[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
READINESS IN THE POST-KATRINA AND POST-9/11 WORLD: AN EXAMINATION OF
THE NEW NATIONAL RESPONSE FRAMEWORK
=======================================================================
(110-68)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS, AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 11, 2007
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
----------
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman
NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, JOHN L. MICA, Florida
Vice Chair DON YOUNG, Alaska
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
Columbia WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland
JERROLD NADLER, New York VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
CORRINE BROWN, Florida STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio
BOB FILNER, California RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi JERRY MORAN, Kansas
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland GARY G. MILLER, California
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania Carolina
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
RICK LARSEN, Washington TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts SAM GRAVES, Missouri
JULIA CARSON, Indiana BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York Virginia
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois TED POE, Texas
DORIS O. MATSUI, California DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
NICK LAMPSON, Texas CONNIE MACK, Florida
ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii York
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr.,
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota Louisiana
HEATH SHULER, North Carolina JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
JOHN J. HALL, New York VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
JERRY McNERNEY, California
VACANCY
(ii)
Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency
Management
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of Columbia, Chairwoman
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, SAM GRAVES, Missouri
Pennsylvania, Vice Chair BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania Virginia
MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee York
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota JOHN L. MICA, Florida
(Ex Officio) (Ex Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
Page
Summary of Subject Matter........................................ vi
TESTIMONY
Bohlmann, Robert C., Chairman, U.S. Government Affairs Committee,
International Association of Emergency Managers and Director,
York County, Maine Emergency Management Agency................. 26
Manning, Tim, Chairman, Response and Recovery Committee, National
Emergency Management Association and Director, New Mexico
Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management....... 26
Paulison, R. David, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management
Agency, Department of Homeland Security........................ 7
Rufe, Jr., Roger T., Director, Office of Operations Coordination,
Department of Homeland Security................................ 7
Stockton, Dr. Paul, Senior Research Scholar, Center for
International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University.... 31
Waugh, Jr., Dr. William, Professor, Department of Public
Administration & Urban Studies, Georgia State University....... 31
PREPARED STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Altmire, Hon. Jason, of Pennsylvania............................. 48
Cohen, Hon. Steve, of Tennessee.................................. 49
Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota............................ 50
Shuster, Hon. Bill, of Pennsylvania.............................. 53
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Bohlmann, Robert C............................................... 58
Manning, Tim..................................................... 63
Paulison, R. David............................................... 69
Rufe, Roger...................................................... 104
Stockton, Paul N................................................. 109
Waugh Jr., William L............................................. 117
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Paulison, R. David, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management
Agency, Department of Homeland Security, responses to questions
from the Subcommittee.......................................... 75
ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD
James Lee Witt Associates, James Lee Witt, CEO, written statement 125
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
READINESS IN THE POST-KATRINA AND POST-9/11 WORLD: AN EVALUATION OF THE
NEW NATIONAL RESPONSE FRAMEWORK
----------
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
House of Representatives,
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,
Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and
Emergency Management,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:10 a.m., in
Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Eleanor Holmes
Norton [Chair of the Subcommittee] Presiding.
Ms. Norton. Good morning, and welcome to today's hearing.
We are pleased to welcome our Federal guests and the panel of
experts, and I look forward to their testimony on the National
Response Framework, the NRF. We are holding the first hearing
on the NRF on the anniversary of 9/11 because our Committee
holds primary jurisdiction over the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, or FEMA, the primary agency implemented in
the most serious terrorist and natural disaster events in U.S.
history, 2 years after Hurricane Katrina and 6 years after the
9/11 attack on the United States.
After months of delay, we gave FEMA and the Department of
Homeland Security, or DHS, a deadline of September 5th to
supply the National Response Framework. We thank the officials
for meeting this deadline and for giving the Subcommittee the
time to analyze the NRF. They have agreed that, on this 9/11
anniversary, the American people must be assured in the midst
of, yet, another hurricane season and the administration's own
warning about a reorganized and a strengthened al Qaeda that
the country is ready for a catastrophic attack of any kind.
To address issues of accountability that were on stark
display during the administration's response to Katrina, the
last Congress passed the Post-Katrina Emergency Management
Reform Act of 2006, which prescribed several directives that
Congress felt were essential to prepare the Nation for any new
disasters, whether a natural event or a terrorist attack. The
Post-Katrina Act requires the Administrator of FEMA to ensure
that the National Response Plan provides for a clear chain of
command that is consistent with the role of the Administrator
as the principal emergency management advisor to the President
of the United States. Perhaps most important, the new Act
requires FEMA to coordinate with State and local officials when
developing the National Response Framework.
To ensure that these mandates were met and that the
Subcommittee could objectively evaluate the administration's
submission, the Subcommittee sent prehearing questions to our
expert witnesses to get their assessment of the draft plan.
They were asked, one, "Do you believe the draft National
Response Framework reflects the role and responsibility of the
FEMA administrator as required by law?" two, "Do you believe
the President will receive the professional advice he needs
during a catastrophic disaster?" three, "The law requires that
FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security coordinate and
confer with State and local emergency managers in developing
the National Response Framework. In your opinion, did FEMA and
DHS comply with the law in this regard?"
The answers we received were candid and, I must say,
troubling. One of today's witnesses will testify, "The draft
framework overlooks the concerns that help shape the
legislation Congress enacted and would put the Nation at risk
to some of the same systemic failures that hobbled the Federal
response to Katrina."
According to the testimony of another of today's experts,
the National Response Framework, "ignores the role of the
counties and parishes in disaster response and early recovery,
which, in many States, is very significant."
Such criticism of missing-on-the-ground involvement from
first responders, who alone are familiar with local conditions
and who must implement any plan go to the heart of a response
to disasters and would amount to noncompliance with
requirements of cooperation and coordinations set forth in the
Post Katrina Act. Remembering the plain and painful confusions
between the roles of FEMA and the Department of Homeland
Security during Katrina, we are left concerned that, as another
witness notes, and I am quoting him, "it is not clear in the
NRF who will be in charge of coordinating the Federal response.
In fact, it contradicts the Post Katrina Act."
This year, this Subcommittee has already had occasion to
examine the chain of command issue as it relates to the Federal
Coordinating Officer, that is a FEMA official, and the
Principal Federal Officer. That is the PFO or a person who
works for the Department of Homeland Security.
Now, explain this dichotomy for those of you who are not
familiar with bureaucracies because what you have are two
officers--one who works for FEMA, which is in the Department of
Homeland Security, and the other, the PFO, who works for the
Department of Homeland Security. Now, remember what this
hearing is, in part, about. It is about avoiding some of the
confusion on the ground that accounted for the Katrina disaster
response.
We concluded in this Subcommittee that the PFO position in
DHS was duplicative, here we go again, and caused confusion in
the field. That is this year. Just a few months ago we
concluded that. This Subcommittee was so concerned that we
subsequently asked the Appropriations Committee to prevent
funds from being used for the PFO positions, and the House did
so. The Senate DHS appropriation is, as yet, unfinished.
When Congress enacted the Post Katrina Act, it wrote in by
statute, by law, my friends, one coordinating Federal officer--
that is in plain language in the statute--who must, we wrote,
this Post Katrina, understand, must have emergency management
experience and must be the disaster response official. That is
how we tried to clear out the confusion that existed in
Katrina. This provision was written with a clear intent to
provide the President of the United States through the FEMA
administrator with direct emergency management consultation
directly to him, not through anybody else but through him, to
avoid delay in responding to a disaster, cutting out the
bureaucracy that the whole world saw was responsible, in no
small part, for the response to Katrina.
If the PFO, the person who works for the Department of
Homeland Security, is not required to have emergency management
background--and he is not--and is the representative of the
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and if this
person is to be the advisor to the Secretary in a disaster as
the draft National Response Plan now states, then the plan in
this respect clearly contravenes the plain language of the Act.
We are mindful of the difficulty of putting together a
document so ambitious in its mandate that it is named a
"national response framework." We must expect that any such
document would incur some criticism. However, we are deeply
troubled that the critiques of the plan we are receiving go to
the Congressional mandate of the Post Katrina Act, itself,
suggesting that the Department, as some would say, just does
not get it or, worse, that it does not want to get it.
We will listen carefully and objectively to testimony from
the administration and particularly to their defense against
the caustic criticism of the experts. However, we are a
democratic Nation of laws, and no executive branch agency,
including the Department of Homeland Security, gets to pick and
choose which laws to follow. We do not intend to forget that
the reason Hurricane Katrina's response was such a disaster
was, in no small part, because of a lack of a coherent plan for
martialing the resources available locally, at the State and at
the Federal levels. Katrina was a dress rehearsal for the next
disaster that this country may face, whether manmade or
natural.
This Subcommittee in its role of oversight intends to work
closely with FEMA and with the Department of Homeland Security
to do whatever proves necessary to ensure that the
Congressional mandates of the Post-Katrina Management Act of
2006 are implemented as written into law. Under no
circumstances will this Subcommittee abrogate its
responsibility to ensure that, in the event of another disaster
response, there is insufficient accountability.
Again, we appreciate the time and the effort that went into
the National Response Framework and look forward to the
testimony of the government and of the expert panel. I am
pleased to hear the comments, such that he may have, from our
ranking Member, Mr. Graves.
Mr. Graves. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for
holding today's hearing on the Federal Government's disaster
readiness and the revised National Response Plan.
Madam Chair, today's hearing is important for a couple of
reasons. First, we need to know if the experts believe the
Department has produced a good plan. Will it work? If not, how
should it be improved? We saw during Hurricane Katrina a
confusing response plan or a plan that was poorly implemented
that can have tragic consequences for those struck by the
disaster. The House of Representatives Katrina Committee, on
which Chairman Bill Shuster served, identified a few serious
problems with the National Response Plan.
Most significantly, the plan did not enable the President
to get the professional disaster advice he needed during the
disaster. It created new positions which confused the chain of
command, and it did not result in a proactive Federal response
when one was clearly needed.
The second important reason for today's hearing is the
National Response Framework is the most major document produced
by the Department since Congress passed the FEMA Reform Bill
last year. It is our first opportunity to see how well the
Department is implementing the near unanimous reforms
recommended by the major stakeholders.
The FEMA Reform Bill required several changes to the
National Response Plan that were based on the Katrina
Committee's findings and the professional recommendations of
almost every first responder association. Most importantly, the
reform bill placed the responsibility and authority for
managing all aspects of an incident under FEMA and required the
administrator to have professional emergency management and
homeland security qualifications. This means the administrator
has primary responsibility for, one, preparedness, including
planning, training and exercises; two, for response, including
managing and coordinating the Federal response; three,
recovery, including individual assistance and infrastructure
reconstruction; and four, mitigation, including reducing the
consequences of future disasters.
The FEMA Reform Bill also made the administrator the
principal emergency management advisor to the President and the
primary Federal official responsible for managing and
coordinating the Federal response to disasters. As far as the
National Response Framework allocates roles and
responsibilities within the government, it provides an insight
into the actual role DHS has assigned to FEMA after enactment
of the FEMA Reform Bill.
With respect to the National Response Plan, the FEMA Reform
Bill specifically required the plan to be changed to reflect
the operational role of the administrator, to account for the
unique requirements of a catastrophic disaster and to clarify
that the Federal Coordinating Officer, FCO, and not the
Principal Federal Official, PFO, is responsible for
coordinating the Federal response in the field.
Given the specific changes to the National Response Plan
mandated by law, I find it particularly surprising the new plan
does not mention the FEMA Reform Bill at all. Perhaps that
helps explain why FEMA and the FEMA administrator are barely
mentioned, and the administrator is given no operational role
in the plan. I am not raising this issue because the FEMA
Reform Bill came from this Committee or that it has to be done
our way. I say this because these aspects of the bill were key
recommendations of the major first responder and stakeholder
groups. We have letters from the emergency management, fire
services, law enforcement, city, county, State, and other
professional associations calling for the specific reforms.
These are the reforms the professionals thought necessary to
fix a broken system at DHS.
A properly constructed response plan should define the
roles and responsibilities of the agencies involved, explain
how decisions will be made and clarify who is in charge. Given
the critical testimony of our expert witnesses and our
Committee's own review, it appears the Department has a lot
more work to develop an effective National Response Plan.
Thank you again, Madam Chairman, for holding today's
hearing. I look forward to the testimony and, obviously, the
testimony from our distinguished visitors.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Graves.
Does any other Member have comments he decides to make? Mr.
Cohen?
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate your having
this hearing as well for I live in Memphis, Tennessee, which is
a sister city to New Orleans, which suffered greatly 2 years
ago and which is on the grid fall, the New Madras Fall, which
gives it certain possibilities of earthquakes in the future. We
have had other problems with what we call "Hurricane Elvis,"
but that was a wind shear that came through 2 years ago and
caused one of the greatest urban disasters that went unnoticed
by the national media. Utilities were out for over a week.
I went down to New Orleans on my own time for the second
anniversary of Katrina. This Committee was going to meet there,
and for reasons, it cancelled the meeting, but I went on my own
and visited. There is still much to be done in New Orleans, and
of course, your plan today is to show what you have done since
then to prepare. I saw a television show, I think it was
Sunday. It might have been 60 Minutes but one of those type
shows, and they said that less than 10 percent of the cities
are prepared presently to respond to a disaster and to have an
adequate disaster response plan and evacuation. There might
have been an evacuation route. That is shocking, only 10
percent of the cities, and they mentioned D.C. had some type of
little, red and white insignia on the street signs.
Most people do not know what they are. When I went to
dinner last night on Pennsylvania Avenue, I thought I know what
they are now. I do not know how good the ratings were for that
show, though. So FEMA and other folks need to make people aware
of what is already out there, but also the 90-plus percent of
the cities that do not have a plan.
I think I will wait a bit on my questioning, Madam
Chairman, but there was some time ago that I had an issue with
FEMA concerning ice.
After writing you on July 18 and 19 and, among other
things, being concerned about your lack of response to my
inquiries, I received a response to my concern about your lack
of response to my inquiries concerning the $70 million waste of
ice that went on around this country. The response was on
September 10. So, in responding to my inquiry about your lack
of responsiveness, it took you 2 months and Chairman Norton's
Committee hearing on the anniversary of 9/11 to thank me for my
being patient.
Well, I do not know that I was patient, but when you cannot
respond to a Member of Congress about a $70 million boondoggle
for 2 months, it makes me very concerned about every American
cities' future when they are subject to some disaster whether
caused by wind, rain, an act of God, or a misfeasance or a
malfeasance by some Federal agency.
What happened with that ice--and I still will wait for my
questions--but as to the idea that you could not drink that
ice, I drank that ice. I am fine. I want to hear the scientific
evidence about the ice. It will be news to people in Alaska. I
drank glacier ice. It was over 2,000 years old. I am fine. Now,
maybe it was not wrapped in that bag, and I know that your
response to say why it was not good is because the
International Packaged Ice Association said it is not good
after a year. Do you think the International Packaged Ice
Association wants to sell you some more ice?
Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Cohen.
Mr. Walz of Minnesota.
Mr. Walz. Well, thank you Chairwoman Norton for holding
this hearing. I would also like to thank Ranking Member Graves
and a special "thank you" to him for the attention he paid to
the care on the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota. I thank you
for that.
I thank you, Administrator, for being with us today.
We are here today to evaluate the National Response
Framework, and many of us know a lot of this came out of the
response to 9/11 on the 6th anniversary, which we are observing
today. The earlier version had some glitches in it. It was
looked at. We are back here today in the post-Katrina, I guess,
era to take a look at this and, I think, in the right spirit,
and that is why I thank the Chairwoman for being here, and I
thank the director for being here to work this thing out for
what is best for America to find where the weaknesses are and
where the strengths are in doing so, and I want to say I am
particularly looking forward to the administrator's testimony,
and I say that not out--this is not an academic exercise for
me.
Three weeks ago, my district in southeast Minnesota was
devastated by flash floods. We saw over 17 inches of rainfall
in a 24-hour period in the community of Hokah, Minnesota.
Damages to public businesses, private businesses and homes have
already run into the tens of millions of dollars. I toured
these areas, and I know that the administrator was there--
Administrator Paulison was there--and I know you were in
Rushford, Minnesota, a town of about 2,400, that was literally
almost wiped off the map in a matter of a few minutes.
When we went into that town and saw it, there was a little
island a church, part of a school and a city building where the
emergency management was gathering and where the headquarters
and the response team were gathering, and both were shuttling
in and out of that city right on downtown. There were people
climbing out of the second floor windows of those homes to get
into those boats.
I say this because I want to thank the administrator for
being there. I said you took this job--if I am not mistaken, it
is about your 2-year anniversary that you took this job, and
quite honestly, it is not a very enviable one, but it is one
that someone needed to step up and do, being fully aware that
there were severe glitches and knowing that what happened in
Katrina simply could not be replicated again.
At this point, I am cautiously optimistic that what I
witnessed in southeast Minnesota is what we would hope. I am
noticing that, as to the framework here and things like engaged
partnership, the unity of effort through a unified command,
those types of things seemed to happen, and the people in
Minnesota were--quite honestly, there were a couple of things
that they were afraid of. They were afraid FEMA would not show
up, and when FEMA did show up in a timely manner, led by the
administrator and fulfilled the obligation that the people
thought they were going to, there was a sense of real relief.
There was a sense of, wow, this is fantastic. We need to get
this to the point that no matter where it is at that people
come to expect that, not hope that they got the lucky end of a
straw or something. So I truly appreciate that.
At this point, I am proud to say that I think Federal,
State and local officials handled this incredibly well. We have
got a lot of work to do yet. It is yet to be seen. The judgment
on southeast Minnesota will come as we kick in many of the
other agencies, but as to this initial response in
understanding how it works and putting these things into play--
obviously, the Southeast Minnesota floods were devastating.
There were seven individuals who lost their lives, thousands of
homes, tens of millions of dollars in damage. It was not on the
scale of Katrina, but the principals of leadership and the
framework that underlie that can be the same, so I look forward
to that.
I thank you, Administrator, for being here. I thank you for
your personal attention to my district and to what has happened
so far.
With that, I yield back, Madam Chair.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Walz.
TESTIMONIES OF R. DAVID PAULISON, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY;
AND ROGER T. RUFE, JR., DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF OPERATIONS
COORDINATION, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Ms. Norton. Now we are pleased to hear from our Federal
Government witnesses.
Mr. Paulison.
Mr. Paulison. Thank you, Chairwoman Norton, Ranking Member
Graves, Congressman Walz, and Congressman Cohen. I appreciate
the opportunity to come in front of the Committee.
I am pleased to be here to discuss the draft National
Response Framework, known as the NRF, which was recently
released, just yesterday, for additional public comment. The
NRF is the next generation document that FEMA, the Department
of Homeland Security and our Federal, State and local partners
will use when responding both to natural and manmade disasters.
When adopted, it will replace the existing National Response
Plan that has been in place and active since 2004.
I think, Chairwoman Norton, it is altogether fitting that
you call this hearing on September 11th as we honor those, as
we did this morning, who lost their lives on that terrible day.
It reminds those of us in emergency management and in the first
responder communities why we come to work every day. Despite
the risks, despite the long hours, men and women involved in
every level of response across this country are dedicated to
saving lives and to protecting our Nation. On that fateful
September day, many of our colleagues and, quite frankly,
several of my good friends lost their lives rushing into
danger, not away from it.
As the Bible teaches, "greater love hath no man than this
that a man lay down his life for his friends." Truly, truly,
these men and women showed their love for their fellow
Americans on that day.
It is important to note that, even as we work to streamline
and update this document, we have robust and effective plans in
place, and they have worked. While we are always working to
improve our ability to serve the wider community and to address
hazards of all shapes and sizes, our existing system was
sufficient for the events that we faced this past year. In our
response to the first storms of the hurricane season, most
notably Hurricane Dean, and our response to the flooding in the
Heartland, storms in the Northeast, tornadoes around the
country, and other events, our existing plans and the
implementation of changes based on lessons learned from
Hurricane Katrina resulted in a very strong response, as you
noted, Congressman Walz.
This is not the FEMA of just a year ago. We are leaning
forward. We are working hand in hand with our partners at every
level of government as well as in the nonprofit and private
sectors, and are providing improved services for the American
people. This new framework will help us institutionalize those
reforms and improvements. The draft NRF incorporates numerous
comments we received through the process, and is based on real
world experience of thousands of Americans involved in
emergency management. Many comments addressed these same key
issues and are addressed in this document.
The result is an NRF that is user-friendly. It is focused
on the basic facts that you need available at your fingertips
while providing additional materials needed as companions.
Still available but not overwhelming to the average user, it is
a framework that is accessible to everyone involved in a crisis
and easily referenced when time is of the essence. The ease of
use is critical as the NRF is designed to guide all hazard
response across America. It is built on the flexible, scalable
and adaptable coordinating structure of the National Incident
Management System, or NIMS. The NRF aligns key roles and
responsibilities across jurisdictions. It links all levels of
government, private sector business and nongovernmental
organization. It is intended to capture specific authorities
and best practices for managing incidents that range from
serious but purely local to large-scale terrorist attacks or
catastrophic natural disasters as we saw in Hurricane Katrina.
But keep in mind that the National Response Framework is
written for two distinct, vital audiences--senior leaders and
day-to-day practitioners. Its clear, simple style makes serious
work for the incident management, understandable to those who
provide executive directions, including Federal department or
agency heads, governors, mayors, tribal leaders, and city
managers, who are not the day-to-day operators. Meanwhile, its
annexes and related documents, including the new online or
national resource center, provide added resources to emergency
management practitioners, such as first responders and health
officials, explaining the structures and tools routinely used
at all levels of government.
The NRF also identifies and clarifies the National Incident
Response Doctrine and not just at the Federal level. It retains
the same core principles in the National Incident Management
System of which first responders from different jurisdictions
and disciplines can work together to better respond to natural
disasters and emergencies, including acts of terrorism. The
National Response Framework presents core principles more
clearly and includes them in a newly-described response
doctrine that lays out how we respond. There are several core
principles laid out here. One is engaged partnerships; a tiered
response; scalable, flexible and adaptable operational
capabilities; a unity of effort through unified command; and a
readiness to act.
Additionally, the NRF draws focus on preparedness.
Effective preparedness is crucial, a crucial precondition for a
successful response. The NRF draws a sharper focus on the value
of preparedness, activities that improve response across all
jurisdictions.
In conclusion, let me simply state that a draft of the NRF
is at a stage where additional review and comment is needed by
the stakeholders at all levels of government and in the public
and private sectors. These comments will be taken to heart so
that, when the final NRF is released, it will truly assist in
guiding and conducting all of those involved in all hazards/
incident management.
Thank you very much.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Paulison, for your
testimony.
We go now to Admiral Rufe.
Admiral Rufe. Good morning, Madam Chairman, Ranking Member
Graves, Mr. Walz, and Mr. Cohen.
I am Roger Rufe, Director of Operations Coordination at the
Department of Homeland Security, and I am pleased to appear
today alongside Administrator Paulison and the other witnesses
later on. Thank you for inviting me to provide to you and your
Subcommittee my evaluation of the development of the National
Response Framework as it relates to the Office of Operations
Coordination.
The NRF, I believe, is an important step forward for DHS
and for interagency coordination in that it captures and
formalizes critical structures and processes we are now using
to provide situational awareness and to manage a broad spectrum
of events. Since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, DHS has
undertaken a systematic effort to ensure that there are more
robust and coordinated preparedness and response structures in
place to deal with all manners of incidents. We have taken the
post-Katrina recommendations provided by the White House, the
Congress, the GAO, and others very seriously, and are making
enhancements to DHS operations. Let me highlight for you this
morning just three of these post-Katrina enhancements that are
a part of the NRF.
One of the recommendations from the Katrina Lessons Learned
Report was that a National Operations Center be established and
that it act as a single information reporting system for all
departments and agencies. In May of last year, the NOC was
established. It is comprised of five elements. One is the watch
section from the old multiagency Homeland Security Operations
Center. Our second is the intelligence and analysis watch and
warning branch. A third is FEMA's National Response
Coordination Center. A fourth is the Infrastructure Protections
National Infrastructure Coordination Center. The fifth is the
NOC planning element.
Taken together, these five elements of the NOC compromise
the principal operations center for DHS and provide situational
awareness and a common operating picture and operations
coordination for the Secretary as he carries out his
responsibilities as the Principal Federal Official for domestic
incident management.
The second recommendation that was made in the Katrina
After Action Report was the need for a Federal planning
system--a planning process--and recognizing that within the
Federal Government while there were business and budget
planning processes in place outside of the Department of
Defense, there was no standardized contingency or crisis action
planning system for the Federal Government. We have taken that
on in my office, and we have developed a national planning and
execution system, NPES, which is a five-phase, national-level
planning process that has been very broadly adopted by the
interagency. In fact, we have trained over 500 people in the
interagency in this process, and they are using that to develop
their crisis action plans.
The third element that I want to touch on is that the
Katrina after action recommendations included the creation of a
permanent planning body within the National Operations Center.
The mission of the NOC planning element is to provide
contingency and crisis action incident management planning in
support of the Secretary's national level domestic incident
management responsibilities articulated in the Homeland
Security Act and in HSPD-5. This planning element is
compromised of some 53 members of the interagency--15 are full-
time; 38 are part time, but all of them come from the key
elements within DHS as well, as from virtually every agency
within the Federal Government, to put together national level
Federal interagency strategic plans to address the 15 national
planning scenarios. These strategic level plans will identify
the roles and responsibilities of individual departments and
agencies in the event a given scenario were to occur.
So those are the three items I wanted to bring to your
attention this morning, Madam Chairman, and I look forward to
your questions.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much for that testimony, Admiral
Rufe.
Now I would like to give both of you the opportunity to
respond to the testimony we are going to receive from
witnesses. Obviously, you as Federal officials are testifying
first. Before I indicate the predicate to this question, I am
going to ask you to forward to the Committee a copy of the
draft National Response Framework plan that was submitted to
the Department of Homeland Security by the Drafting Steering
Committee in the spring of 2007.
Do you understand what the Committee wants?
Mr. Paulison. No, ma'am, I did not. Could you repeat that
again?
Ms. Norton. I am asking you to forward to this Subcommittee
a draft of the National Response Framework plan that was
submitted to the Department of Homeland Security by the
Drafting Steering Committee in the spring of 2007. Now do you
understand? There was a draft submitted to the Department of
Homeland Security, apparently a drafting committee from FEMA.
We would like that submitted within 30 days to this
Subcommittee.
Mr. Paulison. There were literally dozens of drafts back
and forth, but I will give you----
Ms. Norton. The final draft is all we are interested in
that you submitted to the Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Paulison. Again, there were literally--I understand
what you are saying, and there were literally dozens of drafts
back and forth. We worked on this thing all summer.
Ms. Norton. Well, I can understand that. Let me be clear. I
do not want anyone to say, "We did not understand what the
Chair was asking for."
I want the first submission of the final draft--and I am
giving you the date, spring 2007--that you submitted, and they
may have come back with questions, and there may have been a
back-and-forth, but I am being very specific in what I am
requesting, and I am requesting it within 30 days. I am not
requesting at this time all the back-and-forths. I want to know
what was originally submitted. I know what finally came out
because the Subcommittee has the document.
Mr. Paulison. I understand your question.
Ms. Norton. Thank you. The date is March 13th, 2007. It is
that submission we are asking for.
Now I would like--in order to be fair to the
administrators, I warned you that there was caustic criticism
coming. The only way for us to judge it is to give you an
opportunity to respond to it, so I am going to ask you, I will
give you a sample of the kinds of things that are coming
forward in the testimony that will follow. Here is one comment.
"the draft framework overlooks the concerns that helped
shape the legislation Congress enacted and would put the Nation
at risk to some of the same systemic failures that hobbled the
Federal response to Katrina."
So it is alleging that--this comment, which we take as
fairly typical of the comments we received, alleges that you
did not abide by the legislation and that, therefore, some of
the same failures that FEMA encountered would be repeated.
Now, secondly, "Unless revised, the framework"--well, let
me just start with that.
Mr. Paulison. I guess part of my concern is that this
report just came out yesterday. So to have comments on it
without thorough review, I find----
Ms. Norton. Well, you know that they are reviewing the
draft report. The draft report was submitted to all of the
State and local agencies, and those who are commenting are
commenting on the draft report.
Are you saying to me that the draft report has nothing in
common with----
Mr. Paulison. It has lot in common. The problem is this is
only one piece of it.
Ms. Norton. Well, respond to the concern then.
If you are saying, first of all, that that is not true
because we, in fact, used the legislation, then tell us how you
did, and you will tell us what failures that hobbled the
Federal response to Katrina will be overcome by this document.
That is the way to respond to it, not to say, well, they have
not seen it.
Mr. Paulison. Well, there is a lot they have not seen. At
the resource center where we set up all the annexes that lay
all of this out does follow the Pre-Katrina Reform Act.
What this document does do is it does very clearly define
the roles of local, State and Federal Governments. It also
brings in the private sector and the nongovernmental
organizations, the volunteer agencies. It also has a separate
planning section that the other National Response Plan did not
have.
This document is going up for review again. If there are
specific comments that the users have, we want to see those.
This is going to be a collaborative effort. This is a draft
document. However, I do feel very strongly that it does answer
a lot of those questions that happened in Katrina. I went
through the same issues during Hurricane Andrew.
Ms. Norton. All right, Mr. Paulison. We understand.
Let me let Admiral Rufe take a try at this. These are very
specific, very caustic criticisms, and I would like a specific
answer as possible. The public is going to hear a lot of
caustic testimony. If I were in your position and somebody said
to me that I did not follow the law, I would then cite ways in
which they did follow the law, Admiral Rufe, and if somebody
criticized my draft and said it is going to subject us to the
same failures we had with Katrina, my answer would not be,
"Hey, look. We are not going to comment. Maybe we will do
better." My answer would be, "No, we do not. This is the way in
which we will not have the same systemic failures we had in
Katrina." It is that kind of specificity, it seems to me, that
can overcome the criticism that will be forthcoming from the
testimony that we will be receiving, and I am trying to give
you a fair chance to rebut it.
Admiral Rufe. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
The only thing I would say is I support the administrator.
One, this was just released yesterday, but more importantly,
attacks like that which are of a such general nature do not
allow you to get at the issue that these attacks are being
directed towards. If there are specific shortcomings in the
draft that people are concerned about, we can address those, I
hope, during the comment period rather than having these
general, what I consider to be, pretty broad attacks that are
not based on any kind of specifics and that are not helpful,
and if we can get to the specifics, we will be able to address
those during the comment period.
As the administrator said, this is a draft. We are looking
for those kinds of comments. We want to improve it. We would
like all of the stakeholders to be involved in the process of
improving it and in making it a better document.
Ms. Norton. I do want to say for the record that the draft
that the expert witnesses saw is almost the same as the
document we have before us, so I do not think the government
can hide behind some notion that they are responding to a
different draft. We looked very closely at that before
accepting those comments.
Yes, go ahead.
Mr. Paulison. I was just going to say that we are not
hiding behind anything. This is a draft document. We feel like
it is a very good draft document. However, if we were putting
it back out on the street again after receiving over thousands
of comments on the original one and if there are specifics in
here where people do not think we have addressed all of issues,
we want to know what those are, but we feel that we have.
Ms. Norton. Well, let me also be fair to those who are
going to come. I have, obviously, tried to summarize what they
said. Although I quoted them, I could not give you all of the
particulars. They are going to come forward with them. I just
wanted to make sure that you had the opportunity to respond to
it.
Understand that the reason I picked this one out is because
this particular comment, among many others, I must say--and we
tried to pick out comments that we thought were fairly
typical--said that DHS and FEMA overlooked the concerns that
helped shape the legislation, suggesting that the act, itself,
is being violated.
Now let me go to another comment that was typical. "unless
revised, the framework will create new confusion over roles at
the very top of the system." Now let me explicate what they had
in mind.
Every single expert says that the so-called "PFO"--I hate
these titles, and I will say to the general public please
forgive me. This is so typically bureaucratic, but you have to
name them something. The role of the PFO, who is the appointee
of the Secretary--that is not in our statute. That is somebody,
I mean, the Secretary could appoint me. He could appoint
anybody in the audience. This person does not have to have any
expertise. That person's role and the role of the Federal
Coordinating Officer, we call him the "FCO." Now, he is
appointed by us. That appointment is in the statute, and that
is a legal officer. Now, say the experts, there is total
confusion over those roles, and let me explain why that is
important to us.
Why that is important to us, to be very particular about
it, is that, in the confusion over Katrina--when we sent
Admiral Allen down, this confusion was the first thing that
arose. There was a person who reported to the Secretary. There
was this person who said, "Well, I am in the statute."
Everybody on the ground said, "Well, who is in charge here?"
Congress took note of that as part and parcel of the confusion.
So what the President did there, seeing the confusion was
real, was to make Admiral Allen both the PFO and the FCO, in
other words, to give him both positions. Well, what Congress
did in saying let us clean this up once and for all, Congress
said, ``Okay; since we are trying to empower FEMA within the
Agency to do its job and not be a hang-on bureaucrat of DHS,''
I will tell you what, says Congress in the Post-Katrina Act.
The PFO, our guy in the statute, sorry, the PFO is prohibited
from having directive authority, to make directives, replacing
the incident command structure in the field. It was real clear
and came out of the evidence.
Now come the experts, and they say, "Well, wait a minute.
These two officers are still in the document. If, in fact, you
are a Federal official, will you look at this chart." See how
confusing that is? You go in, and you say, "Well, here I am in
the middle of a hurricane. Here I am in the middle of an
earthquake. Who do I ask for something?" say everybody,
everybody who responded--the State and local officials, the
experts who were unconnected from any of them. There is still
rank confusion between these two officers.
I ask you to say to me why that confusion is in the
document, at this late state, given the fact that the Post-
Katrina Act went to great lengths to dislodge one officer from
his responsibility and to give the other the existing
responsibility. That is the very specific question I am putting
to both of you.
Mr. Paulison. The very specific answer is there is a very
clear definition and separation of the FCO and the PFO.
Ms. Norton. Describe that separation.
Mr. Paulison. The separation is the PFO will not oversee
what the FCO does. The PFO will not be the FCO.
Ms. Norton. But what is his role and mission?
Mr. Paulison. The role of the FCO is to run the work out of
the JFO, run the day-to-day operations.
Ms. Norton. What is the role of the PFO? He is the
representative of the Secretary. Is he going to be on the
ground?
Mr. Paulison. The PFO may or may not be on the ground,
depending on the type of----
Ms. Norton. If he is on the ground, what does he do, and
what do you say to the people in Missouri or to the people in
Tennessee about who is in charge on the ground and who he
reports to?
Mr. Paulison. If the people in Missouri want to know who to
go to for that disaster, they go to the FCO. The PFO is out
there as the Secretary's representative to help with overall
incident, Federal coordination among agencies. The FCO is going
to run that day-to-day operation. Now, the----
Ms. Norton. What day-to-day operation is he running?
Mr. Paulison. Of all of the Federal assets that are on the
ground.
Ms. Norton. Well, what in the world is the FEMA guy, the
FCO, doing then? If he is not running all of the assets on the
ground, but the Secretary's representative is, I am still
confused about who is in charge.
Mr. Paulison. The FCO is in charge of anything that has to
do with the operational component of that disaster. If an
emergency manager needs anything from FEMA or from the Federal
Government, they go through the FCO. The PFO, again, is the
Secretary's representative on the ground. If it is a
catastrophic event--in Hurricane Dean, where we had a category
5 storm predicted to come into Texas, we did not have a PFO,
but we had an FCO. The Secretary did not deem it necessary to
have one.
Ms. Norton. The staff has given me the language to show you
why we are concerned, gentlemen. The staff has given us the
language from your report, and it says the national--your
report. The National Response Framework says that the PFO--that
is the Secretary's representative--will coordinate and is the
lead Federal official.
Now, Admiral Rufe, I have to ask you because I expect that
somebody who has been in the military understands, as many of
us out here in civilian life do, and particularly in
bureaucracies which overlap all the time--I mean, we pass laws
which make them overlap. If you have worked up to the rank of
admiral and you have heard what I have just said, first, I
would have to ask you whether you have ever worked under a
command structure like that.
Mr. Paulison. Are you asking me or the Admiral?
Ms. Norton. The Admiral.
Admiral Rufe. Yes, ma'am. This is actually a command
structure that is very familiar to people in the Coast Guard
because it is what is used in responding to oil spills. We have
a unified command. There is not a person in charge. It is a
coordinated effort at the top.
Typically for a major oil spill, for an example, the
unified command structure, which is a structure under NIMS,
calls for the Coast Guard's principal--I forget what they call
it now--the on-scene coordinator, the Coast Guard's on-scene
coordinator; the responsible party's lead, who is the spiller;
the State official, and others just as you see in this diagram,
which seems confusing, but actually, it works quite well. They
practice that way. They train for that.
Ms. Norton. Admiral Rufe, I understand that they practice
that way. It did not work well in Katrina, and we fear that
this person on the ground brings confusion, but most of all, we
fear that you did not follow what Congress said to. Let us
assume that it works wonderfully well for the Coast Guard. The
Congress, in its wisdom or lack thereof, chose another course,
and it put it in plain English in the statute. Now, we are
always prepared to hear, for example, evidence from the Agency
that, in the last emergency, we found that the PFO needed to
play a role; therefore, we asked for the statute to be amended.
The fact is that the Post-Katrina Act is an amendment of the
statute, and we cannot discern that the Act was followed in
this regard.
Before I ask further questions, I am going to go to Mr.
Cohen.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
First of all, I want to thank the Director, and he has a
background as a firefighter, and I have always had an
appreciation for their work, and being from Miami, you know
about emergency preparedness, and you know how important it is
to a community. So I am pleased that you are in the position
you are in, and I have heard many good things about you. Having
said that, and not wanting to appear frozen in place, I want to
go back to ice.
Explain why it took 2 months to respond to my letter.
Mr. Paulison. Sir, I cannot do that. That is unacceptable.
You should not have waited that long for a response, and I,
first of all, apologize for that, and we have put a system in
place to make sure that does not happen again. We are putting a
tracking system in place. We have hired an executive secretary.
When I took over FEMA, we were 800 correspondences behind, and
we are pretty much caught up with those, but there is no excuse
for that whatsoever. It should not have been that long. It
should have been a matter of weeks, not months.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
In your letter to me, you expressed that you tried to find
some folks to use this ice, and you could not find any. Then
later, once you decided to make it available to the public and
some people came forward, the initial efforts to find
recipients where there were none found were through the General
Services Administration, which is the Federal Government, the
seafood industry, the United States Forest Service, and
nonprofits.
Did you look to local and State agencies and governments
and ask them if they had any need or if they could help in
giving notice to 501(c)(3)'s or to other charitable groups in
their communities?
Mr. Paulison. No, sir. A lot of the ice we could not get
certified as "potable." I know you said you drank it and tasted
it, and you are fine, obviously. We could not take that chance
with the whole system that FEMA had been using for years with
the ice. As we go into our new type of logistics, we are not
going to store ice anymore. We are using third-party logistics
where you are using a just-in-time delivery system. So I know I
am making this a long answer, I do not mean to do that, but the
answer is we tried to find somebody to take the ice, and we
gave away 600,000 pounds of it just recently to a concrete
company in Memphis that needed to cool the concrete down, and
it was used for things like that.
Mr. Cohen. I appreciate that, and I understand that. Let me
ask you this: I would just think, and maybe I am wrong, that
when you gave out your notice and did not get any responses,
you only gave it to certain Federal agencies and to the seafood
industry. If you had given it to local and State governments
and said, "hey, put out a bulletin," maybe some people would
come have forth. When you finally did make it available, this
group did come forward, and the 600,000 pounds of ice were use
for nonpotable purposes.
If there had been a better distribution system for other
commodities in giving notice that we were not going to have ice
in the future and so it could be used before its shelf life
expired, it could have been done, and it just seems like that
was not well thought out.
Do you just accept the bag industry's 1-year shelf life or
has there ever been any scientific study on this or Eskimos who
have passed away or something?
Mr. Paulison. No, sir, not that I am aware of. I do not
think there has been a study on the Eskimos' eating ice.
There has been the standard of a year for that. I know as
to all the stuff that we put out when I store ice at my house,
which I do for the hurricane season, I always throw it out,
generally, after 6 months. I do not keep it much longer than
that. A year is an industry standard. I do not know if there is
any scientific basis behind that.
Mr. Cohen. Being that you accepted the fact that it was
nonpotable, which I still kind of find difficulty with--and I
will be honest with you. When I was in New Orleans, there was a
fellow down there. Well, I should not really give his testimony
away, but he said that he had never heard of any such thing as
an ice expiration date.
If it were the expiration date that you honored, why was it
not disposed of in Memphis where people could go at first and
pick it up, not be fenced in and take it home and drink it?
Mr. Paulison. Perhaps we could have done that. We stored it
for hurricane season. We did not have any hurricanes that year.
I cannot help that part of it. If we had had a hurricane season
like was predicted, we probably would have used almost all of
that ice just like we did the year before, but we did have a
corps come in and test that ice, and the corps would not
certify it as potable, usable ice. So that was part of the
decision-making also. It was not just the industry 1 year.
Mr. Cohen. I think, if you would try to give more notice to
folks so they could use it, it might work.
Let me ask you about the formaldehyde in those trailers.
Ms. Norton. Could we ask that you wind up this line of
questioning shortly so we can get back to our other witnesses
who are waiting?
Mr. Cohen. Oh, we are under the 5-minute rule. I did not
see the clock ticking.
Ms. Norton. Well, actually, we took more than 5 minutes
because we are trying to devote as much of the hearing as
possible to the plan, but we are pleased to have the gentleman
ask his questions on formaldehyde.
Mr. Cohen. As to the formaldehyde in the trailers, is it
true that you all, for fear of some type of action against you,
did not want to give notice to the public about the danger?
Mr. Paulison. No, sir. After that e-mail that came out from
our general counsel, there was literally an 8-hour delay before
we took action and started notifying people. There was nothing
purposeful in keeping people from being told that there was
formaldehyde in trailers. We had already put flyers out. We
continue to do that. What we are doing right now is actually
moving people out of those trailers as quickly as possible. CDC
is moving in to do some testing to really give us a "no
kidding," scientific basis of what do we really have. FEMA has
used these trailers for 20 years. They are the same ones you
buy off the lot. We bought thousands right off the lot. So, if
there is a problem with the trailers, then it is truly an
industry problem. So we have stopped sales of the trailers. We
are making a very concerted, high-intensity effort to move
people out, particularly in the group sites, to get them into
hotels, motels and apartments. We are going to make sure that
we do everything we can do to move people out of harm's way.
You know, secondly, we are not going to use travel trailers
anymore. If we are going to use any type of manufactured unit,
it strictly will be mobile homes.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Cohen. The next
question is a very important one because it goes to the issue
of implementation of the plan.
Now, you received, you and FEMA, Mr. Paulison, received a
draft from your own steering commission. It does seem to me
that is regular order because that steering commission
consisted of, among others, particularly State and local
officials. No plan gets implemented from Washington. It is
either done in the field or it is not done. We can go in to
assist, we can send in the resources, we can send in FEMA. But
it is on the ground that these plans must be submitted.
Some of the most costly criticism has come from State and
local officials. Typical of the statements is this one: The
collaborative and cooperative process in rewriting the document
failed. The State and local responders allege that after
submitting the draft to you in FEMA, Mr. Paulison, that there
was no response back even though you yourself say that the plan
was submitted to the Department of Homeland Security with many
drafts going back and forth. The people on the ground say they
were excluded from this process and that you went into a mode
of secrecy from them. Please respond to that criticism, you and
Mr. Rufe.
Mr. Paulison. I categorically reject that. We had over 700
people provide comments on the old NRF into developing the new
one. We took those comments and then right after that we
brought the steering committee together to condense those down
into 17 areas. At that point we took 120 days to put a writing
team together. And the writing team did have emergency
management experts on it, although there were FEMA employees
from Emergency Management Institute and others, to take those
comments from those 700 people.
Ms. Norton. The 700 people from where?
Mr. Paulison. The 700 people were from the emergency
management community, the fire community, the police community.
Ms. Norton. Were these the steering committee people?
Mr. Paulison. I have a list of the steering committee. It
should have been in your packet.
Ms. Norton. Were these 700 people--you talk about 700
people. I am talking about the steering committee. Are we
talking about the same group of people?
Mr. Paulison. It is part of that. The steering people
wasn't 700 people, but it was a large group.
Ms. Norton. Who are the 700 people?
Mr. Paulison. From all across the emergency management
community.
Ms. Norton. So there were a steering committee and then
there were other State and local officials.
Mr. Paulison. We received comments in on the National
Response Plan, and the steering committee took those comments
and went through those and broke those down into 17 buckets, so
to speak, of 17 different areas. We then took those that the
steering committee put together. And I put a writing team
together to put this document together to make sure that all--
--
Ms. Norton. Was anybody from the steering committee on the
writing team?
Mr. Paulison. No, there was not.
Ms. Norton. Why not?
Mr. Paulison. The steering committee did their job. Our job
was to put the writing team together.
Ms. Norton. I asked was there anybody from the steering
committee, not was the whole steering committee there.
Mr. Paulison. No, there was not. We had emergency
management experts on there.
Ms. Norton. Were there State and local officials on the
writing committee?
Mr. Paulison. No, but I had the past Director of the
Emergency Management Institute on there. I had the key person
that teaches the emergency managers, that teaches the course
work on that writing committee. We had a lot of experts on
there putting the comments together, writing this draft plan,
making sure back and forth, back and forth that we had
everything in there from the comments that we had as we could
possibly get in there. Now that it is done it is going to get
back out to not only the steering committee, but also to a
larger steering group for getting comments back in. This is
going to be a collaborative effort.
Ms. Norton. That explanation is important. Let us make sure
we are talking about the same period. Once the draft was sent
to Homeland Security, apparently many changes were made. These
State and local officials allege they were not included in
consultation.
Mr. Paulison. Chairwoman, we took all the comments we could
possibly get.
Ms. Norton. But were they included or not once the plan was
submitted to the Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Paulison. The plan was not done to go back out yet.
This is a plan to go back out for review.
Ms. Norton. These are the people who thought they were
entitled to more than review, I guess we should tell them that,
that although parts of the steering committee, they are only
entitled to review like everybody else even though they wrote
the initial plan. Is that what you want us to tell them?
Mr. Paulison. No, ma'am, they did not write the initial
plan. We were putting the plan together with a writing team
making sure we incorporate all of their ideas and all of the
comments, and we think we have.
Ms. Norton. Well, again, we could have a situation here
where--a hubris. That is to say we weren't part of it. And that
is why we wanted to give you an opportunity to respond. The
reason we took these comments so seriously is that we could
find nobody in the State and local emergency management
community that differed from these comments. And because these
comments were so caustic that the final document as far as they
are concerned does not bear resemblance to the document they
submitted. And for us that is the ball game. There is not a
thing you can do out in California or in Illinois. So if these
folks who got to do it says this is not what we submitted and
we wouldn't mind except when they went back and forth we
weren't included, you must understand that the Congress has to
take that very seriously since the whole intent here was to get
an extremely collaborative process going. So that if you
disagreed, in the end they could say, look, at the end we
disagreed, but we were kept informed until the very end, and
that is not what they say or will say when they testify.
Mr. Paulison. I would hope, and I understand what you are
saying, I really do, I would hope since we put the document out
along with all of the annexes, along with the resource center,
which is on the Web site, I would hope that once they review
that and comment back, that they would see that it does
incorporate everything that they have asked us to do.
Ms. Norton. Wait a minute. I am not going to let you go
back to what we have already established for the record. And
for the record we have established that the draft plan that
they have seen and commented on does not differ materially from
your final National Response Plan.
Mr. Paulison. But it does, it does differ, because this was
just a piece of it. The rest of it is in our annexes that they
did not see, the Web site that they did not see with our
resource center.
Ms. Norton. So you are convinced that once they see the
whole thing, they will see that this is what they had in mind.
Mr. Paulison. And if it is not, there is 30 days to review
this 78-page document and 60 days to review all of our annexes
and the Web site. And it will be a collaborative effort.
Ms. Norton. Could you again, your testimony it seems to me
would be more credible to us if you could indicate some ways in
which the plan from the steering committee needed changing and
that you changed. Give us some examples, then perhaps you can
understand. Because after all, they were dealing at the State
and local level and you are dealing in another level.
Mr. Paulison. I have to go back to what I said earlier, is
that this plan went back and forth inside our organization,
back and forth with Homeland Security making sure we dealt with
the two most important pieces. One is obviously the users that
are out there, the State emergency managers, local emergency
managers, the fire and police chiefs, those that have to use
it. But the second piece that we have missed, and one of the
reasons that we had issues with Katrina, part of it, was the
fact that our local officials at the local level, at the State
level or appointed officials at those levels, come and go quite
often. And they were not part of the initial mass response
plan. So we wanted to make sure that there was a piece in here
that they could quickly pick up and learn and understand what
their role was. And we think we captured that.
Now, the big in-depth piece of it is in the annexes that is
not part of this, it is separate. Our on-line resource center
is part of it that the State emergency managers are going to be
using. I wish that I had had this when I went through Hurricane
Andrew. I wish that my Governor had it, Governor Lawton Chiles
had it, because we had a major disconnect in what role each was
supposed to play. And this I think clarifies this. If it does
not clarify it in the minds of our State and local emergency
managers, then they need to tell us very specifically what we
need to clarify to do that.
We have a consortium meeting this Thursday with all of
these people being involved to go over this again in Chicago. I
think most of the people behind me will be at that meeting. And
then we have the 30-day process also. It is going to be
collaborative. If it needs to be tweaked, if it needs to be
changed, we want to hear what they think has to be done.
Ms. Norton. I have only one more question. Admiral Rufe, I
ask you to respond to what has just been said. But I would like
you both to understand that a part of this is built in. Once
upon a time there was a FEMA and none of these questions would
have been relevant, not a single question I asked today would
have been relevant. Because that FEMA reported to the President
of the United States, was like a special force that just went
underground and got it done. You knew who was responsible.
There wasn't any back and forth between some super agency.
Well, we created a super agency and there was a disagreement
between committees as to whether or not we should return to
what seemed to work, which was a direct line to the President
of the United States, or should struggle within this
bureaucracy. And I must say that today's testimony seems to me
to put you in a struggle. The steering committee gives you a
document. There is a reason why we go to the Department of
Homeland Security, although we are talking about all hazards.
And that is one of the concerns of the committee. We are
talking about all hazards. What FEMA says goes for any hazard.
Goes for a terrorist attack, which is clearly where the
Department of Homeland Security has been focused all along,
even though the only thing that is predictable are natural
events. But all hazards from the beginning meant everything.
What we are asking you to do is to mediate between what you are
told from people on the ground and some people in Washington
above you, an agency we have set up, tell you to do or not do.
There is no Federal emergency management experience in the
Department of Homeland Security. It is all in FEMA. So we are
at a loss to figure out what in the world they are telling you,
so that there is so many back and forth drafts. From who? Who
knows anything what he is talking about? Who is a Federal
bureaucrat sitting in an agency over top of you, of which you
are a part to be sure, who has no Federal emergency management
experience, whether it is Admiral Rufe or anybody else? Now,
Admiral Rufe, do you consider yourself a Federal emergency
management official?
Mr. Rufe. Yes ma'am, I do. I have had 34 years experience
managing emergencies in the Coast Guard; search and rescue,
response to oil spills, response to natural disasters.
Ms. Norton. So you would have been, it seems to me, very
helpful in advising FEMA, but you are in the Department of
Homeland Security, sir.
Mr. Rufe. If I may, just to indicate to you what some of
the roles are respectfully of the Secretary that are in statute
and that are important and that are complimentary to what FEMA
is doing, let me give you a couple of examples. The Secretary
is the----
Ms. Norton. Is it the Post-Katrina Act that we have focused
on?
Mr. Rufe. Yes, ma'am. The Post-Katrina Act made some
important changes to the way we manage emergencies. It did not,
and I emphasize, it did not undo the Secretary's responsibility
for being the principal Federal official for domestic incident
management.
Ms. Norton. And we are not suggesting it does. We are
suggesting that the Post-Katrina Act looked to focus and locate
emergency management experience in the agency we created and
not in the Department itself.
Mr. Rufe. Let me give you one experience that is just very
recent that might give you a sense of when the Secretary is
engaged where FEMA does not really have a role. Just a month or
so ago we had what we thought was an outbreak of foot and mouth
disease in the Midwest. We were concerned about it. We didn't
know whether it was a real incident or not. We didn't know
whether it had a terrorist nexus. As it turned out, it didn't
turn out to be a foot and mouth experience, but the cows were
experiencing what appeared to be foot and mouth symptoms. We
were engaged for 11 days. We had--that is the Secretary and I
in my role as his principal adviser for this sort of an event.
We were working with the economic advisers to the President
because this principally would be an economic impact to us. We
were involved with the Department of Agriculture, HHS, Custom
and Border Protection, HSC and a whole host of others,
intelligence, managing that incident. And it was not an
emergency, it was an incident.
Ms. Norton. That it seems to me is appropriate.
Mr. Rufe. Pardon me.
Ms. Norton. FEMA has jurisdiction when there is an
emergency management declaration, and that is what we are
concerned about here. We are not concerned about a foot and
mouth disease rumor that you go out from the Federal agency to
confirm or not. Of course if the President then decides that
what we have is a national emergency, then of course you go to
FEMA and say handle it.
Mr. Rufe. Let me give you another emergency which doesn't
have a FEMA role. A mass migration from Cuba. That is a role
where the Secretary, as his role to lead the U.S. Coast Guard;
It involves Customs and Border Protection----
Ms. Norton. You have just given me a very appropriate role
for the Department of Homeland Security that does not involve
FEMA. So we do not allege, particularly given the role, the
Department of Homeland Security has no role in matters that may
be serious affecting our country. We do allege that the Post-
Katrina Act said that if we are talking about a Federal
emergency, thatFEMA and FEMA alone has the jurisdiction and
alone has the expertise.
I have only one more question, and it is just a straight up
and down question. If I were given your horrific task, and I
don't want you to believe that the questions we have asked do
not, or underestimate what a charge this is; hey, go and do a
whole National Response Framework for the whole country, and by
the way make sure that the private sector is included. That is
pretty awesome. You have to sit back and fan yourself. So how
do you even begin there? It seems to me that the first thing
you do would be to line the act up and almost do a side by
side.
What does the act say, what does that mean I should do? We
found it noteworthy, curious, that in light of the time that
Congress put into writing the Post-Katrina Management Reform
Act, in light of the tragic experience out of which that act
was born, that the act itself was hardly mentioned in any
meaningful way. It is as if the act was not a part of your
thinking and that you just sat down to write a plan. In what
way, if that was not the case, in what way did you measure what
you wrote against the Post-Katrina Management Reform Act?
Mr. Paulison. Actually we did use the document to make sure
that everything we put in the National Response Framework----
Ms. Norton. In what way I ask? In what way? I am looking
for examples. Of course everybody will say of course we
followed it. I am trying to allow you to respond to the notion
of the expert that you did not in fact follow the act by
saying, well, if you had the act on a side by side in what way
do you say you followed the act. Chapter and verse, any
example. I don't expect you to have all of them, but any
example that follows the act.
Mr. Paulison. I don't know if I can----
Ms. Norton. Since it is not even cited in a footnote we
have to ask you yourselves.
Mr. Paulison. I don't know that I can give you exact
examples. I do know that we made sure as we walked through
putting the National Response Framework together, that
everything was in compliance with the----
Ms. Norton. Why? Did you submit it to your lawyers to see
if it was in compliance, did you submit it to the Justice
Department?
Mr. Paulison. No, we did not submit it to those. We are
capable of reading it, I think, and understanding it and making
sure that what is in here is in conjunction with the Post-
Katrina Reform Act.
Ms. Norton. In the future it might help the Committee and
it might help your own testimony if a document referred to the
act that in fact was responsible for its being drafted. When it
is not referred to at all, when we have extraordinary criticism
that it wasn't followed, you force me to ask in what way it was
followed since the act itself is not cited in the act. And none
of what you write do you say is in conformance with specific
sections of the act.
Thank you very much. We go to Mr. Cohen.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I will just be brief.
This being the anniversary of 9/11, one of the issues that came
up in a previous Committee I was on was the firefighters, first
responders there, who didn't have proper equipment at first
when they were on the pile and folks who have had respiratory,
serious respiratory problems, some I think have died. That
seems like something that we should have had some planning for.
At this point, particularly as a former firefighter, do we have
a stockpile of equipment that we could supply if there is a
tragedy that doesn't have a shelf life that we could provide to
folk and have plenty of those available?
Mr. Paulison. Yes, sir, we do. We have those scattered
around the country where we can go and equip either a police or
fire department should they in fact lose their equipment or
should we have to staff another agency with those type of
things. And we have those scattered around the country.
Prepositions of what are called pods or something like that. I
can give you a description of those, what is in them, and also
give you a description of where they are. I can get that to
your office, and it won't be 3 months.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, sir. It was just the testimony we
received from the firefighters. And I read something about some
folks this morning because I was reading about 9/11. And they
should have had those regulators, I think they were, and they
didn't.
Mr. Paulison. They should have been wearing respirators the
whole time. They were on that pile. And a lot of them were not.
Another one of those sadly lessons learned from those types of
things.
Mr. Cohen. When I went there myself about a month after 9/
11, again just as a private citizen wanting to see it, but
Mayor Giuliani was nice enough to have me get access. I guess
he was nice enough, because I used the mask that somebody told
me did me no good, so I breathed that air. Those masks they
gave apparently don't do any good at all.
Mr. Paulison. I am not sure what kind of mask you had.
Mr. Cohen. Blue and white and they had a number on them.
Mr. Paulison. Some of those work very well actually for
keeping particulate out, if there is something in the air, like
asbestos. If it is a chemical they don't help, but if it is for
a particulate anything you wear helps some. But there are some
better ones out there than what you are talking about.
Mr. Cohen. I know it is the Corps of Engineers'
responsibility, but if a Hurricane 4 or 5 hit New Orleans this
year how are the levees, the system?
Mr. Paulison. The Corps' description of the levees is they
are as good as or better than they were during Katrina.
However, they failed during Katrina. The ones that they rebuilt
are much better. The levees did not fail. There has to be some
concern since they probably were not challenged. There is a--I
know the Corps is looking very seriously, I think there is a
plan in place, on what the long-term rebuilding of the levees
should be and what the cost should be. And I am pretty sure
that is going to be coming to Congress.
Mr. Cohen. And the wetlands are real important as a
barrier. I flew over those, too, and they have been decimated.
Are you involved at all with the efforts to replenish the
wetlands or is that another department?
Mr. Paulison. Yes, that doesn't, not that I am aware of,
that it falls under FEMA, but it would be another department.
Mr. Cohen. Madam Chair, I got here a couple minutes late,
you may have said something, I don't know. But being the
anniversary of 9/11, I think it is appropriate this Committee
be working and shows the government is working. And FEMA has a
high responsibility. They gave government, and it wasn't you,
sir, you get good marks, but FEMA gave the government a black
eye for not being able to respond. You have got a high
responsibility and your people have a high responsibility, and
you are our team. I just have to have confidence, will have
confidence in you, and know that you have such an important
mission to protect us if there is another terrorist attack, if
there is another Hurricane 5 level in New Orleans or anywhere
else. And so just we are going to have to count on you, and I
appreciate you.
I think back upon 6 years ago and seeing the TV of the
second airplane hitting the towers. I think I read this morning
that President Bush somehow imagined that he saw the first
plane hit the tower, which is impossible because nobody saw
that for some time later. Kind of like President Reagan I guess
being at D-Day. Sometimes people get confused. But it was an
awful event and a tragedy that we honor and remember today. And
you as a firefighter, I am particularly pleased you are the
head of that agency. And being a Floridian, I am a Memphian by
birth, and that is my hometown. I have lived almost all my
whole life there, but I have spent about 4-1/2 years in Florida
in Coral Gables. I am 58. I think you are 59.
Mr. Paulison. Sixty. I will be 61 in February.
Mr. Cohen. Well, you got a few. I guess Gables played North
Miami at some time or another. I know that you got experience
with hurricanes, which I have been through too, so you will do
your job. And I thank you for your service and Godspeed.
Mr. Paulison. Thank you, sir. It is very humbling to have
to tell you it is an awesome responsibility. And we are putting
good people inside the organization. And I do appreciate--I
know we get testy sometimes, but I do appreciate this Committee
and its oversight. I really do.
Ms. Norton. The responsibility is not any that anybody
would relish and certainly a responsibility of writing this
document is of the same order. I agree with the gentleman that
the point is to inspire the confidence in the American people
that if something happens we are ready. And that is why this
oversight is so important. And why we are so concerned at
differences here about whether we are ready and therefore
whether we should have confidence. We don't intend to take any
chances, not in this oversight. We do not intend for it to be
said that, well, this Committee went pretty easy on them. And
the first responder said that the document wasn't up to par,
but there was testimony. And we said, well, may the good Lord
protect us. We think God helps those who help themselves. And
we have to straighten out what appear to be grave differences
between the experts who have looked at this report and the
witnesses whose testimony we have heard today.
I will take your point that there will be 30 days when
people can comment. I'm sure, let me just ask you, given the
nature of the comments, if more time is needed than 30 days,
would FEMA be prepared to allow more time for comments?
Mr. Paulison. Yes. If we are still getting a lot of
comments during that 30 days we will obviously extend that
period.
Ms. Norton. I appreciate that.
Mr. Paulison. And don't forget they have 60 days to comment
on the annexes and on the resource center.
Ms. Norton. 60 days to comment on the annexes.
Mr. Paulison. And the resource center. The 30 days is just
for the base document. But again, if we are still getting more
comments on the base document in the 30 days, we are very
flexible on that. I have had a conversation with both the
international emergency managers and also the national
emergency managers behind me and have committed to them that we
will make sure that during this 30 to 60-day period that we
will be very collaborative and we will work together to make
sure we have all their comments.
Ms. Norton. Let me inform you of another action we are
going to take to be fair to FEMA, DHS and to the first
responders who have commented given what is clearly a
disconnect between their view of the document. We are going to
look for what is always regarded by the Congress as the most
objective source. I am going to ask our ranking Member Mr.
Graves to join with me in seeking in an expedited request to
the GAO to conduct a review, a thorough review of how the Post-
Katrina Act is being implemented through the National Response
Plan you have submitted. And that way we will be relying upon a
source that has had no role in the document.
We very much appreciate the very awesomely difficult task
we have put you to. As you know, Mr. Paulison, I have always
been willing to work closely with you. If we offer comments, we
offer those comments not to say go and do better, we offer
those comments to say go and work with us and together we will
do better.
Thank you Mr. Paulison, you, Mr. Rufe, for your important
testimony today.
Mr. Paulison. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Norton. And let me call the second panel. We are
calling Dr. William Waugh, Jr., who is Professor of the
Department, or maybe I will say who they are as they begin to
speak. Panel 2 and 3 we are joining together to save time. You
are all offering your own critique of the report. And the way I
am going to do this, I think probably as a matter of protocol
we ought to start with those who are public officials first.
So we will first hear from Tim Manning, who is the Chair of
the Response and Recovery Committee of the National Emergency
Management Association and who is Director of the New Mexico
Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Mr. Manning.
TESTIMONY OF TIM MANNING, CHAIRMAN, RESPONSE AND RECOVERY
COMMITTEE, NATIONAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION AND
DIRECTOR, NEW MEXICO DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT; AND ROBERT C. BOHLMANN, CHAIRMAN, U.S.
GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS COMMITTEE, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF
EMERGENCY MANAGERS AND DIRECTOR, YORK COUNTY, MAINE EMERGENCY
MANAGEMENT AGENCY
Mr. Manning. Madam Chair, good morning. Over the past
calendar year I have served as the NEMA representative to the
Department of Homeland Security/FEMA National Response Plan
Senior Interagency Steering Committee, which has overseen the
updates to the NRP. As I come before you today, NEMA has two
significant issues related to the National Response Framework,
the NRF.
First, the current draft of the NRF must be reworked to
reflect the true operational plan or an additional document
must be drafted immediately to replace the NRP.
Second, the collaborative and cooperative process in
rewriting that document has failed. On September 11, 2001, the
Federal Government responded to the attacks using the Federal
Response Plan and the Terrorism CONPLAN. One of the
recommendations of the 9/11 commission and mandates included in
the Homeland Security Act called for a consistent and
coordinated national plan. Title V of Public Law 107-296 called
for DHS through the Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness
and Response to be responsible for, quote, consolidating
existing Federal Government emergency response plans into a
single coordinated National Response Plan. The NRP was not
perfect but it was necessary. It included the creation of the
Principal Federal Official, the PFO, which NEMA opposed, and
the new term, Incident of National Significance. The current
rewriting effort was given to FEMA in last year's Post-Katrina
Emergency Management Reform Act.
FEMA is responsible for administering and ensuring the
implementation of the National Response Plan, including
coordinating and ensuring the readiness of each of the
emergency support functions under the National Response Plan.
Initially NEMA was heavily consulted and actively engaged.
NEMA was included on the DHS/FEMA Interagency Steering
Committee, along with representatives of Federal agencies, a
representative from the Major City Police Chiefs Association
and the International Association of Fire Chiefs. In addition
to the steering committee, NEMA provided over 20
representatives to various NRP working groups that spent weeks
and months working as subject matter experts to provide input.
These highly experienced State emergency management
professionals participated in lengthy conference calls and flew
across the country to D.C. Often with very short notice. The
input provided was based on lessons learned from past disasters
and a vision for the future.
Since the informal release of the plan in early August,
NEMA has identified a number of critical issues that must be
addressed before it can be recognized and accepted by State
emergency managers as a viable replacement for the NRP or the
FRP. We raise these issues as partners to ensure appropriate
readiness.
For the purposes of this hearing our comments reflect the
draft that was obtained in early August. DHS has released a
final draft for public comment yesterday. In our review it is
not substantively different than the first draft, although some
minor improvements have been made. NEMA is concerned that the
majority of the collaboration, the input provided through the
interagency steering committee and the writing teams was not
included in this draft.
Overall, the most critical issue for NEMA is the current
framework is not a plan. The document reads more like a primer
for State and local officials, which is a valuable resource;
however, it is not the national plan for responding to
disasters. This can be compared to showing up for a football
game with an encyclopedia entry on who is involved and how the
game is played, but without the actual playbook for offense or
defense.
Essentially only a small segment of the plan or the
national team is being considered. The current framework is not
sufficient for emergency responders and does not replace the
previous NRP, the FRP. If the framework is intended to serve as
simply a description of the system of response and an
introduction to the players involved, an additional document,
an actual operational plan must be produced as well.
The current framework has been clearly drafted from a
Federal perspective and does not appropriately address the
planning needs of the State and local governments, nor does it
follow commonly accepted management planning principles,
specifically unity of command. The current document maintains
the Principal Federal Official as operational. NEMA supported
the deletion of this position as duplicative and confusing. If
it is to persist in doctrine it must be explicitly clarified as
having no operational role or authority as was stated in the
Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act.
Finally, references to mitigation of a document are
virtually nonexistent and recovery is only sparingly mentioned.
The current draft does not specifically say what the Federal
Government brings to the table in a disaster. And the framework
essentially writes FEMA out of a job by downplaying the role of
the organization and the National Response Coordination Center
and the regional response coordination centers. The roles of
the national operation center, the NOC, and the NRCC should be
clarified and cemented. Operations and coordination centers
should serve as the central collection and coordination points.
A goal should be the reduction in the number of disparate
operation centers, not the proliferation of them. National
doctrine for response should eliminate uncertainty. One should
not be left to wonder whom to call or talk to in a time of
crisis.
The current framework references a number of other planning
guides, hazard specific annexes and other resources that will
have to be continually developed and adapted to support the
framework. It has stated that these will be posted to Web sites
and the emergency response community will be expected to know
which plan is in play at any given moment. Disaster
preparedness is about preparing before a disaster occurs and
not downloading the playbook in the middle of an event. If the
first time somebody reads a disaster plan is when the event is
unfolding, they have already lost.
This concept must be reconsidered, not only to allow
partner governments to participate in annex development, but to
allow for the adequate timing to train, practice, refine the
plans and develop institutional knowledge.
Finally, the collaborative and cooperative process in
rewriting this document completely broke down when all of the
input and advice from partners was put aside for an internal
DHS rewrite. In April 2007, a month before the deadline, NEMA
was informed that DHS needed additional time to consider all of
the input. In the following weeks NEMA learned that DHS was
undertaking a complete rewrite of the newly completed NRP in a
closed door process with no stakeholder input, working group
involvement or visibility by the steering committee. In early
July NEMA was informed that the nearly complete NRP was in fact
being completely and substantively rewritten and would be
renamed the National Response Framework. It would include
significantly more detail and direction on the responsibilities
and expectations of State and local governments, but written
without the collaboration of those State and local government
representation.
The interim final draft was released yesterday to a limited
30-day comment period. Today attempts have been made to open
communication with DHS on the draft and that process. If the
collaborative and cooperative process remains strained, we fear
that the State and local governments and emergency responders
will be hard-pressed embracing a plan that has not seriously
taken their input into account.
Again, NEMA appreciates the opportunity to testify and
provide Congress with the comments on the National Response
Framework. We hope that by outlining our current concerns we
can help DHS make an effort to engage stakeholders to address
the shortfalls of the current framework and work together to
strengthen the final product.
Thank you.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Manning.
Mr. Bohlmann.
Mr. Bohlmann. Madam Chair, ranking Member, and
distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, I am Robert C.
Bohlmann. I am a Certified Emergency Manager and the Emergency
Manager and Homeland Security Director for York County, Maine.
I currently serve as a Government Affairs Chair of the
International Association of Emergency Managers and I am
providing this testimony on their behalf. Our association
represents more than 3,800 members, including emergency
management professionals at all levels of government, tribal
nations, colleges, universities, private enterprise and the
nonprofit sector. Most of our members are U.S. city and county
emergency managers who have the statutory responsibility to
implement emergency plans in a disaster. We appreciate the
tireless work of this Subcommittee to strengthen FEMA and your
continued effort to see that the Post-Katrina Reform Act is
implemented, and we appreciate the opportunity to provide
testimony on the process and the substance of the National
Response Framework. We were extremely gratified to be
identified as one of the key stakeholders and partners in the
revision of the National Response Plan.
Especially in light of our above-mentioned statutory
responsibilities, we eagerly anticipated participating in a
collaborative revision process carving out a clear definition
of the roles and responsibilities of those involved in all
hazards emergency management at the Federal level. And we look
forward to a clear and straightforward description of how those
Federal roles and responsibilities would interrelate with State
and local emergency management practitioners who have the
acknowledged lead role in responding to disasters and
emergencies.
The process under the direction of FEMA from December 2006
to March of this year was exemplary. Stakeholders were
intensively involved in the collaborative group and worked to
address dozens of different aspects. The NRP revision co chairs
worked tirelessly to champion a transparent, inclusive process,
making sure that both stakeholders and key stakeholders were
represented. That is why I along with other key stakeholders
and partners were surprised when reviewing an unofficial draft
document of the National Response Framework dated July 27th,
which is the one we are commenting on today. The document bore
little resemblance to what we discussed so extensively from
March 2006 to the 2007 timeline.
The last communication we received was on March 13th, that
the first draft was being delayed. No further stakeholder
interaction on the revised NRP occurred after that date. IAEM
believes that this process reversal in conjunction with other
fundamental misunderstandings of the emergency management
process by DHS has produced a document with flaws which must be
corrected for its adoption. IAEM stands ready and willing to
assist in this process and is hopeful that key stakeholders
will again be welcomed into the process before the NRF is
released.
And we did receive comment this morning from the
Administrator that that would be happening. A truly effective
National Response Plan is vitally important and will serve as a
clear purpose, standing as the overarching planning document
identifying the role and responsibility of the players and the
way in which resources are accessed in order to save lives and
property. It is not rocket science and it does not require 800
pages.
The July 27th draft NRF that we have reviewed appears to be
more like a public relations document rather than response plan
or framework. IAEM believes one of the fundamental DHS
misunderstandings is what ``all hazards'' means. It is really
quite simple. All hazards signifies all hazards resulting in
any cause, whether natural, manmade, national security or
homeland security. Therefore, we should identify our disaster
roles and responsibilities in such a fashion that they relate
to any disaster. This is commonly referred to as a functional
all hazards approach to planning.
We do not agree with DHS's assessment that the audience for
the draft NRF should be local elected officials. Instead, we
believe that those charged with the statutory authority to
implement and coordinate emergency plans at the State, local
and tribal level of government are the primary audience for
this document as the subject matter experts.
The draft NRF seems to undercut reforms of the Post-Katrina
Reform Act which provides structural realignment and protection
of FEMA inside the Department of Homeland Security and
clarifies the role of the Administrator. The act restored the
national partnering of preparedness, mitigation, response and
recovery as responsibilities of the reenergized FEMA, yet the
draft has the responsibilities for the strategic planning
outside of FEMA.
The Post-Katrina Reform Act also amended the Homeland
Security Act of 2002 and clarified the role of the
Administrator as the principal adviser to the President, the
Homeland Security Council and the Secretary for all matters
relating to emergency management in the United States. It
further stated that in Section 504 the Administrator shall
provide Federal leadership necessary to prepare for, protect
against, respond to, recover from or mitigate against natural
disaster acts of terrorism, other man-made disasters. Yet in
this draft the role of the Administrator is severely limited
and frequently ignored. The NRF diminishes the role of the
Federal Coordinating Officer and gives the Principal Federal
Official more authority than the Post-Katrina Act allows. The
continued existence of the Principal Federal Official is
another way that DHS is increasing our opportunity to fail in a
disaster response. We strongly urge that the FCO remain the
single point of contact in the field between the Federal
Government, State and local governments, and that the FEMA
Administrator act as the President's direct representative.
Charles Kmet, the emergency management Administrator for a
large tribe in Arizona and a member of the FEMA National
Advisory Council, has asked me to emphasize that the tribes
continue to see conflicting ways in which they are handled_
sometimes a sovereign nation and other times as local units of
government_as a major problem not only with the draft NRF, but
also in many other emergency management and homeland security
issues. Consequently many tribes are not prepared or equipped
to the capabiliy level that their local and regional
counterparts are.
The principle for emergency management is planning, and
that is important in the process rather than the particular
products. General Dwight D. Eisenhower is often paraphrased as
saying plans are nothing, planning is everything. We are
greatly encouraged with the collaborative nature that would be
the beginning of the NRP revision process, and we look forward
to the ones that were being offered today. We urge FEMA to
reengage the key stakeholder input and give adequate time to
correct the flaws of this vitally important plan and encourage
Congress to insist on the implementation of the Post-Katrina
Reform Act. The NRF should not be a vehicle for reducing FEMA's
responsibility and authority.
Thank you.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Bohlmann. We will now
go to our two additional expert witnesses from outside the
government; Dr. William Waugh, Professor of Department of
Public Administration and Urban Studies, Andrew Young School of
Policy Studies at the Georgia State University, Professor
Waugh.
TESTIMONY OF DR. WILLIAM WAUGH, JR., PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & URBAN STUDIES, GEORGIA STATE
UNIVERSITY; AND DR. PAUL STOCKTON, SENIOR RESEARCH SCHOLAR,
CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND COOPERATION, STANFORD
UNIVERSITY
Mr. Waugh. Thank you for the opportunity to address the
Committee, Madam Chair. I am a specialist on local government
capacity building as well as emergency management, and have
broader interests. That is, I hope to offer an academic
perspective but also something of a practitioner perspective. I
am a current member of the Emergency Management Accreditation
Program Commission that sets standards for and accredits State
and local emergency management agencies and a former member of
the Certified Emergency Manager Commission, which is the top
national credential for professional emergency managers.
With the academic hat I look at the NRF draft in terms of a
variety of things. One is an academic sense of a framework that
facilitates collaboration and also doesn't interfere with the
potential for improvisation, particularly on the ground in
large scale disasters. We do live in a networked world with
shared authority and dispersed resources, a great deal of
interdependence, both in terms of intergovernmentally and
organizationally and individually, and we also live in a world
where there is considerable stress and conflict between
emergency managers and Homeland Security officials. So some
part of the context here is I think in part a reflection of
that.
I am also interested in sort of the weaknesses of the NRP
and how those are addressed; that is, things like excessively
centralized decision processes that slowed things down, the
notion of a cavalry approach to disaster management, the
presumption of a Federal lead, even in relatively small kinds
of disasters which were sort of an assumption that shows up in
the other document, a single-minded focus on terrorism, and as
the Committee has talked about, there are too many people
without emergency management experience in the structure
dealing with things.
I will say that in the field generally there are some very
positive developments in terms of EMAC, the Emergency
Management Assistance Compact; that is, letting States share
resources, statewide mutual assistance, which is facilitating
intrastate sharing of resources, and now the National Emergency
Management Network, which is facilitating community resource
sharing. So there are some very positive things that should
have some impact on this document.
The draft has some positive aspects in terms of dropping
reference to the incident of national significance, the
emphasis on unified command, although I would caution for
cultural reasons some people don't understand unified command
and sharing authority and I would be more than happy to deal
with that if someone wants to pursue it.
And the negative aspect is that the NRF is a scenario based
document that is not all hazards. There are 15 scenarios,
planning scenarios that are frequently referred to, only three
of which we might consider natural. There are no large flood
scenarios, no tornado outbreak scenarios, no tsunami and any
number of other things that are potentially devastating kinds
of events.
There is a lack of attention to connecting response to
mitigation, response to a variety of other things that is sort
of necessary to prepare the Nation for dealing with large scale
events. The obvious things that you have been focusing on have
been the potential conflict between the principal Federal
officer and the Federal Coordinating Officer, which I think my
comments referred to as the 800-pound gorilla in the room if
you have the representative of the Secretary sort of in the
chain of command. This also is a question of having more people
involved in the process who may or may not have any expertise
with emergency management. And I think the predesignated
principal Federal officers don't seem to reveal people that
actually do have that kind of expertise.
And the lack of direct contact between the FEMA
Administrator and the President in events that don't involve a
national disaster, Federal disaster declaration, that it is not
certain that the President will be receiving advice from
someone who actually knows anything about emergency management.
My conclusions are notions that the document actually does
need to assure that there are experienced emergency managers in
charge. And I will say that in some of the discussion here that
frequently people confuse emergency responders and emergency
managers and they are not the same thing. And developing
mechanisms that will facilitate collaboration, either
governmentally, interorganizationally and so on, that while the
incident command actually drives academics nuts, it is a
bureaucratic system and we have had 50 years of criticisms of
that in circumstances that require flexibility and
improvisation. And the notion of having a document that
provides at least a general framework but also affords
opportunity for flexibility when you have to respond to
changing circumstances.
And with that I will stop.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Dr. Waugh. Now we move to our last
witness, Dr. Paul Stockton, Senior Research Scholar, Center for
International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University.
Mr. Stockton. Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity
to testify. It is clear that you have read our prepared
testimony with great care, so I am going to summarize my
remarks very briefly and maximize the opportunity that you have
to ask questions. I believe that the draft framework as
currently written ignores and is likely to subvert the
important changes that Congress enacted into law in the Post-
Katrina Reform Act. I am going to suggest this morning that
Congress had compelling reasons to adopt those changes and also
suggest that departing from the law, departing from the law
enacted by Congress puts the Nation at risk of some of the same
systemic failures that hobbled the Federal response to
Hurricane Katrina.
I couldn't help but smile, Madam Chair, when you made
reference earlier to the possibility of doing a side-by-side
between the law and the draft National Response Framework.
Because as an old Hill staffer that is exactly what I did when
I got my hands on a copy of the draft. I lined it up against
the statutory provisions that you enacted into law, and here is
what I came up with.
The act specifies that the FEMA Administrator is, quote,
the principal adviser to the President for all matters related
to emergency management in the United States. The act also
specifies that the Administrator of FEMA shall, and again I
quote, lead the Nation's efforts to prepare for, protect
against, respond to, recover from, mitigate against the risks
of natural disasters, acts of terrorism and other manmade
disasters. Very clear. And my written testimony provides the
cites.
The draft framework ignores these legislative grants of
authority and assigns them to the Secretary of Homeland
Security. The framework states that the Secretary, not the FEMA
Administrator, would be the principal adviser to the President
for emergency management. The framework also specifies that,
and here I quote, the Secretary of Homeland Security is the
principal Federal official for domestic incident management. By
presidential and statutory authority the Secretary is
responsible for coordination of Federal resources utilized in
the prevention of, preparation for, response to or near-term
recovery from terrorist attacks, major disasters and other
emergencies.
Madam Chair, the framework's departure from the division of
authority that Congress specified in the Post-Katrina Reform
Act creates a couple of problems. First of all, the framework
will foster confusion over who is responsible for leading and
coordinating Federal assistance in a disaster operation. And
confusion can have deadly consequences.
Even more important is the second problem. The framework
takes the emergency management system in the wrong direction
and ignores lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina. Let me turn
very briefly to why I believe that is the case.
Studies of the response to Hurricane Katrina, including the
House Select Committee's report, A Failure of Initiative,
identified a number of underlying causes for the failed Federal
response to Hurricane Katrina. The House report noted that it
does not appear that the President received adequate advice and
counsel from a senior disaster professional. And the key reason
for that, again the report specifies, that under the Homeland
Security Act of 2002 the Secretary of Homeland Security is the
Department's top official for emergency management. The report
noted that emergency management, and I quote, is just one of
the Secretary's many responsibilities. According to the
Secretary's testimony before the Select Committee he is not a
hurricane expert, nor does he have much emergency management
experience.
Madam Chair, I believe that it is likely that this
situation will continue to exist in the future. The Secretary
is going to be responsible of a vast array of responsibilities,
including terrorism prevention that extend beyond traditional
emergency management. The Secretary needs to be good at that.
Occasionally maybe we will have an emergency manager as a
Secretary but not always.
So in response to that thinking, that analysis by Members
of Congress, the Katrina Reform Act adopted two structural
changes to strengthen the quality advice to the President. It
shifted the leadership of emergency management from the
Secretary to the Administrator of FEMA. And second, as you
noted earlier, Madam Chair, the act mandates that the FEMA
Administrator will be an emergency management professional
with, quote, a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of
emergency management at Homeland Security.
Mr. Stockton. I think. Madame Chair, I believe that
Congress made a sound decision in enacting these changes. The
Nation needs a professional emergency manager to be in charge
of the Emergency Management System, and that professional must
have the authority needed to lead the assistance to States and
localities when they require it. Any reversion to the previous
DHS Secretary-led system would be a step backwards and reflect
an unlearning of the lessons learned at such enormous cost in
Hurricane Katrina.
My written testimony provides supporting analysis for the
arguments I have just presented and highlights additional
problems with the Framework, particularly in the realm of the
catastrophic response. I would welcome the opportunity to
answer questions that you might have and want to thank you
again for the opportunity to testify.
Ms. Norton. I want to thank all four of you. I have some
questions for the four of you. You have been important
witnesses for us. We obviously have our own expert, but it was
important for us to hear from the academic community, the
community that is not involved and doesn't have a dime in this
dollar, and to hear, of course, from those who we are going to
look to to get it done.
And in that regard, Mr. Manning, I just say you got my
attention because you unearthed a gnawing concern I have had
ever since looking at this report. And when you said when the--
effectively you said that when the response community feels
that it has not had sufficient input into a plan, it may not
embrace that plan. There is a difference between you at a State
and local level and FEMA, and that is to say that when we write
a law, we can't compel FEMA to do what we say to do. And we
intend to do that. But nobody can compel. Nobody up here--that
is why we have a Federalist system--can compel State and local
managers to embrace a plan that they think is not sufficiently
relevant to their own experience. That is a red flag for this
Subcommittee.
Now, I want to get to particulars. I am going to ask Mr.
Manning and Mr. Bohlmann some questions.
Mr. Manning, first of all, let us establish you are bona
fide--you are on a steering committee.
Mr. Manning. Madame Chair, that is correct. I am on the
steering committee.
Ms. Norton. Now, I asked the Director about his
consultation with the steering committee and had to finally
call him in to dates, the date of March the 5th, because he
said that there were many back-and-forths after that. So I had
to say I am talking about the original submission. Now, what
would have occurred--he also said that State and locals were
involved, but--that is to say after the initial submission.
All right. If there was another formal network of State and
locals--I mean, if they are trying to create a whole network of
States and locals, perhaps that was the objective. Do you know
of any State and locals, beside the steering committee where
there were many State and locals, who were involved or who
disagree with you? Is there other opinion from the
organizations that you represent, the National Emergency
Management Association or, for that matter, the International
Association of Emergency Managers, at odds? Are you having some
minority views from those who were consulted even though those
of you on the steering committee were not consulted after you
handed in your report?
Mr. Manning. Madame Chair, I am not aware of any of my
colleagues that hold a dissenting opinion on our official
association position, and I am not aware of any local people as
well.
Ms. Norton. I wish you would let this Committee know if
there is a minority view, in your view, that there were State
and locals who were consulted who had some input into this
matter. We consulted you because you represent the association
of all of them, so we thought if they don't tell you, we are
not sure who they are telling.
Dr. Waugh, this whole notion of consultation and this whole
notion of the chain of command--and I want to question all of
you on this chain of command problem, the Federal officer, the
principal officer. Dr. Waugh, it is very interesting--you
said--and I think the metaphor is well taken that--but who is
the 800-pound gorilla in the room? That was DHS. We were
literally trying to create an 800-pound gorilla in FEMA because
it was a baby gorilla. Let us fatten him up, give him some
muscles, and I will take care of it. And we come back with the
same puny gorilla that we put in there. He didn't lift his
weight. Something happened when he was in the room.
That is what I want to get to, and that is where I would
most appreciate--because I am now--I am going to hypothesize
one of the reasons. Notice what we did in the Congress. There
was disagreement among the Committees. My Committee, Democrat
and Republican, Full Committee Chairman, the Chairman of the--
the ranking Member, the Chairman of this Committee--I was not
that Chairman. I was the ranking Member--all believed that
there was something that didn't need fixing, and we fixed it
when we took FEMA and put it in the Department of Homeland
Security. It is an interesting mistake, one that you can
understand after 9/11. You are trying to consolidate
everything. So we said--unfix it is what we said, put it back
to where it was. But by that time, there was a whole
Committee--and this is part of the Committee on Transportation.
There was another whole Committee, the Committee on Homeland
Security.
I might say as an aside, you can imagine the position this
puts me in since I'm one of the so-called big four that says
let us go back to what worked. I am also a Member of the
Homeland Security Committee. So from the inside of that
Committee, I saw that Committee claim ownership. What do you
expect? You give somebody FEMA, and then you want to take it
away. So Congress, in effect, kind of creates a structural
problem here. And I am wondering whether or not when this
document was submitted by Mr. Manning and his colleagues to
FEMA, whether or not structurally FEMA was put between a rock
and a hard place, because there is somebody over them that
Congress has left over them, and they do not report directly to
the President; or yes, they do, according to the act, except
they are still in the Department of Homeland Security.
You know, in our naivete, we thought writing in law that
they were to report--we thought writing in law that they were
the principal officer would do it. But I am asking all four of
you, those of you who have experience from the academic
community, those of you who understand bureaucracy because you
have been in State or local government, to say whether or not
FEMA is put in a position that would make it very difficult to
do what we have asked them to do because there is somebody that
looks like he is more powerful, looks like he is in charge of
them, who can then instruct him with respect to any document he
turns in what to do. And if so, what do you think we ought to
do about it, given the fact that we wrote a law that seems to
us in plain English did say what was to happen and it did not
happen?
I am trying to put before you a dilemma so that we don't
look as if these people just said, ``we don't care what
Congress said.'' I am trying to look beneath the surface to see
what was the dynamic that would make anybody in the Federal
Government ignore so patently what, as Dr. Stockton said, the
side by side would show you they were mandated to do. Is there
a structural problem here; and if so, how does FEMA get around
it and still be a part of the Department of Homeland Security,
assuming as I do that with all we have on our plate, Congress
is not going to go through what it would take to snatch FEMA
out at this point, at least not at the moment? Dr. Stockton, do
you have a view? Let us start with you.
Mr. Stockton. Yes, ma'am. I believe that regardless of the
structural changes that Congress ended up enacting after
Hurricane Katrina, that continued congressional oversight,
especially by this Committee, was going to be essential to
further progress. I note in my written testimony that the Post-
Katrina Act included a very important provision that
essentially turned FEMA into a fortress within the Department
of Homeland Security. That was no accident, Madame Chair. That
came after careful consideration by Members of what had become
of FEMA within the Department of Homeland Security. In the act
you specify that the mission and capabilities of FEMA cannot be
diminished by the Secretary----
Ms. Norton. Think of it. Think, all four of you, those of
you in government, do you know of any precedent in the Federal
sector for that? Hey, you are part of them, he is over you, but
you really report to the President of the United States?
Mr. Stockton. My point, Madame Chair, is to make it work,
sustained, vigorous oversight of the sort you are conducting
right now is absolutely successful to strengthening the
Emergency Management System and making this law work as
intended.
Ms. Norton. Mr. Bohlman, did you have something you wanted
to say?
Mr. Bohlmann. Well, I have seen great changes on FEMA in
the last year or so and certainly since----
Ms. Norton. I wish you would detail those. That would be
important.
Mr. Bohlmann. Well, we underwent a fairly large disaster in
the State of Maine this summer, spring and flooding, and the
response from FEMA was markedly different than it was in May of
2006. We had the opportunity to do one in 2006 and one in 2007.
I hope we miss 2008. And it was markedly different. The boots-
on-the-ground response, the capabilities that FEMA brought, the
openness to work within the community was certainly there. It
wasn't large enough to have a PFO, so we didn't have to go
through that, but the Federal Coordinating Officer and the
regional office and all of the staff that was on the ground,
there was a marked difference in moving forward.
Ms. Norton. There was a marked difference in the resources
they brought, how quick they responded?
Mr. Bohlmann. How quickly they responded, their willingness
to be there almost as the rain stopped and start their process,
their disaster--their initial ground taking the damage
assessment.
Ms. Norton. Did you see anything of DHS?
Mr. Bohlmann. No, no.
Ms. Norton. Of course, as you said, there----
Mr. Bohlmann. There was no PFO----
Ms. Norton. There was no national emergency.
Mr. Bohlmann. That could be questioned because when you get
it declared, it is almost--the way it reads now, it could be.
Ms. Norton. But it wasn't declared----
Mr. Bohlmann. It wasn't declared national significance, no,
ma'am. But it was a good response, different, as I say, from
2006.
Ms. Norton. Different from 2006 in Maine?
Mr. Bohlmann. 2006 in Maine, yes, ma'am.
Ms. Norton. And even though you had not had a Federal--I
mean, a principal officer, the DHS man, there was a difference
between the 2006 and the 2007 response and what----
Mr. Bohlmann. Very definitely, yes.
Ms. Norton. Just in the quickness of the response?
Mr. Bohlmann. The rapidness, the willingness to work with
State and local, the fact that FEMA was on scene and actually,
during the event, were on conference calls back and forth with
them. FEMA was much more visible and approachable in 2007 than
they were the year before.
Ms. Norton. It looks like they have demonstrated that, left
to their own devices, they can come in and do the job if they
don't have somebody who may confuse the people on the ground.
Mr. Bohlmann. Very well.
Ms. Norton. Very important to hear that. When we hear about
this confusion about the plain language--by the way, that
interests me because if you want to know my real profession, I
am a professor of law. I taught full time as a tenured
professor of law at Georgetown University, and I teach one
course there every year. And it comes out of my experience as a
Federal official, Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, and now as a Member of Congress. It is called
Lawmaking and Statutory Interpretation, and it is all about how
what we do up here lends itself to confusion and with those
implementing the law, and that the courts are right when they
try to discern what in the world we are talking about, shall it
be the text, shall it be the context, and what we are going to
do about that. In a world where all of the governments have a
parliamentary government, you don't have to go to court to find
out what happens. And so we use all kinds of examples of
unclear language from the Congress.
Therefore, you see when I looked at the Post-Katrina Act, I
looked at it with the other hat I have, which is my
professorial hat, and I will be darned that I don't think
anybody would have to sue under this act to find out what we
meant. Now, when you see how it gets implemented, and indeed
that in black and white, contrary to what the act says, we have
this other guy popping up full of muscles, the principal
officer, you are left to say, well, what more can we say? Dr.
Stockton, you can depend on us, on oversight. That is why we
were able--we nailed ourselves as the first of the Committees--
and there are going to be a number of Committees that examine
this--because we have the primary jurisdiction over FEMA.
But I am wondering, and I would like to hear from all of
you who would have an opinion on this, whether in light of this
confusion--I heard what Mr. Bohlmann said and was impressed
with it--that you leave these guys to themselves, they heard
what the Post-Katrina Act said, they were there as rain fell,
they got it done, it sounds like the old FEMA to me therefore,
since they had trouble, thereby reducing, frankly, our
confidence that when they get the comments back, they will
simply do what we say do as opposed to perhaps what their
overseers in the Department of Homeland Security say, do you
believe that the notion that there shall be a single point of
contact in a national emergency or any other emergency should
be now further defined in law and written into law? We thought
we had done it. I am always willing to take responsibility when
the Congress has been unclear because that is typical of the
Congress. Do you think that would help in this case?
Mr. Manning. Madame Chair, I believe that there does need
to be some direction to clarify that. We cannot go into the--we
cannot go forward with unclear rules and responsibilities at
the top of the pyramid as shown on the diagram. The principle
of unity of command is that every one person works with or
reports to one other person, and unified command--I have worked
in a unified command many times in my professional career, and
it does not mean an abrogation of single point of contact,
leadership over whoever you are responsible for. It means
different people of different jurisdictions coming together and
coming to consensus in the direction of an incident. That is
very different than having two people with equal and
conflicting responsibility. As long as that--those roles remain
in confusion in a National Response Plan, in a Framework,
whatever the document is called, there will be opportunity for
failure, and that must be clarified going forward.
Ms. Norton. We are trying first with the appropriation
change, which I indicated in my opening remarks. We have asked,
and the House has already made--defunded this person, at least
for these purposes. The Department does claim that it needs him
for other purposes, like foot-and-mouth disease.
We don't have any problem with the Secretary having an
advisor. We have problems with countermanding what we said
about what to do in a Federal emergency management.
Mr. Manning, you spoke, I think, forebodingly of how this
was not an operational plan. I wasn't sure how much detail you
thought needed to be in the plan, whether you were talking
about amount of detail. When you say it is not an operational
plan, if that is your criticism, what do you mean by that?
Mr. Manning. Madame Chair, that really stems from the fact
that this document does not contain a single frame of reference
for who is in charge, at what point--at what point does who
talk to whom. It gives very--it gives many variations on
different types of emergencies. In some cases it could be this
person; in some cases it could be these people.
Ms. Norton. I don't understand that. I thought this was an
all hazards document; there are different people you report to.
Mr. Manning. Madame Chair, that is correct, and that is a
very good point. The Framework reads like an introductory text
to disaster response with all its many variations, and that is
useful, as we have stated. This could be a useful document, but
not in place of an operational plan.
We need a single document that states that in all cases,
this is the chain of command, these are the players involved,
this is the framework under which we will respond. Those
elements exist in some part in this document. They exist in the
NIMS document. They exist throughout the ESFs. What is lacking
now is a single unifying operational plan.
What is also lacking is a replacement for the old FRP, the
Federal Response Plan. There is no single one document that
says how the Federal Government will respond in support of a
request for assistance from State governments. That is what the
FRP was. That no longer exists. It is buried within the
Framework and supporting documents.
Ms. Norton. If this is not the plan, and this is the
question that the ranking Member would have wanted to ask--the
ranking Members had to--one of our Members has died, and he has
had to go to the funeral, so you will have to excuse him that
he had to leave to go to a funeral of a Member that is taking
place in Ohio. Do you believe--if this is not the plan, we are
trying to find out what is the plan? Does FEMA intend, do you
think, to replace the National Response Plan with 30 scenario-
based plans? Mr. Manning talked about different plans for--
different strokes, I guess, for different folks. Is that what
you think they are talking about, Mr. Manning.
Mr. Manning. Madame Chair, my understanding is in some
cases that may be correct. It appears in the current draft, the
public draft that was released yesterday does call for
playbooks and incident-specific annexes and numerous plans
based on the 15 scenarios. I can't more vociferously oppose
that idea. It is one thing and very recommended for an agency
or a level of government to have an operational hazard-specific
contingency plan for an area. If you are the government of New
Orleans, to have a plan for a hurricane coming ashore is a
great idea. When you scale up to the level we are talking
about, to have 30 different duplicatives with variation
operational plans, it is a recipe for disaster. One will be
left to say, well, is this a flood, or is it a tornado, because
there was a tornado, or is it a wind event? That cannot be
allowed to be the environment we operate in, Madame Chair.
Ms. Norton. Because in a real sense, the preparation is the
same. For example, in Hurricane Katrina, the big argument among
the insurance carriers is, you know, we pay for flood, we pay
for hurricanes; in fact, they were both. When you prepare for--
when you litigate, there is, at the level where we are dealing,
something everybody should being doing. And then below that are
things that in your own jurisdiction you know best.
Dr. Waugh spoke of something that was very disconcerting
about there being only three natural disaster scenarios in the
plan, no flood, no tornado. That is the things I most remember
from this season, by the way. Could this be because the
Department of Homeland Security thinks, well, we know how to
handle those things, and what we need the scenarios to be about
is about terrorism since that is what is new. I am now trying
to imagine what their response might be for this obvious,
rather huge discrepancy. Three natural disasters and how many
terrorist disasters, Dr. Waugh?
Mr. Waugh. The remaining 12 would be terrorism.
Ms. Norton. How do you account for that? How do you think
they would account for that, and what is the danger.
Mr. Waugh. The essential focus was on terrorism. It would
be, frankly, fairly easy to develop scenarios that are not
terrorist-related that would actually have applicability for a
chemical attack or a variety of other things. But part of the
problem--if you are focusing on that as sort of the planning
scenarios in all of those cases--if it is a terrorist event,
the Federal Government is the lead, and it really defines the
structure that----
Ms. Norton. The Federal Government. Does that mean FEMA, or
who does that mean?
Mr. Waugh. It means DHS. It doesn't necessarily mean FEMA.
Ms. Norton. In fact, that is, of course, if there was to be
a fatal flaw in the document, it is not having the same answer
from them as from you. That is where the original sin, it seems
to me, would lie, and then you go forward from there to the
bureaucracy and the rest of it.
Mr. Bohlman, and Mr. Manning for that matter, because Mr.
Manning was on the Committee, why do you believe that the
steering committee and other responders were shut out after
this first document was submitted? And why does it bear so
little resemblance to what you submitted? Why would such
changes be made, and what--how would you characterize the major
differences between what was submitted by the steering
committee on the ground and what has come up in this final
response Framework?
Mr. Manning. Madame Chair, I have no knowledge of why the
draft that was done in consensus between the working groups,
the writing teams, the steering committee and all of the
stakeholder input, the 700 plus people that----
Ms. Norton. What were the major changes?
Mr. Manning. The NRP, the National Response Plan revision
that was completed sometime in the spring of 2007 was an
operational plan. It was a revision to the National Response
Plan. It included checklists and oversight and overview
documents for elected officials, as was mentioned, that is now
the core of the new document, plus a new doctrine. The National
Response Plan revision that was the product of 6 or 8 months of
work was an operational plan. I don't know why. All I know----
Ms. Norton. It is basically--the operational nature of it
is not so much the content of the plan?
Mr. Manning. That is correct, Madame Chair. The draft that
went away in the spring was an operational plan. It contained
consensus. An example is the PFO, the principal Federal
official. The writing team that was--the working group that was
trying to define the roles and responsibilities of all of the
officials worked on that particular position and how it would
be defined in the NRP, the new NRP. It was explained and made
very clear there was no negotiation, that position would not go
away. It was not up for discussion. That would remain in the
plan.
So they worked very diligently to come up with an
explanation, a definition, a description of the role and
responsibility of that position, And what they came up with,
what was in the draft that was completed in the spring, was
that position was for informational purposes only for the
Secretary. It was a representative of the Secretary on the
ground for visibility--for the Secretary's visibility into a
disaster operation in an affected State; had no line or
operational or any authority whatsoever on the ground, simply a
representative of the Secretary, like him coming to visit.
What came out in the plan--in the Framework is a very
decidedly operational position that, depending on the
situation, may have authority; while not having a line
authority over the FCO, certainly has the inherent authority
over the FCO, and certainly looks so on the ORG chart.
Ms. Norton. The point you make is just a very important one
in understanding what to do.
Finally, let me say, one last question, because we are
honored to have the Chairman of the Full Committee here who is
an expert, the ultraexpert on all of these issues, and I would
like to ask him to say a few words, perhaps have some
questions. But I do want to make sure I know how to proceed
from here.
We are going to get questions and answers. You heard me ask
FEMA if they need more time to respond. We are going to give it
to them. They said yes. I am not trying to make work for
anybody, but it occurred to me that they didn't say anything
about going back to the steering committee to assure them that
they had taken into account or to hear further from them.
Do you think in addition to the 30-day or more response
period that the steering committee should be reconvened, the
steering committee consisting of any State and local officials,
so that they can, in fact, have some concerted input into the
final document?
Mr. Manning. Madame Chair, the steering committee is still
in effect as far as I am aware. We do have weekly conference
calls. There was one this morning while this hearing was being
conducted. The steering committee is primarily the Federal
interagency. There are only three State and local government
representatives out of the membership, And my understanding is
that through this last 30 to almost 60 days, the draft that
went out on the street was being circulated through the Federal
interagency, through the Federal members of the steering
committee.
Ms. Norton. Wait a minute. Let me understand this. How many
members were on the steering committee?
Mr. Manning. Madame Chair, I actually do not know the total
membership of the steering committee. It is primarily the
Federal interagency.
Ms. Norton. It is primarily Federal officials.
Approximately how many?
Mr. Manning. I would say approximately 15 to 20.
Ms. Norton. Approximately 15, about three State and local
officials, and you are saying that the Federal members of the
steering committee continue to be involved, but not the State
and local members of the steering committee?
Mr. Manning. Madame Chair, I am sorry, let me give a little
more explanation on that. The members of the steering committee
were not involved in the period between the end of May and July
when the new draft came out on the streets. The Federal----
Ms. Norton. Federal and local members?
Mr. Manning. That is correct, Madame Chair.
For the last 30 days, since it was released in July through
the month of August, it was undergoing--the Framework draft was
undergoing a review-and-comment period through the Federal
interagency, the agencies being led by their member
representatives to the steering committee. It was not provided
to State and local governments on the steering committee--well,
it was provided to the--I received a copy in July, Madame
Chair, but not for dissemination to the membership of the
National Emergency Management Association or to the Governors
or to anybody else. It was simply for my personal review.
Ms. Norton. And not also as a member of the steering
committee, for the steering committee to collectively look at
this document you then received?
Mr. Manning. Madame Chair, I personally was given a copy
and asked for my personal comments inside of that period. The
Federal agencies were given agency copies, for the agencies to
give formal comment, I believe, a large number of those
comments. It was not provided to the International Association
of Emergency Managers, to the National Emergency Management
Association for all of the members and mayors and
representatives to comment inside that period.
Ms. Norton. They would say that is for the comment period.
The reason I ask about the steering committee is because
these were the original drafters of the plan, and so if you are
going to go back to anybody, it does seem to me that you--it
might be appropriate to go back to the steering committee--
after all, they gave you something--if only as a matter of
respect, to say, We are giving you back something different,
and maybe you want to have something to say about it.
Mr. Manning. Madame Chair, at this point it appears those
decisions are made internally at DHS headquarters, and the
steering committee is on occasion being briefed.
Ms. Norton. Mr. Chairman, this has been really very
forthright and important testimony. We heard first from the
Department, and we made every attempt to be fair to the
Department by letting the Department know in advance. The crux
of the comments that were submitted by these witnesses, they
were very seriously at odds with the Framework, and we now
heard from the members, the experts, too, from State government
who represent those from State and local government, and two
outside experts. You, Mr. Chairman, are the ultimate inside
expert, and I would like to ask you to make such comments that
you have or ask such questions as you may bring.
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you, Madame Chair, for those
compliments. But you have been conducting a rigorous and
thorough hearing and inquiry into the development of the
National Response Framework Plan, and I followed a good bit of
it upstairs when I was in my office with one after another
group of constituents and other--including a visiting
delegation from France, a mayor--two mayors of French cities
who are here to understand how our system of government works
compared to the parliamentary system of government. And I
turned on the television to say, Here is how our system of
government works. We have a well-informed Committee,
Subcommittee Chair who knows the subject matter and is
proceeding like an inquest, cross examination that has been
withering, and they listened, and I translated with some great
interest on their part.
But what you have been pursuing here is the origin,
evolution, development of this National Response Plan, and what
appears to me is that there is a plan developed by the group,
the Commission, that then was commandeered by Homeland Security
and fashioned into a response Framework draft that apparently
you did not see after it left your hands; is that correct? Or
had little input once it left----
Mr. Manning. Mr. Chairman, that is essentially correct. The
working groups, the writing teams and the steering committee
came to a consensus document that went through public comment
within the community, and that document then was reframed,
redrafted by the Department of Homeland Security in a separate
process without the visibility of any of those stakeholders
into this new document.
Mr. Oberstar. It doesn't appear to have the structure of a
plan, laying out very--in very specific ways how response to
disasters will occur. And one thing that caught my eye as I
read through this previously was that these gratuitous
commentaries, resilient communities begin with prepared
individuals and families, that could have been written in the
sixth grade. I just don't understand where this sort of thing
comes from.
In the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, simply
because that is the most recent event, the response was very
well structured because the mayor took advantage 4 years ago of
the Advance Preparation for Disaster Initiative that James Lee
Witt had established while he was at FEMA. The community
engaged in planning exercises and then in a mock disaster
response, bringing together not only the first responders of
Minneapolis, but those of St. Paul and the surrounding local
jurisdictions, mobilizing so that each one knew what its role
was to be. And then they did a warm-up a year ago just to
revisit the response plan. They were prepared. They were ready
to move because they had--they had engaged in this exercise.
How many communities under this plan are going to be
counseled, advised and supported in undertaking this kind of
response? Is there a structure within this Framework to do
that?
Mr. Bohlmann. I would like to try to comment on that. I
believe from what I have seen in the basic draft document that
we saw on July 27th, and even the one that came out yesterday,
which I quickly looked at last evening, that does not have that
in it. But the playbooks and the reference materials on the
other Web site that they talk about may provide more of that.
However, that type of response and planning at the local
level is what the local emergency managers do on a daily basis,
and we would use this Federal plan as the overarching, guiding
plan to do that local planning and exercising and training that
you refer to which is so critical. And the response you saw in
the Minneapolis area is the response that we all work daily to
encourage in our local communities and is so critical to do
that.
This is a document that we need to look at for the larger
picture and currently, what we saw on the 27th of July, does
not provide that. And I cannot really go into great detail on
the playbooks and other that are going to be on the Web site.
Maybe my counterpart Mr. Manning would care to comment more.
Mr. Oberstar. Other Members wish to comment.
That is very disturbing. The success of any response
mechanism begins at the community level and should. And the
experience of Katrina and of other incidents and on this
particular day, recalling September 11, there were so many
lessons that we were to have learned and to have applied, and
this document just does not seem to apply those lessons
learned, and that to me is troubling.
Mr. Bohlmann. Well, I would like to add there are other
avenues that FEMA does provide, and they are excellent avenues,
and one of the key ones is the Emergency Management Institute
in Emmitsburg where that high level of training is provided by
FEMA on a regular basis, and another is from universities such
as Dr. Waugh, Dr. Stockton here today that are offering courses
at all levels today to get professional emergency managers and
public officials trained. But, again, I will go back to we
still need that overarching document to bring that all
together.
Mr. Oberstar. It appears to me also there is a very heavy
reliance in this document on response to what we might call in
other terms a terrorist attack. I have said that--and former
Chairman Don Young and I, when we were laboring over the
proposal to create a Department of Homeland Security, would
remove FEMA from its position, the Coast Guard, throw these and
many others into this new amalgam-- that our terrorism in the
heartland is fire, flood and blizzards, whiteouts. On the
northern border, the prospect of Canadians trying to sling
their way across the border is remote. It is Americans who are
invading Canada for their healthcare system.
What we need is a plan that really prepares local
governments to cope with an event that is beyond their local
capacity to manage. And I just have a feeling that this
national response architecture is a subtitle, a response to
terrorism, and not in preparation for and response to those
tragedies that strike us day to day and which will occur with
greater frequency in this year of global climate change.
You are all nodding yes.
Mr. Manning. Mr. Chairman, I think you bring up a very
important point in that in the past, when FEMA was independent,
but that notwithstanding, we had disparate plans for disparate
events. We had the Federal Response Plan for general, large
emergencies. There was the CONPLAN that dealt with how the
agencies would come together if it was terrorism to do the
investigatory piece. The directive that the Department of
Homeland Security combine these plans into a National Response
Plan was really one to--a directive to unify--to take to the
final step the all-hazard planning concepts; that it doesn't
really matter what caused it, the response is going to be the
same. There may be investigatory pieces, there may be
mitigation pieces later, there may be other aspects to it, but
the response will be primarily the same.
What we have seen out of the NRP, the first version, the
second version that was in effect during Katrina, and then the
third draft even, and certainly in the Framework, is that that
differentiation has not been eliminated; it has almost been
cemented, it has almost been institutionalized to say that the
idea, for example, that you need a PFO and an FCO because
sometimes there won't a Stafford Act declaration, so you won't
need an FCO, so we are always going to have a PFO. I think what
is an important tenet that needs to be taken into account when
we are drafting our national response plans is that we need to
find a way to do it and do it that way and not--without regard
for the cause, or the effect, or any of the other pieces.
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you. I think that is exactly what I
hear from local fire chiefs, from volunteer fire departments,
from local police, sheriffs' departments. They are looking for,
as you described it, a cohesive, coordinated response and for
support, volunteer fire departments, for example. We had a
tragedy, and I had this discussion with Mr. Paulson shortly
afterward, in April of this year. Campers in the wilderness
area, the Bounty Waters Canoe Area, the wilderness, had a
campfire going, and they were burning trash, which they
shouldn't have been doing, and it was in a time of year where
fires were discouraged by the Forest Service, very dry. They
left the campsite and the campfire burning. Wind came up, blew
it into the nearby brush and then the woods, and a fire was
underway, a huge forest fire.
So the volunteer fire department arrived with their pumper
truck, and it didn't work. They had applied to FEMA 2 years
consecutively for a grant to buy a new pumper truck. It could
have snuffed that fire right out at the start. They were turned
down because they didn't show a connection between their pumper
truck request and Homeland Security.
That is an outrage, and that is where a document like this
falls apart. If it doesn't recognize that these day-to-day
occurrences--and that fire eventually swept 75,000 acres--then
it is not doing its job, and it is going to be our
responsibility to make sure that we turn this document around.
Thank you very much for your contributions. It has been--
your insights have been very beneficial.
And thank you, Madame Chair, for your grinding inquisition
here.
Ms. Norton. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. We did believe
that we had to be very clear to FEMA and to the Department of
Homeland Security that this was an oversight hearing in the
nature of a critique, and that is why we had expert witnesses
in the first place. The whole purpose of a critique is to get
improvement, and that is what, given what is at stake, we are
going to demand--we are going to demand with more hearings.
I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, your remarks focusing on the
cohesive nature of the response. The Framework must contemplate
cohesive nature to all hazards, as the witnesses have also
reinforced, and that FEMA is who Congress said and who the
public believes has that responsibility, and if it doesn't,
then everybody is in confusion.
And Dr. Waugh, Mr. Chairman, made a point that we did not
in this hearing have need to question about, but it is very
important in light of the all-hazards response. He talked about
allowing for innovations and flexibility at the local levels.
That is what they are there for, to see whether or not to apply
all hazards to a hurricane, to a tornado. There is a general
notion of what everybody should be able to do. Beyond that, the
Federal Government wouldn't dare to tell you what to do,
because only you know what to do on the ground. You have done
it in Maine on the ground for generations. But we are here to
provide guidance in case it is a flood or in case it is a
terrorist attack. These are the fundamentals. These are the
operational fundamentals as Mr. Manning would have it.
So, Mr. Chairman, the heart of what we have heard today is
that there are still two people on the ground, and that those
two people continue to render confusion in the field. That is
all we needed to hear. None of us has--none of the witnesses
has said that the Secretary should not have his own man;
however, the statute made clear who our man is, Mr. Chairman,
when it comes to a Federal emergency, and that was supposed to
be FEMA, and we have heard no testimony that documented the
notion that FEMA is the primary person.
In fact, what we are left with are three flaws, all of
which individually and together, it seems to me, could be
called fatal. One is the redundancy of these officers, the
Secretary's man, our man--each of those may be women at any
point in time--and who is in charge on the ground; secondly,
the bureaucracy that breeds--and FEMA--and DHS's reach-down
continually into FEMA's expertise, although DHS has no specific
Federal management expertise. It has across-the-board
oversight, none of the specific management expertise that is
very hard to come by--I asked Mr. Bohlmann who is a certified
Federal management officer.
And the third was--and this, of course, is ominous to
hear--the cutoff to quick advice to the President of the United
States because of the waving line--we are not sure where it
goes between FEMA and the President--indicated whether this
was--asked whether this was structural; given what we have done
leaving FEMA in there, what we thought we should do about it,
whether to strengthen the legislation; whether to do what we
have done with the Federal officer and the principal officer
and the appropriation.
But I tell you one thing, gentlemen, we are not going to
sit here and do nothing. That is why we had this hearing on
September the 11th. That is why we asked you for your candid
critique. That is why, on the basis of your critique, I have
announced today that we will be asking the GAO for its critique
of this report and of what you have had to say about this
report.
The Subcommittee cannot thank you enough for the time, the
effort, the great thought on this you put into your own
critique of this extraordinarily important document to the
security of the United States of America. Thank you, and this
hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:00 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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