to get to the
weekend before the landfall. We spent a lot of time in these
investigations on Hurricane Pam, which was a mock hurricane
exercise, fortunately much more powerful and damaging than
Katrina turned out to be. I assume that you were familiar with
the Hurricane Pam exercise, is that right?
Secretary Chertoff. Yes.
Senator Lieberman. And Hurricane Pam showed that Federal,
State, and local agencies were not ready to deal with the Pam
or Katrina-type hurricane, is that correct?
Secretary Chertoff. I think actually Pam itself was not
fully complete. I think the evacuation piece was done in the
summer of 2005----
Senator Lieberman. But generally speaking, it was clear
that there was a lot to do to get ready for a Katrina-type
hurricane. I want to go to the weekend before the hurricane
struck. I know that some people said after the hurricane that
there was a misimpression first that New Orleans had dodged the
bullet, but by the evidence the Committee has gathered, and to
some extent by what you have said in your opening statement, by
Sunday night before the Monday morning of landfall, it was very
clear that there was a loaded gun poised and aimed at the City
of New Orleans. There were reports all throughout the weekend.
On Saturday at 9 a.m., FEMA produces slides at headquarters
that state current predicted path takes storm directly over New
Orleans. The slides state the Hurricane Pam exercise predicted
60,000 fatalities and 1 million-plus persons displaced, and
then goes on to say Pam's estimates are exceeded by Hurricane
Katrina real-life impacts, projecting at that point that there
could be more than 60,000 fatalities, a million-plus persons
displaced.
Dr. Mayfield is warning constantly about the seriousness.
Sunday afternoon, National Infrastructure Simulation and
Analysis Center within DHS puts out a report saying Katrina was
a Category 4 storm or higher that would ``likely lead to severe
flooding and/or levee breaching that could leave the New
Orleans metro area submerged for weeks or months.'' That is
Sunday afternoon from within DHS.
So it is quite correct, and I wrote down what you said,
beginning the week before, we were, you said, acutely aware of
Katrina and the risk it posed, and finally, we knew that it
potentially would hit New Orleans, and I quote what you said,
``with potentially catastrophic consequences.''
So the question that I have builds on this, and it is that
our investigation has nonetheless revealed, though you
understood by your statement today that this was a catastrophic
hurricane, that prior to landfall, there were many things that
were not done, that were done later in the week. For instance,
you did not designate a Principal Federal Officer that weekend
as required by the National Response Plan. You did not stand up
the Interagency Incident Management Group that weekend as
required by the National Response Plan. You didn't designate a
law enforcement component within DHS to serve as the co-lead
for law enforcement under the NRP. And based on the projections
in the FEMA report I have cited and the NISAC report of an
enormous number of fatalities and displaced persons, you did
not direct FEMA to task the Department of Transportation, or
you didn't talk to DOT itself to obtain and immediately move
buses to New Orleans so that the people who were not able to
get out of New Orleans before landfall would not be left in the
horrific conditions that we all observed at the Superdome and
the convention center.
I want to contrast that with what happened 3 days later
after DHS, to use your Deputy Michael Jackson's term, kicked it
up a notch and the Federal Government took very powerful
actions. Countries saw just how impressive that response was.
So the question really is, how do you explain the
Department's failure, your failure to take much more aggressive
action over the weekend before landfall since you knew that
this storm was going to hit New Orleans with potentially
catastrophic consequences?
Secretary Chertoff. Let me try to unpack all the steps of
the question and begin by saying I think that the recognition
of the catastrophic possibility here--of course, and it was a
potential, you have to prepare for the worst, you hope for the
best, is reflected by the President's declaration of emergency,
which as I said was virtually unprecedented.
Senator Lieberman. Could I ask you a question on that?
Secretary Chertoff. Yes.
Senator Lieberman. As you know, I believe, or let me ask
you, did you know at that point that when the President
declares an emergency, it automatically becomes an incident of
national significance?
Secretary Chertoff. Yes.
Senator Lieberman. And charges you with the responsibility?
Secretary Chertoff. Correct.
Senator Lieberman. The question, and I don't want you to
spend a lot of time on this, but I was puzzled by Tuesday
evening, I think announced Wednesday morning, you formally
announced that this was an incident of national significance.
It raised a question about whether you knew it over the
weekend.
Secretary Chertoff. The answer is that on Tuesday, we had a
cabinet meeting the next day, and I wanted to formalize the
appointment of Michael Brown as PFO, and it was, I guess, kind
of a judicial hangover. You tend to write in a formalistic
style. But my understanding of the plan and my reading of the
plan then and now is that by dint of declaring the emergency,
it automatically made it an incident of national significance.
Senator Lieberman. That is my reading, as well.
Secretary Chertoff. And that is why I became personally
involved in it.
As far as the IIMG is concerned, the IIMG was kept
briefed----
Senator Lieberman. So why did you declare it again on
Tuesday if you knew that it----
Secretary Chertoff. I think because I had never done any
paperwork in my own hand. I said to somebody afterwards, this
is probably a judicial hangover. It is the way I was used to
writing. In truth, I didn't need to do it. I was told I didn't
need to do it. But I just did it to formalize it.
Senator Lieberman. OK. So again, you are testifying this
morning that as of the President's declaration of emergency,
which by your testimony was unusual, maybe unprecedented, you
knew that it was notched up.
Secretary Chertoff. Correct.
Senator Lieberman. It was an incident of national
significance, which gave you more authority and responsibility
to mobilize the resources of the Federal Government. So I ask
again why more was not done over the weekend.
Secretary Chertoff. And let me make clear, it gives me more
authority to coordinate it. It doesn't actually change my legal
authorities. So let me talk about the individual things we are
discussing, and I think you raised three. You raised the PFO,
the IIMG, and the issue of transportation.
Senator Lieberman. Right, and the law enforcement.
Secretary Chertoff. First, as it relates to the IIMG, which
is a group of representatives of the agencies who come together
to provide strategic guidance, that group was kept in the loop.
It was briefed. It was brought in on Monday. It didn't actually
stand up until Tuesday. If this had been a different kind of a
catastrophe, one that FEMA was not accustomed to dealing with,
like a biological incident, I would certainly have triggered
that group right away. I think on July 7, when the London
bombings came up, we triggered that group right away.
But I have to tell you, at least at the time, it was my
judgment that if there is any area where the expertise resided
around that table at the National Response Coordination Center,
it is hurricanes. I mean, there is no group of people who have
spent more time on that than the people at the NRCC. So I
frankly viewed that group as the source of operational advice
and even strategic advice going forward.
Likewise, in terms of declaring Michael Brown a PFO----
Senator Lieberman. Why not do that right away on Saturday
after----
Secretary Chertoff. With the PFO?
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Secretary Chertoff. Because, again, and this may reflect
kind of a practical reality as opposed to formality, the
function of the PFO is to represent the Secretary and basically
exercise his authority in terms of coordination. It doesn't
exercise command authority, it is a coordinating authority.
If I had brought somebody outside the chain of command, I
probably would have done it right away. But given the fact that
Michael Brown was an Under Secretary of the Department, so he
was the third ranking member of the Department, at least in
terms of level, and given the fact that he and the team working
on this had been working together for a week, I frankly didn't
think it was necessary at that point to add an additional title
or additional measure of authority.
When the cabinet meeting came up, I guess in recognition of
the fact that, first of all, this was going to be actually a
much longer process of rescue than we originally hoped it would
be, I wanted to make sure that, out of courtesy to my
colleagues, I was very clear to them that I was conveying to
Michael Brown every ounce of authority to speak on my behalf in
the field as the operator as I could do.
With respect to the issue of transportation, let me say
that in that first couple of days after I learned about the
levee breach, it was clear to me that the biggest failure was
not getting buses in. We did a very good job with rescue, and I
kept very close tabs through the Coast Guard on the number of
missions flown----
Senator Lieberman. How about on the weekend before the
storm hit New Orleans, knowing that the predictions were for a
very large number of displaced people? Why not mobilize Federal
DOT resources? We had a witness here from DOT who said they
began to get ready to deliver buses under a contract, a stand-
by contract they had on the previous Friday but were not asked.
Secretary Chertoff. Well, I can't tell you specifically
about buses, but I know, because I remember this particularly,
if you go back to that Sunday conference, there was a specific
question about activating ESF-1, which is the Department of
Transportation and the Movement Coordination Center. So my
understanding on Sunday was that the people whose job it is at
the Department of Transportation to move all this, get buses,
planes, or trains, had been stood up and were now working on
the contingency plans to do that. I will acknowledge to you I
did not call the Department of Transportation and say, I want
to see the plan.
On Thursday--actually, on Tuesday and Wednesday, after
landfall, I expected to then see the plan. And my heated
conversation with Mr. Brown, if I can describe it that way on
Tuesday, and my consistent, if I can use the word nudging,
nudging the Department, nudging, prodding, poking, and
ultimately raising my voice about buses on Wednesday led to a
decision by the deputy and me on Thursday that we needed to
simply take this away and get it done ourselves. That was, by
the way, a failure of--that is not what I should have been
doing and not what the deputy should have been doing and
reflected my frustration.
Senator Lieberman. I thank you for answering. My time is
up. I assume if you give me just a one-word answer, that as you
look back, you agree that the Department's preparations over
the weekend preceding Hurricane Katrina hitting the Gulf Coast
were inadequate?
Secretary Chertoff. Yes, particularly in the area of bus
transportation.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Senator Warner.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR WARNER
Senator Warner. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, first, there is a report out today issued by
the House of Representatives. Our Committee will eventually
issue its report, but I would say that--looking around the
table, I think I am the longest-serving Member except for
Senator Levin--I have the highest degree of confidence in this
Chairman and this Ranking Member of any two Senators here in
this building, and I am confident that our report will be fair
and objective, and it will reflect on your statements this
morning, where you step up and accept accountability. That is
exceedingly important in all realms of our government and I
commend you for that.
I wonder if you would just indulge me in a personal story.
It coincidentally was in February 1969, when President Nixon
took office and I was privileged to join the Department of
Defense in the Navy as Under Secretary and then the Secretary,
and a remarkable man became Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird,
who left the Congress and took on that job, and it was in the
middle of a war.
Now, I mention this because a number of us had known
President Nixon for many years. I had been with him in his
first campaign as an advance man, traveled with him to 12
States, kept abreast of him and worked with him during the
interregnum, and I mention that only that when Laird formed his
Department, put it together, he brought us all into a room one
day and closed the door, and he looked at us straight in the
eye and he said, ``Now, I want to make it clear. Many of you
have known the President. You have varying degrees of personal
relationships.'' I am saying with a sense of humility I did
know him quite well. And, he said, ``but I want you to
understand I am the Secretary, and from this moment forward, I
and I, alone, will communicate with the President. If there is
anyone that feels that you have a need to do some direct
communication, give me the courtesy of letting me know and then
we will talk it through together.''
As I say, this country was in a tough situation in that
war, taking over the responsibilities, and that worked. I will
never forget that. You might tuck that away for future
reference.
Secretary Chertoff. A good piece of advice.
Senator Warner. And he also said, ``If anyone decides to
violate that rule, please pack up and say goodbye,'' and that
was understood.
Now, we go to the question of people in charge and chain of
command. In your written testimony, you said ``We must have a
clear chain of command for managing incidents, and we must have
a unity of purpose across our Department.'' You are addressing
that and putting together a very important part of this
Committee's record. So many people felt that they had a measure
of take charge, and you have the sovereignty of the States to
deal with and the governors, and I suppose mayors consider
themselves a subset of the sovereignty. This one, I think,
exercised some of that thought. You have the FEMA director, the
National Guard, the Coast Guard, the active duty military, all
these components.
Lessons learned from this, how do you propose in a future
situation, and we must focus on that, how do you propose to
sort through all of those situations?
Secretary Chertoff. I think, Senator, you put your finger
on the most challenging element of this, precisely because you
have, first of all, State and local governments with elected
officials. You have a lot of different departments, and they
all have their own authorities. And I can't say I have got a
complete answer, and I think I am looking in part to this
Committee's report and also what Assistant to the President
Townsend is going to suggest, but I can give you some ideas.
First of all, I think just as a mechanical matter, this
idea that we have separate operations centers where one
delivers something to something else in DHS makes no sense. We
don't yet have the campus that would allow us to literally have
one operations center, but we are in the process of building
the hardware and also the culture that gives everybody
simultaneous visibility.
Second element, and I saw this work much better in
Hurricane Rita, is relations with DOD. We all knew in theory in
August that Northern Command and Department of Homeland
Security would have to work together as partners, but knowing
that and not actually having practiced it and having gotten out
there and done the work doesn't allow you to actually execute
as well as you should. That is why we did better in Hurricane
Rita than Katrina.
The Department of Defense NORTHCOM is going to be putting
some of its planners into our regional offices. We have got
some people over at NORTHCOM. We are looking in some way to set
up a regional preparedness function under our new Under
Secretary so that we can get closer to the States in various
regions a cell of DOD and DHS planners who can work with the
State and locals to build that relationship.
Senator Warner. That is an interesting response, and I
would hope that prior to finalizing that you might come up and
acquaint the Committee with your proposals such that if we have
some thoughts, that we might be able to contribute them because
that unity of command is absolutely essential. You do have the
subset of problems between the active duty forces, whether or
not to nationalize the National Guard. Now, that is a matter
that the President really has to work out with the respective
governors if that is necessary, and then your integration with,
again, the National Guard of that State.
In this situation, I felt--and by the way, I think General
Honore did a superb job as did all the men and women in
uniform, be they active or Guard or Reserve. Do you feel that?
Secretary Chertoff. I do. I think they did an outstanding
job.
Senator Warner. But all of the individuals, right down to
the privates and the sergeants that were there----
Secretary Chertoff. Absolutely.
Senator Warner [continuing]. Integrating that, and it is a
great credit to the military that they will step in. But I
think through personality and the ability to know how to
exercise command, Honore and the Adjutant General certainly of
Louisiana worked out their situations quite well. Do you agree
with that?
Secretary Chertoff. I do.
Senator Warner. The distinguished Ranking Member talked
about the National Response Plan, and I wasn't certain I was
listening carefully to your response. Do you feel it was or was
not followed?
Secretary Chertoff. I think it was--well, let me put it
this way. Until last Friday, I believed that problems in
actually following it were just inherent in the fact that the
situation was overwhelming and it was a new plan. I mean, I
think it was--it had never been used before. Friday, I think I
heard from a witness additional facts which now cause me to
believe there may have been a choice not to follow it, but I
will tell you, that was news to me.
Senator Warner. So do you feel that the NRP as written is
adequate, or do you wish to make some changes as we go to the
future?
Secretary Chertoff. I think we need to look at some changes
because I think it winds up sometimes being cumbersome. It is
evident to me, for example, that there is genuine confusion
about some of the elements of the plan and when you have to do
certain things. Rather than try to argue as if we are talking
about a legal document, I think we ought to clarify it and
simplify it. But I think the basic concept of an integrated
management system is a correct concept.
Senator Warner. Well, again, I would hope that this
Committee would be involved before that was finalized because
we all bear a measure of responsibility in a natural disaster
of these proportions. It just isn't the Executive Branch, it is
the Congress, and we want to be supportive because we have
learned from bitter experience in this the element of human
suffering.
You heard the gentleman behind you get up and speak out
about the plight of so many individuals today. I know they are
foremost in your mind. What active steps are you taking today
to try and alleviate the suffering that is taking place every
hour we sit here?
Secretary Chertoff. Here is the program we have in place.
In order to transition people from having the government
directly pay for hotels, which are very expensive, to having
people receiving assistance that they can use to find places to
live or receiving trailers, we put in a process, a program, to
first of all validate the appropriateness of everybody in the
hotel to see who is, in fact, entitled to be there and who
isn't, get them their money, and then give them a couple of
weeks from the time they get their money to find someplace to
live. We have sent--we have done a lot of intensive work
sending teams in to meet with people in hotels to give them
housing solutions. If they have to wait for trailers or if they
have to wait for apartments, they will have individual
assistance that they can use to pay for places to live until
that happens.
I know the hotels are a little impatient and with tourism
coming up, some of them want to push people out. We have tried
very hard to be very sensitive to helping people find housing,
but ultimately move us away from what is a very expensive
program of having large numbers of people in hotels.
Senator Warner. Could you fill in, in the few seconds I
have left, the story of the trailers and the accuracy of it and
the situation because it really, the compassion of the American
people is enormous for those suffering, and when they hear
stories like this, they feel it quite disturbing, and
expenditures being used for purposes totally unrelated, in
other words, compensation somehow they have received in other
areas, totally unrelated to alleviating that suffering.
Secretary Chertoff. Well, we knew in the first week that
the scale of people who would require assistance being so large
and being so widely dispersed, we would have to reconcile two
imperatives. One is people who had literally swum out of their
houses with nothing but the clothes on their back who needed to
have money for food and clothing, and then people who are going
to try to cheat you.
So we got the Inspector General in right away, and we said,
look, we are trying to devise a program to get money to people
as quickly as we can and yet try to build in some way to avoid
fraud. I don't think we were entirely successful because (a) of
the scale and (b) we didn't have the systems in place.
One thing I am happy to say is this. The criticism that our
telephone system did not allow us to validate who people were
and the addresses has now been corrected. We have taken the
program that was used to validate people who registered online
and in the last couple of weeks we have made it operational for
telephones, as well. So there are a series of steps we are
taking through implementing the financial controls that will
eliminate at least a large part of this threat in the future.
But I think part of it is also prosecuting people who try
to rip us off.
Senator Warner. Madam Chairman, my time is up. I wish you
and your Department good luck in the future.
Secretary Chertoff. Thank you.
Senator Warner. Thank you very much. You didn't cover the
trailers, but maybe later you can speak about the trailers.
Chairman Collins. Senator Dayton.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DAYTON
Senator Dayton. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
The House Committee's report that has just been released
says it remains difficult to understand how government could
respond so ineffectively to a disaster that was anticipated for
years and for which specific dire warnings had been issued for
days. The crisis was not only predictable, it was predicted. If
this is what happens when we have advance warning, we shudder
to imagine the consequences when we do not.
As those of us who accompanied the Chairman and the Ranking
Member recently to Mississippi and New Orleans can attest, this
failure of response was not just in the immediate aftermath of
the hurricane. It remains and continues to this day. According
to one article in the Washington Post, vast sections of the
City of New Orleans are still without utilities. Without
electricity, businesses can't open their doors. New Orleans is
a Gordian knot of complications that has tied up about
everyone. Everyone is waiting for the FEMA maps like they were
oracles of Delphi because the maps will tell residents and
businesses where and how they can rebuild. Those maps are not
likely to be finally released until August, a year after the
hurricane has occurred. As Senator Warner pointed out, we heard
testimony from the Inspector General that mobile homes and the
like that have been bought are just an incredible waste of
money that are sitting and rotting in, ironically, Hope,
Arkansas.
So this incompetence and this lack of a capable response by
FEMA and by DHS continues to this day. That, to me, is if
anything more disturbing than the failure of the immediate
response. I think they are both critically important, but this
is ongoing. As I will get into later in my second round,
Roseau, Minnesota, a small town in Northern Minnesota, has
struggled for 3 years after a flood to get approval for a
$619,000 project that has just been in the regional office
going around and around. FEMA should be out of Roseau by now.
This occurred in June 2003. They should be on to whatever, but
it goes on and on. People get dragged on. These are responsible
local officials just trying to rebuild their community, which
was flooded, and they can't get a $619,000 project.
The problems in FEMA are so systemic and so ingrained, I
just frankly don't know, other than turning the responsibility
over to the National Guard and making some chain of command
temporarily responsible for immediate emergencies until you can
go back and start this agency all over again because this is
just so dysfunctional or nonfunctional, it is frightening, and
it sets up expectations that people in an emergency are going
to get helped, and they don't. SBA and the housing, all this
just goes on and on, and New Orleans is a macro example, but
there are these smaller examples all over.
The Committee report goes on to say that Katrina was a
failure of initiative. It was a failure of leadership, it says.
Mr. Brown, who I realize you inherited, was the roommate of the
previous Director of FEMA, resigned in part because of issues
that were raised about falsification of his qualifications in
his resume. The predecessor, Mr. Albaugh, was the national
campaign manager for the President's 2000 election campaign.
According to this bio in Wikipedia, Mr. Albaugh brought about
several internal reorganizations of FEMA designed to shrink the
agency in size and scope, and particularly, the Albaugh FEMA
diminished the Clinton Administration's organizational emphasis
on disaster mitigation in favor of terrorism response. That is
an accusation that Mr. Brown made himself last week.
But where this gets current and relevant is he says in
March 2005, Mr. Albaugh registered as a lobbyist on behalf of
Kellogg, Brown and Root, which is the firm, a subsidiary of
Halliburton Corporation, that we have received testimony has
failed on numerous occasions in Iraq and has, according to that
Inspector General, over $1 billion of questionable charges.
Two of his clients, Mr. Albaugh's clients, Kellogg, Brown
and Root, and the Shaw Group, reading the list of contracts
received in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, appear again
and again--roof repaired in Louisiana, Shaw Constructors, Inc.
Water removal, City of New Orleans, and these are projects, as
I say, that in cases have been delayed or not even begun to
occur. Unwatering, Kellogg, Brown and Root, contingency support
for INS, temporary expansion of facilities, Kellogg, Brown and
Root. FEMA's prime contractors, of which there are four, one
being the Shaw Group. It has on its website the saying,
``Hurricane Recovery Projects, Apply Here.'' It received a $100
million emergency FEMA contract for housing management and
construction. The Shaw Group received a $100 million order from
the Army Corps of Engineers for work.
Another article says the Army Corps of Engineers awarded a
contract worth up to $385 million for the building of temporary
immigration detention centers to Kellogg, Brown and Root.
Another one says KBR won a $33 million contract from the Naval
Facilities Engineering Command for Hurricane Katrina
stabilization and recovery.
So here you have a situation where somebody who downsized
the agency and people who are basically then turning around and
getting contracts, some of them big sole-source contracts, that
they haven't performed on and they are continuing because these
two $100 million awards that I cited for KBR, or for the Shaw
Group, I am sorry, were awarded just in the last couple of
weeks.
You have, I think, a political scandal of enormous
proportions not only in what happened immediately because of
the failures of communication, but the opportunistic greed that
has dominated this recovery project is one that needs to be
rooted out and eliminated, and you need to find, if it is
possible to find it given FEMA's reputation, people who are
professionals, who are trained and experienced with
professional management of disaster recovery, which is what
FEMA is charged to do, who aren't put in these key positions
because of their prior political campaign experience, who
aren't allowed to then leave office and turn around and become
consultants for companies that are making hundreds of millions
of dollars off the misery of the people that are still
suffering down there and not even performing on the contracts.
I think you have a monumental disaster, and I think FEMA is
the disaster today. It is an even greater disaster than the
disasters it is supposed to be addressing.
Secretary Chertoff. This is a lot to respond to. Maybe I
can just do it briefly this way. As we get into recovery, of
course, that engages a lot of different elements, a lot of
different departments. You are quite right that we continue to
have open on the books disasters from over 10 years ago. The
Northridge earthquake, which I think was in 1993 or 1994, we
still have a FEMA office open there, and I think that raises
some interesting questions about the way in which we handle
long-term recovery, which I think has grown like topsy over the
last few years.
In terms of things like some of the frustrations in New
Orleans, of course, the President has a Gulf Coast coordinator
who is working closely with the States and locals. Sometimes
these are matters of problems at FEMA. Sometimes there were
trailers that were sitting staged that for a long time no one
wanted to give occupancy permits because nobody wanted to have
it, as they say, in my backyard. So we had to get local
permission. We don't have the ability to say to mayors, take
it. You have to. You have no choice. We have had problems with
utility companies in terms of hooking things up.
So there is a lot to work on in FEMA. One thing I will tell
you, though, is that the President has appointed some really
outstanding people to help me in this Department since I have
come on board. George Foresman, for example, who is our Under
Secretary for Preparedness, has spent 30 years, most recently
as Governor Warner of Virginia's Homeland Security Advisor,
working in the area of homeland security and emergency
management. We are looking at people, ultimately--we have Dave
Paulison, who has 30 years in emergency management in Florida
as the Acting Director.
So we are committed to getting people in here who have the
appropriate skills to run their particular components, and we
know we have a lot of work to do with FEMA. We have started to
talk about some of the things we need to do, and one of the
things I look forward to is having the Committee talk about
some of these long-term recovery issues and how to deal with
them.
Senator Dayton. Mr. Secretary, when I go back to the
sequence of events regarding information, and you have
acknowledged that was a problem, but Mr. Bahamonde testified
before this Committee that at approximately 11 a.m. on Monday
morning, the worst possible news came into the Emergency
Operations Center. I stood there and listened to the first
report of the levee break at the 17th Street Canal. They added
that it was ``very bad.'' We have here pictures that he took
from a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter at about 5:30 p.m. on Monday
afternoon. I mean, this is New Orleans underwater. This is not,
as you said earlier, the possibility of 80 percent flooding,
this is 80 percent flooding that has already occurred, that has
been documented by the one FEMA individual on site at 5:30 in
the afternoon.
He said that he then contacted the FEMA headquarters three
different times--including Mr. Brown, yet we had testimony last
week from General Broderick, head of the HSOC, that he left the
office that Monday evening unaware. He said there were
conflicting reports, but this is about as hard to refute as
anything I could imagine. He came in the next morning at 6 a.m.
and became convinced that there had been, in fact, major
breaches and flooding. He, then, according to his testimony,
didn't tell Assistant Secretary Stephan until 11:30 in the
morning that this catastrophe had already occurred, which it
was first identified 24 hours previously by somebody, an
eyewitness.
Talk about situational awareness, you have people that are
taking pictures from helicopters that are communicating. How
much more situational awareness could anybody at your level
have?
Secretary Chertoff. Well, I think this comes directly back
to the point of integration. As I later learned, and I actually
spoke to Marty Bahamonde the weekend after landfall and for the
first time actually heard from him what had happened, which no
one had told me before then, he took these pictures, I guess,
in the late afternoon or early evening around 6 p.m. There is
no question this is exactly the kind of image that should have
come into the HSOC and would have immediately, it seems to me,
alerted everybody that we had a major breach.
I have a lot of respect for General Broderick, and I think
you read his resume. He spent more time running operations
centers and handling crises for the Marine Corps than anybody I
have ever met. I trust him implicitly to sift information. I am
confident that had he had this, he would have gotten it to me
immediately. I can tell you that the 6 a.m. report did get to
me, so when he got it, he did pass it on to me.
The fact that there could be people talking about this in
FEMA and we not know about it is precisely the problem of lack
of integration. Part of it is hardware and stuff, but I have to
be honest, part of it is culture, people--this is the
stovepiping we have dealt with in the intelligence community.
People sometimes hoard information. I have been in the
Department of Justice, I have dealt with issues there that are
similar, and I am dealing with it here. We have got to convince
people that stovepiping information and hoarding information is
irresponsible when matters of life and death are involved.
Senator Dayton. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Senator Coleman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, I do appreciate your candor and admission of
responsibility, which is important. I felt, in listening to
Michael Brown, that he feigned admission of any sort of
responsibility, and in fact, I think what he really was doing--
what he testified to when he said very directly, even though he
asked me--I have apologized; what else should I do? His
testimony essentially was that DHS and FEMA, their response was
doomed from the beginning because of the structural
incorporation of FEMA into DHS. I have been pointing out this
disfunction. He stated these clashes in the Department, if they
are not fixed, this Department is doomed to fail. It will fail
the country.
Is it your belief that FEMA and DHS were doomed to fail
because of structural infirmities?
Secretary Chertoff. No, quite the opposite, and I will tell
you that the proof of the pudding to me is in a couple of
stories I will tell you about what happened on Thursday, which
were examples of situations where finally violating my general
rule that the operator ought to be in control of the operation,
the Deputy Secretary and I started to intervene personally into
operational things because I think--my perception was at the
time Mr. Brown may not have been aware of the capabilities.
Maybe now, after the testimony on Friday, he didn't want to use
them.
One was the buses, the air bridge out of the Superdome.
When we learned that the plan was to simply bus everybody to
Houston, we realized that is going to take forever, so the
Deputy, working with TSA, which is one of the components of the
Department, and the private sector was able to get commercial
aircraft, arrange to come into New Orleans Airport to create an
air bridge so we could bus people just to the airport and then
go back and pick up more people. That was one example of
enhanced capability.
The second was the Coast Guard. I got a report from the
Coast Guard on Thursday that there were pockets of people who
had self-evacuated to a high ground that didn't have water, and
I guess FEMA wasn't able to respond. So I simply directed the
Coast Guard to take a helicopter, and I was a little hesitant
because I didn't want to take them out of another mission, and
map where those people were so they could go back and deliver
water.
Those are examples of capabilities that DHS brought to the
table. The shame is that we were not made aware of the need to
do those things a little earlier.
Senator Coleman. I want to talk about that. The Chairman
raised the issue of how could you have the guy in charge who
clearly didn't have respect for chain of command, who basically
said it was a waste of time to talk to you and was talking to
the White House. You answered in response to what you know now
versus what you knew then. I want to go back to kind of what
you knew then.
One of the issues is when did you know that New Orleans was
underwater? You have indicated that you didn't know Monday. You
went to sleep Monday night thinking, in effect, that you dodged
a bullet, and so when we woke up reading papers, that was the
impression you had, and apparently you didn't get information
from Bahamonde or anybody else talking about the breach, is
that correct?
Secretary Chertoff. That is correct.
Senator Coleman. But then on Tuesday morning, actually, in
regard to a Tim Russert interview which was September 4,
Sunday, you talked about what actually happened. You talked
about New Orleans. You woke up Tuesday. New Orleans dodged a
bullet. And it was on Tuesday the levee--it may have been
overnight Monday or Tuesday the levee started to break, and it
was mid-day Tuesday they became aware of the fact that there
was no possibility of plugging the gap and essentially the lake
was going to start to drain into the city. Were you saying here
that it was Tuesday afternoon, mid-day before you knew----
Secretary Chertoff. No. What I said----
Senator Coleman [continuing]. That the break was
irreparable?
Secretary Chertoff. No, what I said was this, and I
apologize a little bit because I think I was on 4 hours of
sleep over 48 hours when I did that interview from the field
outside of New Orleans. What I said, my understanding at the
time, as late as Sunday, was that the breach had occurred
overnight Monday because I found out about it first thing, 6
a.m., Tuesday. Then the question I had is, well, what can be
done? Is this something the Army Corps can repair? My
impression is it took a little bit of time to get a definitive
answer to that. Mid-day is probably not the right word. I knew
by mid-morning that it was irreparable, and I also knew by mid-
morning that it was situated in a way that would really flood
the entire city like a bathtub until equilibrium.
Senator Coleman. On Monday morning, I think it was in
Exhibit 14,\1\ there is an e-mail from Michael Brown to Patrick
Rhode, I think, and others saying that he touched Chertoff--
this e-mail is 8:53, so it is 9 in the morning. Brown is saying
that he touched Chertoff today. ``FYI, he and Leavitt are
headed to CDC.'' You have testified to that. ``Casually
mentioned he was going to R4 to give morale boost to R4.'' You
indicated you went to that Atlanta base. Did you know that? Did
they know that? When Brown said he touched you, what did you
and Brown talk about on Monday morning? Did he not explain that
he understood that the levee was broken, that we were facing a
great catastrophe?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Exhibit 14 appears in the Appendix on page 172.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secretary Chertoff. I don't think he knew--I can't speak
for him. What I have seen of the record does not suggest to me
he knew on Monday morning that the levee had been breached. I
have seen an e-mail, after the fact again, around 12:30 or
something like that on Monday, where Brown says to somebody, I
think there is some over-topping. So on Monday morning, I asked
him for general--I don't remember the exact conversation--what
is the situation. The storm was still going on. I expected that
we wouldn't know the full picture. At that point, he did not
tell me about a levee breach.
Senator Coleman. How do you respond to the reports or the
e-mails that the White House knew Monday night about the
breach. Obviously, you didn't. What happened there?
Secretary Chertoff. I think the whole idea of dealing with
conveying information by e-mailing people you know around the
government is a huge mistake. We have an operations center to
fuse information. This is, again--I feel like I am back with
the issues with intelligence. It has got to come to one place.
If it had come to the HSOC, the HSOC has the responsibility to
notify the White House Situation Room as well as me.
Senator Coleman. It was clear, though, that by Wednesday or
Thursday, clear to Americans, my wife watching TV and then
talking to her husband, the Senator, and just being aghast at
what was going on and why can't we get food to the Convention
Center? What is happening at the Superdome? It was clear that
Brown was in way over his head, way over his head. Yet on
Friday, I believe it was Friday, September 2, the President is
standing there and saying, ``Brownie, you are doing a heck of a
job,'' which tells me somebody didn't tell the President that
he has got a FEMA Director who is way over his head, who has
failed to respond to the needs of the people in the city. All
of America knows that. It seemed the only people who didn't
know were the White House and Homeland Security. How did that
lack of communication take place?
Secretary Chertoff. Let me give you, again, a kind of a
play-by-play of my assessment of Mr. Brown as things went on.
On Wednesday, I was in a cabinet meeting. There were associated
meetings about this. He actually did communicate with me on
Wednesday. I was regularly in touch either through the HSOC or
directly, even talking to people in the field.
On Thursday, we had the incidents I have described with the
Coast Guard and the bus, and also it was Thursday when I
discovered about the Convention Center. I initially asked Mr.
Brown. He said there are 1,500 people there. Finally, I had to
send somebody in and have them report back directly.
Thursday night, I began to--I asked myself, are we dealing
with a situation where it is not just the inherent overwhelming
challenge, but that maybe despite good intentions, Mr. Brown is
really not up to this, and I thought I would go down on Friday
and see for myself.
When I came back on Saturday, I concluded I had to replace
Mr. Brown, at least in Louisiana, and at that point, I
solicited some suggestions and began the process of bringing
Admiral Allen in to be the Deputy PFO on Monday.
Senator Coleman. The President, to his credit, has accepted
responsibility. I mean, the buck stops at his desk. I would
suggest, though, Mr. Secretary, that as head of DHS that you
failed the President by allowing him on Friday to be with
somebody that at that point in time, I think you had to have
some real doubts that Michael Brown was capable of providing
the leadership that needed to be provided in those
circumstances.
Secretary Chertoff. I certainly had reservations. First of
all, I am acutely--look, I mean, my job was to manage this
incident. I take responsibility for the management, and I want
to make it completely clear that when Michael Brown said, well,
he went to the White House for this, it was not the White
House's responsibility to direct the operation or to direct the
operator, and it was our Department's responsibility. To the
extent that failed the President, I feel that very acutely.
I can't speak for the President. I understand that on
Friday, notwithstanding my doubts, I believe Mr. Brown was
doing the best he could. And so I can't say I was offended by
the fact that--he was very tired. He was up a lot. I don't
think we should let hindsight color the fact that he worked
hard. But I certainly on my own began to reevaluate him over
that period of time.
Senator Coleman. My concern about that is, again, it is not
what we know now, but really then. I mean, if all you had to do
was watch TV then, I think most of America knew by Wednesday
night and Thursday that FEMA had not responded the way it
should, and a lack of leadership across the board. I have said
this was the perfect storm of poor leadership, a governor who
didn't make decisions, a mayor who was holed up in a hotel
without communications and wasn't showing leadership, and a
FEMA Director who clearly did not provide leadership. I think
we knew it. What concerns me is with all the communications you
have, everything you tuned into, you are still evaluating
something that I think is pretty apparent to the rest of us.
A last comment very quickly because we have to talk about
today, I was with the Chairman and the Ranking Member. We
visited Mississippi and New Orleans. To many people, FEMA is a
four-letter word, a negative four-letter word. There is a lot
of work that needs to be done, and I do think we have to look
ahead and deal with the great tragedy that is going on, deal
with the situation that I think Chairman Warner was getting to.
You have these trailers, and they are sitting somewhere and not
functional where people need them.
So I would hope as we not just look at what happened then,
but as we are looking at what is happening now, that we don't
need to do another investigation a year from now as to the
slowness of the response.
Secretary Chertoff. Well, do you want me to talk about, not
trailers, but the mobile homes now? The original conception, I
think, was just to have mobile home communities in places that
were outside the flood plain. It turned out, I think, not to be
the right solution, partly because I don't think communities
wanted them. What we will do with these mobile homes is we need
to make sure they are stored properly. They will be used in the
area and for other purposes.
More generally, let me leave you with this thought. The
challenge we have now is we have to continue the recovery
process, but we have to get ready for June 1, which is my--we
could have something before June 1, but the hurricane date. So
we have both of those things to juggle, and that is why I am
spending a considerable amount of my time now talking about how
do we rebuild FEMA.
Senator Coleman. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Pryor.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR
Senator Pryor. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Let me just make sure I understand this. You used to be on
the Circuit Court of Appeals.
Secretary Chertoff. Correct.
Senator Pryor. So you gave up a lifetime appointment for
this, is that right? [Laughter.]
Secretary Chertoff. My wife reminds me of that
periodically.
Senator Pryor. I thought you might hear about that from
some folks. Let me ask you about something that one of our
Congressmen in Arkansas, Mike Ross, who represents the Fourth
Congressional District, has talked about a lot in the last few
days and that is the FEMA trailers that are in Hope, Arkansas.
They are in an airport there. There has been a lot of news
coverage on this. As I understand it, there are two types of,
what do you call them, trailers, manufactured homes----
Secretary Chertoff. Right.
Senator Pryor [continuing]. Or whatever terminology you
would like to use. One type is the type that you have that are
stored in Hope, and as I understand it, those are maybe a more
permanent type of home that needs permanent utility hook-ups.
There is another type that I think you may call in the lingo in
FEMA, you may call them travel trailers. Is that right? There
are two types of trailers?
Secretary Chertoff. There are mobile homes and trailers,
correct.
Senator Pryor. OK. And on the travel trailers, they can be
put in someone's yard. They can be hooked up to the existing
utilities there. And they can be placed in a floodplain, is
that correct?
Secretary Chertoff. That is correct.
Senator Pryor. And so the first question I have is, who
made the decision or why was the decision made to go with the
more permanent-type mobile home rather than the so-called
travel trailer?
Secretary Chertoff. Actually, the decision was made to use
both, and we have acquired many more travel trailers than
mobile homes. At the time that the dimensions of this became
clear, there was literally a shortage. I mean, there was not
enough capacity, and they wanted to contract to get as many
trailers and as many of any kind of living facility in the
pipeline as quickly as possible. So we really turned the spigot
on for the trailers.
I think the original thought was the mobile homes would be
an alternative to trailers in places without a floodplain, for
example, if there were communities around Baton Rouge, we might
use those for that. I think it has turned out that they are not
particularly popular in terms of having communities like that,
and while I still envision we are going to use several thousand
of those mobile homes where we can instead of trailers, we will
have to use the excess for non-floodplain places.
Senator Pryor. So is it your testimony today, just so I am
clear on this, that it is up to the local communities? If they
want the trailers, they can have them?
Secretary Chertoff. Well, no, but they have to agree to
have them or we can't put them there. If a local community
says, give me trailers, we still have to allocate among people
who want them because there is a shortage. But if they say, we
don't want mobile homes and they don't grant a certificate of
occupancy, then I don't think we can do anything.
Senator Pryor. And has that been your experience here, that
they don't grant a certificate of occupancy?
Secretary Chertoff. What has been reported to me is that
there are instances where, with respect to mobile homes or
trailers sometimes, there are communities that do not want to
grant a certificate of occupancy if you are going to put a
group of homes in one place.
Senator Pryor. Right. And I guess, not to parse words with
you, but you said it has been reported to you that there are
incidents of that----
Secretary Chertoff. Yes.
Senator Pryor. What I want to get a sense of is how
widespread that is, because I went down with the Committee to
that region and my impression from local people is they were
begging FEMA for trailers and mobile homes, just begging them.
Secretary Chertoff. Yes, and the reason I say reported to
me is because not having spoken to the mayors myself,
necessarily, all of them myself, I don't want to say something
that turns out to be inaccurate. I think Mississippi is
different than Louisiana. I think in Mississippi, you have a
lot of home sites that are habitable right now, and many of
those people--and this is the traditional hurricane model--many
of those people want to put a trailer on their home site, they
hook it up, they are ready to go.
I think we have satisfied a lot of those needs. I don't
think we have satisfied all of them. Louisiana is different
because we have a lot of area that is not habitable, and some
of what is habitable is still in a floodplain, and there have
been discussions about, for example, in some communities,
having groups of mobile homes or groups of trailers in a park,
and that is where we have sometimes gotten some resistance.
Senator Pryor. OK. Well, I would like to explore that with
you further, but our time is short.
As I understand the policy under the previous
administration, when James Lee Witt was running FEMA,
apparently what they would do with trailers or mobile homes is
they would negotiate with the manufacturers before any storm,
and they had a series of contracts in the file, so to speak,
and then once they knew the needs after the flood or after the
storm, whatever it may be, once they knew the need, they would
execute the contracts. As I understand it, there has been a
change in FEMA's policy, and you tell me if I am wrong, but my
impression is that after this hurricane, you all really started
almost at ground zero and had to do the negotiations and all
that after the storm occurred. Is that true?
Secretary Chertoff. I am not sure that is correct, and so I
want to make sure that we get back to you on that to find out.
My impression is there were some contracts, but that the scope
well exceeded that. And also, there were also some purchases
that we allowed to be made locally just to meet the need and
also to help the local communities.
Senator Pryor. Were these contracts on a competitive bid
basis?
Secretary Chertoff. I don't know what the specific
procurement was with respect to the trailer contracts. So
again, I don't want to say something here that I am going to be
wrong about. I think that generally, I agree with you. The
right answer here is to prearrange contracts up front, and one
of the reasons I was emphatic about some of the changes I
announced earlier in my testimony is there is a time line for
procuring, and we have got to get that started. I think that is
the right place to go.
Senator Pryor. OK. Again, I would love for you to get the
answers to those questions back to the Committee, if possible.
Another question that you probably won't know right now is
as I understand, under the current FEMA setup, there was a
middleman that was hired to somehow go out on the market and
find these trailers, and I would like to know more about who
that was and how that contract worked. Were they on a
percentage or flat fee? I would like to know more.
Secretary Chertoff. We will have to get that back to you.
Senator Pryor. And also this issue of the floodplain. You
can't put these in the floodplain. As I understand it, that is
a FEMA regulation, is that right?
Secretary Chertoff. That is my understanding.
Senator Pryor. And that regulation could be changed?
Secretary Chertoff. It could be. Now, let me make it clear
that trailers can be in the floodplain. Mobile homes cannot be.
Senator Pryor. I am sorry, yes, mobile homes.
Secretary Chertoff. We could change it. I have actually
asked about that. I think there would be a serious concern
about putting a mobile home in a floodplain in an area which is
likely to be exposed to a hurricane in less than 6 months, and
one of the things I am trying to caution people about is we
need to start thinking now about what preparations are being
made in Louisiana and Mississippi for the upcoming hurricane
season while we are in the process of rebuilding.
Senator Pryor. Right. Well, let me talk about, if I can
follow up on that planning theme that you just mentioned. As I
understand it, with Hurricane Pam, that simulation was supposed
to be a two-part simulation. It began in 2002. The first part
was to simulate a hurricane in the New Orleans area. The second
part of that was to simulate a massive earthquake in New
Madrid, Missouri, which, by the way, is immediately north of
Arkansas and the New Madrid fault actually runs through the
very northeastern corner of our State, so that is near and dear
to our hearts, as well. The New Madrid exercise has never been
done, is that right?
Secretary Chertoff. I don't know if it has ever been done.
Senator Pryor. I am pretty sure, you can take my word for
it, that it has not been done, and it seems to me that here
again we see a total lack of planning for what scientists and
seismologists, etc., tell us could be an enormous national
disaster. And again, it appears that FEMA and the Department of
Homeland Security are just not prepared for that. So I would
encourage you to do that exercise, to spend the money, the
resources, whatever it may be, to do that exercise so that you
are prepared for that massive earthquake.
Secretary Chertoff. Well, let me say that you have touched
on an issue that is very much at the forefront of my mind. The
President directed and Congress then subsequently legislated a
requirement that we go to all the States, and this would
include Missouri, and look at their emergency plans. Our
deadline for reporting on the first cut was Friday, September
10. I am pleased to say we made the deadline, which I thought
was important.
We are going to have to do this for all the States now.
Like the rest of my job, we are always in a race against time,
and I have a great Under Secretary of Preparedness who has a
lot of experience, and I have tasked him to make sure that this
gets done as quickly as possible.
Senator Pryor. OK. Well, the New Madrid fault is a very
serious fault line in North America, potentially the most
deadly one that there is.
The last question I have for you is that Congressman Baker
of Louisiana has introduced legislation that would create the
Louisiana Recovery Corporation, and I assume you are familiar
with that proposal. I would like to get your thoughts on the
bill, and my understanding is the Administration does not
support that legislation, but I would like to get your thoughts
and know if the Administration has taken a position on it.
Secretary Chertoff. I think the Administration, principally
through Chairman Powell, who the President is looking to to
coordinate the recovery phase of this, is working with
Congressman Baker. I know there are ongoing discussions. We all
want to achieve the same result. We need to get this process
kick-started to make sure that we can start the process of
rebuilding New Orleans, taking account of the fact that we have
to live with the topography of the city and make some
accommodations to the challenge that poses.
Senator Pryor. So in other words, you don't have a position
on the Baker bill?
Secretary Chertoff. I don't think at this time the
Administration's position has been announced. We are continuing
to work on the issue with Congressman Baker and others. I don't
have a definitive position to give you.
Senator Pryor. Madam Chairman, thank you, and I guess just
on a personal note I would say that I feel like we have given
the Department of Homeland Security and even Secretary Chertoff
plenty of time to fix the problems with FEMA and preparedness
and emergency response, and quite frankly, with all due
respect, I don't think that they have done it, and I think it
is probably time for the Congress to come in and offer the fix
there. Every time we sit down and talk about it, we talk about
all these problems. I guess the fear I have is we may have a
big government solution to this, and that is let us throw more
money, let us redo the organization chart, let us do this, but
in the end, it is not very effective. So I would be glad to
work with the Chairman and the Ranking Member on that.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Bennett.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BENNETT
Senator Bennett. Thank you very much.
Secretary Chertoff, is the Coast Guard part of the
Department of Homeland Security?
Secretary Chertoff. Yes.
Senator Bennett. So why do we hear that the Department has
failed?
Secretary Chertoff. I have tried to be careful to say that
there were some real successes and also some of the other
components, like TSA, real successes. There were some real
successes in FEMA, and there were some failures, as well.
Senator Bennett. I think that is an important point to make
because what we need to do in this hearing, or what I think we
are trying to do in this hearing, is look at three separate
areas: The past, we want to know what happened; and the
present, what is going on with the trailers, etc.; and then,
ultimately, the future. Where are we going to try to solve the
problems of the Department?
You remembered correctly my warning that the Department was
not going to function properly for at least 5 years. This has
nothing whatever to do with who is appointed to try to get it
to work. This has everything to do with the challenge of
creating it. This is the largest reorganization of the
Executive Branch since the creation of the Department of
Defense, and unfortunately, the first Secretary of Defense
committed suicide. Secretary Ridge got through that without
that particular result. But the Department of Defense never
really functioned for about 20 years after it was formed, and
to Senator Pryor's point, it took the Goldwater-Nichols Act to
ultimately fix that, but that came after decades of experience
with the cultural clashes that occurred.
The Coast Guard handled its transfer into the Department of
Homeland Security virtually without a ripple, and that is a
tribute to the Department and it is a tribute to the Coast
Guard.
FEMA obviously did not, and I was interested in your
reaction to the testimony we had on Friday. To repeat, I found
it staggering that an Under Secretary--you have described him
as the third most important figure in the Department in terms
of the pecking order--would testify that he deliberately would
not call you and discuss things with you because he considered
it ``a waste of my time.'' I heard your answer to the Chairman,
but it is staggering to me that a subordinate could be that
insubordinate and hide it from you to the degree that he
apparently did.
I have looked over the excerpts from the VTC transcripts,
not only your questions, and you gave us these excerpts to
demonstrate your questions, but his answers, and there isn't a
hint in his answers of the attitude that we saw on Friday. You
read those answers and you think, this is the most open,
cooperative, supportive subordinate you could possibly have,
and yet he sat at that table and told us that it would be a
waste of his time to have a conversation with you.
That is an incredible demonstration of dysfunction, and the
difference between FEMA's performance and the Coast Guard's
performance is a demonstration of that kind of refusal to
integrate which the Coast Guard commandant, maybe because he is
used to chain of command and following orders, obviously didn't
have any problems with. But that is the past, and we go
forward.
I must say, I find your description of what you did on the
day when you were supposedly off in Atlanta enjoying yourself
to be properly--I find it to be an accurate description of a
very engaged official, and you do have all of the modern
communications and just because you are physically in Atlanta
doesn't mean, as it would have meant 10 years ago, that you had
no connection with what was going on. So I find that reassuring
and appreciate and thank you for that.
As to the present, you are dealing with these issues and
you are aware of them. Let us spend a little time talking about
the future.
I still have confidence in your abilities to manage this
Department, and given the baptism by fire, if you will, through
which you have gone in the time since Katrina, there is
probably not another official on the planet better prepared to
understand the challenges and the enormity of the challenges
than you are. Look into the future, although 5 years is
running, if indeed that is the figure we are going to take, and
tell us what kind not only of FEMA you would like to create,
but what kind of Department of Homeland Security you would like
to leave behind as your legacy, the contribution you want to
make in this part of your stewardship that you could say, I
left the Department no longer dysfunctional and properly put
together.
Secretary Chertoff. Now, Senator, I have thought about that
since before I took this job. The short answer is I would like
to leave it one Department. I think your description of what
happened to the Department of Defense is something I am very
aware of, and we actually looked to what happened there to try
to accelerate that sense of jointness, that sense of unity that
you need to make one Department.
Part of it is we have got to finish the process of building
integrated operations centers, getting a single IT structure,
and we are doing all that now. But a second piece of it is we
need to build a common culture, promoting joint assignments,
promoting people moving from one component to another, and
promoting a culture of preparedness.
I was concerned when I came into the Department that the
hardest part of what we do is planning and thinking through
what do you do when you face contingencies, and that is still a
challenge we have ahead of us, ranging from everything from
terrorism to natural hazards.
Senator Bennett. By the way, I assume you reject Mr.
Brown's statement that you are so focused on terrorism, you
think natural disasters don't matter.
Secretary Chertoff. Not only do I reject it, but I rejected
it explicitly in a speech, at which Mr. Brown was present, when
I rolled out my second stage review, and I rejected it again
when we had the first time ever joint summit with emergency
managers and homeland security advisors, at which Mr. Brown was
present, and I reject it because, first of all, there is going
to be a lot of common requirements that are going to apply
whether you are dealing with evacuation because of a flood or a
hurricane or evacuation because of some chemical explosion
caused by terrorists.
Second, things are not going to come labeled. We are not
going to necessarily know, is this a terrorist attack? A levee
could be breached because of a natural problem or it could be
breached because of a terrorist problem.
The last thing we need to do is to create a new stovepipe
where people are competing about this.
Senator Bennett. I apologize for interrupting you, but I
wanted to get that point and go back to your overall----
Secretary Chertoff. I think that a big part of this is
going to be building a culture of preparedness and planning
where we really integrate our planning and our preparedness
with our state and local partners, and that means really
getting into specifics in a way that I don't know we always
have in the past and asking the hard questions like we are in
the process of doing now. What is your evacuation plan? What
are you going to do if the bus drivers don't show up to drive
the buses out? These are the kinds of hard questions we can
only answer if we really put the resources and the effort into
preparedness that we are doing thanks to this Congress'
appropriation for preparedness this year and what we are going
to do going forward.
At the end of the day, I would like to feel that in terms
of the spectrum of prevention, protection, and response, this
Department is all hands on every single one of those things,
and while we are always going to have challenges, I mean, you
are never going to have a natural catastrophe that is anything
but difficult and ugly, I would like to do the best humanly
possible to have us in a position to spare people's suffering
and pain during those kinds of catastrophes.
Senator Bennett. Thank you. I wish you well.
Secretary Chertoff. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Levin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN
Senator Levin. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and welcome to
you, Secretary Chertoff.
You have already mentioned to us in your statement that the
breaches in the levees caught you by surprise. You only
referred to the breach in the levees and not to the size of the
storm. It was the fact that the levees broke that you were
referring to the week in question when you said you were caught
by surprise, is that a fair statement?
Secretary Chertoff. It is fair with just this one
additional fact. I would not have been surprised on Monday
morning to hear about levee breaches. What surprised me is my
going home Friday night, 12 hours after the storm had passed,
or 10 hours after the storm had passed, having seen a report
that said there were no significant breaches, and then to find
out the next morning that there had been a breach. That is what
surprised me.
Senator Levin. You mean Monday night instead of Friday
night?
Secretary Chertoff. I am sorry, yes, Monday night instead
of Friday.
Senator Levin. Now, the President said on Thursday,
September 1, on Good Morning America, ``I don't think anyone
anticipated the breach of the levees.'' That is not accurate,
is it?
Secretary Chertoff. My understanding is he meant what I
meant, which is the perception was that although it would not
have been a surprise on Monday morning to learn about breaches
of levees, based on what, speaking for myself, I knew Monday
evening, thinking it was over, I was surprised on Tuesday
morning.
Senator Levin. There had been a long list of studies that
anticipated breach of the levees, is that true?
Secretary Chertoff. Breach and over-topping, yes.
Senator Levin. Let us just talk breach. The Corps of
Engineers as early as 1994 talked about a possibility of
breach. In 2000, the Corps of Engineers talked about the
possibility of breach. Your own Assessment Center talked about
the possibility of breach of the levees, is that not accurate?
Secretary Chertoff. I don't know all of the reports, but I
know there has certainly been a lot of discussion over the
years of that as a possibility.
Senator Levin. Well, let me read to you, then, your own
Assessment Center report on Sunday prior to landfall. It said
the following, that New Orleans is surrounded by a 130-mile
system of levees to protect the urban area. It lies six feet
below sea level from surrounding waters. The potential for
severe storm surge to overwhelm Lake Pontchartrain levees is
the greatest concern for New Orleans. Any storm rated Category
4 or greater will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee
breaching. This was immediately prior to landfall.
Now, did you receive that report? You were supposed to
receive it in your Monday morning briefing.
Secretary Chertoff. I don't remember the specific report,
but again, I want to make it clear, I have no doubt that I knew
that as the storm approached, one possible outcome was levee
breaching, and I have never heard anybody suggest that they
didn't realize that was a possibility.
Senator Levin. Well, no, you suggested it on television----
Secretary Chertoff. No, what I said was given my--what I
had been told had happened on Monday, which is that the worst
had not occurred, I did not anticipate that I would get a
report on Tuesday morning that said, oh, you know what? The
worst did occur.
Senator Levin. The way you talked later on that week, you
said, ``I will tell you that really that perfect storm of
combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the
planners and maybe anybody's foresight.'' But it didn't escape
the foresight of planners.
Secretary Chertoff. Well----
Senator Levin. The planners said, and you now acknowledge,
that you were aware of the fact that the levees could be
breached.
Secretary Chertoff. I certainly was aware of it. I think
what I was referring to was the particular combination of
events.
Senator Levin. It didn't come across that way to me, but--
--
Secretary Chertoff. I am quite sure I have said things in
the press that don't come across the way I intended them to,
but I am telling you what I thought at the time.
Senator Levin. When you went to bed on Monday night, not
knowing that the levees had been breached, this is in the face
of all kinds of communications to your agency saying that the
levees had been breached on Monday. There was an 11:13 a.m. e-
mail to your Director of Response, is it Michael Lowder, saying
flooding is significant throughout the region and the levee in
New Orleans has reportedly been breached, sending six to eight
feet of water throughout the Ninth Ward area of the city. That
is 11:13 a.m. on Monday.
At 11:51 a.m. on Monday, New Orleans Fire Department is
reporting a 20-foot-wide breach on the Lake Pontchartrain-side
levee. That was an e-mail from FEMA's Michael Heath to FEMA's
Deputy Director of Response, Michael Lowder. You have got later
reports on Monday saying the same thing.
We just have received, belatedly, may I say, a Coast Guard
report. The Committee has been frustrated in getting a number
of documents. That was reported a couple of days ago by the
Government Accountability Office, I believe, reported
difficulty in getting documents. The Committee just received
this document from--this is a Coast Guard e-mail going directly
into your ops center, your HSOC at the Department of Homeland
Security, and this is dated Monday, 1:51 p.m. A levee in New
Orleans has been breached, sending three to eight feet of water
into the Ninth Ward area of the city.
Now, that is not stovepiping. That goes directly into your
operation, and yet 10 hours later, you go to bed believing that
there had been no breach because you received a report at 6
p.m., apparently, saying that there had been no breach of the
levees yet at 6 p.m. Is that so far accurate?
Secretary Chertoff. Well, that is not the only reason
because I had been asking repeatedly and getting repeatedly
oral reports about what was going on, not from my ops center
people, and had not gotten a report that there was a
significant breach of the levees.
Senator Levin. Well, your ops center was notified a number
of times during the day that there was a significant breach of
the levees, including from the Coast Guard. I don't know if
this document is part of the record yet, but if it isn't, I
would ask that it be made part of the record, Madam
Chairman.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The information submitted by Senator Levin appears in the
Appendix on page 162.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chairman Collins. Without objection.
Senator Levin. A levee in New Orleans--this is 1:51 in the
afternoon--a levee in New Orleans has been breached, sending
three to eight feet of water into the Ninth Ward area of the
city. Now, something is not working well in your shop if you
are not notified of that. You have all these communications
systems right at your hand. You indicated you can be contacted
within seconds. They are with you all the time. And yet you go
to bed 10 hours later without apparently being aware of the
most significant event that had happened in New Orleans
following landfall, which is the breach of those levees. Who
was responsible for not getting you that information from your
ops center to you? Have you found out?
Secretary Chertoff. Let me, first of all, be fair in saying
that--and here again, and I have spoken to General Broderick
about this, he has testified before you because I know he was
dismayed at the fact that he didn't know and I didn't know.
First of all, some of what you have read, I think, are internal
e-mail communications among FEMA people, which as I have said
previously is not the way you organize and communicate
information.
You have a Coast Guard document. I haven't seen it, or I
don't know if I have seen it. There was information flowing in,
as I think Mr. Broderick testified and certainly as he told me,
that was imperfect, conflicting, indefinite, and he made
judgments about when things were--he was comfortable enough
with the facts to pass them up to the leadership of the
Department.
By way of example, I think at 12:09 p.m., I see an e-mail,
which I didn't see at the time, where Michael Brown says to
Michael Lowder that he is being told that what was described as
a breach is water over, not a breach. So there is that issue--
--
Senator Levin. My question is, have you made an effort to
discover how it was that these messages----
Secretary Chertoff. I know how it is.
Senator Levin. This was known early Monday morning, right?
We have testimony saying that the helicopter, the Coast Guard
man flew over, saw the breach in the morning, confirmed it in
the evening, took the pictures which I believe Senator Dayton
showed you. Those pictures all were there before you went to
bed.
Secretary Chertoff. I agree that by late Monday, or by the
time those pictures were taken----
Senator Levin. How do these screw-ups happen? I mean, have
you looked into them?
Secretary Chertoff. Yes. The answer is, I have looked into
them----
Senator Levin. How did they happen?
Secretary Chertoff. I think it is a combination. Some of
these messages never got to the operations center. Some of them
did, but there were conflicting stories, so there was an effort
made to ascertain what the truth was. Was there really a
breach? How significant was it?
Senator Levin. Should there have been that effort made?
Secretary Chertoff. Well, there was an effort and it should
have been made. The problem is it wasn't made--the effort did
not proceed the way it should have proceeded. Let me try to put
it this way. I give a lot of credit to Marty Bahamonde for
getting on a Coast Guard helicopter to take those pictures, but
he never should have had to do it. We should have had the
capability on Monday to put on the ground not a public affairs
officer, but trained officers who would go out and actually do
a survey and would have communicated that back to us.
Senator Levin. I agree with that, but there were messages
that came into your particular agency----
Secretary Chertoff. Right.
Senator Levin [continuing]. Saying that there was a breach
all day Monday that never got to you, apparently, by the time
you went to bed. It is a critical issue, the breach of those
levees. That is where the flooding----
Secretary Chertoff. Not only that, but----
Senator Levin. Because I am out of time, has anybody been
held responsible, accountable for failing to do what they
should have done in terms of either getting the data together,
getting it to you, notifying you with that telephone that is
right at your elbow? Is there any accountability except your
coming before us and saying, I accept responsibility?
Secretary Chertoff. Yes, and let me make two points. It was
not an issue of messages not being conveyed. The report at 6
p.m. affirmatively told me that reports were that levees hadn't
been breached, so there was--at that point, the judgment had
been made there was not enough information. I have gone over
this in quite painful detail with General Broderick. I have a
lot of respect for him, and I trust him implicitly. I know he
was unhappy about that. I know he has made adjustments in the
operations center to deal with that. I have made it clear to
him that while I respect and understand his desire to make sure
the information is sufficiently grounded before he gets me, I
would rather him reach me earlier with less perfect
information.
I have been through this fog of war stuff in September 11,
and I vividly remember it there, so the answer is I have held
people accountable, and I believe we have a process now that
will be better, but I don't underestimate the challenge of
information flow.
Senator Levin. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Senator Chafee.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CHAFEE
Senator Chafee. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and welcome,
Secretary.
There has been a lot of criticism of what occurred in New
Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and one of those is your attendance
of the avian flu conference on Tuesday. However, I do think
avian flu is a serious issue, and as we do look ahead, how are
we prepared for that possibility?
Secretary Chertoff. I think that actually is a challenge
which is more difficult because unlike hurricanes, which we
have done before, I don't think anybody in living memory has
dealt with something as potentially as serious as that,
although it may never come to pass. The answer is that the
President has put an enormous amount of his personal attention
on this. We have a national strategy. We are working on a
national implementation plan and Department plans.
One of the things we have tried very hard to do, which is a
lesson of Katrina, is engage early with State and local public
health and homeland security officials because the Federal
Government is not going to be able to do this by itself. The
ground responsibility for managing a public health emergency
and dealing with the collateral consequences will lie with
State and local government, and they have got to start thinking
about that.
You know, we can deliver, for example, things out of the
National Stockpile to an airport, but they have got to get them
distributed to people. So I don't want to make a bad pun, but I
would say we are working feverishly to get this thing done
because we don't know if and when we are going to need it.
Senator Chafee. Are there any specifics you can share with
the American public that they should be undertaking?
Secretary Chertoff. First of all, I want to make it very
clear that it is important people not be alarmed. We talk
generally about preparedness. We have a website, ready.gov,
which deals with preparedness, types of measures you can make
for preparedness. I think HHS has a website up. A lot of what
the public will be able to do will involve sanitary
precautions, making sure you avoid things which allow
transmission of infectious material.
I have personally spoken to the CEOs of a number of very
large corporations, and I have said to them, based on my
experience in Katrina, which is now certainly had a lot of
educative effect on me, that they need to start thinking about
who their essential employees are, how they will keep their
operations running if we have something. So I think what people
can do is they can look to information that we are going to be
putting out, look to their local officials. If they have
business responsibilities, work with their companies to have
contingency plans about continuity of operations and who is
essential.
Senator Chafee. Thank you. That is all I have.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Akaka.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Madam Collins. I want
to commend you and the Ranking Member, Senator Lieberman, once
again for your bipartisan diligence and the way in which you
have conducted this investigation. In my humble opinion, you
have served the Senate and our country well.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. I also want to acknowledge, Madam Chairman
and Ranking Member Lieberman, the hard work of your staffs who
have reviewed--maybe this is an understatement--hundreds of
thousands of documents and conducted hundreds of interviews. I
hope the country will be better prepared because of the efforts
of the Committee and the Committee staff.
I, along with my colleagues, will be considering what steps
need to be taken to ensure that a future disaster does not
result in the tragedies that befell the Gulf Coast. Mr.
Secretary, many, including yourself, have accepted personal
responsibility for what went wrong, but with due respect, I
believe those who have lost loved ones, homes, and jobs may
need more accountability than has been shown up to this point.
You have a responsibility to convince the American people that
you understand what went wrong with DHS's response and to
convince us that you have a clear strategy to ensure these
mistakes will not be made again.
Your statement outlines how large and catastrophic
Hurricane Katrina was, but you were not as clear in explaining
what went wrong. The issue is not the size of the disaster, but
the quality of the response. Without knowing what really
happened, the American people may not be convinced that the
solutions you are proposing are the correct ones.
Mr. Secretary, I want to follow up on a response you gave
to Senator Lieberman. You said that if it had been a biological
terrorist attack, you would have stood up the IIMG, the
Interagency Incident Management Group, right away instead of
waiting. Shouldn't the Department be taking an all-hazards
approach?
Secretary Chertoff. Absolutely, and I have said that
repeatedly, but my point was this. The experts in the
government in hurricanes were at FEMA. I mean, if there is
anything that FEMA does and has done over the last 20 years, it
has been hurricanes. Even Michael Brown had been through four
prior hurricanes the previous year. So in terms of where I
would look to for advice and expertise on what needs to be done
to get ready to prepare for a hurricane, I couldn't have
collected a better group of people than the people who were
already sitting around the table at FEMA headquarters.
My point was that if we were dealing with a catastrophe
that they hadn't been accustomed to dealing with because they
hadn't faced it before, then I would have looked to bring
experts in with the relevant disciplines, like, for example,
medical people because there the way you deal with a response
can be very influenced by the medical issues.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Secretary, I have asked questions in
past hearings about the PFO and how it came about. The National
Response Plan states that once an individual is named Principal
Federal Officer, he or she ``must relinquish the conduct of all
normal duties and functions.'' Last week, I asked former Deputy
Director of FEMA Patrick Rhode what impact this provision had
on his position. He responded that he was unaware of the
provision and therefore was unaware that under the NRP, he
became Acting FEMA Director while Michael Brown was PFO. Were
you aware of this provision in the NRP when you named Mr. Brown
to be PFO, and if so, did you communicate that information to
Mr. Rhode?
Secretary Chertoff. As I read this, it doesn't actually
require the PFO to resign or suspend. It requires him to spend
full time being the PFO. I will tell you that, in fact, not
only Michael Brown, but everybody at FEMA during this hurricane
was doing nothing but working on Hurricane Katrina. So in
practice, everybody was focused 100 percent on Hurricane
Katrina, and FEMA was dealing with nothing but Hurricane
Katrina.
I want to make one point clear, though, that in terms of
who is running things back in headquarters, and I respect Mr.
Rhode, he is very intelligent, and he worked hard, but the
person who was the Chief Operating Officer was a very
experienced veteran of FEMA of, I don't know how many years,
but many years with a lot of emergency background experience,
and he and the team of people around him were the people that
we really looked to in terms of the actual management of the
agency while Mr. Brown was down in the Gulf.
Senator Akaka. Would you be able to give the name of that
person?
Secretary Chertoff. It is Ken Burris; he was the Chief
Operating Officer.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, and I thank you for
that specific response.
Making sure disaster victims have food, water, and ice is
one of FEMA's core responsibilities and probably one that
average Americans most closely associate with FEMA. Given the
importance of this mission, why was the FEMA logistics system
``not up to the task of handling a truly catastrophic event,''
as you have stated in your testimony?
Secretary Chertoff. Because although they ordered a lot of
food, water, and ice, and for initial staging, the way they
obtain it, and this is my understanding, is they don't contract
directly but they contract through, I think, the Army Corps of
Engineers. I don't think those contracts, at least as far as I
know, require that the actual shipper provide real-time
information about the location of shipments. I know from
personal experience, just as does everybody in this room, that
if you--I am not going to single out a particular company, but
there are a lot of companies you can send a package in and they
are going to tell you by the minute where that package is.
So I guess my--it seems to me at a minimum what we need to
do by June 1 is in the contract require that you put on the
trucks the kind of communications that allows you to track
where a truck is at any particular point in time, and that is
something which just requires better contracting, better
procurement.
Senator Akaka. Can you again be specific? Name who was
responsible for ensuring that this was done right.
Secretary Chertoff. I was only 6 months in the Department,
I don't know who originally set up the arrangement to do
contracting through other agencies. The business model of FEMA,
which has existed for a while, which involves contracting with
other people, because you have a very small agency, is not, I
think, a necessarily good business model, and a lot of what we
have suggested in the last week--and I want to be honest, we
have been working on this for a few months. I announced it on
Monday, but we have been looking at this since November and
December of last year, is designed to alter that business model
so that we do the kinds of things that I think people logically
expect us to be able to do.
Senator Akaka. One of the problems that seems to appear is
that DHS does not really have a point of contact in these
disaster areas. Having a permanent consolidated DHS regional
office in the Gulf Coast may have prevented some of the
catastrophic response previous to Hurricane Katrina by
establishing a strong preexisting relationship between DHS and
State and local officials. Such an office would also have
provided one DHS point of contact. A consolidated DHS presence
is critical in Hawaii because we do not have neighboring states
that can provide assistance during a catastrophic incident. Our
only outside help would have to come from the Federal
Government. The people of Hawaii want to know whether you will
implement a regional office structure in DHS as required by the
Homeland Security Act of 2002.
Secretary Chertoff. We do, as I have indicated, although
the exact details aren't--I don't think they are fully formed,
we do look to have a regional DHS structure focused on the
issue of preparedness, linked up with the military and linked
up with the FEMA regions to have exactly what you are
describing, a continuity of relationship and preparedness with
the States within a region.
Senator Akaka. The reason I asked that specifically about
Hawaii is that NORTHCOM is working with you, but NORTHCOM does
not include Hawaii. A regional office there would certainly
serve Hawaii as well as the Pacific and should be considered
for a regional office, and that is my question to you.
Secretary Chertoff. I didn't realize that was true. As we
roll out the details of what we are doing in the next couple of
months, I will certainly talk to Admiral Keating because it is
critical that we be aligned in how we do these things.
Senator Akaka. I thank you so much for your responses. As
you know, this Committee wants to learn all we can about the
mistakes and try to work on solutions with you on helping our
country.
Secretary Chertoff. I look forward to that. We have a lot
of work to do.
Senator Akaka. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lautenberg.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUTENBERG
Senator Lautenberg. Thank you. Mr. Secretary, we have known
each other some time, and I had been a big booster for--
boaster, as well--for you when you took on this important
assignment. While there are questions asked now about what
happened, when, where, the fact of the matter is that the
situation was so unique, not to make any excuses and not to
relieve anybody of blame, but when Michael Brown was here, I
suggested that maybe he was the designated scapegoat, and I
think what happens is there are probably several designated
scapegoats because the fingers are pointing all over. Some of
it is productive and some of it, I think, is not really
significant.
Starting from the present situation back, our visitor here
who couldn't stand the frustration spoke aloud, respectfully,
about wanting to see something happen. In the last 2 weeks, we
had several hundred--in the last 10 days, several hundred
people from New Orleans come in here and crowding the room, SD-
G50, that we have in this building, it is our largest meeting
room, just asking for some relief, some help. They can't
understand why approaching the sixth month since this terrible
disaster hit, why it is that we still can't find our way out of
the morass and get things done, whether it is the trailers or
it is who did what to whom. I think the gentleman was correct
in raising it, maybe out of sorts with our meetings here, but
that is all right. We forgive him for that. We understand what
he wanted to say and what he wanted to do, and I would like to
see us get it done.
But starting from a point in time when the President of the
United States on Friday after the disaster struck on Monday, he
said that Brown, in his familiar vernacular now, was doing a
heck of a job. ``Brownie, you have done a heck of a job.'' Now,
what possessed--what can you imagine gave the President the
opportunity to do that? He must have had some knowledge of
something, and I am not defending Brown. I am not going to
defend anybody here because when this tragedy hit, there isn't
anything of this kind of magnitude that doesn't end up
including mistakes, accidents, etc. It doesn't excuse it. We
have got to be better at it.
What, do you think, possessed the President to give that
pat on the back? I mean, he had to be familiar with what was
happening. It was 5 days later. It wasn't like it happened 2
hours ago and the guy jumps in the water to rescue somebody.
Secretary Chertoff. I don't want to speak for the
President, but I can just tell you in general in dealing with
these kinds of circumstances, I think whatever, speaking for
myself, I viewed or was beginning to view as Michael Brown's
shortcomings, everybody was very tired, working with very
little sleep, away from their families, and it is easily
understandable to me that in a larger--for people, the message
you want to send is a message of encouragement and recognition
of the fact that, whether people are being successful or not,
they are certainly operating under difficult circumstances.
So I didn't regard the comment as a real judgment, and I
didn't view it as limiting me in my ability to remove Mr.
Brown, which is what I did over the weekend. I viewed it as a
courteous effort to make--kind of buck the troops up.
Senator Lautenberg. Well, the thing was so replete with
mistakes made accidentally or intentionally or otherwise. This
wasn't an ordinary citizen. This was the President of the
United States saying you have done a good job, a pat on the
back to ameliorate a disaster, it didn't seem right and thereby
forces me to ask the question, well, could Brown have been as
bad as everybody says or is he, again, the designated
scapegoat?
I think it is critical that the happenings of August 29,
2005, be reviewed by an independent commission. There is too
much fodder here for the political functioning which takes
place. People are interested in the legitimate questions that
are raised. Though almost everything has been said, everybody
hasn't said it, and that is standard around here.
Were you aware of the transportation decisions on, let us
say, Amtrak, the decision on Amtrak? Amtrak had a train sitting
there that could have taken 600 people out. Do you know why it
didn't?
Secretary Chertoff. I don't. I guess they pulled out on
Saturday. I became aware of that, and I don't know if I ever
really learned the reason why they did that. I don't know
whether it was because people didn't know to show up or whether
Amtrak pulled back too quickly. I know I actually worked very
hard with people at DHS to get Amtrak back in during the middle
of the week after landfall so we could expedite the departures,
but I can't tell you definitively why that train moved out on
Saturday with empty spaces.
Senator Lautenberg. Well, I heard from Secretary Mineta
that the train was there and nobody would get on. I think they
wound up with less than 100 people. And once again, somebody is
pointing fingers at someone else.
The statement that you made earlier may have been
confusing--it was for me--about when you learned of the size of
this disaster. When would you say your first reliable awareness
came?
Secretary Chertoff. Well, I knew about the hurricane when
the hurricane hit, and obviously even a Category 3, almost
Category 4, hurricane hitting is in and of itself a huge
disaster. I think as it relates to this substantial breach of
the levees, I learned about that on Tuesday morning at--between
6 and 7 a.m., approximately 7 a.m. when I got the report.
Senator Lautenberg. OK because there were wires--that is
old fashioned--e-mails sent out, one of them August 29 that
Senator Levin talked about. This one was sent out at 9 a.m.,
Monday, August 29, from a man named Dabdoub, Louis Dabdoub, to
Michael Waters, other people at DHS, and it says, getting bad,
major flooding in some parts of the city, people calling in for
rescue, trapped in attics, means the water is 10 feet high
there already. Trees blowing down. Flooding is worsening every
minute. Infrastructure issues are rapidly being taxed and most
of the area has lost electricity.\1\ This is Monday morning, 9
in the morning, and you didn't learn about this, Mr. Secretary,
until Tuesday morning?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Exhibit A appears in the Appendix on page 173.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secretary Chertoff. Well, let me separate flooding, which,
you know, from over-topping in a hurricane and also a
tremendous amount of rain, that I don't think anybody was in
doubt was happening on Monday. I think the critical issue was
the breach of the levee because the breach of the levee is what
amplifies the danger from the hurricane. This particular
communication didn't reach me. It doesn't look like it is
directed to DHS. One of the things I have said is the idea that
what you do is send e-mails around FEMA without making sure
that copies are getting to the operations center is, I think,
part of the core of the reason I didn't know these things.
The second issue, of course, is you get a report from one
person. You don't know what the basis of the report is. I
vividly remember, because I was on duty on September 11,
unbelievable rumors that floated around on September 11 about
stuff that was going on, bombs in Washington, and all that
stuff had to be run down before you communicated with higher-
ups. So there is always a tension between getting preliminary
reports and figuring out what the truth is, but there is no
doubt that part of the problem here was a disconnection between
the FEMA channel of communication and the DHS channel of
communication.
Senator Lautenberg. Well, if I may help, it was sent to
Michael Waters, Headquarters, DHS, Mark Milicich, Headquarters,
DHS, John McLaren, DHS. This was a general distribution to
people at the top of DHS. Now, was there some kind of a thing
that says, don't disturb the Secretary or that these things
didn't come to you? One of the complaints was that Brown didn't
communicate with your office, he communicated directly, so he
said, with the White House. Even bouncing off that wall would
be to you.
I find it, to use your word, astonishing that you didn't
really learn about the severity because whether it was the
breach of the levees or whether it was just water coming in
from wherever, people were standing with luggage on their
heads, kids on their heads, and trying to save themselves from
drowning. So unless there is some protocol that says, well, you
don't disturb the Secretary until X-point, Y-point, or whatever
it is----
Secretary Chertoff. I would have to say quite the contrary,
and I was not at all bashful about disturbing people in the
operations center about what was going on. I think the
challenge they had was is the report based on a reliable
observation? Is it, you know, what are the actual facts on the
ground? I think General Broderick explained it. I have been
through the circumstance of hearing a lot of reports that come
in that turn out to be untrue on numerous occasions in every
element of my job in government.
I can tell you emphatically the policy is the exact
opposite of don't disturb the Secretary. The criticism is most
often, in general, why didn't you call me earlier? My general
rule is if I have seen it on TV and I haven't heard about it
first, I am going to be annoyed, not just with respect to this
but with respect to a whole host of things. I have made that
clear, and frankly, we have gotten better. I get an earlier
trigger on things, which is good.
Senator Lautenberg. Madam Chairman, there are several more
questions, and rather than hold everybody up, I would like the
Secretary to confirm that any questions that we submit in
writing will be responded to, and I urge you, Mr. Secretary, to
see a report that in 1996 was printed in the Atlanta
Constitution newspaper about what happened when James Lee Witt
was responsible for FEMA and that had been noted as a dumping
ground for political figures. By 1996, and he came in 1992,
that it was one of the best performing agencies for that kind
of disaster situation and that James Lee Witt went to the
trouble to get it fixed and get it operating properly.
I urge, Mr. Secretary, that we get on with trying to solve
the immediate problem. People are still displaced, whether it
is the trailers that are now sinking in the mud or evacuation
or distribution of funds that are essential, that we get on
with that because the delay only compounds the mistakes that
were made in the first place. Thank you very much, Madam
Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Mr. Secretary, I realize that you are expected over at the
House side for a hearing before the Appropriations Committee.
All of us have many more questions that if you were able to
stay, we would pose to you. But since you do have the
obligation on the House side, we are not going to do a second
round.
We will, as Senator Lautenberg asked, expect you to respond
to additional questions for the record, and because our next
stage is going to be to compile a report, I would ask that
questions from members be submitted by close of business
tomorrow night and that you respond to us by close of business
on February 28 so that we can proceed. Do I have your
commitment on that?
Secretary Chertoff. Yes, and I appreciate the work the
Committee has done, and I appreciate the opportunity to appear.
I think that we have a lot of work to do together. I don't want
to minimize the amount that has to be done. There is a lot of
preparation, but I think out of this, the redeeming value will
be we will have been force-fed some very important lessons.
Chairman Collins. That is absolutely true, and by learning
those lessons, our goal is to improve our emergency
preparedness for the next disaster, whether it is a man-made
disaster, such as a terrorist attack, or another hurricane or
natural disaster, and that has been our goal, as well.
I am going to submit my full closing statement for the
record in the interest of time, but I do want to take this
opportunity to recognize the very hard work of the Committee
staff under the leadership on this side of the aisle of Michael
Bopp and David Flanagan. They have reviewed some 820,000 pages
of documents. We have done interviews with more than 270
witnesses. We have held 20 hearings. We probably will only have
one or two more hearings. This concludes the major hearings,
and we will now begin a report.
I also want to thank Senator Lieberman for being such a
terrific partner. Every interview, every hearing has had good
participation from both sides of the aisle, such as our friend,
Senator Akaka, who has worked very hard on this, and it has
been the kind of bipartisan oversight investigation that this
Committee has the proud heritage of accomplishing.
We are going to proceed with our report with findings and
recommendations. I want to thank you and the members of your
Department for your cooperation in the investigation.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Collins follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS
I would like to thank Secretary Chertoff for his testimony. The
topics discussed in today's hearing go to the heart of the shortcomings
in the response to Hurricane Katrina. But lest we forget, the next
hurricane season is right around the corner and, of course, a terrorist
attack could happen any place, at any time. Unfortunately, I am not
confident that we as a Nation are prepared to respond to either threat.
This Committee's investigation revealed systemic problems hindered
the Department's response to Hurricane Katrina. The Committee's report
will detail its findings and offer recommendations to fix problems--
those problems must be fixed, and fixed promptly.
Perhaps the problem that most concerns me is the report of apparent
infighting and turf battles within DHS. The mottto of the Department is
``One Team. One Fight.'' But in direct defiance of that motto, the
situation this Committee has unveiled looks more like a free for all at
the Department. Be assured that this Committee will aggressively
oversee your efforts to better integrate the various components into
one team.
I look forward to working with you to implement reforms to ensure
that as a Nation we are better prepared and will respond more
effectively to the next catastrophic event.
The hearing record will be held open until close of business
tomorrow, February 16, for the submission of questions or other
materials.
Chairman Collins. Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks very much, Madam Chairman. Let me
join you, first, in thanking our staff, which has done an
extraordinary job, and let me thank you personally because you,
as Chairman, have really set the tone. So much around Congress
these days descends almost immediately into partisanship. This
is not a partisan inquiry, and it should not be. We all have an
interest in improving the Federal Government's performance the
next time disaster strikes, and that is the tone that you have
set. It has been a pleasure, as always, to work with you. It
always seems so foolish that our staffs go separate ways when
we all have the same goal, and in this case, our staffs have
worked together to maximize our realization of that goal.
Secretary Chertoff, I thank you for your testimony here
today. You know, I appreciate the fact that, in some sense, in
response to the questions that I raised in my opening
statement, you acknowledged your legal responsibility as the
Nation's primary official in charge of preparation and response
to disasters and you acknowledged that the preparation for
Hurricane Katrina was inadequate, you said particularly with
regard to transportation.
Of course, I agree with you. I think one of the most
pathetic moments of our hearing was last week when Mr. Brown
was in and I asked him why, in response to General Landreneau
of the Louisiana National Guard who asked him for buses
desperately to get those people out of the Superdome, out of
the Convention Center, out of New Orleans, and he said he would
deliver them, and he didn't deliver them until late Wednesday
night or Thursday morning, and they went through those 3 days
of hell that we all saw.
But unfortunately, there were failures in a lot of other
areas. I know you cited transportation, maybe because of its
consequences, and search and rescue and deployment of assets
and helping special needs people, law and order, medical needs,
and then finally in communications and situational awareness.
Personally, I don't like the ``fog of war'' term in this
regard. Fog of war is a term that comes from Clausewitz. I
always thought it meant the inability to have what we now call
situational awareness on a battlefield because so much was
going on. But this is the 21st Century. Clausewitz was a long
time ago. We have the most extraordinary technological
capability, and you should have known.
I guess what I want to say in response to all of this is
that you had the capability. It wasn't used well, and it wasn't
used early enough. I will tell you, I know maybe it is not
appropriate to do it in public, but I hope you are really
furious about the fact that your Department let you go to bed
on Monday night not knowing that the levees were broken,
notwithstanding a little bit of conflicting evidence, but most
of the evidence, we have got 15 different communications that
went direct to your operations center in which we invest
millions of dollars every year, and somebody should have told
you much earlier on.
The Coast Guard, very briefly, was cited, and they were a
star here. And part of what they did is what we would have
hoped the whole Department did, and they testified to us that
is just what they do and they did it on their own. They had no
authority, no special permission from anybody. They
prepositioned assets as they listened to the Weather Service on
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. When the hurricane struck, they
were right there that afternoon. And that, I hope, will be the
model and the standard that you and we will take forward as we
try to make this better.
I will say, to end on a note of encouragement, which in
some ways also is an indictment of the performance of the
Department and the Federal Government during Katrina, when
Hurricane Rita was coming, you led exactly the kind of pre-
landfall aggressive effort by the Department and the Federal
Government that really put us in a position to protect people,
which is what, looking back, surely should have happened before
Katrina.
So thank you for your testimony, and as you said, we have
got a lot of work to do together.
Secretary Chertoff. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. This hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:08 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
Chairman Collins and Senator Lieberman, thank you for your tireless
oversight work investigating the government's response to Hurricane
Katrina.
Secretary Chertoff, I appreciate your being with us today.
It has become clear that there were serious and regrettable
deficiencies in the response at every level of government during the
days leading up to and following the unprecedented catastrophe in the
Gulf Coast.
My hope is that we can move past the finger pointing to make useful
adjustments at the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Secretary, the
most important thing you can tell us today is that the Department of
Homeland Security has learned the difficult lessons from this tragedy.
I would like to be assured that, under your leadership, the Department
is doing everything it can to address its shortcomings so that in the
future, DHS and FEMA will be able to effectively assist State and local
governments in responding to catastrophic events. I hope we can all
work together in the coming months to identify and implement the
appropriate modifications to improve our Nation's disaster preparedness
and response capabilities.
Thank you.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.008
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.011
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.012
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.013
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.014
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.015
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.016
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.017
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.018
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.019
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.020
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.021
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.022
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.023
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.024
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.025
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.026
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.027
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.028
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.029
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.030
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.031
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.032
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.033
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.034
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.035
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.036
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.037
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.038
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.039
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.040
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.041
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.042
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.043
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.044
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.045
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.046
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.047
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.048
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.049
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.050
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.051
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.052
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.053
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.054
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.055
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.056
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.057
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.058
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.059
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.060
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.061
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.062
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.063
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.064
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.065
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.066
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.067
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.068
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.069
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.070
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.071
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.072
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.073
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.074
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.075
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.076
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.077
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.078
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.079
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.080
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.081
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.082
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.083
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.084
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.085
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.086
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.087
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.088
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.089
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.090
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.091
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.092
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.093
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.094
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.095
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.096
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.097
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.098
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.099
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.100
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.101
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.102
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.103
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.104
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.105
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.106
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.107
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.108
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.109
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.110
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.111
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.112
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.113
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.114
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.115
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.116
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.117
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.118
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.119
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.120
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.121
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.122
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.123
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.124
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.125
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7032.126