[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
RECOVERING AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA: ENSURING THAT THE FEMA IS UP TO
THE TASK
=======================================================================
(109-34)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 6, 2005
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
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25-914 WASHINGTON : 2006
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman
THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin, Vice- JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
Chair NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia
SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland Columbia
JOHN L. MICA, Florida JERROLD NADLER, New York
PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan CORRINE BROWN, Florida
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan BOB FILNER, California
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
SUE W. KELLY, New York JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD,
RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana California
ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
JERRY MORAN, Kansas ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
GARY G. MILLER, California BILL PASCRELL, Jr., New Jersey
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania
HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South Carolina BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania JIM MATHESON, Utah
SAM GRAVES, Missouri MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota RICK LARSEN, Washington
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania JULIA CARSON, Indiana
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York
JON C. PORTER, Nevada MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine
TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
TED POE, Texas ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado
CONNIE MACK, Florida JOHN BARROW, Georgia
JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New York
LUIS G. FORTUNO, Puerto Rico
LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr., Louisiana
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
(ii)
Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency
Management
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas, Vice-Chair Columbia
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine
JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New York LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
DON YOUNG, Alaska JULIA CARSON, Indiana
(Ex Officio) JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
(Ex Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
TESTIMONY
Page
Ashwood, Albert, Vice President, National Emergency Management
Association and Director, Oklahoma Department of Emergency
Management..................................................... 52
Baker, Hon. Richard, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Louisiana................................................... 45
Buckley, Kent W., Director, Bolivar County Emergency Management
Agency, Bolivar County, Mississippi............................ 52
Burris, Kenneth, Acting Chief of Operations, Federal Emergency
Management Agency.............................................. 11
Kilgore, Janice R., CEM, Director, Department of Public Safety,
Escambia County, Florida....................................... 52
Rodriguez, Henry ``Junior'', President, St. Bernard Parish...... 52
Skinner, Richard L., Inspector General, United States Department
of Homeland Security........................................... 11
Wise, Hon. Bob, President, Alliance for Excellent Education..... 52
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Blumenauer, Hon. Earl, of Oregon................................. 79
Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, of the District of Columbia......... 111
Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota............................ 114
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Ashwood, Albert................................................. 73
Buckley, Kent W................................................. 82
Burris, Kenneth................................................. 93
Kilgore, Janice R............................................... 104
Skinner, Richard L.............................................. 118
Wise, Hon. Bob.................................................. 124
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Bachus, Hon. Spencer, a Representative in Congress from Alabama,
letter to Kenneth Burris, Acting Chief of Operations, Federal
Emergency Management Agency, October 21, 2005.................. 135
Buckley, Kent W., Director, Bolivar County Emergency Management
Agency, Bolivar County, Mississippi, responses to questions.... 88
Kilgore, Janice R., CEM, Director, Department of Public Safety,
Escambia County, Florida, responses to questions............... 106
Wise, Hon. Bob, President, Alliance for Excellent Education,
responses to questions......................................... 130
RECOVERING AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA: ENSURING THAT FEMA IS UP TO THE
TASK
----------
House of Representatives, Committee on
Transportation and, Infrastructure,
Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public
Buildings and Emergency Management, Washington,
D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 11:00 a.m. in room
2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Bill Shuster
[chairman of the committee] presiding.
Mr. Shuster. The Subcommittee will come to order.
Before we begin, I would like to ask unanimous consent that
members of the full Committee not assigned to the Subcommittee
be allowed to sit with the Subcommittee today, make statements
and ask questions. Without objection, so ordered.
We are meeting this morning to begin a series of hearings
on the recovery effort in New Orleans and the Gulf region. I
just returned from touring Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama
with ten other members of the Committee. I would like to make
two observations.
First, I would like to say something about the hard-working
FEMA State and local employees I saw on this trip. I was very
impressed with their professionalism, dedication and
determination to get the job done under very difficult
conditions. People are literally working around the clock for
weeks on end. I hope you will let your colleagues know that we
are extremely proud and appreciative of your efforts. Thank
you.
My second observation is that never before has this agency,
FEMA, in any form been faced with a challenge as extensive as
the one created by Hurricane Katrina. With over 90,000 square
miles of disaster area, hundreds of thousands of people
displaced, tens of thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed
and a potential health crisis that has been left behind, FEMA
is being tested like it has never been before.
The hearing today will focus on ensuring the recovery
happens in a timely and effective manner. Billions of dollars
are going to be spent on the recovery and there are many
questions to be answered, such as, do FEMA and its State and
local partners have the capacity to manage these dollars? How
will we ensure that waste, fraud and abuse are limited? How can
we streamline red tape, build projects and reimburse local
governments quickly? And what are the major obstacles to a
successful recovery?
In the wake of the hurricanes of 2004, there was a
significant amount of criticism leveled against FEMA for a
process that was at times very efficient but also at times slow
and in some instances, stalled. That effort will seem like a
walk in the park compared with what lies ahead of us. We are
here today to ensure that FEMA will be up to the mammoth task
that lies ahead. I am confident that FEMA has the expertise to
manage the recovery, but I am concerned you may not have the
capacity to do the job well. This one is simply bigger than
anything FEMA has faced.
As I mentioned in the memo, sent to all members last
Friday, and which is in the folder before you, there are a
range of issues we will be discussing today, including the
adequacy of FEMA's recovery staff, the efficiency of the
process, the types of assistance that may be provided and to
whom, and several specific issues, including debris removal,
housing and delivery of money to cash-starved governments.
It is this last issue, the question of cash flow at the
local level, that I am particularly concerned about. It
presents a difficult policy question and has the greatest
likelihood of hampering the recovery effort. If local
governments are unable to pay their bills, both disaster and
non-disaster related, their recovery will come to a grinding
halt.
During the recovery from the 2004 hurricane season in
Florida, which we are still in, many counties in Florida
complained about delayed approval and payments from FEMA on
project worksheets. I am told that some of these approvals and
payments are still outstanding. I am not going to dictate from
here what is an appropriate amount of time, but we are going to
closely examine this process to ensure that it does not
continue to take a year, which I know is too long.
One of the things I would like to examine at today's
hearing that I believe contributes to this problem, and I hope
the witnesses will be able to address, is the issue of staffing
within FEMA. It is my understanding that the recovery division
within FEMA started the fiscal year with just 72 full-time
staffers on board. Is this enough permanent staff? Will the
temporary staff that is brought in have the expertise and
training sufficient to meet this huge task ahead of us?
I hope that we will be able to address these as well as
many other staffing issues that arose in Florida to prevent
such problems in the future as we deal with Katrina.
While we are not the first subcommittee to hold hearings to
discuss the aftermath of Katrina, I want to ensure my
colleagues that this will not be the last hearing this
Committee holds. We have already scheduled a joint hearing with
our Water Resources Subcommittee and we are discussing the
possibility of holding a hearing over two dozen Katrina-related
bills that have been introduced thus far.
As the Subcommittee with primary jurisdiction, and I would
add, the broadest jurisdiction, over emergency management, I
expect that we will play a central role in any legislative
package that goes forward. During this process, I expect the
members of this Subcommittee and our full Committee will play
an active role and I look forward to working closely with all
of you, Republican and Democrat.
With that, I would now like to yield to Mr. Blumenauer for
an opening statement, if he has one.
Mr. Blumenauer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I do appreciate your focusing the key role that this
Subcommittee can play. I am pleased that you have indicated
that you are looking at a variety of initiatives. I am looking
forward to the joint hearing with the Water Resources
Subcommittee. Being able to both have the appropriate response
to the disaster in the Katrina-ravaged region and to make sure
that we have Federal policies in place that are going to do the
job for the future is going to take all our efforts. I
appreciate your leadership and your commitment.
We have to learn, not only is there a problem now, and we
are going to be hearing about that, but there is going to be a
next time. Rita was the 18th storm of this season. I have seen
some estimates that indicate that we have already seen more
death and destruction this hurricane season than in the last 35
seasons combined.
We are also facing a problem where, at least until
recently, more and more Americans have been flocking to coastal
areas that have been termed hurricane alleys. We have, though
there are some who remain skeptical, the overwhelming consensus
of the scientific community that global warming is a reality
and that we are witnessing rising sea levels that are going to
make hurricanes and other storm incidents more frequent and
more severe.
Of course, as our friends from Louisiana know all too
painfully, rising sea levels combined with the fact that the
land area here is subsiding could create a two to five foot
difference by the end of this century.
I too am looking forward to hearing from FEMA. It has been
an agency that I have been working with for the last eight
years, most recently on flood insurance reform. I think this
Subcommittee can play a critical role in evaluating what
changes need to be made with the agency structurally and in
terms of resources and our own policies.
I hope, Mr. Chairman, that in the course of your working to
determine an outline for the Committee, that we can focus
quickly on the notion of temporary housing. I know people on
both sides of the aisle are appalled at the notion of spending
billions on temporary trailer parks that I hear from my
colleagues in North Carolina and in Florida have an appalling
habit of becoming permanent, especially when there are hundreds
of thousands of vacant rental units in the region at reasonable
rental rates. We have a very effective Section 8 policy that
can be embraced by conservatives and liberals alike.
I would hope that as we move forward, we think about long-
term efforts. I will not take the time now, Mr. Chairman, to go
into them, but I will enter into the record seven principles
that I hope will guide our efforts in terms of recovery to make
sure we are not putting people back into harm's way; that we
are assuring that citizens are directly engaged in the work of
disaster recovery and mitigation; that we clarify with a
hearing like this today the Federal Government's disaster
prevention, mitigation and relief efforts; that we make the
recovery process a model of transparency and accountability. I
hope that you will consider a hearing where we can talk about
how we put into these contracts post-contract analysis and
accountability provisions, so they get more value for the
dollar.
I hope that we are looking at more responsibility at the
local level to prevent disaster, for mitigation and recovery,
that we look at prevention and mitigation as a long-term
element to any federally-funded restoration and that we employ
natural solutions, wherever possible, to blunt the destructive
force of nature. I deeply appreciate the Subcommittee's work
and your willingness to let some of us outsiders to hang around
with you, because we are going to be working together. I look
forward to a productive hearing.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Blumenauer. I look forward to
working with you. Many of the topics you discussed we have
plans to hold hearings on those, and then today with the IG,
talk about some accountability. It is good to have somebody
with your background. I know you have some municipal
background, so with your expertise I am sure we can lean on you
for some of that expertise as we go forward.
Thank you for being here today.
We are going to go in order of the way people showed up to
the hearing this morning. I am also going to strictly enforce
the five minute rule, so be prepared to hear the gavel come
down at five minutes.
I would now like to recognize my colleague from Louisiana,
Mr. Boustany.
Mr. Boustany. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to commend you for holding this hearing and starting
this process. Much has been said about FEMA over the past
several weeks, particularly about its position in the
Department of Homeland Security. But I think we have many more
issues to discuss, such as FEMA's role in working with local
communities and local officials, looking at accountability
issues, how money is spent.
And coming from Louisiana, I look forward to the testimony
and hope to be able to question the witnesses about a number of
issues with regard to how FEMA interacts with the local
communities, how can we make it a better organization,
regardless of whether it is in within Homeland Security or as
an independent agency accountable directly to the President.
How can we get it to be the effective organization that it
really needs to be to deal with these types of disasters?
We face unprecedented challenges in this recovery, many of
which we don't have adequate answers yet. So as we move
forward, I hope that we can address some of those challenges as
well as work with how will we make this organization, how will
we make FEMA a more effective organization to deal with the
problems that we will have in the future.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Boustany.
I would now like to recognize Ms. Johnson.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
holding the hearing. I appreciated the opportunity to visit on
Tuesday.
Let me quickly compliment FEMA for what they have done.
There are still a lot of questions, but in my area of Dallas,
where we have thousands of people that have come for either
temporary or permanent housing, once FEMA arrived, we have no
complaints. Long time coming, but once they got there, we
worked very well with them.
I will have questions later concerning 90 percent of the
contracts being let to people outside the area. That is a real
concern for people in the area, so I want to do that when the
time comes. Thank you very much.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.
Next I would like to recognize the gentleman from
Pennsylvania, Mr. Dent.
Mr. Dent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too want to commend
you for holding this hearing.
I really don't have anything prepared this morning to say.
I will save most of my questions and comments for the question
and answer period. But I believe it is critical that we get to
the bottom of the issue of FEMA, how prepared it was for this
devastating event. I just believe it is important that we move
forward and I look forward to hearing the witnesses. Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. I would now like to recognize the Chairman of
the House Administration Committee, Mr. Ney.
Mr. Ney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for
allowing me to participate in this important hearing today. I
will be brief.
In addition to being a member of the Transportation
Committee, I also chair the Subcommittee on Housing and
Community Opportunity for Financial Services. Both committees
have different oversight responsibilities for various aspects
of FEMA. Of course, we have been working with FEMA and HUD on
the current situation down in the Gulf.
As we examine some of the past problems and problems
currently facing FEMA, I think we need to ensure that we treat
all natural disasters in a consistent manner. It is a terrible
thing that has happened in the Gulf. In my district, we have
suffered severe damages and worked with FEMA quite a lot. In
fact, we had an evacuation of 7,000 people last year, 7,000 out
of a county of 70,000.
As we talk about reforms, I think the one important thing,
and I am convening a summit in the district of a lot of
different people involved in this, is that we have to ensure
that some of the past things that have worked not be changed,
and some of the problems that we have that need to be expedited
or changed, should be considered. I know Washington can't solve
all the problems. We have to work together with local and State
authorities to ensure any future changes made to FEMA and other
related Federal programs don't adversely affect the plans that
they have in place already in the State and local levels and
other jurisdictions.
Again, I know it has been a tough job, but I think having
this hearing will bring a lot of things to light and as there
are reformation bills, we want to look at the process. I want
to also close by recognizing someone that is no stranger to
floods. I see former Congressman Bob Wise across the river in
Wheeling, West Virginia, from where I live. He knows the
flooding situation and has been very active to help people down
there.
Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. I will take this opportunity to recognize the
Ranking Member, Ms. Norton, for an opening statement.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I apologize,
I was the lead witness in the Senate on a matter affecting the
District of Columbia before its own D.C. Subcommittee. I
appreciate your indulgence.
I particularly thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this
first in a series of hearings. You are being very careful,
because you have studied what should be studied and you have
indicated that there are a whole series of matters affecting
FEMA that you intend to look into.
I fully agree with your purpose today to move from
assigning blame, acknowledging that there were failures, at
every level of government, but instead to concentrate on our
responsibility, to focus on FEMA, which reports to this
Subcommittee, with the goal of ensuring that the ongoing
response of FEMA is efficient, effective and responsive to the
needs of the Gulf region and other regions of our Country.
Under your predecessors as Chair, this Subcommittee had
five FEMA hearings or markups on the Homeland Security Act of
2002 that transferred all of the statutory functions of the
Stafford Act from the Director of FEMA to the Secretary of the
Department of Homeland Security, further delegated to the
Undersecretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response.
Although I am a member of the Homeland Security Committee who
was a strong advocate of the creation of the Department, I have
reluctantly become an original co-sponsor of a bill to move
FEMA from DHS to help enable it to once again become the
professional quick recovery agency it became in the 1990s.
At our September 24th, 2003 markup, I cautioned about
challenges to hazard mitigation activities. Those are the
activities that State and local governments engage in before
the hazard occurs. Because those challenges were already quite
clear then. State and local officials were complaining that the
increased emphasis on terrorism that kept them so busy trying
to keep up with the security alerts, overtime costs and the
myriad of terrorism-related grant programs that hazard
mitigation, that we now know might have led to a better
response to Katrina, was in steep decline.
Yet the Administration in its fiscal year 2003 budget
request had proposed the elimination of the hazard mitigation
program, and the fiscal year 2003 Omnibus Appropriation Bill,
over the objections of our Committee and various stakeholders,
reduced the mandated percentage of hazard mitigation funds from
15 percent to 7.5 percent, cutting it in half. The reduction so
inhibited the ability of the State and local governments to
effectively carry out preparation for hazards and so
dramatically increases the cost of natural disasters that we,
this Subcommittee, restored funding levels back to 15 percent
at that markup.
In May of 2004, we were very concerned that the President's
2005 budget proposal reduced funding for the Emergency
Management Performance Grant program, even though the Congress
had indicated its strong support of State and local personnel
in planning when it included specific language in the fiscal
year 2004 DHS appropriations bill, stating, ``Emergency
planning is the backbone of the Nation's emergency management
system ... now more than ever, the planning activities carried
out in this program are of the utmost importance.'' The result
of this short-sighted shift of funding from FEMA is clear in
the aftermath of Katrina.
Presently, almost one million people in the Gulf region
have registered with FEMA for individual assistance, but only
72 full-time employees are in the Recovery Division. This
division is responsible for reviewing the paperwork which is
the basis for reimbursement by FEMA for eligible activities,
including debris removal, housing assistance and reconstructing
public buildings and infrastructure. Although FEMA has a vast
network of disaster assistance employees and other reserve
employees that it can call upon, the Agency internally
obviously lacks the management talent to adequately respond
completely to Katrina's victims.
The District of Columbia was among the first local
jurisdictions to reach out to Katrina victims and 300 were
cared for here and given the full bevy of services. Like the
District, many State and local governments have laid out
millions of dollars up front without payment as yet from FEMA.
However, my concern is for the more than 75,000 people
still in shelters and thousands of others away from family and
friends. Is today's FEMA capable of assisting victims of
disaster through the direct provisions of housing or through
temporary housing solutions? Is FEMA capable of addressing the
needs of over 300,000 people who have requested rental housing
assistance? Is FEMA prepared for the long haul that Katrina
recovery necessitates?
This much is clear: FEMA has suffered rather than
benefitted from its absorption into DHS. Although the exact
numbers are disputed, the Agency's core budget for disaster
preparedness has been cut every year since it went into DHS.
Its staff has been reduced by 500 positions. Hurricanes,
floods, tornadoes and other natural disasters come on cue every
year, but three out of ever four local preparedness and first
responder grants have gone for terrorism-related activities.
The GAO reports that 75 percent of next year's grants are
similarly targeted to terrorism, despite local officials'
complaints that the most urgent need now is for natural
disasters and accidents. FEMA has suffered rather than
benefitted from its submersion into DHS.
Some considerable direction or redirection of funding to
terrorist activities was fully justified after 9/11, but we now
know that billions of dollars were not distributed on a risk
basis. The recent Homeland Security reauthorization requires
risk-based funding and strategies. We also know, not only from
Katrina but also from the way FEMA was overwhelmed by four
hurricanes in Florida in 2004 that all hazards has become a
bureaucratic slogan, and that the evidence that FEMA was in
complete disarray was already unmistakably clear from the
Florida experience last year.
FEMA has apparently regressed to the state James Lee Witt,
the first career disaster specialist to head FEMA, found it in
1993 when he reorganized and energized the Agency and was
praised for FEMA's recovery response to the earthquake in
Northridge, California, and to the Mississippi River flooding.
This Subcommittee cannot alone return FEMA to those halcyon
days of praiseworthiness. But with the series of oversight
hearings you begin today, Mr. Chairman, we can pledge the
oversight the Agency will need to assure the improvement that
the public expects after the lessons taught by Katrina.
Thank you very much again for this hearing, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Ms. Norton.
I would like to remind my colleagues, I think we have the
clock back up and running, so we are going to adhere strictly
to the five minute rule.
I would like to recognize Mr. Poe for an opening statement.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate this hearing this morning. I have a very
strong interest in FEMA. My Congressional district is located
across the Sabine River from Louisiana, Mr. Boustany's
district. We have a couple of issues that we are having to deal
with, two ladies of the Gulf. When Hurricane Katrina hit New
Orleans and Louisiana, a lot of those folks from Louisiana came
across into Texas. We still had 15,000 of them in Jefferson
County, Texas before Rita hit. Several other hundreds of
thousands came into Texas and are dispersed all over the
Country.
We felt those repercussions, and the folks in Jefferson
County started working and trying to help those dispersed
individuals. But not long after that, Rita hit my Congressional
district. In fact, I just got off the phone with the mayors of
my Congressional district. Half my Congressional district is
still without power and water, and Katrina evacuees had to
leave with Rita evacuees to parts all over the Country again.
So we are very concerned about the aftermath of both of
these hurricanes, and I will be very blunt: the number one
question I get from regular folks citizens, mayors and other
elected officials is issues regarding FEMA. They ask me,
where's FEMA, what are they doing. I think that this hearing is
important to address those specific issues.
The number one concern I would mention and have to deal
with is communication. I think FEMA, based on these two
hurricanes that impacted directly in my Congressional district,
does a poor job of communicating. At least that is the way it
comes across to the average person that is sitting out there in
the swamp without a roof on their barn or their home. So I
think that is a work that needs to be done.
And I asked three questions that FEMA probably ought to be
able to answer to people that are concerned about Federal
response: what can FEMA do in a particular situation; what will
they do, and what are they specifically doing at the time.
Those are really the three questions that I get, and it all has
to do with communication.
So I look forward to the testimony this morning, because I
get to talk to all those mayors again tomorrow morning. Thank
you.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Poe.
I would now like to recognize Mr. Taylor, if he has an
opening statement.
Mr. Taylor. Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank you and my
colleagues for coming down to Mississippi earlier this week. I
know the presentations in Mississippi were brief, because your
eyes told you everything you needed to see, one bridge two
miles long completely destroyed, another bridge a mile and a
half long completely destroyed. Highway 90 along the beach
running to Harrison County gone, for all practical purposes.
Tens of thousands of homes just leveled.
And we have obviously got some challenges. Prior to the
storm, our local communities had requested about $250 million
of infrastructure for people who don't have a central water
system, who don't have a central sewer system. It has obviously
been complicated by those larger cities that have now been to a
certain extent destroyed and the need to rebuild that
infrastructure.
So we are certainly glad to have the FEMA folks here today,
and again, I am personally grateful that you and so many other
of my colleagues took the time to visit south Mississippi
earlier this week.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. We certainly appreciate
your efforts. I have been down there twice now and I keep
hearing the stories about how Congressman Taylor has been
literally in the mud pulling people out and helping people. He
is one of these people that were affected, lost his house. So
our thoughts and prayers are certainly with you and your
family, Gene.
I would now like to recognize Mr. Bachus for an opening
statement.
Mr. Bachus. I thank the Chairman.
Gentlemen, I have actually been in Louisiana and
Mississippi with Gene Taylor and others the day before
yesterday. I would like to thank you for the recovery efforts
that are going on there and some of the mitigation that is
going on.
I do have a question, just as a thought or question about
the overall. What Americans saw on their TV screens as that
category 5 hurricane approached New Orleans, I think that we
all made assumptions that turned out not to be true. The
assumption I think most Americans had made is that somebody was
in charge and responsible for preparing for those hurricanes. I
think as it turned out we weren't very prepared as a Nation.
Now, I don't know whose responsibility that is, and still,
there are a lot of questions whether it is local, State or
Federal. Now, FEMA was created to consolidate and coordinate
the Federal effort to prepare for and respond to disasters.
Part of that definition is to prepare for disasters. Anybody
that saw what went on in New Orleans knows we weren't prepared.
Now, my question is, who was supposed to do what? More
importantly, not because of a blame game, but if it happens
again, are all those things that went wrong in New Orleans, are
they going to go wrong again?
One thing that, after this storm, that I became more aware
of, now, before this storm there were all these predictions
what a real catastrophe it could be that if New Orleans had a
direct hit from a hurricane. We heard that a year before, six
months before. In 2001, in 2001, four years before this
hurricane hit, FEMA did a study. That study said that a major
hurricane, category 3 plus, directly hitting New Orleans, is
one of the three likeliest most catastrophic disasters in our
future.
In other words, FEMA itself said of the three major
catastrophes most likely to happen in the future, one of them
is a direct hit on New Orleans. So it was likely to happen.
With that in mind, why, for instance, I mean, who came up
with taking people into the Superdome and telling them to
provide five days worth of water and food for themselves as
opposed to getting them out of the city? Who was responsible
when Amtrak offered a train for 1,000 people to get out of New
Orleans, what was the Federal role there? Was there any role?
And the city had a preparedness plan, and part of it said
that people would bring their own food into the Superdome. It
was predictable that the sanitation and the lights would go out
there.
Was there anybody at the Federal level that said, you know,
this won't work? Because those are my questions. In preparing,
what are your authorities? What do you do when you look over
these plans which turned out to be not very much of a plan at
all in New Orleans? Did you bless, for instance, the mayor when
he said, everybody that can get out, get out, but provided no
transportation for those who didn't have transportation?
Four years before, you predicted that this event--and I am
not talking about you personally, but the Agency predicted this
event may happen. If it happens again, what is your role? Those
are basically my questions. And I know you are here to testify
today about your recovery efforts and what you are doing with
things like debris removal.
But as far as psychological, the debris removal that I
think American citizens are still dealing with is those images
in our mind of people trapped for five days without water and
food. That is really my remark.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the gentleman.
And I just want to remind my colleagues that I think Mr.
Bachus just said it, this hearing is focusing on recovery
efforts. I know we have the chief operating officer of FEMA
here, and obviously if members ask questions, we certainly want
you to respond to them. But again, the focus of this is
recovery efforts. That is why the Speaker set up the Katrina
Committee. We are dealing with those questions of the five days
before and the five days after.
Mr. Bachus. I would say, just as a subcommittee chairman,
this Subcommittee has jurisdiction over FEMA. Part of the
charge is preparing recovery. Part of the recovery effort
depends on how well we were prepared.
Mr. Shuster. Absolutely.
Mr. Bachus. Part of what went on with recovery was because
we weren't prepared and there were things we had to do after
the hurricane which we are looking at today because someone
didn't so something before the hurricane.
Mr. Shuster. Yes, the gentleman is absolutely correct in
that analysis. We are going to look into those aspects of it.
But as I said today, we really want to focus on those recovery
efforts, as you mentioned, as we move forward.
I know members have, there are 535 members of Congress that
have those exact same types of questions, and we are going to
sift through it all and figure that out and get to those
answers.
We have three panels of witnesses appearing before us
today. The first will be comprised of two witnesses from the
Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Ken Burris, who is the
Deputy Undersecretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response,
and Mr. Richard Skinner, the Department of Homeland Security's
Inspector General.
These witnesses are being called to discuss what the
Department is doing to manage this massive recovery effort;
what additional resources are required to ensure it works
efficiently; and what systems or processes are required to make
sure it is not abused. I want to welcome you both here today.
Our second panel is going to consist of our colleague from
Louisiana and a member of this Committee, Richard Baker. While
he normally would testify first, he was not able to join us
now, and he will be here around noon and we will have him
testify after the first panel.
And the third panel will be witnesses representing State
and local officials who have worked or are working with FEMA on
the recovery effort. We hope to hear from them how the system
works or doesn't work for the end users.
I would like to now ask unanimous consent that all our
witnesses' full statements be included in the record. Without
objection, so ordered.
For each panel, we will hear all the witnesses' statements
and then ask questions of the entire panel. Since your written
testimony has been made part of the record, the Subcommittee
will request that you limit your testimony to five minutes.
With that, the first panel, Mr. Burris, you may proceed.
TESTIMONY OF KENNETH BURRIS, ACTING CHIEF OF OPERATIONS,
FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY; AND RICHARD L. SKINNER,
INSPECTOR GENERAL, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND
SECURITY
Mr. Burris. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Representative Norton
and members of the Subcommittee. I am Ken Burris, I am the
Acting Director of Operations at the Federal Emergency
Management Agency within the Department of Homeland Security. I
serve in the role as the Chief Operating Officer.
As the response efforts for immediate lifesaving and life-
sustaining efforts end a long and immensely challenging
recovery effort is already well underway. To date, FEMA has
registered over 2 million victims for assistance to provide
housing assistance or direct assistance, and has provided
direct assistance to 390,000 displaced individuals and
families.
At this point, there were more than 300,000 evacuees from
Hurricane Katrina sheltered in congregate care spread out
around 48 different States in our Country. Today, that shelter
population in congregate shelter care is down to 57,000. We
have a little more work to do to get that to zero.
Our first and foremost priority is to address the housing
needs of those that are displaced. This will be a partnership
with State and local leaders that play a central role in
determining the nature and the shape of this type of planning
and rebuilding process. We will support and supplement State
and local efforts through our processes, while continuing to
assist the individual disaster victim.
Our goal is to move all Katrina evacuees out of congregate
care by the middle of October. In Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas
and Alabama as well, there were hundreds of thousands of homes
that were destroyed in one of America's largest natural
disasters. The housing stock in the most impacted areas in the
southern parishes of Louisiana and the counties of Mississippi,
there is an estimated short and mid term housing requirement
for 600,000 households.
Some of these households are still in congregate care,
while many of those are displaced in hotels or motels, or are
living with family and friends. These individuals too will
require that type of long term housing assistance. The Federal
Government is committed to helping the citizens of the Gulf
Coast overcome the disaster and rebuild these devastated
communities.
Our strategy is based on the single premise that assistance
of victims of Hurricane Katrina is to reestablish a normal
living environment as quickly as possible in the towns and
communities where they want to live, so as long as the local
infrastructure can support that type of long term living. In
reaching these goals, we apply three basic methodologies.
The first methodology is to provide direct to families and
individuals assistance that allows them to choose for
themselves the best housing options where they can best find a
job, fit into the community and decide for themselves how they
can best move forward. The Federal Government's disaster
assistance is not and does not take the place of insurance.
None of our programs are that comprehensive or provide that
comprehensive coverage. But we can help and we will help where
eligible families are available to have housing assistance for
temporary housing up to 18 months.
Last month, we announced a comprehensive housing assistance
program to meet the immediate needs of individuals and families
displaced by Katrina. DHS and the Department of Housing and
Urban Development announced measures that provided transitional
housing assistance to evacuees, to cut through red tape and to
provide the flexibility, the choice and the portability needed
to remove themselves from congregate care and temporary
shelters to more stable housing.
We also expedited aid to evacuees with immediate housing
needs. Because of Katrina's unprecedented scope and widespread
dispersion of the evacuee population, FEMA accelerated the
assistance to individuals and households program to provide
housing assistance to homeowners and renters. To reduce the up
front paperwork and provide immediate need, households will
receive an initial lump sum payment of $2,358 to cover three
months of household needs. This payment represents a national
average of the fair market rent for a two bedroom unit. Those
who qualify for further benefits may be extended assistance up
to 18 months, for a total of $26,200.
HUD is also providing specialized housing assistance
through a program that is called the HUD's Katrina Disaster
Housing Assistance Program. While many and most of these
evacuees will receive FEMA assistance, others will be eligible
for the HUD assistance.
We have instituted the Disaster Unemployment Assistance
Program and at this point, we have distributed $48 million to
the Department of Labor for unemployment benefits for those who
qualify.
The second method in assisting the States that have been
encumbered by the increased demands on their limited resources,
it is apparent that many of these States welcomed the evacuee
population into their States. Through that, there has been
impact on their local services. We have agreed to commit to
reimbursing the States for the increased shelter costs of this,
as well as the increased cost to the educational system where
States have experienced an insurgence of students within their
school systems.
As always, we stand ready to help in rebuilding communities
in a safer, less vulnerable situation for future loss of life
and property. We do this through our public assistance program.
I know we want to talk about some of our other contracting
methods, but our public assistance program, let me say that the
States will be paid a portion of this through the grants
process. We enter into a lot of awarding through public works
process, through the grants process. Through that process, we
will try to assist as well as we can in the rebuilding efforts
in these areas to make these communities safer and stronger.
That concludes my oral statement. I will be glad to answer
any questions you may have.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Burris.
We will now hear from Mr. Skinner. You may proceed.
Mr. Skinner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Norton, members of the Subcommittee and others.
Today I would just like to summarize a couple of points
from my prepared statement which I have submitted for the
record. First, concerning OIG community oversight. Through the
PCIE, that is the President's Council on Integrity and
Efficiency, their homeland security roundtable, which I chair,
the Inspector General community has been working together to
coordinate our respective oversight efforts from the beginning.
Collectively, we have prepared plans to provide oversight for
99 percent of the $63 billion already appropriated to date for
Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
As with all presidentially-declared disasters, FEMA
establishes or coordinates the Federal Government's relief
efforts. To do this, they administer some of the funds
directly. But the bulk of the funds are distributed to other
Federal departments through mission assignments, or State
agencies through grants. As of October 4th, FEMA has made
grants to Katrina-affected States totaling about $1 billion and
mission assignments totaling about $7 billion, of which about
$6 billion went to the Department of Defense.
The overriding objectives of the OIG plans are to ensure
accountability, promote efficiencies and to detect and prevent,
and I emphasize prevent, fraud, waste and abuse. Insofar as a
large portion of the funds obligated to date have been or will
be spent for contractor support, the OIG's current plans will
naturally focus on contract management. This includes
performing internal control assessments or risk assessments of
procurement systems, monitoring contract operations and
reviewing the award and management of all major contracts,
particularly no-bid or limited competition contracts.
In this regard, the OIGs are looking at the evidence to
support the no-bid selection or decision, the criteria used to
select one contractor over another, the reasonableness of the
costs associated with the service or product to be delivered,
the qualifications of the contractor selected, and the support
for the payments made to the contractor.
Notwithstanding our best efforts, however, to prevent
problems through an aggressive oversight program, history has
shown that there are some who will try to beat the system
through fraudulent means. Accordingly, the OIGs will be working
closely with the newly established hurricane fraud task force,
which is chaired by the assistant attorney general of the
Criminal Division in the Department of Justice.
The task force is designed to investigate and prosecute
disaster-related crimes. It will track referrals of potential
cases, coordinate with law enforcement agencies such as the IGs
to initiative investigations, match referrals with the
appropriate U.S. attorney offices in the affected States, and
ensure timely prosecution of cases. In this regard, an OIG
hurricane relief fraud hot line has been established and has
been widely publicized throughout the Gulf Coast.
As a result of these efforts, we have already made eight
arrests and expect to make many more in the days and weeks to
come. To date, the OIGs have committed a total of over 350
auditors, investigators and inspectors in this combined effort.
Now with respect to our office, the DHS OIG oversight
responsibilities. Based on my experiences as a deputy inspector
general at FEMA, I recognize that a disaster of this magnitude
will require long term commitment. Accordingly, to ensure that
we remain focused, not just on short term response operations,
but also on long term recovery initiatives, which require our
involvement for the next three, five, seven, maybe even ten
years, I have created an office to focus solely on Hurricane
Katrina relief activities.
I just recently hired an assistant inspector general to
manage this effort on a full-time basis. Sixty employees have
already been assigned to this effort, and over 30 more will be
added within the next 3 months. We are prepared to add even
more resources, provided funding is made available as the need
arises.
We have had personnel monitoring FEMA operations since the
hurricane struck September 1st, and currently have auditors and
investigators assigned to the joint field offices in Baton
Rouge, Montgomery, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi and Austin,
Texas. Our auditors will provide oversight of the entire
spectrum of FEMA programs: individual assistance, temporary
housing, public assistance and mitigation when it comes online.
Finally, we have initiated a review that will focus on
FEMA's preparedness for an response to the devastation caused
by Hurricane Katrina. This review will be done in close
coordination with GAO.
In conclusion, I would like to say that collectively, the
OIG community is uniquely qualified and in position to provide
the most timely and effective oversight of Hurricane Katrina
and Hurricane Rita activities. You can be sure that the OIG
community stands united in its efforts to ensure that taxpayer
dollars are spent wisely today and in the years to come as the
communities and victims of the Gulf Coast region get back to
normal.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement. I will be
pleased to answer any questions.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Skinner.
We are going to go into the question rounds, and again, I
want to remind my colleagues we are going to stay to five
minutes. I am sure everybody has many questions. But we will
keep it to five minutes, and I am going to enforce that
strictly.
As I mentioned in my opening statement, I have a great
concern about some of these not only in New Orleans, but the
smaller communities that we traveled to. I know Hancock County,
a small, rural county, we talked to the city manager of Biloxi
and in New Orleans, they are running out of cash. The mayor of
New Orleans just laid off, 20 minutes after he left a briefing
with us, he laid off 3,000 workers out of the 7,000 workers in
New Orleans. They just don't have cash.
The Stafford Act, it does not make, well, let me back up.
The interpretation of the Stafford Act says that the FEMA can
only pay for overtime, but in reviewing the Stafford Act,
nowhere does it say overtime or straight time in there. I
wanted to know what your view is. Can the President order cash
to flow to those affected areas to pay for straight time? You
can both comment on it, if you wish.
Mr. Burris. I guess Rick is going to let me go first, since
I am the policy guy and he is the legal guy. On a policy basis,
we have had a longstanding policy that the straight
appropriated funds, that jurisdiction would be applied to their
services, are the responsibility of that jurisdiction. We pick
up the overage over the normal appropriated funds.
Mr. Shuster. But on the legal side, it doesn't say
specifically in the Stafford Act, your policy and
interpretation has been that in the past, I understand that.
But we are facing a situation right now where people just don't
have the cash to pay the straight time. So is it your view, I
guess what I am looking for is, do we need to correct it
legislatively, or can you go back and the President can
reevaluate and say, we have to get them some cash, let's just
move forward?
Mr. Burris. I am aware of efforts, we also administer the
disaster loan program that currently has a cap on it of $5
million. That is currently being revisited to raise that cap to
allow loans from that to happen.
Mr. Shuster. Also I understand that you want to make it
really a loan program, because in the past it has turned into
just a grant program, which I think is wise.
Mr. Burris. That is correct. In the past, it was, most of
those lower than $5 million were just forgiven.
Mr. Shuster. Right. I think we may even be trying to
correct that legislatively this week with the CDL program.
Mr. Burris. I read that this morning.
Mr. Shuster. But back to, is that something you are willing
to go back and take it up to the highest levels?
Mr. Burris. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shuster. We talked to Biloxi yesterday, and their city
manager said 80 percent of their revenue is gone. They just
don't have the cash, everybody is cash-starved. So the CDL is
one way, but looking at the Stafford Act paying for emergency
personnel is what we are looking at, the police, the firemen,
getting them paid so they are on the job.
The second question I have is, does FEMA have the manpower
to manage this recovery, which I believe Mr. Skinner said, this
is a long term project. We are talking three years probably, or
maybe longer. As I look at some of the statistics, the IG's
office has 90 inspectors and FEMA has 70 program managers. We
have 20 more inspectors than we do managers. It seems to me,
especially at this point, we are going to need a lot more
managers. What is your view on that, Mr. Burris?
Mr. Burris. The Stafford Act allows us the availability to
search and have employees come on board in FEMA that are direct
charge to the disaster. We have done that. We are in the
process of hiring additional employees to staff up our recovery
efforts.
But we also rely heavily upon our technical assistance
contractors, in which we have, private industry goes out,
provides engineering assistance, provides technical types of
assistance to local jurisdictions to help them through the
process. Currently there are around 3,000 of those in the
affected areas.
So we have the ability to hire term employees that are
charged specifically to the disaster. We do that regularly. We
still have employees on our rolls that are term employees from
the Northridge earthquake. We had Andrew employees on our
employees for 10 years. So it is a long term effort that goes
on in a recovery. The Stafford Act provides us the flexibility
to staff up and do that.
Mr. Shuster. Are these people going to be high level, they
are going to be able to make decisions? What it sounds to me
like is, you sort of have the workers out there, and it would
seem that with 70 programs you need more people that can make
decisions. The concern is, where do they come from and how long
do they take to train?
Mr. Burris. On the policy decision front, especially in our
recovery division, they have put together a task force to
address policies as they come along. I can say I have to deal
with a policy decision several times a day to adjust things.
The debris removal policy was one of them that we streamlined
to make it work specifically for this event.
So the intent and purpose is to provide workers in theater,
and then we also provide senior level managers through that
method in the field that have the ability to make limited
policy. But policy that affects disaster response on a
nationwide basis has to come up to Washington to be reviewed.
Mr. Shuster. That is a great concern of mine, and your
answer is concerning me, that we seem to be doing business as
usual. This is enormous. We need decision makers. I know the
process, I saw the process in Florida. It goes up the line, it
comes to Washington and the next thing you know, the facts
aren't the same as they were when it started out.
I would encourage you, let's do some things differently.
Let's push those decisions out into the field. We are going to
make mistakes, there is no doubt, no matter how we do it. But
getting the relief to these people, and this is, as I said, and
you know it, it is huge, it is different than anything we have
faced. I think we ought to be looking at it differently.
I see the clock has expired, so I am going to live by the
five minute rule and die by the five minute rule. Next I would
like to recognize Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Well, if the Chairman lives and dies by it, you
see the message he is sending to the rest of us.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Norton. I would like to ask Mr. Skinner a question
about this sole source notion, because it is very easy to
criticize Government for sole source, of course, if there is no
other way to do it. You say, get us somebody here that does
what needs to be done.
This Committee has jurisdiction over GSA. What I am
familiar with is the GSA schedule. That doesn't have to do with
emergencies. What it means is that people have pre-competed so
that you don't have to think about sole source, because in fact
you know who is qualified, you go to a set of qualified people,
you get a low bid just like that, because they are all
qualified. It has been a competition.
Is there anything of the kind like the GSA schedule that
FEMA uses or should use?
Mr. Skinner. They in fact do use the GSA schedule where
they can. In this particular disaster, however, I think the
scope of the work that was required required FEMA to think
outside the box, go beyond what was on that GSA schedule.
Ms. Norton. What items, for example, were unanticipated,
were not on the schedule?
Mr. Skinner. The need for, in going with the Corps of
Engineers, for example, in the debris removal.
Ms. Norton. I'm sorry?
Mr. Skinner. The Corps of Engineers, who FEMA tasked to
lead our debris removal efforts.
Ms. Norton. And the Corps of Engineers alone does the
debris removal after these hurricanes and earthquakes? They are
contractors who are on your schedule who do that?
Mr. Skinner. Yes. They are the primary agency tasked to
lead our debris removal efforts, I believe. The States also, I
think, have the option to do their own debris removal.
Ms. Norton. Well, there was no State option here,
obviously. What I am trying to find out is, are you solely
dependent upon the Corps of Engineers, or were there
contractors on the GSA schedule or on some other schedule that
could have or should have been called to that task, for
example, since it is perfectly foreseeable?
Mr. Burris. When you are talking about solely dependent on
the Army Corps of Engineers, in the debris removal, in this
particular disaster there is direct Federal assistance for the
first 60 days. That means that the Federal Government is going
to pick up the cost for that direct Federal assistance.
We turn to the Corps for debris removal. Now, the Corps, in
and of itself, does not themselves do all this debris removal.
They go through a contracting process where they contract to
local contractors or national contractors to assist them in the
debris removal process.
Ms. Norton. So why weren't there contractors--and since I
was cited by Mr. Skinner now, I asked for an example, he said
debris removal, he said that was something that was unforeseen.
I am trying to find out why that was unforeseen since that
obviously is necessitated whenever there is a natural disaster.
Even if there was a scope of it, the Country is crawling
with debris removal people. Do we need to have the GSA schedule
expanded, there just weren't enough people on it, the Corps
doesn't have enough companies on it? Why was it necessary to do
sole sourcing debris removal?
Mr. Skinner. Congresswoman, we are looking at that as we
speak, at all the contracting activities that took place
immediately following this disaster, from day one. One of the
issues that is high on our priority list is the debris removal
issue. What we have learned today is that the Corps of
Engineers does in fact have pre-existing contracts for
contractors to come in and remove debris.
However, the extent of the devastation here was so great
that they had to--we absorbed all the available resources that
were available under those pre-existing contracts. They had to
go outside of the pre-existing contracts, outside the GSA
schedule and look for other contractors. That is what we are
observing right now.
A lot of that was done on a sole source basis. We are
looking at that to ensure that although it was sole source, you
still have to act in a very reasonable manner when you
negotiate these contracts.
At the same time, you have your States and you have your
local governments, many of whom chose to take charge of their
own debris. In Alabama, for example, I believe 90 percent of
the debris removal operations is not being handled by the
Corps, but being handled by the State in itself. In the State
of Mississippi, 50 percent of the debris removal operations,
based on our assessments right now, are being handled by the
Corps, whereas the State and the local counties have chosen to
handle their own.
All of these people, most of these people, we are not
complete in our assessment, but it looks like about 90 percent
of those contracts that were entered into were on a sole source
basis. I am not suggesting there is anything improper about
that. We were in the middle of a battle, the debris had to be
removed off the major arteries, the ambulances, police, law
enforcement and also to allow people to come in to clean up.
But we are in fact looking at that, and that is generally what
we are seeing.
In Louisiana, I believe the Corps is the predominant lead
for the debris removal operations in that State.
Ms. Norton. So we have one reform that you think is
underway already, and that is to expand the list of
contractors, so that sole source would not be necessary, given
what we have learned from Katrina?
Mr. Skinner. I am not aware of anything underway to expand
that ability, but at this point--
Ms. Norton. Mr. Burris, is there anything under--that is
what you are being criticized for as much as anything. I am
just trying to get an answer, if we have learned anything and
if we have, whether or not we are contemplating dealing with
those things. We didn't do it after Florida, I am trying to
find out if lessons can be learned and attended to.
Mr. Burris. Let me clarify this Corps of Engineers thing.
Corps of Engineers was mission assigned. They were not a sole
source contract.
Ms. Norton. I know the Corps of Engineers was not--look, I
didn't get--I will leave that there. That was given to me by
Mr. Skinner as an example. I didn't accuse anybody. And let me
just go on to--
Mr. Shuster. The gentlelady's time has expired. We know
everybody has a lot of questions here, we want to be fair to
everybody. Maybe that is something we can offer in writing to
you, a question, and you can give us back detail. I think it is
a detailed answer to it, and we want to make sure we get the
answers. But I now want to move on to Mr. Dent for five
minutes.
Mr. Dent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question will be for
Mr. Skinner.
I read recently in a series of articles by the Tribune
Services, you might have seen those articles about clear cases
of fraud, waste and abuse with respect to the FEMA recovery
effort for previous disasters. It identified specifically
situations in Florida and also in Detroit, Michigan. Some of
the things they pointed out in those stories really were quite
alarming.
For example, States declared counties disaster areas where
the counties themselves had not asked to be added to that State
disaster list. It was submitted to the Federal Government.
There were cases of many people, far too many people, who were
not impacted by the disasters in Florida and Detroit, people in
alarming numbers, they had received checks from FEMA.
I am just deeply concerned that your Agency is going to be
up to the task in the Gulf Coast, where we have so many real
victims of these disasters. We want to make sure we get them
all the support that they need. But given the abuse that
occurred in previous hurricanes, what specifically can you do
to make sure that we don't see that same kind of recurrence of
events that we saw in these previous situations?
Mr. Skinner. Thank you, Congressman. First, let me assure
you, we are up to the task. We also are working very, very
closely with the other IGs in the community to provide
oversight of their respective programs.
For example, SBA IG is looking at the SBA loan programs.
The Department of Labor IG is looking at the unemployment
programs, or the grants that were made to the States for
unemployment. The Department of Agriculture is looking at the
food stamp distribution program for the disaster victims.
With regards to providing oversight in making references to
what we found in Florida and Detroit, one of the lessons
learned, I think, from the Florida hurricanes, is the fact
that--in other words, we are not experiencing the same problems
in Florida that we observed last year. That is, FEMA was very
careful to go to the individual counties and do preliminary
damage assessments for those outlying counties to ensure that
the damage was sufficient to justify a declaration. That was
not always done after the Florida disasters, and as a result,
some marginal counties may have been declared unnecessarily.
In this case here, it is pretty obvious, those counties
that have both PA and IA declarations are most certainly in
need. Those outlying counties, FEMA has done preliminary damage
assessments. I just returned from there last night myself, in
visiting Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, and looked at
those counties that are on the marginal line. Many have not
been declared, not every county in the State has been declared
a disaster in Mississippi and Alabama, for example. So that in
itself will help solve some of the problems.
Now we just need to focus on those that were declared,
those counties that are in need of assistance. Unfortunately,
there are going to be people in those counties and people
outside those counties that are going to come in and try to
take advantage of the situation. We are working very closely
with the Department of Justice and their task force.
Mr. Dent. How quickly can you recognize this type of fraud
when it occurs, and how quickly can FEMA de-obligate those
funds if you do witness this fraud?
Mr. Skinner. Our attempt here is preventive. We are trying
to get to them before the check is actually delivered. That is
what we have done to date. As a matter of fact, we have met
many of these culprits, we have made several arrests already.
We just met them at the post office when they come to collect
their check.
So we try to do it up front. We have a lot of partners that
are helping us do that. One of the biggest partners is the post
office. For example, in Louisiana, someone applied for, a
couple applied as Mr. and Mrs. John and Jane Doe. The postal
employee that delivers the mail recognized that John Doe did
not live there, nor was there any damage to their home, nor did
they need disaster assistance. They immediately contacted the
task force, we investigated and made an arrest.
So we are trying to catch them right up front. We have many
partners that are helping us with this. We are doing it through
hot line complaints as well. We are advertising our hot line
number down there through public service announcements, on TV,
radio and the local governments there.
Mr. Dent. Thank you. I would like to ask Mr. Burris a quick
question, just keeping in mind those difficulties from Florida
last year, and even in Pennsylvania, we had Hurricane Ivan. I
still have a lot of problems up there with people getting
reimbursed, and of course our situation was much more limited
than what we have seen here in the Gulf Coast.
Do you feel that FEMA recovery division has the current
capacity to handle the recovery of such a large scale disaster?
How much additional staffing are you going to require and
resources to ensure timely action to help those people who have
been the victims of this terrible disaster in the Gulf Coast?
Mr. Burris. We definitely require additional resources to
handle the magnitude of what has happened in the Gulf Coast. We
are doing that through the Stafford Act hiring authorities that
allow us to bring on, into the Federal Government or through
contracting, employees that are charged directly to a disaster.
They are on a term limited basis.
Mr. Dent. Okay, no further questions.
Mr. Shuster. The gentleman's time has expired.
I yield five minutes to Mr. Taylor for questions.
Mr. Taylor. Mr. Skinner, I found your talks about trying to
cut down on the fraud interesting in light of a case that I
know to be true, and that is that my daughter and son-in-law,
because of bad communications, both filed for a FEMA claim.
They happen to have been residing in New Orleans.
Both checks come in, my son-in-law calls FEMA and says,
look, you all screwed up, we screwed up, we ordered two checks,
we are only due one, what do we do with it? He said the folks
at FEMA started laughing on the phone and said, this is the
first person to ever call in and do that. So I am hearing that
you are going after fraud, but they basically said, do what you
feel like with it. I am quoting my son-in-law, there is no
reason for him, he knows what my job is, there is no reason for
him to try to pull a fast one.
But that is certainly contrary to the tone of what you are
saying today. So I would hope that you would instruct your
folks that when people realize they have made an honest mistake
and try to do the honest thing to reward them for that and say
yes, this is the process that you do. I found it interesting,
in one of the publications I read just yesterday that now you
are going after Floridians about a year after the fact who got
too much money. I think it is much more important to catch it
up front, right?
Mr. Skinner. Yes.
Mr. Taylor. Than a year later.
Second thing, again, I am hearing a lot of hearsay about
the abuse of the system. So I would like a clarification. In
Mississippi we have an excellent State law preventing conflicts
of interest. It is just airtight. You can't even be a member of
a board that does business with yourself, you can't exclude
yourself from the vote, you just can't be on a board that does
business.
What are the rules as far as FEMA? Because I am hearing
some disturbing accusations. Could a county or a State elected
official in one of the three affected States turn around and
start a business to do business with FEMA, either in disaster
cleanup, a site for waste disposal, since that seems to be a
hot ticket, or any of these other things? What are your rules,
and does that need to be approached, since to a certain extent,
particularly if you are dealing directly with a county, that
person is in a position that they might or may not have been
steering business his own way?
Mr. Skinner. First of all, I will just make a comment on
the remark on the telephone call. Those people do not work for
the OIG. We are embedding people up at the NPSI, the place that
receives those calls, so that we can monitor their activities
as well.
Mr. Taylor. Well, you need to monitor them a bit more
closely.
Mr. Skinner. Yes. I really encourage you, that remark was
definitely inappropriate, and had we been made aware of it, we
would have taken action.
Mr. Taylor. It is even worse, she actually called for her
supervisor, and the supervisor started laughing.
Mr. Skinner. That is very, very inappropriate. We are going
to embed people up there in that operation this week, as well
as at the payment center in Mount Weather to track that whole
process and learn more.
In response to your second question, I think Ken might be
more equipped to answer this, but from a prosecution
standpoint, we rely on the laws of the State. I know
Mississippi has very tight conflict of interest laws. Louisiana
has laws that allow you to invest up to, I think it is 4.999
percent without disclosure. So if someone does have a vested
interest in a company that is doing business, that is totally
legal, it is not prosecutable.
However, if that individual provides any information that
may mislead or have an influence, adverse influence on the
decision to approve a contract or a financial relationship,
then we can factor that in for prosecution. So there is no
Federal law, per se, that will override any of the State laws.
Mr. Taylor. So you are using your authority to enforce
State laws?
Mr. Skinner. Yes. In essence. We do have to, there is no
Federal law that would override the State laws in that regard.
Mr. Taylor. Since the majority of the work is going to take
place in the three coastal counties and that average is
anywhere from about 150 miles from the State capital of
Jackson, I am curious why you are putting your Inspector
General 150 miles away from 90 percent of the work.
Mr. Skinner. No, we are not.
Mr. Taylor. I heard you say Jackson.
Mr. Skinner. Yes. We have an operation there, because that
is where the joint field office is. That is where all of the
applications are screened, that is where the accounting is
done, that is where the contracting is done and the awards are
made.
We have a sub-office as we speak in Biloxi, and we are
working out of Biloxi as well. Our biggest problem right now is
housing, not only a place to sleep, but a place to secure our
work papers and our documents as we go through our
investigations and audits. But we are in fact in Biloxi itself.
Mr. Taylor. Mr. Burris, some of the best work that I saw
done in the aftermath of the storm was performed by the Army
National Guard and the Navy Seabees. One of the things they
just took upon themselves is, we are going to make thing right,
we are going to open up these streets and we will ask for
permission later.
In the immediate aftermath of the storm, that really was
the right attitude to take, it was the only attitude to take. I
was there at ground zero.
One of the things we are running into now is we still have
desperate need for housing. At this point, people would welcome
a tent to live in as opposed to a little dome shelter that may
or may not have been looted from the local Wal-Mart or K-Mart.
I am being told that the Navy construction battalion has been
stopped on at least one occasion from erecting large tents to
provide temporary housing because a local contractor objected.
It would seem to me that it would be in the best interests
of our Nation to have some sort of a 60 to 90 day window where
the military can just step in and do what needs to be done
without a contractor being able to object. These are desperate
times. I am of the opinion this is not the last horrible
hurricane or natural disaster this Nation is ever going to see
and there is certainly the threat of terrorism out there.
If the military has the capability, I understand that at
some point, when life gets back to normal, the contractors
ought to be able to say, hey, I can do that job. But for the
foreseeable future, 30 days after the storm, 60 days after the
storm, even 90 days after a storm, when you have people who are
living in their cars, living in a pup tent in what used to be
their front yard, and the military has the availability of
building tents, I would sure hope FEMA would rethink that whole
law that allows just one contractor to stop this from
happening. I would like to hear your thoughts on that.
And apparently, this apparently is happening as we speak
near Pass Christian, Mississippi.
Mr. Burris. Where again, sir?
Mr. Taylor. Pass Christian. I guess you guys would say
Christian.
Mr. Burris. Yes, sir. I am not aware of that incident. I am
aware that military commander have the ability to implement
whatever program they deem necessary to implement for the
health, safety and well-being of the civilian population around
their post. I will have to check into this particular one. I
don't see that a contractor would have the authority to tell a
military commander no, he could not do something like that.
Mr. Taylor. Since we are blessed to have the Seabees down
there, and they do a lot of good works, as they are training to
deploy. The rule traditionally has been that they could come in
and help a county clear a field for a soccer field, even do
some sewage treatment work, build a pier for recreational
purposes for a city or for a county, as long as a local
contractor did not object. That has worked pretty well during
peace time.
What we are finding now is that in this time of true
emergency that still, a veto by a local contractor is still on
the books. It is really preventing a great asset from being
used to its fullest extent.
The county supervisor who brought it to my attention
happens to be in town today. Is there any chance I can get him
with you to walk you through that?
Mr. Burris. Yes, sir.
Mr. Taylor. Would you get with me?
Mr. Burris. Right after this.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Burris. Could I answer a question regarding the
integrity of our contracting?
Mr. Shuster. Sure.
Mr. Burris. We do applicant contract, applicant briefings
with local government and State government to have everyone
that gets Federal dollars to understand what the requirements
are to use those Federal dollars in contracting. This, because
we have been delayed in our public works projects, we worked
with the IG's office to put together a program to be more
proactive in that. Instead of doing it during the applicant
briefings, we worked with our JFOs in each State to get that on
the ground up front, so that the local officials, who are
managing Federal funds, know exactly what the requirements for
the use of Federal funds are and the penalties for violating
the Procurement Integrity Act.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Burris. I certainly would like
to hear back as to if we were able to resolve that problem. I
appreciate that.
Next I would like to recognize Mrs. Kelly.
Mrs. Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have to say that, being from New York, we experienced a
man-made disaster on 9/11/01. FEMA had a great response. They
were there for us and they worked hard. I really do thank FEMA.
There are still some loose ends. We had a couple of hurricanes
that hit my district, forest fires and storms, and FEMA has
been in and helped my district a great deal and I do thank you.
But five years later, Mr. Burris, I represent a district
that holds Indian Point Nuclear Facilities, power plants that
are just north of New York City. The soundness of the emergency
preparedness plans for the area surrounding the plant has
always been a top level concern in my district. I am sorry to
say that the confidence in the plans is not nearly as strong as
it should be, and with good reason.
Governor Pataki commissioned a report that found a lot of
problems with the emergency preparedness in 2003 and now in the
aftermath of Katrina, there are some very serious concerns in
my district. In some towns, officials have gone so far as to
begin mapping escape routes, because we all saw the traffic
jams coming out of Louisiana. And sir, we have a lot of people
living in that area within very close proximity, a ten mile
proximity to that plant.
Due to those inadequacies that were exposed by Katrina, I
want to know if we can expect FEMA to conduct another review of
the evacuation plan for the area surrounding Indian Point.
Mr. Burris. I will take your concerns back to our REP
program, our radiological emergency preparedness program, and
to the director to bring that to their attention.
Mrs. Kelly. I wish you would, sir.
Mr. Burris. I will do that.
Mrs. Kelly. Because earlier this month, the DHS, the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, FEMA and the FBI conducted what
they considered a comprehensive review of Indian Point. They
went out publicly and told our local officials and other people
there about the conditions of the plant. They painted a very
rosy picture of safety and security.
The following week we found out that these same people had
neglected to mention a leak in the spent fuel pool. It was a
radioactive leak. And it was a fact that they just neglected to
share, after going out and painting this rosy picture.
Mr. Burris, I don't think that we can expect people to have
confidence in the Federal Government's ability to evacuate them
in the event of any kind of an emergency, let alone a
radiologic emergency which is what we are worried about here.
If you can't be counted on to share some basic information on
safety levels at this plant, it has been five years and we
still don't have an adequate plan.
After what happened in Louisiana and Mississippi, we know
we need your help. But we need honest help, sir. We need
something that tells us the real facts.
I am also concerned that Indian Point currently does not
maintain a backup electricity source for their independent,
that is independent, for their energy grid and its emergency
sirens. FEMA met with the county officials on July 6th, and in
that meeting they agreed with county officials that there was
cause for concern after they evaluated the siren notification
system.
FEMA officials at that meeting agreed to issue a formal
written report to the NRC on the findings of their evaluation.
But in fact, they have said that report would be to us by the
end of September. It is now October. No county, none of the
five counties that I represent, has received anything. I would
like to know what the status of that report is.
Now, I know you did not come here to talk about Indian
Point, sir, and I understand you are not able, maybe, to answer
my questions. That doesn't change the fact that I have a lot of
constituents who are demanding answers. We are worried. We live
there. The nuclear plant is within 50 miles of New York City.
What I want to do by my questions to you right now is make my
colleagues aware of some of the FEMA problems that we, who have
experienced a man-made disaster, have found.
There is a delay. The record needs to be better for
Louisiana and Mississippi and definitely and definitely needs
to be cleaned up in New York with regard to your responding to
these emergencies. And sir, I would caution you, please do not
stand again and give us a rosy picture of evacuation plans and
how this plant is running unless it is absolutely true.
Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you. I would like to now yield five
minutes to Ms. Johnson.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Skinner, are you satisfied that there is true
accountability for the money and transparency in dealing with
the contracts and the money?
Mr. Skinner. No, I think there most certainly is room for
improvement. There is no question. This is a very large
disaster. There is a lot of activity spread across four to five
States. Actually even 48 States, when you look at the
dispersion of the evacuees. We are working on that, that is
what our job is, to review how well we are accounting for the
funds, how well we are contracting and how well we are
providing oversight in ensuring that we receive the products
and goods that we buy.
I am very cautions or concerned about the amount of
monitoring we are doing right now, after we award these grants
to the States for debris removal, as an example, and for that
matter, how well we are monitoring the contracts that we have
awarded to ensure that we are getting our money's worth. As
time goes on, I am sure that will improve. But at this point in
time, I think that there is room for improvement.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you. I am from Dallas, Texas, and we
have up in the thousands of people from the more flood-prone
area of Louisiana, primarily. No money has flowed in our
direction. But it is needed. There are so many evacuees that
need to placed in housing. There are so many organizations that
need to find out how to be reimbursed for some of the things
that they have done. Because it has basically been furnished by
public service of non-profit organizations and money that the
local officials have raised. So I would appreciate some
attention to that.
Mr. Burris, when I was in Louisiana the other day, I asked
a gentleman who has a contract for removing debris if he had
hired any local people. He is from Georgia. He said, a few.
What kind of outreach effort is in place to attempt to hire
people that are from New Orleans, somewhere in those areas
where they could get the benefit of making some kind of wage?
There is no income there for the city or the State or anything.
Unless some of these people get jobs and some of the local
people get contracts, there won't be any. It is going to take a
long time to get through where they are.
But I want to know what kind of outreach efforts are going
on to try to get some of those people back into those jobs.
Mr. Burris. We have outreach efforts to do local hiring
when we hire, first of all, let me talk about the Federal
Government, when we hire we make it a practice to hire locally
there, to ensure that the impacted area has the opportunity to
have those jobs. Secondly, in our contracting process, the
Stafford Act says to the extent possible that the contractors
will use local contracting and local hires to do that.
Our contracts also carry the clauses that 40 percent of the
contracts have to go to small and disadvantaged businesses, and
we monitor that very closely. I feel comfortable that we are
meeting our obligation to utilize local contracting when and
wherever possible.
Ms. Johnson. Well, according to the newspaper and what
people are saying, 90 percent of the contracts have gone to
large firms outside the State. The biggest complaints that I
have are small businesses and some of the local people can't
even get in touch with anyone to see whether they can do some
subcontracting or something. What I would like to do is have
you give me a name that I could contact directly to assist.
Mr. Burris. I will do that. We are actually having a--
Ms. Johnson. Where I can get through. Lines are busy all
the time. But I really would like a number where there will be
an answer.
Mr. Burris. I will do that. We are actually hosting
tomorrow a small contracting seminar in New Orleans, in the
area, in Louisiana, to assist small contractors. So we are
going to be replicating that around the different States where
our senior procurement officials are on the ground with the
Small Business Administration, hosting these seminars so people
understand that. That kicks off tomorrow.
Ms. Johnson. How have you posted it?
Mr. Burris. It has been, to my knowledge, distributed
through our joint field offices in Louisiana to where the
seminar is being hosted.
Ms. Johnson. Most of those people have been displaced. So
some of them, a whole lot of them are in Texas. I have not seen
any opportunity listed for any small business to try to get any
business. They are all calling my office. It is jamming our
phones and we need some help and relief.
Mr. Burris. I will make sure you get the information.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.
I now want to yield five minutes to Mr. Bachus for
questions.
Mr. Bachus. Thank you.
Mr. Skinner, you have 90 inspectors inspecting for fraud
and abuse, is that correct?
Mr. Skinner. We had about, when we transferred FEMA's IG
office to the DHS IG, we transferred approximately 200
positions from FEMA, approximately, I would believe, between 90
and 110 that had extensive disaster response and recovery audit
investigative capability.
Mr. Bachus. Yes. That is what I have been supplied with, a
figure of about 90 some odd inspectors.
Mr. Skinner. Yes, that is about correct.
Mr. Bachus. What type of fraud and abuse are they finding?
Mr. Skinner. Right now, we are focusing on two things. One
is contractor fraud. The big contracts right now that we are
looking at deal with debris removal. I am not at liberty to
talk about where we are on those investigations, but we do have
ongoing investigations of debris removal contractors.
The second area that we are focusing on right now deals
with the individual assistance and temporary housing program.
The way this program is evolving, it started with the response,
and that was a big contracting frenzy, so to speak, for debris
removal. We then shifted into, within a week or so, into the
individual assistance temporary housing program. So we are
investigating that as well.
We have not started anything on the reconstruction, of
course, because that has not started. But we are doing a lot of
pre-applicant briefings, alerting them to what they do not want
to do to get themselves into trouble. We are finding the
individual assistance fraud, the fraudulent applications, we
have already made eight arrests within the past week. We have
at least 21 additional cases ongoing in Louisiana. We have
several ongoing in Mississippi. There will be many, many
arrests coming in the very next few days and weeks.
Mr. Bachus. Is there a 1-800 number where people can report
fraud and abuse, or what they consider mismanagement?
Mr. Skinner. Yes, and I did not bring it with me. But we
publish what we have done. Since there are 26 IGs involved here
and they all have some oversight responsibility, SBA for loans,
Labor for unemployment, what we have done is collectively come
together and we have created one hurricane fraud hot line
number.
Mr. Bachus. Are you making an attempt with the local media
to put that number out?
Mr. Skinner. Yes, we have. I have done public service
announcements for the radio, which have been satellited up, I
believe this week. Tomorrow, we have done television public
service announcements. Those will be distributed tomorrow to
the local media in not just the four or five States that were
affected, but the surrounding States as well, because many of
the culprits reside in these outlying areas.
Mr. Bachus. I know sometimes you contract, but more often
than not it is the local government that contracts for debris
removal and you reimburse those. Do you review those contracts
also?
Mr. Skinner. Yes, we are.
Mr. Bachus. Your inspector, when he recognizes what he
believes is waste or fraud in a contract, once you recognize
that, how quickly can you respond to that?
Mr. Skinner. Within hours. Once we open a case, what we
want to do is develop certain facts so that we know that there
is in fact a crime being committed. Within hours of opening
that case, we immediately start coordinating with the local
U.S. attorney to get that on their docket, so we can get
prosecution.
Mr. Bachus. And those have happened?
Mr. Skinner. Oh, yes. All the cases I just referred to, the
8 arrests we have already made, the 21 investigations that are
ongoing.
Mr. Bachus. With contractors?
Mr. Skinner. No, these are mostly individual assistance
right now.
Mr. Bachus. Let me deal with the contract. Debris removal
is predictable, I think I have read in the press where a
hurricane generates as much as seven years of municipal waste
within a few hours. So you know you are always going to have
debris removal.
Now, those contracts, do you have a standard where you say,
we are going to pay $10 a cubic yard or $15 a cubic yard?
Mr. Skinner. That is done competitively. Yes, in those
cases as well, before we even open a case, we go to the U.S.
Attorney to ensure that it can be prosecuted. As far as the
rates, they vary by region. They are let competitively, they
can be anywhere from $6 per cubic yard in remote areas of
Alabama to as much as $25 a cubic yard down in New Orleans.
Mr. Bachus. It is my understanding that a lot of them
weren't let competitively right after the storm, is that
correct?
Mr. Skinner. Yes, there were many sole source let. That is
one of the things we are looking at, as to why was it let sole
source. I think there is an explanation for that. Then the
second question is, why did you choose this contractor over
contractor B. The third question, and a very important question
is, is the pricing fair.
Mr. Bachus. Is there a guideline for local governments in
letting, say, you always know there is going to be debris
removal. Is there may be a one or two page guideline saying,
this is what we want you to do?
Mr. Skinner. I believe there is.
Mr. Bachus. Could I get a copy of that?
Mr. Skinner. Absolutely.
Mr. Bachus. You are looking at these contracts to see
whether that was done?
Mr. Skinner. Yes, we are.
Mr. Bachus. Do you de-obligate funds when you find it was
not done?
Mr. Skinner. Yes, we do. If the contract is active, we will
immediately go to the contracting officer and make a
recommendation, there his something amiss here, freeze the
contract, freeze payment, stop work. If it is determined that
that contract should not proceed, yes, FEMA will de-obligate.
But in addition to that, if they in fact did so something
irregular or improper or illegal, we either go after those
monies through the courts or we will make an administrative
recommendation to FEMA that they go out administratively.
Mr. Bachus. I have one more question. The special needs
shelter that the City of New Orleans emergency plan set up at
the Superdome, it said it was for elderly and sick patients. It
instructed them to bring five days of water and food.
Mr. Burris, number one, was that practical for the sick and
elderly to bring five days of water and food? Were you aware of
that plan? What provisions did you make anticipating that, to
bring water and food in?
Mr. Burris. To my knowledge, the Superdome had been
designated, like you say, as a special needs shelter for
critical patients that needed special needs. We had an MDMS
team deployed to the site to take care of that.
New Orleans' decision to ask their citizens to bring five
days--
Mr. Bachus. Could you pull the mic a little closer?
Mr. Burris. I said, the decision to have the citizens bring
five days worth of food and water, that is a local decision.
Mr. Bachus. Is it reviewable?
Mr. Burris. Is it reviewable? I am sure every decision that
has been made in this incident will be reviewed.
Mr. Bachus. No, I mean is it reviewable prior to the case?
Mr. Burris. By the Federal Government?
Mr. Bachus. Yes.
Mr. Burris. No.
Mr. Bachus. Okay. Do you have the statutory authority to
review that and say, that is not practical?
Mr. Burris. No.
Mr. Bachus. Okay, if you review it and you see that they
are supposed to bring that, did you all anticipate that they
would not bring five days of food and water?
Mr. Burris. No, I can't say we anticipated what an
individual's actions would be. I can say that the State of
Louisiana requested that we provide food and water to that
facility for 10,000 people for 3 days, of which we did on
Sunday.
Mr. Bachus. Oh, you did just--so the water and food were--
Mr. Burris. On Sunday at 5:00 o'clock.
Mr. Shuster. The gentleman's time is expired, contrary to
the green light there. We have a malfunctioning lighting
system. It is making clock management even more difficult.
I know those questions that you are asking, Mr. Bachus, are
things that we are on the Select Committee on Katrina, we are
going through a series of those types of questions. We have not
got to that point yet, but I know we are going to be asking
many of those same kinds of questions.
Mr. Bachus. That is part of the recovery and rescue
efforts, which I thought were part of this hearing.
Mr. Shuster. There will be more focus on those things as we
move down the road.
At this time, I would like to recognize the Ranking Member,
Mr. Oberstar.
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would say to the gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Bachus, in
reviewing my notes from our Tuesday trip, I found that at
Gulfport, Mississippi, the Corps testified or told us that
their cost of removal includes costs within a 15 mile
transportation radius of the site. That included all costs. But
beyond that, it was not clear just what would be covered in
costs.
As to the magnitude of the problem, I recall, I wrote to
one of the cleanup teams, said, ``We did the cleanup in New
York City after 9/11. I can tell you, this is worse. The water
damage makes it worse.'' Further, there were 40 million cubic
yards of debris in Mississippi after Hurricane Andrew, I mean
20 million after Hurricane Andrew, 40 million cubic yards
estimated of debris after Katrina.
Clearly, the scope, the depth of the Katrina-Rita
disasters, to be fully appreciated, have to be observed in
person. Mr. Chairman, you did that a couple of weeks ago, and I
commend you for taking the time to observe first-hand. Then on
Tuesday, with Chairman Duncan and you, Mr. Chairman, and other
members of our committee, we toured Louisiana, Mississippi,
Alabama in that order, had on the ground briefings, we saw from
close-up helicopter oversight the scope, the depth, the
magnitude, the pain of this disaster.
But even before the disaster struck, and as Congress was
creating the Department of Homeland Security, I cautioned, as
did Chairman Young, against including both the Coast Guard and
FEMA in this new Department. I argued against it in committee,
together Mr. Young and I went to the Select Committee on
creating the Department and argued against including FEMA. When
the bill that came to the House floor did nonetheless include
FEMA, I offered an amendment to strike it and restore FEMA.
After seeing my worst fears realized on the screens of
television coverage of the disaster, I have drafted a bill
which I will, one I have introduced already, but it is an
enhanced version, which I will soon introduce, to restore FEMA
as a cabinet level independent agency with a director who
reports directly to the President, to establish qualifications
for that director, requiring experience in emergency management
and response, recovery, preparedness, mitigation, acts of
terrorism, to set a five year term for the director as we do
for the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration,
the legislation that I sponsored back in the 1980s.
To establish a deputy director who will be a liaison to the
Department of Homeland Security to deal with terrorism issues,
to reauthorize the pre-disaster hazard mitigation program for
another five years. Our Committee last year reported out that
legislation, brought it to the House floor. It passed the
House, nothing happened in the other body.
To allow FEMA to provide additional household repair
assistance greater than the $5,000 cap. We heard time and again
testimony in our review on Tuesday about this limitation and
the problems it creates for people. To authorize FEMA to
provide grants to State and local governments to buy emergency
interoperable communications equipment. That was the great
lesson of September 11th, 2001. Police couldn't communicate
with each other, fire units couldn't communicate with each
other, police and fire couldn't communicate with each other.
The great lesson learned of September 11th was to have
interoperable equipment and mobile emergency power equipment.
FEMA didn't do that in the aftermath of September 11th and
wasn't prepared in Katrina.
To assure that State and local governments will take into
account the needs of families with household pets and service
animals, time and again we heard the stories of people who
wouldn't leave their home because they didn't know what would
happen to their pet, they weren't assured it would be taken
care of. We should deal with that. People should not be forced
to stay behind to take care of a pet.
And restore the Davis-Bacon requirements for work being
done in the recovery effort. We shouldn't punish people, making
them work for less than the going wage in the area in order to
save money. And if you are going to do that, then at least for
heaven's sakes put a cap on the amount of profit that
corporations can earn in servicing disasters and extend
disaster unemployment assistance to a maximum of 52 weeks.
Those are elements of the bill that I will be circulating
and I ask members to take a look at it to join in sponsoring
this legislation. I am very hopeful that our Committee will
respond and move the legislation in an expeditious manner.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the Ranking Member.
Now I would like to give five minutes for questions to Mr.
Boustany.
Mr. Boustany. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for being here with us. We appreciate
your testimony and appreciate the hard work you are doing. I
represent Louisiana's Seventh Congressional District. It was
devastated by Rita, significant challenges posed by Katrina
with evacuees. So we have been living through all of this,
along with my colleague from Mississippi and others.
A couple of questions. One, I have been contacted by the
Louisiana Procurement Technical Assistance Center. They are
part of a Federal-State partnership partnering with our local
State university. It is a program to help businesses do
contracting work with the Federal Government. They basically
help businesses through the process. In my district, they are
well underway in completing a profile of all the businesses
that are hoping to provide work in this effort.
So they are very concerned right now that FEMA is simply
not utilizing this resource. Instead, other Federal employees
and agencies have been brought into the process. It seems to be
getting things started from scratch, as opposed to utilizing
this resource. Do you know this to be the case, or do you know
of contact with this entity?
Mr. Burris. No, sir, I don't know that entity specifically.
But we do try to leverage all local resources that we are aware
of. We worked with the State of Louisiana to secure their
minority business list. We distributed that minority business
list to all of the people that were doing contracting in our
field offices to ensure that they had access to that type of
information. If you will give me the name one more time, I will
take it back and make sure that we have that one as well.
Mr. Boustany. It is the Louisiana Procurement Technical
Assistance Center. My office can probably get you contact
numbers, if you like.
Mr. Burris. Thank you.
Mr. Boustany. Does the recovery division selection and
training of temporary hires with each disaster hinder the
efficiency of project approval and reimbursement process? Do we
reinvent the wheel each time with a disaster. I want to dig
into this issue of temporary hires a little bit with you.
Mr. Burris. I don't know that we reinvent the wheel each
time. We keep on our rolls around 5,000 disaster assistance
employees that we can call to provide assistance. Within that,
they are divided up into cadres that have public works
technical knowledge or they have individual assistance
knowledge. They go through training at the emergency management
institute. We provide internet training as well.
So we try to keep this cadre up to speed. It serves us well
during our normal disaster activities. In this particular
disaster, we are having to move forward in hiring many more
temporary employees than we had before, so we are having a
challenge in bringing those employees up to speed. That is the
reason we have our technical assistance contracts as well. We
rely on the private sector to provide that type of assistance.
Mr. Boustany. As I have traveled around my district, I have
seen a large degree of variation in the capability of those
working with FEMA, either temporary hires or permanent hires.
Some have the ability to make decisions that communicate well,
and in other areas we are finding deficiencies. It is creating
problems.
It is amazing, in some communities, everybody says, FEMA is
doing a great job, we are very happy. I go to another community
20 miles down the road and hear just the opposite. So I am just
looking for ways, how can we improve this process? Do you feel
comfortable with the training program? I understand the
challenge you have now of trying to really ramp up with
temporaries under difficult circumstances.
Mr. Burris. I feel comfortable with our training programs,
but what happens a lot in the field is that you will have an
individual that has a particular knowledge set, whether it is a
community relations knowledge set that is out there trying to
assist, that gets pulled into a public works debate, in which
they do not have that particular knowledge.
Unfortunately sometimes instead of extracting themselves
from those debates, they go ahead and interject what they
believe their thoughts to be, which automatically becomes
FEMA's position in a public works arena, made by somebody in
the field that wasn't down there for that. So we have those
challenges as we try to get people moved forward. Every FEMA
employee does not have the skill sets, knowledge, skills and
abilities over the broad range of our programs.
Mr. Boustany. That is exactly the case I have seen. I
talked to one FEMA employee who was part of a communication
response team who was then put in a position of having to deal
with some of the other issues. That was his complaint, he said,
please pass it on to the top that we need to correct his
problem.
In general, I know we have talked about FEMA as being under
DHS versus being an independent agency and so forth. Let's just
focus on FEMA for a minute, regardless of where it sits in the
chain. What does it need to be ready to deal with the
challenges that we are now faced with, and future challenges of
a similar magnitude? Because obviously we do have some
deficiencies.
What is it going to take? I understand money, personnel.
But what do you see for the future with FEMA as an
organization?
Mr. Burris. First, I think it is going to take our
collective wisdom to make a decision as to what type of
response this Country wants and in what time frame do they want
it. Once that decision has been made, then you can move forward
to create an organization that can meet that expectation.
Our organization was created to provide Federal assistance
within a 72 hour time frame after an event has happened and to
provide limited assistance in a lot of different areas. We are
being asked to do way beyond what we were created to do in some
forms or fashions. That in itself is the first decision, what
is that we believe in our Country is a measure for success, and
then we can build toward that.
I have to say that I believe that our Agency has done
incredible work in trying to coordinate the rescue of hundreds
of thousands of people, the distribution of a population of
around 2.4 million across 48 different States, provided 28
million meals and all of that done in a 5 day time period. We
were not created, we didn't have the assets to be what people
want to believe is successful. I believe that to be successful,
given how we are structured.
If all of that effort should have taken place in a 48 hour
time frame, instead of our 2 day time frame, then fine, then we
have to redesign what we are doing.
Mr. Boustany. I agree. The public expectation of what FEMA
can and can't do was certainly out of tune with what you have
been able to do and so forth. Do you envision a closer
collaborative effort between FEMA and Coast Guard in the first
response in dealing with these disasters? Coast Guard did an
outstanding job. I think FEMA certainly, I thought, fit within
its role. But Coast Guard has a logistical support and
capabilities. Do you see a larger role in Coast Guard working
in collaboration with FEMA?
Mr. Burris. I am sure those will be discussions that we
will get into as we evaluate all the decisions and actions that
were taken during our response.
Mr. Shuster. The gentleman's time has expired, but we are
going to do an abbreviated second round here if you have
further questions, Mr. Boustany.
I would now like to recognize Ms. Carson.
Ms. Carson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
To Mr. Burris and Mr. Skinner, thank you very much for
being here.
I have a question that you might have answered even before
I came. I had a disruption in terms of coming.
Can either of you explain how the $236 million Carnival
Cruise housing contract was awarded, and what guidelines were
in place to ensure that this and other contracts are
responsible, fair and in the best interests of those who were
affected, who needed housing and the taxpayers? While we had
three cruise ships, none were at capacity by any means. Whose
authorization was it to secure those contracts, and whether or
not they were bid and whether or not you bid contracts of that
magnitude ordinarily?
Mr. Burris. Yes, ma'am, I can speak to that. I was involved
in that one personally. The cruise ships are part of an all-
encompassing housing situation when you have a mass displaced
populace. That particular contract was not sole sourced. It was
competed. We did not have what I considered the technical
ability to procure ships, that is something that we had not
done before. We turned to the Navy to ask for their assistance
in doing such. They provided the procurement assistance in
securing the contract.
Carnival was a bidder in the contract. Originally that
contract started out to be one that was more sole source and
limited competition. After we put it into the Navy's hands and
they executed a competition, the cost of those cruise ships
came down somewhat significantly.
The cost of keeping an individual on that cruise ship is
$168 a day. They provide meals, they provide security. We
closed, all the things that people think go on on a cruise ship
are not going on on those cruise ships. There are no bars on
those cruise ships, there is no gambling on those cruise ships.
It is specifically for housing and feeding only.
And they have turned out to be an effective method in which
to do that. And they were competed, that contract was competed.
Ms. Carson. You had other bidders for the contract, you
say?
Mr. Burris. Ma'am?
Ms. Carson. You had other bidders?
Mr. Burris. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Carson. For the contract?
Mr. Burris. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Carson. So why did you award it to that group?
Mr. Burris. Because they were the lowest bid for what we
were asking for.
Ms. Carson. No negotiation to try to get the costs down?
Mr. Burris. Yes, ma'am. There was quite a bit of
negotiation on that, to the extent that those contracts
originally carried some clauses in them that wanted different
things to happen that we would not agree to. So there was
negotiation back and forth on those contracts.
Ms. Carson. You canceled the contracts?
Mr. Burris. Yes, ma'am, we can cancel the contracts at the
convenience of the Government. All of our contracts carry that
clause.
Ms. Carson. Didn't Greece offer us cruise ships for free?
Mr. Burris. Yes, ma'am, the country of Greece did offer
cruise ships. Unfortunately, those ships could not pass the
inspection certifications to operate within the U.S.
territorial waters, nor could they, it was my understanding,
they could not arrive in a timely manner had they been able to
do so.
Ms. Carson. Could you explain for me, I don't want to
belabor the point, could you explain for me the difference
between a competitive contract and a non-competitive? Is there
a cost involved in terms of making that decision?
Mr. Burris. Well, the non-competitive contract would be a
sole source contract where you went to a particular company
because they either could provide the services that you needed
and were unique in providing those services.
Most of them are contracts that are expedited or limited
competition contracts, in which we get contractors from the GSA
schedule and we do a limited contract in order to expedite the
services. We do very few sole source contracts.
Ms. Carson. So what happens now that you have canceled out
the contracts? Where do the people go?
Mr. Burris. Ma'am, we have not canceled the contract on the
cruise ship. I thought you asked me could we. We can.
Ms. Carson. I heard that you had done it. You did not
cancel Carnival's contract?
Mr. Burris. No, ma'am, I am not aware of canceling the
contract.
Ms. Carson. Do you intend to?
Mr. Burris. Not at this particular point. Where they are
being utilized, they are being utilized to house workers that
are in areas where there is just not any housing to house them
in. They have some evacuees on them. But right now, I believe
while people want to characterize them as expensive and maybe
not the appropriate thing to do, they are providing their
purpose, which is providing a facility right there where a lot
of this work has to happen and a methodology to house a lot of
the people that are doing just that, as well as evacuees.
Ms. Carson. Okay, I am going to stop here, but there is no
rationale between if I went up and wanted a cruise, $600, if
the Government, FEMA goes up, it is $2,000 or $4,000 per, is
there any reason why that discrepancy occurs in terms of its
costs?
Mr. Burris. I am not aware of those numbers. I am aware
that what happens is, when those cruise ships are fully
occupied that it costs $168 per person. Now, until they reach a
level of being fully occupied, which my understanding is it
should have been at that level this week, then you could
extrapolate up and down that the cost of the cruise ship would
be $600 or $800 per person as opposed to being fully occupied
at $168. I could see where those numbers could happen.
Ms. Carson. So you measure the cost on the occupancy
numbers?
Mr. Burris. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Carson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Ms. Carson. Mr. Blumenauer, five
minutes for questions.
Mr. Blumenauer. Thank you very much.
I am interested in how we can incentivize under these
contracts, so people will be paid for performance, not
necessarily for volume of activity. I am curious if any of
these contracts have provisions where we are reimbursing for
costs, and if they have incentives for performance that are
built in, how will they make their money? Most of their profit
is by having superior performance. And the better they perform,
the more money they get, as opposed to just units of work.
Are these provisions incorporated into contracts currently?
Are there performance indicators that are wired in?
Mr. Burris. We have performance measures in some of our
contracts. I can't characterize that all of our contracts have
them in there, but we do have them in many of our contracts.
Mr. Blumenauer. But I am saying, in terms of how people are
paid, under how many of the contracts do people get more money
based on performance and are penalized if they don't perform?
Mr. Burris. I don't have an exact number of that. I could
get that.
Mr. Blumenauer. Mr. Chairman, this is something that I am
personally keenly interested in, because we are going to be in
this business for a significant period of time and everybody
wants this to be done right. Having contracts that are written
so that people get their costs back but then performance drives
how much they make--
Mr. Shuster. If the gentleman will yield for one second,
that has been very successful the highway portion of it, both
punitive and reward. We learned down there there is a highway
contractor who got his project done 10 days earlier and gets a
million dollar bonus for getting it done, so I agree with you.
Mr. Blumenauer. I am curious about the extent to which
these can be utilized on a widespread basis.
My second question deals with end of project reports.
Oftentimes it seems that we really don't have good information
about how well particular contractors performed specifically. I
am hopeful, Mr. Chairman, our Committee might encourage or in
fact advance legislation so that part of what we are paying for
is an actual report, so it is not something that is
shortchanged or is an after-thought, but that there is an end
of project report that is given to FEMA, that is given to
Congress, that is given to the actors and actresses on the
ground.
I wondered, Mr. Skinner, if you could comment on an end of
project report mechanisms I think you know where I am going on
this: the way that they are being applied now or changes that
we need to make so that we have good information about who is
doing what, so that we can be informed for the next round of
activities.
Mr. Skinner. To my knowledge, I am not aware of us doing
after-action reports on the performance of our contractors. But
that is most certainly a very good idea, especially those
contractors that we know that we are going to have a continuing
relationship with. Not only would it help FEMA, it would help
others that may want to use these particular contractors for
similar work outside the disaster response area. That is
something that I would probably have to give a lot of thought
to as to how you would go about doing that so it is fair, and
also so it is recorded for the record, not just for FEMA use
but for Government use.
Mr. Blumenauer. Mr. Skinner, if it would be possible, I
appreciate you don't have everything on top of your head and
you are dealing with a wide range of concerns here from the
Committee, but if it would be possible to do a little
examination to find out if there are after-action or end of
project reports. I am interested if there are any that have
been incorporated. I would hope that they would and if not,
that is good to know.
Mr. Skinner. I will certainly look into that.
Mr. Blumenauer. And Mr. Chairman, if it is possible to work
to find a way that the Committee can start offering up advice
to our friends, both in the Administration and other
appropriate committees, if we think it is a good idea and we
know what is going on with performance from various
contractors, we see what works and what does not, and people
have a track record.
One of the concerns I will say is not with FEMA and
Katrina, but a problem with the Federal Government having a
short memory in terms of who performs and who does not.
Periodically we get people back in the mix who did not do a
stellar job. Institutionalizing this sort of information and
feedback seems to me something that would be valuable for us to
advance.
Mr. Shuster. I agree in your assessment. In the business
world, as the saying goes, that which gets measured gets done.
That is what you are talking about, what is the performance,
let's measure it and invite those people back to do business
again with the Government.
That is what is happening down in New Orleans. There was a
firm from Tennessee that did such a great job and came in under
budget on the contract bid that they have been asked to come
back again. Those are the kinds of things, those are the kinds
of companies we need to be engaging in these types of projects.
So I agree with you and look forward to working with you on
that.
Mr. Blumenauer. Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. There are several members that want to go for
another round of questions. We are going to do two minutes of
questions. I am going to have a swift gavel. We have other
folks here that have traveled up from the Gulf Coast to testify
here today, so we are going to go with another round of
questions.
I want to start first with a question to Mr. Burris. On the
Corps and the cadre of on-call reserve employees and the
disaster assistance employees, are we utilizing those folks? I
met with the former FEMA, in the last Administration, who led
me to believe he didn't think they were being utilized to their
full capacity. I wonder if you could comment on that.
Mr. Burris. Eighty percent of our cadre is deployed into
the field.
Mr. Shuster. They are? Eighty percent of Corps or both?
Mr. Burris. All of them. They are all Stafford Act
employees. Within the Stafford Act, you have Corps employees,
DAEs, disaster term hires, there are many different
classifications under the Stafford Act. We have employed many
of our employees down there from all categories. I am sure that
the Representative's problem with that REP report not being
back is that our REP employees are in the field as well.
Mr. Shuster. What employees?
Mr. Burris. REP, radiological emergency preparedness
employees. This is an all hands on deck disaster for us.
Mr. Shuster. What are those numbers of the Corps and the
Rep and the DAE--
Mr. Burris. We have approximately 800 Corps employees and
around 4,000 or so DAEs on our rolls. That has been greatly
expanded at this point that we have around 10,000 currently
that have been hired, all total, combination against this
disaster.
Mr. Shuster. For Katrina?
Mr. Burris. Yes.
Mr. Shuster. How does that compare with pre-9/11/01? Do we
have less people overall? Do we have more?
Mr. Burris. There is a cap on the number of cadres,
employees you can have. We have not exceeded that cap in years.
Mr. Shuster. Is that something you think we ought to
increase, that cap? These are part-time folks, right?
Mr. Burris. Yes, but it costs money to have them on the
rolls. You have to pay the National Finance Center to keep
their employee records, whether they are deployed or not. There
is a certain amount of dollars that goes to per employee,
whether they ever deployed. That is the reason for the cap.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you. I now yield to Ms. Norton two
minutes.
Ms. Norton. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that all
members of this Committee have an opportunity to submit
additional questions for the record.
Mr. Shuster. Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. Norton. And I hope that will not be included in my
time.
Mr. Burris, you know that the main problem facing the
Mississippi towns and Louisiana is to get a tax base back. I
learned that the usual low interest loans that many small
businesses can't afford to take because they don't want and
can't absorb more debt was not all that was available after 9/
11 in New York, that there were some small business grants to
small business.
Will small business grants be available to small businesses
in the Gulf region?
Mr. Burris. Through FEMA or through the Small Business
Administration? I don't know the Small Business
Administration's programs.
Ms. Norton. You don't know whether they--a member from New
York informed me that the grants were available. I don't know
through whom. You do not know if grants were made in New York
after 9/11 as opposed to the usual FEMA low-interest loans?
That is why I asked the question.
Mr. Burris. I am not aware.
Ms. Norton. Okay, let me go on. If you are not aware, this
is very important, it seems to me, for the Committee to bear in
mind.
Two, I believe it was you, Mr. Burris, that mentioned
something called specialized housing assistance. Specialized
housing assistance for evacuees. I would like to know what that
entails. We have seen very troubling reports of these trailer
parks. In good faith, you put trailer parks up. And you are
doing it again. I need to know who polices these trailer parks.
Why is it that some communities don't even want them because of
the experience in Florida and elsewhere?
Mr. Burris. The policing and services are the
responsibility of the local government, for which we reimburse.
There is--
Ms. Norton. Would that include hiring extra police, if
necessary, to make sure that the problems that you have had in
trailer parks in Florida and elsewhere do not arise again?
Mr. Burris. That would be correct, yes, ma'am.
Ms. Norton. Let me ask you about a very interesting
proposal of the President for homestead, the old homestead
notion, where in order to draw back residents and to promote
ownership and entrepreneurship. As I heard him, he said,
Federal land would be available. So I have to ask, what land?
Are we talking about land in New Orleans or Mississippi or
Alabama? Are we talking only about Federal land? Are we talking
about the Federal Government buying land and then homesteading
it out to residents of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana?
Mr. Burris. I am not aware of that program.
Ms. Norton. Would you respond to the questions I have just
asked by written response, then? We need to know what may be
possible here.
Mr. Burris. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Norton. One final--yes, I'm sorry?
Mr. Burris. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Norton. One final question. It seems unlikely that
anybody is going to rebuild without insurance, near or not so
near to where the flooding and hurricane took place. I am not
sure whether most of these people were included in the National
Flood Insurance Program, and what FEMA is doing to facilitate
the insurance contact with victims. Could you tell us something
about that?
Mr. Burris. Yes. We are working to expedite the insurance
claims process and the flood insurance program. Our flood
insurance administrator has met with all of our underwriting
companies that do that to ensure that these, that we move
forward.
Ms. Norton. Is anybody paying claims, Mr. Burris?
Mr. Burris. Are we paying them?
Ms. Norton. Is anybody paying claims?
Mr. Burris. Yes. We are paying claims on a daily basis. To
my knowledge, we have already paid, let's see, 178,000 claims
have been paid for a total of $172 million.
Ms. Norton. In what jurisdictions?
Mr. Burris. That is in all, for Hurricane Katrina.
Ms. Norton. Would you please get that information to the
Chairman so we can know in what jurisdictions insurance claims
have been paid.
Mr. Shuster. The gentlelady's time has expired, and I know
that is a big problem. I know we talked about that in
Mississippi. There are some hold-ups down there with insurance.
That is going to be a huge question as we move down the road,
how we address that problem.
With that, I yield, Mr. Bachus is up, two minutes, Mr.
Bachus.
Mr. Bachus. Thank you. The President has proposed a 5,000
individual recovery account for child care and job training.
When are we going to receive the legislative proposal on this?
Mr. Burris. We haven't received the language on the bill
yet. But we will take that back and I will make sure we forward
that as soon as we can.
Mr. Bachus. Because it will require legislation, I guess,
under the Stafford Act.
Mr. Burris. That is correct.
Mr. Bachus. And also the new housing plan for disaster
victims, it is my understanding that may require legislation. I
am also on Financial Services. I guess my question there, will
you be requesting legislative changes for that?
Mr. Burris. We are evaluating legislative changes
currently.
Mr. Bachus. Okay. There is a cruise ship, the Holiday, in
Mobile. It was part of our cruise ship industry that brought in
probably 2,000 tourists a week. It was an important source of
revenue. As you know, Mobile was flooded during the hurricane
and incurred a great deal of cost.
Before you all contracted to pull that ship out of Mobile,
which did create tremendous hardships, it is actually still in
Mobile, but it is not doing cruise business because it is
waiting on the docks to be repaired in Gulfport. But it is tied
up for the next six months out of service to the cruise
industry.
Did you all create with the local folks back in Mobile
about the impact that would have on their local economy?
Mr. Burris. No, sir.
Mr. Bachus. Do you think that in the future it would be
wise to consult with the local authorities before you pull that
type of cruise ship out? Was that factored into your equation?
Mr. Burris. That wasn't factored into our decision, no,
sir.
Mr. Bachus. Are you aware, have you heard complaints that
it is causing a financial hardship?
Mr. Burris. Yes, sir, I have heard complaints to that
effect.
Mr. Bachus. Is there any consideration, since that ship is
not being used, and may not be used, is there any consideration
for releasing it back?
Mr. Burris. To my knowledge, that ship is being used and--
Mr. Bachus. Presently, there are less than 300 people on
it. It is a ship for 1,500.
Mr. Burris. I will check into it. But again, the
information I have is it is being used.
Mr. Bachus. If the city could come up with better housing
for those 300 people that may be in it, would you at least
review that and consider it?
Mr. Burris. Yes, sir.
Mr. Bachus. Thank you.
The cell phones went out right after this hurricane. Of
course, the internet did, and radio communications. In the
future, have you all made any changes in your recovery program
or your relief program to account for the communications system
going down?
Mr. Burris. In our recovery program, we provide disaster
recovery centers. We try to put them out into areas that
utilize our communications system, which is satellite based and
powered under its own power. Part of the communications problem
at the local level is that that type of technology is not down
at the local level, the kind of Federal technology that we
utilize.
So we try to make it easily available to access
communications through the DRCs.
Mr. Bachus. I understand. I guess what I am saying, the
whole communications system went down, cell phones and
everything. Are you all factoring that into future events of
this nature?
Mr. Burris. We are factoring it into future planning for
the purposes of emergency communications, yes, sir.
Mr. Bachus. You are aware of all the reports of the
fundamental breakdown of communication.
Mr. Burris. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shuster. The gentleman's time has expired. Mr. Burris,
the question on those cruise ships, what I have been reading
us, it is a pretty good deal if you have full capacity.
Mr. Burris. If it is full capacity, yes, sir.
Mr. Bachus. But people decided they didn't want to stay on
a cruise ship for that long.
Mr. Burris. There have been several different--you can't
just--in the Texas incident originally, early on, people didn't
want to get on it, rightfully so. They had been evacuated and
they were afraid they were going to lose their spot in the
shelter if they had gotten on. Since that time, we have
completely reevaluated how we use those. We let those ships, a
couple of those ships, we said, okay, this city, you can use it
and you direct all that.
It is now being directed at the Federal level as to who
gets to use those cruise ships, not at the local level. I feel
comfortable we will be at capacity if we are not there already
this week.
Mr. Bachus. As of last week, there were, actually I was
down there on Tuesday. As of Tuesday, it was less than a fifth
occupied.
Mr. Burris. The problem with that particular cruise ship is
that ship is supposed to be over in the Mississippi area--
Mr. Bachus. Gulfport.
Mr. Burris. Right. They are trying to dredge the canals to
get it into the port. We have been trying to get Mississippi
residents to come over and get on the ship. We have done a
little bit of that and--
Mr. Bachus. No, no, no. I guess you are missing my point. I
understand all that, and really it is going to be months before
it can be moved because of the dredging and the port facilities
getting ready, or weeks anyway. But what I guess I am saying,
before it was taken out of line, was there any consideration
for letting it continue to operate at Mobile? In fact, that is
the main source of their airport, because of that. Their main
traffic in and out of that airport is destination traffic.
This is actually the county in Alabama which took the
biggest hit. And you took away its biggest source of revenue.
And it is not being utilized. That is what I am saying. And I
am just saying, if you could talk to these people and see if
other arrangements could be made. What they are telling me is,
we will go out and get a hotel, we will go out and get a motel,
we will find better accommodations for these people, better
accommodations at far less the price if you can get that ship
released.
Mr. Burris. I will have it evaluated.
Mr. Shuster. Maybe we can get back in writing as to his
question.
Mr. Oberstar, two minutes for questions.
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just one question. Are you familiar with the Jones Act
waivers issued in the course of the aftermath of Katrina?
Mr. Burris. No, sir.
Mr. Oberstar. There were waivers from the Jones Act issued
by the Department and approved by the White House on claim of
requirement for capacity to move goods among U.S. ports. But
since those waivers were issued, we have learned that there is
substantial U.S. flag capacity to accommodate whatever goods
and people movement may have been necessary or may still be
necessary. I would like to have a report from FEMA on the
causation of the Jones Act waivers and action to engage foreign
ownership vessels in the aftermath of those waivers.
Mr. Burris. Yes, sir.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Oberstar.
Two minutes to Mr. Blumenauer.
Mr. Blumenauer. Thank you. And I apologize that I had a
meeting that I could not reschedule if I am plowing ground that
has already been covered by the Committee. I am curious if
there is an overall plan under which the spending and the
recovery is taking place.
Mr. Burris. Let me characterize what I think an overall
plan would be, I guess. We have an ESF-14, which is a long term
recovery planning effort, that is mostly State-centric to the
States, where we have our partners from the Commerce Department
and other departments assist in the evaluation of when we make
decisions on projects that will affect the economic development
of an impacted area and how do those projects interact with
that.
FEMA is not in the business of economic development and
providing grants for economic development. Our grant program is
for the restoration of the public infrastructure. However, in
doing that, we certainly recognize that that does have an
impact on the future economic development of an area. And
because of that, we have this planning group.
Mr. Blumenauer. Mr. Chairman, part of what was interesting
to me as I interviewed some of our senior members on the
Appropriations Committee, to whom the $62.5 billion request
went and flowed out, was that they made the same inquiry. They
indicated to the best of their knowledge they were not aware of
an overall plan under which we could see where the money was
going, what it was actually for.
I am interested in getting a sense from somebody if, and I
appreciate you don't do particular economic development
planning, that is not FEMA's job, when we are spending $10
million an hour or more, do we have an overall plan about
prioritization, how the money flows, what we expect to receive
for what. I don't want to put you on the spot now, but if you
can help us understand as soon as possible what would be the
closest approximation to a plan that would tell us how the
$62.5 billion has been allocated, obligated and spent, would be
of great interest.
Mr. Shuster. I thank the gentleman. Some of that answer I
think came from Admiral Allen on Tuesday when he talked about
his three priorities are housing, debris removal and assistance
to folks. That is where the bulk of it I think is going right
now. There are some estimates out there that debris removal
alone could be $50 billion, $40 billion to $50 billion.
Mr. Blumenauer. Which is why having a couple of objectives,
important objectives that we can all agree on, does not
translate into a plan.
Mr. Shuster. Right.
Mr. Blumenauer. I have had a group of people from my
community who have gone down with a proposal to recycle
building materials, something that I saw happen in the tsunami
region. Two weeks after the tsunami, 20,000 people were at
work. We have historic things in New Orleans, for example, that
have great value that shouldn't be lost. Preserving them would
be very labor intensive and would be part of a plan for
recovery. If we are just going in and doing massive demolition
and removal, for instance, there is no way to get hold of
things like that.
Mr. Shuster. Right. Thank you.
Mr. Taylor.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, gentlemen, for sticking around.
Three quick ones, and I am sure you are going to have to get
back to me.
At what point can you and will FEMA recompete the debris
removal contracts? I do understand the need to act immediately
after the storm to get the roads cleared. I am not busting your
chops about that. But we are getting a bit more normal and some
people still think that $16 a yard is too much to be paying one
month after the fact.
Second thing, what is the target date for fulfilling the
requirement for trailers for peoples' housing? Again, I am told
that we have requested 20,000 just for south Mississippi, that
about 2,000 of that has been fulfilled. That leaves 18,000. So
what is your target date for fulfilling that 20,000
requirement?
The third thing is, when you went out for the request for
proposals for the cruise ships, did that include American flag
vessels, like the Delta Queen, the Mississippi Queen? Did you
bother to speak with the Maritime Administration and see if
they had anything? For example, a couple coastal cruisers were
repossessed in the wake of 9/11 that became part of the Federal
Maritime Administration's fleet. Did you look there?
Interestingly enough, the 3rd August edition of Boats and
Harbors, which is a trade publication, advertised a 900 person
floating barracks barge in the last weeks of August. Did anyone
bother to look and to see its availability and its cost
compared to the cruise ship contract?
Mr. Burris. Let me answer number one, which is, all of our
contracts that were ``non-competed'' or were expedited are
going to be re-bid.
Mr. Taylor. When, sir?
Mr. Burris. That process is currently underway with some of
our larger technical assistance contracts. I will have to get
with my senior procurement official to see what the schedule of
that is.
Mr. Taylor. But you will get back to me on that?
Mr. Burris. Yes, sir.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you.
Mr. Burris. But all of those will be re-bid.
As far as the target date for the trailers, I will have to
get hold of our field offices in Mississippi and determine what
they believe that target date is and get back with you on that.
Before I answer the last question, I would like to
characterize a little bit what our agency is up against. It has
been characterized here and alluded to that somehow we don't
watch after the Federal dollars like we should. Let me say that
while expedited assistance and providing funds in an expedited
manner is not not compatible with keeping our fiduciary
responsibilities with the Federal tax dollars, there is a lot
of tension in there over following what everybody believes to
be--
Mr. Taylor. Mr. Burris, I am sorry to interrupt. I am not
busting your chops.
Mr. Burris. I understand that.
Mr. Taylor. I was down there, I saw the immediate need to
do something. I am just asking that, in your capacity, did you
ever call the Maritime Administration and ask them what they
had available already within the Government for fulfilling this
need?
Mr. Burris. I can say that I didn't feel like we had the
expertise to execute a ship contract. We asked the Navy to do
that for us. The Navy contracted--
Mr. Taylor. Did you contact the Maritime Administration?
Mr. Burris. I don't know whether the Navy contacted them or
not, but I didn't. We asked the Navy to do that procurement for
us.
Mr. Taylor. All right.
Mr. Burris. Let me finish my statement here on that. The
men and women that work in my procurement divisions and our
financial divisions take their responsibility seriously.
They also understand that we have to get in there, get it
done and do it quickly. We have not had a standoffish
relationship with our IG's office. We have invited them in as a
partner on this thing, when we saw we were dealing with
billions of dollars up front. We have created strike teams to
go out and address these things. We are being as proactive as
we can to stop waste, fraud and abuse in any of these programs.
But there is this tension of, I have to act on somebody's
request by 6:00 o'clock in the evening and so--
Mr. Taylor. Cutting to a quick end. If members of this
Committee, members of the general public can show you in any of
these instances a better way to do something, can you reassure
me that you are not locked into contracts?
Mr. Burris. I can assure you that we are not locked into
the contracts that we currently have.
Mr. Taylor. In each instance, be it trailers, be it the
ships?
Mr. Burris. Yes, sir.
Mr. Taylor. Be it debris removal?
Mr. Burris. That is correct.
Mr. Taylor. Okay, thank you.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. One final question, and
you don't have to answer it now. But I hear there was a report
that firemen from Phoenix tried to get into New Orleans, and
they were accompanied by Federal marshals, and they were
rejected from coming in because they had, the Federal marshals
had sidearms, and the Phoenix fire department was bringing them
in with them. Is that a fact?
Mr. Burris. That is not exactly accurate.
Mr. Shuster. It was reported on the national television. So
I understand that it may be not be accurate.
If you could give to me some time later, if you can get
somebody to call us.
Mr. Burris. I can give you all the details on that, yes,
sir.
Mr. Shuster. Okay. We can do that at a later point. I want
to move on. I want to again thank you very much for coming in
today. You have been here for two and a half hours or so. I
appreciate your taking the time. I would encourage you, as Mr.
Taylor has said, there are other ideas out there, there are
other ways of getting things done that may be more effective,
more efficient.
I would encourage you to streamline things, push those
decisions down to the people in the field to let them make
those decision. I think we can do as good or better a job of
getting some of these problems handled earlier, instead of
going through the gyrations that we sometimes have to.
So again, thank you very much. You are excused.
Next up we will hear from our esteemed colleague from
Louisiana, Congressman Richard Baker. We appreciate his
accompanying us yesterday in New Orleans.
I just want to make a quick comment. I talked to the media
after that, and my comments were carried quite widely that I
think I stated the obvious, we certainly want to go about the
rebuilding of New Orleans using common sense. If there are
places below sea level, I think it is only right to question
whether we should be spending Federal dollars to rebuild.
One thing they did not carry is I also said if someone
gives me any compelling argument, that I would rethink a lot of
that. I think you were one of those people that yesterday, or
two days ago, they carried this comment, that there are parts
of New Orleans that are absolutely essential to our national
economy, shipping grain out of the port, the energy sector,
those types of things.
So I just wanted to say publicly that I am looking for that
compelling argument. But I certainly know that my constituents
and constituents in 430 or so other Congressional districts
want to make sure we go about this in the right way and don't
do things that don't follow a line of common sense, or try to
just disrupt the laws of physics or nature.
So with that, I would recognize my colleague from Louisiana
for a statement.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE RICHARD BAKER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA
Mr. Baker. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for this courtesy that
you have extended. I also thank you and the members of the
Subcommittee who ventured to Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama
this past week to view with your own eyes the consequences of
these terrible storms.
I also want to respond to your kind comment and say that we
of the Louisiana delegation have visited frequently and talked
a great deal about the need for accountability. On all
occasions, when expressing our appreciation to this Congress
and to the great people of this Country for their extraordinary
generosity, that we owe it and we understand we owe it to be
fully accountable and transparent in whatever steps that are
taken going forward, and that we also have to balance that
accountability to you and the taxpayer with our appropriate
responsibilities to those victims of Katrina and Rita to ensure
to the best of our abilities this circumstance does not occur
again.
There are some things that I have observed in the course of
the aftermath that I thought would be helpful for the Committee
to hear in addition to those points made at the Committee's
last meeting in Baton Rouge. FEMA is by its nature an emergency
response organization. It is not a permanent rebuilding
organization, as Mr. Blumenauer's questions were pointed as to
the overall costs, for example, of just debris removal. I am
hopeful that we get to a point where we have an overall plan
for the entire recovery that makes sense over time, not merely
moving to the question of getting the trees off the power lines
or getting the roads cleared to travel, but getting communities
in a position with their own resources and hard work to begin
the important business of functioning.
Secondly, it is important to recognize that for the
criticisms I may make of FEMA, FEMA's mission is ultimately
defined by this Congress. We have the obligation to examine the
manner by which they function, to look at the statutory
constraints under which they operate and make clear we
certainly want quick and responsible assistance for people in
need, but we also need to look at it from the bottom line
perspective as well.
I will give just an example of some of the concerns that
have come about in the aftermath. Much pressure has been
applied to get emergency housing as quickly as is possible to
anyone who is found to be a qualified victim of the disaster.
Certainly that is a laudable goal.
In the case of Baker, Louisiana, and I have no familial
relation with the city of Baker, that is another story. But in
the case of Baker, Louisiana, there is now on the ground a very
nice, professionally accomplished project of about 250 trailers
which people will begin to occupy probably this week. The
project life is anticipated to be about two years for the stay
of the evacuees at that location.
The typical price per unit for trailers is running from
$22,000 to $25,000 per unit in very large acquisitions. There
is a cost to locate those trailers on the site, either by long
term lease or by purchase of the land outright. In some cases,
necessary adjustments to infrastructure, whether water, sewer
or other utilities, may need to be implemented to facilitate
the location of the trailers. Operationally, there is cost
associated with security on-site, as well as other services
which may be deemed appropriate.
In the case of the Baker site, it is located away from the
city by some distance. It is not walking distance to local
services. There will be the need to deploy buses in order to
move personnel from the site to get essential services and
return. There is not job training located on the site for those
wanting to go back and help rebuild their communities.
If you were to take the total cost per trailer and divide
it by the 24 months to get a per-month operating cost, it would
certainly exceed $1,000 a month. In some cases, $1,500, $1,600
per month.
It would seem logical to me, as an alternative strategy,
knowing that the rental market in the community is full, that
with the emergency FEMA assistance of $2,000, and by the way,
FEMA also has the authority to pay relocation costs, they could
fly a family of four to Wyoming, for example, if they had
family there. But with the $2,000 emergency money, the FEMA
relocation money, which has already been deployed, you could
find rental opportunities for families somewhere in this
Country that would be close to services or perhaps close to job
training or perhaps even the miracle of a job for $1,000 a
month or less.
So in examining the deployment of resources to date, it
starts, Mr. Chairman, with a contract, I believe, for $237
million with one vendor for trailers, all the way down the line
to Uncle Bob's, where we might be just buying five, because
that's all he has. But we are buying every trailer that will
roll anywhere in America and deploying them into regions where
we do not yet know where we will have sites that are adequate
to meet FEMA's needs.
FEMA's needs, however, are not the needs I reflect: job
training, job opportunity. They are site-specific needs, and
will the site accommodate the number of trailers being acquired
and do they have the resources there to meet local codes in
providing customary sewer, water and utilities.
It may not be possible in all cases to match every evacuee
with a temporary home in close proximity to work. But it has to
be possible for some. The Port of Orleans is critical. We are
now into the Nation's grain harvest in the midwest. One of the
limiting factors in an efficient working port is that we don't
have the employees. I know they have to be out there somewhere.
But perhaps we could train people in the interim, move them
into trailers in proximity to their employment, and let that
family earn some money.
I have determined that money really helps families be
mobile, not mobile homes. So if our goal is to get people on
their feet and get them back into the working economy, we need
to train them and employ them.
Among the folks I speak to at the evacuation centers, they
are desperate to go back home, and they are desperate to get
their jobs back, or any job. No one enjoys living in an
evacuation center. I suspect after folks are in these trailers
for a few months, they are going to be just as anxious to get
out of there, with nowhere to go. We really need to think
carefully through the deployment of taxpayer money in creating
trailer cities which don't have the logistical ability to get
people back working and on their feet.
There is another example of concern that I was personally
involved with, relating to the activities of a local sheriff's
department. The morning after the event occurred, many local
officials were deploying resources out for search and rescue
which was maintained for about a four day period. The morning
after, the sheriff of the Ascension Parish sheriff's office
operated a facility known as Lamar Dixon, which became an
unofficial staging area for about 70 different law enforcement
entities to come together, where they were fed, geared up and
deployed with boats down into the flooded areas. This happened
on a daily basis.
The second morning the sheriff came to me and said, we need
to do this work, but I want to make sure I do not get in any
legal difficulty with my constituents by spending money today
in this emergency search and rescue for which I am not going to
be reimbursed. I said, I will find out. There appeared to be
some confusion, but I was ultimately told, yes, this could be a
reimbursable event.
I should have known better. I am a Louisiana politician,
and you parse your words carefully. The sheriff then called and
said, okay, where do I send my bill to, speaking to FEMA, and
was told, that is not a reimbursable item. The sheriff called
me back and said, I thought you told me that this was
reimbursable. Sheriff, I was told it could be reimbursable. And
then we hit on it, the word could. It didn't mean it would be,
just meant it could be.
Then we found out that for the sheriff to get recovery, he
shouldn't bill FEMA, he had to bill each jurisdiction into
which his personnel went when they did the search and rescue.
As for example, if they were searching and rescuing in the
Parish of Orleans, they had to send the bill to the city of
parish of Orleans to be reimbursed.
Well, the problem with that in this case is the Mayor just
laid off 3,000 non-essential personnel last week. That is all
the accountants and the mail openers. I am told if we don't get
them some help, the Mayor is likely to announce the dismissal
of the other 3,000 essential employees next week and the city
will be without municipal government.
Now, I have to ask the question. How likely is it the
sheriff of Ascension is going to get reimbursed from the Parish
of Orleans or the city when we are in such financial duress?
The sheriff acted in good faith. He raised the issue in a
timely manner. He was told by FEMA at a personal meeting with
me and a FEMA official that he would be reimbursed. To date, to
my knowledge, the sheriff is still looking for reimbursement.
This can be replicated in many, many governmental locality
relationships with this disaster, people acting in good faith
to do what they thought was their appropriate duty and finding
at the end of the day there are liabilities which will appear
to go unpaid.
As to the steps that this Committee might take in analyzing
and redirecting FEMA's emergency role, I will simply say, there
must be a responder of a nature like FEMA. And I cannot sing
too highly the praises of the men and women of the National
Guard, some 46,000 strong at one point in Louisiana, did
remarkable work. That military command and control at the
outset would have made it a great deal easier for our first
responders to have engaged in work in a safe and responsible
manner.
But there still must be an entity, FEMA-like. I don't care
what you call it. But it needs to be given clear authority and
responsibility to act in times of national disaster and bring
critical needed assistance to people in the most reasonable
manner possible.
However, moving beyond FEMA, I believe there is going to be
a long term need for a permanent reconstruction, which is not
the role of the FEMA organization. I and the members of the
Louisiana delegation will introduce this week the likelihood of
a bill that reaches out beyond the current need of FEMA and
looks at a more appropriate, longer term structure to help and
assist with the long term rebuilding.
It will start, Mr. Chairman, with the reconstruction of a
stable and secure levee system built to a category 5 storm. It
will deal with the environmental remediation now necessary to
get large tracts of property available for commercial use. It
will require at some point, once made available, the sale of
large assets to the private sector for redevelopment, so the
taxpayers can see some money being returned to them at the end
of the day.
I will discuss in more detail the recommended plan, but
would urge the Committee members to take a careful look and
would certainly ask for your support.
Finally, I have been working with Mr. Ney, Chairman of
House Administration, to establish a House intranet, the
purpose of which is to allow members who have resources or
capabilities that they would like to see deployed into the
disaster area be able to post those on that web page, and for
those of us in the affected areas, to match up those volunteer
efforts with local officials who may need assistance. Mr.
Radanovich, for example, wrote me and said he had a number of
mayors in his communities that wanted to donate surplus
equipment, fire trucks, police cards, anything that would be
functional and of some use to these small towns which have
literally nothing left.
Under the House Ethics Rules, there is a concern that
utilization of official resources for charitable solicitations
would be in violation. I have been requested in moving this
resolution forward to ask members on both sides of the aisle,
in and out of the affected area, to sign on to a letter that I
will present to the leadership asking for immediate
consideration of this resolution.
I have had any number of members, and again let me say
thank you to each of you, it has really been quite something to
have as many people come up to you and say, I have this and I
would like to help, how can I do it. The B part of that has
been, we have offered it through the formal process, either
FEMA or some other mechanism and we have been unable to get
closure on how to make this donation.
I think we as policy leaders ought to be able to get this
worked out where we can just communicate directly with each
other. I will be happy to give the names, phone numbers and
addresses of the mayors, the police jurors, the sheriffs and
let the professionals work out a transaction that will be
ultimately very helpful to people at very little cost.
So my last ask, Mr. Chairman, is that the Committee
consider going on to this letter of request that would enable
us to waive the House ethics provisions that would constrain
these charitable activities from being engaged on an official
site of the House. With that, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the
courtesy of the time extended.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you. And as always, you have some great
observations and ideas. The trailer cities, I think we know
that it is best, communities are best served if their folks can
get close to home and start to get back to some normalcy in
their life, not that they are going to be normal, but starting
to. The situation with your sheriff, I have witnessed that
first hand over in Escambia County in Pensacola, the Ivan
hurricane, where people were told things and then two days
later, two weeks later, the story changed. I think that comes
down to a lack of trained personnel with FEMA. We have to do
something to make sure we have people that know what the rules
are, so we are giving sheriffs and local emergency folks the
right answers.
On your final point there, with an intranet system, I know
we have tried to go through FEMA to figure out what folks in my
district could do. We ended up talking to Mr. Boustany and he
and I coordinated and we were able to get a truckload or so of
items down there. But it was through that contact that we were
able to do that. So that makes a lot of sense.
You bring the Country all together right here in
Washington, we ought to be able to do those things. It doesn't
make any sense in a situation like this, the ethics process
isn't clear anyway to many of us. So that is something I would
look forward to working with you on.
I don't have any questions, I don't know if Mr. Blumenauer
has any questions.
Mr. Blumenauer. I appreciate your bringing it home in a
very practical way. It is very useful and I share our Chair's
indication that it would be great to sign up on your letter
internally, and then all roll up our sleeves and look at the
big picture.
Mr. Baker. Terrific. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Shuster. Mr. Bachus.
Mr. Bachus. Congressman, you have gone into some detailed
example, the sheriff in getting reimbursement. As you know, New
Orleans, Gulfport, Biloxi, Waveland, all along the Mississippi
coast, these communities, they have lost much of their tax
base. A lot of it will not be coming back this year or even
next. Their revenue streams, various revenue streams are gone.
Do you see the need for any legislation or changes in FEMA
procedures on reimbursing cities and towns that really just
cannot employ their police and their fire? I know under the
Stafford Act they can get reimbursed for overtime. But that is
not going to begin to do it. Do you have any suggestions?
Mr. Baker. Thanks for the question, and thanks for being
there in the district on Tuesday as well.
Yes, I don't know how to streamline it. I am sure there are
people on the Committee that could come up with a methodology
that would make some sense. But the processes which you must go
through today, and frankly whether it is HUD, FEMA, just
generally the bureaucratic process of making application, tends
to be a 30 day cycle at best, 45, logically, 60 days is not
uncustomary.
I understand it in the normal course of business where you
are really not sure what the person may be asking for, you are
not really sure what they are going to do with the money. We
have a responsibility to do our due diligence to protect the
taxpayers' money.
In this case, you could answer those questions with a short
helicopter trip. Send down a team of all the agencies, let them
fly over, do a damage assessment, do it by mapping, maybe with
GPS, draw up a map and if you are located in area code XYZ, and
you are the mayor of that community and you write in and say,
here is my operating budget from last year, we raised and we
spent, we need 30 days of that at least to get by, that ought
to be out the door. That ought not be necessary if it is a
public official using publicly reported income to ask for one-
twelfth of that year's income to hold his government together.
During that 30, maybe make it 60 days, teams could come
down and do a further assessment. I am running into that
problem now with various bills we are trying to move through
the process. I have actually had folks ask, well, why do you
need this money and where is it going. I understand that is the
normal way we do things, is to ask those questions. But when
your mayor is on the evening news laying off half his employees
this week and announcing he is laying off all his employees
next week, and the city has no revenue stream period, it would
seem that would be sufficient justification for extraordinary
assistance.
So I think the current constraints of the statutory
provisions and the concerns that any person in the bureaucracy
would have of automatically sending money out without doing
what is required, they have legal liabilities attached to that.
But there ought to be something, whether it is a FEMA-
administered program or some other mechanism where a local
government official, maybe as a result of a presidential
disaster declaration, with a mappable confirmation and you know
the community has lost 50 percent of its housing and maybe all
of its jobs, something out to go out the door.
I regret to tell the Committee that we have any number of
communities, I mean a large number of communities, that will be
some years before they get to where they used to be. That is
saying a lot. I think it may have been your discussion, Mr.
Bachus, I overheard someone talking about the cost of debris
removal and how it varied from $6 to $26. The last count in
tonnage, which has been updated as of the end of last week, was
77 million cubic yards of debris. That is enough to fill 250
football fields 50 feet deep. Now, we don't know where we are
going to put it quite yet.
The second part of the observation is that people haven't
started tearing out the insides of the flooded homes and
putting the refrigerators--there are thousands of automobiles.
All that has to be disposed of.
Now, all that has to be taken care of before you can really
restore normal public function. So we are talking about a long
time. So we are going to be around here for a long time asking
for a whole lot of help. I hope we don't wear out our welcome.
Thank you.
Mr. Bachus. As you say, if you lay off the accounting
department in a city or county, at the very time when the
demands on them are actually--
Mr. Baker. Yes, my sheriff can mail the letter, but I am
not sure exactly who is going to write the check.
Mr. Bachus. I believe in the case of some of these cities,
Camden, Louisiana and others, we have to act immediately. Even
a loan has to be paid back with interest. I think, Congressman
Baker, you mentioned that New Orleans and Louisiana may have
been placed on credit watch.
Mr. Baker. Yes. Standard and Poors, Moody's and Fitch have
all put Louisiana, the State, Orleans Parish, on a negative
credit watch. It would make our ability to raise funds much
more difficult. At least we would have to go into the debt
markets at a much higher price than customary. The debt load of
the State already was significant.
So these are not developments that are helping us to help
ourselves. Let me add that point, and emphasize it, we want to
do this as best we can on our own. We are not trying to avert
our own obligations. We are not asking folks to give us money
and walk away. We need to get our jobs back so we can pay those
taxes and support our government. We know the long term future
of Louisiana will come only when we have rebuilt properly, with
a secure levee system and evacuation routes that get us out of
harm's way when these storms eventually do come.
But we are accustomed to and expect accountability. Any
oversight this Committee or the Congress chooses to place on
any assistance granted is absolutely understood.
Mr. Bachus. I appreciate it. I want to commend you for your
package of financial service legislation that you have authored
in respect to this to try to keep our financial institutions
viable, to allow customers who have lost their homes some
consideration.
Mr. Baker. And thank you for your courtesies in helping on
Financial Services and moving this critical legislation through
the process. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Shuster. We need to wrap up. We have some locals here
that are worrying about flights.
I just want to say two updates to you about the Stafford
Act. This Committee believes that the President, actually FEMA
stated here today that the straight time versus the overtime
situation, that is not written into the Stafford Act. That is a
policy that they have adopted over the years.
So that can be changed. The President, FEMA can change
that, and we are urging them to do that to help with those
bills, with the emergency pay for straight time instead of just
overtime.
Second, we are trying to work out a deal with the
appropriators as we speak on the community disaster loan
program, lift the cap and get that money out to them. So we are
working on that.
Mr. Baker. Yes, sir, I was just in the anteroom talking to
the Appropriations Committee staff about it. We are not there
yet, but we hope to get it across the line. Thank you very
much, sir.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you. We appreciate your being here
today.
With that, we will get our third panel up. Governor Wise,
why don't you get in the first chair. Governor Wise, Mr.
Rodriguez, Mr. Buckley, Ms. Kilgore and Mr. Ashwood. We
appreciate all of your being here today.
We will start with Governor Wise. I first want to welcome
Governor Wise here. He is no stranger to this room. He served
in the House of Representatives for 18 years, he served on this
Committee and he was the Chairman of this Subcommittee at one
point. So it is great to welcome you back and we look forward
to hearing your testimony. We will get started with you,
Governor Wise, and you can excuse yourself whenever you see
fit.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE BOB WISE, PRESIDENT, ALLIANCE FOR
EXCELLENT EDUCATION; HENRY ``JUNIOR'' RODRIGUEZ, PRESIDENT, ST.
BERNARD PARISH; KENT W. BUCKLEY, DIRECTOR, BOLIVAR COUNTY
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, BOLIVAR COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI;
JANICE R. KILGORE, CEM, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY,
ESCAMBIA COUNTY, FLORIDA; ALBERT ASHWOOD, VICE PRESIDENT,
NATIONAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION AND DIRECTOR,
OKLAHOMA DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
Mr. Wise. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and it is a very
important hearing.
I also want to thank you for this panel, because I feel it
is a privilege to be here with each of these people. Because
they are the ones who make it happen. Whatever the structure of
FEMA is, whatever the Federal emergency response structure is,
it is the men and women that this table represents to my left
that make it happen. That is why it is so important.
They are the ones who will be in the four-wheel drive
vehicle filled with coffee cups, they are the ones who are
going to have the bleary eyes, they are the ones who are going
to coordinate the volunteer fire departments and the
firefighters and the State police and all those who come in. I
learned that through 10 federally-declared disasters in my
State while I was Governor and 31 State state of emergencies
that were declared.
Mr. Chairman, I will submit my testimony for the record. I
have just a few notes to make, not about the specifics
necessarily of what is taking place on the Gulf Coast, but I
think it relates to that. Rather than talk about FEMA as it
currently is and some of its limitations, I would like to make
some recommendations about the way it should be.
In responding to natural disasters, FEMA does best in the
most independent capacity it can. I worked, Mr. Chairman, with
two FEMA administrators, the first when I was in the House of
Representatives on this Committee with James Lee Witt. I think
during those times, FEMA gained a reputation as an organization
probably one of the most effective in the Federal Government.
I worked with another excellent administrator after I
became Governor and President Bush became the President, and
that was Joe Albaugh. Both those people, while they had
different personalities, had similar traits. The traits were
that they one, knew what they were doing because they had been
at the State and local level for many years, they knew
emergency services, they knew what everyone from the local
emergency administrator needed to what the Governor needed, and
they had direct contact to the President of the United States
and the White House. They were in effect, both James Lee Witt
and in my observation, Joe Albaugh, they were both in effect
unofficial Cabinet officers and they carried the same weight.
That direct relationship to the White House is crucial. I
think it also has been borne out in the Katrina experience.
Because if FEMA is truly to coordinate planning and response to
natural disasters, all the other Federal agencies must know
that the FEMA director and the President communicate directly,
that there isn't anyone between them.
Numerous Federal, in West Virginia, when we had to activate
our emergency services network, there were a number of Federal
agencies that would be routinely involved. You have talked
about many of them today: Small Business, HUD, VA, EPA,
Department of Agriculture, Department of Labor, Army Corps of
Engineers. That just starts the list. Then most times you have
to bring in somebody that you didn't expect to. It is very
important that that FEMA director can go and cut through all
the levels of bureaucracy to get to the person that it needs to
be, and that the other Cabinet officials treat the FEMA
director with the respect that is so important.
I attached to my statement a copy of the--and let me just
say that had I sat where you sit now, Mr. Chairman, and any
member of this Committee, I would have voted for the DHS
structure following 9/11. But having said that, I now recognize
that what looked good on paper doesn't necessarily work out in
practice in terms of FEMA. Because if you look at the
Department of Homeland Security organizational chart, and it
took me two tries to find where FEMA is. If it takes me that
long, then it is going to take the FEMA director that long to
get through when he or she absolutely needs to.
I knew that when I had a problem, I could go to Joe
Albaugh, and he, if he felt it was worthwhile, would
immediately cut through and get to the White House. I did not
have to spend long days trying to figure out my end run to the
White House, through a Congressional delegation, through people
I knew, whatever it would be. The FEMA director could do it if
they thought it was worthwhile.
And admittedly, even after FEMA moved under DHS in March of
2003, I still felt I had a direct connection to the highest
decision makers. I think I know why now, even though FEMA was
farther removed. It is because the first DHS Secretary was Tom
Ridge. You know Governor Ridge, Secretary Ridge, formerly
Governor Ridge, was well-respected by Governors and he had
certainly been through this drill, the natural disaster drill,
many times.
He met with Governors regularly. He knew and understood our
needs in dealing with natural disasters, and at the same time,
we were all learning to deal with terrorism. Once again,
through Tom Ridge, we knew that we had a direct line to someone
who understood our problems at the local level and also who had
a direct line to the White House.
With respect to the present Secretary of DHS, I do not
question his credentials in any way to coordinate anti-
terrorist activities. Indeed, the fact that there has not been
a major terrorist incident since 9/11 indicates to me that
people are doing the job that they need to do. Understandably,
his top priority is preventing terrorist attacks.
But I look at his resume, at least on the web, and I don't
see any indication of past work in natural disasters. I don't
see any work at the local level. So now the major, the main
natural disaster response agency is removed from direct
communication to the White House, and the top of the
organizational chart has no real experience or sensitivity to
dealing with disasters.
Another reason to look at some way of giving FEMA back its
independent status is the need to be able to present and argue
for its budget and programmatic needs, based on disaster
prevention and recovery in the States and not have to fight
within the existing DHS bureaucracy for that. FEMA used to
apply directly to OMB, of course, but the White House, for its
budget. Now it has to do it in conjunction with DHS and it has
to square off against the other legitimate needs that are
there.
Some of the recent cuts, I would suggest, indicate either a
shift of priorities, and I can't argue with the shift in
preparing for terrorist attacks, I can't argue about the
result. Or in ignorance of what is needed to respond, or the
lack of awareness of the importance of preventive activities. I
think it is interesting that former FEMA Director Brown
indicated in recent Congressional testimony that budget cuts
had restricted his Agency's response capability.
We made good use in our State of the hazard prevention
funds under both the previous Administration and the
Administration of President Bush. That actually saved millions
of dollars for the Federal Government, because when we had the
same areas flood again, they weren't affected in the same way.
Likewise, FEMA must be free to consider, propose and
consider innovative interagency recovery programs. The hazard
mitigation program we have talked about. I know that in
Congressman Rahall's district, my first presidentially declared
disaster wiped out an entire rural mountain town, a couple of
thousand people. We realized that existing recovery programs
would not be sufficient.
So at the State level, they couldn't take any more SBA,
even with the SBA, they couldn't take low interest loans. They
were out of reach.
So we at the State came up with a $20,000 forgivable loan
that said, if you stay in business for five years, then that
loan is forgiven at 20 percent a year. We also offered at the
State level a $15,000 very low interest loan, and then we
worked with SBA so that when they did their counseling, they
put our loan in front, so that these people could get started.
I am happy to tell you today that we have a lot more
taxpayers in that community when originally it looked like we
would have tax consumers for a long time, and a lot of small
businesses are back in operation.
It is going to take innovative approaches on the Gulf
Coast, and FEMA needs to be free to present those and to have
them considered.
A couple of quick points. The differences between FEMA in
responding to natural disasters and terrorist or enemy attack.
I have come to believe that they are not necessarily the same
all the time. For natural disasters, there are often several
days of warning. You know it is coming, in the case of
hurricanes and floods and major rain storms, massive weather
surges, such as snow. Even brief warnings precede fires and
tornadoes.
But for terrorist attacks, there usually is no warning and
no preparation time for the community. The immediate response
is performed under different conditions as well. With natural
disasters, the event typically occurs and then is gone, the
flood moves through, permitting the immediate search and rescue
to take place with no other considerations.
But with a terrorist attack, however, you must conduct it
with an eye to watching out for subsequent attacks and also
apprehending the perpetrators. There may be other items of
priority as well, such as protecting vital assets. With natural
disasters, the immediate response is usually straightforward,
with no need for specialized activities. Responding to a
terrorist attack may require highly trained personnel in
specialized areas.
With our DHS money, we put together regional response
teams, moon suits, whether it is an anthrax attack, biomedical,
whatever it is.
So that is another reason I think FEMA needs to get the
recognition that in natural disasters, it has a unique role.
And also planning for natural disasters differs significantly
from attacks on the homeland. Since natural disasters usually
can't be prevented, the planning is about mitigation or
responding to the aftermath. In the case of floods, we knew we
couldn't stop the rain, but we could do something with it once
it got there. It is not often the case in terrorist attacks.
In conclusion, let me also note that FEMA needs the ability
to think, particularly in the Gulf Coast, outside the box.
Simply restoring things to the way they were won't always work.
I am in education now. Simply restoring Orleans Parish schools
to the condition they were isn't fair to the kids of Orleans,
just like you don't want to restore the levees to the condition
they were. They have to be strengthened.
It is not a FEMA responsibility to do that. But it is, I
hope, a FEMA responsibility to be a partner to the State and
locals. When that happens, we build back stronger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me just say that I have
the greatest respect for FEMA. I am one of FEMA's biggest fans.
We need to let FEMA do the job that FEMA is quite capable of
doing.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Governor. I know you have to leave
shortly, so I want to ask you a question before you do, because
you have very interesting perspective, I think, being here for
18 years and then having to go out and be chief executive of a
State and deal with FEMA at both levels.
If you had a magic wand and you could wave it, what would
FEMA look like to you?
Mr. Wise. Well, I would put Joe Albaugh back, first of all.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Wise. Or I would put somebody like him, assuming that
Congress will not be able to change the structure of FEMA for a
while. If it could, though, working with the President,
recognize the need for the FEMA director to establish a unique
relationship, particularly once it is already in an existing
agency, with the White House. That is number one.
If I could wave the magic wand, I would also restore some
of the hazard mitigation funds, the money that went into
prevention. And of course, so that FEMA can get back up and
running and in the way that it was.
Those are the two main things I can think of. I guess I
would urge, though, and I understand there is some move to even
break FEMA up as it already is further. I would just urge
against that, because former Director Brown made an interesting
point in his testimony recently. He pointed out that while he
had been the Director, there had been 150 federally-declared
disasters, some of them were on my watch, in West Virginia.
Because of the effective work of DHS, there had been no
terrorist incidents.
But while that was going on, we still had 150 natural
disasters. That tells me that there is still such a great need
for FEMA to do the job that it has over several administrations
built itself up to do.
Mr. Shuster. Do you think that FEMA can operate like you
say within the DHS structure, or do you feel as though it
should be taken out and operate as it did with your experience
prior to 2001?
Mr. Wise. In 2001, I knew how to get to the White House.
And I knew I didn't need to go to the White House, because when
I talked to Joe Albaugh, I was at the White House.
Mr. Shuster. But we can't always be assured that we have
James Lee Witt or Joe Albaugh in that position. So would it be
your position that, as a former Governor and a former member of
this Committee that FEMA is better outside that DHS box?
Mr. Wise. Yes, sir, it definitely is. Because my guess is
that whoever is in there is going to be someone that the
President directly knows and directly appoints, because of the
importance of that position. The second thing is that if FEMA
needs to respond to a terrorist incident, I don't see why you
couldn't use the old model of the Coast Guard, which, when
necessary to activate it, the President put it under the
control of the Navy. There are ways we can work that.
But FEMA, I would urge you over time to look at making
independent again.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Governor, and I know, you can
excuse yourself whenever you need to.
Mr. Wise. Thank you, and thank you for the Committee's
indulgence.
Mr. Shuster. We appreciate your being here. Thank you.
We will move on in the panel to Mr. Henry Rodriguez, who is
the President of St. Bernard Parish, which is, I believe it was
the hardest hit parish in the New Orleans area. I know also
from my experience two weeks ago that Mr. Rodriguez is a plain-
spoken gentleman that says what he means and means what he
says.
So with that, Mr. Rodriguez, you can proceed.
Mr. Rodriguez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the
opportunity to be here today.
I also appreciate the fact that you came down to St.
Bernard and not only St. Bernard, but the entire area, and you
saw what it was all about. It is hard to explain and describe
what it is like. My parish has been, I think it is the hardest
hit area there is.
If you were to come in my parish today, you would not find
one business place open. You could not stay overnight in but
one house that I know of. There is not a light bulb that is lit
in my parish. We are beginning to get our water together,
because that is a local concern. The gas, we have no gas. We
have none of the utilities.
Our parish is totally destroyed. If you would come look at
it, you would think a bomb hit St. Bernard Parish from one end
to the other. I have never seen anything like it, not in my
life, not anything.
Our tax base is totally depleted. We depend on ad valorem
taxes, we depend on sales taxes. We have none of that.
Our sheriff's office depends on the fact that we have this
revenue source, because he gets a certain percentage for
collecting the taxes. So when St. Bernard goes down, so does
our enforcement division, Sheriff Stevens, who runs our
sheriff's department.
When I left yesterday, he was laying another 100 people
off. They simply can't get the money to us. We need it. But
somehow or another, the money is not getting where i should get
in a timely fashion.
The problem that I saw with FEMA is, it finally got to us
after about five days. Five seems to be the magic number in
every community. I don't know what happened. But for five days,
St. Bernard Parish existed without any outside help whatsoever,
no communications.
But you know what I will tell you? And you can figure this
out for yourself, we had Canadian police that came down on the
third day, walked into my office and said, what can we do? A
self-contained unit, 50 people from Vancouver, Canada.
Now, how did those 50 guys get from Vancouver, Canada, and
they were there on the third day? You tell me. Because we were
surrounded by water, we had no ingress or egress, and they got
there. My own State government and Federal Government couldn't
get to St. Bernard Parish.
The issue that was brought before you and that you have
been talking about concerning the trailer issue, St. Bernard
Parish is in favor of the trailers. But what I found out the
other day after a meeting at the Governor's office is all the
temporary housing that they have been telling people and
assuring people that they will have is in fact not there. There
is not enough trailers in the United States to supply what is
needed for this catastrophe that we have today.
Our thoughts on trailers were a little bit different. We
liked the idea of a trailer city, but what we were going to do,
is as a person comes into a subdivision and he wants to rebuild
his home or he wants to build a new one, that that trailer
would be placed on his property until he was through building
his home. That way we figured we wouldn't use as many trailers,
and it wouldn't be no big issue at the end of 18 months to
close these trailer cities down.
Also, I think one of the things that people have to look at
these trailer things is, there are existing trailer parks, and
there are existing trailer parks in my area that will house at
least 800 or 900 trailers, and we intend to look at that.
One of the problems that I have found with this situation
was communications. It just didn't seem that the left hand knew
what the right hand was doing. You asked a question, and if you
asked one person, and I think the gentleman before me kind of
stated that, if you asked for an opinion on whether you could
get reimbursed on something, one would tell you yes, and the
next one would tell you no. It was kind of a nightmare when you
get to that situation. So I think communications and education
is something that needs to be taken care of.
The other issue, and I kind of feel that number one, I
don't think they have the proper staff. I don't think FEMA has
the proper staff. To be totally honest with you, I think
everybody was overwhelmed at the vastness of this situation. I
know at local government we were. And I know State government
was. And I am assuming from what I saw, Federal Government was.
They weren't prepared for this. They simply weren't.
The problems also arose with us is that people that
represent FEMA, you will get a representative, like we had a
representative that served us for almost three weeks, a little
over two weeks, almost three weeks. That gentleman was
replaced. The guy was really, he knew his business, so
obviously I feel that he was, I know he was a full-time FEMA
representative.
The next person that came in obviously came out of a pool
that could be used. I think he was a representative from NASA
or somewhere. Nice gentleman, but he just couldn't give us any
answers to any of our questions. So basically, we are back down
to zero. We are climbing the ladder, but we keep going up and
then we go back. Whenever you get in that point, in a situation
we're in right now, you have to keep going or you are going to
drown in this thing.
St. Bernard is, we are going to come back and we are going
to come back better. We are determined.
But one of the FEMA problems that has us at the present
time is the inability for FEMA, and that is with regard to the
Stafford Act, to take care of the base pay. We simply don't
have the funds. We don't have any funds coming in at the
present time. Normally this is the time of year when it is
always tough on local governments, because you get your ad
valorem monies in the beginning of the year, and you stretch
them. When you get to the end of the year, then that stretching
gets pretty thin. And you are depending on your sales tax from
your holidays, and there is not going to be any sales tax at
St. Bernard for holidays.
Gentleman, that is basically, I think that is all I can
help you on. We need some help. I will be totally honest with
you, the next time I come to Washington, I am probably going to
the Chinese embassy and apply for foreign aid.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Shuster. Well, there are some things we are doing that
we will address. But we are going to go through the Committee,
then I will have some questions I would like to ask you and
everybody. But we will proceed.
Next is Mr. Kent Buckley, who is the Director of Emergency
Management from Bolivar County, Mississippi. Where is Bolivar?
I was in Mississippi, I was in Hancock County.
Mr. Buckley. Bolivar County is in the Mississippi Delta. It
is about 330 miles north of the coast, but I was deployed to
Hancock County.
Mr. Shuster. All right. Please proceed.
Mr. Buckley. Chairman Shuster and distinguished members of
the Subcommittee, I would like to thank you for inviting me
here to provide this testimony on our Nation's worst natural
disaster and the recovery operations that are going to be part
of our lives in Mississippi for many years to come.
I am Kent Buckley, Director of Bolivar County Emergency
Management Agency in Cleveland, Mississippi. It is an office of
two people, charged with maintaining our county emergency plan
and coordinating response of all emergency departments,
bringing to the table Delta State University, the hospital,
nursing homes, 15 municipalities, industry, private sector and
so forth. We conduct preparedness programs with the public just
like we have done in the old civil defense days.
I am President of the Mississippi Civil Defense Emergency
Management Association, MCDEMA, made up mostly of local
emergency management directors and staff. Our membership is
about 280. I am also a member of the International Association
of Emergency Managers, with a membership of about 2,800.
We just experienced a new disaster standard with Katrina in
Mississippi. The old standard was Hurricane Camille, that came
in about 40 years ago, August, 1969. Katrina has left tens of
thousands homeless with losses of jobs and critical
infrastructure. It is going to take months to deal with the
debris and years to close this disaster out.
My county was not affect nearly as bad as much of the
coast. I was deployed to Hancock County under our statewide
mutual aid compact, and plus the EMA director in Hancock County
asked for me. Hancock County was ground zero for Mississippi.
Chairman Shuster, we very much appreciate the fact that you
and some others of the Committee got a first-hand look at the
massive damage last weekend. Hancock County was thrown into
third world conditions. Officials in emergency management
fought the water coming into the building at one point in
Hancock County, and they passed out life jackets among
themselves and wrote numbers on their arms with permanent magic
markers. Then they placed vital personal information and so
forth in the ceiling area, so in case the water got up and they
didn't make it somebody might be able to find that information
and get to them. They didn't know if they were going to make it
or not.
Much infrastructure was totally destroyed. This is going to
be a huge burden on the towns and counties when the funds there
have been drained while they are trying to meet payroll and
they are continuing the recovery efforts.
We need redundant communications like a nationwide
satellite radio system. We only had one of those in Hancock
County for days. FEMA is assisting with housing, which is a
huge logistics matter. It is going to be a huge logistics
matter later on also, when the trailers have to be removed. We
still need those trailers, since many are still living in their
front yards. We need a better handle on logistics and tracking
resources in the emergency management field.
FEMA representatives in our counties did a good job,
according to our county emergency management directors. I
called a number of them before I flew to Washington, D.C.
However, we need to work on getting a means of registering the
affected people. It is kind of hard to do when you don't have
phone lines, cell phones, you don't have internet and you don't
have computers. And when you don't even have a building to use,
well, then, maybe FEMA needs to bring a building with it.
Response and capability has to be built from the ground up.
That means local programs need better support from the
Emergency Management Performance Grant, that's EMPG. This is a
50/50 matching grant program that is the backbone of emergency
management in the United States. We have a $264 million
shortfall in that program.
Congress will have to decide what level of preparedness it
is willing to pay for that translates into emergency management
response capabilities dependent upon EMPG funding. Emergency
managers in Mississippi believe that FEMA should be restored to
an independent agency and its director restored to Cabinet
level status. You can't dismantle an agency and expect it to
respond like it used to, and preparedness needs to be restored
in FEMA.
Homeland Security can have a preparedness program, National
Weather Service has one, Red Cross has one, others have them.
But all hazards preparedness needs to stay in FEMA.
Preparedness response, recovery and mitigation is the emergency
management program across this Nation.
I would like to thank you for this opportunity to visit our
Nation's Congress and to provide you with this testimony. I
will be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much, Mr. Buckley.
Now I would like to recognize Janice Kilgore, who is the
Emergency Management Manager for Escambia County. Welcome. I
was in Escambia County over a year ago, and your wonderful
Congressman Jeff Miller, I know he works hard and works well
with you folks down there.
So please proceed.
Ms. Kilgore. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the
Committee. It is an honor to be here today.
I have served Escambia County in public safety and
emergency management for the past 32 years. I offer some of the
comments today based on those experiences.
We have heard a lot in different testimony about issues
associated with how you communicate, coordinate, consistency or
lack thereof, and also being able to timely deploy these
resources. Those are things we feel like that we have to look
at in an adequate emergency management program.
Emergency management does begin at the local level, but we
must have help from State and local governments to make that
happen. A year ago, September 16th, 2004, Hurricane Ivan made
landfall at the Alabama-Florida line as a category 3 hurricane.
Nowhere does it compare to what our neighbors in Mississippi
and Louisiana saw with Hurricane Katrina.
But we still had a lot of devastation, a lot of damage in
our county, in Escambia County and Pensacola. We had better
than half of our homes with some type of damage there. As a
result of that, we had people that needed supplies. I will say
that in less than 48 hours, we had ice, water, and MREs being
distributed to the citizens in our county. So it can be done in
a timely manner.
Many agencies came to help us after Hurricane Ivan. So when
Katrina went into the Mississippi Gulf Coast, it was our turn
to go over and offer assistance. On August 30th, the afternoon
after Katrina went in, we sent a multidisciplined team to
Harrison County, Mississippi. They came home for the last time
on September 29th, so there were there just about a month.
Early reports from our team told of all the devastation
that they saw and all the basic needs that they had, the
supplies, just tetanus information, being able to put band-aids
on people that had scrapes and cuts. The food and water that
they took with them they actually passed out to people in the
community because they couldn't find anything else. They were
using their own supplies for that. Day after day, they would
call back in, telling us of different communities that really
needed assistance.
Katrina caused catastrophic damage and any community would
have a hard time dealing with something of that magnitude. They
can't do it by themselves. They have got to have assistance.
And the greater the population you have, the more assistance
you are going to need.
I have already talked about communications and coordination
being extremely important as it relates to any disaster. The
old saying that you hear, you play like you practice, local
governments have got to have adequate plans and make sure that
those things come together. Thankfully, we have groups like our
churches and businesses and individuals that step up during
times of disaster and don't necessarily wait for the Government
to ask them to come in and help. Because they were a big help
to us after Ivan, and we saw those same things in the couple of
times that I visited the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the last
month.
We talked about the consistency or inconsistency. Like the
other people said, you would get one story on how to fill a
form out, only to get told two or three different times by
other FEMA representatives, no, you have to do it this way. So
you spend a lot of time and effort spinning your wheels. So I
really hope that something will come out of this on consistency
for being able to get the word all the way down to the people
that are on the streets giving that information. There has to
be proper training for all the people that are employed during
these events.
The other thing that I will mention is the status of the
emergency Preparedness funds, the emergency management funding
that comes down from the Federal Government to the local
levels. Last year, the fiscal year that just ended, Escambia
County received $47,222 for this pass-through money for our
emergency management program. That was actually $43 less than
the prior year and $82 less than the year before that.
I really think that the funding levels should be
increasing, not decreasing, if we are going to have adequate
response to emergency management and disasters in this county.
FEMA has been a vital part of response and recovery
activities in the past. I think if they would have a renewed
emphasis on having qualified, trained people respond to the
disaster locations, consistent instruction and information
provided, as well as improved coordination before disasters,
then FEMA should be able to effectively carry out the mission
that it has been given to perform.
Again, thank you very much for allowing me to participate
in this hearing.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Ms. Kilgore.
Next, Mr. Albert Ashwood, who is the Vice President of the
National Emergency Management Association. Thank you for being
here and please proceed.
Mr. Ashwood. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, members of
the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to provide
testimony on FEMA's ability to lead the recovery mission after
Hurricane Katrina. I am representing the National Emergency
Management Association, whose members are the State directors
of emergency management. I am also the State Director of
Emergency Management in Oklahoma.
Today, you have asked me to speak to the question of FEMA's
capacity and capability to direct the long term recovery
mission along the Gulf Coast. I appreciate the opportunity to
address this issue. However, I must first ask which FEMA we are
discussing. Are we talking about the FEMA who responded to and
led recovery efforts in the Oklahoma City bombing, Hurricane
Floyd, the Northridge earthquake and the tragedies of September
11th? Or are we talking about the current FEMA, with depleted
manpower and funding, who is strained to respond to everyday
disasters, much less the catastrophic damages caused by
Hurricane Katrina.
The post-9/11 FEMA is a shell of its former self. Over the
past weeks, we have talked at great length about leadership
qualifications, organizational structure and statutory
responsibilities. Yet if all we do is talk, we should not be
surprised when history repeats itself in future disasters.
When I entered this profession 17 years ago, FEMA and
emergency management in general were little more than a quasi-
military entity, spending all of its time figuring out where a
nuclear attack was going to take place and how to relocate the
Nation's citizens from one population target to a host
community down the road. We worked extremely hard to stay in
our cubicles and make sure as little attention as possible was
directed toward our profession.
In 1989, a disaster called Hurricane Hugo hit the
Carolinas. Then-Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina made
a statement to the media which I remember today. As he was
standing in line at a disaster assistance center with his
constituents, he simply said that FEMA was the biggest bunch of
bureaucratic jackasses he had ever met in Federal Government.
The reason I remember this quote is because it was
accurate. He was correct, but things were about to change. In
1992, Hurricane Andrew hit southern Florida. It was the most
catastrophic disaster FEMA had responded to since its
inception. Mistakes were made. Many of the same issues that we
have talked about with Katrina were issues in Andrew.
With Andrew on everyone's mind, the new Administration felt
the need to elevate the importance of FEMA and the emergency
management profession in the Federal Government. Changes came
rapidly and FEMA adopted a motto of people helping people and
lived up to that mantra through their partnerships with State
and local government.
Large disasters continued to occur: the Northridge
earthquake, the Midwest floods, and yes, even the Oklahoma City
bombing, a disaster which I was deeply involved in. I can
promise you that the FEMA that responded to these disasters is
the FEMA you want and every American citizen deserves.
Unfortunately, we live in a reactionary country, and
following the tragedies of September 11th, we all agreed that
something had to be done to prevent future terrorist incidents.
What was originally discussed as a coordinated effort of
intelligence gathering between the FBI and CIA eventually
evolved into the Department of Homeland Security, comprised of
22 Federal agencies, including FEMA. An agency of this size
must utilize and distribute its resources to best meet its
needs: preventing and preparing to respond to acts of
terrorism.
Unfortunately, during the organization of DHS and future
reorganizations, FEMA has gotten lost in the shuffle. Not only
do they lack the manpower and financial resources they
possessed in the mid to late 1990s, but they lack the authority
and the position in the overall chain of command.
I don't want anyone on the Committee to think I disagree
with the mission of the Department of Homeland Security. In
today's environment, it is essential that we expend all
resources necessary to prevent and prepare for the next act of
terrorism in this Country. However, we need not do it through
the degradation of an existing success story. If you ask me if
FEMA is the right Government agency to lead the long term
recovery efforts concerning Katrina and Rita, I say they are
the only agency with the knowledge and statutory authority
capable of doing so.
But we must give them the resources necessary to not only
do their job, but to do their job the right way. It will take
years for the Gulf Coast to return to the level of prosperity
it had prior to Katrina. It is essential that the Gulf Coast is
rebuilt with mitigation efforts in mind. If not, we are simply
spending money to apply a band-aid to a region as it awaits the
next Katrina.
A fully staffed and funded FEMA must be there to not only
accomplish that mission, but to prepare for and respond to
future disasters. Personally, I have a few recommendations to
succeed in this long term recovery mission. First, remove FEMA
from the Department of Homeland Security and make it a
standalone agency answering to the President of the United
States.
The emergency management mission, simply put, is one of
coordination and support. It is a basic Wal-Mart at all levels
of Government, where one stop shopping for resources and
disaster assistance can be obtained. You cannot expect this and
then establish a coordinator of the coordinator.
Second, FEMA's funding and manpower must be returned to
pre-DHS levels. It is asinine to think an agency can
effectively respond and recover from disasters without a
preparedness effort to accomplish this task.
Third, the Federal Government is only as strong as its
base, and regardless of what anyone tells you, disasters are
local. If you want a strong FEMA, we need to have a strong
State emergency management and a strong local emergency
management. Funding for the emergency management performance
grants has remained virtually stagnant for the last 15 years.
The grant is currently funded at $180 million and is the only
grant that funds emergency management on the local and State
level.
And it is a 50/50 matching grant. It requires local
investment. This is quite different than the $2.3 billion of
Homeland Security grants funded 100 percent federally and given
to locals and States.
In conclusion, FEMA is the right agency to meet the long
term needs of the citizens of the Gulf Coast. I have many
friends who work for FEMA who have been working 12 hour shifts,
7 days a week for the last month only to wake up each morning
and read about how inept their agency is and their leadership
has become. Many of these people have been doing the same job
for the past 20 plus years, and quite frankly, they do a good
job. But we have to give them the support they need to do their
job and to meet the expectations of the American citizens.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much, Mr. Ashwood.
I think you have all made yourself pretty clear on the
macro question of FEMA and where you believe i should be. But I
still want to go into sort of the micro question first, and
then perhaps some other questions, since Mr. Taylor is here and
Mr. Dent.
First, I wish Mr. Rodriguez, I wish he could have stayed
with us. One of the things that he said, and I guess really Mr.
Buckley, to get your view of this and Ms. Kilgore's on the
proper staff that came in, and again, Mr. Rodriguez isn't here
to answer that. But in your experience on Katrina, in the
aftermath here in the last couple of weeks, do you feel that
the staff that came in from FEMA was knowledgeable, that they
knew what they were doing? Can you give me generally what your
sense of that was?
Mr. Buckley. Well, in what I was doing in Hancock County, I
didn't see anybody from FEMA the first several days. There may
have been somebody there, but I never did see them. And we were
having a hard time trying to find some place to work out of.
The emergency operations center had been flooded, and after
several days, mold and so forth, we were having to try to find
some other place to move to. We moved to trailers in the alley
and eventually to Stennis Airport, which was about some 12
miles inland.
Mr. Shuster. Ms. Kilgore, in Ivan, what would your comment
be on the staff that came in from FEMA? Do you know if it was
the permanent or the temporary staff that you were dealing
with?
Ms. Kilgore. It varied, as we heard earlier, where some of
the ones that came in were very knowledgeable, and then others,
you would get used to dealing with one and then they would be
rotated out. So I guess they are part of their temporary pool
that they had.
Mr. Shuster. Did you know who you were dealing with, if you
were dealing with a permanent or a temporary?
Ms. Kilgore. Sometimes we did. Sometimes they just had the
FEMA credentialing, so you weren't sure if they were 100
percent a FEMA employee or if they were one of their disaster
employees.
Mr. Shuster. Right.
Ms. Kilgore. But even some of the disaster employees they
have are very, very knowledgeable in what they do, because they
go and deal with the disasters a lot. It just depends on the
individual and the instruction that they are getting and the
consistency.
Mr. Shuster. Experience.
Ms. Kilgore. Exactly.
Mr. Shuster. Even a temporary person can have tremendous
experience. Yes, Mr. Buckley.
Mr. Buckley. There was a FEMA representative in the EOC
early on. His name was Eric, I don't remember his last name.
But I thought you might have been talking about FEMA people
that were coming in to help people to register and so forth
like that. I thought that is what you were talking about.
But early on, there was one person, his name was Eric.
Mr. Shuster. I believe I met Eric, I was at Stennis Airport
two weeks ago. Eric Gentry.
Ms. Kilgore. He was in Pensacola.
Mr. Shuster. Okay. One of the things we are looking at
doing, and I just want to get all three of you to comment on
it, is to lift the cap on the community disaster loan program
from $5 million to unlimited. What are your thoughts? How
important is that to a community, to be able to get those low
income disaster loans?
Mr. Ashwood. I think I can answer part of that. Having
worked numerous disasters, there are very few items in the FEMA
bag of tricks that are going to get a community back to the way
economically it was prior to the disaster. We can rebuild the
infrastructure, we can help out the individual victims. But as
happened in Oklahoma in 1999, we had a community that was wiped
out by a tornado and its three top employers all left town.
There was nothing I could do to make sure that there was any
prosperity for that community after that.
The community loan program that you allude to is the one
item that can be used to help that community through more of a
long term process. Now, they will also work with the Department
of Commerce to do everything that they can to make sure that
the economic impact is lessened as greatly as possible. But
that is the real issue. That is the one thing you can utilize.
Mr. Shuster. Do you know that the community you are talking
about, did it actually pay back that disaster loan? Because
there are some communities that, based on their financial
picture, those things are forgiven.
Mr. Ashwood. Actually, in their case, they decided not to
apply for that loan, because they had no idea whether they
could pay it back or not. We did stress that most of those
loans were forgiven, but at the same time, it was their city
council's decision not to go that route.
Mr. Shuster. Ms. Kilgore?
Ms. Kilgore. Well, as you know, with Hurricane Ivan, we
lost a good bit of our tax base. Quite frankly, we are still
recovering from Hurricane Ivan over a year later. We estimate
it will be at least another year before we even start getting
up close to the area. Most people have not even started
rebuilding.
And now with Mississippi and Louisiana in that same area,
contractors are really going to be at a premium. So I think
local governments should have the ability to go after something
that can keep them, to sustain them, to pay the bills and do
the things that they need to do for their citizens, especially
when you know it is going to be a three or four year process.
Mr. Shuster. Do you know if Escambia County applied for
that community disaster loan?
Ms. Kilgore. Personally, I do not, but we can certainly
find out for you.
Mr. Shuster. Mr. Buckley, would you care to comment on that
community disaster loan?
Mr. Buckley. On infrastructure, with these municipalities
and so forth trying to build back, the rule has generally been,
well, you build it back to the way it was. But if the way it
was is not what is going to get you through the recovery or if
the way it was is not adequate, it may fall short of standards,
or maybe it was borderline, well, then, maybe you should think
about improving it a little bit.
For instance, the levees in New Orleans, they are going to,
my understanding from the news this morning was they are going
to rebuild those sections back to the way they were. Well, this
would be a prime opportunity to build them better than they
were, at least in those sections. Then later on, they will have
something to build onto.
The infrastructure in these towns with sewage treatment and
water systems and communications and things like that, if what
you had before was not adequate, then don't penalize them for
trying to put some increased capacity in there. Because this
recovery process is going to be a long thing.
Mr. Shuster. Right. And a final question on the macro
question of FEMA, where do you see it, where does it belong.
But before I let you answer that question, I just want to make
sure of the experience I am dealing with here. Ms. Kilgore, did
you say for 30 years--
Ms. Kilgore. Thirty-two.
Mr. Shuster. Thirty-two years. And Mr. Ashwood, how long
have you been in emergency management?
Mr. Ashwood. Seventeen years.
Mr. Shuster. And Mr. Buckley?
Mr. Buckley. Sixteen.
Mr. Shuster. Sixteen years. So I have a pretty experienced
crew here I'm talking to.
The same question I posed to Governor Wise, if you had a
magic wand and you could wave it, what would FEMA look like to
each of you? Inside DHS? Outside DHS?
Mr. Buckley. Outside DHS and back to the way it was before
it was pretty much thrown in the gutter and then kicked when it
couldn't respond.
Mr. Shuster. And in the 16 years you have been in emergency
management, now versus 4 or 5 years ago?
Mr. Buckley. After Hurricane Andrew, it was fixed pretty
good. It was a very responsive and user-friendly agency.
Mr. Shuster. Not perfect, though?
Mr. Buckley. No, not perfect. We all have things we need to
work on.
Mr. Shuster. I want to make sure we are painting the right
picture here.
Mr. Buckley. Sure.
Mr. Shuster. Ms. Kilgore, your thoughts on FEMA, inside,
outside?
Ms. Kilgore. I think being separate again like it was would
make a difference to those of us that deal with emergency
management. I do think that preparedness and mitigation still
need to play a very major role, as well as response and
recovery, and that we need to make sure that that coordination
is there through all levels of government.
Mr. Shuster. And in your experience, did you see a marked
difference in FEMA last year versus before?
Ms. Kilgore. Yes, I have.
Mr. Shuster. I just want to make sure I clarify. I thought
I was in Escambia County a year ago. It was only eight months
ago. Time flies.
Mr. Ashwood, your views?
Mr. Ashwood. I think I made it clear. I think that FEMA
needs to be outside DHS, similar to the way it was in the mid
to late 1990s. One of the things we keep talking about, we talk
about a lack of funding and a lack of manpower. But one of the
things that FEMA lost over this entire transformation is a
great deal of institutional knowledge. There were a lot of
people at FEMA who had worked there a very long time.
When we started working through the terrorism, DHS
standpoint, there was a lot of money that went out to private
industries and is still going out to private industries, that
needed that expertise base. So a lot of people who worked for
FEMA back in the mid to late 1990s are now working in private
industry as consultants and we have lost a great deal of
institutional knowledge that was in FEMA previously.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you. I yield to Mr. Taylor, if you have
any questions.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me begin by
thanking Mr. Buckley for coming to south Mississippi and my
home county in particular. And Ms. Kilgore, I also want to
thank the Floridians. The help that was provided from outside,
from Bolivar County, from Florida was really well received,
there was a lot of expertise.
What Ms. Kilgore failed to mention, and I think that Mr.
Brown completely missed last week in his testimony, obviously
the first responders, the local first responders are extremely
important. But FEMA ought to have a plan for when the first
responders literally have their legs cut out from underneath
them, as happened in Hancock County, when the vehicles were
parked in a place that had never flooded before, and you had
every police car, every fire engine, most of the emergency
management equipment, went underwater in a flood that just
simply was unimaginable.
So we are very, very grateful for the outside help that we
received.
Mr. Buckley, I would like you to comment, because I think
it is worth hearing, if you would tell the Committee what kinds
of communications you saw for the first four days in Hancock
County, how many radios were available to you?
Mr. Buckley. It was completely third world. The only thing
that we were able to use, we brought a communications bus. We
have an agreement with Delta State University, we have an
agreement for the bus with them. We installed communications
equipment in that bus, and we hurried up to finish it so that
we could go to Hancock County. When we arrived, we pretty much
had the only communications with us that was in Hancock County.
Mr. Taylor. What day was that?
Mr. Buckley. That was the Tuesday after the storm. That
Tuesday night, we had to wait for the roads to get cleared so
that we could make it down there. So that was Tuesday night.
Mr. Taylor. So that was over 24 hours since the storm.
Prior to that, again, all I can do is ask you to confirm this,
that there was one satellite phone.
Mr. Buckley. And it was on my bus.
Mr. Taylor. And it was owned by the National Guard. That
was the total communications.
Mr. Buckley. Oh, I am sorry, if the Guard had one, that
would have been another one. But I had one in my bus. That
doubled it.
Mr. Taylor. What kind of sanitation did you see when you
got there?
Mr. Buckley. For several days there were no Port-A-Lets. I
think they were brought in, I can't remember, I can't remember
now what day it was. It had to be at least Thursday or Friday
before Port-A-Lets arrived. It was probably on Friday. We were
able to respond, my group, we were able to respond and be self-
sustaining. But that was a problem.
Mr. Taylor. What did you see in the way of food?
Mr. Buckley. We brought food with us. But as far as what
was available for the first responders, again, they had lost
their vehicles, many of them had lost their houses. But they
were on the job, trying to do their job as best they could.
Mr. Taylor. What were the first responders eating?
Mr. Buckley. Most of the food that I saw around there was
food that first responders, people responding like my group
brought in with us. I didn't see any outside food. If it was
there, I didn't see it.
Mr. Taylor. Okay. What you missed then was that the first
responders had looted the Wal-Mart and the Sav-A-Center in
order to feed themselves. If you remember the guy they referred
to as Boss Hogg, the stuff Boss Hogg was cooking had been
looted from the Wal-Mart.
Mr. Buckley. I remember Boss. Right. I seem to remember
something about that now. I also brought him a pickup truck
load of food myself, a week later, because he was running out
of food. He came real close to running out of food several
times.
Mr. Taylor. One of the things that I found really
frustrating in dealing with FEMA, and again, I want to hear
your observation on this, that as, when the questions would be
asked, when is the water coming, when are the MREs coming, the
answer I kept getting is, it's in the pipeline. Then when you
try to narrow it down, okay, is that pipeline in Alaska, is it
in Arkansas, is it in North Mississippi, is it 100 miles from
here, the answer is, we don't know.
Was that your observation as well, that there was really
poor coordination from FEMA as to what was coming, when it was
going to arrive, and what the follow-on was going to be?
Because I always found it was impossible to ration what you
don't know you have, and even harder to ration what you don't
know what you're getting.
Mr. Buckley. That is right. We need a better tracking
system. GPS I think would be great. Satellite communications in
all those trucks, maybe we can work toward something like that.
But the tracking system needs to be greatly improved.
We ran into the same thing with fuel. Law enforcement was
running out of fuel. At one time, I sent a message over to law
enforcement that if a fuel tanker came into the county, you
escort it in.
Mr. Taylor. Again, Mr. Chairman, as you know, there is
another hearing going on upstairs. I want to thank all of you
for being here today and in particular, Kent, I want to thank
you for coming down and helping out in south Mississippi.
Mr. Buckley. I would describe it as a heartbreaking
pleasure.
Mr. Taylor. I really do want to thank all the Floridians. I
promise never to say a bad thing about Florida again.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Shuster. I have heard you say good things about
Florida. Escambia County, too, Pensacola.
With that, Mr. Dent, five minutes for questions.
Mr. Dent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Ashwood, I have a
question for you. In your testimony, you have made some remarks
about federalizing a disaster could be extremely difficult with
so many agencies lending support to disaster.
We have heard a lot of discussion since Katrina about what
the role of the Federal Government should be, specifically the
military, in the event of these types of catastrophic events
that you have experienced down in the Gulf Coast. I would just
like to hear you expand on that a little bit more. As you know,
we have this layered system of response, local, State and
Federal, FEMA.
Mr. Ashwood. Yes, sir. And here again, I have to provide a
caveat that I was not in the Gulf Coast responding to these
disasters. So we all have to realize that this is something we
have not experienced before in emergency management or in
response, just by the enormity of it all.
In disasters that I have worked, and I have worked numerous
disasters, Oklahoma is no stranger to disaster, all disasters
are local. I still stand by that statement. Because the first
line of defense are your first responders. You have emergency
medical, fire and law enforcement who are all there, the first
ones in. Of course, the State is right there to help them out
if they need additional resources, and the Federal Government
is right behind that to make sure that the quickest response
and the most efficient response is made as possible.
With the Federal Government comes a defense coordinating
officer. Any time there is an emergency declared or a major
disaster declared under the Stafford Act, the Federal
coordinating officer can ask the Defense coordinating officer
to stand right next to him. If there is anything the Department
of Defense has that can be applied to that response, it is
immediately available.
I have concerns just hearing, as you have, the reports on
television and everything saying that the Federal Government
was waiting for the State to ask for this, or the State was
asking for the local government to ask for this. I know it was
chaotic. But the fact of the matter is, in disasters I have
worked, those people were all basically talking to each other
in the same room.
So it is not like somebody was sitting behind a desk
waiting for somebody to ask me for help before I am going to do
anything. I don't understand that statement. How it is supposed
to work is basically as Mr. Brown pointed out in his testimony
that it works from the bottom up, from local to State to
Federal and the needs are met. But they are not done in a such
a way that is disjointed, they are done working in cooperation
and partnership together.
So I don't know what happened in this disaster, but that is
the way it has always worked in the past.
Mr. Dent. Another question I had, all of you have indicated
you would like to see FEMA as a standalone agency, direct
report to the President. Other than having that direct ear of
the President, what are the other principal reasons why you
would like to see FEMA as a standalone?
Mr. Ashwood. I will start that off. I guess I think it goes
back to the all hazards approach. We have been preaching and
planning all hazards for years now, that we don't need to have
a hurricane plan and a tornado plan and a flood plan, because
if you plan for all hazards you can take in the different
aspects of all of those types of disasters.
When the Department of Homeland Security started, we
basically started saying, we need to plan for terrorism, and
oh, by the way, the underwritten philosophy is that if we can
plan for a terrorist event, then we are prepared for any event
that the Country might face. I don't agree with that
perspective. There are different incidents there.
We used to have, prior to DHS, authorities were divided up
between crisis management and consequence management. That made
perfect sense to me. You have crisis management, which takes it
on the front end. If we can catch the bad guy and keep the
event from happening, by all means, let's do that. We all agree
with that.
But we have to be prepared for consequence management if we
don't catch the bad guy. And that is where FEMA came in,
because they were the experts in consequence management. They
could come in and respond to the event that already happened,
to make sure the resources were there, to make sure that the
most effective response could be made.
I never quite understood why that was a bad idea, this
crisis management and consequence management. But it seemed
like when DHS was initiated, we had to get rid of those two
terms and make sure that it was all together in one department.
So I think there are a lot of growing pains as to how that
actually works out. Because a lot of things that DHS talks
about are not really of interest to me as the State emergency
manager for Oklahoma when it comes to terrorist intelligence
and where we might get hit next.
While it is very interesting to listen to, there is not a
whole lot I can do to effectively respond until the event
actually happens. Some will tell you that you need to pre-
position resources. Well, we do pre-position resources. FEMA
pre-positions resources across the Nation for different types
of disasters that could occur.
But at the same time, you are not going to give me 72 hours
to pre-position resources within my State because this is where
the terrorist event might occur. We have to be prepared long
before that.
So I will pass that on and you can answer to that.
Ms. Kilgore. Most of the things that I was going to mention
he talked about, when he talked about the resources and the
other things that were available to local governments. Having
them in different areas is certainly important. I think what's
happened with the Department of Homeland Security, in my
opinion, is there has been a lot of money, a great deal of
money that has gone out through State and local, and in some
cases local government, more importantly probably in the State
and regional areas.
But it has more been on equipment and types of things to
put in these stockpile areas, and as a result, there has not
been a lot of emphasis on people but yet there has been a lot
of direction coming down to the local area as to what each
local emergency management agency has to accomplish as it
relates to this plan or that plan or the other plan. But again,
there are no dollars associated with that for us to keep up
with everything that keeps coming down the tubes.
Mr. Buckley. I agree with all of that. Homeland Security
really does not understand the emergency management discipline
as far as the all hazards approach and then the types of plans
that we have had in the past. They are law enforcement focused,
most of them, and they deal with intel and investigations and
that sort of thing. Even in the State of Mississippi I had one
of our highest homeland security persons in the homeland
security office talk about, well, they need a separate plan,
they need their own plan.
Well, you need to plan for all hazards and that needs to be
part of it. You don't need to start having 15 different plans
for everything that could happen. We learned that lesson time
and again.
So FEMA needs to be a separate agency, and emergency
management is a little different from some of these other
disciplines, in that emergency management is a coordinating
agency and a resource agency and is not focused just on fire
service and law enforcement and emergency medical, but we
coordinate with all those people. And it is a little different.
Mr. Dent. Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. I think that is one of the big lessons of
Katrina, is a lack of coordination. I think you are absolutely
right, I had somebody, it was actually former FEMA Director
Brown, I think it was him, that said we need to have less
engineers at FEMA and more coordinating type people, contract
administrators, because that is what you folks do in your
business and your world.
I want to thank you very much for coming here today. I
can't tell you how important it is that folks like you come and
testify before the Committee. Because the only way that we can
gain the knowledge from folks like you that are in the field,
first-hand knowledge, I have emergency responders in my
district I talk to, but to be able to get a perspective from
around the Country and those different experiences is essential
to those of us on this Committee and in Congress to be able to
hopefully make wise decisions.
Sometimes we make knee-jerk decisions, but we want to try
to protect against that with the information that you folks
provide. You do that, so I thank you all very, very much for
being here. I appreciate it.
And I would ask unanimous consent that the record of
today's hearing remain open until all witnesses have provided
answers to questions submitted to them in writing, and
unanimous consent that during such time as the record remains
open, additional comments offered by individuals or groups may
be included in the record of today's hearing. Without
objection, so ordered.
And again, thank you very much. The Committee stands
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:10 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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