[Senate Hearing 109-527]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 109-527
ALWAYS READY: THE COAST GUARD'S RESPONSE TO HURRICANE KATRINA
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HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 9, 2005
__________
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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
Kathleen L. Kraninger, Professional Staff Member
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Robert F. Muse, Minority General Counsel
Jason M. Yanussi, Minority Professional Staff Member
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Collins.............................................. 1
Senator Lieberman............................................ 3
Senator Dayton............................................... 5
Senator Carper............................................... 19
Prepared statement:
Senator Lautenberg........................................... 35
WITNESSES
Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Rear Admiral Robert F. Duncan, Commander, Eighth Coast Guard
District, U.S. Coast Guard..................................... 6
Captain Frank M. Paskewich, Commander, Coast Guard Sector New
Orleans, U.S. Coast Guard...................................... 7
Captain Bruce C. Jones, Commanding Officer, Coast Guard Air
Station New Orleans, U.S. Coast Guard.......................... 9
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Duncan, Rear Admiral Robert F.:
Testimony.................................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 42
Jones, Captain Bruce C.:
Testimony.................................................... 9
Paskewich, Captain Frank M.:
Testimony.................................................... 7
Appendix
Photographs submitted for the Record by Senator Collins.......... 36
Responses to questions submitted for the Record from Rear Admiral
Duncan......................................................... 45
ALWAYS READY: THE COAST GUARD'S RESPONSE TO HURRICANE KATRINA
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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2005
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:37 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M.
Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Collins, Lieberman, Carper, and Dayton.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS
Chairman Collins. The Committee will come to order.
Today the Committee continues its investigation into the
preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina. Our focus
this morning, at our sixth hearing, is on the performance of
the U.S. Coast Guard before, during, and in the immediate
aftermath of this disaster.
Amidst a sea of failures across all levels of government,
the Coast Guard stands out as a shining example of a mission
accomplished through careful planning and outstanding
execution. We must learn from the failures that this
investigation has revealed, but we must also learn from its
successes.
The Coast Guard's extraordinary performance provides models
for other agencies at all levels of government to emulate. In
advance of this powerful storm, the Coast Guard anticipated the
potential devastation and executed plans to relocate its
personnel, aircraft, and vessels, including evacuating 18 small
boat stations. Personnel and assets were moved to a
predetermined inland military installation precisely so that
they would not be trapped in flooded coastal stations and
unable to respond.
As a result of this foresight, the Coast Guard was able to
launch extensive search and rescue operations even while
Katrina continued to pound the Gulf Coast. Pollution response
strike teams and teams to restore aids to navigation were
readied, and they were deployed just as soon as conditions
allowed.
The result of this careful preparation is that, during the
chaotic days and weeks immediately following the storm, the
Coast Guard rescued or evacuated 33,544 people. In that same
period, the Coast Guard responded to more than 1,100 pollution
incidents with a total discharge of more than 7 million gallons
of contaminants. And furthermore, the Coast Guard restored 39
critical aids to navigation and repaired, replaced, or
repositioned over 900 navigational aids to reopen the vital
waterways of the Gulf Coast, New Orleans, and the Mississippi
River.
Most of us can only imagine how overwhelming the search and
rescue mission in the Gulf States must have appeared in the
hours and days following the storm. The photograph now being
displayed shows how sections of New Orleans filled with water
rushing out of the 17th Street Canal on the day of the
storm.\1\
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\1\ The photographs displayed at the hearing by Senator Collins
appear in the Appendix on pages 36 through 41.
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The next series of photos show how the Coast Guard used
every means available to rescue people trapped by the flood
waters. The first two show the Coast Guard rescues by
helicopters.
During Senator Lieberman's and my journey to the Gulf
region, Coast Guard pilots described to us harrowing rescues
amidst live power lines, whirling blades of other choppers, and
frantic cries for help from attics and rooftops in the dark and
stormy night. One of the pilots said to me, ``Senator Collins,
I was trained to rescue people from the open sea. Here I was,
rescuing people in an urban setting from rooftops with live
power lines all around me.''
It showed to me the ability of the Coast Guard to innovate,
to use its training to react to new and extreme circumstances.
The next photograph shows how the Coast Guard went house to
house in small boats, looking for people who were trapped and
needed assistance. Another photo shows how the Coast Guard
commissioned a barge to bring people trapped from St. Bernard's
Parish to safety.
The Coast Guard's resourceful, sometimes remarkable,
performance is noteworthy in its own right. But what makes it
all the more extraordinary to me is that it occurred while more
than 70 percent of Coast Guard personnel and their families
stationed in the Gulf region were themselves initially
displaced by the storm.
Moreover, the Coast Guard was hampered by damage to its own
facilities. The photo now being displayed shows the Coast Guard
Station in Gulfport, Mississippi, which was devastated by the
storm. Nevertheless, despite coping with personal losses and a
destroyed headquarters, the Coast Guard persevered and carried
out its mission.
The Coast Guard's success story is one of both dedicated
and courageous actions by front-line personnel and of effective
leadership. Among the key questions I intend to explore today
is how the Coast Guard's operational and command structure
allowed individual components within the Agency to act so
quickly without having to wait for specific instructions or
permissions from up the chain of command.
The contrast between the Coast Guard's situational
awareness and the disconnect between the FEMA official on the
ground and the Washington hierarchy for FEMA could not be a
greater contrast. I think that is very instructive for us.
I am also very interested to learn the extent to which the
Coast Guard was able to act without having to wait until State
and local officials asked for help.
The three Coast Guard officials here today as witnesses
occupy key positions in its operational and command structure.
Their testimony will provide insights on how the Coast Guard
way, exhibited in its motto, ``always ready,'' can be
translated to other agencies across all levels of government.
Senator Lieberman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN
Senator Lieberman. Thanks very much, Madam Chairman, for
convening the sixth in a series of hearings that this Committee
is holding to examine the preparations for and response to
Hurricane Katrina.
Today I am happy to say we are going to examine the pre-
and post-Katrina efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard. It strikes me
that this is a good news story. Maybe looking around the room,
I would reach the conclusion that good news does not draw a
crowd. But it is important for us to focus on and to learn from
and to certainly make this part of the public record.
The fact is, in a local and regional experience, this
Hurricane Katrina, which obviously was watched by the Nation
and the world, the people of America had their confidence in
their government's ability to protect them in time of crisis
shaken. And it is, in that sense, even more important that we
point out to them that there were agencies of their government
that performed remarkably well, with competence and courage.
And the U.S. Coast Guard was at the head of that list.
I only give part of the reason for that to the fact that
the Coast Guard Academy is located in Connecticut, and I say
that with pride. I know that two of the three people before us
were trained at the Academy.
I do want to give a special welcome to Captain Paskewich,
who hails from New London and I gather, for the record, whose
mother lives in Groton. I do not want to put the other two of
you at a disadvantage, but I am proud to welcome all three of
you here obviously, and thank you for a job well done.
As you gentlemen know, the modern Coast Guard is a
combination of several historic agencies, including one that
was known originally as the Life-Saving Service. In the hours
and days after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, the Coast
Guard more than lived up to its predecessor's name. You really
did save lives.
The advance planning, quick decisionmaking, and round-the-
clock effort of the men and women under your command,
gentlemen, led to the rescue, as has been said, of 33,000
people in a matter of days, eight times the number of search
and rescue missions you generally perform in 1 year. That is a
record that deserves our praise and our gratitude.
So we will ask today why was the Coast Guard able to
perform at such a high standard when others in the Federal,
State, and local governments did not?
One of the most important reasons, clearly, is that you
were prepared. As we are going to hear from you today, the
units operating under Admiral Duncan began preparing for
Hurricane Katrina several days before landfall. The week before
the hurricane struck--and that was, of course, based on
information that you were receiving from people who were
charting the course of the hurricane--the week before the
hurricane struck, helicopters based at the New Orleans Air
Station were inspected in anticipation of heavy workload after
the storm, even though I probably could not have imagined how
heavy the workload would have been.
One of the helicopters, I was really interested to learn,
needed major repair, discovered in the lead up to landfall. And
that repair was done in advance of the storm so that helicopter
was able to be used, literally, in saving lives. Unable,
probably, to have done that if it had not been inspected in
advance of the hurricane.
Another reason for the success of the Coast Guard in
Hurricane Katrina, in my opinion, clearly was that you had
plans, that you had continuity of operations plans in effect,
blueprints to follow, that assumed in most cases a worst-case
scenario, and that the three of you therefore implemented those
plans effectively, evacuating--as Senator Collins said--your
respective staffs and critical assets the weekend before
Katrina when we were all hearing on television the rising
anxiety of the National Weather Service about the intensity of
this storm and yet not seeing other branches of government
getting ready for what we were all being told on the TV.
You removed those assets and established those remote
command centers. Admiral Duncan had the additional foresight to
request backup helicopters, increased the number of aircrew
personnel and additional ships. All of these steps were taken,
I repeat, well before Katrina hit land on Monday, August 29.
And I must say, based on the record we have compiled so far,
well before the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary
Chertoff formally declared a so-called incident of national
significance on Tuesday, August 30.
The Guard was not only prepared, not only had plans, but of
course executed its mission with courage and precision. And in
this case, the victims of the hurricane benefited tremendously
from that fact.
In addition to its successful search and rescue missions,
the Coast Guard--I do want to restate and emphasize--ensured
that the Mississippi River was navigable as soon after the
storm hit as possible in order to maintain free-flow of
commerce on the river, helped restore navigational aids that
were damaged or destroyed on the river and around the Gulf
Coast, and worked with the Army Corps of Engineers and NOAA to
make channels navigable again.
Here is the really impressive fact. By the Friday after the
Monday Hurricane Katrina hit, traffic was already back on those
key waterways.
The Guard also assisted with environmental hazards,
identifying eight oil spills around New Orleans and working
with other agencies and private contractors to clean them up.
So the Coast Guard really was the model in this case.
But there are still lessons to learn, and I know that you
gentlemen agree with that. We want to ask some questions about
information sharing, about how reports from the scene made
their way up to the decisionmakers in Washington.
Our staff's investigation finds that the Coast Guard sent
its first written report that the levees in New Orleans had
broken in the early morning hours of Tuesday, August 30. But we
have also learned that Admiral Duncan had two phone
conversations on Monday, August 29 with the Coast Guard
Commandant in Washington. And we know that the Commandant had
phone conversations with Deputy Homeland Security Secretary
Jackson on Monday.
So I am interested in learning about the contents of those
conversations so we know whether the information flowed up.
Because as was indicated here earlier in a hearing we held with
Mr. Bahamonde of FEMA, Secretary Chertoff and Secretary
Rumsfeld had indicated earlier that they did not know the
levees had broken until Tuesday.
Bottom line, the Coast Guard performed the way we wish all
government agencies had performed, with speed, resourcefulness,
efficiency, bravery, and effectiveness. You really set a model
for the rest of the government, and I thank you for that.
I also want you to know that I have written to the Director
of OMB, Josh Bolton, asking for an additional $500 million for
the Coast Guard to cover the costs related to your work in
Katrina. I know that many of your facilities were damaged and
some were completely ruined as that picture indicates.
Obviously you have expenses related to the evacuation and
temporary housing of your staffs, and for unanticipated fuel
costs.
Apparently, OMB plans to include $270 million for the Coast
Guard in a supplemental Katrina request that will be made soon.
I do not believe that is enough, and I am going to again urge
the Administration to rethink that supplemental budget. I will
ask you today about your needs.
But most of all, thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Dayton, usually we do
not have other Members make opening statements, but since you
are the only other Member here today, if you would like to make
some opening comments, feel free to do so.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DAYTON
Senator Dayton. I think the two of you said it very well,
and I join with them in commending you. And I will not hold the
Connecticut connection against you. If you would like to check
out more suitable quarters in Minnesota at any time, just
contact me.
Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
I would now like to officially welcome the witnesses before
us today. Our first witness, Coast Guard Rear Admiral Robert
Duncan, assumed command of the Coast Guard's Eighth District in
May 2003. While the Eighth District is headquartered in New
Orleans, Admiral Duncan's area of responsibility covers 26
States, more than 1,200 miles of coastline, and 10,300 miles of
inland waterways from Florida to Mexico and from Louisiana to
Minnesota, as it happens. He has served in the Coast Guard for
more than 30 years.
Admiral Duncan is joined today by two of his commanding
officers, Captain Frank Paskewich and Captain Bruce Jones.
Just 11 days before Katrina's landfall, Captain Paskewich
took command of Sector New Orleans. The Captain arrived in New
Orleans in July 2004 and has continued, since that time, to
serve as the Captain of the Port, the Federal Maritime Security
Coordinator, the Federal On-Scene Coordinator, and the Officer
in Charge of Marine Inspection.
Captain Bruce Jones is the Commander of Air Station New
Orleans, where he has served since July 2004. In his 22 years
in the Coast Guard, Captain Jones has been engaged in response
efforts for a number of hurricanes, including Ivan, Dennis, and
now Katrina and Rita. He has distinguished himself in the
military aviation community and has received several awards for
his flying skills.
Gentlemen, I would like to ask you each to stand so that I
can swear you in.
Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give to
the Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, so help you, God?
Admiral Duncan. I do.
Captain Paskewich. I do.
Captain Jones. I do.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. You may be seated, and Admiral
Duncan, we will begin with you.
TESTIMONY OF REAR ADMIRAL ROBERT F. DUNCAN,\1\ COMMANDER,
EIGHTH COAST GUARD DISTRICT, U.S. COAST GUARD
Admiral Duncan. Madam Chairman, Senator Lieberman, Senator
Dayton, thank you so much for those very kind words and the
opportunity to discuss the Eighth Coast Guard District's role
in response to this incredible tragedy, Hurricane Katrina.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Admiral Duncan appears in the
Appendix on page 42.
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I should note, in the picture that shows all of those
people on the barge, every one of them has a personal flotation
device, a life jacket. Some chose not to wear it, but they are
all there. Just so you know that we follow that in all of our
missions.
And if my wife is to have her way, I think we are likely to
find ourselves retired in some community where I will be
shoveling snow 6 months of the year. So Mr. Dayton, I may give
you a call, sir.
My written statement covers our preparations for and
approach to the unprecedented natural disaster. Essentially,
plan seriously, test those plans, recognize it is a dynamic
environment, and be open to modifying the plans to meet
changing circumstances.
Second, to establish a shared vision and a concept of
operation in advance of the need. Make sure that that is well
understood, anticipating that there will be lapses in
communications in impacted areas.
Survive the impact. Evacuate people, evacuate equipment,
place them in places where they are safe. The balance here is
moving them not too soon so that they are able to provide
services up until it no longer makes sense. And then place them
in positions where they will be able to respond immediately
behind the storm, as we did in this case, and in Rita, and
others.
In the first few days, over 10 percent of the U.S. Coast
Guard, about 40 percent of the Coast Guard helicopters, air
crews from every Coast Guard Air Station, including Kodiak,
Alaska, and Barbers Point in Cape Cod, hundreds of boats, major
cutters, and specialty teams, which include active duty,
reservists, civilian employees, and America's finest group of
volunteers, the Coast Guard Auxiliary, from every part of this
country converged on a devastated Gulf Coast. Together they
saved, as you have indicated, 33,544 people, and not a small
number of dogs by the way, contained or remediated hundreds of
oil spills, eight major spills, on the Mississippi from New
Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico. In that area alone, the total
amount of oil spilled was about two-thirds of the oil spilled
from the Exxon Valdez. Any one of those would have been
national news at other times. Restored major ports and
waterways.
You may recall a footnote in the discussions at the time
about the grain harvest. The U.S. grain harvest needed to move
to world markets, and it moves through the Mississippi River
and past New Orleans. Captain Paskewich's team was able to
restore, as Senator Lieberman mentioned in some detail, the
waterway to accommodate that grain shipment to international
markets, itself a major accomplishment.
The accomplishment I am most pleased to report to you today
is that we did that with no injuries, aside from cuts and
bruises to some very heroic rescue swimmers, to ourselves or
anybody that we assisted. That is a record of which I am most
proud.
I am extremely proud of this team. I am most proud of the
582 Coast Guard men and women and their families who lost their
homes to Katrina, and another 69 a few weeks later who lost
their homes to Rita, and who nonetheless continued to work full
out to bring aid to others in the best tradition of our
service.
In doing this, we were part of a large team of Americans,
and frankly some international sisters as well, who worked hard
to bring relief to a vast devastated region. That need and that
work continues today.
The men and women of the Coast Guard deeply appreciate the
kind words and the praise that has been offered today and at
other times in reference to our work in this chamber. Our
aspiration is, as always, to live up to our service's motto
across all of our missions and be Semper Paratus.
I would be happy to answer your questions.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Captain, do you have any
formal statement that you would like to present?
Captain Paskewich. Yes ma'am.
Chairman Collins. Please proceed.
TESTIMONY OF CAPTAIN FRANK M. PASKEWICH, COMMANDER, COAST GUARD
SECTOR NEW ORLEANS, U.S. COAST GUARD
Captain Paskewich. Madam Chairman, Committee Members, thank
you for the opportunity to speak to you today to discuss Sector
New Orleans' role in the response to Hurricane Katrina.
As the Sector Commander overseeing more than 700 Coast
Guard personnel, including 19 area subunits, I was responsible
for ensuring we were prepared in advance to deal with five
primary mission areas within the sector: Search and rescue,
port and waterway safety, environmental protection, maritime
salvage and debris removal from navigable waterways, and
maritime homeland security.
Our hurricane plan mission statement says it all, Sector
New Orleans will provide search and rescue support, restore
essential aids to navigation, respond to hazardous material
spills, manage waterways including traffic and safety or
security zones, provide transportation of victims, provide
essential waterborne and airborne logistics support, deliver
vital supplies and materials, provide access to storm damaged
areas to key response personnel, and perform any and all acts
necessary to rescue and aid persons and protect and save
property.
Our concept of operation is built around this mission
statement. We took proactive measures in anticipation of
Hurricane Katrina's impact 3 days before the storm, advising
the port community, the maritime industry, and the public to
take necessary precautions.
Due to the storm's forecasted intensity, we established our
alternate incident command post in Alexandria, Louisiana.
Additionally, we evacuated our personnel from Venice, Grand
Isle, Gulfport, and New Orleans, and prepositioned our patrol
boats, river tenders, and our small boats and crews away from
their exposed home ports.
We dispersed these assets over a wide area to the north,
east, and west of the intended track to ensure that we
maintained the ability to surge back into the affected area.
Additionally, we placed liaison officers at the Offices of
Emergency Preparedness in New Orleans and Baton Rouge and
coordinated with the maritime industry. By Sunday noon, we
closed the Mississippi River to all vessel movements, ceased
cargo operations, and sent out final advisories to the industry
on necessary precautions to safeguard property.
Within 2 hours of the storm's passage on Monday, and when
it became safe to do so, our forces began to mobilize back to
the affected area. Under Captain Bruce Jones' superb leadership
as the on-scene commander for air search and rescue, air crews
from Air Station New Orleans arrived on-scene to commence what
became round-the-clock air rescues for a week-and-a-half
straight.
By Tuesday morning, our small boats, river tenders, and
crews had remobilized back into the city to commence large-
scale urban search and rescue. And within 2 days, a Coast Guard
medium endurance cutter was on-scene providing command and
control and security presence on the river.
The ability to rapidly respond back into the affected
areas, integrate with other agencies, and surge additional
forces was critical to our success and resulted in more than
13,000 rescues and assists by small boats alone.
In addition to the heroic efforts of Coast Guard personnel
conducting search and rescue, we were well poised to
effectively deal with our other Coast Guard missions, as well.
Reopening the Mississippi River and Gulf Intercoastal Waterway
became a national priority since this region is host to four of
the Nation's top 11 ports. Eighty percent of the aids to
navigation below New Orleans were destroyed, and numerous
sunken or grounded barges and ships threatened the waterway.
Through long-standing relationships with the maritime
industry, pilots associations, Army Corps of Engineers, and
NOAA, we were able to rapidly assess the impact to 255 miles of
the Mississippi River and more than 200 miles of Gulf
Intercoastal Waterway. Within 1 day, we reopened portions of
the river and Gulf Intercoastal Waterway. And by Friday, 4 days
after the storm, ocean-going ships were entering port. Our Aids
to Navigation Teams went above and beyond reestablishing
critical aids under arduous working conditions.
Sector New Orleans responded to hundreds of pollution
response reports, 134 minor oil spills, and 10 significant oil
spills, totaling more than 8 million gallons of produced crude
oil discharged from storage tanks, refineries, pipelines, and
marine facilities across 130 miles of rivers, canals, bays, and
adjacent sensitive wetlands. At the peak of the response, the
Coast Guard coordinated the efforts of more than 750 pollution
responders, deployed more than 30,000 feet of boom, and
recovered more than 3.3 million gallons of free-floating oil.
Additionally, the Coast Guard supervised several controlled
burns of marshland to consume any remaining oil.
Furthermore, Sector New Orleans has engaged in long-term
salvage recovery to remove hundreds of sunken and grounded
vessels which pose serious hazards to navigation or the
environment. Within our unified command, we successfully
brought together a team of experts from the private and public
sector, including the Navy Supervisor of Salvage and members of
the American Salvage Association, to complete this task.
The Coast Guard's success in completing all of our assigned
missions after one of the most devastating storms in the
Nation's history was a result of well-honed first responder
skills, our ability to pre-plan, and our multi-mission nature.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today.
I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Captain Jones.
TESTIMONY OF CAPTAIN BRUCE C. JONES, COMMANDING OFFICER, COAST
GUARD AIR STATION NEW ORLEANS, U.S. COAST GUARD
Captain Jones. Yes, ma'am, good morning. Madam Chairman and
Committee Members, thank you for allowing me to speak with you
about how a relatively small Coast Guard aviation force was
able to save more lives in 7 days than it typically does in
several years.
Like all of our Gulf Coast units, Air Station New Orleans
exercises its hurricane plans several times each season. We
prepared for and responded to five named storms this year prior
to Katrina. Our response crews witnessed firsthand their
devastating power.
Consequently, we take hurricane planning very seriously and
were well-prepared as Katrina approached.
As Katrina cleared New Orleans on August 29, prepositioned
Coast Guard aircraft from New Orleans, Houston, and Mobile
responded rapidly and were confronted by scenes of utter
devastation with entire communities flattened or submerged and
survivors waving for help from rooftops in every direction.
Every available helicopter immediately began hoisting
survivors, beginning when my unit's rescue swimmer, Laurence
Nettles, was lowered from an H65 and threaded his way between
tree limbs to reach a 4-month old infant, her mother, and
grandmother stranded in deep flood waters in lower Plaquemines
Parish at 2:50 that day.
Coast Guard Air Stations around the country quickly
dispatched aircraft and crews to join this historic rescue
effort, and our Mobile and New Orleans units rapidly expanded
to accommodate the influx of resources.
Assisted by Department of Defense aircrews and coordinating
our efforts with the Louisiana National Guard air operation,
Coast Guard crews responded to distress in all Southeast
Louisiana parishes, rural and urban communities, hospitals and
schools, homes and floodwaters.
Aircraft and crews were pushed to their limits, hoisting in
obstacle-strewn environments, often on night vision goggles
with unlit towers and other hazards, including power lines and
trees. Our rescue swimmers struggled with steep slippery roofs,
contaminated water, and debris. They hacked their way through
roofs. They broke out windows to free survivors.
And after the storm passed, sweltering 100-degree heat,
high humidity, and no winds severely degraded our helicopters'
performance and challenged our pilots' ability.
Despite these many hazards and around-the-clock flight
operations over 7 days, the Coast Guard using helicopters saved
over 7,000 lives and assisted many thousands more by delivering
critical food, water, and other supplies.
As the Admiral noted, Coast Guard aircrew suffered no
significant injury to themselves or to their survivors and no
major aircraft mishap, a testament to their professionalism and
to the Coast Guard's unsurpassed training, safety, maintenance,
and standardization programs.
Coast Guard personnel worked tirelessly and effectively
without regard for their own needs, despite their facilities,
and in many cases their own homes, being destroyed or severely
damaged and with virtually all of our families dislocated and
scattered around the country.
Like the several hundred Coast Guard boat forces operating
surface rescue missions, they had no power, no running water,
or adequate rest. Yet they went back out again and again to
save lives.
A month later, our crews rushed in immediately behind
another Category 5 hurricane, the strongest to have ever
entered the Gulf of Mexico. The first helicopters to respond to
Rita, Coast Guard air crews rescued 67 survivors from rooftops
in 50 to 60 knot winds. And then they worked with local parish
officials on the ground to ensure the victims were properly
cared for.
So many others deserve your attention and thanks. The men
and women in our small boat crews working with local and State
police, Fish and Wildlife, Red Cross, FEMA, out-of-state urban
SAR teams, the National Guard, DOD, and others exhibited
unnoticed courage and initiative day after day.
Unheralded incident command post staff and liaison staff at
numerous locations worked tirelessly to bring players from
disparate organizations and agencies together, and they created
teams which achieved results far exceeding the sum of their
parts.
Madam Chairman, the Coast Guard consistently achieves
greater results than should reasonably be expected of any
comparably sized and funded organization. We look forward to
the opportunity to tell you how that is possible.
As you seek solutions to improving national disaster
response, I will leave you with this thought: What matters the
most in a crisis is not the plan, it is leadership. It is not
process, it is people. And it is not organizational charts, it
is organizational culture.
I thank you for the opportunity to answer any questions.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Captain.
The final statements that you made are a perfect segue into
my first question for the panel, and that is every agency had
plans. Every agency had done exercises. Every agency knew that
the hurricane was coming. Every agency had been warned that it
was going to be a monster storm.
What is it about the Coast Guard that enabled you to
respond so much more effectively than many other agencies?
I am not asking you to criticize other agencies, although
frankly I would welcome hearing any criticisms, but what is it
that is different about the Coast Guard?
A disaster expert whom I met with earlier this week said
that he felt that one of the problems with Louisiana and in New
Orleans is that although there were plans, the plans were not
followed. But what is it about the Coast Guard that allowed for
an effective response?
Admiral, we will start with you, and then I would like to
just go down the panel.
Admiral Duncan. Thank you. Madam Chairman.
It is something I have thought about for some time now. I
think our culture is one of service. We are attracted, as I
think Senator Lieberman's point was, to life-saving. That is
always our top priority. It remains that in any context.
Over the years, we have adapted to other missions that the
government has seen fit to give us to execute, and we have
tried to do that with skill.
What has emerged is a multi-mission organization where I
think every Coast Guardman sees a role for himself, a personal
role, in the success of the organization, in delivering
services along a whole series of missions, and is used to
shifting priorities from say fisheries enforcement to life-
saving in the middle of a flight or on a patrol.
The idea that this is a full portfolio of missions that we
are charged with executing and are trained to do those. I think
we have an adaptive culture that says, right now September 11
has happened. We are not going to do fisheries enforcement. We
are going to surge everything to find out what this terrorism
thing is all about and try to provide whatever assets, whatever
service we can, to the event that is unfolding.
When it turns out to be a hurricane of monstrous
proportion, I think everybody in the organization feels that
ability to have their hand on the tiller, if you will, to
control the outcome, to really bring personal benefit to the
event.
In our case, we are familiar with hurricanes. We exercise
before hurricane season. We typically have about a third
turnover in personnel at the beginning of each year. It is a
good opportunity for us to bring people into the culture, to
understand what the threats are in the Gulf Coast, how we would
deal with that, make sure they have their own plans for their
families, to talk about those things, and to exercise our
Continuity of Operations Plan in the event that we do need to
maintain command and control in a remote location.
We came very close to pulling the trigger on that, I came
close to that, last September during Ivan. It was a very close
call frankly, but we have every year sent a team up to make
sure that the command center that we have in St. Louis was
connected, the computers were up, that the phones were working,
that the phone numbers were right, that the berthing was ready
to receive people and ready to move.
We did that this time. We actually left the area. And we
have modified the plan to deal with exigencies. The plan does
not call for a forward command element. Due to the nature of
the storm and the impacted area, the anticipation that there
were going to be communications lapses, it appeared to me a
good idea to have a forward command element where I would
remain forward, not in St. Louis, but connected with my Chief
of Staff who ran the day-to-day operations of the District but
allowed me to have an executive eye's view of unfolding events
in the area that looked to be most challenged. I think that was
helpful.
I think the other speakers can talk about adaptations to
the plan at their level, as well.
But there was an understanding ahead of time what the
priorities are. And it is written, we have a concept of
operations. I called both sector commanders in advance of the
storm, as is my practice, and I think every district commander
got alignment verbally on what we were going to do, how we were
going to survive the impact, stage our resources, come into the
community afterwards. And if we never spoke or had difficulty
speaking for several days, there was that understanding ahead
of time.
I also called each governor in advance of the storm and
then as soon as the storm hit, and advised them of our
preparations, what our intentions were. I made sure that we
were in alignment with the governors' expectations. And of
course, there is no argument over life-saving and restoration
of channels. That appears to be very much in line with the
governors' direction but it is appropriate to make that
contact.
I did that with Governor Blanco, I did that with Governor
Barbour, and I did that with Governor Perry when Hurricane
Katrina threatened Texas.
So there is an active dialogue. I think individuals are
used to taking responsibility or been given responsibility at a
very early level in their career, are used to moving between
missions and tooling up for whatever the requirements of the
Nation are for the service.
I think there is a real shared understanding of what needs
to be done and an expectation they will be supported if they
see something different that was not anticipated when they
arrived, that they will be supported in carrying out the
mission that they get when they get there.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, but my time on this round is
almost expired. If I could get brief answers from the other two
captains, thank you.
Captain Paskewich. Yes, ma'am.
I think it begins with a comment I made about well-honed
first responders. These are missions that we do every single
day, search and rescue, response to collisions, response to oil
spills.
I maintain a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week watch center. I am not
sure I can recall in the last 2 years actually making it
through a night without getting a phone call about responding
to a particular incident. We are trained to do that, and I
think that is our strength. We respond, and it is ingrained in
our culture.
With respect to hurricane planning, we certainly take all
hurricanes seriously, do lessons learned, and then retool our
plan appropriately. After a near brush with Hurricane Ivan, we
put together a tiger team to take a comprehensive look at our
plan and made changes appropriately, which helped us in this
particular situation.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Captain.
Captain Jones. Ma'am, the only thing I could add to what
the Captain and the Admiral have said is probably the human
factor. We place a great emphasis on interagency coordination
and working well with others.
You put a Coast Guard lieutenant into a room with
representatives of 20 different Federal agencies where there is
a lot of activity going on but maybe not a lot of cohesion, the
Coast Guard lieutenant will pull those people together, get a
meeting going, and come up with a plan. That is what happened
numerous times during Katrina.
That is what we do every day, day in and day out. That is
what Captain Paskewich's folks do in the maritime community,
with maritime industry. We simply would not dream of not
responding. If there is a possibility to use a Coast Guard
asset or Coast Guard people to help out when people need
assistance, we are going to find a way to do it. We are not
going to wonder whether we have the authority to do it, we are
just going to take action.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Madam Chairman.
I want to pick up on your questions. As I hear you answer,
what I find very impressive is that you are obviously a
hierarchical organization. And yet, consistent with the best of
what we know of modern organizations, particularly the private
sector, it seems to me you are very agile and, in some sense,
not bureaucratic. You are problem oriented. And you have a
willingness to break through to get the job done, which is the
most important thing.
And how we replicate that is an interesting challenge for
us in other organizations.
I just want to ask a few baseline questions about why you
did so successfully. Admiral, let me just ask you quickly,
under what authority was the Coast Guard acting in preparing
for and responding to Hurricane Katrina?
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir and I apologize for taking so much
time the last time. I did not realize it was 10 minutes for
everybody.
Senator Lieberman. No, go right ahead.
Admiral Duncan. The succinct answer is 14 U.S. Code,
specifically Section 88. Section 89 and 88, taken together,
give us quite a number of authorities. And 88, which I have
here, goes into a lot of detail about what we are authorized to
do, and it is very expansive.
We have the largest grant of law enforcement authority, I
believe, in the Federal Government. We are, at the same time, a
law-enforcement agency and an Armed Force.
Senator Lieberman. What does law enforcement mean in this
case, briefly?
Admiral Duncan. Law enforcement is less significant, I
think, in this case but to give us the authority. This is the
first time that I am aware of that we were very concerned about
safety of our life savers. So we did bring in force protection
elements that were able to control crowds at marshaling
stations, that were able to provide convoy support where
necessary, those sorts of things.
Senator Lieberman. But the Coast Guard does not share the
concerns that the Department of Defense has about Posse
Comitatus?
Admiral Duncan. No, sir. Posse Comitatus, as you are aware
sir, affects the DOD, specifically the Army and the Air Force
and by policy the Navy. The Coast Guard, from its constitution,
it is organic in statute. It is a law enforcement authority as
well as an Armed Force. The restrictions on use of Armed Forces
do not apply to the Coast Guard.
Senator Lieberman. Got it.
So as you began to get information about Hurricane Katrina,
am I correct--let me just ask you--did you need to go to any
other authority or person, I mean, within the government, to
get authority to begin to implement and prepare as you did? In
other words, do you need to get authority from the Secretary of
Homeland Security or the President, as Commander-in-Chief?
Admiral Duncan. I guess I am attracted to the line in the
old movie ``that we do not need no stinking badges.'' It is a
wonderful quote, and I guess it sort of underscores the
culture.
Senator Lieberman. That is a good line.
I want the record to show that was not your statement. That
was a quote.
Admiral Duncan. No, sir, I am making my statement under
oath. I am aware that, sir.
No, sir. Not to be glib, truly we have the authority and
exercise it on a daily basis. The difference here was the
scale, rather than the mission. As Captain Jones indicated, we
do life-saving. That is our statutory authority. We enforce
fisheries offshore. We interact with foreign vessels.
Senator Lieberman. This is my point and this is fascinating
and very important. Not that I suppose you do not want every
agency of the government to be able to do that, but you did not
have to get a lot of check-offs. This is what you do. And when
you had the indications that a hurricane was coming, you sprang
into action.
Admiral Duncan. To the contrary, sir, I think my job would
be in jeopardy had I not taken those actions.
Senator Lieberman. Am I correct that what was moving you to
get ready was exactly what I referred to earlier, except maybe
you were getting more detailed information. You were getting
the weather reports that said that this hurricane was going to
be a big one.
Admiral Duncan. We had that view, sir, and we have had
experience in the Gulf for quite some time now. We have worked
with our partners in the community. We understand first, make
sure that we remove potential targets. Captain Paskewich
indicated that we interacted with those that could be targets,
the commercial shipping community, button up the ports. Make
sure that the ships at sea understand there is something
coming. We broadcast----
Senator Lieberman. So you were working on the days coming
with the authorities that have to do with private shipping and
the ports to make sure that----
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir. And to be specific, those are the
Captain of the Port authorities that someone in the Sector
Commander's position, as Captain Paskewich was, can use to
prepare ports for a strike, and working with the pilots. There
is 100-and-some-odd miles of river there that need a pilot.
So working with those partners to control traffic.
Senator Lieberman. You have ongoing relations with them?
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir.
Senator Lieberman. How about other governmental agencies?
Did you, in the days leading up to landfall of Katrina, have
any interactions with FEMA?
Admiral Duncan. At my level, I was aware in reviewing our
plans, that we were providing support to FEMA, as we had in
other contexts. Specifically, during Hurricane Ivan we had
assisted FEMA in the Panhandle, the Florida Panhandle, for
locating sites for their urban search and rescue teams, which
are very effective units.
Senator Lieberman. Sites them some to----
Admiral Duncan. Sites for them to stage out of, to
understand where they would be effective, how they would move
into the area, provide support to them. We had done that in the
Florida Panhandle not too long before.
Senator Lieberman. How about in the days before Katrina?
Was there interaction?
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir. The point I was hoping to make
there was that we had a similar arrangement, and I put a check
in the box in my mind that we had already contacted FEMA. FEMA
had requested and we were going to be providing flights as soon
as they were aviationally technically sound to get a FEMA
representative in the air to do their survey for their
purposes.
Senator Lieberman. In fact we know, from Mr. Bahamonde's
testimony, that he went up, I guess twice on that Monday,
August 29, with the Coast Guard.
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir. I did not know his name but I did
know that we were going to provide----
Senator Lieberman. He went up with you, did he not, Captain
Paskewich?
Captain Paskewich. Yes, sir.
Senator Lieberman. Was there any interaction with the
Department of Defense, National Guard, or active military
leading up to Katrina?
Admiral Duncan. I would not say any formal interaction, no,
sir. The National Guard is more present in the community on a
regular basis so we know the National Guard pretty well, and
they are taking their preparations, as well.
Senator Lieberman. My time is gone, but I want to ask two
quick questions.
One is, did your plans for response to Hurricane Katrina
assume that the levees would either be topped or broken? In
other words, since most of what we saw was your rescue, was
rescue because of flooding and not because of wind damage?
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir. The flooding was the difference
in Katrina.
We participated in the exercise Hurricane Pam the year
before that did posit breaches in the levees. We were concerned
about that. We were aware that New Orleans is largely under sea
level. And that was part of our assessment, that we would be
looking for those things.
Now in my assessment flight on Monday, I was aware that
there was substantial flooding throughout the city. But I am
not sure that I could have made the connection that it was due
to any particular injury to either overtopping or a breach in
the levee system. The salient fact for me to use in my
situational assessment was that we had massive flooding and
needed to direct a response towards that.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks.
My time is past due, so I will come back and ask more
questions in the second round. Thank you. That was very
helpful.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Dayton.
Senator Dayton. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Thank you again. It is even more extraordinary hearing you
recount the heroism that was involved and the dedication.
Did I understand you correctly when you said that the
equivalent of two-thirds of the Valdez oil spill occurred at
various sites?
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir. Taken in total, I understand 11
million gallons was discharged in the Exxon Valdez. And I
believe the number we had was about 7.9 million gallons in
this.
Senator Dayton. What caused those spills and what can be
done in the future? Because as the Chairman said, there was
forewarning of this. So is it possible to prevent something
like that happening in the future?
Admiral Duncan. Certainly, that is the sort of thing that
we will be looking at to see--we are going to scrub every
aspect of our response and others in the area to see how we
make it a more hardened system and a more efficient responsive
system.
The short answer, if I can, is breaches in tanks, tanks,
and disrupted pipelines. There was at least one occasion where
a pickup truck was floating, and when the water went down it
landed on a pipeline and ruptured the pipeline, sort of a
secondary injury to the system.
Captain Paskewich can go into great deal about all of
those.
Senator Dayton. I will wait until you have made the
assessment of what can be done because hindsight is 20/20 and
in something of that magnitude there is going to be
unforeseeable consequences. But it would be good to know what
can be done and make sure somebody has the authority to do
whatever is possibly necessary to prevent those kind of
occurrences in the future.
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir. I can point you to the offshore
environment and say that the thousands of platforms that are
active in the Gulf of Mexico are shut in. They shut in their
production to mitigate potential disruption out there.
So those are the sorts of things I think they would be
looking at.
Senator Dayton. Good.
You also mentioned there were barges or other boats or
whatever that were blocking part of the passageway down the
Mississippi into the Gulf? Again, who has the authority to
clear out, or is there necessary additional authority to clear
out before a storm like this occurs, so that again the few
cannot block the many subsequently?
Admiral Duncan. Let me ask Captain Paskewich to answer
that, sir.
Captain Paskewich. Sir, as Commanding Officer of Sector New
Orleans, two of the hats that I wear--as Federal On-Scene
Coordinator and Captain of the Port--give me broad authority to
basically take the appropriate actions along the river, along
the navigable waterways. So there was certainly hundreds of
barges which had gone aground and/or sank, ships which had
pushed up on the levees. And there were oil spills, as well.
We did not wait. Essentially, we went out and took the
action that we needed to bring in the right contractors to
exercise leverage against the owners of the vessels and have
them do an immediate removal of that particular asset.
Senator Dayton. Did you get cooperation in the hours
leading up to the storm, in terms of clearing as many of those
kind of barges and others out of the possible path?
Captain Paskewich. Pre-storm, we had a team in our
Alexandria office made up of members from the American Salvage
Association, the big operators, the ones with the heavy lift
equipment, in advance, in anticipation that we could
potentially have severe impact. It certainly panned out that
that occurred.
Senator Dayton. So my question is do you, or somebody, have
the authority 48 hours ahead or whatever it takes--I realize
barges move quite slowly--to get them to clear out of the way
in advance?
Captain Paskewich. As part of our pre-port requirements, we
have different port conditions. And I send out broadcasts. I
commenced the first broadcast that Thursday, advising the
industry that a potential storm was on its way. And as the
storm crept closer and closer, I would start implementing our
port conditions, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu, depending on how
close--the time within 72, 48, 24, and 12 hours.
Each one of those tells them a condition that the hurricane
is getting close. And within my broadcast I say you should
either leave now or if you are going to stay, you should hunker
down and double up the lines, move to a safe mooring, take
extra precautions, and advise them that by Sunday we would
probably be shutting everything down.
Senator Dayton. I have only got a minute left so I have one
more question I want to ask. I have to leave because I have
some Minnesotans testifying at another hearing. Thank you, I
apologize.
How do you contrast your response and the effectiveness of
it with other agencies? You talked about leadership and people
and culture. What did you see lacking in the response,
efficiency of response of other agencies, Federal in
particular?
Admiral Duncan. I am going to dodge that question
respectfully, sir.
I feel comfortable talking about our culture and what we
did. Honestly, I can say with true candor, everybody I met
downrange was seriously concerned about the suffering and
trying to provide relief. Some were more effective than others.
But I do not think I saw anyone that I would nominate as a bad
player, sir.
Senator Dayton. In terms of communications between Federal
agencies, State and local, it seems that there is this almost
tension that is irresolvable in the moment of crisis between
who has the authority to do what. Is that a problem we need to
address for the future or not?
Admiral Duncan. I do not think so. We exercise regularly
with others. We work with Fish and Wildlife, people who did a
wonderful job by the way, Louisiana Fish and Wildlife folks
worked very closely with our boat people, our boat forces. We
have those kind of arrangements.
I will offer just one observation. We were asked a couple
of years ago to fly on Mardi Gras parades. The local police had
asked to do that. Mardi Gras is a very large celebration, and
it lasts for about 2 weeks. There are many parades. And they
asked us to fly the parade routes on the major routes.
And I authorized that for a couple of reasons. One, because
it gave us familiarity with the city. It gave us familiarity
with the police organization. We took a police officer with us
in Captain Jones' helicopters.
And in the event--and frankly, if we saw a Homeland
Security event that was attracted by a large gathering of
Americans for a celebration, we were on scene. We were there.
We had people in the air. We had connectivity with the local
folks who would be responding on the ground.
As an aside, they told me that that cut street crime along
the parade route by a substantial amount. So we have done that
for several years now.
I think that is a significant factor. Coast Guard air crews
in New Orleans knew where Lee Circle was. They knew the Ninth
Ward. They knew how to get from one place to another. They knew
how to work with local police.
So those types of relationships that are built up in
advance of a desperate situation, I think stand us in good
stead. And it is probably not the sort of thing that can be
written into a plan. It is a kind of culture that says we are
working with people that we may need to work very closely with
in a very significant event.
Senator Dayton. Thank you again. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Let me preface my questions by saying when I was a member
of the U.S. House of Representatives for 10 years, I was
privileged to serve on the Coast Guard Subcommittee of what was
then the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee. I entered my
time on that Committee as an old Navy guy with a good deal of
respect for the Coast Guard, and when I left 10 years later, I
had an even greater respect. I have been a fan of the work that
you and the folks that you serve with have done for a long
time, probably never more than in the wake of Katrina.
Let me say, we have had a whole series of hearings on
Katrina-related issues. I just came from a hearing a few
minutes ago on the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Sometimes I say it seems like Katrina all day, all night as we
try to figure out what went right, what went wrong.
Let me just start off by asking, what question or what
issue--what have we asked you to answer, as a Committee, and if
you just sort of take it one at a time. Let me start with you,
Admiral. What have we asked you to answer today?
Admiral Duncan. What have you asked me----
Senator Carper. What questions have you been asked? Usually
when we have a hearing, we say, these are the questions we
would like for you to address in your testimony. What have been
those questions?
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir. My understanding is that the
Committee's focus was that many things went right, many things
went wrong during Katrina, and the focus of this Committee is
semper paratus, what did the Coast Guard do? How has their
culture allowed them to achieve what success we were able to
achieve and is it something that can be distilled and
recognized--our interactions with others in the community, and
generally, you get a better understanding of the details of the
work, the rescue and the restoration that went on in our
sector, the maritime sector, in this historic event.
Senator Carper. It would be helpful to me, just take a
minute or two in your own words and just answer that question
again.
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir. I think that in our case, as a
cultural event, the culture is one of how can we do things
rather than what is required of us? Where do we bring talents
that can be best used to meet the challenge? We have a very
broad charter in the statute. It gives us many
responsibilities, and I think that allows us to look at things
in different ways, saying more why not do that rather than why
do that? If there is something happening in a community that
looks like our capabilities or our authorities would be helpful
in providing relief, I think our natural inclination is to say,
why not? Why not do that? How can we do this?
In this event, it comes to deciding to distribute water to
people who were not moved on. Once we have moved them out of
positions of imminent peril and put them in places of temporary
refuge, we added life sustainment to that set and said, let us
keep water and food moving until people can be moved to final,
or at least intermediate, places of refuge.
We have a culture that speaks both DOD and law enforcement.
We understand J systems. We understand N codes. We understand
ICS and NIMS, and in some cases, we are a translator between
those systems. That is helpful. I think there is a whole host
of things. We take it seriously that the motto is semper
paratus. I think we really do want to be ready. We look at our
plans. We make sure our plans are adaptive. We make sure that
our people understand that they are empowered to act consistent
with the guidelines that have been understood ahead of time,
and where they see something as a first responder that is not
quite exactly what we describe, to take the right action when
they get there, consistent with the concept of operations,
saving lives, sustaining lives, and evacuating.
Senator Carper. It is interesting. I say to my colleagues,
every now and then, I visit the Amtrak shops back in Delaware
where they work on the locomotives and repair the cars, and
this one guy who works at one of the shops wears almost every
day to work a T-shirt that says on the back, ``Attitude is
everything.'' When I hear you talk about sort of the idea is
not why can't we do something, but why can we, it reminds me of
in the Navy, we had what I call a ``can do'' spirit. Basically,
we felt we could do just about anything, get just about
anything done. That was our attitude to it, and it sounds like
it is very much the kind of attitude that pervades the Coast
Guard.
When I was privileged to be Governor of Delaware, we would
await--not really await, we prepared for emergencies, whether
hurricanes or Noreasters or blizzards or ice storms, whatever
it was. We would go through a drill. We would prepare for, we
would practice the emergency with the relevant agencies,
Federal and State and local. We would also do, literally, every
several hours during the course of the day as the disaster,
natural disaster was approaching, we would do what we called a
bridge call. We would have all the relevant agencies on the
phone. It could be Coast Guard--it probably was. It included
the weather folks. It included all of our National
Guardspeople, our DEMA people.
Did they have that kind of operation in Louisiana and
Mississippi? How did it work?
Admiral Duncan. In a variation of that. I made contact with
the Governor's office in advance of the storm and then after
the storm hit, I know that Captain Paskewich made contact at
the local level. We had liaison officers in every place that we
could think would be useful. Some places were not struck by the
storm. We called those people back. Others were right at the
center of things. We had Lieutenant Commander Sherry Banaesaw
in the Mayor's office in New Orleans. That was a vital
connection that gave us situational awareness of what was going
on, what the Mayor understood was happening in the city, and
how we could interact with that.
We had liaison officers in the State Emergency Operations
Center in Baton Rouge as well as in Mississippi. Some of those
liaisons became pivotal in our understanding of other players
and being able to interact with those on a regular basis, and
that was a pipeline of sharing information back and forth.
Within our organization, we had daily conference calls at
0800 and 2000, eight and eight, if you will, myself and my
boss, Vice Admiral Vivian Crea in Portsmouth, Virginia, and I
had direct authority to call the Commandant at any time should
I need to do that, and I did several times. So he had good
situational awareness right to the very top of the
organization, at least as I understood it.
It was important, I thought, to remain forward in this
event, to maintain situational awareness and be able to contact
at that level so that when DOD moved into the community, the
JTF, I was able to attend the Commander's conferences on the
Iwo Jima and make sure that if we were able to provide support
in alignment with the JTF's mission, we could do that, as well.
So I think we looked for those opportunities for
connectivity. There were regular, structured contacts. There
were less formal contacts. And we held conference calls daily
to make sure we had shared understanding of what was happening
in each of these places.
Senator Carper. Thanks. I think my time has expired. Thank
you very much, Madam Chair, and again, to each of you, thanks.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Captain Jones, you referred in your testimony just briefly
to the Coast Guard's effort to transport food and water to
evacuees. It is my understanding that you could shed some light
on an incident that a FEMA witness, Marty Bahamonde, described
to this Committee where FEMA trucks with water and food in them
were locked and in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Are you familiar
with that incident?
Captain Jones. Yes, Senator.
Chairman Collins. Could you explain the Coast Guard's role?
Captain Jones. On Wednesday, August 31, one of my officers,
Lieutenant J.G. Williams, who was a liaison working with Task
Force Eagle, the Louisiana National Guard Air Rescue Operation
staged out of the Superdome, a parallel rescue operation to
ours, linked up through this liaison officer. He had some face-
to-face with a local FEMA official who let him know that the
ten 18-wheelers, five with water, five with food, were at the
Wal-Mart on Airline Highway, which had already been used as a
staging area for small boat operations the day prior, on
Tuesday, August 30, that those trucks had arrived there. They
were locked up, but they weren't yet being distributed.
So Mr. Williams contacted my unit, and we tasked two H-53s
from the Marine Corps from the U.S.S. Battan, which had offered
their services to us, and we tasked those two Marine Corps H-
53s to go land at that parking lot. They cut the locks on the
trucks. They loaded up, again, ten 18-wheelers full of food and
water, distributed them to the landing zones we had designated
at the causeway, the cloverleaf, the Superdome, and they also
brought food and water back to my air station for further
redistribution by helicopter to individual groups of survivors.
Chairman Collins. So even though these trucks were FEMA
trucks, it was the Coast Guard, assisted by the Marines, that
actually got into the trucks because they had been abandoned
and were locked, and then distributed the food?
Captain Jones. Ma'am, I can't say how long those trucks had
been there, but I can say it was a FEMA official who told our
liaison officer about them, so I would say that the FEMA, Coast
Guard, and Marine Corps together coordinated the distribution
of that food and water.
At the same time, on the same morning, a Coast Guard C-130
brought in the first shipments of water to arrive at New
Orleans International Airport, water purchased by Coast Guard
officers on Tuesday, August 30. And additionally, on Tuesday,
August 30, my junior officers had the idea to break into the
Navy exchange retail store, which they did with the permission
of the Navy commanding officer, loaded food and water into my
pilots' pickup trucks, put it on Coast Guard H-60-Js, and flew
it out to St. Bernard High School in St. Bernard Parish for
distribution to 400 survivors who were stranded there in eight
feet of water without food and water.
Senator Carper. Madam Chair, that sounds like a real Navy
``can do'' spirit. [Laughter.]
Chairman Collins. They needed the Coast Guard's help,
though, did you notice. [Laughter.]
Admiral Duncan. The Navy are good people.
Chairman Collins. They are, indeed.
Captain Paskewich, I am curious why the Coast Guard pilots
kept bringing people to the Superdome when the Superdome was
becoming overwhelmed, short of water and food. The floodwaters
were starting to encircle the Superdome. Why was the decision
made to bring the rescued individuals to the Superdome? Or
Captain Jones, if you know the answer to that.
Captain Jones. Yes, Senator. The landing zones and staging
areas in use is a very dynamic situation. Hour by hour, we
would receive reports, the cloverleaf is closed. Don't bring
anyone else. The Superdome is closed. Don't bring anyone else.
The hospitals told us, don't bring anyone else unless they are
on death's door. Then they told us, don't bring anyone else if
they are on death's door.
The problem was that all the staging areas, all the landing
zones were full by the second day and not happy at all about
receiving more people. They were short of food. They were short
of water. They were short of medical supplies. So all of the
staging areas were overwhelmed by certainly the second and
third day after the hurricane. It was a question of there was
no better alternative. If we took them to the cloverleaf after
the Superdome turned us away, it would have been putting them
down with 2,000 other of their friends and neighbors who also
had no food and water and inadequate EMS personnel on scene to
provide security.
Chairman Collins. Did the Coast Guard express concerns to
any Federal, State, or local officials that more shelters were
needed and more places for sanctuary?
Captain Jones. Yes, ma'am. I passed that concern up through
my chain of command on a regular basis, and they passed that
concern on through their contacts with the OEP in Baton Rouge.
I also expressed that concern at the Superdome to the task
force where they were staged there.
Admiral Duncan. If I may add to that, ma'am----
Chairman Collins. Admiral Duncan.
Admiral Duncan. I was also at the Superdome where we
discussed that concern and the need for providing better, more
permanent relief. I also flew to Baton Rouge. I met with Mr.
Brown to express personally my concern about us moving people
to places of temporary refuge and them not being moved on to
more permanent places. It led to our decision to equip every
Coast Guard helicopter with a full suite of water, and we moved
60 to 90 pallets of water a day that we purchased to people who
were in need of it in very difficult circumstances.
Chairman Collins. What was Mr. Brown's response when you
raised this concern with him?
Admiral Duncan. I began trying to contact Mr. Brown on
Wednesday through my aide. He was initially unavailable, and we
left messages through the day. A message was passed that if I
could get to Baton Rouge, he would be happy to meet with me. I
went to Baton Rouge and talked to him. He was about to do a
presentation, and we had a short amount of time, 15 minutes or
so, where I explained my observations from the theater, what I
thought needed to be done next. I made reference to a Berlin
airlift kind of an operation to get resources to people who
needed it. He indicated interest and said, ``Let us get
together again.'' He needed to do this press conference. ``Let
us get together at eight.''
I showed up at 8:10. I had been detained before getting
there. The meeting was over. Others were leaving the trailer he
was in, and we were unable to really meet to pursue that. His
chief of staff said that my concerns had been heard and that
they were going to act on those in some way. But I was unable
to meet with Mr. Brown at that time. He had moved on to other
things.
Chairman Collins. Did anything change, from your
perspective on the ground, after you brought those concerns?
Admiral Duncan. That was Thursday evening. It appears that
Friday, things did change. We did get recognition that water
and food was necessary. We did see the JTF move resources into
place that provided some relief that was needed up until that
point.
Chairman Collins. Were alternative shelters established as
a result of that conversation?
Admiral Duncan. I can't say that anything came as a direct
result of that conversation. For all I know, some of these
things were planned before I had a conversation with Mr. Brown.
But the movement out of congested areas began, medical triaging
at the International Airport, alternatively referred to as
Moisant or Louis Armstrong, began. Water and food distribution
was better supported. And it did appear at that point that we
were starting to see a turn.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks. I want to go back to the
questions of communications, which are very important,
obviously critically important, in disaster response. Some of
the most pathetic moments in watching what happened and reading
afterward in New Orleans was the inability, for instance, of
the Mayor to communicate with his personnel, etc.
Captain Paskewich, you were on both Coast Guard flights
with Mr. Bahamonde and have indicated that you, too, were
clearly able to see significant flooding in New Orleans at the
time. Admiral Duncan, you have indicated that you were aware of
significant flooding from a damage assessment flight that you
took about 5 p.m. on that same Monday, the day of landfall,
August 29.
I wanted to ask you both how and when did you communicate
that information to your superior officers in the Coast Guard,
to the Louisiana Emergency Operations Center, or to any other
Federal agencies or operations centers?
Admiral Duncan. Do you want to take it?
Captain Paskewich. Yes, sir.
Senator Lieberman. Captain, why don't you start.
Captain Paskewich. I was certainly on both flights with Mr.
Bahamonde, and when I came in from Baton Rouge, or from
Alexandria via Baton Rouge, and went down the river to survey,
do a quick scan, and then headed across the city to the
airport, at the Superdome to pick up Mr. Bahamonde, he wanted
to go up on an overflight, do an assessment of the area just
like I did. It was our first opportunity to get a nice, good,
detailed survey or good look of the area.
We flew up to the north. We were on an H-60. We went up
toward where my station was, and you could see houses burning.
You could see my station was intact, and I could see intense
flooding in the Lakeview neighborhood area, up to the rooftops.
At that point, you could also hear chatter on the radios that
there was thousands of people on the rooftops that needed to be
saved.
Senator Lieberman. Where was that coming from?
Captain Paskewich. That was coming from--to the 60
helicopter. I think that was general, other helicopters----
Senator Lieberman. Other helicopters were flying, right.
Captain Paskewich. Correct. There were multiple helicopters
in the area.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Captain Paskewich. I counted four Coast Guard helicopters
within my own visual, and then the H-60 pilot asked permission
if he could bring us back because they are a big asset. They
can rescue a lot of people. So our first flight was about 10
minutes.
Then we went back to the Superdome and told him we would
get him back up again----
Senator Lieberman. You are talking about Mr. Bahamonde?
Captain Paskewich. Yes, sir.
Senator Lieberman. On that first flight, could you see that
the levees had broken?
Captain Paskewich. We went right over the area where the
levees were broken, and I am pretty positive Mr. Bahamonde saw
the levee breach. I was focused on the flooding in the
neighborhoods----
Senator Lieberman. Sure.
Captain Paskewich [continuing]. And I was trying to get a
visual as to how many assets we needed.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Captain Paskewich. The second flight we took with one of
Captain Jones' 65 crews. We went east, New Orleans East and
Slidell. I believe we were the first ones to see the twin span
drop, and then Slidell was under water. New Orleans East was
very much under water, as well, Shalmet, you could see the
Ninth Ward off in the distance. Intense flooding. So north of
I-10, intense flooding, and then Shalmet, Ninth Ward south,
intense flooding.
Senator Lieberman. So did you report what you saw to any
superiors?
Captain Paskewich. Yes, sir. When we landed at the Dome, we
made--we called back three separate times----
Senator Lieberman. Who did you call?
Captain Paskewich. I called up our Incident Command Post in
Alexandria, relayed information that there was intense flooding
in the area and that we needed to marshal as many resources,
both aircraft and small boats, as many as possible because this
would be an extended, protracted search and rescue effort.
Senator Lieberman. Admiral Duncan, I am interested in--I
presume you were a recipient of some of that information that
Captain Paskewich reported?
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir.
Senator Lieberman. Then I am curious. I know you did speak
to Deputy Secretary Jackson and apparently you were in
conversations with, I am sorry, the Commandant and Secretary
Jackson.
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir, that is correct.
Senator Lieberman. You were in conversations with the
Commandant and senior Coast Guard officials, so just help me
with that chain of command----
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir.
Senator Lieberman [continuing]. To the best of your
recollection, as to communication.
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir. I moved on Sunday to Houston to
be in a position to come in immediately behind the storm.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Admiral Duncan. When the storm conditions were abating, I
flew to Alexandria, took a brief from--this is the tie-in with
Captain Paskewich. His information goes to this IMT in
Alexandria. I went to see what was known across the entire
theater. So I tried to find out what was happening in Sector
Mobile, which covered the Mississippi Coast, and also what was
happening in Louisiana----
Senator Lieberman. So this is Monday evening?
Admiral Duncan. Monday afternoon, sir.
Senator Lieberman. Monday afternoon, OK.
Admiral Duncan. Two o'clock in the afternoon, I took off
from Houston, arrived probably about, I think it says about
three o'clock or so--three o'clock. I am sorry, 2:30. I
received initial reports from whatever was known by our folks
or any source that we could--news, anything we could find----
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Admiral Duncan [continuing]. Preparatory to my flight going
into the area. My notes indicate that at that time, there was
some reports of overtopping. I believe the Industrial Canal was
mentioned. We were prepared for flooding. Myself and my chief
of operations got on a flight with a petty officer, and we took
a 60, a Falcon jet out down over Grand Isle, which is on the
coast, out over Loop, which is a substantial oil production
facility out in the Gulf, and then up the Mississippi River,
over the City of New Orleans, and then to the east along the
coast until we got to Bayou La Batre, Alabama, turned around
and came back and landed.
At that point, I had personally seen very substantial
flooding, not really able to attribute, I think in my mind,
what caused that flooding at this point----
Senator Lieberman. Right, but you saw the effect----
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir. Absolutely.
Chairman Collins. And you reported that to the Coast Guard
Commandant?
Admiral Duncan. That is correct. I contacted the--in fact,
the time I have is--I took a brief from the sectors at nine
o'clock, when I landed. Then I called the Commandant and the
Area Commander, and the notes I have say it was at 10 o'clock,
2200, and I discussed with Admiral Crea and the Commandant my
observations, supplemented by what I was able to gather from
others who were doing other detailed assessments on the ground.
Senator Lieberman. Yourself, you did not speak to Secretary
Jackson in DHS----
Admiral Duncan. I did not, no, sir.
Senator Lieberman. But do you have any idea what the
Commandant reported to Secretary Jackson?
Admiral Duncan. No, sir, I would----
Senator Lieberman. We will have to talk to him directly.
Admiral Duncan. If I could also add----
Senator Lieberman. Please.
Admiral Duncan [continuing]. Because there is another
element to your question, if I might, sir----
Senator Lieberman. Go ahead.
Admiral Duncan [continuing]. How do we pass that
information to others.
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Admiral Duncan. That information, the normal tie-in at the
State Emergency Operations Center to all the players, including
the State, who has primacy in responding to incidents in the
State, of course, is to pass that information up through the
OEP, or the Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge. That
information was passed through to them, and our sit-reps, our
situation reports, which lag, of course, by an hour or two in
typing it up and sending it along, try to capture the detail of
these observations and any other source of information that
might be available to us and send that up to others, as well,
and those would have been developed and sent to the OEP, which
is the Louisiana Emergency Operations Center.
Senator Lieberman. OK, I appreciate that. I want to just
quickly ask one more question and go to you, Captain Jones; and
Captain Paskewich, if you want to add. How were you and your
personnel receiving information about--communicating with one
another, but also receiving information about who on the ground
needed help, or were you just doing observation when you saw
people on the rooftops?
Captain Jones. Senator----
Senator Lieberman. I know that the Coast Guard itself had
some communication difficulties under the circumstances.
Captain Jones. Senator, regarding communications,
communications between aircraft was not degraded in any way,
other than the volume of radio calls being made, which simply
made for a short wait in having to get a phone call in, or a
radio call in. Radio communications between Coast Guard
aircraft and Coast Guard ground stations were degraded because
of the fact that the coastal antenna, the high sight antenna
had been destroyed in many cases.
Senator Lieberman. Yes. There is a lesson right there.
Captain Jones. Yes, sir. But I would add that I think we
are always working to improve the technology. The technology is
always susceptible in a catastrophic incident like this. The
primary operational concept that we employ is that all of our
forces in the aviation world should be ready to work without
communications for extended periods of time. The briefing I
give my crew prior to deployment in response to any hurricane,
the briefing I gave all of my air crew on August 28 when we
left New Orleans in evacuation to preposition for a response to
Katrina, was that each air crew should be prepared to operate
independently for up to 72 hours with no contact with me, no
contact with the district, have to find our own food and water
and shelter, have to find our own jet fuel. Now, I told them, I
hope that is not the case, but you should all be prepared to do
so, and they were prepared to do so. So if you have people that
are extremely well trained, extremely well equipped, and
understand the commander's intent and what the mission
objectives are, they can operate without communications without
floundering about.
In regards to mission tasking, there were two primary ways
we tasked missions. There were literally hundreds each day, if
not thousands, of specific mission requests that came in.
Evacuate this many people----
Senator Lieberman. In this particular area?
Captain Jones. Yes, sir. Evacuate people from this
hospital, from that hospital, this high school, this community
center, this house. There were hundreds of phone calls coming
in, to both the district INT, the sector INT, the Baton Rouge
EOC, being funneled through our Coast Guard liaison officers in
each of those places either to Eagle Base, to the Coast Guard
liaison officer working with the National Guard to task
National Guard and DOD helicopters, or to my air station, or to
Coast Guard Aviation Training Center, Mobile, Alabama, which
was also launching mass helicopter rescue operations. So there
were many targeted specific distress calls coming in and
everyone else was assigned to general areas where there were--
for the first 4 days, Senator--were so many thousands of people
that were readily apparent to be rescued, we didn't need to
assign them to specific homes or blocks.
Senator Lieberman. Admiral Duncan, did you want to add
anything?
Admiral Duncan. If I may just elaborate, Senator, a
parallel effort was going on at the State Office of Emergency
Preparedness, so 911 calls were coming in through there, as
well. Those were dispatched to appropriate liaison officers to
have their agency respond. So if the call was for a State
police response, the State police desk was given that ticket.
If it looked like an aviation response was appropriate, then we
would get that and pass that down. So these parallel systems,
really quite a number of things coming.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Captain Jones, I just want to clarify and follow up on the
discussion we had of the Coast Guard's role in trying to get to
the FEMA trucks at the Wal-Mart that contained vitally needed
food and water and what FEMA knew and didn't know about these
trucks. Our staffs recently interviewed William Lokey. Are you
familiar with Mr. Lokey?
Admiral Duncan. No.
Chairman Collins. He is the FEMA official who was
designated as being the Federal coordinating officer, so the
key person for logistics. We told him about the Coast Guard,
and you have elaborated the help that you got from the Navy,
also, in coming to the trucks, breaking the locks, getting the
desperately needed food and water out of them, and airlifting
them to the Superdome.
My staff asked Mr. Lokey if he was aware of this. He said,
``No, this is the first that I have heard of that.''
The staff went on to say, ``You don't know anything about
trucks being abandoned in the Wal-Mart parking lot?''
He responded, ``It doesn't surprise me, but this is the
first time I have heard of trucks abandoned in the Wal-Mart
parking lot, and I am glad they cut the locks and helped get
the food over there. They did the right thing.''
Question, ``Is it possible in your mind that these could
have been trucks that were either contracted for by FEMA,
either directly or from mission assignment?''
``I do not know. I didn't think we had any mission-assigned
trucks because most of our trucks and logistics people directly
contracted with their contractor to provide, but I would be
interested to know about this. Literally, it is the first time
I have heard of having to go commandeer food in an abandoned
parking lot.''
I tell you about this because I think, once again, this
shows the disconnect of FEMA not knowing what assets they had,
where they were, and how they could be tapped. Obviously, Marty
Bahamonde knew about these trucks, or had seen these trucks,
but the individual at FEMA who should have been aware of this
was not. Since I think your testimony created some doubt on
that point, I just wanted to clarify that.
Captain Jones. Yes, ma'am. I don't know anything about the
history of those trucks, how they came to be there, how long
they had been there, or if they were truly abandoned or simply
there was someone on the way to get the materials and our
helicopters, our tasked helicopters got there first. I don't
know. I only know that a FEMA person who spoke face-to-face
with one of my officers who worked with the Marine Corps to get
a helicopter over there and distribute that desperately needed
food and water. I really can't speak as to whether it was truly
abandoned and forgotten, or whether that was part of the
process. The trucks may have just arrived there and FEMA worked
with the right people, which is the Coast Guard, to get it
distributed.
Chairman Collins. Well, I think it is clear from--and I
just read you an excerpt of the transcript, it is much longer--
that the individual who should have known did not, so that, in
fact, those were trucks that were lost track of, which is very
troubling in this situation.
Admiral, as you know, this Committee is studying the
mechanics of the National Response Plan and the National
Incident Management System and its implementation in response
to Hurricane Katrina. Senator Lieberman has often said that
this was the first big test since September 11 and the system
failed.
It appears, based on our initial investigation, that there
was considerable confusion over the various roles played by
different individuals at all levels of government under the
National Response Plan and that some individuals involved in
the response efforts may not have been adequately trained to
the National Incident Management System standards. What are
your observations?
Admiral Duncan. I think, in large part, there is truth in
that observation. The National Response Plan was barely 8
months old when Katrina hit, so I think it is not surprising
that we would find different levels of understanding in
different agencies. It was not a huge shock to the Coast Guard.
It operated under the Federal Response Plan previously and had
helped with drafting elements of the National Response Plan for
which we would be coordinating officials or coordinating
agencies. We have significant experience in oil pollution,
where we have learned how to deal with the National Incident
Management System and ICS. We have since incorporated that for
all hazards, all events. So there is a fairly high
understanding of those concepts in the Coast Guard.
One of the lessons learned I come away with for our
organization is we want to push that down further. We want to
make sure that petty officers at a lower level are more
conversant with ICS and take less ramp-up time when they show
up in an organization like that. So that is a lesson learned
for us, to develop that expertise at a lower level.
I guess I would say there is merit in the National Response
Plan. I think elements of the Response Plan were more effective
than others, but I do think it provided a good framework for,
for instance, the ESF organization, mission assignments, the
way that the government looks at a very large problem that cuts
across the scope of all agencies that might bring something to
it. I think it is a very good framework, and as we get more
conversant in it, I think we will probably fine-tune it or
maybe find that it is exactly what we need.
But the National Response Plan, I think, is a good
framework for starting. We did find different levels of
understanding and, frankly, different levels of usage of it
among some of the participants.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks. I want to follow up on the last
series of questions asked about communications, and this is in
the spirit of lessons learned.
In terms of the antennas going down and inhibiting
communication between your planes in the air and base
operations or locations, what are the alternatives that we
might pursue in the future there?
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir. One of the things that we did in
advance of the storm was to take specialized communication
equipment and place it in areas we thought would be necessary.
That was part of the dialogue I had with my immediate
supervisor, which is Vice Admiral Crea, the Area Commander.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Admiral Duncan. We took things called a TMAC and a TMIC--
they are specialized communication bands. We put them in
Mobile, which was expected to be an impact area. We moved one
to Alexandria. And we reestablished communications through
those, not the kind of robust communications that we would have
on an ordinary basis, but enough to move through an emergency
until we could restore other things. We found that text
messaging worked.
Senator Lieberman. Interesting.
Admiral Duncan. Yes. I was the Group Commander in
Charleston, South Carolina, when Hurricane Hugo hit, and I
thought the first thing that was going to go was my cell phone.
As it turned out, the cell phone towers remained up, and we
were able to communicate with what was then pretty new
technology.
Senator Lieberman. But they didn't here, did they?
Admiral Duncan. They did not, no.
Senator Lieberman. No.
Admiral Duncan. And we ended up--I am wearing a phone on my
belt. This is the third phone I have had since August. It is an
area code not affected by the storm, and I am able to
communicate very nicely with that. It is in Northwestern
Louisiana. The 504 area code was greatly impacted. My wife's
phone, it was difficult to find out where she was.
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Admiral Duncan. But that was a matter of trial and error to
try and find something we could bring up as we experienced
problems.
Again, communications are always one of those things you
wish were better, and I know that we have mobile communications
van projects that are very near completion that we hope will
provide that kind of----
Senator Lieberman. I appreciate that. The staff just told
me that they have learned that the helicopters were able to
intermittently use your own C-130s or order Customs and Border
P-3s as communications centers. Tell me a little about that.
Admiral Duncan. I will address it broadly and ask Captain
Jones, as the aviator among us, to do the details.
The air traffic management package, again, with that many
helicopters in the air, every time I flew in there, I was
looking out the window to make sure there wasn't a helicopter
on the next roof over. That air traffic management piece was
done by two aircraft, a Coast Guard C-130 and a Customs P-3 in
an elliptical orbit over New Orleans, much like an AWACS kind
of a thing.
Senator Lieberman. Was this part of the plan, in other
words, that you----
Admiral Duncan. It was perceived ahead of time and put into
place. Those aircraft showed up as ordered before the storm.
Senator Lieberman. Right. Unique to preparation for
Katrina, or is that part of the continuing plan?
Admiral Duncan. I think any time we expect a congested air
space, we make an effort to make sure that that is there, and
the Navy brought assets with them when they came, as well, that
could take care of that.
If I might throw that to Captain Jones to describe the
details of that communications.
Senator Lieberman. Sure.
Captain Jones. The Navy provided an E-2-C Hawkeye, also,
for that role, but primarily, they benefitted us by not only
reeling information--if we had to send out a broadcast to all
helicopters, we sent it to the overhead aircraft, and then they
could talk to an on-scene helicopter better than we could from
my operations center. But also, they were able to do phone
patches, so if I needed to talk to the District IMT in St.
Louis, we could contact the overhead fixed-wing aircraft from
10,000 feet, and they could do a phone patch and actually get
on a land line in St. Louis.
Senator Lieberman. Let me ask a different question--
Captain, did you want to say something?
Captain Paskewich. Could I add just a couple more things on
the communications, sir?
Senator Lieberman. Please.
Captain Paskewich. There were some novel approaches to
overcoming some of the limitations. We did actually get a ham
radio operator in, which turned out to be effective. We had our
own----
Senator Lieberman. This is after you saw how bad it was?
Captain Paskewich. Yes, sir. They came in within the first
couple days.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Captain Paskewich. And then we had a group of auxiliarists
who actually went out to one of our towers to establish the
link between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. This key tower
halfway in between, once it was up and running, we could have
the communications leap-frogged through that site to our
station, once we regained access to our station. And out-of-
state cell phones actually worked quite well, if you had that
ability.
Senator Lieberman. Again, a real sign of resourcefulness.
You know, the contrast, and I don't want to ask you to talk
about this, but--maybe I will ask you a different question, the
contrast between how you responded and others did.
Has there been any after-action work done within the
Department of Homeland Security about, for instance--in
preparation for the next, or even in implementation around
Hurricane Rita, about you and FEMA, for instance, working more
closely together? I mean, here you are in the same Department
and, honestly, a night and day--that may be unfair because of
different histories, etc.--in the reaction of the two agencies,
but what has happened since all this happened in Katrina?
Admiral Duncan. I think we are capturing many lessons
learned, pages and pages of things. Some are small, single
points of failure or to be avoided, lots of things like that,
the business about pushing training down to a lower level in
ICS in our community.
When Rita approached, we put the word out that we were
going to treat this as an expeditionary event. We were not
going to assume that anything would have survived the strike.
There would be nothing to go back to. Bring everything you need
with you. Bring communications, bring food, water, bring RVs. I
think I am the largest owner of RVs in the government right
now. We try to provide our ability to move into an area and
sustain operations for a long period of time.
Efforts to integrate with FEMA and others in DHS and others
in the government, I think, are being looked at and probably
smoother. We put liaison officers--I put a Coast Guard Admiral
in the PFO organization before Admiral Allen was assigned to
try to make that kind of connectivity during the event. Admiral
Acton was assigned to be Mr. Brown's assistant earlier on in
that.
We did the same thing with Hurricane Rita. We actually
moved Admiral Acton over to Rita to be part of that PFO cell
and to also make the connections with the Joint Task Force as
DOD came in with their own capabilities and their own mission
sets. So interconnectivity, interoperability are very big on
our list of lessons learned.
Senator Lieberman. Let me ask you this final question,
maybe if each of you want to offer a quick answer. I think one
of the reasons you are as good as you are is you probably don't
rest on your laurels and you are always asking, what could we
have done better here? So I am going to give you an
opportunity, each of you, to--and maybe this time I will start
with Captain Paskewich and go around the other way--what went
wrong or what lessons did you learn for the next time?
Captain Paskewich. I would say it is a strength, and at
times we are pretty tough on ourselves. In fact, we are
incredibly tough on ourselves, and we constantly reevaluate
where we can improve, and we have captured lessons learned
across a whole broad spectrum, not just communications. There
are whole lessons learned within that whole communications
segment, but organizationally, what do we need to do better?
How can we set up? How can we connect the dots? I call it
connecting the dots between all the agencies. It is very
important to me.
The liaison officers are key people, and what I take out of
this is that that is one of the major bonds that has to take
place and we have to do it even better----
Senator Lieberman. Liaison----
Captain Paskewich. Liaison officers. For instance, we had
assigned officers at the City Office of Emergency Preparedness.
We had SAR controllers at the State level, trying to stay
linked with those folks and linked with other key agencies who
we overlap with and interact with. That is a key, and I think
if I take anything away from that, I want to build upon that.
Senator Lieberman. Great. Captain Jones.
Captain Jones. Honestly, Senator, I think Captain Paskewich
hit it on the head when he said we beat ourselves up. We are
perfectionists in the Coast Guard. After a miraculous rescue, a
crew will sit around and agonize over what they should have
done better.
On the first day of Katrina response, I flew 9 hours and my
rescue person was Dave Foreman, a young man who is incredibly
heroic, hanging from gutters at 10 o'clock at night when I was
hovering on night-vision goggles, smashing windows out of a
second-story building over by Lakeview to try to get an elderly
woman out who we then had to abandon because he just couldn't
get her out. She was immobile, and it was just not physically
possible to get her out that night in those conditions.
This is the same young man who, 2 years ago, you may
remember the Bow Mariner rescue mission, the 600-foot tanker
that sank off Cape Henry at Chincoteague with highly-toxic
chemicals aboard, and he went into that water in January in the
Atlantic Ocean with highly toxic fumes that made the helicopter
crew pass out and saved six lives, and he beat himself up after
that. I couldn't save anyone else. And we have to just slap
ourselves sometimes and say, you just did the most successful
rescue operation in American history, so don't beat yourself up
so much.
Honestly, the factors that the Admiral and Captain
Paskewich have pointed out, our ability to interact with other
agencies, our ability to empower our people to make decisions
on the fly, to look at what needs to be done and make those
decisions, and we can empower them to do that because of the
fact that they are so well trained and they are experienced and
they are local first responders who are part of the local
communities and know the local officials and know where the
local geographic landmarks are.
There were times after Katrina where we sat around and we
were practically saying, gee, what could we have done more?
Could we have plugged the levees ourselves? Could we have built
the tent cities ourselves? My Command Master Chief had to slap
me one time and say, ``Captain, we did a hell of a job.''
Senator Lieberman. You did a hell of a job. Admiral Duncan.
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir. It would make your hair hurt,
honestly, to go through the details of lessons learned. We had
a single point of failure in a server in one of our subordinate
commands that provided the routing for our E-mail, and it
either went underwater or ran out of fuel. Those pretty much
are concurrent events at this point. And we said, man, that
cost us a couple of hours in restoring, rerouting through St.
Louis, where we put our COOP, our E-mail. So we are really hard
on ourselves that our E-mail went down, which was a significant
thing. We really wanted that to be up.
So that is the level of things. Just briefly, we have
broken these lessons learned down into people, training,
equipment, supply, infrastructure, and information, and then
there are subsets under all of those and a good part of this
book are lessons learned.
Senator Lieberman. That is great. And I presume you are not
only working that over internally, but you are sharing it with
the rest of DHS?
Admiral Duncan. Yes, sir. Captain Paskewich made a good
point. One thing that we did this time was we took commanding
officers out of command positions in a non-impacted area, the
Texas coast, for instance, and moved them into those key
liaison positions and let the executive officers fleet up and
run the show in day-to-day operations. So we ensured that the
quality of people we had interacting with other agencies were
our top command-level people. That was a significant event.
That is the best case that I think we are going to offer for
Coast Guard-wide operations.
Remain flexible. For instance, it has struck me as we are
going through this that we probably want to think about putting
a fluorescent mark on the top of roofs of houses that we had
taken people off of, and that looked like an adaptation in the
plan. I looked just like you do now, sir. That is a good idea.
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Admiral Duncan. It turns out not to be a good idea in
practice. Now, you wouldn't have known this, sir----
Senator Lieberman. You tricked me there. [Laughter.]
Admiral Duncan. Well, it was my idea, and sometimes the
Admiral doesn't have good ideas, but if he talks to people, he
finds out that the rescue swimmers are going down, and they
say, we have marked this house, but flying back, we saw new
people on this house, people who just decided to come out now,
or people who have moved up from other areas and found easy
access to this roof. So what looked like a promising variant of
that plan, in practice, we were quick enough to recognize it
was putting people at risk if we went forward with that. There
would be people there again. So we scratched that.
So remaining agile, questioning fundamental assumptions,
listening to the petty officer who is hanging from a wire rope
and seeing what his experience is. Captain Jones can tell you
that we put axes on his helicopters and then we got electric
saws so that we could get into roofs of houses--not standard
equipment on his helicopters, developed on the fly.
So that is a lesson learned that we will probably put in
and offer as a best practice for other air stations in other
hurricane areas.
Senator Lieberman. Fantastic. Thanks very much. Great job.
We are very grateful to you. I was thinking, this is probably
the ultimate expression of gratitude from American society
these days, is that we should go from ``NYPD'' to a television
series called ``USCG.'' [Laughter.]
Admiral Duncan. Captain Paskewich has already had enough
press. [Laughter.]
I have to talk to him through an agent. He has dark
glasses. Please don't make him harder to work with, sir.
[Laughter.]
Senator Lieberman. I wasn't thinking of him playing
himself, however. [Laughter.]
Chairman Collins. Thank you very much for your testimony
today. Admiral Duncan, I would ask that you share with the
Committee the lessons learned document. That would be very
helpful to us.
Admiral Duncan. I would be happy to do that, Madam
Chairman.
Chairman Collins. And again, I want to join Senator
Lieberman in commending the Coast Guard for a truly outstanding
performance. I think that we can learn a lot from the
experience with Katrina by looking at the Coast Guard's
preparedness and agile response. The constant innovation as you
were going along is really impressive, and that is what we need
to learn and adapt for other agencies. So we look forward to
working with you further as we continue our investigation, and
I thank you very much for your testimony today and your service
to the country.
This hearing record will remain open for 15 days, and this
hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:20 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR LAUTENBERG
Madam Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing and giving us an
opportunity to examine one of the few bright spots in the Federal
response to Hurricane Katrina.
I have always admired the U.S. Coast Guard. Before coming to the
Senate I served on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and I
know what a vital role the Coast Guard plays in the shipping industry
which is so important to our economy.
The Coast Guard is responsible for ensuring that ships are
seaworthy. Since 9/11, they have been given additional responsibilities
in the war on terror, but not commensurate resources. New port and
maritime security duties increase the myriad activities which the Coast
Guard performs. They have always protected the marine environment
through enforcement of our laws and treaties, and guarded our marine
resources.
We have always looked to the Coast Guard in times of emergency, to
protect the lives and safety of citizens.
During Hurricane Katrina we witnessed some deplorable scenes. Many
aspects of the Federal response were inexcusable. But we also saw
heroism on the part of Coast Guard personnel.
I especially want to note the efforts of two helicopter rescue
crews from Atlantic City. I ask that their names be placed in the
record for this hearing:
CDR Daniel Taylor
LT Kevin D'Eustachio
AET2 Troy Maxwell
AST3 Josh Rice
LCDR Kurt Richter
LT Eric Purdue
AST1 Craig Miller
AMT2 Clinton Wood
AMT2 Adam Wolfe
AMT3 Shane Sprague
The first crew arrived in New Orleans starting the night the
hurricane struck, and by the next day had rescued 24 people, including
a pregnant woman who went into labor aboard their helicopter. Her baby
was delivered safely. The same crew also evacuated a family with an
infant. The second crew arrived shortly thereafter and commenced
several days of relief and rescue operations, which resulted in the
rescue of 50 people, 2 dogs, and the delivery of 150 pounds of food and
water.
These heroic acts were multiplied many times over. Coast guard
rescue crews from across the nation saved orevacuated more than 33
thousand victims of Hurricane Katrina.
This tragedy brought out the best in the United States Coast Guard.
Unfortunately, the current Administration has failed to support
providing the necessary resources for the Coast Guard, both for new
equipment and for operations.
A plan to upgrade and renew the Coast Guard's long-range fleet was
adopted several years ago, but it as not been fully funded. As a
result, many Coast Guard vessels are outdated, affecting their ability
to support operations in the Gulf as well as non-security operations.
The Coast Guard was there when the victims of Hurricane Katrina
needed it. If we expect it to be there during the next emergency, we
need to be there for the Coast Guard.
We must finish the job of upgrading and modernizing the Coast Guard
fleet, and we must ensure the Coast Guard has adequate resources to
conduct both their homeland security missions as well as their
traditional missions. Thank you.
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