[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
TO REVIEW THE RESPONSE BY CHARITIES TO HURRICANE KATRINA
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
of the
COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
DECEMBER 13, 2005
__________
Serial No. 109-52
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Ways and Means
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26-384 WASHINGTON : 2006
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COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
BILL THOMAS, California, Chairman
E. CLAY SHAW, JR., Florida CHARLES B. RANGEL, New York
NANCY L. JOHNSON, Connecticut FORTNEY PETE STARK, California
WALLY HERGER, California SANDER M. LEVIN, Michigan
JIM MCCRERY, Louisiana BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
DAVE CAMP, Michigan JIM MCDERMOTT, Washington
JIM RAMSTAD, Minnesota JOHN LEWIS, Georgia
JIM NUSSLE, Iowa RICHARD E. NEAL, Massachusetts
SAM JOHNSON, Texas MICHAEL R. MCNULTY, New York
PHIL ENGLISH, Pennsylvania WILLIAM J. JEFFERSON, Louisiana
J.D. HAYWORTH, Arizona JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee
JERRY WELLER, Illinois XAVIER BECERRA, California
KENNY C. HULSHOF, Missouri LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
RON LEWIS, Kentucky EARL POMEROY, North Dakota
MARK FOLEY, Florida STEPHANIE TUBBS JONES, Ohio
KEVIN BRADY, Texas MIKE THOMPSON, California
THOMAS M. REYNOLDS, New York JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin RAHM EMANUEL, Illinois
ERIC CANTOR, Virginia
JOHN LINDER, Georgia
BOB BEAUPREZ, Colorado
MELISSA A. HART, Pennsylvania
CHRIS CHOCOLA, Indiana
DEVIN NUNES, California
Allison H. Giles, Chief of Staff
Janice Mays, Minority Chief Counsel
______
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
JIM RAMSTAD, Minnesota, Chairman
ERIC CANTOR, Virginia JOHN LEWIS, Georgia
BOB BEAUPREZ, Colorado EARL POMEROY, North Dakota
JOHN LINDER, Georgia MICHAEL R. MCNULTY, New York
E. CLAY SHAW, JR., Florida JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee
SAM JOHNSON, Texas CHARLES B. RANGEL, New York
DEVIN NUNES, California
J.D. HAYWORTH, Arizona
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C O N T E N T S
__________
Page
Advisory of December 6, 2005, announcing the hearing............. 2
WITNESSES
McCrery, Hon. Jim, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Louisiana...................................................... 8
______
American Red Cross, Joseph C. Becker............................. 27
Baton Rouge Area Foundation, John G. Davies...................... 40
Salvation Army of America, Major Todd Hawks...................... 34
U.S. Government Accountability Office, Cynthia M. Fagnoni,
Managing Director, Education, Workforce and Income Security.... 19
______
American Institute of Philanthropy, Daniel Borochoff............. 54
National Spinal Cord Injury Association, Marcie Roth............. 59
Resources for Independent Living, Yavonka Archaga................ 68
Wyatt, Johnny G., City Marshal and Homeland Security Director,
Bossier City, Louisiana........................................ 73
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
American Arts Alliance, statement................................ 81
National Council of Nonprofit Associations, Audrey Alvarado,
statement...................................................... 83
National Fraternal Congress of America, statement................ 85
Rotary International, Evanston, IL, Christine Neely, statement... 87
TO REVIEW THE RESPONSE BY CHARITIES TO HURRICANE KATRINA
----------
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2005
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Ways and Means,
Subcommittee on Oversight,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:05 p.m., in
room 1100, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Jim Ramstad
(Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
[The advisory announcing the hearing follows:]
ADVISORY FROM THE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
CONTACT: (202) 225-7601
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 06, 2005
No. OV-5
Ramstad Announces Hearing to Review the
Response by Charities to Hurricane Katrina
Congressman Jim Ramstad (R-MN), Chairman, Subcommittee on Oversight
of the Committee on Ways and Means, today announced that the
Subcommittee will hold a hearing to review the response by charities to
Hurricane Katrina. The hearing will take place on Tuesday, December 13,
2005, in the main Committee
hearing room, 1100 Longworth House Office Building, beginning at 3:00 p.
m.
In view of the limited time available to hear witnesses, oral
testimony at this hearing will be from invited witnesses only. Invited
witnesses will include Members of Congress and witnesses representing
the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the American Red Cross, the
Salvation Army, and certain other groups involved with the response to
Hurricane Katrina.
BACKGROUND:
Hurricane Katrina caused unprecedented destruction along much of
the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, displacing more than one million
people and causing over $100 billion of property damage. Tax-exempt
charitable organizations have played a key role in the response and
recovery efforts by providing food, shelter, and clothing to many of
the victims of Katrina, as well as counseling, financial assistance,
and other forms of help. Americans have reportedly given or pledged
nearly $2.6 billion in donations to charitable organizations aiding the
victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Due to the scope of the disaster, a multitude of charities have
been involved in the response to Hurricane Katrina. National
organizations, such as the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army,
have had prominent roles, but local charitable organizations ranging
from churches to foundations have performed significant
responsibilities as well. The hearing will provide an opportunity to
review the activities of these organizations, the coordination of their
relief efforts, and the lessons they have learned from Hurricane
Katrina.
In announcing the hearing, Chairman Ramstad stated, ``We are
grateful for the charitable organizations that have played such a
critical role in responding to Hurricane Katrina. The Subcommittee has
a responsibility to examine the lessons learned so that charities can
improve their efforts to prepare for and respond to disasters in the
future. We also want to ensure that Americans who have given so
generously have confidence that their contributions have been and will
be used effectively to help people in need.''
FOCUS OF THE HEARING:
The hearing will focus on relief services provided by charitable
organizations, and will explore areas where service delivery,
preparedness, and coordination could be improved.
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Chairman RAMSTAD. The hearing will come to order.
I want to welcome everyone to today's hearing on the
response of charities to Hurricane Katrina.
As we all know, the whole world watched as Hurricane
Katrina caused unprecedented devastation along the Gulf Coast,
displacing more than 1 million people, and causing over $100
billion in property damage. This destruction has required a
massive response from Federal, State, and local governments.
The Hurricane has also inspired the Nation's charities to
make an historic effort. Americans have made this effort
possible by giving or pledging over $2.6 billion to help the
victims of this terrible disaster. Charities have provided
critically important assistance, ranging from food, shelter and
cash assistance to counseling and job training. This is the
single largest charitable response to a disaster in our
Nation's history.
This Subcommittee has the responsibility to review the
activities of charities, to see where things worked, where they
didn't work, and where the response can be made more effective.
This Subcommittee, as some of you will remember, held a similar
review after the September 11th attacks, and highlighted areas
in which charities needed to improve their response to
disasters. I hope our effort today can lead to further
improvements as well.
Several of the witnesses today will tell extremely
inspiring stories. We will hear about volunteers who dropped
what they were doing so they could help take care of hurricane
victims. We will hear about churches and synagogues providing
shelter and food to people who had nothing but the clothes on
their backs.
We will hear about Americans generously donating to the
American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and other organizations
to provide needed cash assistance to Hurricane victims; as I
said earlier, $2.6 billion in monetary contributions by the
American people.
Notwithstanding the tremendous humanitarian response, other
witnesses will describe some significant shortcomings in the
charitable response. Today's hearing will really focus on three
main concerns. First, how coordination between charities can be
improved. In massive disasters like this one, charities both
large and small get involved in the response. Their collective
resources, capabilities and efforts obviously must be
effectively coordinated.
Four years ago, this Subcommittee discussed the problem of
coordination among charities responding to the September 11th
attacks. Hurricane Katrina has unfortunately shown that much
work still remains.
The second area of concern we will examine is how all
Americans can have access to and receive assistance from
charitable organizations during disasters. It is important that
the Red Cross and other charities not forget communities and
individuals who are harder to reach or who need special
attention, minority populations, people with disabilities, and
low-income people.
Today we will hear from two witnesses representing people
with disabilities, which are of major interest to me, and I
know other Members of the Subcommittee. These two witnesses
will describe the experiences of individuals with disabilities
during the disaster, and believe me, some of those experiences
are downright shocking. We need to hear what the Red Cross and
others are planning to do to ensure that underserved
populations are not forgotten or neglected during the next
disaster. We always know, unfortunately, there will be the next
disaster.
The third area of concern is that we need to ensure that
charitable dollars are not lost to fraud. While disasters bring
out the best in most people, they also bring out the worst in
others. In some cases, criminals have pretended to be charities
and have stolen money intended for actual charities. In other
cases, people pretending to be victims have taken advantage of
charities and taken money that could have been used to help
actual victims.
The New York Times reported that the Red Cross distributed
$32 million in cash to residents in and around Jackson,
Mississippi, even though many of them had experienced little or
no significant property damage. One pawn shop owner in Jackson,
Mississippi, told the New York Times that many aid recipients
cashed relief checks at his shop and immediately bought
jewelry, guns, DVDs and electronics.
The owner of a Western Union branch in Jackson was quoted
as saying, ``Surely the Red Cross has to have a better use of
funds, unless they just have money they are trying to get rid
of for some reason.''
Stories like this may discourage donors from giving money
for relief efforts; therefore, we have to understand what the
Red Cross and other charities are doing to ensure that their
aid is going to the people who actually need it. If this
hearing helps document where charities fell short in serving
the hurricane victims, it can help ensure these problems do not
occur again. If Americans do not have confidence that their
donations are being used wisely, they may not be so generous
when the next disaster strikes.
This morning I am sure many of you noted that the American
Red Cross announced the resignation of its president, Marsha J.
Evans. I would like to thank Ms. Evans for her dedication and
hard work.
I also, quite frankly, appreciated Ms. Evans' candid
acknowledgment in September that the Red Cross's responses to
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita had been ``uneven,'' and that these
natural disasters ``eclipsed even our direst worst-case
scenarios.''
In more recent weeks, I have been encouraged by the Red
Cross's public vow to address some of the criticisms by seeking
greater diversity within its ranks and establishing
partnerships with local groups. I believe the coming transition
at the American Red Cross offers an opportunity for Red Cross
management to respond to the concerns that have been raised and
that will be discussed here today.
At this time, I now recognize my good friend from Georgia,
the distinguished Ranking Member, Mr. Lewis, for his opening
statement.
[The opening statement of Chairman Ramstad follows:]
Opening Statement of The Honorable Jim Ramstad, Chairman, and a
Representative in Congress from the State of Minnesota
Hurricane Katrina caused unprecedented destruction along the Gulf
Coast, displacing more than one million people, and causing over $100
billion in property damage. This destruction has required a massive
response from federal, state, and local governments. The hurricane has
also inspired the nation's charities to make an historic effort.
Americans have made this effort possible by giving or pledging over
$2.6 billion to help the victims of this disaster. Charities have
provided critically important assistance, ranging from food, shelter,
and cash assistance, to counseling and job training.
This is the single largest charitable response to a disaster in our
nation's history. This Subcommittee has the responsibility to review
the activities of charities to see where things worked, where they
didn't work, and where the response can be made more effective. This
Subcommittee held a similar review after the September 11th attacks,
and highlighted areas in which charities needed to improve their
response to disasters. I hope that our efforts today can lead to
further improvements.
Several of the witnesses today will tell an inspiring story.
They will tell us about volunteers who dropped what they were doing
so they could help take care of hurricane victims. We will hear about
how churches provided shelter and food to people who had nothing. We
will hear about how Americans' generous donations allowed the American
Red Cross and other organizations to provide needed cash assistance to
hurricane victims.
Notwithstanding the tremendous humanitarian response, other
witnesses will describe some significant shortcomings in the charitable
response. Today's hearing will focus on three main concerns.
First, how coordination between charities can be
improved.
In massive disasters like this one, charities, large and small, get
involved in the response. Their collective resources, capabilities, and
efforts must be effectively coordinated. Four years ago, this
Subcommittee discussed the problem of coordination among charities
responding to the September 11th attacks. Hurricane Katrina has shown
that much work still remains.
Second, how all Americans can have access to and receive
assistance from charitable groups during disasters.
The Red Cross and other charities must not forget communities and
individuals who are harder to reach or who need special attention.
Today, we will hear from two witnesses representing the disabled
community, which is of particular interest to me. They will describe
the experiences of individuals with disabilities during this disaster,
and some of those experiences are shocking. We need to hear what the
Red Cross and others are planning to do to ensure that underserved
populations are not forgotten or neglected during the next disaster.
Third, we need to ensure that charitable dollars are not
lost to fraud. While disasters bring out the best in many people, they
also bring out the worst in others. In some cases, criminals have
pretended to be charities, and stolen money intended for real
charities.
In other cases, people pretending to be victims have taken
advantage of real charities, and taken money that could have been used
to help real victims. The New York Times reported that the Red Cross
distributed $32 million in cash to residents in and around Jackson,
Mississippi, even though many of them had not experienced significant
property damage.
One pawn shop owner in Jackson, Mississippi, told the Times that
many aid recipients cashed relief checks at his shop, and immediately
bought jewelry, guns, DVDs, and electronics. The owner of a Western
Union branch in Jackson was quoted as saying: ``Surely the Red Cross
has to have a better use of funds. Unless they just have money that
they are trying to get rid of for some reason.'' Stories like this may
discourage donors from giving their money for relief efforts.
Therefore, we have to understand what the Red Cross and other charities
are doing to ensure that their aid is going to the people who need it
most.
If this hearing helps document where charities fell short in
serving the hurricane victims, it can help ensure these problems do not
occur again. If Americans do not have confidence that their donations
are being used wisely, they may not be so generous when the next
disaster strikes.
This morning, the Red Cross announced the resignation of their CEO,
Marsha Evans. I would like to thank Ms. Evans for her dedication and
hard work. I also would like to say that this transition offers an
opportunity for the Red Cross management to respond to the concerns
that have been raised and will be discussed today.
I now recognize the distinguished Ranking Member from Georgia, my
good friend, Mr. Lewis, for his opening statement.
Mr. LEWIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
holding this hearing this afternoon.
More than 2 months ago, Hurricane Katrina tore through the
gulf region, causing unbelievable destruction. Tens of
thousands of people were forced to leave their homes. The area
suffered over $100 billion in property damage.
Charitable organizations played a critical role in our
country's humanitarian response to Hurricane Katrina. Americans
helped these efforts by giving well over $2.5 billion to
charitable organizations for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The American Red Cross described Hurricane Katrina as a
disaster of epic proportion, in fact, nearly 20 times larger
than anything we have ever faced before.
At the peak of the emergency, the Red Cross sheltered close
to 150,000 people in more than 500 facilities. In response to
the hurricanes, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, the Red
Cross has provided 3.42 million overnight stays in more than
1,000 shelters nationwide, and given more than 1.2 million
families emergency financial assistance.
In coordination with the Southern Baptist Convention, the
Red Cross has served over 50 million hot meals and snacks to
hurricane survivors. The Salvation Army and small churches,
often local churches, were able to meet many of the needs of
hard-to-reach communities where the American Red Cross could
not.
When Katrina first hit the region, the Salvation Army was
able to quickly deliver food, blankets, cleaning kits, and
other needed supplies to those in most need. Today, the
organization has served more than 12 million hot meals,
sandwiches and snacks to survivors and first responders.
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I want to
welcome all of the witnesses coming before the Subcommittee
today. Your organizations' response to Hurricane Katrina was
outstanding and unlike anything seen in our country before.
There are always lessons to be learned to improve our disaster
response system for the future; I share your interest in
learning from past experience.
In conclusion, America's charitable response to Hurricane
Katrina deserves our praise. I want to give each of you my
personal thank you for all that you did and continue to do.
[The opening statement of Mr. Lewis follows:]
Opening Statement of The Honorable John Lewis, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Georgia
More than two months ago, Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf
region causing unbelievable destruction. Tens of thousands of people
were forced to leave their homes. The area suffered over $100 billion
in property damage.
Charitable organizations played a critical role in providing our
country's humanitarian response to Hurricane Katrina. Americans helped
these efforts by giving well over two and a half billion dollars to
charitable organizations for the purpose of aiding the victims of
Hurricane Katrina.
The American Red Cross describes Hurricane Katrina as a disaster of
epic proportions--``in fact, nearly 20 times larger than anything we
had ever faced before.'' At the peak of the Katrina emergency, the Red
Cross sheltered close to 150,000 people in more than 500 facilities. In
response to Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, the Red Cross
provided 3.42 million overnight stays in more than 1,000 shelters
nationwide and gave more that 1.2 million families emergency financial
assistance. In coordination with the Southern Baptist Convention, the
Red Cross served over 50 million hot meals and snacks to hurricane
survivors.
The Salvation Army and small charities, often local churches, were
able to meet many of the needs of hard-to-reach communities where the
American Red Cross could not. When Katrina first hit the region, the
Salvation Army was able to quickly deliver food, blankets, cleaning
kits, and other needed supplies to those in most need. To date, the
organization has served more than 12 million hot meals, sandwiches and
snacks to hurricane survivors and first responders.
I want to welcome all the witnesses coming before the Subcommittee
today. Your organizations' responses to Hurricane Katrina were
outstanding and unlike anything seen in our country before. There are
always lessons to be learned to improve our disaster response system
for the future. I share your interest in learning from past experience.
In conclusion, America's charitable response to Hurricane Katrina
deserves our praise. I want to give each of you my personal thank you.
Chairman RAMSTAD. The Chair thanks the Ranking Member.
Now, we call the first panel comprising of our colleague
from Louisiana, a Member of the Committee on Ways and Means and
Chairman of the Subcommittee on Social Security.
I want to say before you begin, Jim, that in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina, your leadership, your hard work, your
dedicated efforts were truly an inspiration to all of us and to
all Americans. I want to thank you for all that you did to lead
us in the direction of providing the appropriate relief to
people devastated by the worst natural disaster in our Nation's
history.
I look forward to your testimony. Welcome to the
Subcommittee.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. JIM MCCRERY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA
Mr. MCCRERY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for those
kind words.
I want to thank the full Committee of Ways and Means for
being so responsive in the wake of Katrina initially, and now
Rita, in moving bills through the Congress, through our
Committee, through the Congress on unemployment compensation
relief, on welfare relief, tax relief for individuals who are
victims of Katrina; and now, we hope this week or next, another
tax bill dealing with incentives to bring investment, business
investment, back to the devastated areas.
I think this hearing today, though, is very important, Mr.
Chairman, and I commend you for holding it in an effort to shed
light on the positive things that were done--as you and Mr.
Lewis both talked about, indeed there were a lot of very
positive deeds performed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina--but
also to question and highlight problems that were present in
dealing with the aftermath of those storms.
Today, I want to take this opportunity to shed light on
some of those shortcomings as I saw them from my perspective as
someone on the ground in a part of Louisiana that was not
touched by Katrina. My district was not touched at all by the
storm, but we were touched by the tens of thousands of evacuees
that came into my district seeking shelter.
So, it is that experience, primarily, that I want to talk
about today. Before another Committee, I can talk about the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and some other
things, but today I am going to focus on the sheltering
activity and who was responsible for that.
I am concerned, in particular, with the performance of the
American Red Cross. Based on my experiences on the ground from
Katrina and Rita, the American Red Cross was not properly
prepared to fulfill its emergency role in our national response
plan. For over 100 years, beginning with the Congressional
Charter of 1905, the Federal Government has partnered with the
American Red Cross to provide domestic and international
disaster relief.
The current relationship is outlined in the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security's National Response Plan, where the
American Red Cross is named the primary agency responsible for
mass care after a disaster. This means that the American Red
Cross, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), is primarily
responsible for providing emergency medical care, food and
shelter to Americans in the wake of natural and man-made
disasters. After witnessing the Red Cross's struggles during
Katrina and Rita, I question whether it is prudent for Congress
to place such great responsibility in the hands of one
organization.
Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of New
Orleans displaced roughly 1 million people from their homes in
southeast Louisiana. Tens of thousands sought shelter in my
district. It was clear from the beginning that the Red Cross
simply didn't have the sheltering capacity to meet immediate
needs. Small independent shelters began popping up by the
dozens across northwest Louisiana. At the peak, there were over
40 shelters operating in my district, and fewer than 10 of
those were Red Cross shelters.
So, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, when you
read in the paper or you hear statistics like Mr. Lewis cited
in his opening statement about X number of people being fed and
so forth, a lot of those statistics come from the Red Cross,
and they are accurate insofar as the Red Cross is concerned,
but there are literally tens of thousands, probably hundreds of
thousands of people being fed and sheltered that are not
accounted for in those figures because the Red Cross does not
know about them.
That is the experience I had, Mr. Chairman. Immediately
after Katrina, when I was going around my district trying to
make sure that evacuees from south Louisiana were taken care
of, we had a number of small shelters--I say ``small,'' some of
them had 300 people in a high school gymnasium; they were not
that small--but we had a number of shelters like that that
popped up out of necessity.
The large shelters in Shreveport were full, and none were
opening at that time. So, these people were coming up from
south Louisiana, banging on our doors, saying, ``Help.'' Those
communities, rightfully so, opened their doors, created a
shelter, and when I or the people from those local communities
tried to get the Red Cross to send them blankets or cots or
food, or diapers, they were told, sorry, we cannot help you.
Now, I believe that the Red Cross director in my district
was being honest. He probably could not help because he either
didn't have the provisions, or he didn't have the
transportation for the provisions, didn't have the volunteers,
but whose fault is that? In my view, it is the fault of the
American Red Cross--not my local chapter, the national Red
Cross--poorly planning or just not planning at all for a
disaster of this scope.
We have known for decades that New Orleans was vulnerable
to a storm of this sort, that flooding was possible, that
hundreds of thousands of people would be displaced from their
homes. We have, since 9/11, I think, anticipated a similar man-
made disaster that could be caused by a terrorist act. Why were
we not better prepared?
I spoke earlier about FEMA. I think FEMA was woefully
unprepared. The Federal Government was woefully unprepared. Our
State government was woefully unprepared. The local governments
were unprepared. I think the Red Cross was unprepared, as
clearly demonstrated.
So, that is my testimony in a nutshell, Mr. Chairman. I
will be happy to stay and answer questions that your Committee
might have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McCrery follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Jim McCrery, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Louisiana
Mr. Chairman, my colleagues on Ways and Means, I commend you for
holding this hearing and appreciate the invitation to share my views on
the charitable response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. For the past
three months, my energies have been largely devoted to responding to
the hurricanes which ravaged the Gulf Coast region. As part of that
response, I have assisted hurricane evacuees residing in my
congressional district, as well as my constituents who were directly
impacted by Rita. National and local charities have played a central
role in feeding, housing and finding employment for these families.
Their contributions to the relief and recovery have been amazing. I am,
however, particularly concerned with the performance of the American
Red Cross. Based upon my experiences from Katrina and Rita, the
American Red Cross is not properly prepared to fulfill its emergency
role in our National Response Plan.
For over 100 years, and beginning with the Congressional Charter of
1905, the Federal Government has partnered with the American Red Cross
to provide domestic and international disaster relief. The current
relationship is outlined in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's
National Response Plan where the American Red Cross is named the
primary agency responsible for mass care after a disaster. This means
that the American Red Cross, a non-governmental organization, is
primarily responsible for providing emergency medical care, food, and
shelter to Americans in the wake of natural and man-made disasters.
After witnessing the American Red Cross' struggles during Katrina and
Rita, I am not sure it is prudent for Congress to place such great
responsibility in the hands of one organization.
Hurricane Katrina, and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans,
displaced roughly one million people from their homes in southeast
Louisiana. Tens of thousands of evacuees sought shelter in my district.
It was clear from the beginning that the Red Cross simply did not have
the sheltering capacity to meet immediate needs. Small independent
shelters began popping up by the dozens across northwest Louisiana. At
the peak, there were over forty shelters in my district, while fewer
than ten of those were operated by the Red Cross. Red Cross had serious
trouble operating at least three of the larger shelters in my district:
Hirsch Coliseum in Shreveport, LA, CenturyTel Center in Bossier City,
LA, and the Health and Physical Educational Building at Northwestern
State University in Natchitoches, LA.
Several days after Katrina's landfall, the American Red Cross asked
a network of local churches, led by the First Assembly of God, to take
over the Red Cross shelter at Hirsch Coliseum in Shreveport, LA. Steve
Beyer, an Associate Pastor with one of the churches, agreed to manage
the shelter until a replacement Red Cross manager could be found. No
one replaced him. Mr. Beyer operated the Hirsch Coliseum shelter, where
6,200 people came through its doors, with only two Red Cross volunteers
for the first two weeks. The Red Cross asked church volunteers to wear
Red Cross shirts, I suppose to give the appearance that Red Cross was
operating the shelter.
The CenturyTel Center in Bossier City, LA, opened as an independent
shelter one week after the storm in response to overwhelming need for
additional sheltering capacity. CenturyTel operated on the backs of
local government and community organizations while it waited for
certification from the American Red Cross. Even after the American Red
Cross moved in, local charities provided all of the food for seven days
until Red Cross could secure food. Johnny Wyatt, the City Marshall and
Homeland Security Director for Bossier City, LA, helped manage
CenturyTel. Mr. Wyatt is scheduled to appear in front of the
Subcommittee today. His testimony will shed light on the challenges of
working with the American Red Cross.
The American Red Cross shelter at Northwestern State University was
managed by the City of Natchitoches and the Natchitoches Parish
Sheriff's Department in conjunction with the University. Dr. Bill
Dickens, the shelter's manager, had one Red Cross volunteer to help
service the 1,000 evacuees housed each night at the site for the first
10 days following the storm. I should note that it took seven days for
this shelter to receive any of the $60,000 in new bedding that was
donated to the local Red Cross chapter by General Motors. The bedding
sat unused in a Red Cross facility seventy miles away in Shreveport,
LA, despite the fact that some evacuees in Natchitoches were sleeping
on the floor. The failure to get these resources to the shelter in a
timely fashion represents an inexcusable breakdown in communication and
coordination within the Red Cross.
While the Red Cross could barely manage its own network of
shelters, the organization offered little assistance to struggling
independent shelters. Dennis Butcher, the Office of Emergency
Preparedness Director for Claiborne Parish, was instructed by the Red
Cross to fend for himself. Mr. Butcher operated an independent shelter
of 1,200 evacuees for over a month without any assistance from the Red
Cross. I wish Mr. Butcher's experience was unique, but the Red Cross
also refused requests for assistance from the Office of Emergency
Preparedness Directors for Claiborne, Sabine, Vernon and Webster
Parishes. I also spoke with OEP and other officials on the Mississippi
Gulf Coast who experienced similar treatment from the Red Cross.
To date, the American Red Cross has attributed its shortcomings in
my district to their local chapter. The Federal Government named the
American National Red Cross as its partner in the National Response
plan, not the local chapter in my district. If it is not the
responsibility of the National Red Cross to step in when a Category 4
hurricane decimates a major metropolitan area and overwhelms one of
their local chapters, whose responsibility is it? It has been over
thirty years since Hurricane Camille decimated the Mississippi Coast,
four years since the terrorist attacks of 2001, and a little over a
year since Florida's terrible hurricane season. Forecasters have known
for decades that New Orleans was one hurricane away from a major
disaster. The American Red Cross, as the Federal Government's lead
partner in mass care, should have been prepared to meet the immediate
needs of the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The national
organization should have been prepared to move sufficient numbers of
volunteers and staff to affected areas. Americans rely on the Red Cross
in times of crisis, but the Red Cross could not be relied on in
northwestern Louisiana.
The American Red Cross' reputation in Louisiana has been severely
damaged. I have stopped giving money to the organization, and instead,
have directed over $450,000 in funds I raised for hurricane relief to
the United Way and the Salvation Army. The Red Cross, though, continues
to enjoy a major advantage in fundraising over other charities because
of its partnership with the Federal Government. In this disaster alone,
the Red Cross absorbed over 60% of all charitable donations. I believe
it is Congress' responsibility to reexamine the Federal Government's
relationship with the Red Cross.
In closing I would like to once again commend this Committee for
its willingness to examine this important issue. I would also like to
thank all the volunteers who have invested their time and money into
the recovery effort. The Gulf Coast is forever indebted to them for
their generosity.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Well, thank you very much for your very
compelling testimony. I have just a few questions I would like
to ask.
Jim, what kind of response did you get when you brought the
problems to the attention of the Red Cross Headquarters of the
American Red Cross? What kind of response did you get when you
alerted them as to the problems with the shelters?
Mr. MCCRERY. The national organization expressed some
surprise at some of the things I was telling them. So, they
were evidently unaware of what was happening on the ground in
my district. They did pledge to look into it and to try to
identify where the problems arose and fix those, and that is
why I am here today.
I hope I am not being unduly tough on the Red Cross, but I
think we need to talk plainly about the shortcomings of our
disaster response; and if the Red Cross is going to be the
Federal Government's primary responder in terms of shelter,
than I think we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to the Red
Cross to point out the shortcomings of that effort so that we
can be better prepared next time.
The national Red Cross evidently was not well aware of what
was going on on the ground, at least in my district, and they
have promised to try to rectify those problems, but the initial
response was just simply, we didn't know.
Chairman RAMSTAD. I notice from your written testimony that
you asserted the national Red Cross attributed the shortcomings
in your district to the local chapter. Rather than being an
issue of lack of control by the national Red Cross vis-a-vis
the local chapter, you seem to indicate today it is more a lack
of planning on national's part.
Mr. MCCRERY. That is my perception, that there was not in
place an adequate plan on the part of the Red Cross to deal
with sheltering this many people. It overwhelmed them. It
overwhelmed my local chapter. It overwhelmed the national Red
Cross. I understand that. It was a very difficult situation.
This country has never seen anything like it in our
history, but after 9/11, I think we all knew that something
like this could happen somewhere, and we should have been
better prepared. That is all I am saying, Mr. Chairman.
I hope the Federal Government will work with the Red Cross
or maybe bring in the Salvation Army or other groups to have a
united effort to make sure these kinds of problems are met in
the future.
Chairman RAMSTAD. I want to ask one final question. I
touched on it in my opening statement, and you certainly have
just touched on it again; that is Congress' responsibility to
examine the relationship between the Federal Government and the
Red Cross, which you clearly stated, so that we can avoid
problems that happened in your district from happening again,
from being repeated anywhere else.
Do you have any suggestions for how we as Members of
Congress can help improve the response by charitable
organizations?
Mr. MCCRERY. Mr. Chairman, I think that we ought to
reexamine the congressional charter that gives the American Red
Cross the responsibility for the initial sheltering and feeding
and so forth of victims of national disasters. We ought to
examine that relationship, perhaps bring in other
organizations, make it an umbrella organization.
I do not know, but Congress needs to fully examine that and
make sure that the plan we have in place with some NGOs is the
best one to meet such a massive need in case we have this kind
of disaster again.
Let me hasten to add, Mr. Chairman, that there were lots of
volunteers; I do not know how many--hundreds, thousands of
volunteers, and the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, the
United Way and lots of organizations that did heroic jobs. I
think my local director of the Red Cross worked 22 straight
days with no time off, trying to see to the needs of the
shelters that they were operating in my area.
So, I certainly want to commend those individuals who
volunteered their time, and some who were paid, and went beyond
their call of duty to perform these heroic acts. They should be
commended.
I think that Congress has to, if not share the blame, at
least share the responsibility, going forward, to make sure
that the organization or organizations that we vest with this
responsibility is better prepared next time to carry out that
responsibility.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Thank you again for your testimony and
your outstanding leadership.
The Chair now recognizes the distinguished Ranking Member
for questions.
Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me join you in
thanking Jim for his leadership and his hard work during the
unbelievable crisis along the Gulf Coast.
I have one or two questions. You have some praise and some
complaints about how things were handled in your district.
Could you, just for the record--what do you consider to be the
best job done and the worst job done?
Mr. MCCRERY. Well, the best job, in my view, Mr. Lewis, was
done by people who were not in the Red Cross or the Salvation
Army or any other organization. They were just ordinary people
who came out of their homes and brought diapers and pillows and
blankets and food, and stayed at the high school gymnasium or
wherever, the civic center, in some small town and cooked for
the people who were there; who gave them rides to the Social
Security office to make sure they got their checks; just
performed daily acts of human kindness for people they had not
very much in common with.
Believe me, people in north Louisiana don't share much
culturally with people in south Louisiana. They are Cajun,
Catholics, French speaking in many cases from south Louisiana,
and we are Protestant rednecks in north Louisiana; it is like
two different States. Yet these folks in north Louisiana were
coming out of their homes every day and every night to take
care of people that they didn't know and didn't have much in
common with, except that they were human beings. That was very
inspiring to me.
The worst thing was just the total lack of planning that
was evident in this crisis. It was insufficient.
Mr. LEWIS. Let me just try to see if I can find out
something here. I believe the Red Cross is going to testify,
maybe later, that this was the worst level of human need in the
history of the organization.
You said earlier that the Federal Government was not
prepared, that the local government, the county, the State was
not prepared. Were there any charitable organizations prepared
for such a level of human need, such devastation?
Mr. MCCRERY. Probably not.
Mr. LEWIS. Well, is it possible for someone to be prepared?
Mr. MCCRERY. I think that is a fair question, and it may
not be possible to be prepared for every single contingency
associated with a disaster of this scale, but, Mr. Lewis, it is
my contention that we could have and should have been much
better prepared to meet the contingencies of this kind of
disaster than we were.
It was not hard to imagine that the numbers of people
evacuating south Louisiana, who did, would actually evacuate.
This scenario had been on the books for years, as I have said,
and we should have been better prepared.
Let me just give you an example, and maybe--and the Red
Cross is going to testify, and you can ask them about this--and
maybe they have some sound reason why they could not do this,
but in my view they should have, from the national office,
anticipated a huge need for volunteers or for bodies, for human
beings, in areas north of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf
Coast.
They should have prepositioned people in Dallas and
Shreveport and Jackson, maybe Atlanta, ready to go into
whatever areas were taking those evacuees from those devastated
areas; and they weren't. My local chapter got zero help for
quite a while. I think that is inexcusable.
Mr. LEWIS. Well, should there be a greater burden on the
National Government than on some charitable organization,
whether that organization be national, international or local?
Rather than talk about getting involved in a blame game, I just
want to be clear here where we are going.
Mr. MCCRERY. Well, I am merely reporting to you what
happened on the ground.
The Federal Government has already made the decision,
through the Congress, to enlist the American Red Cross as the
NGO that is on the front lines, supposed to meet the needs of
evacuees and shelters and so forth in a disaster. We have made
that decision.
Whether that decision needs to be reconsidered is a
question for this Congress. I am posing it today. I do not know
the answer, Mr. Lewis, but it is a question we ought to ask. We
ought to examine it thoroughly, and if there is a change
necessary, we ought to make that change.
If the Red Cross needs help, if they need other
organizations, if they need the Federal Government, then we
ought to examine that and get it done.
Mr. LEWIS. Thank you very much.
Chairman RAMSTAD. The Chair would now recognize the
gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Beauprez.
Mr. BEAUPREZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Jim, let me add my thanks to you for your leadership on
this, and my sympathy to all of the people affected by these
horrible storms. Even though Colorado is a long ways from the
impacted area, we took in 4,200 refugees even in far-away
Colorado, about three out of four of them from your State of
Louisiana; and it stressed us a little bit. I can only imagine
what it must have been like for you in your district, Jim.
You have mentioned in considerable detail what you went
through, what your local Red Cross chapter went through. We all
know that Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, were affected by
Katrina; Rita took its effects on Texas as well. Of course, the
storms impacted areas even farther than that because of the
refugees.
What is your perception, Jim, of the circumstances, the
struggles, the way the whole reaction was managed in other
areas? Was yours unique or was this a pattern that was far too
prevalent?
Mr. MCCRERY. I cannot speak with any authority on whether
similar problems existed in other localities, except for the
Mississippi Gulf Coast, which I did tour and spoke with several
public officials in the Mississippi Gulf Coast area. There were
similar complaints, Mr. Beauprez, about the Red Cross and the
response to sheltering and assisting shelters on the
Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Mr. BEAUPREZ. I am sure you have had some opportunity to
talk to some other States, Florida comes to mind, that has been
hit, hit, and hit again it seems. At least it is my perception
that however they manage to do it, they seem to respond pretty
well. What is the difference in Florida?
Mr. MCCRERY. I have spoken to some of our colleagues from
Florida, who have also expressed complaints about FEMA, about
the Red Cross, about other organizations in the aftermath of
hurricanes in South Florida.
If you are asking about the State's response, I think the
State of Florida has enough experience that they have learned
to be ready and to respond admirably on the State level.
Mr. BEAUPREZ. Well, given that experience, you have pointed
out clearly that while we didn't know the when or the degree of
the devastation, it should have come as a mystery to no one
that something like this could happen. After all, we have had
other hurricanes, not this large, but we have had others.
We had 9/11. We certainly witnessed, a bit from afar, but
we saw the devastation from the tsunami months before your
terrible event. So, it should have come with some, I guess,
anticipation.
You said that the question as to the prudence of one
organization having the responsibility within our national
response plan, that the Red Cross does, is a legitimate
question.
Well, let me ask you directly. In your opinion, Jim, is the
thing broken so badly it can't be fixed? What is your
perception right now?
Mr. MCCRERY. My belief is that it can be fixed, that it is
possible to be better prepared. Will it take a lot of
organization and a lot of work? Yes, I think it will. I do
think it is possible to be much better prepared to meet the
needs.
Look, we all have run campaigns, and we know, at least
those of us who had tough campaigns at one time--and some of us
still do--we have to organize volunteers, and we have to have
them ready to get on a bus, if necessary, and go to some other
town to go door to door and hand out leaflets. That is hard
work. It is hard to have a ready set of volunteers, at a phone
call to pick up and go. I know that. It is very difficult.
However, that is the kind of nitty-gritty work that I think
needs to be done on a national level; to have people ready at
the drop of a hat to respond and be there, have bodies on the
ground ready to help, ready to give some guidance. That is all
a lot of people in my district wanted.
They wanted some people there to just direct them. Look, I
am here, I am ready to help, but tell me how to do it; what do
I need to do? There was nobody.
Chairman RAMSTAD. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman
from Texas, Mr. Johnson.
Mr. JOHNSON. No questions.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Mr. Linder.
Mr. LINDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Jim, for all you have done on this issue and all
of your colleagues. I am sure you are still working on it on
the weekends when you get home.
Is there a competing element between FEMA and the Red
Cross?
Mr. MCCRERY. I don't know. There shouldn't be, but I am
glad you brought that up, because one thing that was prevalent
in the first, say, 5 days following the storm, is that I would
finally get in touch with somebody at FEMA, and they would say,
``that is the Red Cross's responsibility.''
I would get in touch with the Red Cross; they would say,
``Oh, no, that is FEMA's responsibility.''
I would call FEMA back, and they would say, Oh, no, I think
that is the State's responsibility; call the Emergency
Operations Center in Baton Rouge. That is the National Guard.
Everybody was doing this: ``That is somebody else's
responsibility.''
So, clearly in our National Response Plan, we either need
to have a better plan or we need to have people better familiar
with the plan so that everybody knows what his responsibility
is; and we do not get this runaround of, no, that is not us,
that is him, them, whoever.
People need to know what their responsibility is and take
responsibility and give answers and give direction when the
time comes.
Mr. LINDER. Is there a reason to question whether we would
have the major planner of shelter and food in a major disaster
being an NGO that has a pretty huge budget and pays its
executive director $500,000 a year, and is distant from the
government?
Mr. MCCRERY. I don't know. That is the question we need to
examine.
Congress has made that decision in the past. We have said
that in this case the American Red Cross is the appropriate
organization; we are going to not only vest them with that
responsibility, we are also going to provide them some assets
and some assistance. So, I think that needs to be thoroughly
examined.
We cannot ignore this. It is going to happen again
somewhere, if it is an Earthquake in California, it is a
Category 5 in South Florida.
Mr. LINDER. Or a terrorist attack.
Mr. MCCRERY. Or a terrorist attack where the terrorists
dynamite a dam or infiltrate the water system with pollutants,
that causes people to have to leave in mass numbers. Something
is going to happen. So, we owe it to ourselves and our
constituents to make sure that we either take the plan that is
on the books and make it work or create a new plan.
Mr. LINDER. If we anticipated a disaster, which we saw
coming for several days, and were unprepared for that, how
could they prepare for a nuclear accident that we didn't have
any idea was coming?
Mr. MCCRERY. Yes. Well, certainly something like that--
where a nuclear device explodes that we do not have any notice
of, the problems are going to be different associated with
that, but some of them could be similar. You could have people
within a certain radius of the explosion ordered to get out
quickly and to evacuate, to go somewhere else, and you could
have the same kinds of problems.
Certainly every situation would be different, but some of
them would be the same, and we need to be prepared for that.
Mr. LINDER. My recollection is that after September 11th,
huge sums of money came into the Red Cross. They made an
executive decision not to spend it all on September 11th, which
I believe the board subsequently overturned.
Mr. MCCRERY. That's right.
Mr. LINDER. Do you have any expectation that this is
occurring in this event?
Mr. MCCRERY. I do not. I just do not know, but--I think you
raise a legitimate question, though, which is, should we have
one organization that is generally recognized as the
organization to respond to disasters, and as a consequence of
that recognition, have the overwhelming majority of private
sector donations going to that one organization. I think that
is a legitimate question.
The government shares in the responsibility for identifying
that one organization, I think. So, I think that is a question
we need to reexamine.
Mr. LINDER. Thank you.
Chairman RAMSTAD. The gentleman from California, Mr. Nunes.
Mr. NUNES. No questions.
Chairman RAMSTAD. The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Shaw.
Mr. SHAW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I, having experienced a lesser disaster, but a disaster,
indeed, with Wilma down in Florida and having been a lifetime
resident of Florida, I have seen many, many hurricanes, but I
do not think I have ever seen, and I do not think one has ever
hit our shores that has caused the devastation and loss of
property--even though there have been some with much larger
loss of life in Florida, back in the early days--as Katrina.
Looking back on what we have learned, I think it is easy to
overlook much of the good that was done, the heroic behavior,
the generosity of the American people. All of those
organizations have done a good job in so many ways, but that
does not mean that we should not go back.
I appreciate your testimony as to what went wrong, and
those are the things that we should be talking about. You won't
read about it in the paper unless it is something that went
wrong. Nevertheless, we should not be afraid to get in there,
roll up our sleeves and talk about it.
I would suggest--and perhaps you hit on this in your
testimony, but I think FEMA should call together all of these
organizations. You talk about a ``plan.'' Well, the plan should
be in writing and be very, very clear.
There were many breakdowns. The first breakdown was in
individual responsibility. That was a huge breakdown, and
particularly in Louisiana. Then there was a breakdown in the
city, there was a breakdown in the Governor's office in
Louisiana.
Florida was not perfect, but I think that--compared to what
went on in Louisiana, that we should get an Oscar for the way
our government operated at the local as well as at the State
level with Jeb Bush. I think he did a wonderful job.
Again, I can tell you, the press in Florida talks about
what went wrong. One area that is a little bit outside of the
scope of this hearing, but Mr. Linder brought up the question
of FEMA, an area that is worrying me, and that is exactly what
FEMA does.
In Florida, I am sure in Louisiana, Mississippi and
Alabama, I don't care how rich you are, if you went out and
bought a generator, they reimbursed you up to $800. Luckily,
most people didn't know that, or I can tell you that it would
have been rampant. Chain saws, why are we buying people chain
saws? We all are anxious to get the trees out of the road and
out of our yards, but giving individuals--refunding the money
for going out and buying themselves a nice new chain saw, I do
not think is the responsibility of FEMA.
Now, I know of personal individuals, if you have got
medical emergencies, something that is really drastic and
people cannot afford it, then I think it is proper to buy a
generator to put in someone's personal home. To just simply
say, all you have got to do is buy one--one of the adjusters
for FEMA, going out and looking at where the generator was and
being sure that it was properly done before the adjustment,
found it in a five-car garage. Now, I can tell you, somebody
with a five-car garage should not be getting a free generator.
On the island of Palm Beach, there were several people;
there is not a home on the island of Palm Beach that is worth
less than $1 million. That should not happen. As a matter of
fact, I do not think we should be buying them, period, except
in drastic circumstances.
Did you have the same experience in your area.
Mr. MCCRERY. Yes. As you said, this is not the proper forum
to examine FEMA's responsibilities.
Mr. SHAW. It is as close as this Committee will get.
Mr. MCCRERY. Since you asked, though--and I have already
stated in a general sense that FEMA was unprepared for this--
and I think the examples that you point out of people abusing
FEMA abound. That is hard to control because that is human
nature, to take advantage of a situation, sometimes even in
Florida. What FEMA can do about that, short of our changing the
rules, I don't know.
Mr. SHAW. Well, I did look at what the law is; and the law
allows FEMA to set the regulations as to what they are going to
do, and I think we need to be a little more restrictive in the
statute.
So, I plan to ask the party of appropriate jurisdiction to
look at that and tighten up on that, because otherwise, the
word has gotten out now; and I can tell you, when Florida gets
another hurricane, the best business you can be in is selling
generators, because you are going to sell jagillions of them.
It is wrong. It is not the proper use of taxpayer dollars.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Thank you, Mr. Shaw.
The Chair again thanks you, Chairman McCrery, for your
testimony, your leadership and your great effort in this
regard. We look forward to working with you to remedy some of
the problems that you point out.
The Chair will now call the second panel for today's
hearing. If you would come forward please, take your seats.
First, Cynthia M. Fagnoni, Managing Director, Education
Workforce and Income Security, U.S. Government Accountability
Office (GAO); Joseph C. Becker, Senior Vice President,
Preparedness and Response, American Red Cross; Major Todd
Hawks, Public Affairs Secretary and Associate National
Community Relations and Development Secretary, Salvation Army
of America; and John G. Davies, President and Chief Executive
Officer (CEO), Baton Rouge Area Foundation.
Welcome to all four of you witnesses. Thank you for being
here today. We will begin, please, with Ms. Fagnoni.
STATEMENT OF CYNTHIA M. FAGNONI, MANAGING DIRECTOR, EDUCATION,
WORKFORCE AND INCOME SECURITY, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY
OFFICE
Ms. FAGNONI. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Members of
the Subcommittee. I am pleased to be here today to share early
findings from GAO's ongoing review of charities' response to
the recent Gulf Coast hurricanes.
Charities have played a major role in responding to
national disasters, including the September 11th terrorist
attacks, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. They provided food,
water, shelter and other assistance to victims in devastated
areas.
Following the recent hurricanes, charities mounted the
largest disaster response effort in U.S. history. My statement
today will focus on charities' progress in incorporating
lessons learned following the September 11th attacks and our
preliminary observations on how well charities have coordinated
following the Gulf Coast hurricanes.
The GAO reported several lessons learned from the 9/11
response that could help charities enhance their responses to
future disasters. These included making it easier for eligible
survivors to get the help they need, enhancing coordination
among charities and with FEMA, educating the public about
charities' roles in disaster response, and planning for future
events.
We recommended that FEMA convene a working group of
charities to address these lessons learned, which resulted in
the creation of the Coordinated Assistance Network (CAN). The
CAN involves seven of the largest disaster response charities
and is designed to improve coordination and share information
electronically about aid recipients and services provided.
In response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, charities have
raised more than $2.5 billion in cash donations according to
the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. The American
Red Cross raised more than half of that total, with other
organizations raising considerably smaller amounts.
Disaster relief charities took steps to coordinate services
through central operations centers, conference calls and
electronic databases. For example, in the weeks following
Katrina, the Red Cross organized a national operations center
with FEMA and other national charities to coordinate services
on the ground.
National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD),
an umbrella organization of charities organized daily
conference calls with Federal officials and more than 40
charities to share information. The CAN activated its case
management databases, which enabled more than 40 participating
charities to share data on their clients and the services they
provided.
The CAN also created and activated a shelter database that
included information about the operating status and capacity of
emergency shelters in the Gulf Coast region. The charity
representatives we interviewed reinforced the importance of
these efforts, but they raised some concerns about the
usefulness of these operations and systems.
For example, charity representatives told us that the
national VOAD conference calls often included too many
participants and sometimes participants provided inaccurate
information. Some charity officials also told us that because
the CAN databases were still under development, they were not
ready for use on such a large scale.
Many volunteers had not received sufficient training on the
system, and some of the technological glitches had not been
resolved. In addition, the databases required Internet access
and electricity, which is not always available in disaster
situations. We also found that charities had to balance access
to services with safety concerns as they responded to the
hurricanes.
The GAO teams visiting the Gulf Coast in October observed
that the Red Cross didn't provide relief in certain areas due
to policies intended to protect the safety of service providers
and victims. These policies included not establishing shelters
in flood-risk areas or in structures that are vulnerable to
strong winds, even when victims remained in these areas.
The GAO teams in the field observed that the Salvation Army
and smaller charitable organizations, often local churches,
frequently met victims' needs in these locations. Smaller
charities played an important role in responding to this
disaster, but some concerns were raised about their ability to
provide adequate services to victims.
Some charity representatives told us that many of the
smaller organizations had never operated in a disaster and may
not have completely understood the situation. Some smaller
organizations tried to establish tent cities to house evacuees,
for example, but were not prepared to provide the water,
sanitation and electricity these shelters required.
In addition, some of the small charities that placed
dislocated children in temporary homes didn't keep sufficient
records about where the children were placed. This made it
difficult for families to locate their missing children.
In closing, the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
has challenged charities' abilities to provide large-scale aid
to disaster survivors. At the same time, it has provided a
critical opportunity to assess how the Nation's charities have
incorporated lessons learned from responding to 9/11.
In ongoing work, GAO will continue to examine how well
charities coordinated their response to the Gulf Coast
hurricanes.
Mr. Chairman, this completes my oral statement. I would be
happy to answer any questions you or the Subcommittee Members
may have. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Fagnoni follows:]
Statement of Cynthia M. Fagnoni, Managing Director, Education,
Workforce and Income Security, U.S. Government Accountability Office
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
I am pleased to be here today to discuss the role of charitable
services in response to recent Gulf Coast hurricanes. Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita caused massive destruction and large-scale disruption
of lives in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. In response to
this destruction, we have witnessed heroic efforts by public, private,
and nonprofit organizations and volunteers. My testimony today will
present some of our observations regarding the performance of charities
in response to these hurricanes. These natural disasters have placed
strengthening the nation's emergency response efforts at the top of the
national agenda. Comptroller General Walker has stated that GAO will
provide support to Congress through analysis and evaluation of
coordination efforts among federal agencies, and between federal
agencies and the state, local, private, and nonprofit sectors. GAO has
conducted several previous reviews of federal actions following
national disasters, including Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that will be helpful in
evaluating the nation's response to recent hurricanes. We plan to
conduct all Katrina-related work under the Comptroller General's
authority since it is an issue of interest to the entire Congress and
numerous committees in both houses.
Charities have addressed many short- and long-term needs of the
victims of recent hurricanes in the Gulf Coast region. Their efforts
represent the largest disaster response effort in United States history
by charitable organizations. As charities collect donations to address
these needs, questions have been raised about how the money will be
used and how charitable relief efforts will be coordinated. This
testimony will discuss progress to date in incorporating lessons
learned from our review of charitable coordination following September
11, and preliminary observations about the coordination of charities
after the recent hurricanes. This testimony is based upon published GAO
reports; ongoing work; relevant interviews with federal, state, and
local government officials in states affected by the hurricanes;
interviews with charitable officials and national experts; and data on
total hurricane-related donations to charities from Indiana
University's Center on Philanthropy.
In summary, we learned from our work following the September 11
attacks that charities could take steps to make it easier for survivors
of disasters to get the help they need, improve coordination among
charities and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), better
educate the public about charities' roles in disaster recovery, and
plan for responding to future disasters. Following our report, seven
charities formed a network to share information electronically about
aid recipients and services provided, improve coordination, and ease
access to aid. The group worked in partnership with FEMA to develop a
database to share information between agencies. In a little more than 3
months, charities have raised more than $2.5 billion to assist in
hurricane relief and recovery efforts. In addition, charities have
taken other steps to improve coordination following the Gulf Coast
hurricanes. Charities shared information through meetings at the
American Red Cross headquarters, daily conference calls, and electronic
databases that allowed multiple organizations to access information
about services provided to hurricane victims. Despite these efforts,
some charities raised concerns about the usefulness of the conference
calls and electronic databases for sharing information. For example,
some charities said that daily conference calls after Katrina included
too many organizations and did not provide the information they needed.
There were also problems with providing charitable services to victims
in some hard-to-reach areas. GAO teams in the field reported that
American Red Cross did not provide relief in certain areas because of
safety policies. In areas where the American Red Cross did not operate,
GAO teams observed that other charities, such as the Salvation Army and
smaller charities--often local churches--provided relief services.
Although smaller organizations provided needed charitable services in
the Gulf Coast region, some concerns have been raised about their
ability to provide adequate services to victims. We will be reviewing
this issue in more detail over the next several months. GAO is
currently engaged in ongoing work on the coordination of charitable
efforts in response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and will further
examine how effectively charities coordinated their responses to recent
hurricanes.
Background
Charities are organizations established to serve broad public
purposes, such as the needs of the poor or distressed and other social
welfare issues. The Internal Revenue Service reported that for 2002,
501(c)(3) organizations, which include charities, had total assets of
over $1.7 trillion. In 2004, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
recognized 820,000 charities, accounting for about 90 percent of
501(c)(3) organizations.\1\ Charities can include organizations with
missions such as helping the poor, advancing religion, educating the
public, or providing disaster relief services. Although the Federal
Government indirectly subsidizes charities through their tax-exempt
status and by allowing individuals to deduct charitable contributions
from their income taxes, the Federal Government has a fairly limited
role in monitoring charities. States provide the primary oversight of
charities through their attorneys general and charity offices.
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\1\ This estimate based on data from the IRS, with modifications by
the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) at the Urban
Institute. NCCS excluded foreign and governmental organizations from
the data.
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Charities' Response to National Disasters
Charities have historically played a large role in the nation's
response to disasters. For example, after the September 11 attacks, 35
of the nation's larger charities--including the American Red Cross and
the Salvation Army--collected almost $2.7 billion to provide food,
shelter, mental health services, and other types of aid.
Charities' roles in responding to disasters can vary. Some
charities, including the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army, are
equipped to arrive at a disaster scene and provide immediate mass care,
including food, shelter, and clothing, and in some circumstances,
emergency financial assistance to affected persons. Other charities
focus on providing longer-term assistance, such as job training,
scholarships, or mental health counseling. In addition, new charities
may form after disasters to address specific needs, such as the
charities established after the September 11 attacks to serve survivors
of restaurant workers and firefighters.
National Response Plan
The U.S. Government's National Response Plan provides a single,
comprehensive framework for the federal response to domestic incidents,
such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks. The plan provides the
structure and mechanisms for the coordination of federal support to
states and localities. Major cabinet and other federal agencies are
signatories to the plan, along with the American Red Cross and the
National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (National VOAD), a
national charity umbrella organization. The American Red Cross and
National VOAD are the only nongovernmental organizations that signed
the plan. In December 2004, the Department of Homeland Security
released the plan, which was developed at the request of President
Bush. The plan incorporates and replaces several previous plans for
disaster management, including the Federal Response Plan, which was
originally signed in 1992. One of the ways the plan changed the Federal
Response Plan was by not naming charities active in disaster relief
other than the American Red Cross, but instead incorporating them under
the umbrella organization, National VOAD.
The plan designates 15 Emergency Support Functions, each
identifying a specific disaster response need as well as organizations
that have key roles in helping meet those needs. The sixth Emergency
Support Function, the function most relevant to charities involved in
disaster relief, creates a working group of key federal agencies and
charitable organizations to address:
mass care, including sheltering, feeding, and emergency
first aid;
housing, both short- and long-term; and
human services, such as counseling, processing of
benefits, and identifying support for persons with special needs.
As a direct service provider, the American Red Cross feeds and
shelters victims of disasters. In addition to fulfilling this role, the
American Red Cross is responsible for coordinating federal efforts to
address mass care, housing, and human services under Emergency Support
Function 6 with FEMA. The American Red Cross is the only charity to
serve as a primary agency under any Emergency Support Function. The
plan gives the American Red Cross responsibility for coordinating
federal mass care assistance in support of state and local efforts. The
American Red Cross also has responsibilities under other Emergency
Support Functions, such as providing counseling services and working
with the Federal Government to distribute ice and water. FEMA's
responsibilities include convening regular meetings with key agencies
and coordinating the transition of service delivery from mass care
operations to long-term recovery activities, among other
responsibilities.
National VOAD, a membership organization composed of approximately
40 charities that provide services following disasters, is designated
as a support agency under Emergency Support Function 6, but it does not
provide direct services to victims.\2\ Rather, National VOAD is
responsible for sharing information with its member organizations
regarding the severity of the disaster, needs identified, and actions
taken to address these needs.
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\2\ For a list of National VOAD members, see appendix 1.
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Following September 11, GAO Reported That More Effective Collaboration
Could Enhance Charities' Contributions in Disasters
Following September 11, GAO reported several lessons learned that
could help charities enhance their response to future disasters.\3\
These included easing access to aid for eligible individuals, enhancing
coordination among charities and between charities and FEMA, increasing
attention to public education, and planning for future events. Further,
GAO recommended that FEMA convene a working group to encourage
charities involved in disaster response to integrate these lessons
learned from the September 11 attacks. Following our report, seven of
the largest disaster response charities, in partnership with FEMA,
formed the Coordinated Assistance Network (CAN) to ease collaboration
and facilitate data sharing. While the network databases are still
largely in a pilot phase, both government and charity representatives
have praised the potential of the network's databases to improve
collaboration.
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\3\ GAO, September 11: More Effective Collaboration Could Enhance
Charitable Organizations' Contributions in Disasters, GAO-03-259
(Washington, D.C.: Dec. 19, 2002).
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Lessons Learned from September 11 Could Improve Charities' Response to
Future Disasters
Easing access to aid for those eligible: We reported that
charities could help survivors find out what assistance is available
and ease their access to that aid through a central, easy-to-access
clearinghouse of public and private assistance. We also suggested
offering eligible survivors a case manager, as was done in New York
City and in Washington, D.C., following September 11 to help to
identify gaps in service and provide assistance over the long term.
Enhancing coordination among charities and with FEMA: We
also found that private and public agencies could improve service
delivery by coordinating, collaborating, sharing information with each
other, and understanding each other's roles and responsibilities.
Collaborative working relationships are critical to the success of
other strategies to ease access to aid or identify service gaps, such
as creating a streamlined application process or a database of families
of those killed and injured.
Increasing attention to public education: After September
11, we reported that charities could better educate the public about
the disaster recovery services they provide and ensure accountability
by more fully informing the public about how they are using donations.
Charities could improve transparency by taking steps when collecting
funds to more clearly specify the purposes of the funds raised, the
different categories of people they plan to assist, the services they
plan to provide, and how long the charity plans to provide assistance.
Planning for future events: Further, we reported that
planning for how charities will respond to future disasters could aid
the recovery process for individuals and communities. Although each
disaster situation is unique, it could be useful for charities to
develop an assistance plan to inform the public and guide the
charities' fundraising efforts. In addition, state and local emergency
preparedness efforts could explicitly address the role of charities and
charitable aid in future events.
Charities Formed National Network to Improve Coordination
GAO recommended that FEMA convene a working group to encourage
charities involved in disaster response to integrate lessons learned
from the September 11 attacks. After our report, FEMA encouraged
charities to form a working group to share information following
disasters, which became the Coordinated Assistance Network. The seven
charities that formed CAN are the Alliance of Information and Referral
Services, the American Red Cross, National VOAD, the Salvation Army, 9/
11 United Services Group, Safe Horizon, and the United Way of America.
The group worked in partnership with FEMA to develop a database to
share information between agencies.
The CAN network addressed several of the lessons learned that GAO
identified. To ease access to aid for those eligible, the network is
designed to share client data, such as previous addresses, employment
information, and FEMA identification numbers, between charities. CAN is
intended to ensure that victims need only explain their circumstances
once, rather than repeatedly to different service providers. To enhance
coordination among charities and with FEMA, the CAN network is designed
to make charities more aware of the services provided by one another
and identify any gaps or redundancies in services. Last, to plan for
future events, the CAN network intends to build partnerships or working
relationships among disaster response charities before disasters
strike. While the CAN network databases are still largely in pilot
phase, both government and charity representatives have praised the
database's potential to improve collaboration and noted that it
functioned well following the disasters, considering that it was not
fully developed.
Preliminary Observations of Charitable Organizations' Operations
Following the Gulf Coast Hurricanes
Following the hurricanes, charities have raised more than $2.5
billion to assist in hurricane relief and recovery efforts. Many of the
charities responding to the disaster have taken steps to coordinate
with one another and with FEMA and other government agencies. For
example, charities have shared information through daily conference
calls and through electronic databases that allowed multiple
organizations to access information about services provided to
hurricane victims. Some charity representatives we spoke with praised
the potential of these systems for sharing information, but also raised
concerns that using these systems could be difficult at times.
Charities also experienced problems in providing services to victims in
some hard-to-reach areas. GAO teams that visited the Gulf Coast region
in October 2005 observed that in areas where the American Red Cross did
not operate, other charities, such as the Salvation Army and smaller
charities--often local churches--provided relief services. Although
smaller organizations helped fill the gaps in charitable services in
the Gulf Coast region, some concerns have been raised about their
ability to provide adequate services to victims.
Charities Have Raised More than $2.5 Billion Following the Gulf Coast
Hurricanes
Charities have raised more than $2.5 billion in cash donations in
response to the Gulf Coast hurricanes, according to the Center on
Philanthropy at Indiana University.\4\ The center notes that this
number is a low estimate, since it does not include direct giving to
individuals, giving to smaller charities, or in-kind donations. As of
November 18, the American Red Cross had raised more than $1.5 billion,
more than half of all dollars raised. The Salvation Army raised the
second-highest amount, $270 million, about 18 percent of the amount
raised by the American Red Cross. The Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund and
Catholic Charities were the next-largest fund raisers, each raising
about $100 million.
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\4\ This sum is as of November 18, 2005.
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Charities Took Steps to Improve Coordination but Experienced Some
Challenges
Charities operating in the Gulf Coast region following the
hurricanes coordinated services through the convening of major national
disaster relief organizations at the American Red Cross headquarters,
daily conference calls organized by National VOAD, and databases
established by CAN. The usefulness of the daily conference calls, as
well as the CAN databases, was questioned by some charity
representatives.
In the weeks following Hurricane Katrina, the American Red Cross
organized a national operations center with representatives from FEMA
and several major national charities, including the Southern Baptist
Convention and the Salvation Army, at its headquarters in Washington,
D.C. Because of the scale of the hurricane disaster and the large
response needed, this was the first time the American Red Cross
coordinated this type of national operations center following a
disaster. This working group helped the major charities coordinate
services on the ground by allowing for face-to-face interaction and
ongoing communication, according to charity representatives and FEMA
officials.
To help fulfill its information-sharing role under Emergency
Support Function 6, National VOAD organized daily conference calls with
FEMA and other Federal Government representatives and its member
organizations operating in the Gulf Coast region. National VOAD also
invited nonmember charitable organizations that were providing relief
to hurricane victims to participate in these calls, which sometimes
included more than 40 organizations at once. During these calls, both
the Federal Government and charities were able to provide information
and answer questions about services provided, needs identified, and the
organizations' abilities to meet these needs. Representatives from
charitable organizations told us that these calls were an effective way
to coordinate the delivery of supplies among charities and help
identify those regions that were most in need of charitable services.
Charities were also able to share information through CAN
databases. Following the hurricane disasters, CAN created a Web-based
shelter registry that provided information about emergency shelters
operating in the Gulf Coast region, including their capacity and
operating status. CAN also activated the database of victim
information, which at the time was being tested in six pilot
communities. More than 40 charities--all of whom must sign CAN
participation agreements, including the American Red Cross, the
Salvation Army, and the United Way of America--were able to access this
database and input information about the services they provided to
individual clients, according to CAN representatives. Charities could
share information about these clients, who were required to sign
privacy releases, through the Web-based database, thus reducing service
duplication and the need for victims to give the same information to
multiple organizations.
Although charity representatives we interviewed reinforced the
importance of the conference calls and the CAN databases, they also
raised concerns about the usefulness of these systems. For example,
some representatives were concerned the conference calls had too many
participants. Because 40 or more charities might be participating in
any one call, the calls often ran long or dealt with issues that may
not have been of interest to the whole group, according to some charity
officials. Additionally, charity representatives told us that call
participants sometimes provided information that turned out to be
inaccurate.
Charity officials we spoke with were supportive of CAN and its
mission, but they raised several concerns about the usefulness of its
databases following the hurricane disasters. One concern that we heard
from a few charities was that the CAN case management system is still
in its developmental stages and was therefore not ready to be activated
on such a large scale. Many volunteers had not received sufficient
training on the system, and some of the technological glitches had not
been completely resolved, according to charity representatives. In
addition, representatives told us that the shelter database, which was
developed soon after the hurricanes and had not been previously tested,
may not have been ready for widespread use. In addition, some officials
said that after Katrina there was neither electricity nor Internet
access in certain locations, and as a result, the CAN databases could
not always be used. Some officials stated that they needed to collect
information in writing at the time of the disaster and then input the
data into the system once they had Internet access--a task that was
time-consuming and diverted resources from other needed areas. CAN
officials responded that the CAN databases were created primarily for
long-term recovery efforts, which would take place after electricity
and Internet access were restored, rather than for short-term relief.
Charity representatives also told us that daily conference calls
and electronic databases helped with coordination efforts, but these
systems were not as important to coordination efforts as pre-existing
relationships. Several of the charities we spoke with stated that in
order for charities to function efficiently following a disaster, they
must have some sort of established working relationship with the other
charities involved in disaster relief efforts. One charity
representative told us that it is difficult to make introductions in
the chaos of a disaster. He stressed that charities that operate in
disasters should have memorandums of understanding signed before a
disaster strikes--a practice used by many charities--so that they can
immediately coordinate efforts in a disaster situation.
Charities Struggled to Balance Access to Services with Concerns
Regarding Safety of Service Providers and Victims
GAO teams that visited the Gulf Coast in October 2005 observed that
the American Red Cross did not provide relief in certain areas because
of safety policies; and thus, other charities, such as the Salvation
Army and smaller charities, often helped to meet the needs of those
areas. The American Red Cross told us that with the American Society
for Civil Engineers and FEMA, it had previously developed policies
intended to protect the safety of service providers and victims
following a disaster. These policies include not establishing shelters
in areas that may become flooded during a disaster or in structures
that strong winds may compromise. However, victims remained in areas
where the American Red Cross would not establish shelters. Further,
where the American Red Cross was able to establish shelters, the needs
of victims sometimes exceeded the capacity of the American Red Cross,
as this represented the largest response effort in American Red Cross
history. GAO teams in Mississippi observed that the Salvation Army and
smaller charities, such as local church organizations, filled many of
the needs for volunteer services that the American Red Cross did not
meet. Additionally, GAO teams estimated that in the Birmingham,
Alabama, area, a significant portion of the approximately 7,000
evacuees were being cared for and sometimes being housed by local
churches and their members.
Although smaller organizations provided needed charitable services
in the Gulf Coast region, some concerns have been raised about the
organizations' abilities to provide adequate services to victims. Some
officials told us that the smaller organizations helped meet important
needs, but many of the organizations had never operated in a disaster
situation and may not have completely understood the situation. For
example, officials told us that some of the small charities that placed
children who were separated from their parents in homes did not retain
sufficient information about which children were placed where. This
made it difficult to locate missing children. Other officials told us
that some of the smaller organizations that tried to establish ``tent
cities'' to house evacuees were not prepared to provide the water,
sanitation, and electricity these types of shelters require.
In closing, the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita once
again challenged federal, state, and local governments and charitable
organizations' abilities to provide large-scale aid to hundreds of
thousands of survivors. It also provided a critical opportunity to
assess how the nation's charities have incorporated lessons learned
from responding to the September 11 tragedy.
Our report on charitable organizations' contributions after
September 11 identified several lessons learned and made important
recommendations for improving the delivery of charitable services after
disasters. GAO's ongoing work on the coordination of charitable efforts
in response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita will examine how these
recommendations have been implemented and how effectively charities
coordinated in response to recent hurricanes. Specifically, this
upcoming report will address questions regarding the amount of money
charities have raised to assist people affected by the hurricanes and
how these funds have been used, how well charities are meeting their
responsibilities under the National Response Plan, how well charities
are coordinating their relief efforts, how people affected by the
hurricanes have accessed charitable services and relief supplies and
the challenges they encountered in dealing with charities, and what
charities are doing to guard against fraud and abuse. This report will
be released next year.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. I would be pleased to
respond to any questions that you or other members of the subcommittee
may have at this time.
Appendix I
Members of National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster
Adventist Community Services
America's Second Harvest
American Baptist Men
American Radio Relay League
American Red Cross
Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team
Catholic Charities USA
Center for International Disaster Information
Christian Disaster Response International
Christian Reformed World Relief Committee
Church of the Brethren
Church World Service
Convoy of Hope
Disaster Psychiatry Outreach
Episcopal Relief and Development
Friends Disaster Service, Inc.
The Humane Society of the United States
International Aid
International Critical Incident Stress Foundation
International Relief Friendship Foundation
Lutheran Disaster Response
Mennonite Disaster Service
Mercy Medical Airlift
National Emergency Response Teams
National Organization for Victim Assistance
Nazarene Disaster Response
Northwest Medical Teams International
The Points of Light Foundation
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
REACT International, Inc.
The Salvation Army
Society of St. Vincent de Paul
Southern Baptist Convention
United Church of Christ
United Jewish Communities
United Methodist Committee on Relief
United Way of America
Volunteers of America
World Vision
Chairman RAMSTAD. Thank you for your testimony and for
making us all accountable. Mr. Becker, please.
STATEMENT OF JOSEPH C. BECKER, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR
RESPONSE AND PREPAREDNESS, AMERICAN RED CROSS
Mr. BECKER. Mr. Chairman, my name is Joe Becker, and I head
Red Cross disaster services. I continue to lead our
organization's response to Hurricane Katrina. I am delighted to
be here, and I appreciate the opportunity to share with you our
work for the survivors of the storm. The core mission of the
American Red Cross is to provide relief to victims of
disasters. We are volunteer-led and our services are delivered
by volunteers. We do this through a network of 800 chapters
throughout the country. We, like others, deal with the human
side of disaster. To do that we partner with other nonprofit
groups and organizations, and we partner with every level of
government--local, State and Federal. Every day we respond to
victims of disaster, from as small as a family whose house
burns to as big as Katrina, and we help with the same needs.
We shelter, which is to provide a safe place for people to
stay during a hurricane and in the coming days after until they
have a place to go. We feed. We feed the people in our
shelters, and we feed in the community. We work with other
nonprofits and faith-based groups in the larger disasters, who
come forward to join that effort. We provide emergency
financial assistance. We do this to provide for things like the
next set of clothes for people who left home with very little.
This is usually done now in the form of a debit card. We
provide mental health counseling, and we connect families with
loved ones who are missing. So, we shelter, we feed, and we
provide for immediate emergency financial needs of people.
For many years, the bar that we had set for hurricanes was
Andrew. Then we had the four back-to-back storms last year, the
sum of which was the largest Red Cross response ever.
In every way of measuring, Katrina has dwarfed the sum of
all four storms last year. We said early on in Katrina that the
response would be bigger than the Red Cross alone--that it
would take many Americans to respond. They did.
We did run the shelters, as was described, about 1,100 in
27 States and here in the District. We just closed our last
Katrina shelter a little over a week ago. We closed our last
Wilma shelter last night. We have fed over 50 million meals and
snacks, and we are still feeding in the Gulf Coast at about
50,000 meals a day.
We knew early on that there was a need for our financial
assistance on a totally different scale. We didn't have 73,000
families needing financial assistance, like we did last year in
the sum of all four of those storms; we knew early on that we
would have over 1 million families requiring that assistance.
We had to build entirely new ways to do that.
We had very long lines. We had a lot of busy signals at the
call centers that we created for the storm, but in a matter of
weeks, we gave over 1.2 million families an average of about
$1,000 per family.
Last fall's storms cost our organization about $130
million. We project that our response to these storms will cost
us over $2 billion, and we continue to raise money to pay those
bills.
About 220,000 Red Crossers have served so far. They slept
in their trucks, they slept in the shelters, and they did good
work. They volunteered because they care.
However, there were things that we could have done better.
After every major disaster, we conduct a top-to-bottom
study with a critical eye, and our board is leading this study
now. We intend to take the lessons we learned and work to get
better.
In my written testimony, I outlined some of our early areas
of focus from the study. The response was bigger than the Red
Cross. So, many organizations joined the effort, many new to
the disaster work. We have a lot to be proud of, we have a lot
to be thankful for, and we still have a lot to do.
Thank you for allowing me to share with you today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Becker follows:]
Statement of Joseph C. Becker, Senior Vice President, Preparedness and
Response, American Red Cross
Chairman Ramstad, Congressman Lewis, and Members of the Committees,
thank you for providing me the opportunity to provide testimony on
behalf of the American Red Cross.
By any measure, this was the most significant level of human need
the Red Cross has ever faced in its 125-year history, and it was our
most challenging operation, too. The organization's capacity to meet
the needs of our citizens has never been tested in a magnitude such as
that presented by Hurricane Katrina. In fact, it was nearly 20 times
larger than anything we had ever faced before.
I thank the Committee for holding this hearing today to address the
ways the nonprofit sector responded to Hurricane Katrina. After each
major disaster response is concluded, the American Red Cross carefully
examines its response retroactively to determine what worked well. More
importantly, we always try to identify areas where we could improve our
response and operation in the future.
There is much to be learned from this disaster--lessons that will
help us improve our response to future disasters. However, I would like
to state up front that given the remarkable demands that we faced, the
entire nonprofit sector, supported by the incredible generosity of the
American public, rose to the occasion and provided care and comfort to
millions of people who had no place to turn. As the person responsible
for directing the response on behalf of the Red Cross, I am extremely
grateful to our sister organizations including the Salvation Army, the
United Way, the Southern Baptists, Catholic Charities, the NAACP, the
American Psychological Association, and myriad other voluntary
agencies, large and small. The American public and our corporate donors
were an integral element of our response, along with the more than
200,000 Red Cross volunteers who have given their time and talent so
tirelessly. We could not do the work that we perform without all of
this support and the support of Congress, and it is with my gratitude
that I present this testimony before the Committee today.
About the American Red Cross
For more than 124 years, the mission of the American Red Cross has
been to help Americans prevent, prepare for, and respond to
emergencies. In 1905, Congress chartered the American Red Cross to
provide a system of disaster response and to mitigate suffering caused
by disaster. We continue to meet this mandate today. We have a long and
proven track record of immediate response to major disasters, both
natural and man made. In towns and cities across the United States, the
American Red Cross has responded to more than 72,000 disasters in the
past year, ranging from residential house fires to the devastating
hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast. At the same time, the Red Cross
continues to aggressively prepare for the possibility of another
terrorist attack on American soil, the threat of a pandemic flu and, of
course, we share the unenviable task faced by all disaster response
organizations of standing prepared to respond to novel and unexpected
disasters that we may have never seen or imagined until the moment they
strike.
Governed by volunteers and supported by community donations, the
Red Cross is a network of more than 800 chapters, eight regional
service areas, and 35 Blood Services regions dedicated to saving lives.
Comprising more than one million volunteers and more than 30,000
employees, the Red Cross trained nearly 11 million people in lifesaving
skills during the past calendar year alone and keeps U.S. military
families connected worldwide. The Red Cross is the largest supplier of
blood and blood products to more than 3,000 hospitals across the nation
and also assists victims of international disasters and conflicts at
locations worldwide.
The Red Cross provides a unique community-based network to support
all-hazard preparedness in your districts, to your constituents, each
and every day. As an integral member of the first response community
with expertise in meeting the human needs associated with disasters, we
are integrated into state and local government agency disaster planning
exercises and response efforts. We partner with local, state, and
federal governments to provide emergency shelter, food, and health and
mental health services as well as short-term financial assistance to
address basic human needs.
In addition, the Red Cross has the unique role of being the only
nongovernmental organization assigned Primary Agency responsibilities
under the National Response Plan (NRP). Upon activation of the NRP, the
Red Cross serves as the Primary Agency under Emergency Support Function
(ESF) #6, Mass Care (provision of food, shelter, emergency first aid,
disaster welfare information, and bulk distribution of emergency relief
items). The Red Cross also serves as a Support Agency to the Department
of Health and Human Services for Public Health and Medical Services
(ESF #8), providing blood in coordination with the American Association
of Blood Banks (AABB) Inter-organizational Task Force on Domestic
Disasters and Acts of Terrorism, mental health services, and disaster
health services. In addition, we have undertaken an expanded function
under the NRP within external affairs (ESF #15) to help disseminate
accurate and timely information to those affected during an incident to
help better protect themselves. Ultimately, our activities in the NRP
focus on meeting the human needs associated with disasters.
Response to Hurricane Katrina
For the American Red Cross, and for the country, Hurricane Katrina
is a watershed moment in our history. Hurricane Katrina produced human
needs exceeding those presented by all previous natural disasters in
this country, including the Johnstown Flood in 1882, the San Francisco
Earthquake in 1906, the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918, Hurricanes
Camille and Andrew, or manmade events such as the Oklahoma City
Bombings in 1995 and the tragedy of September 11, 2001. The needs
created by Hurricane Katrina exceeded even those posed by the four
back-to-back hurricanes last year. Each of these are major incidents
that tested the organization and served as a benchmark moving forward.
Now, Katrina will do the same.
The moment the levees gave way in New Orleans, we knew that this
response and recovery operation would test our capacity as an
organization. Yet even as the waters rose and more people fled, none of
us could have envisioned the sheer scale of the catastrophe.
In order for me to put this in perspective, I want to spend just a
moment looking back on Hurricane Season 2004. The State of Florida was
slammed with four back-to-back hurricanes. To date, it had been our
largest response to a natural disaster. We provided 519,000 shelter
nights, gave approximately 73,000 families financial assistance, and
provided close to 16.5 million meals and snacks to victims and
emergency workers. In the end, the organization spent roughly $130
million.
Yet, all this pales in comparison to our response efforts for
Katrina and Rita. In response to these two storms, the Red Cross has
provided 3.42 million overnight stays in nearly 1,100 shelters across
27 states and the District of Columbia. We have given more than 1.2
million families emergency financial assistance. The Red Cross, in
coordination with the Southern Baptist Convention, has served more than
27.4 million hot meals and 25.2 million snacks to hurricane survivors
to date. The Red Cross will spend in excess of $2 billion in our
response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
But while the challenges were immense, and the circumstances were
difficult, the Red Cross persisted, and continues to persist, because
of our tireless volunteers. Almost 220,000 trained Red Cross disaster
services workers from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto
Rico and the Virgin Islands have given their talents and time to
respond to those in need because of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This
may be the largest mobilization of Americans helping each other in our
nation's history. It is because of their selfless work that we have
managed to do the work that we do.
Even before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, the American Red Cross
was preparing for what proved to be the costliest storm in U.S.
history. In addition to strongly urging coastal residents to take
action by developing a family communication plan, making plans to
evacuate, and preparing a disaster supply kit, the American Red Cross
was also launching our largest mobilization effort in the
organization's 124-year history.
The American Red Cross mobilized on all fronts and moved before the
storm hit. Local Red Cross chapters opened shelters for thousands of
residents who heeded evacuation orders. Thousands of Red Cross staff
and volunteers were pre-deployed to safe areas, waiting for the storm
to pass so they could begin to respond to the needs following the
threat. In addition, nearly the entire Red Cross fleet of emergency
response vehicles (ERVs) was sent to the Gulf Coast before and just
after landfall. We also pre-positioned mobile kitchens prepared to
provide 500,000 meals a day, food and supplies, and necessary
technology, and we rented 1,000 box trucks to feed and deliver supplies
in communities. We knew this was going to be big.
We set up shelters in Louisiana and surrounding states. As those
affected were evacuated or fled to virtually every state, we mobilized
our entire organization and extended our services across the nation.
From California to Maine, our chapters sheltered, fed, counseled, and
assisted the tens of thousands of evacuees relocated to distant places
and worked with local communities to welcome them and meet their needs.
And while we faced a number of challenges, our basic services were
solid. As soon as the storm passed, we began to set up our feeding
kitchens, opened additional shelters, and started to increase the
services to provide immediate care for the survivors of Hurricane
Katrina. With our partners, the Southern Baptists, we served 300,000
meals on the third day of the response and peaked at 995,000 meals in a
single day. The largest number of meals we had ever provided in a
single day prior to this was 280,000, which was in response to the four
hurricanes last year.
Partnerships
With 824 chapters nationwide, the Red Cross has an infrastructure
that allows us to respond quickly to disasters. Similar to former House
Speaker Tip O'Neill's observation of politics, all disasters are local.
It is at the community level that victims are sheltered, fed, provided
with mental health counseling, and offered emergency financial
assistance. However, even in small-scale disasters such as residential
house fires, the American Red Cross does not respond alone.
Partnerships are tantamount to our meeting our mission, and in chapters
across the country, local partnerships help to ensure that those in
need receive assistance.
The importance of partnerships in disaster response cannot be
overstated. Because of the scale and magnitude of this disaster, the
American Red Cross early on called on all of its partners to provide
assistance to those in need. The response to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita,
and Wilma required collaboration at every level of government, and full
engagement of the entire charitable sector, the faith community, and
the American public.
There has never been a response that has required as much
coordination among the nonprofit sector. From the start, the Red Cross
coordinated efforts with other nongovernmental organizations at all
levels. At our National Headquarters, a group of national service
providers worked together for days to plan service delivery strategy.
Red Crossers were busy in county and state emergency operations centers
working with our partner organizations to coordinate response,
logistics, resources, and staff. And on the ground, our chapters had
partnerships in place to ensure that the local communities were
responding in a collaborative manner.
We also partnered around fundraising activities. We knew this
response was going to involve the entire charitable sector, including
the faith community. While the Red Cross does not provide direct
funding to other charities, we wanted to do our part to ensure that
their messages were received as well. For example, during the first
week in October, representatives from the Salvation Army and the United
Way joined us for a day-long donor trip in Gulfport and Biloxi led by
our Red Cross Chairman, Bonnie McElveen-Hunter. Also participating were
representatives from several major foundations, some of whom had
requested an opportunity to meet with our nonprofit partners.
One of the significant lessons learned is that partnerships are
much more effective when formed well in advance of a disaster. Because
of the enormity of the crisis and speed required in response, it is
difficult for organizations new to the response environment to be
quickly assimilated into county or parish planning and operations in
the midst of responding to a disaster. The Red Cross has a number of
agreements in place with other organizations that delineate roles and
responsibilities when disaster strikes. During Hurricane Katrina, those
partnerships worked and worked well. And while we have received some
criticism from other NGOs for not coordinating with their organizations
after Katrina made landfall, we seek out their partnership going
forward. We are grateful for the work that all organizations did to
respond to the millions of people in need, and that is why we
recommended that the Federal government provide reimbursement to groups
that stepped forward to provide sheltering and feeding operations.
There is no ownership here--local charities and the faith community
performed vital and necessary work during this disaster.
Diverse Communities
The American Red Cross historically deals with the most vulnerable
citizens in our society. Issues of poverty, race, physical and mental
disability, and cultural differences are not new to our organization.
It is an unfortunate fact that in our society, disasters have the most
profound impact on the most vulnerable residents in communities.
In an effort to learn how we can serve more effectively, we have
already undergone some evaluation regarding coordination and
partnerships, particularly among organizations that represent
communities of color and the disabled. While we have made tremendous
efforts to reach out to minority and disabled communities for
volunteers, staff, and donors, we are acutely aware that there is much
work to be done.
Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Mel Watt and other Members of
the CBC were among the first group of lawmakers we met with following
Katrina's landfall. We have worked with the Caucus in the past and knew
how important they would be in keeping vital lines of communication
open and guiding us as issues and challenges arose. The weekend
following landfall, our President and CEO, Marty Evans, and Board of
Governors member Gina Adams hosted a trip to Baton Rouge and Houston
for Members of the Caucus to begin to challenge difficult issues. Our
partnership with the CBC proved instrumental in easing tensions and
addressing needs, and we thank them for their work and leadership
through the entire response. We are also grateful to Reverend Jesse
Jackson for his help in coordinating with the faith community. We met
with Reverend Jackson, CBC leadership, and leaders in the faith
community in Memphis to better coordinate efforts. Additionally,
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee was of tremendous help in coordinating
sheltering efforts in Houston, where an estimated 250,000 hurricane
survivors and evacuees were relocated.
Challenges and Criticisms
Hurricane Katrina was a disaster of epic proportions and posed
unprecedented challenges. The affected area compares to the size of
Great Britain, devastating the lives of among the most vulnerable
people in America. Not only were there geographical challenges, there
were severe socio-economic challenges. In so many circumstances, we
were providing care for those who needed assistance even before they
were affected by Katrina.
Although American Red Cross services were available throughout the
affected area on an enormous scale, we fell short of being universally
present everywhere there was a need. Nevertheless, we moved as rapidly
as possible to provide services in those areas that we could not
immediately reach or, in some cases, were unaware of.
We knew this was not going to be a traditional response. During
traditional responses, the American Red Cross provides direct services,
often door-to-door, to disaster victims. Red Crossers are among the
first on the scene, providing shelter, meals, and helping local victims
that cannot be reached by their loved ones. Yet this storm, and the
response to it, was not traditional.
Given the number of people in need, our response was geared toward
places that we knew we could get to immediately and places where we
knew people were congregated. It was our goal to reach the greatest
number of people with the most possible speed. Throughout this process,
Red Crossers endeavored to work with local community-based
organizations and faith based groups to reach the most people.
One of the hard truths about Katrina is that our country was not
prepared. Of equal concern moving forward is that even with the
devastation wrought by Katrina, a recent report released by Professor
Paul C. Light of New York University indicates that Americans still do
not feel compelled to prepare for disaster. This is a vexing challenge
for those of us in disaster services.
While there were many successful partnerships, there were also
significant voids that needed to be filled. A large number of
spontaneous shelters sprang up. Most were churches that opened their
doors to provide shelter for those in need. Early on, we had difficulty
learning of and coordinating efforts with these wonderful groups.
There were a number of questions regarding why we did not re-enter
the City of New Orleans. The American Red Cross of Southeast Louisiana,
located in the City of New Orleans, heeded the evacuation order called
for by local authorities. The chapter relocated to the town of
Covington, located on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. Our service
delivery in New Orleans differed from that provided to other affected
areas in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Under the Louisiana State
Plan, if a Category 3 or higher storm is headed for Louisiana, 23
parishes, including Orleans Parish, are to begin an evacuation inland.
The inland parishes, in cooperation with state agencies and the
American Red Cross, are to shelter evacuees from ``Risk Area
Parishes,'' as there are no shelter sites that meet hurricane safety
criteria within Orleans Parish. In fact, it has been the policy of the
Red Cross that there are no safe areas south of the I-10/I-12 corridor
for a large scale hurricane. The Louisiana Plan, which makes no
reference to the Red Cross operating shelters within the city,
enumerates eight distinct shelter types, plus what is described as the
``Refuge of Last Resort.'' The Convention Center and the Superdome
served as refuges of last resort. Under state plans, these facilities
are to open when local authorities terminate an evacuation due to
unsafe driving conditions. These facilities are not operated by the Red
Cross. In practice, after the threat has passed, the Red Cross at times
staffs shelters of last resort, providing services to people. We do not
establish shelters in facilities that do not meet our criteria for
safety during landfall.
Consistent with state and local plans, and our practice in previous
disasters, we were asked by state and federal officials not to enter
New Orleans. While we were in constant communication with local and
state authorities, it was not deemed safe for Red Cross personnel to
re-enter the city of New Orleans. The Red Cross does not place our
client evacuees, staff, volunteers, or resources in harm's way. It is
our practice to heed evacuation orders and assist those in need of
shelter outside of high-risk areas.
Additionally, it was the goal of local and state officials to fully
evacuate the city of New Orleans after the storm passed. We were
instructed by authorities that, in addition to issues of safety, if the
Red Cross provided services to survivors within New Orleans, it would
discourage people from heeding evacuation orders. At the direction of
public officials, we entered New Orleans in a coordinated fashion to
provide services at the earliest possible time.
This was a difficult scenario for the Red Cross. Eighty percent of
our local Red Cross staff in the Southeast Louisiana Chapter lost their
homes to Katrina, yet while they themselves were victims, they
desperately wanted to provide support to their neighbors in need, and
to this day they continue to do so. We are still engaged in active
operations in the city.
Another Herculean challenge was getting financial assistance as
quickly as possible to an unprecedented number of people who left their
homes with little or nothing and in many cases would have no homes to
which they could return. As stated previously, the largest number of
families to which the Red Cross had ever provided assistance was
approximately 73,000--those served during the four back-to-back
hurricanes in 2004. By contrast, demographic and census information
from the area affected by Katrina led us to estimate that more than one
million families, most of whom were bereft of all of their traditional
social support systems, would need financial assistance.
The challenge of raising enough money to provide assistance to an
estimated one million families was, frankly, daunting. Initial disaster
assessments and demographic information led us to estimate that, with
average assistance of about $1,000 per family, we were facing financial
assistance expenses of approximately $1 billion. We had to make the
difficult determination whether we would--or could--provide this
magnitude of financial assistance. Red Cross leadership, together with
our Board of Governors, rapidly decided that the tremendous needs of
the evacuees demanded that we act. Soon, it became clear that dollars
were going out at a fast rate. We had to either suspend our emergency
financial assistance or borrow funds. We chose to borrow the money--
over $300 million--with the confidence that the American public would
see our efforts as worthy and support the work we were doing. This has
proven to be the case.
The mechanisms for getting the financial assistance to the people
who needed it without delay posed an additional set of challenges.
During traditional responses, trained American Red Cross volunteers and
staff, conduct disaster damage assessments, meet with survivors to
determine their needs and provide assistance accordingly. We often do
home visits to confirm damage and determine necessary assistance. This
type of detailed assessment would clearly be impossible for many months
after Katrina and Rita. We had to choose between two options: we could
attempt to verify damage house by house and thereby delay assistance to
those who so urgently needed it, or we could utilize the best
information available regarding damaged areas and speed the provision
of our assistance. By choosing the latter option, we knew that we ran
the risk of putting assistance in the hands of potentially unscrupulous
individuals not affected by the hurricanes; we concluded that it was a
reasonable business risk and mitigated the risks as possible. We
considered the need to help the vast numbers of families in desperate
and legitimate need without delay. Using satellite images and fly-over
photographs, we determined specific ZIP codes where the devastation was
obvious and began to disburse the maximum assistance to these families
based on family size. It was our goal to get money in the hands of
survivors as quickly as possible. The fact that fraudulent claims for
assistance could occur was to be addressed with an aggressive ``no
tolerance'' fraud enforcement policy which we discussed with federal
and state law enforcement authorities.
Another hurdle was the logistics of getting cash into the hands of
so many people spread across so many states. Methods used in the past
would not accommodate the unique aspects of this epic disaster. We set
up an 800 number and call centers around the country and partnered with
Western Union to provide immediate cash assistance. A critical moment
came when we realized that it could take days and weeks to bring these
systems up to a scale that could accommodate the number of families in
need of assistance. That left us with another difficult choice: delay
assistance to every disaster victim until we had the capacity to
effectively serve them all, or proceed with the capacity we had,
getting funds into the hands of thousands of families right away and
working diligently to add to those numbers as quickly as we could scale
up our systems. We chose to help those whom we could without delay,
while striving to serve all who needed us. We sincerely regret that
there were long lines and a lot of busy signals, but we believe that we
made the right choice. In the six weeks following landfall, the Red
Cross put over one billion donated dollars into the hands of families
who desperately needed it without delay.
Lessons Learned
Hurricane Katrina's raging winds and engulfing waters laid bare
some hard truths. It is now a question of whether the American Red
Cross, others in our sector, governments at all levels, and the
American people will confront those truths and learn from them. Now, in
the cold light of day and with a calmer atmosphere, we have a clearer
picture of the impact of such an event on our society, the challenges
inherent in a disaster of this magnitude, and the scope of need we must
address. Over the course of the next several months we will continue
our own top-to-bottom internal review of our practices and our response
to Katrina, and we will continue to build upon our lessons learned.
However, I want to share with you some big-picture items that are front
and center.
First, we need to convene community leaders to expand our reach to
respond where needed. Despite tremendous efforts by all, the scale of
this disaster left our response uneven in some places. To ensure more
effective efforts in the future will require the input and assistance
of all organizations locally in communities across the nation now. It
will require the diligence of all community stakeholders, including
nonprofits, faith-based groups, elected officials, diverse
organizations, and individuals to partake in a full assessment of
community needs to ensure that every person in every community will be
provided for should we confront a disaster like this again.
Second, preparedness--training, planning, and drilling--must become
a way of life for every man, woman and child in this country. For
communities, particularly those prone to disaster, training operations
must take place and, particularly when there is a need, the government
must provide adequate funding to ensure that such training and planning
operations can be realized.
Third, we must also dedicate our attention to some larger public
policy questions. For example, how much should we in the nonprofit
sector--and the government--invest in our infrastructure to be ready to
respond to the next catastrophic event when current funds are barely
adequate for ongoing needs? How much money should we invest on an
annual basis in a core capacity that we may not use for 10 or 15 or 20
years? Systems must be maintained and upgraded over time, and there is
a cost for contingent capacity that is not used on a day-to-day basis.
How much of this cost can nonprofits bear? Will donors understand that
a return on this kind of investment might not be seen for years? Even
if they do, how much of this should fall on the backs of the American
people who support our response efforts?
Finally, there is the biggest challenge of all: preparedness. If we
in America ever thought we were prepared to face a major catastrophic
event, we were wrong. We have been operating under the assumption that
what we have done in the past--how we respond to smaller disasters--
would simply need to be scaled up if we faced a larger one. This is
simply not the case.
We need to do a better job engaging our nation's citizens in
preparing for disasters big and small. And this is no small feat. As we
look back on Hurricane Katrina, I hope that we will do a better job of
ensuring that those who live in harm's way of disasters will better
prepare their families, individually, for what may come their way. We
need to focus our attention on all-hazards preparedness. There are
simple steps that every family can take to be safer and to ensure that
if separated from their loved ones, they can reconnect. We need to
convince every individual and family to make the effort to keep
critical documents, medicines, and items they would need immediately in
an emergency ready, keeping in mind that, unlike Hurricane Katrina,
disasters often provide no warning at all. The American Red Cross has a
``Together We Prepare'' program that calls for families, schools, or
businesses to do five things: (1) Make a Plan, (2) Build a Kit, (3) Get
Trained, (4) Volunteer, and (5) Give Blood.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are replete with stories of families
trapped in attics who survived unimaginably harrowing ordeals because
they had water or items on hand. But for each success story, there are
also cases where families experienced trauma and loss. In many
instances, the very fate of those separated from loved ones was
completely unknown. With the existence of a simple emergency
communication plan identifying a third party in a remote location for
all members to call, the needless anxiety of knowing where their loved
ones are could have been avoided by many who experienced this
unspeakable anxiety. Preparedness plans work.
Conclusion
I started my presentation today by talking about the tremendous
work of the nonprofit sector, our organization, and our staff and
volunteers in response to Hurricane Katrina, and I would like to
conclude my testimony along those lines as well.
The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was worse than any
worst-case scenario the Red Cross, or the Federal government, ever
prepared for. How can the Red Cross, or any organization, respond
successfully on a scale that is at least 20 times greater than it ever
faced before?
I think the answer can be found in the compassion, generosity, and
commitment of the American people. This is the one consistent resource
upon which our organization relies, and the one that enables us to rise
to the challenge when needed.
Our mission is to help people--people who find themselves on the
receiving end of nature's most indiscriminate and violent furies along
with those impacted by the cruel and calculated actions of terrorists.
Then there are the people who volunteer at the more than 800 Red Cross
chapters across the country, those who give generously of their time,
talents, blood, and money--including the 200,000 volunteers who put
their own lives on hold for weeks this year to help the victims of the
unusually severe hurricanes we have endured. There are the American
people who time after time, disaster after disaster, sacrifice part of
their financial security to provide for those who have lost their own.
At the end of the day, the Red Cross and other charitable
organizations, together with the tireless volunteers and donors who
support these organizations, responded to the needs of their neighbors
in never-before-seen ways. There were challenges, and there are voids
that need to be filled and problems that need to be fixed. But the
compassion and humanity shown by Americans around this country to open
their arms and provide comfort to those in need is unparalleled.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Lewis, Members of the Committee, I am proud of
the work of the American Red Cross--I am proud of the way Americans
came to the aid of their neighbors in need. And while Katrina will go
down as the largest natural disaster to hit our American soil to date,
she could not break the will and compassion of the American public.
Thank you again for providing me the opportunity to testify today.
I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Thank you, Mr. Becker. Major Hawks,
please.
STATEMENT OF MAJOR TODD HAWKS, PUBLIC AFFAIRS SECRETARY AND
ASSOCIATE NATIONAL COMMUNITY RELATIONS AND DEVELOPMENT
SECRETARY, SALVATION ARMY OF AMERICA
Major HAWKS. Mr. Chairman, the Salvation Army is a part of
the Universal Christian Church. Our mission, our fundamental
purpose is to provide aid and comfort without discrimination to
those in need. Services are delivered by 3,600 uniformed
officers, 132,000 soldiers and adherents, 65,000 employees, and
by about 3.5 million volunteers.
Our workers have a firsthand knowledge of their individual
communities, and they are on site when a disaster strikes. We
have a decentralized infrastructure that allows us to respond
to a disaster very quickly and on a large scale. In essence,
the Salvation Army operations are driven at the local level and
communicated upward. Indeed, the role of the national
headquarters is to support local effort.
Our disaster response services are a small part of our
work. Each day of the year we are serving the poor, the hungry
and the homeless, and the forgotten, people's lives who are in
profound crisis. Our primary objective is to give people hope.
The Salvation Army has been at the site of every major
disaster in America for more than a century, and we have
developed the following areas of expertise: mass feeding to
survivors and emergency responders, sheltering survivors while
attending to their emergency needs, providing social service
assistance, both immediate and long term. Knowing that no
single charitable organization is capable of providing the full
range of disaster response services, the Salvation Army has
entered into memorandums of understanding with both faith-based
and secular organizations, including FEMA and the American Red
Cross.
Despite our sizable footprint, established role in
responding to disasters, and the history of collaborating with
other organizations, the Salvation Army is not mentioned in the
National Response Plan. We are concerned about that. Since we
are not mentioned in the plan, we may be precluded from having
access to key local, State, and Federal officials.
In Louisiana, for example, the Army was represented by an
interagency volunteer and wasn't permitted to have a liaison
officer in the State's Emergency Operation Center. As a result,
we had to obtain critical information secondhand. In the
immediate aftermath of Katrina, we were and still are focused
on providing life-sustaining commodities. Within hours after
the storm had passed, we moved 72 mobile feeding units into the
affected areas. In some areas, we presented the first
opportunities for survivors to obtain water and food.
To date, the Army has deployed 178 mobile feeding units and
served more than 12 million meals and snacks to survivors and
first responders. We have also distributed more than 150
cleaning kits, hygiene kits, and almost 200,000 boxes of
groceries. Because of the overwhelming need, the Army opened
225 shelters that house more than 31,000 people. As always, the
Salvation Army provides emotional and spiritual comfort to
disaster survivors and emergency workers.
At some point the nature of our services will change from
the immediate life-sustaining service to long-term recovery
services. The Army employs case management to help people get
their lives back to normal. We sit down with each family and we
determine the social services they need. Some of these clients
are referred by other organizations because they present
particularly challenging problems and the Army is well equipped
to help the most disenfranchised members of our society. At
this time we are assisting more than 269,000 people through
case management.
The Salvation Army is also involved in the reconstruction
of communities. Typically, we act in partnership with other
organizations to achieve our reconstruction goals. For example,
Biloxi, the Salvation Army is building a volunteer village for
reconstruction teams.
I want to make one final point about disaster services
provided by the Army. We do not come into a community, help out
for a few weeks, and then leave. We don't make exit plans
because we live in those communities. Our presence is
permanent. If Congress is inclined to make changes in the
Federal Government's disaster response protocols, then the
Salvation Army has identified four items for your
consideration.
First, the Salvation Army should be explicitly mentioned in
the National Response Plan as a support agency.
Secondly, if the Federal Government is going to rely upon
NGOs to deliver disaster services, then standardized training
is needed, especially for new entrants in the disaster services
field. All NGOs must understand the government's emergency
management systems and the language of those systems.
Thirdly, people and corporations send unwanted items to
disaster sites. Their motivation is laudable, but the arrival
of unsolicited, in kind contributions is problematic. The
Federal Government could help to channel the generosity of the
American people through public education.
Finally, any government policy that makes it more difficult
for potential donors to contribute will impact our ability to
deliver services. Therefore, we ask Congress to make it as easy
as possible for donors to contribute to charitable
organizations.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. I look forward
to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Major Hawks follows:]
Statement of Major Todd Hawks, Public Affairs Secretary and Associate
National Community Relations and Development Secretary, Salvation Army
of America
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
The Salvation Army
Mr. Chairman, The Salvation Army is a part of the Universal
Christian Church. Our mission--our fundamental purpose--is to provide
aid and comfort, without discrimination, to those in need.
We are active across the country. Indeed, the Army has a presence
in nearly every zipcode in the United States.
Services are delivered by 3,600 uniformed officers, 132,000
soldiers and adherents, 65,000 employees, and by the three-and-a-half
million Americans who volunteer their time, energy, and compassion to
those in need.
More importantly, our people live and work in the communities that
they serve. This is an important point when discussing The Salvation
Army's disaster response activities, and I'd like to elaborate on it
for a moment.
Our officers, staff and volunteers have first-hand knowledge of
their individual communities and they are on-site when a disaster
strikes. Not only does the Army have people spread out across the
country, we have buildings and equipment in those communities too. In
short, Mr. Chairman, we have a decentralized infrastructure, and that
decentralized infrastructure is the single most important factor in our
ability to respond to a disaster very quickly and on a large scale.
Given this organizational structure, it isn't surprising that The
Salvation Army's operations are driven at the local level and
communicated upward. We don't mobilize through directives issued at the
National Headquarters. Indeed, the job of the National Headquarters is
to make resources and contacts available to the local level.
Despite today's focus on the Army's disaster response efforts, it
should be noted that our disaster response services are a small part of
our work. Each and every day of the year, we are serving the poor, the
hungry, the homeless, the forgotten--people whose lives generally are
in profound crisis. Our primary objective is to give people hope where
all may seem lost. Last year, we delivered hope to some 34 million
Americans through our core social services that include programs
providing help to the drug addicted, the homeless, abused women, low
income seniors and at-risk youth. Most of this work is performed beyond
the spotlight of television cameras.
Of course, we are also moved, by our faith, to provide for those
who have been stripped of shelter and sustenance by a disaster. I would
stress that these are ancillary services and the numbers bear out that
fact. In comparison to the 34 million Americans who received help from
our core social services programs last year, we assisted 4 million
disaster victims during that time.
Role in Disaster Response: The Salvation Army has been at the site
of every major natural disaster in America for more than a century, and
we have developed the following areas of expertise in disaster
response:
Mass feeding to survivors and emergency responders
immediately after the disaster has occurred;
Sheltering those affected while we tend to their
spiritual and emotional needs in the immediate aftermath of the
disaster; and then,
The continuation of social service assistance to ensure
that the survivors have the means necessary to move back into some
semblance of the routine they knew before disaster struck.
As you are well aware, The Salvation Army was not the only
charitable organization to respond when Hurricane Katrina struck. This
is not an unusual situation; there are several charitable
organizations, including The Salvation Army, that routinely provide
assistance to disaster victims. Each of these organizations is known
among the disaster response community for having a particular set of
skills or assets to bring to bear on a particular disaster.
Let me be clear on this point: I do not know of any single
charitable organization that, on its own, is capable of providing the
full range of disaster response services that are usually required to
put communities back on their feet. As a result, charitable
organizations routinely coordinate their activities with one another as
well as with official government emergency management agencies. The
Salvation Army, for example, has entered into Memorandums of
Understanding with both secular and faith-based organizations,
including FEMA, the American Red Cross, and several other groups.
Role in the National Response Plan: Despite our sizable footprint,
established role in responding to disasters, and history of
collaborating with other organizations, The Salvation Army is not
mentioned in the National Response Plan. Omitting the Army at the
national level has implications for disaster response coordination at
the state and local levels.
Many states and municipalities have tailored their emergency
response plans after the National Response Plan, and because the Army
was left out of the federal plan we now find that we are often without
a seat at the table at the state and local level during disasters. In
Louisiana, for example, the Army wasn't permitted to have a liaison
officer in the state's Emergency Operations Center (EOC).
As a result, we had to obtain critical information second-hand
through Voluntary Organizations Active in a Disaster (VOAD)--if we
received the information at all. This is an untenable situation. In
order to deliver our disaster services effectively and efficiently, our
local partner must always be the emergency management personnel, and
that means inclusion in their disaster response plans.
Another implication of the Army's lack of a seat in the EOC is that
we did not have an opportunity to forge relationships with the other
organizations present--relationships that might have produced a
partnership to deliver disaster services more efficiently,
expeditiously, or on a larger scale.
With this general portrait of The Salvation Army in mind, I'd like
to move on to review the specific services we offer in times of
disaster.
Being Prepared
Some disasters occur without any warning. We prepare for such
disasters by educating and training our response personnel.
First and foremost, we train under the Incident Command System.
This is a management system designed specifically to help first
responders manage a critical incident. We've adopted this system.
In addition, the Army has entered into a Memorandum of
Understanding with the International Critical Incident Stress
Foundation, which is the leading trainer for first responders in stress
management. The Foundation teaches relief workers how to help survivors
deal with stress and how to manage their own stress while working in a
disaster site.
These two programs are the keystones of our training.
In addition, The Salvation Army conducts additional disaster
response training for our own staffs as well as those from other
organizations. Earlier this year, for example, The Salvation Army
conducted a week-long training conference for nonprofit organizations
in which 750 people received training to prepare their organizations
and communities to respond to a man-made or natural disaster.
Sometimes we have an opportunity to make additional preparations.
Weather events such as hurricanes typically give disaster response
organizations a few days to prepare, and that is just what we do. In
the case of Hurricane Katrina, we staged personnel and equipment in the
states adjacent to the primary strike zone. Specifically, we:
Loaded meals on 72 mobile canteens, each capable of
providing 5,000 hot meals per day, and two 54-foot mobile kitchens,
each capable of providing 20,000 hot meals per day. We intended to
dispatch these mobile feeding units into those geographic areas
determined by FEMA to be the hardest hit, and to dispatch additional
units as needed.
Mobilized 200 officers, employees, and volunteers to man
these mobile kitchens.
Prepared to dispatch portable shower units, trucks
transformed into 1-stop shops called comfort stations, and emergency
response command stations for officers to direct the response efforts.
Delivering Life-Sustaining Commodities
In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, we were--and still are--
focused on providing life-sustaining commodities--namely food and
water. To use the language of the emergency management community, we
were operating in the ``response phase.''
Mass Feeding: We moved our mobile feeding units into New Orleans,
Biloxi, Gulfport, Mobile and numerous other affected communities within
hours after the storm had passed. In some areas, we presented the first
opportunity for survivors to obtain food and water.
As the scope and scale of the damage became apparent, we deployed
additional resources to the region:
The number of mobile canteens rose from 72 to 178.
The number of field kitchens deployed rose from 2 to 11.
I should note that eight of the nine additional field kitchens belonged
to the Southern Baptists and that they were deployed under a
cooperative MOU between the Army and the Southern Baptists.
Since Katrina struck, The Salvation Army has served more than 5
million hot meals and more than 7 million sandwiches and snacks to
survivors and first responders.
We have also distributed more than 150,000 cleaning kits and almost
200,000 boxes of groceries.
Shelter: Although sheltering disaster victims is not our primary
activity, The Salvation Army does provide shelter for storm victims. At
the height of the initial response, the Army was operating 225 shelters
which were housing more than 31,000 people. Since then, many of these
people have moved on to temporary quarters. In some cases, the Army is
helping with rent payments and other shelter-related needs.
Emotional and Spiritual Care: The Salvation Army provides emotional
and spiritual comfort to disaster victims and emergency workers coping
with the stress of a disaster. This practices dates from the hurricane
that devastated Galveston, Texas, a century ago. At the sites of the
Oklahoma City bombing and the World Trade Center, one of the most
critical missions of the Army was counseling firefighters, police, and
morgue workers who were struggling with the enormity of the tragedies.
We are providing this care now, to both those who have remained in the
Gulf region and to those who have been moved to other communities
across the country.
Ultimately Assisting with Long-Term Recovery
At some point in the process of responding, the nature of our
services will change from life-sustaining services to recovery
services. Typically at this stage--we're now at Day #101--the Army is
usually operating in what is known as a ``recovery phase.'' That means
we're helping people put their lives back to normal.
The Army employs case management to help people get their lives
back to normal. We sit down with each family to determine what social
services they need. Some of these clients will have been referred by
other organizations because they present particularly challenging
problems and the Army is well-equipped to help the most disenfranchised
members of our society. At this time, we're assisting more than 269,000
people through case management.
These social services are the muscle, if you will, that allows the
Army to make a lasting contribution to impacted communities.
The Salvation Army is also involved in the reconstruction of
communities. We are conscious of the need to rebuild a community's
economic infrastructure, so that people can return to work. Typically,
we act in partnership with other organizations to achieve our
reconstruction goals. For example, if there is a need for new housing,
then the Army might pay for the lumber.
Mr. Chairman, I want to make one final point about the disaster
services provided by the Army: we don't come into a community, help out
for a few weeks, and then leave. We don't make exit plans because we
live in those communities. Our presence is permanent.
Thoughts and Observations on Katrina Response
Congress is obviously and rightly concerned about the quality of
the preparations for and response to Hurricane Katrina.
From our perspective, the services that were needed by Gulf Coast
residents were no different than those provided to other victims of
earlier hurricanes. The crucial differences between the response to
Katrina and earlier hurricanes were the geographic scope of the
disaster, the scale of the damage, and the multiple types of disasters
triggered by a single event.
Some special circumstances did arise in New Orleans. There, the
conditions under which we delivered our services were somewhat
different from those of other hurricanes in two respects.
First, there was toxic material present and our relief workers had
to take precautions to protect themselves. Moreover, this delayed the
movement of personnel into the area by a few days.
The second complication was civil unrest. The Salvation Army will
draw a line in the sand with respect to service delivery when a
situation is simply too dangerous.
How Congress Can Help
If Congress is inclined to make changes in the Federal Government's
disaster response protocols, then The Salvation Army has identified
four items that we would like you to consider.
National Response Plan
The Salvation Army should be explicitly mentioned in the National
Response Plan as a support agency, similar to VOAD. Inclusion in the
federal disaster response plan would clarify our role to state and
local governments and, in our opinion, help the Army to more
effectively deliver our services.
Training for NGOs
If the Federal Government is going to rely upon tax exempt
organizations and other NGOs to deliver disaster services, then
standardized training is needed because all of the NGOs--especially the
new entrants in the disaster services field--must understand the
government's emergency management systems and the language of those
systems.
We believe that FEMA should take the lead role in providing this
training. In fact, FEMA already provides some of this training through
the National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
Public Education
Just as there are roles for government and charitable organizations
in disaster response, there is also a role for people who are moved to
help in some way.
All too frequently, people and corporations will send unwanted
items to a disaster site. Their motivation is laudable, but the arrival
of unsolicited in-kind contributions at a disaster site is problematic.
Volunteers have to be diverted from feeding and directly assisting
victims to sort through truckloads of miscellaneous clothes and other
un-needed items. Further, storage space in a disaster is scarce.
Likewise, the unexpected arrival of unsolicited and untrained
volunteers is also problematic.
I don't want to sound cold, but the simple truth of the matter is
that the best response is to send cash and stay out of the disaster
zone, particularly when personal safety and health are at risk.
The Federal Government could help to channel the generosity of the
American people through public service announcements or by making
prominent statements to that effect at the time of a disaster.
Tax Policy
Donors make it possible for The Salvation Army to respond to a
disaster, and they play an essential role in the delivery of services
to those in need. To date, the Army has received $295 million for
hurricane relief efforts in the affected areas and to assist the
evacuees from coast to coast.
Obviously, there is a direct correlation between the generosity of
donors and the extent of the Army's ability to help people in crisis.
Consequently, any government policy that makes it more difficult
for potential donors to contribute will impact our ability to deliver
services. Therefore, we ask that Congress make it as easy as possible
for donors to contribute to charitable organizations.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony and I look forward to
your questions.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Thank you, Major Hawks. Mr. Davies,
please.
STATEMENT OF JOHN G. DAVIES, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, BATON ROUGE AREA FOUNDATION
Mr. DAVIES. My name is John Davies. I'm the President and
CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, a community foundation
serving the capital region of Louisiana. Because of our size
and location and prior activities, the Baton Rouge Area
Foundation was positioned to be significantly responsive to the
challenges brought about by the two hurricanes that devastated
our State.
It is important to understand that after the storm Baton
Rouge became the center of activity regarding both the
displaced population from south Louisiana and the
reconstruction effort. The Foundation was in the midst of the
relief effort. As a result, our staff arrived at several
conclusions about our experience, and we would like to present
those to you in the hopes that they might be instructive.
The first is that the lack of coordination among large
NGOs, local charities, local, State, Federal agencies was a
huge impediment to service delivery. For the first 3 weeks
there was no coherent way for relief organizations to
coordinate their efforts to ensure complete service coverage
and effective response.
Second, within the independent sector, there was a yawning
gap of communication between the large multinational NGOs and
the local organizations. Logically, large charities who work on
the international scene know how each other works and
understand each other's role in disaster relief. Local
organizations, at least in our case, were unfamiliar with
disaster practices and were on a steep and costly learning
curve. There was no significant awareness among local
organizations of what the national organizations were doing,
and vice versa.
The Red Cross response felt to us like it was a first time
event for the Red Cross. There was a wide range of competency
and experience among Red Cross staff, and that affected the
capacity of local charities and volunteers to quickly and
properly plug into the Red Cross system. Further, several
professionals from different international NGOs commented that
the International Red Cross protocols and practices were
different from those of the national Red Cross. This too led to
confusion in the early stages of the relief.
Fourth, there was a clear dichotomy between the two types
of shelters: The Red Cross shelters, of which there were up to
five in the greater Baton Rouge area during the storm, and the
non-Red Cross shelter that grew to 70 in the area. The various
designations of Red Cross shelters and non defines the lack of
communication and collaboration between the two groups. The
Foundation focused on supporting the latter, primarily faith-
based organizations in our greater community, that had very
quickly responded to the human crises by opening their churches
and buildings to become shelters. In our estimation, the faith-
based shelters were hugely important to our community's
capacity to absorb the volume of displaced people that it did.
Fifth, the 211 charitable resource phone call line is
critical in these situations. The Foundation was inundated by
generous people from all over the country who wanted to
contribute important gifts in-kind: the use of private jets,
the use of complete fleets of trucks, helicopters, offers of
free hotel rooms, offers of free housing and apartments, et
cetera. For the first 2 weeks after the storm, there was no
effective 211 system. It had been overwhelmed, and it took us
time, way too much time, to get it up to capacity to handle the
volume of calls and to connect the resources from generous
people to those in need.
The Foundation hopes that lessons are learned from the
experiences of Katrina so that we do not have to relive the
scenarios in other disasters, and we are grateful to the
Subcommittee on Oversight for holding the hearings so that we
can gather information that may reduce the anguish, pain, and
suffering of those who are affected by crises in the future.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Davies follows:]
Statement of John G. Davies, President and Chief Executive Officer,
Baton Rouge Area Foundation, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is John Davies and I am the President
and CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, a community foundation
serving the capital region of Louisiana. Louisiana has five community
foundations that serve the state. The three community foundations that
responded most directly to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, were the
Community Foundation of Acadiana in Lafayette, the Greater New Orleans
Foundation, and us. The Baton Rouge Area Foundation, the largest of the
community foundations in Louisiana, has approximately 25 full time
employees and almost $400 million in assets. The Greater New Orleans
Foundation is the second largest community foundation in the state with
approximately $110 million in assets and seven employees. The other
three foundations have less than $50 million each in assets and small
staffs.
Because of our size, location, and prior activities, the Baton
Rouge Area Foundation was positioned to be significantly responsive to
the challenges brought about by the two hurricanes that devastated our
state. We immediately launched two Katrina Funds, one to address the
challenges faced by the displaced population from south Louisiana
living in the greater Baton Rouge area. The second fund, which we
launched as a proxy for the Greater New Orleans Foundation, was
intended to help rebuild the civic structures of the greater New
Orleans area. We launched the second fund rather than our colleagues in
New Orleans because they were displaced themselves. Two of the seven
employees of the Greater New Orleans Foundation lost everything except
for what they wore as they left the city. All of them had to seek other
housing arrangements, in many cases with difficult logistics.
It is important to understand that after the storm, Baton Rouge
became the center of activity regarding both the displaced population
from south Louisiana and the reconstruction effort. Most critical civic
offices from New Orleans such as the Chamber, the Community Foundation
and United Way moved into temporary offices in Baton Rouge, and many
businesses from that region did the same. Baton Rouge developed as a
central meeting site to discuss both the immediate response to victims
and the longer term reconstruction issues. The Baton Rouge Area
Foundation became one of those locations. For several months, we housed
the International Rescue Committee, the Governor's Louisiana Family
Recovery Corporation, the Greater New Orleans Foundation and Greater
New Orleans, Inc.
The funds that we launched under Foundations For Recovery.org, a
website that contains significant information about our fundraising
success and the disposition of the funds that we have raised, has
reached almost $27 million from all 50 states, the Virgin Islands, and
26 foreign countries. Of that amount over $12 million has been
contributed to the Hurricane Katrina Displaced Residents Fund and $4.6
has been contributed to the Hurricane Katrina New Orleans Recovery
Fund.
Remembering that south Louisiana had evacuated into Baton Rouge and
across the country, with Baton Rouge serving as the center of activity,
the Baton Rouge Area Foundation was in the midst of all the relief
efforts. We arrived at several conclusions about our experience, and we
present those in hopes that they might be instructive for future
responses to disasters.
1. The lack of coordination among large Non-Governmental
Organizations (NGO's), local charities, local, state and federal
agencies was a huge impediment to service delivery. For the first three
weeks post-Katrina, there was no coherent way for the relief
organizations to coordinate their efforts to ensure complete service
coverage and effective response.
2. Within the independent sector there was a significant gap of
communication between the large, multinational NGO's and local
organizations. Logically, large charities who work on the international
scene know each other and understand each other's role in disaster
relief. Local organizations, at least in our case, were unfamiliar with
disaster practices and were on a steep and costly learning curve. There
was no significant awareness among the local organizations of what the
national organizations were doing and vice versa.
3. The Red Cross response, though critical to whatever success we
have had in responding to the challenges of the displaced residents,
felt to us like it was a first time event for the Red Cross. There was
widely varying degrees of competency and experience among Red Cross
staff, and that affected the capacity of local charities whose service
could have been most helpful to quickly and properly plug into the Red
Cross system. Further, several professionals from different
international NGO's commented that the International Red Cross
protocols and practices were different from those of the National Red
Cross. This, too, led to some confusion in the early stages of the
relief effort.
4. Again, in the area of communications, there was a clear
dichotomy between two types of shelters: the Red Cross shelters, of
which there were up to five in the greater Baton Rouge area during the
storm, and the non-Red Cross shelters that grew up to seventy in the
area. The very designation of Red Cross and non-Red Cross shelters
defines the lack of communication and collaboration between the two
groups. The Foundation focused heavily on supporting the faith-based
organizations in our greater community who had very quickly responded
to the human crises by opening their churches and buildings to become
shelters. In our estimation, the faith-based shelters were hugely
important to our community's capacity to absorb the volume of displaced
people that it did.
5. The 211 charitable services call line is immensely important in
these situations. The Foundation was inundated by immensely generous
people from all over the country who wanted to contribute important
gifts in-kind--the use of private jets, the use of complete fleets of
trucks, helicopters, offers of free hotel rooms, offers of free housing
and apartments, etcetera. For the first two weeks after the storm,
there was no effective 211 system. It had been overwhelmed, and it took
us time--too much time--to get it up to the capacity to handle the
volume of calls and to connect the resources from generous people to
those in need. It seems reasonable that communities should focus time
and energy on ensuring that their 211 system has the capacity to serve
them in times of crisis.
The Baton Rouge Area Foundation made a few correct and important
assessments early. The day after the storm, we analogized our situation
with Banda Aceh and not 9/11. That led us to invite the International
Rescue Committee to come to Baton Rouge for the first domestic
deployment in their history. In their first day onsite, which was
during the first week post-Katrina, they told us that the major issues
we would face would be the coordination of service resources and the
management of information. Almost a month later, in chaos, we finally
developed systems to deal with the coordination of resources--but it
took us a precious month. The staff of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation
hopes that lessons are learned from the experiences of Katrina so that
we do not relive these scenarios in other disasters. There must be
better ways to quickly develop systems into which service providers can
plug in so that their valuable services can be put to work right away.
Additionally, there must be a centralized communication system that
allows both the victims of the crisis and the service providers a
reasonably current and reliable status report of relief efforts.
The Foundation is grateful to the Subcommittee on Oversight for
holding this hearing so that we can gather information that may reduce
the anguish, pain and suffering of others who are affected by crises in
the future.
Chairman RAMSTAD. I want to thank all four members of this
panel for your very helpful testimony. I would like to ask of
you, Mr. Becker, and let me first say I think it is nothing
short of miraculous that the Red Cross has already distributed
$1.3 billion in financial assistance to Katrina evacuees.
Believe me, as a former board member of my local American Red
Cross chapter in Minnesota, I appreciate all the good work that
the Red Cross does, and certainly we are not here to point
fingers, but to work with you in a collaborative way and the
other organizations represented on the panels here today to do
things better and to correct some mistakes that have been made.
Obviously, in a disaster, an epic disaster of these
proportions, nobody could totally and accurately make all
contingency plans, and we understand that. Again, we appreciate
your cooperation. We are trying to figure out how we can avoid
some of the mistakes that were made, how we can cut down on
waste and fraud like we are trying to do as Members of Congress
every day with respect to the Federal Government.
I know the Red Cross is under pressure in a disaster like
this, under immense pressure, to get cash out to people who
need it. As I said already, you have distributed $1.3 billion
in cash. At the same time, it is discouraging to donors to read
about cases where there is fraud or waste, money going to
people who really are not victimized, who have minimal or
little damage.
I cited in my opening statement the experience in Hinds
County, Mississippi, in Jackson, Mississippi, which was written
up in The New York Times, where initially all residents of the
county were receiving cash assistance. At midcourse, I
understand, the Red Cross corrected the policy or changed the
policy, so that damage assessments were required before the
residents of that county could receive cash.
First of all, I understand, in a hurricane like that there
are not too many insurance adjusters or others around to make
those kinds of assessments, before getting cash assistance,
which is usually imminently needed and desperately needed.
How is, if at all, the Red Cross changing its policy
consistent with what happened in Hinds County, Mississippi?
Mr. BECKER. Our policy has always been that we give
financial assistance to families who have verified disaster-
caused needs, major damage or destroyed homes, in essence. Our
constant challenge in the earliest days of Katrina was wanting
to get that assistance in victims' hands as quickly as we
could, based on what data we had. So, initially, we had some
counties that we knew were obviously totally destroyed, and
then beyond that we waited--we constantly refined that data as
our assessment teams were able to.
We leaned on FEMA's data with their overhead satellite
imagery, and what we did was constantly changed the zip codes
that we knew everybody in those zip codes had damage, then we
had other zip codes that no, I think we need a home visit here.
In a traditional disaster we go street to street, house to
house with our volunteers. In a disaster the size of Great
Britain, which street do you go down first? So, we relied on
macro data in those earliest weeks, and then as our on-the-
ground data assessment came back in, and we had that data,
particularly in Hinds County, we were able then to refine the
data and change our zip code list of who we were giving
assistance to.
We felt like we had a system that yes, if you wanted to in
some ways defraud the system, we might not catch it in the
earliest days, but when the data was entered we would
eventually find out who you were, and we have had a large fraud
team focused on how many people got assistance who double-
dipped on us, went to more than one place, or how many people
defrauded the system.
I can quantify that for you at this point. Out of the 1.2
million or so families that we gave assistance to we have
identified about 4,000 families that we are now going back and
working with. So far, we have recovered over $1 million from
people who have given us the money back. We have had wonderful
cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and
with local prosecutors who have lowered the dollar threshold
that we would prosecute to allow us to prosecute people who
defrauded the Red Cross and the people that gave us the money
to give out.
Chairman RAMSTAD. You mentioned the number of families, Mr.
Becker. Of the $1.3 billion in cash assistance that has been
handed out, can you quantify how much in your judgment went to
fraudulent claims?
Mr. BECKER. About 4,000 families, at about an average of
$1,000 per family.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Four thousand families at about $1,000 a
family.
Well, again, I thank you, Mr. Becker.
Mr. Davies, I want to ask you a question, if I may. You
made quite an indictment in your testimony and in your remarks
today. You say that for 3 weeks after Hurricane Katrina there
was no coherent way for relief organizations to coordinate
their efforts. Who in your judgment is responsible for this
amazing failure?
Mr. DAVIES. I am not sure. The situation was so
overwhelming that it would have been terribly difficult. The
frustration of this situation is that we had invited the
International Rescue Committee to come to Baton Rouge, and they
deployed for the first time in their history within the United
States. They normally serve overseas. They worked in Banda
Aceh. We invited them to come to Baton Rouge precisely because
they had done some point relief work in Banda Aceh and they
understood the whole issue of displaced people and relocation,
which we saw coming. When they arrived within 5 days after the
storm, the head of their team of 11 told us in a briefing that
the greatest issue we were going to have was to coordinate all
of the resources that were there to benefit the people, and we
knew that then, and we still couldn't get it pulled together
until 3 weeks later at a fairly large meeting in our office
where, finally, the State determined to develop a central
coordination center called the Family Recovery Corps, and that
was intended to be the central place through which services
would be provided to the displaced people.
Chairman RAMSTAD. We all know that FEMA's inadequate
response initially has been well documented. We know also the
relationship on the ground. Do the charities key, if I may, key
off FEMA, and because of FEMA's inadequate response did this
affect the response of the charities on the ground?
Mr. DAVIES. It may have been a contributing factor. I think
the enormity of the situation, we had so many international
groups who had come to Louisiana for the first time; we had
obviously the Red Cross and Salvation Army, we had World
Vision, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, International Rescue;
we had many, many groups who had never worked in Louisiana
before, didn't know our organizations, didn't know the
structure of our government. They also didn't understand--we
didn't understand them and their roles.
I think the nature of relief work at this point, at the
shelter point is chaotic, but the chaos should not have been at
the level it was.
Chairman RAMSTAD. I want to ask finally Major Hawks a
question. Thank you, Mr. Davies.
Major Hawks, I was surprised to learn in the context of
preparing for this hearing that the Salvation Army is not named
in the National Response Plan. It was more than a surprise, I
was shocked. Therefore, the Salvation Army was excluded from
bodies in which it could have helped coordinate the response to
Katrina.
Has the Salvation Army applied to become a support agency
in the National Response Plan, or do you see that as being
desirous and consistent with your goals and your mission?
Major HAWKS. Yes, Mr. Chairman. The Salvation Army has
expressed an interest in being a support agency, and the reason
that that is important to the Salvation Army is in part because
the State as well as the county and the parishes all adopt
their local emergency management plans using the Federal plan
as the model. So, if we are not listed, as you have indicated,
then often we are not included. We are included in the VOAD
grouping.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Again, I want to thank you and all of the
officers, members, volunteers of the Salvation Army for all the
good that you did with respect to the hurricanes and for all
the good you do every day in our country.
The Chair would now recognize the distinguished Ranking
Member, Mr. Lewis.
Mr. LEWIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman,
I want to join you in thanking members of the panel, and thank
the representatives of these organizations and groups for doing
the necessary work and the good work for so many years. Some of
us really appreciate, all of us as a people, as a Nation are
very grateful to you for your work, for your service. I often
think, what would it be like if we didn't have organizations
like the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, local community
foundations.
Just recently in my own city in Atlanta, we had a bad
apartment fire in the heart of the inner city, and it was the
Red Cross that responded to help people, and I am sure the
Salvation Army no doubt was involved also. The Salvation Army
in Atlanta has done great work for many years in helping with
the homeless population and meeting the ongoing needs of
people. For one, I am very grateful, and I appreciate your
great work.
Ms. Fagnoni, I wish you would expand on the statement in
your testimony where in areas where the American Red Cross did
not provide service, the Salvation Army and smaller
organizations, often local churches, were able to meet many of
the charitable needs in hard-to-reach communities.
It just sounds like everyone, everybody was just doing the
best they could. What happened, it was unbelievable, it was
unreal. So, could you just expand? Did we learn anything? Did
the organizations, did the groups learn anything from 9/11 to
plan better?
Ms. FAGNONI. To answer the last part of your question
first, Mr. Lewis.
Mr. LEWIS. Was anything put in place?
Ms. FAGNONI. Sure. What we see as the most direct response
to some of the lessons learned that we and others identified
from 9/11 was this effort to have the CAN, which is a web-based
system. It is designed to help keep track of both people and
services. One thing that happened after September 11th is that
survivors had to keep telling their stories over and over again
to different organizations. With the CAN once an individual
gives information, then signs a waiver, then the other
charities that participate in the network and have signed a
privacy waiver can access the information and know something
about the individual. This will enable organizations to
identify services that have been provided to an individual, so
that there are not gaps or duplication of services.
So, that is probably the most concrete development that has
occurred since 9/11. Further, you have asked about gaps in
services, and I am sure the Red Cross can explain that due to
some of their policies, they did not place shelters in areas
where people happened to still be. In response, particularly in
places like Mississippi, local organizations, often churches
stepped in. I think the Salvation Army will also tell you that
due to their roaming approach to service delivery, it may be
easier for them to move into some areas and fill in where
others might not be.
I think there is still an open question as to the overall
coordination, but there is no question that people were trying
to fill in where they saw a need. The GAO has a broad set of
studies going on. Today, I am discussing the piece that deals
with charities, but we are also looking overall at the National
Response Plan, how effectively it has been implemented in this
situation, and what changes, if any, might need to be made. Of
course, charities are a very important, but very small piece in
that whole picture. Even within the emergency support function
where the Red Cross has a lead role, they share the lead with
FEMA. So, even in that situation, there is a Federal presence.
So, yes, I think there were some lessons learned after
September 11th, but clearly, there will be new lessons learned
from this situation. The fact is, with Katrina as with other
disasters, it is not over. Situations are continuing to happen
and we will continue to monitor and look at how things are
going and what improvements might be needed.
Mr. LEWIS. Mr. Chairman, I notice my time has run out. If I
could just ask Mr. Becker a question.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Sure.
Mr. LEWIS. Mr. Becker, could you expand on your comments
about how your sister organizations, the Salvation Army,
Southern Baptist, Catholic Church, National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the American
Psychological Association were critical to the success of the
Red Cross mission and goal? Sort of follow up on your statement
about the significant lessons learned. Is the partnership much
more effective well in advance of a crisis?
Mr. BECKER. I think there is a distinction between the Red
Cross and our primary role in the National Response Plan and
the Red Cross as a service provider. The role that we take in
the National Response Plan has to do with how does the Federal
Government resource States. What we do in our National Response
Plan role is work at FEMA's resourcing center to receive
requests from States and process those to the right Federal
organization to resource the State. That is what we do as the
Emergency Support Function (ESF) 6 primary agency. That is a
very different assignment than what the Red Cross does as a
service provider. What the Red Cross does as a service provider
is work with the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, many
partners to make sure the work gets done.
The quarterback in a disaster is the parish or county
emergency manager, and what we are doing in the earliest days
of a disaster is making sure that we are coordinating on a
local basis: Where do you have a kitchen? Where do we have a
kitchen? What church do we know of is feeding? The worst thing
we could do is set a kitchen down right next to a Salvation
Army kitchen or next to a church kitchen. So, we are trying to
coordinate that, and at the county or parish level that is
where that coordination happens.
Our role as primary in ESF 6 does not mean that we are
responsible for the Red Cross meeting all of the service
delivery needs for meeting shelter and clothing distribution,
welfare inquiry; it is the coordinating role in resourcing
States and then we work in partnership with other organizations
to actually deliver the service.
Mr. LEWIS. Thank you very much.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Mr. Beauprez, please.
Mr. BEAUPREZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Becker, let's stay on that point for a little bit.
Communications seem to be an enormous problem. We heard in Mr.
McCrery's testimony, we have heard it from several of you, that
communication was extremely difficult, maybe to be polite. Yet,
in your testimony, I don't see much discussion about how we fix
that. So, why don't you expand, if you have ideas. You have
been through what I am guessing you admit was not a stellar
performance by the Red Cross as well as many other agencies.
How do we address that? How do we get over it?
Mr. BECKER. To clarify the question, communication among
the nonprofits in the response?
Mr. BEAUPREZ. Communications throughout. I am likening this
to a battle zone. There is always going to be variables that
happen in the field of battle. It is critically important that
someone take charge, someone develops the strategy, and someone
passes the orders for execution throughout the ranks. That
seems like there was--it seems like, from what I understand
from the testimony already today, that there was an enormous
breakdown in that chain of command communication if in fact the
chain of command even exists.
Mr. BECKER. There are several aspects to that. I would say
the first one is, what are the local relationships among all of
the nonprofits that can bring value during a disaster? Not just
the large national organizations, but anybody. The local food
pantry, the local crisis center, anybody who can bring value.
When we formed the CAN, it was done by the large national
disaster organizations and the United Way, but the intent was
that we would offer that to a community, and it is not just the
technology, it is not just entering cases so that we can all
see what we have done for the Smith family. The better benefit
is that we all sit down in that community long before a
disaster happens to carve out those rules a little bit more
clearly.
The way a disaster sequences, in the earliest days of a
disaster, what we are focused on is the lifesaving needs, the
shelter and the food. There is a fairly small number of
players, if you will, in that, the Salvation Army and the
American Red Cross, and in a very large disaster such as this,
the faith community would respond.
As the disaster runs out, and people start focusing on
questions like ``where am I going to live'' and ``how am I
going to recover,'' that is where the whole group of nonprofits
comes together. We have all been in the community long before
the disaster hit, and we are going to be in the community long
after the disaster is off the front page of the news. How do we
work together to do that? If we wait until the middle of a
disaster to exchange business cards with each other, we are off
to a bad start.
The value of the CAN would be that we sit down ahead of
time and form those relationships. We as a group had received
funding to preposition that network in six pilot communities
around the country, and we had just started to roll that out.
We received the funding in the spring. We did it based on
threats and, interestingly, New Orleans was one of those six
pilot communities that we chose. So, we were off to a little
bit better of a start in the New Orleans area. We now have CAN
in over 500 communities around the country. I think long-term
it is not the technology, it is the relationships among the
leaders of the nonprofits to carve those roles out and clarify
those expectations in advance.
Mr. BEAUPREZ. I accept that, but what confuses me I guess
is that this seemed to escape everyone before this disaster
happened. I accept the premise you just laid out, that progress
maybe is being made, but in the time I have got remaining, I
guess I will ask the same question in a slightly different
manner to you than I asked to my colleague, Mr. McCrery.
Whether we want to point a finger at FEMA, local government,
State government, whether we want to point a finger at the
collection of NGOs, the collective assumption here is we did
not do very well and a whole lot of people suffered mightily as
a result.
Thinking of the National Response Plan, is it broken so
badly it cannot be fixed? If your answer is no, we can fix it,
how soon can we fix it?
Mr. BECKER. Our organizational view is that the National
Response Plan needs to be seriously reexamined. There are
public policy issues in that as well. At its core, with the
National Response Plan, all it does is outline how the Federal
Government is going to resource a State, when you really get
down to it, and it is predicated on when a county has a
disaster or a parish that is bigger than it can handle it will
turn to the State. When a State has something bigger than it
can handle, it will turn to the National Response Plan
structure for that.
All disasters are local, though. They are all local, and
where we have to grow, when the parish or county has its
disaster plan, we craft ahead of time: this is where the Red
Cross shelters are going to be, these are the other shelters
that might open in the community. That is dictated typically in
a plan. If the question is asked, what if it is bigger than
that, the answer on the local level is then we turn to the
State or we turn to the Feds.
I think what we need to reexamine on a local level is, no,
what if it is bigger than that, what are the local resources;
bring the faith community into that planning process, bring the
other nonprofits into the planning process, because the
response has to be people from the community first. So, yes,
the National Response Plan needs to be reexamined, but I think
that is too easy for us at the local level to say, oh, that is
the problem. Our organizations at the local level need to think
about what if it is bigger than we can handle? Before we turn
to the State, who else in this community can bring value? That
needs to happen as well.
Mr. BEAUPREZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman RAMSTAD. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman
from North Dakota, Mr. Pomeroy.
Mr. POMEROY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In 1997, the City of Grand Forks, a city of about 50,000,
suffered a catastrophic flood and the city was evacuated, and
we were literally years in recovery. That was the worst thing
we ever thought could happen until Hurricane Katrina and we saw
that things can get a magnitude worse. We are still very
grateful for the roles played by both the Red Cross and the
Salvation Army, and our own emergency response and then
recovery periods.
I am troubled, however, by anecdotal reports that things on
the ground did not go as one might have hoped or expected. I am
wondering about key lessons that have been learned as we try to
address these issues.
In talking about coordination, in Grand Forks we literally
built a one-stop shop under the auspices--and this is now more
than the recovery phase--under the auspices of the United Way,
who had utter coordination between all nonprofits and charities
and churches working on the program. Is there some
institutional, multi-organizational coordinating entity that
you will be further constructing and improving in light of what
you have learned?
Mr. Becker and Major Hawks.
Mr. BECKER. On a Federal level, FEMA has awarded a very
significant grant to the national VOAD and the United Methodist
Committee on Relief (UMCOR), to do the casework for the people
going forward. While that is being built, and what is typical
in a disaster, each community or each county forms what
generically you would call an unmet needs Committee. You see
these all over Florida from last year's storms and you are
seeing these form in the Mississippi Gulf Coast. That would be
the local political leaders, the nonprofit leaders, the faith
community, business leaders coming together to say how are we
going to meet the longer term needs of these people. That is
where CAN was designed to work. CAN was designed to, when these
people all come together, how do they share that data? Various
leaders step forward in communities to take that convening
role. I don't think that can be dictated by a Federal grant.
Mr. POMEROY. That is the recovery phase, though. I am
wondering if we can't have an entity that is probably located,
I don't know, in Washington or somewhere that exists between
disasters and has very well-established, multi-participants,
and so we have a coordinating capacity preestablished for
something like this. I think quite clearly there was
coordination on the ground during the relief phase of this
organization but did not meet what we I think expect and hope
for. I am wondering if you are building something that will
make--that will leave us institutionally improved going
forward.
Mr. BECKER. I would agree that that would be one of the key
learnings going forward, not so much for the recovery phase,
which is what the learning from 9/11 was, how do you deal with
the people in the recovery phase; but in the emergency response
phase, those earliest weeks, we presumed that coordination
happens at the local level, because the key players, the county
emergency manager, I would agree we need that Federal level as
well.
Mr. POMEROY. Major, do you have insights on that?
Major HAWKS. I think the model that is in place nationally,
statewide as well as locally, relates to the VOAD structure,
where all of us as nonprofit organizations are a part of that
group. There is a national group, there is a State group, there
are county groups, there are local groups, and I am thinking
that those are the groups that need to be strengthened now and
they need to continue to communicate right on up to the time of
the disaster and throughout the disaster.
Now, there are a number of unmet needs groups that have
come from the Katrina efforts, and they all have different
names. Depending on the communities they have all been given
different names. The Salvation Army, the American Red Cross and
other organizations, faith-based organizations, are all plugged
into those Committees across the coast and involved in the
recovery efforts.
Mr. POMEROY. I had a Red Cross--I had a volunteer scheduled
to go down there and work, work with the Red Cross, and I left
my personal cell phone number to call if she had any problems.
She didn't call from down there, but she called literally
before she had gotten to her apartment or house back in Fargo
to tell me of her concern relative to lack of oversight
management and lack of fund-tracking as the client assistance
cards were dispersed, and this has come up in some of the
questions raised here, but I literally had a constituent call
and tell me that there would be lines in front of the table and
one individual claiming on behalf of a family in one line and,
two lines down, there was another individual claiming on behalf
of the same family, and this North Dakota volunteer said, well,
there is not much we can do about that.
Was sufficient information captured at the time of
disbursements, so that the FBI investigation in duplication of
benefits inappropriately can now have a chance to work?
Mr. BECKER. Where we had power and infrastructure, that
data was captured. Where we didn't have infrastructure and we
were handing out intake forms and entering the data in a remote
location, there was a period of time before that data got put
in. That was the comment that I made earlier where you might be
able to in essence double-dip on us, but we would know who you
were eventually. There is a team, independent of my team, that
has been working on that since then, and that is what we did
quantify to be about 4,000 families that stood in line at one
table and then went to another table or, in some cases, stood
in line in a community and then went to another community.
Mr. POMEROY. This individual was in Baton Rouge. I think
you had power throughout there, right?
Mr. BECKER. In Baton Rouge we did, but to also get the
assistance out more quickly, we had a lot of organizations and
places that we turned into intake centers and, actually, in
Baton Rouge was the centralized data processing facility. What
we were balancing there was the speed of getting the assistance
to people and the data, and if we had to err we were going to
err on the side of getting the assistance in people's hands,
feeling like if we had to we would come back and knock on their
door later to talk about the fact that they had gotten two
checks from the Red Cross. The 4,000 number might grow, but it
is about three-tenths of 1 percent fraud, out of 1.2 million
cases. That is how many we have so far. It might go up a little
bit more, but anecdotally, that was keeping me up at night, and
it was organizationally for us a risk that we took, but we
agreed to err on the side of speed. This is the immediate
emergency assistance before FEMA can get you your big check, or
this is just to get you that next set of clothes or what you
immediately need. Getting it 5 weeks later, 10 weeks later
doesn't help, and our emphasis was on speed at that point and
mitigating as best we could the risk along the way.
Chairman RAMSTAD. The Chair now recognizes the
distinguished Chairman of the Subcommittee on Social Security
and thanks him again for participating again in today's
hearing.
Mr. MCCRERY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief.
Mr. Becker I think hit the nail on the head when he said,
this is not so much a failure of individuals, it is a failure
of lack of appropriate planning, lack of adequate planning. For
example, given the situation in the Baton Rouge area, which is
very similar to ours in my congressional district where the Red
Cross simply was not prepared or able to take care of all of
the evacuees who were flooding into our areas. So, we called on
the local Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP) directors to
call all their friends and their acquaintances, not just
churches. You keep using the faith-based. Well, yes, a lot of
the churches help, but a lot of these people were just called
on the phone by the OEP director to say, help. What do you have
that you can bring me? Well, I have a generator or I have this
or that. Those were people responding. The problem was, there
was not any planning for that, at least that I could identify.
Maybe there was on paper somewhere, but the OEP director didn't
seem to know it and the Red Cross didn't know it, and FEMA sure
didn't know it.
So, I think that is right. We have to--and whatever
organizations choose to participate, we have to get a
comprehensive plan to prepare us for these kinds of
contingencies in some kind of mass disaster.
For example, I think Red Cross, Salvation Army, United Way,
the major charitable organizations in every community, every
community has some vestige of one or more of those in their
communities, in their counties or their parishes; why not get
with the OEP director in each parish and some representative of
the charitable organizations and plan ahead of time. This is
the first shelter to open in my parish at the local civic
center, and it can have up to 500 people here. If that is not
enough, then we will have spot B as a shelter that can handle
50 people. If that is not enough, we are going to have to send
them north to the next parish, or all the way to Shreveport to
the Red Cross shelter, which has a thousand or 1,200 or 1,500
people in it. There didn't seem to be a plan in place like that
and, unfortunately the Red Cross, when asked, would just say
sorry, we can't help; we have our own problems. I am sure they
did, but then you would ask FEMA and FEMA--well, you couldn't
even get FEMA, basically. Communications were terrible, Mr.
Chairman. You couldn't get through to Baton Rouge. All the
lines were blocked. Yes, they had electricity, but they had no
phones because everything was so busy you couldn't get through.
It was just chaos.
So, somebody, whether it is FEMA or the lead organization
in the National Response Plan, somebody I think has to sit down
with these OEP directors who are by and large volunteers
themselves; they are not paid, they have another job, so they
just volunteer in their parish or their community, their county
to do that. Somebody has to take them to lunch, spend a buck,
have the FEMA spend enough to buy this poor guy a lunch and go
over with him just basic stuff. If we have a disaster, this is
what we got to do. I don't know. There has to be a better way,
because people simply were not aware of the plan if there was a
plan, and the shelters just popped up, thank goodness.
Finally, I got tired of trying to get the Red Cross to help
and trying to get FEMA to help, Mr. Chairman, and I and my
staff said we are going to do this ourselves. We went community
by community, enlisting the sheriffs and the mayors and the OEP
directors and said, we are going to handle this. We are just
going to get the food, get the--we don't have any cots, we
can't find any cots, but we will get mattresses and sheets and
pillows and clothes, and we did. We just handled it. There
should have been a better plan in place.
So, thank you for your comments, all of you.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Thank you, Mr. McCrery. The Ranking
Member has just one brief follow-up question of this panel.
Mr. LEWIS. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I want to ask
Major Hawks, your primary mission in America is a better place
because of it, is to give people hope where all may seem lost.
Now, the Red Cross has been criticized some here today. Do you
have any positive comments you would like to make? I know you
have done great work in Atlanta. We have about 40,000 people in
the metropolitan Atlanta area from the affected States. What
are you doing now to help people that are coming?
Major HAWKS. You mean with the evacuees across the country?
Mr. LEWIS. Right. In places like Atlanta or Houston or
Dallas or some other place?
Major HAWKS. Right now we are actually in the response and
the recovery mode. I have never been in a disaster before where
we spend 4 months in a response mode, where we have our roving
canteen all across the Gulf Coast and at the same time in other
communities we are doing case management with evacuees trying
to get people back into homes and back into places with some
semblance of normalcy.
So, in over 30 States, the Salvation Army is working with
the evacuees from around the country to try to get them back
into their homes, and, at the same time, in the affected areas
we are still working in the response phase.
Mr. LEWIS. Do you consider yourself different from the Red
Cross?
Major HAWKS. Well, initially, in the response phase we
emphasize providing food. Our roving canteens that I mentioned,
the 72 canteens that were initially staged to come in, they
were staged in adjacent States, they were staged in the
northern parts of the Gulf States, and then there were almost
200 more or 200 total brought into the area. That is what we do
really well during the time of response. Those canteens can
provide up to 5,000 meals per unit, and we have memorandum of
understandings with the Southern Baptists and other
organizations that will just, really just elevate our ability
to prepare food, but it goes beyond that. As the disaster moves
forward, so do our services.
Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, sir.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. The Chair would
again thank all four members on this panel for your testimony.
I want to thank you for all of the food that your organizations
provided with respect to these epic disasters Rita and Katrina.
Finally, the Chair would thank you for agreeing to work with us
in a collaborative way to address the shortcomings. Again,
thank you.
Now, we call the third panel for today's hearing. Marcie
Roth, Executive Director of the National Spinal Cord Injury
Association; Yavonka Archaga, Executive Director, Resources For
Independent Living (RIL); Daniel Borochoff, President of the
American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP); and John G. Wyatt,
City Marshal and Homeland Security Director for Bossier City,
Louisiana.
We can go as we traditionally do from your right to left,
the Chair's left to right, so we will begin with you, Mr.
Borochoff, please.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL BOROCHOFF, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF
PHILANTHROPY
Mr. BOROCHOFF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you to the
Committee for inviting me here. I also was invited to testify
after 9/11, and there are a lot of lessons that fortunately the
charities have learned from all of this.
I am Daniel Borochoff with the AIP and Charitywatch.org,
and we are a charity watchdog group. Since 1993 we have been
America's most independent watchdog of accountability,
financial governance, and promotional practices of charities.
Our letter grade ratings, A-plus to F, of nonprofit
organizations financial performance are published in the
Charity Rating Guide & Watchdog Report and are utilized by
thousands of conscientious donors across the Nation.
Americans responded quickly and generously with over $2.5
billion of charitable aid for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita. The AIP is pleased to report that the Red Cross has
improved its fundraising performance in the aftermath of the
recent hurricanes. Though it does need to be clear about its
financial position, it has taken to heart the many important
lessons after 9/11.
The Red Cross continues to be a financially efficient
organization. It receives an A-minus grade from the AIP. It is
able to spend 90 percent of its total expenses on programs and
has a cost of $22 to raise $100. It is going to be a lot less
for the current fiscal year period because of all of the
hundreds of millions they have raised in this disaster. The Red
Cross, unlike 9/11, has honored donor intentions by not trying
to raise money for one disaster and then using it for another
disaster or program. Certainly, in this case, with the
magnitude of the disaster, they cannot be accused of raising
too much money, because even $1 billion, when you divide it by
a million families, it is only $1,000 per family, so it is not
a 9/11 situation at all.
We actually feel that the Red Cross may have gone overboard
when it declared that it would not use money given for one
disaster, to another disaster, for example to help Rita victims
with Katrina funds. Being in this case that we have so many
overlapping victims, and that the areas were devastated within
weeks of each other, and is the same type of disaster, I don't
feel that the American public would mind if the larger amount
of money given for Katrina, since that got more coverage and
that was focused in New Orleans, if some of that money was made
available to Rita. I think the Red Cross is putting themselves
in a difficult situation there, and it would be a shame if the
Red Cross does not have the funding to treat similar victims
equally.
The Red Cross did improve its accountability by announcing
September 9, only a few weeks after Katrina hit, its $2.2
billion goal for providing emergency aid. They were producing
daily statistics on how many people they were helping, how many
meals they served. It would be more helpful if they were
actually giving cumulative totals, if they would give you how
much they were helping right at that time, so that people would
have an idea of how many people currently needed help, and also
if they would say how much money they were spending, not just
the total number of meals or shelter stays.
We talked about the CAN, and AIP is greatly disappointed
that the charities were not able to get it together to
implement a shared database. This is something after 9/11 that
I had written about. I emphasized that we have to have this if
we have another major disaster, and here we are 4 years later
and we still don't have it. It wasn't functional. It is so
important, because the information needs to be shared among the
charities to prevent double-dipping and allow for a more
equitable distribution of aid.
Based on our inquiries at the AIP, some unnamed charities
are not agreeing to sign on to the planned database. The AIP
believes that CAN needs to disclose which charities are
unwilling or unable to participate so that pressure from
watchdogs and donors can help gain their participation. This is
something important.
Another concern that we have is that the Red Cross is the
ultimate brand for charities; it is the Coca-Cola of charities.
On September 23, they were able to raise 75 percent of all the
money raised. This fell back to 65 percent come October 6. The
Salvation Army had only raised about 18 percent of the total at
$295 million. When we have a major scale disaster, everybody
should not just automatically give money to the Red Cross. One
of the beautiful things about our sector is we have many
different groups that can help in many different ways,
particularly the local community groups that were able to get
to places and help particular groups, the minorities, the
Vietnamese and so forth, that were not able to receive aid, and
we think that the Red Cross should reimburse some of these
community groups that have incurred costs to help people the
Red Cross couldn't get to. So, if we have another disaster and
we need community groups to help people, they are going to know
there is a chance they are going to get some of that money back
and they will be more willing to put out money to help these
people.
I have concerns about the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund that
our former Presidents have put together. They are probably the
third largest fundraiser. They have raised about $110 million.
They have been very quick at raising money, but slow in
deciding what to do with it. Not until December 7, over 3
months after Katrina, did it apply for tax-exempt status with
the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and announce how it will
distribute the bulk of the funds. They are going to give $40
million to the States. It is not clear exactly how the States,
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, are going to spend it; $30
million to colleges and then $20 million to faith-based
partnerships. It is fine if they want to raise money for faith-
based groups, but they need to tell the public so the public
knows that is what it is for, because not everybody wants to
give to faith-based groups.
Also, they haven't announced, since December 7th, who is
going to be on their full governing board. This is something
that donors need to know before they make a contribution. They
need to know who is going to be on the board. It is a shame
that they wouldn't tell the public that.
The Red Cross, even outside of a disaster, uses terms to
describe its Disaster Response Fund. They use terms such as
empty, running on fumes, dangerously low. I have a problem with
this because it doesn't reflect the complete financial position
of the Red Cross.
Here is a group with $2.2 billion net assets saying they
have no money in their disaster fund. It doesn't mean that they
don't have any other money available to use toward a disaster.
It is not responsible for them to say they have no money for a
disaster, because this implies that if there is another
disaster they would not be prepared for it.
Fortunately they do have money that is available for the
next disaster. So, what they need to do and all charities need
to do is, say what their true financial position is, or how
much money they have available. It doesn't matter if it is
board-designated, because the board can always undesignate it
if they have to.
So, charities should also consider whether such claims
undermine our international standing as a strong and powerful
nation by creating a false appearance of weakness and
vulnerability on our home front. How are the people in Iraq
going to feel if our main disaster group in the United States
says they don't have enough money to take care of people in an
emergency?
The Red Cross brought up earlier about the three-tenths of
a percent of money lost; but the Red Cross has also lost some
money through workers and volunteers stealing. That is
something that should be brought up.
Chairman RAMSTAD. The Chair would, in fairness to the other
members of the panel, remind the witness of the 5-minute time
rule, which is a rule of the Subcommittee. So, if you could
wrap up.
Mr. BOROCHOFF. One quick thing. I am calling for all of the
charities to offer a 6-month report as the Red Cross did after
the tsunami disaster. Because of the financial reporting rules,
it may not be until June 15th, 2007, before the Red Cross is
required and other charities are required to publicly disclose
their Katrina spending. Also multi-agency evaluations should be
produced that will help make charities and donors more aware of
victims who have been neglected or received poor services so
more services can be directed toward them.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Borochoff follows:]
Statement of Daniel Borochoff, President, American Institute of
Philanthropy, Chicago, Illinois
The American Institute of Philanthropy and Charitywatch.org is a
nonprofit charity watchdog and information resource dedicated to
helping its members and the general public make wise giving decisions.
Since 1993 we have been America's most independent watchdog of the
accountability, financial, governance and promotional practices of
charities. Our letter grade (A+ to F) ratings of nonprofit
organizations' financial performance as published in the Charity Rating
Guide & Watchdog Report are utilized by thousands of conscientious
donors across the nation. During this recent crisis, the December 2004
Asian tsunami and the September 11th terrorist attack nearly every
major U.S. media outlet has covered AIP's advice, analyses and
concerns.
Americans have responded quickly and generously with over $2.5
billion of charitable aid for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The American Institute of Philanthropy is pleased to report that the
American Red Cross has improved its fundraising performance in the
aftermath of the recent hurricanes. Though it needs to be clearer about
its financial position, it has taken to heart many important lessons
from 9/11. The Red Cross continues to be a financially efficient
organization and receives an ``A-'' grade from AIP for spending 91
percent of its total expenses on program services and having a cost of
$22 to raise $100. In contrast to September 11, the Red Cross honored
donor intentions by not trying to raise money for one disaster and use
it for another disaster or other programs. Due to the immensity of this
disaster, the Red Cross cannot be accused of raising too much money for
hurricane victims; even $1 billion, when spread among one million needy
families, only amounts to $1 thousand per family.
In AIP's opinion the Red Cross may even have gone overboard when it
declared that it would not use towards Rita any money given to help
with Katrina. These hurricanes had many overlapping victims and areas
that were devastated within weeks of each other. AIP believes it would
be fair and reasonable for the Red Cross to spend money for both
crises, whether or not it was raised in specific response to Katrina or
Rita. It is our view that most donors to the Red Cross wish to help the
recent hurricane victims of the U.S. Gulf Coast, regardless of which
hurricane struck them. It will be a shame if the Red Cross does not
have the funding to treat similar victims of each disaster equally.
The Red Cross also improved its accountability by announcing on
September 19th, only a few weeks after Katrina hit, its $2.2 billion
goal for providing emergency financial aid and other assistance to one
million families. They also have given regular updates of basic
statistics on the total number of evacuees to whom they have provided
services, how much money they have raised, and how much money they have
spent in total in the most expensive relief effort in its 124-year
history. It would be even more helpful to donors that want to track the
use of their dollars, if the Red Cross also regularly accounted for the
amount spent on each type of service provided, e.g. meals, overnight
shelter stays, mental and health contacts. The Red Cross could also do
a better job in their updates by reporting how many people they are
currently sheltering, feeding or offering other services to, in
addition to how many people that they have helped in total. This
information would give donors a better understanding of how many people
currently are in need of Red Cross assistance.
Unlike after September 11, 2001 when the Red Cross resisted
participating in a shared database, in this crisis they took the lead
in forming a new database system called CAN, or Coordinated Assistance
Network. Unfortunately, the part of the database that was to track the
aid each victim received from the other charities was still being
tested when Katrina and Rita struck, according to Red Cross officials.
The database was operational for keeping track of people's shelter
days.
AIP is greatly disappointed that the charities were not able to
implement a shared database nearly four years after the experience of
9/11 made its importance obvious. Charities need to share information
on specific victims to prevent double dipping and allow for a more
equitable distribution of aid. AIP strongly encourages charities to
expedite the implementation of a shared database in preparation for the
next disaster. Based on our inquiries, AIP understands that some
unnamed charities are not agreeing to sign on to the planned database.
AIP believes that CAN needs to disclose which charities are unwilling
or unable to participate so that pressure from watchdogs and donors can
help gain their participation.
By September 23, the Red Cross had raised $827 million or about 75%
of the total raised by all charities for Katrina and Rita aid according
to a tally by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. In recognition of the need
for more of America's charitable resources to help with this widespread
crisis, AIP encouraged donors to also support the efforts of many other
important charities offering innovative approaches to providing aid. We
emphasized that while the Red Cross is the major charity for providing
emergency, front-line services in a disaster, other charities are
better suited to provide intermediate and longer-term assistance to
help victims get back on their feet. AIP's message must have gotten out
because by October 6, the Red Cross's contributions of $1.1 billion had
fallen to 65% of the $1.7 billion raised by all the charities,
according to figures provided by The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
By the beginning of December, the Salvation Army had raised $295
million, which was the second most raised by any group, yet only 18% of
the $1.67 billion that the Red Cross had raised. Unlike the Red Cross
which plans on using over 90% of its $2.2 billion Katrina/Rita disaster
budget for short-term emergency needs, the Salvation Army estimates
using about two-thirds of the disaster money that it has currently
raised for longer term needs, possibly through August 2007.
The Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, which may have collected the third
most at $110 million, has been quick at raising money but slow in
deciding what to do with it. Not until December 7, over three months
after Katrina hit the Gulf, did it apply for tax-exempt status with the
IRS and announce how it will distribute the bulk of its donations. The
former Presidents' Fund said that it will give $40 million to
charitable funds formed by the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and
Alabama, $30 million for colleges and schools in the three states, and
$20 million for a faith-based partnership, which will decide how to
distribute it. It is surprising that it took so long to allocate these
funds since most went to grantee organizations that are serving as
intermediaries in deciding which organizations or people will be the
final recipients of these donations. Also, as of December 7, the former
Presidents' Fund has not publicly announced on its Internet site or in
its press releases who will serve on its full governing board. Donors
need to know this to make an informed giving decision.
The hurricanes caused millions of people to flee and resulted in
the largest relocation in our nation since the Civil War. It was
beneficial that many U.S. based international relief and development
charities recognized the need for America to utilize as much of our
charitable resources as possible to help the evacuees. For many of
these groups with experience aiding poverty-stricken people after
large-scale disasters in Africa, Asia and South America, it was the
first time that they had ever provided assistance in a domestic
disaster. Some of AIP's top-rated international charities that have
provided assistance to hurricane victims are Samaritan's Purse,
AmeriCares, Mercy Corps, World Vision and Oxfam-America.
Because of the enormous scope of this crisis the Red Cross had
difficulty reaching some of the far-flung rural areas hit by the
hurricanes. Fortunately, many community groups and churches stepped in
to provide aid. AIP believes that it would be a good idea for the Red
Cross to reimburse the documented expenses of these financially
stretched aid groups, who do not have the ability to raise large sums
of money outside of their communities.
``Empty,'' ``running on fumes,'' ``dangerously low'' are all terms
that the Red Cross used during its 2004 fiscal year to describe the
state of its Disaster Relief Fund. These are certainly not the terms
that you would expect a nonprofit to be using when, according to its
fiscal 2004 audited financial statements, it had total net assets of
$2.2 billion. The Red Cross does not make clear in disaster fundraising
pleas its true financial position or the amount of discretionary money
it has available to spend on disasters.
An analysis of the Red Cross' fiscal 2004 audit, the most recent
available, shows that the Red Cross likely has far more money available
for disasters than the $709,000 that it reports in its Disaster Relief
Fund. The Red Cross reports having $1.36 billion in unrestricted net
assets, which includes $1.08 billion designated for various purposes by
its Board of Governors. It is important to understand that funds
designated by a nonprofit board can be undesignated and made available
the very next day. The funds that the Red Cross clearly can not apply
to the recent Gulf disaster are $429 million in permanently restricted
funds and $274 million in purpose restricted funds, identified in its
2004 audit. Unlike funds designated by an external third party, funds
designated by the board as an endowment can be spent by a nonprofit.
Based on our analysis of the Red Cross' fiscal 2004 finances, AIP
estimates that it has over $700 million that it could direct to a
future disaster without using any money earmarked by its board for
``biomedical services,'' ``retirement health benefits,'' ``replacement
and improvement of buildings or equipment,'' and ``other purposes.''
It would be wrong for the Red Cross as our nation's most important
front-line emergency aid organization to suggest to the American public
that it has very little available to spend for a disaster when it
actually has available money outside of its disaster fund. It makes the
organization appear unprepared to deal with future disasters that may
occur before more money is raised. Charities should also consider
whether such claims undermine our international standing as a strong
and powerful nation by creating a false appearance of weakness or
vulnerability on the home front.
As in 9/11 and the Tsunami disasters, scammers jumped on the
fundraising bandwagon. Thousands of questionable web sites purporting
to raise money for hurricane victims were quickly thrown up on the
Internet. Some scammers capitalized on the public's zeal to help by
calling or emailing potential donors for their credit card information
under the guise of fundraising for a legitimate charity. One
particularly outrageous scam involved a Florida man without a pilot's
license who was arrested for allegedly raising $40,000 so that he could
purportedly continue airlifting supplies and rescuing hurricane
victims, according to The Miami Herald. He even bragged about fake
exploits on the Internet, including how he tipped his plane's wings in
a salute to President Bush when he saw Air Force One flying over
Louisiana, and rescued a 7-month-old child who needed a transplant.
There have been many arrests and reports of aid recipients who
falsely claimed to be hurricane victims. This is likely to happen
because people fleeing a disaster often do not have much in the way of
identification or paperwork to demonstrate that they are actual
victims. The charities are in a difficult position because they must
balance the need to get aid out quickly to legitimate victims with the
responsibility of not wasting charitable resources on fakers or double
dippers. Donors should realize that in a crisis situation, charities
will not be able to stop a lot of people with false claims without
making the bona fide victims suffer long delays for assistance. Most
scammers will not be caught until after a charity has turned over a
suspect's information to a law enforcement agency to research its
truthfulness. Unfortunately, by then the money will likely be long
gone.
The recent news media reports of Red Cross workers in California
and Texas being arrested on charges of stealing money intended for
disaster victims is very disturbing. Criminals are more likely to
target charities, particularly ones operating in a disaster or other
chaotic situation, if they perceive that the many good-hearted and
mission-driven people working in these organizations are not focusing
enough attention on internal controls and other security measures. AIP
encourages all nonprofits to be vigilant about safeguarding the
public's donated dollars.
AIP strongly encourages each disaster charity to issue by spring of
2006, a 6-month report of the funds raised and spent and future plans
in response to the Gulf hurricanes. These reports will enable donors to
better monitor the use of their charitable contributions. The American
Red Cross is to be commended for issuing such a report six months after
the December 2004 tsunami. Under current IRS annual disclosure rules,
charities are not required to submit a tax form until 5\1/2\-months
after the end of their fiscal year and are almost automatically granted
two 3-month extensions by the IRS. This means that charities with a
June 30 fiscal year end, such as the Red Cross, may not be required to
disclose how much they received and spent in response to Katrina until
June 15, 2007.
AIP also encourages charities to participate in multi-agency
evaluations, such as those conducted by the Tsunami Evaluation
Coalition for CARE International, World Vision International and other
disaster aid groups. This will help charities improve their planning,
coordination and communication. It will also make charities and donors
more aware of victims that have been neglected or received poor service
so that more resources can be directed to them.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Thank you for your testimony. Ms. Roth,
please.
STATEMENT OF MARCIE ROTH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SPINAL
CORD INJURY ASSOCIATION
Ms. ROTH. Good afternoon, Chairman Ramstad, Mr. Lewis,
Committee Members. Thank you for the opportunity to testify
today. My name is Marcie Roth, I am the Executive Director and
CEO of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, the
Nation's oldest and largest civilian organization serving the
needs of people with spinal cord injuries and diseases.
In our disaster relief efforts, we have been working on
behalf of all people with disabilities, estimated at 25 to 30
percent of those affected.
On September 13th, 2001, I first became involved in
addressing the urgent needs of New Yorkers with disabilities
who had survived the terrorist attacks 2 days earlier. I was
shocked when I discovered how ill prepared the disaster relief
agencies were. In the past 4 years I have participated in
efforts to better prepare for another emergency.
On the morning of August 29th, I was asked to help Benilda
Caixeta, who was quadriplegic. She had been trying to evacuate
from her New Orleans home for 3 days. Even calls to 911 had
been fruitless. I stayed on the phone with her for most of the
day trying to reassure her. Suddenly she told me, with panic in
her voice, the water is rushing in, and then we were
disconnected. I learned 5 days later that she had been found
dead floating next to her wheelchair.
I am here today to say some other difficult things. After
sharing some positive stories, I will focus on the most beloved
organizations of all, the American Red Cross. It is hard to
criticize the Red Cross. They do many good things, but they
have frequently failed to meet the needs of people with
disabilities while simultaneously diverting resources from
organizations addressing those unmet needs.
Not only has this hurt people with disabilities and the
organizations that serve them, but it has also added an untold
burden on taxpayers through costs associated with preventable
secondary complications. Sadly, the needs of people with
disabilities have been overlooked by the general public and the
media.
Joe Shapiro, an NPR reporter, was one of the few to report
about people with disabilities. Thanks to a very generous
donation from Robert and Ita Klein, who established the Brian
McCloskey Hurricane Katrina Survivors with Disabilities Fund,
National Spinal Cord Injury Association is able to provide some
direct assistance. The Disability Funders Network is
distributing $5,000 grants to meet unserved needs, and the
Muslim Public Affairs Council stepped in to get donated medical
equipment and supplies distributed when none of the relief
organizations would provide funds for this.
Several of the international wheelchair distribution
organizations also stepped in. Thanks to the Salvation Army,
funds were made available to assist some hurricane survivors
who had been dumped into nursing homes. While everyone else
argued about who was responsible, the Salvation Army provided
funds to help survivors regain their independence.
In contrast, many Gulf Coast residents with disabilities
were excluded from Red Cross shelters and relief assistance
services. Some were separated form caregivers and service
animals and then sent to nursing homes when they couldn't
maintain their independence.
People with disabilities were forced to remain on buses
while everyone else was invited into certain shelters. Then
they were driven for sometimes hundreds of miles before being
taken in. When disability experts showed up at shelters to
offer assistance they were frequently turned away.
One Red Cross official told me, we aren't supposed to help
these people, the local health departments do that. We cannot
hardly deal with the intact people. One woman was sent to a
special needs shelter so overcrowded that she slept in her
wheelchair for weeks. Ultimately this landed her in a hospital
and then a nursing home.
After waiting all day in line residents of one Red Cross
shelter were told to travel to another town to register.
Without accessible transportation though, those with mobility
disabilities were unable to make the trip. We tried to get
experts into the shelters to assist people who couldn't hear
announcements over loudspeakers, couldn't read signs and forms,
people who needed medication, people who didn't understand how
to get food and water, and people who couldn't stand in line
because they had lost their wheelchair or couldn't handle the
heat.
For weeks, one man had to drive to a hospital every time he
wanted to go to the bathroom because the bathroom at the
shelter was not wheelchair accessible. Most people told me that
they had not received any financial assistance from the Red
Cross. A few received $360. While thousands are in need of
funds to cover basic necessities, $66 million in foreign
donations were distributed by FEMA to nonprofit organizations,
but these can only be used to hire staff, to train volunteers,
and to provide case management.
We can't even get to the tables where rebuilding decisions
are being made by powerful housing nonprofit organizations, and
this will result in discrimination, limited options and
institutionalization. For all of the planning that has gone on,
it seems that the needs of people with disabilities will remain
unmet when the next disaster strikes.
However, with your help, not only can people with
disabilities begin to trust that their needs will be better met
in future disasters, taxpayers, generous donors, and the
general public can rest assured that we are maximizing limited
resources and minimizing unnecessary waste.
Thanks to you, Chairman Ramstad, the needs of people with
disabilities and the hope of visionary leadership have not been
lost. I know you will invite your colleagues to join you in
prioritizing the needs of hurricane survivors with disabilities
as next steps are taken.
In summary, let me recommend that offices on disability
need to be established within Red Cross, the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security, FEMA, and in each of the Federal members of
the Interagency Coordinating Council on Emergency Preparedness
and People With Disabilities. They must all be staffed by
disability experts and given authority to act.
Congress needs to appoint an independent task force to
focus on the disaster management needs of people with
disabilities. Our Office on Disability at the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services needs more resources and more
authority. Please don't compromise the hard won civil rights of
people with disabilities so easily dismissed in a time of
emergency.
It is in Benilda's memory and with great appreciation
toward those who have worked tirelessly over the past 15 weeks
in the Gulf States, in Washington, in cyberspace, and around
the country that I close with the following proverb. The best
time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is
now. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Roth follows:]
Statement of Marcie Roth, Executive Director, National Spinal Cord
Injury Association, Bethesda, Maryland
Good afternoon, Chairman Ramstad, Ranking Member Lewis, and
distinguished committee members. Thank you for inviting me to testify
on issues regarding the response by nonprofit organizations to the
needs of Hurricane Katrina survivors.
My name is Marcie Roth and I am the Executive Director and CEO of
the National Spinal Cord Injury Association (NSCIA). NSCIA is the
nation's oldest and largest civilian organization serving the needs of
people with spinal cord injuries and spinal cord diseases since 1948.
I am here representing NSCIA, but I want to be very clear that in
our disaster relief efforts we have been working on behalf of ALL
people with disabilities, including those with sensory and intellectual
disabilities and those with mental illness and other psychiatric
disabilities.
And, although we are focusing on efforts to assist Americans with
disabilities in disasters, we are also wholly committed to working with
others who are addressing the needs of ALL people with disabilities in
disasters in other parts of the world.
I want to thank my colleagues in the private sector and those
representing government, who have given those of us who are experts on
the additional needs of people with disabilities before, during and
after a disaster the opportunity to work alongside you over the past
fifteen weeks as we have shared our knowledge, resources and a deep
commitment to meeting the critical needs of as many hurricane survivors
with disabilities as we possibly could. I am grateful to those
individuals who have joined us around the clock, for many weeks, in a
shared commitment to do what no one else was doing, despite their legal
and moral obligations, to meet the additional needs of hurricane
survivors with disabilities.
On September 13, 2001, I first became involved in navigating
between the Federal systems and the private sector in an effort to
address the very urgent disaster related needs of people with
disabilities who had survived the terrorist attacks in New York City
two days earlier. I quickly learned that a lifetime of knowledge of the
additional needs of people with disabilities was being called into
action as I found myself in the breach, navigating between the very
real needs of very real people and the limited public and private
systems poorly designed to address those needs.
I was shocked when I discovered how ill prepared the major disaster
relief agencies were, and I became actively involved in efforts to
assist those relief agencies and communities across the U.S. to better
plan for the additional needs of people with disabilities. In the
months and years after those terrible days, I also participated in
efforts to assist people with disabilities to prepare for another
emergency. I saw the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security, the relocation of FEMA and the National Disaster Medical
System, and many printed and Internet published materials on
preparedness for people with disabilities, workshops and conferences on
the topic, and many other visible signs that indicated to me that high
level planning for the next national disaster was in good hands. I did
my part, made recommendations when the needs of people with
disabilities were being overlooked and voiced my concerns when it
seemed that plans were unrealistic. Even when the ideas of disability
and disaster experts were being met with a surprising amount of
resistance and exclusion, I trusted that even though I couldn't always
see it, we were ``ready.'' Just like most Americans, I assumed that the
Red Cross and the other major relief organizations were building on
something far more durable than sand when they published guides and
booklets and held meetings and workshops on emergency preparedness for
people with disabilities.
And then, in the last week of August, I joined much of America as
we watched with more than a little alarm as Hurricane Katrina took a
bite out of FL and then made its way into the Gulf.
On the morning of August 29th, I received a call that I will never
forget and once I tell you about it, I hope you will never forget it
either. My friend and colleague, former appointee to the Social
Security Administration, Susan Daniels called me to enlist my help
because her sister-in-law, Benilda Caixetta, a New Orleans resident who
was quadriplegic, paralyzed from the shoulders down, had been
unsuccessfully trying to evacuate to the Superdome for two days.
Despite repeated requests to be evacuated, in her power wheelchair,
which is a vital tool for mobility and independence, the paratransit
system that serves the transportation needs of people with disabilities
never showed up. Even calls to 911 had been fruitless. She was still in
her home, she had not been able to evacuate, despite her very best
efforts. In my naivete I thought a few phone calls to the ``right''
people would help, and I was sure I knew who to call. I was wrong.
After many calls to the ``right'' people, it was clear that Benny, was
NOT being evacuated.
I stayed on the phone with Benny for most of the day, assuring her
that I was doing all I could to make sure help would be coming as soon
as possible. She kept telling me she had been calling for a ride to the
Superdome for three days, but, despite promises, no one came. The very
same paratransit system that people with disabilities can't rely on in
good weather was what was being relied on in the evacuation. It's no
surprise that it failed.
I was on the phone with her that afternoon when she told me, with
panic in her voice, ``the water is rushing in'' and then her phone went
dead.
We learned five days later that she had been found in her
apartment, dead, floating next to her wheelchair.
Sometimes things like this can't be prevented. Despite the
magnitude of the catastrophe, this was not one of those times. Benilda
did not have to drown.
I am here today to say some other difficult things, and while there
are many organizations worth comment, I will focus almost exclusively
today on one of the biggest, best funded and most beloved nonprofit
organizations of all, the American Red Cross. It feels almost
blasphemous to criticize the Red Cross, almost like criticizing one's
own grandparents. But, for hundreds of thousands of people with
disabilities, the Red Cross has frequently failed to meet the greatest
needs while simultaneously diverting donations and other resources from
small organizations left to address a myriad of often complex unmet
needs. Not only has this hurt people with disabilities and the
organizations that serve them, but it has also added an untold burden
on every taxpayer in this country, through costs associated with
preventable secondary complications in disaster survivors, unnecessary
hospitalization and institutionalization and failure to maximize
limited resources to meet needs.
Over the past 100+ days, while the rest of America and the world
watched on TV, millions of Gulf region residents desperately tried to
survive not only the weather, but the many human failures to follow.
For 25-30% of those people, the additional challenges of disability,
poor planning and low expectations made the unimaginable crisis much,
much more dangerous.
As the parent of two children with significant disabilities and as
the legal guardian for an Iraqi child who was spinal cord injured in an
accidental U.S. artillery bombing two years ago, I am acutely aware
every day of the unmet needs of 56 million Americans with disabilities
and hundreds of millions of people with disabilities worldwide. I am
also acutely aware of just how rare it is that the unmet needs of
people with disabilities are ever considered by the people who have the
most power and the best resources to maximize positive outcomes for a
minority population that encompasses a sizable portion of the general
population of the United States. According to the U.S. Census of 2000,
people with disabilities represent 19.3 percent of the 257.2 million
people ages 5 and older in the civilian non-institutionalized
population. Another 2.2 million Americans are institutionalized in
nursing homes and long-term care facilities. And, it is necessary to
point out that these are all people with disabilities. People don't go
to nursing homes because they are old; they go to nursing homes when
their community fails to meet their additional needs.
Some areas of our country have an especially high percentage of
people with disabilities. As it happens, the areas most severely
impacted by the hurricanes were also areas with especially high
percentages of people with disabilities living in their communities.
According to the 2000 Census:
In Biloxi, Mississippi, 10,700 people (25% of the
residents) are classified as people with disabilities.
In Mobile, Alabama, 43,000 people (24% of the residents)
are people with disabilities.
In the New Orleans metropolitan area, 250,000 residents
(21.3%) described themselves as disabled.
Because people with disabilities are . . .
disproportionately below the poverty line,
often less mobile than the general population,
disproportionately more dependent on outside assistance,
and
often misjudged as less capable
. . . this population felt the impact of Hurricane Katrina quite
severely.
For most of my career, since the 1970's, I have worked primarily
for nonprofit organizations. For most of this time, serving people with
disabilities, we have struggled to meet complicated needs with
extremely inadequate resources. As the executive director of a
nonprofit organization for the last four years, I am sure I have often
fallen short. Due to the magnitude of need, the shockingly limited
resources made available to invest in the needs of people with
disabilities and the never changing bigotry of low expectations
regarding the value and contributions of Americans with disabilities, I
anticipate that the needs of my constituency will remain under-met for
the foreseeable future. And, as long as Congress fails to ensure the
enforcement of laws to educate children with disabilities, fails to
address the institutional bias in Medicaid, fails to pass Money Follows
the Person, MiCASSA, the Christopher Reeve Act and the Family
Opportunity Act, fails to fund adequate housing, mental health parity,
access to quality health care, equipment and services and considers
legislation that will limit the human and civil rights of one in five
Americans, no real progress will be made in maximizing limited
Medicaid, Medicare, private insurance and other resources. This is both
wrong and it is foolish public policy.
There are many fine examples of nonprofits who have actively sought
to meet needs by using limited resources that were intended to serve
people who are in the greatest need even when the weather is fine. Some
organizations, like mine have been very fortunate to have come to the
attention of true heroes who quietly find a way to make a real
difference. Thanks to a very generous donation from Robert and Ita
Klein, who recently established the Brian Joseph McCloskey Hurricane
Katrina Survivors with Disabilities Fund, my organization, the National
Spinal Cord Injury Association, is able to replace wheelchairs,
hospital beds, household goods, repair homes, and pay rent and
mortgages for as many people with disabilities as our fund will stretch
to serve. The Kleins' company, Safeguard Properties, Inc. has been
playing a significant role in disaster and housing related services,
and they wanted to make a generous donation to meet an otherwise
entirely unmet need. Their recognition of the unmet needs of hurricane
survivors with disabilities is a shining exception to the fairly bleak
picture. Yet another is the Disability Funders Network which raised
over $100,000 that it is distributing to small nonprofits in $5,000
grants to meet unserved needs. Many disability organizations have had
to tap their own limited resources to meet the needs of constituents
who have lost everything. When we were desperate to send replacement
equipment like wheelchairs and hospital beds to people who had to have
them to preserve their health and we couldn't get the Red Cross or any
of the other large relief organizations to provide funds for drivers,
trucks and insurance, we were very fortunate to find an unlikely ally.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council stepped in with funding to help
Portlight Strategies to get trucks full of donated durable medical
equipment and supplies on the road and into the hands of those who had
lost theirs.
As wonderful as these stories are, with not more than a few
exceptions, the needs of people with disabilities, and their stories
have been almost entirely overlooked by the general public. Even house
pets have fared far better! I would be remiss if I didn't thank Joe
Shapiro, a wonderful reporter with National Public Radio who was one of
the very, very few to report about people with disabilities. And,
another shining example of high quality nonprofits would be the
formerly all volunteer Disaster Medical Assistance Teams, a part of the
crown jewel known as the National Disaster Medical Systems.
Most organizations like mine exist in the shadow of high profile
nonprofits like the American Red Cross. In the days after the
hurricanes, the American Red Cross has received a reported $1.68
billion dollars in donations while Gulf Coast residents with
disabilities have hardly benefited because many were excluded from
their shelters and relief assistance services.
Sadly, we have attempted to help the Red Cross and other disaster
relief leaders to see that they have been in a key position to address
this inequity since 2001, but instead, people with disabilities are
still turned away from the Red Cross and other charity-run shelters.
As well as the disability community has come together to try to
take care of ``our own,'' we have been excluded from the larger relief
community, sometimes told that we would just be ``in the way'' and
``make things worse.'' We were told to leave the relief efforts to
those who ``know what they are doing.'' At the same time, we received
report after report about the Red Cross shelters turning people with
disabilities away or separating them from caregivers and service
animals, then sending them to nursing homes when they couldn't maintain
their independence.
We had many reports of people with disabilities arriving on busses
from New Orleans and being forced to remain on the bus while everyone
else was invited in. Then they were driven from shelter to shelter for
sometimes hundreds of miles before being taken in.
When disability experts showed up at the shelters to offer their
assistance, they were frequently turned away, and we've been told that
this was because they hadn't completed the ``required training.'' This
was an interesting disconnect from another conversation I had.
When I inquired about the sheltering needs of people with
disabilities, once I was finally able to reach a National Red Cross
Operations official, she told me ``we aren't supposed to help those
people, the local health departments do that. We can't hardly deal with
the ``intact'' people (this term is considered highly offensive to
people with disabilities). Don't you understand that we're taking
volunteers off the street to run these shelters?''
I am told that just last week, a Red Cross official told meeting
attendees at an AARP meeting that the Red Cross does not serve people
with disabilities. I would have dismissed that comment entirely as mere
gossip if I hadn't had a similar conversation.
There are many stories, but a few stand out as especially
egregious.
One woman in Alabama, a college graduate who survived a spinal cord
injury 10 years ago but was living independently until the hurricane
struck told me she went to the Red Cross shelter as soon as it became
clear that her home was about to flood, but she was turned away. She
was directed to a ``special needs shelter'' but that shelter was so
overcrowded with people who all needed additional help that she ended
up sleeping in her wheelchair for days on end. This caused a serious
skin condition to develop, landing her in a hospital and then a nursing
home. Despite the $1.68 billion raised by Red Cross, she never received
any assistance from them.
In one town, also in Alabama, after waiting all day in line for
assistance, residents of the Red Cross shelter were told that the only
way to register for assistance was to leave the Red Cross shelter and
travel to another town. But there was no accessible transportation
offered so those with mobility disabilities were unable to seek
assistance.
Jason and his mom, displaced from New Orleans to Dallas, sent us
the following email three weeks after the hurricane:
``To Whom It May Concern:
Presently, Jason (SCI, 11 years post) and I are homeless and
living in a Salvation Army Shelter due to Hurricane Katrina. We
had to leave our home, and all of Jason's medical equipment
(i.e. his hospital bed, electric wheelchair, hoyer lift, etc.).
Since I am in a public place using one of the laptops that they
have made available to us, I will not be able to write a long
letter explaining all of our business. But I am writing now
because we need some financial help.
Because we don't live in one of the shelter sites, we are out
of the loop of things that are going on. We have not been able
to secure clothes or any basic funding. FEMA is taking a long
time to help and we are missing out on everything because we're
not able to get around. Jason is using an old manual wheelchair
and I have to push him everywhere. This has been a strain on me
also.
If you can help us, please contact us. Any help we can get
would be appreciated. We are desperate, so I'm grasping at any
and all past contacts. Normally, I would never find myself in
this sort of begging position. But this has been anything but
normal. People's lives were totally shattered. Families were
torn apart. Please help us.''
Jason ended up in the hospital for weeks as a result of the lack of
medical equipment and supplies.
We worked around the clock for weeks to try to get disability
experts into the shelters to assess the needs of people who couldn't
hear the announcements over loudspeakers, or see the signage that
directed them to assistance, people who were losing critical stability
because they didn't have access to medication to treat their mental
illness, people whose eyes and kidneys and hearts were being attacked
because they didn't have insulin, people who didn't understand what
they needed to do to get food and water because of an intellectual
disability and people who couldn't stand in line for seven hours, or
even seven minutes because they had lost their wheelchair during the
evacuation. People housed in alternative settings were excluded from
the myriad of relief programs at the shelters and unable to gain equal
access to resources vital to survival and prevention of secondary
complications.
People without their wheelchairs, walkers and canes couldn't stand
in line. In the heat, many people were unable to wait for hours to be
assisted and so those with the direst needs often had the least
assistance.
Some people, who need additional supports to maintain their
independence, were forced to go to special needs shelters while family,
other caregivers and even service animals were denied access to offer
assistance. Once independence was compromised, people were
institutionalized. I am told that many, many of these people have still
not been located!
One man in east Texas told us about having to drive from a shelter
to the local hospital for weeks, every time he had to go to the
bathroom because the bathroom at the shelter was not wheelchair
accessible.
In a recent report by the National Organization on Disability:
``The most underserved group [in shelters] were those who were deaf or
hard of hearing.''
Less than 30% of shelters had access to American Sign
Language interpreters.
80% did not have TTYs.
60% did not have TVs with open caption capability.
Only 56% had areas were oral announcements were posted.
``This meant that people who are deaf or hard of hearing had no
access to the vital flow of information.''
(Report on SNAKE Project, Oct. 2005.)
There are no estimates of the numbers of people with disabilities
who were turned away from the shelters, those who were sent to nursing
homes and institutions and those who were able to evacuate to locations
other than shelters, sometimes further isolating them from the vital
services they needed to protect their independence and their health.
Recently, when I asked people how much financial assistance they
received from the Red Cross, 70% told me they had not received any
assistance and of those who had, most reported receiving $360. The
highest amount received was reported by one man who received $680.
And while thousands remain homeless and in need of financial
assistance to cover mortgage payments, rent, utilities and basic
necessities, just recently, I learned that $66,000 in foreign donations
have been given by FEMA to the United Methodist Committee on Relief
(UMCOR) and the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster
(NVOAD).
The case management program, promises to ``assist disaster
survivors with unmet needs'' but none of the $66M can be used to meet
those unmet needs, rather the $66M will be used to hire paid staff who
will hire volunteers to provide ``case management'' to 100,000
hurricane survivors. No efforts seem to have been made to reach out to
disability service provider experts to participate in this project, and
in fact, the website for the project and the instructions for
responding to the RFP are not accessible, even though accessibility is
required. Even the telephone is a problem for many as it is a New York
number and there is no 800 or TTY line. I have to wonder if the $66M
would have been better allocated to pay rent and child care so people
can get back to work and get on with their lives instead of meeting
with more volunteers. And, for people with disabilities, I wonder how
skilled volunteers will be at navigating complicated systems that
regularly confound experts. I have to wonder if this plan will decrease
or increase unnecessary institutionalization!
Along with everyone else, I have learned over the past three and a
half months that for all of the planning that has gone on, people with
disabilities are not in good hands and without immediate and bold
steps, their needs will remain entirely unmet just as soon as the next
disaster strikes. I wish that generic systems were capable of holding
the very specific and often complex needs of people with disabilities
in the foreground as they make quick and sweeping decisions, but in a
country that still thinks nursing home placement trumps community based
care for people with disabilities on a sunny day, it is obvious that we
can't rely on generic decisionmakers to make smart decisions about the
needs of people with disabilities in the midst of disaster.
We have learned that just as we can't expect well-intentioned
medical and public service personnel to adequately address the complex
needs of people with disabilities in day-to-day situations, without a
deep and thorough understanding of the tenets of independent living and
self-determination or absolute clarity about the human and civil rights
of people with disabilities, we also can't expect these dedicated
community members to understand the complexities of meeting the
additional needs of people in the midst of disaster.
However, with some smart investments, not only can people with
disabilities begin to trust that their needs will be better met in
future disasters, taxpayers, generous donors and the general public can
rest assured that we are maximizing limited resources and minimizing
unnecessary waste.
In fact, amidst all of the projections of huge additional costs to
meet the real needs of our citizenry in a disaster, there is clearly an
opportunity for visionary policymakers to SAVE tax dollars while
maximizing limited resources, now, who could possibly argue against
that! Thanks to you Chairman Ramstad, the needs of people with
disabilities, and the hope of visionary leadership hasn't been lost. I
know you will invite your colleagues to join you in prioritizing the
needs of hurricane survivors with disabilities as next steps are taken.
Recommendations to the Red Cross
1. Issue additional guidance to shelters regarding their legal
and ethical obligation to serve people with disabilities.
2. Establish an Office on Disability, and staff it with
disability experts known to the disability community as strong leaders
with a track record of meeting the additional needs of people with
disabilities in a disaster. Give that Office direct access to the CEO
of Red Cross, power and adequate funds, support staff and other
resources.
3. The in-take forms used for people coming into shelters must be
revised so that disability-specific information is collected.
4. Training and leadership is urgently needed to provide guidance
to Red Cross employees and volunteers regarding their obligations to
serve people with disabilities.
5. Actively pursue partnerships with disability related
organizations.
6. Every shelter must have at least one volunteer on duty at all
times who is knowledgeable about identifying individuals with
disabilities when they arrive at the shelter, helping to identify that
individual's needs and then helping with or directing those individuals
to appropriate assistance.
7. People with disabilities must be carefully tracked, and so
must their equipment. When they leave a shelter, there must be
information kept on file about where they were sent.
8. Nursing homes and institutions must be alternatives of last
resort and never used for more than temporary shelter for previously
independent people, and those receiving their supports and services in
the community.
9. In the future, why not put all shelter services in the same
building, rather than separating people with additional needs from
their family and limiting natual supports that may mean the difference
between dependence and independence.
10. The American Red Cross needs to increase its capacity to use
technology at all levels.
The very same housing crisis that has kept hundreds of thousands of
people across the U.S. in restrictive living environments is now
putting previously independent and self-sufficient disaster survivors
in hospitals and nursing homes for lack of appropriate housing that
allows them to use a bathroom and sleep in a bed. We are still working
to get to the tables where key decisions are being made about temporary
and permanent housing. We have been trying to get to those tables with
powerful housing nonprofit organizations who have access to substantial
funds for rebuilding. We are trying to talk about universal design,
accessibility and visitability. We've been attempting this since it
first became apparent that housing would be a critical need. Yet, even
today, housing decisions are being made that will result in
discrimination, further limited options and institutionalization of
people who could and should be in our communities and in our workforce.
Additional Requests:
Please encourage the appropriate Committees in both the House and
Senate to hold additional oversight hearings on topics within their
jurisdiction. For example, Medicaid would be an important topic for an
oversight hearing.
Many nonprofit organizations that already operate without adequate
resources have had to use their limited funds to address the needs of
disaster survivors with disabilities as well as their usual
constituency. Supplemental funds need to be given to these groups to
support their continued viability to serve our communities now and in
the future. These organizations, independent living centers, local
chapters of national organizations, protection and advocacy systems,
etc. are at the heart of the solution. We know this; let's make sure we
support what IS working.
PLEASE do not allow ANYONE to convince you to compromise the hard-
won civil rights of people with disabilities. Our rights remain fragile
even today, and these rights are easily overlooked or dismissed in a
time of emergency. This is illegal but if that isn't enough it's also
costly. Be good stewards of tax and donor dollars! Just say no to
limiting or violating the civil rights of people with disabilities!
Hurricane survivors are afraid that the rest of us are getting
``Katrina Fatigue.'' I encourage you to join me in assuring our fellow
citizens that while THEY are entitled to Katrina Fatigue, they can
count on the rest of us to stay focused and keep things moving forward.
It is in Benilda's memory and with deep appreciation towards those
who have worked tirelessly over the past fifteen weeks in the Gulf
States, in Washington, in cyberspace and around the country that I will
close with the following Chinese proverb:
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best
time is now.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Thank you very much, Ms. Roth. We
appreciate your testimony. Ms. Archaga.
STATEMENT OF YAVONKA ARCHAGA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, RESOURCES FOR
INDEPENDENT LIVING
Ms. ARCHAGA. Chairman Ramstad, Ranking Member Lewis, and
Representative McCrery and all other Members present, thank you
for giving me the opportunity to testify here today on this
vital issue.
Resources for Independent Living is the center that I
represent. I am the Executive Director. This center has been in
operation for over 15 years. We provide an array of services to
individuals with disabilities.
Those services include the four core services: Information
referral, advocacy, peer support and independent living skills
training. In addition RIL is one of the largest personal care
attendant services organizations in the southeast region of
Louisiana.
I will discuss the services we provide outside of our
normal scope of operation due to the catastrophe and the
devastation of Hurricane Katrina. It became so apparent to us
days after landfall that our center's services were transformed
by the overwhelming unmet needs identified by individuals with
disabilities. Although the shelters provided housing and food
for individuals with disabilities, we had to step in and fill
in the gaps.
RIL delivered durable medical equipment and transported
consumers to sites where they could receive other social
services such as food stamps, Social Security disbursements,
unemployment information and benefits. In addition we also
provided clothing, adaptive accessible equipment, food
packages, and so forth, to consumers within the shelter.
Our center identified the immediate needs of the consumers
and we responded. Our jobs were made more challenging,
gentlemen, by the lack of accessibility in the shelter. It is
disconcerting that decades after Section 504 was passed, access
to shelters, which in many cases are operated by organizations
that are recipients of Federal funding, remains at best
problematic.
Accessibility is not only defined in the ability to
physically get into a building, but also by the ability to meet
the basic living needs of persons with limited mobility in
preparation for people with disabilities in the event of a
disaster.
According to the National Council on Disability, of the
484,000 residents in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina, 23
percent of those individuals were people with disabilities.
Charities such as the Red Cross need to find a way to obtain
expertise about the needs of persons with disabilities and must
develop and implement disaster response plans specific to
addressing the needs of the disabled community.
In order to respond in a way that meets the needs of
persons with disabilities, the Red Cross needs to rethink its
operating principles. Increasingly the disabled community
operates based on an independent living philosophy that
promotes maximizing independence and maximizing an individual's
control over their own lives and support networks in settings
that are as close to fully integrated as possible.
Furthermore, the Red Cross and other charities needs to
embrace this element of independent living philosophy. Many
persons with disability have pets and working dogs, caregivers
and assistive technology. Charities must develop procedures to
provide reasonable accommodations and work with the disability
community to ensure that volunteers are well versed in these
policies.
Problems in service gaps encountered by people with
disabilities in shelters operated by charities, including the
Red Cross:
The Red Cross shelters were not equipped with interpreters.
They were not equipped with materials in alternative formats.
They did not have durable medical equipment and accessible
communication equipment and specifics on dietary needs of
consumers.
Consumers were isolated and not offered services specific
to their needs. Staff and volunteers did not have the skills,
training and knowledge to work with the disabled community. The
staff and/or volunteers did not perform basic needs assessments
to determine the types of disabilities individuals had to
determine if the consumers had adequate medication on hand or
to determine if consumers were on a restricted diet.
Individuals were often denied entry into shelters if they
had a service animal or significant adaptive equipment or were
separated from their families and caregivers in the process of
obtaining shelter and placed into institutions or recommended
to go to institution.
Problems that my organizations experienced:
Representative McCrery, I understand what you were going
through because I was on the ground as well. It was very, very
difficult, gentlemen, for us to get in, and then also to
respond with short notice. Planning is very vital, and we need
to be at the table with everyone, and we need to know, because
the second wave that is coming, gentlemen, is the next
hurricane season. We have to be prepared. We have to be ready.
All of us have to be on the same page.
Referrals of consumers by FEMA to our organization:
It is interesting that our organization was a referral base
for FEMA, and we took the calls for individuals with
disabilities. We had a loss of power. Our office was hit from
the hurricane as well, but we had to do what we had to do to
respond to the community. We don't have the resources that an
organization like the Salvation Army or the Red Cross may have,
but we did the best that we could do in light of what was
needed.
In conclusion, we know that the Red Cross and other
charities are operated with the best intentions who want to do
the right thing. However, substantial reform is needed in the
way that these agencies deliver their services and operate
their shelters to ensure that persons with disabilities already
caught up in the tragic circumstances of a natural disaster,
such as a Hurricane Katrina, don't have the tragedy compounded
by avoidable human error in the aftermath.
Persons with disabilities make up nearly one-fifth of the
Nation's population, and charities need to be responsive to the
needs of those who they are charged to serve, beginning with
the compliance of Section 504.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Archaga follows:]
Statement of Yavonka Archaga, Executive Director, Resources for
Independent Living, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Introduction
Chairman Ramstad, Ranking Member Lewis, and all other members
present, thank you for giving me this opportunity to testify here today
on this vital issue.
Resources for Independent Living, Inc. (RIL) is a Center for
Independent Living, which has been serving the Greater New Orleans and
Baton Rouge areas for over 15 years. RIL offers an array of quality,
consumer-controlled services to individuals with disabilities to assist
them with living independently. These include the four core services of
information and referral, advocacy, peer support and independent living
skills training. In addition, RIL operates one of the largest personal
care attendant services in the southeast region of Louisiana.
Once the devastation of Hurricane Katrina became so apparent within
days after its landfall, our Center's services were transformed by the
overwhelming unmet needs identified by individuals with disabilities.
Although the shelters provided housing and food for individuals with
disabilities, RIL had to fill in the ``gaps.'' RIL delivered durable
medical equipment and transported consumers to sites where they could
receive other social services such as food stamps, SSI disbursements,
unemployment information, etc. In addition, RIL provided consumers with
clothing, adaptive/accessible equipment, food packages, etc. Our Center
identified the immediate needs of the consumers and responded. Since
addressing gaps in services and supports that limit individuals'
ability to live independently and empowering these individuals with the
resources they required to make informed decisions on matters of vital
importance, is consistent with the independent living philosophy, we
worked days and nights, weekdays and weekends to make certain that
their needs were met to the maximum extent possible.
Our jobs were made even more challenging by the lack of
accessibility in the shelters. It is disconcerting that decades after
Section 504 was passed, access at shelters, which are in many cases
operated by organizations that are recipients of federal funding,
remains, at best problematic. Accessibility is not only defined by the
ability to physically get into and out of a building, but also by the
ability to meet the basic living needs of persons with limited
mobility--such as having accessible restroom and dining facilities. In
many cases, shelters were not physically accessible to persons with
disabilities. And in many more cases the shelters were unable to make
their programs accessible to persons with disabilities or to meet basic
living needs of persons with disabilities. Given the demographics that
I will point out below, these failures reflect a systemic problem,
which cries out for change.
Preparation for People with Disabilities in the Event of a Disaster
In preparing for disasters, charities such as the Red Cross must
consider the special needs of the disabled community as a central part
of the planning process. Since persons with disabilities make up a
large percentage of the population both in my region and across the
nation, this must be factored into the planning and preparation
process, BEFORE the next disaster--rather than after.
According to the National Council on Disability, of the 484,000
residents of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina, 23.2 percent of the
population or 102,122 are people with disabilities. This means that
there are 102,122 people with disabilities 5 years of age and older who
live in New Orleans. About 10 percent (or 12,000) of them are people
ages 5 to 20 years old; 61 percent (or 63,000) of them are aged 21 to
64 years old; and 29 percent (or 27,000) of the people are 65 years of
age and older. The statistics are as compelling in other parts of the
region hit by Katrina and Rita. In Biloxi, Mississippi, a city of
around 50,000 residents, 26 percent of the population has disabilities.
This means that there are 10,700 people with disabilities 5 years of
age and older who live in Biloxi. In Mobile, Alabama, a city of 198,915
people, 24 percent of the residents are people with disabilities. This
means that there are 43,000 people with disabilities 5 years of age and
older who live in Mobile.
Among the 102,122 people with disabilities living in New Orleans
are residents who are blind, people who are deaf, people who use
wheelchairs, canes, walkers, crutches, people with service animals, and
people with mental health needs. At least half of the people with
disabilities in New Orleans who are of working age are not employed.
Many of the people rely on a variety of government programs such as
Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid to help them meet their daily
service and support needs.
Charities such as the Red Cross need to find a way to obtain
expertise about the needs of persons with disabilities, and must
develop and implement disaster response plans specific to addressing
the needs of the disabled community. These plans must include
individual needs assessments, and identification of resources, such as
those who are knowledgeable in meeting the needs of the disability
community, surrounding the disaster area to ensure a more immediate
response to requests being made. Charities must work with federal,
state and local emergency management officials to ensure that shelters
are sited in accessible locations (consistent with the obligations of
recipients of federal funding under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation
Act of 1973), have readily available interpreters, are prepared to
provide essential communications in alternative formats, and provide
accessible transportation, durable medical goods, medical equipment,
and accessible communication equipment to those who need them. These
items are vital to assisting the disabled community in responding to a
disaster.
In order to respond in a way that meets the needs of persons with
disabilities, the Red Cross needs to rethink its operating principles.
Increasingly, the disabled community operates based on an independent
living philosophy that promotes maximizing individuals' control over
their own lives and support networks in settings that are as close to
fully integrated as possible. A balkanized system of Red Cross shelters
and ``special needs'' shelters makes no sense in most cases.
Furthermore, the Red Cross and other charities need to embrace elements
of the independent living philosophy. If they do not have the capacity
to assist consumers in locating case management and provider agencies,
doctors, family members and friends, then they need to develop
databases of these resources and contract those responsibilities out to
those who are experienced in the field.
Finally, many persons with disabilities have pets or working dogs,
caregivers or assistive technology. Charities must develop procedures
to provide reasonable accommodations and work with the disability
community to ensure that volunteers are well versed in these policies.
Problems and Service Gaps Encountered by People with Disabilities in
Shelters Operated by Charities Including the Red Cross
The Red Cross shelters were not equipped at all with interpreters,
materials in alternative formats, durable medical equipment, and
accessible communication equipment or dietary items. Consumers were
isolated and not offered services specific to their needs. Staff and
volunteers did not have the skills, training and knowledge to work with
the disabled community. The staff and/or volunteers did not perform
basic needs assessments to determine the types of disabilities
individuals had; to determine if the consumers had adequate medication
on-hand; or to determine if the consumer was on a restricted diet.
Individuals were often denied entry to shelters if they had service
animals or significant adaptive equipment, or were separated from their
family or caregivers in the process of obtaining shelter.
Consumers were ``delivered'' to the shelters by buses from the
affected areas. Once the consumers were ``checked in'' they were
informed that they would receive information from social service state
agencies. As my staff visited the shelters, they did not get to see
anyone at the shelters except the staff and volunteers for many days
after the storm. Once my staff reached the consumers in the shelters,
they continuously expressed their frustration regarding the lack of
assistance they were receiving and their inability to contact and
communicate with state and federal agencies designated to assist them.
Sometimes persons with disabilities were separated from caregivers,
loved ones, essential durable medical equipment/assistive technology,
and/or service animals. Finally, individuals with disabilities were
often moved from shelters into institutional settings without paperwork
noting where they were going, and without any way of applying for FEMA
assistance or other benefits for which they may have been eligible.
Even now, CMS only has a vague idea of where persons with disabilities
who have been institutionalized in the aftermath of Katrina were sent.
As a consequence, we still have been unable to locate many of those
persons with disabilities who were consumers of our CIL before
Hurricane Katrina hit. This is inexcusable and should never be repeated
again.
Problems Resources for Independent Living Encountered in Accessing
Shelters
Our Center was denied access to the Red Cross shelters. We held a
staff meeting and decided that it was vital for us to get inside the
facilities, thus we set out to convince the Red Cross staff that we
were social service employees with skills, training and knowledge
regarding the disabled community that they lacked. After many days of
rejection and many days of persistence we were finally allowed inside.
Once inside we were stunned to see the lack of services being offered
to the persons with disabilities. We began conducting basic assessments
of needs and begin delivering goods to the shelters for consumers.
Ongoing Problems and Need for a New Approach to Emergency Management
for Persons with Disabilities by Charities Including the Red
Cross
Although the Red Cross is more visible than they were immediately
following the storm, many inconsistencies in the service delivery
remain. Consumers with disabilities are still waiting for services.
Following the storm, the Red Cross would advertise locations but once
we would go to the location it would be closed for various reasons.
Consumers are not clear as to the role of the Red Cross. Consumers
expected the Red Cross to make assessments of their need. Once the
needs were identified the consumers expected the Red Cross to fulfill
their requests. This did not occur.
Also, the Red Cross needs to break down their mindset of ``separate
but equal'' services to persons with disabilities which leads to the
division of shelters into standard and special needs shelters. The
special needs shelters are operated by primarily faith-based local
charities, which despite the best of intentions often suffer from the
same ignorance of the needs of persons with disabilities and the same
lack of knowledge about the independent living philosophy and resources
for persons with disabilities in their communities as the Red Cross.
Having two sets of shelters, neither of which are staffed by people
knowledgeable in meeting the needs of persons with disabilities defies
common sense and undermines accountability.
One set of integrated services responsive to the needs of persons
with disabilities makes far more sense. The Red Cross has sometimes
argued that the special needs shelters are necessary because they need
to focus on mass care. But the reality remains that during Katrina,
many people with disabilities wound up in the general population
shelters because they have invisible disabilities such as diabetes and
other chronic conditions, mental health considerations, etc. that are
not readily identifiable. Regardless of the degree of effort by the Red
Cross, persons with disabilities will keep winding up in the general
needs shelters in future disasters. The Red Cross would be well served
to adjust to this reality and rethink its service delivery structure
accordingly.
Referral of Consumers by FEMA to Resources for Independent Living
Our New Orleans location, which hosts our main computer server, was
damaged by the storm. As a result of the equipment failure, our Baton
Rouge office did not have data or voice communications for about a
month. We communicated through our cell phones, a mode of
communication, which was severely limited due to storm damage to the
cell phone towers. Once we got our phone system to work we began
getting numerous calls from disabled consumers who stated they have
been referred to our Center by FEMA.
Centers for independent living do their utmost to assist each
individual in need in order to remain or become independent in the
community. Despite limited resources and the above-mentioned
circumstances we remain committed to doing as much as we can.
We did our best to respond to each caller but we are not equipped
to service as large of a population with as numerous requests as we
were getting. Our usual personnel complement and budget were inadequate
to the need that was referred in our direction and we lacked access to
financial resources due to our data communication problems.
Needless to say, we worked many nights and weekends with limited
resources and supports. As of today, we are still receiving referrals
from FEMA. It is unfortunate that we are placed in a position to
respond without receiving the funds to adequately perform the tasks
expected. The Red Cross and other nonprofits receive funding to meet
the needs of 100% of the population. Yet we have heard the Red Cross
state that it is not their responsibility to meet the needs of persons
with disabilities--over 23% of the population. Either the Red Cross and
other entities need to restructure their service delivery in a manner
that makes us partners in the process (for example, by contracting with
centers for independent living in emergency situations) or Congress and
FEMA need to explore ways of ensuring that organizations such as ours
that are called upon to meet these needs in the aftermath of a disaster
have funding and resources that match existing needs.
Conclusion
We know that the Red Cross and other charities are operated by
individuals with the best of intentions, who want to do the right
thing. However, substantial reform is needed in the way that these
agencies deliver their services and operate their shelters to ensure
that persons with disabilities already caught up in the tragic
circumstances of a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina do not
have that tragedy compounded by avoidable human error in the aftermath.
Persons with disabilities make up nearly one-fifth of the nation's
population and charities need to be responsive to the needs of those
whom they are charged to serve--beginning with compliance with Section
504 of the Rehabilitation Act. It is vital for charities to get to know
the major players in the disability community. Charities must develop
ongoing relationships with Independent Living Centers, Advocacy
Centers, and Social Service agencies to assist them in effectively
providing services to consumers. Charities need to learn about concepts
such as the independent living philosophy and consumer control and
either integrate these concepts into their own service delivery models
or contract with those familiar with these models to address the
specialized needs of persons with disabilities.
I look forward to answering any questions that you may have.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Thank you, Ms. Archaga. Mr. Wyatt,
please.
STATEMENT OF JOHNNY G. WYATT, CITY MARSHAL AND HOMELAND
SECURITY DIRECTOR, BOSSIER CITY, LOUISIANA
Mr. WYATT. I am Johnny Wyatt, Bossier City Marshal. I have
been marshal for 15 years. I have been Homeland Security
Director 6 months. Of that 6 months, half of it has been under
fire.
I would like to speak to you from my heart. I feel very
fortunate to sit at this table with great colleagues. I have
heard a lot of the testimony through the whole Committee today.
There are some things that I would like to tell you up front I
did wrong.
Everybody kept talking about what went right. Well, it
didn't go right all the time. I ran a shelter that had 270,000
square feet. The largest contingency at night I had was a
little over 1,400. I don't know how many thousands went through
the shelter.
My biggest problem is in preparing to come here and doing
interviews with the Red Cross, OEP, the mayor's staff and
everybody that was involved in our shelter. Some things came to
light that I would like to share with you.
One, I was pretty shocked to believe that the Red Cross
informed me that the reason it took them 7 days to start
feeding the people at Centurytel was they were allowing the
faith-based community to do what they could.
When I asked the question, are you telling me the idea of
Red Cross is to let all of the charitable people do the best
they can and when we exhaust that then you step forward, it was
devastating to me, which meant when Red Cross closed their last
shelter I still have people in hotel rooms, I still have all of
the people who came forward and helped us at the beginning, who
have depleted their funds now.
Now, according to statistics, those shelters are closed and
those needs are not met. I was shocked to know when they told
me, oh, we could have started feeding them the first day.
Really? No one was there. We called on the churches, who fed
them for 7 days. We got cots from Red Cross only to find out
that General Motors bought them.
The point I am trying to make is we ran into some
logistical problems running the shelter. I had never run a
shelter. I can tell you when I took over the shelter I thought
it was the worst assignment I could ever have had. Ten days
later, I would have paid anything to be the shelter manager. It
was unbelievably a great lesson in humility and gratification.
There were some fallacies. I saw them, like you talked
about. I had a blind man's dog taken away from him. I stopped
that. Broke every Federal rule there ever was. Okay. The man
finally gave up the dog because the dog was as scared as he was
in a room with 500 people.
Okay. The Gideons weren't allowed to bring Bibles in. I
stopped that. They came in.
They did not like the idea of us having Catholic services.
We did; we had mass; we had a Protestant service; we had
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA); we had Narcotics Anonymous (NA)
meetings. We did what that community needed. We had 1,400 of
our neighbors from the south, scared, hungry and lonely. That
is what we had.
It was real hard working with these people when you were
doing everything you could 24/7, and then to find out after the
fact that things broke down. Now, the truth of the matter is,
Congressman McCrery--and I know that the Congressman wouldn't
want me just bragging on him--but in our area in the northwest
corner, all of the leaders worked very well together through
OEP. We rewrote the book. The book had not been revisited since
1998. We threw it away. We started fresh.
The only person we could get to, to get communications
statewide for us was Congressman McCrery's office. If it had
not been for him we would have really been in trouble. Some of
the things that bother us, as they were talking about here, is
when you have a national organization, such as the Red Cross or
anyone else, you have got to be able to be flexible enough to
adapt to the people's needs, such as when the Philadelphia
House was stopped from coming in to help the HIV patients. That
is insane.
Those type of things we corrected as we found them, but the
problem is, when you come back and say we had a full triage at
our place, we had doctors on scene, we could have all kind of
medical help. They told me, oh, we could have provided it too.
I said, why didn't you provide medical help? Well, you did not
need it. In fact, when they called and said we have medical
help available to you, I turned it down. I said, I can't
believe you turned it down. They said, yes, you already had
that provided. I said so let me see if I understand.
I take away from all of my hospitals and all of my
emergency rooms and all of my space, and I am doing it, we are
handling it, and you could have stepped up and relieved some of
that? Your answer is, we need to involve the community more.
Well, the community was involved. I will have to tell you, we
made a lot of mistakes.
I can tell you I have learned from it. I heard a lot of
questions asked today, and I am going to close very quickly
with this. We are in the process of constructing a 50-by-150
foot structure that will house 3- to 400 cots, bedding,
clothing, water, food, everything necessary for 3 to 5 days,
because in Bossier, we know one thing. We are not going to get
any help for 3 to 5 days. If we don't own it, we don't get it.
I bought the first six wheelchairs for Centurytel. Before
Centurytel closed somebody gave us 50. I only needed 10. So, it
is a matter of organizing and putting a leader in charge. I
believe you have to come up with whoever the first person is to
step up and say I am in charge, right or wrong it all goes
through me, and that way everybody can coordinate those
activities. You know where to get the wheelchair.
The very blind man that was there, I had to mail him his
cane 10 days later. I put him on an airplane to his brother,
but I got the stick to him for the blind man 10 days late. Now
that is crazy.
I had an autistic child in a room with 500 people sleeping.
Do you know what that poor child's sensory overload was? We
would take her aside into a restroom where she could touch
animals and feel safe. I had a Down's Syndrome man that I
couldn't place in a nursing home because the caretaking mother
who was 75 and his brother, which was 4 years older, did not
qualify.
So, we finally found residents. So, what I am saying to you
is, our pleas here are not to lay blame. Our pleas here are for
you to take an action, Mr. Chairman, representing our
government that says, this person is in charge, and we are all
going to work with this person. If you don't work with him,
there are going to be penalties because we cannot afford to
ever have a tragedy like this happen again.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wyatt follows:]
Statement of Johnny G. Wyatt, City Marshal and Homeland Security
Director, Bossier City, Louisiana
On Saturday September 3, 2005, at 8:30 a.m., I became the Incident
Commander for the Centurytel Center Shelter by request of Mayor Lo
Walker.
The Centurytel Center is an oval building similar to the Superdome
in New Orleans, LA. The arena will hold some 15,000 seated. During the
crisis, our largest count revealed that we had just over 1,400
neighbors, children included, from the south sleeping in our shelter.
We initially started providing security check-in, medical triage,
shower/restroom, clothes, and food. This would be accomplished the
first day with the help of the First Baptist Church, which provided
food, cots and clothes, and Willis Knighton Hospital, which provided
full triage with medical staff, not the Red Cross or any other
organization.
The Office of Emergency Preparedness and the Red Cross were
contacted and asked for volunteers to help the staff of police
officers, firemen, and Deputy Marshals that had taken over all the
responsibilities of the shelter until we could be approved as a Red
Cross shelter.
Volunteers from the area and local churches immediately started
working with the firemen to set up cots with bedding, while others
opened up the kitchen to start preparing and serving food from the
local churches. We operated 7 days utilizing the food services of the
local churches before the Red Cross secured a contract to begin
supplying food to the neighbors in the shelter.
Because of the prior working relationships with local Sheriffs,
Chiefs of Police, Fire Chiefs, Mayors, hospitals and churches, we were
able to obtain any and all of our needs within the first 72 hours while
we were operating on our own. We established communication with Patrick
Jackson, Head of the National Guard for the local area who was
stationed in Baton Rouge, who helped coordinate transfers from his area
to ours. D.C. Macham, of the Bossier Parish School Board, was called
upon to start registering children in local schools. McDonald's, Wal-
Mart, Porter's Cleaners, Bass Pro Shop, and other merchants opened
their stores and hearts with donations for every request that we had.
When the Red Cross finally approved CenturyTel as a shelter, I was
placed in contact with American Red Cross representatives Mike Cantrell
and Jeanne Jennings from California. There were many problems from the
very beginning, which ranged from volunteers being turned away, to the
extreme incident of a volunteer who tried to commit suicide in the
parking lot. At this point the Red Cross leaders were more trouble than
the little help they brought us. In many ways I felt as though their
numerous ``rules'' kept us from doing the right thing.
I had to override some of their rules, such as when I learned that
they would not allow the Gideons into the building to distribute Bibles
to those wanting one. I also informed the Red Cross that we had a room
outside of the arena in which we were going to hold both Catholic and
Protestant worship services, as well as Alcoholic Anonymous meetings,
and any other service that I thought might help to serve the poor souls
that were our neighbors from the south. I also had a confrontation with
the Red Cross when they took a seeing eye dog away from a blind man in
a wheelchair. When I asked why, they informed me they had to have the
dog tested by the Blind Association. My response was not good, for in
the middle of all the chaos in trying to house all these people, the
idea of not trying to help a blind man was unbelievable (a letter from
Mr. Littlejohn, the blind man mentioned above, is also enclosed).
The inability of the Red Cross to coordinate efforts from other
organizations such as Adult Protection, New Horizons, The Arc and
Evergreen was also a hindrance. The Philadelphia Foundation was also
turned away when offering to assist with any HIV victims. This led to
the final confrontation with Jeanne Jennings while I was on the phone
with Mr. Richard Wright from Congressman McCrery's office and she
demanded that I stop and talk to her first. At that point I advised one
of my deputies to remove her from the building and if she tried to
return to arrest her for remaining after forbidden. Within 24 hours, a
Mr. Paul Unger met with me as the new Red Cross shelter manager for
CenturyTel. He was a joy to work with. What I did not know until he had
been with me for almost a week was that he was not with the Red Cross
nationally, but was actually a volunteer from another shelter who had
been assigned to cleaning restrooms. He approached the shelter
management and advised that he had a management background and asked if
there was some way he could better serve. Paul was told to report to
CenturyTel as the Red Cross Shelter manager as the prior manager had
been asked to leave.
In addition to the churches and groups mentioned above, another
volunteer organization that did outstanding volunteer work here was the
Salvation Army. Every time I asked for help their response was when and
where, never whether they could or not. I personally watched Steve, the
head of the local Salvation Army, pick up a homeless drunk, place him
in his car, and take him back to the shelter. The Bossier Relief Fund
was established by several church members and local citizens who gave
money to be used for bus tickets, long distance calls and other items
that would help connect our visitors with members of their extended
families who could offer them immediate help. New Horizons worked with
the mentally challenged as did the Association of the Blind to help
those in need.
As mentioned above, Paul Unger arrived as a volunteer who
eventually became the Centurytel Shelter manager. Within days of his
arrival, Paul had become ``Mr. Red Cross'' and did an outstanding job.
I will close with a quote from Mr. Unger. ``I do not look for praise, I
emotionally cannot handle any more. God has blessed me with an
opportunity to use my skills and help others. It has been the most
fulfilling weeks of my life. My workers and guests have also graced me
with more compliments and hugs than I could ever count. That part is
done. I hope to be able to share my experience with others in order to
explain what skills are desperately needed to make the system work in a
time of disaster. Also to allow others to recognize the contributions
of the many churches who helped in so many ways. Without them, we might
as well just drop rations from the sky. They, along with community
volunteers, administered the Red Cross resources to the people. They
turned food into meals, they turned shelters into homes, and they
provided friendship when friends could not be found.''
I am here to answer any questions, and let it be known that my
being allowed to manage the largest shelter in Bossier City was the
greatest lesson in humility and gratitude than anyone could be given. I
gladly await the opportunity to answer any questions. Thank you for
your time.
SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING RESPONSE TIME:
1. Allow the approval for a new Red Cross site to be less
cumbersome.
2. The ability to supply/increase necessary goods such as, but not
limited to, cots, bedding, food, water, clothing. While supplies are
not always readily available, the ability to have sources to call upon
within a 250-mile radius would allow the necessary supply/replenishment
within 24 hours.
3. Have one person as the go to person for all services for a
particular agency. This person would require depth of knowledge of all
resources available.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Thank you, Mr. Wyatt. It is obvious to
the Chair that the good people of Bossier City, Louisiana, are
well served by their Homeland Security Director. Thank you for
your very compelling testimony.
I want to ask a couple of questions. Ms. Roth, I know in
working with you in other venues, I know as Co-Chair of the
bipartisan Disabilities Caucus, for example, we held a hearing
on some of these problems, and I know you have been involved
since September 11th, since the terrorist attacks of September
11th, you have been involved in helping prepare disaster relief
agencies meet the needs of people with disabilities.
I think everybody was shocked to hear some of the horror
stories that happened to people with disabilities who were
hurricane victims, who were evacuees. Was the problem the lack
of a plan in place for charities to meet the needs of people
with disabilities, or was the plan just not followed?
Ms. ROTH. I think the problem is very simply lack of
leadership outside of the disability community and lack of
access within the disability community. There has been a
tremendous amount of planning. The disability community has
done a wonderful job of planning for the disaster-related needs
of people with disabilities.
We have been excluded again and again from the general
relief agencies. We have been excluded from the opportunity to
give our expertise, to give our knowledge to those folks. That
is why we are calling for offices on disability in any place we
can.
As I think you said so eloquently, if somebody steps up and
says, I am in charge, everybody else darn well better start
listening to them. Disability experts can take charge. We are
happy to take charge. We understand other people don't quite
get it, but we need to be in a position to be able to step up.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Well, hopefully one of the results of
today's hearing will be to include people with disabilities and
your organizations, those of you who represent people with
disabilities, in all of the planning for natural disasters and
other emergency situations, because there must be better
preparedness and delivery of services to the disabled community
and you need to be part of that planning. I hope all of the
organizations, be they nongovernmental or governmental, get
that message.
I also want to ask Ms. Archaga a brief question. Thank you
as well for all that your organization does to provide for
people with disabilities, to allow them to enjoy the dignity of
independent living, which is so essential to all of us. I just
want to ask, one of the purposes of this hearing, as I said at
the outset, was to ensure that people with disabilities and
other underserved groups are not neglected when the next large
disaster strikes.
What recommendations would you make to charities to ensure
better preparedness and delivery of services to the disabled?
What specific recommendations would you make?
Ms. ARCHAGA. That we definitely have to be at the table, at
the planning, development, and most importantly implementation.
I think the crucial part is that we need to be there when the
storm is named. We need to be at the table directing where
individuals should go and putting our consumers' interests at
heart as well.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Prior, if I may ask both of you
representatives from organizations concerning people with
disabilities, had either of your organizations been consulted
prior to Katrina or Rita as to emergency preparedness for
people with disabilities? For example, how essential access to
these shelters is, access to the bathrooms within the shelters,
and other basic questions that affect so directly people with
disabilities? Had either of your organizations been contacted
or consulted?
Ms. ROTH. My organization has tried to force its way in
wherever we can, but we very rarely have been invited. Even now
we are very rarely invited to the table, almost never invited
to the table unless we sort of force our way in and say, hey,
we have something we can offer you. We would like to think that
those days are coming to an end and we will be invited,
welcomed to the table right from the start.
Ms. ARCHAGA. Sir, we were not invited. Most importantly, I
would like for you guys to understand that when we went to the
shelters to get in and identified ourselves we were denied
access. We had to get very creative to get in, because we knew
it was vital to get in. Once we got in and the volunteers and
the staff members understood what we were doing, then we were
welcomed back continuously.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Did the people at the shelter, the
officials in charge, have a handle, did they have a directory
of people with disabilities living in the shelter?
Ms. ARCHAGA. No, sir. They really did not have much. One of
the problems that we had was that they did not capture
information in the first 2 or 3 weeks. So, when we would go
back for our consumer, they weren't there and we did not know
where they went. So, that is very frustrating for us, because
we know what their needs were, and we knew that we needed to
get to them. So, there was no information. We were even told
that we cannot come in. It is confidential information. We
understand confidential information, but we only wanted to get
in just to assess their needs and to meet their needs.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Well, and this invitation goes to all
four members of the panel and everybody in this country. If
there are Federal regulations, and, Mr. Wyatt, you cited and
alluded to some that were just nonsensical in terms of this
disaster situation and the problems you encountered. Make us
aware of them. Submit those, if you will, so that we can
address them here in the Congress.
Mr. Wyatt.
Mr. WYATT. One thing that was brought up earlier, and I
think would be a good start is when we started registering
people for Red Cross, we had no system to do so. We took my
probation department's computer system, and designed it,
changed it up, and worked, but we could not use that to hand it
to anybody to download.
So, we literally printed out thousands of sheets of paper
and handed it to the Red Cross, who was going to have to redo
that in another computer. So, in the organizational
structuring, following a person once they have hit a shelter is
critical for their maintenance and supplies.
One of the things that was fearful for us was when FEMA
decided that they were going to give everybody $2,000. When I
heard that in the first meeting, I had just come off a 24-hour
shift and I was not in the best of shape, and I just wanted to
know who was going to buy the spray paint to put a big V on
their chest for victim, because if you took 1,000 people and
gave each of them $2,000 in my building it was going to be
chaos.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Well, again, thank you, Mr. Wyatt. Again,
the Chair would just reiterate, we aren't here as Monday
morning quarterbacks, more exactly Tuesday afternoon
quarterbacks, to point fingers. We are here to make sure we
identify the problems and that we all work together in a
collaborative way so that when the next disaster strikes we
don't have a recurrence of these problems, they don't keep
resurfacing and victimizing people over and over again.
Certainly any emergency plans or preparedness, any
emergency preparedness warrants the participation of the
National Spinal Cord Injury Association on behalf of people
with disabilities, warrants the inclusion of RIL, your
organization, Ms. Archaga, the National Multiple Sclerosis
Society, and the Disabled Veterans, on and on with the
respective organizations representing people with disabilities.
So, I hope this is the last time you are excluded from
planning, because the people of America, people with
disabilities in this country deserve better.
The Chair would now recognize the distinguished Ranking
Member for questions.
Mr. LEWIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I
appreciate your very meaningful questions and statement,
really.
I guess I should have asked representatives from the Red
Cross and the Salvation Army, but the two of you from
Louisiana, you have been there on the ground. You have been
there. You have seen it, and I know you have unbelievable
stories to tell and you have been very moving.
How was the decision made when a group of people came in
and people was placed on planes and buses? I have heard people
say, well, they said we are going someplace. We ended up in
Atlanta or Minnesota or end up in the State of Washington. Did
they put people with disabilities on planes and buses and take
them out of their State? Do you have any knowledge? How was it
done? Did somebody in the Red Cross make that decision, or the
Salvation Army? How was it made? Some people didn't know they
were going some place until they landed, apparently.
Mr. WYATT. Right. One of the biggest problems we had was we
would get a call. There would be three buses coming from
Lafayette. We would never know when they left, who was on them,
what care they needed, and when they were going to arrive.
After a day or two of the frustration of having that, we would
stop them when they would call and say there is a bus coming,
saying stop. Is there anyone on that bus with a cell phone?
Give them our number so we can talk to them to find out what
they need in the way of care, whether they were ambulatory, did
they need to go to special needs hospitals, which we had
available.
Usually though, you are absolutely right, Congressmen. They
would show up unannounced. I got two buses brought to me by the
Black Panthers, in the middle of the afternoon, that had been
abandoned, two buses that the bus drivers actually ran away.
Somebody called Houston, Texas and got some Black Panthers.
They brought them to us, and they were great neighbors. They
brought them to us. They helped us get them checked in, and
they took the buses back to the police department.
So, we got them from everywhere. There was no coordination
of that. The best we could hope for is the OEP tried their best
to coordinate through Baton Rouge. The problem is, we worked
well in a region together, but communication-wise, getting a
State organization to manage us was not available.
That is what we were needing. We were needing somebody to
step up to the leadership role and say we are going to look
over FEMA. We are going to look over Red Cross. We are going to
look over Salvation Army, and we are going to guide these
things to you. We never knew.
So, we had to keep doctors around the clock, because we did
not know what was walking in the back door, where it would have
been a lot better to be able to place them on call and then
call them back in 30 minutes. You are absolutely right. Great
question.
Ms. ARCHAGA. Congressman Lewis, in regard to our consumers,
prior to Hurricane Katrina, we went on--post the storm, we went
on this scavenger hunt, looking for our consumers. We had no
idea where they were. Once we finally made contact, and our
toll free number was up and running, they made contact with us.
We were told that we were sent to Memphis, we were sent to
Arkansas, we were sent to Alabama. Why? How? I don't know. We
went over to the Red Cross shelter. We were at the shelter, and
they told us, okay, here is a bus. You have to go. Once they
left the Superdome, this is the shelter that they took them to.
It was not a decision. They had no idea where they were going.
They had no idea they were going to be in Denver, they had
no idea where they were going to be. What we have done,
speaking of our policies, is continue to serve them. We could
not stop serving them. So, we continued to serve them in
Louisiana, although they were in other States, until that
transition occurred. So, we never stopped our services.
Ms. ROTH. May I add? I knew that in Chicago there was a
very surprising situation in which a man with a spinal cord
injury arrived at the airport in Chicago. No plans had been
made for him. Nobody knew he was coming. He was about to be
sent to a nursing home, when folks at the Center for
Independent Living in Chicago, Access Living, somebody gave
them a heads up about the situation. They stepped in. One of
the staff members came, picked up the guy. He moved into their
house, and they were able to save him from being placed in a
nursing home. There were stories like this across the country.
Also, I want to add in response to the issues about the
law, it is very important that at the same time that we are
having these discussions there is a piece of pending
legislation that has been introduced several times that would
require 90-day notification if someone were going to sue under
the Americans with Disabilities Act (P.L. 101-336).
It is really important to us to point out that this is a
classic example. If people first had to give notice of a need
for accessibility, 90 days would be a horrible burden for
anyone. Making sure that all accessibility is assured is really
the priority in this. Really the Americans with Disabilities
Act is our most important civil rights law that needs to be
implemented and enforced.
Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. Chairman McCrery.
Mr. MCCRERY. Mr. Chairman, I have no questions. I want to
thank the panel for their testimony. I would second your
suggestion that the citizens of Bossier City are indeed well
served by Mr. Wyatt, both in his official capacity as Marshal
and in his voluntary capacity as Emergency Preparedness
Director.
Chairman RAMSTAD. Thank you, Mr. McCrery. Thank you to all
four members of this panel for your very helpful testimony. We
look forward to working with you and your organizations. The
Chair also would like to thank the members of the audience for
your interest and for being here today.
Seeing no further business before the Subcommittee, the
hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:40 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[Submissions for the record follow:]
Statement of American Arts Alliance, Inc.
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee, the
American Arts Alliance is grateful for this opportunity to submit
testimony on behalf of our member organizations--American Symphony
Orchestra League, Association of Performing Arts Presenters, Dance/USA,
OPERA America and Theatre Communications Group--and the audiences they
serve.
The arts play a disproportionately large role in the economy of the
areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.
Culture is the second largest industry in Louisiana and tourism is
the fifth largest employment sector in Mississippi. Arts and culture
accounted for 7.6 percent (7.6%) of Louisiana's employment--more than
144,000 jobs across the state, 57,000 of them in New Orleans alone.
As with other sectors of the economy, the destruction of physical
property and resources to community cultural and artistic institutions
is immense. Tens of thousands of artists, arts administrators, and
educators have been dislocated, left without the space or equipment
needed to work. Facilities such as theaters, museums, galleries,
concert halls, and studios are severely damaged or destroyed. Many
surviving venues are being used to house evacuees.
Performing arts organizations are serving the affected communities and
displaced families.
Recovery goes beyond providing mere material necessities. Displaced
arts educators and artists have been key participants in creating
recovery programs especially for displaced children and families.
Performing arts organizations in host cities such as Houston have
offered free admission to displaced Katrina families. Arts
organizations whose own venues are unusable have taken the show on the
road performing at the shelters and temporary housing. Artists from
across the country have held benefit performances to raise money for
the victims of the hurricane. In a gesture of solidarity, New Yorkers
who suffered in 9/11 held a dance benefit, ``Ballet to Ballroom'' in
October at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. All proceeds
from the performance and the silent auction that followed it went to
the Mayor's Disaster Relief Fund to benefit displaced persons in
Dallas. And arts organizations in communities across the U.S. have
offered temporary employment to displaced artists.
New Orleans Ballet Association
Among the hundreds of thousands affected by Hurricane Katrina were
the students, faculty and staff of the New Orleans Ballet Association
(NOBA), an award-winning community school and Creative Communities site
providing free arts instruction to 1,200 inner-city children at three
schools and 14 after-school sites. Creative Communities is an arts
education, youth development and community building strategy that
partners community schools of the arts with their local housing
authorities to provide youth in public housing communities with high
quality, sequential arts instruction. As with much of the rest of New
Orleans, NOBA is now faced with rebuilding from the ground up. All but
two of the schools and after-school centers with which NOBA works were
completely flooded. 100% of NOBA's students have been displaced, as
have the school's staff and faculty.
In November, NOBA held free dance classes at three satellite
locations--Lafayette, Baton Rouge, and Metairie. Displaced New Orleans
artists taught children displaced by the hurricane and children in the
host communities. NOBA also partnered with two Baton Rouge based dance
companies--Baton Rouge Ballet Theatre and Of Moving Colors--to raise
money to support local teaching artists and to give them performance
opportunities.
In January, NOBA will resume offering free dance classes in Orleans
Parish at the one New Orleans Recreation Department center that is
operating at Tulane University. The free program started in Metairie
will continue in the spring. The Creative Communities free dance
program in the public housing developments of New Orleans is expected
to resume summer 2006.
Southern Rep
The Southern Rep is a nonprofit professional theatre in New
Orleans. The theatre was broken into by looters during the storm and
the building in which the theatre is housed, The Shops at Canal Place,
suffered major damage. They estimate that 25% of their audience has
lost their homes. Southern Rep's office and rehearsal space is being
used by the Small Business Association's Disaster Relief Program.
Southern Rep had to cancel the first four shows of its season but
hopes to reopen by the end of February. In April, they plan to co-
produce THE SUNKEN LIVING ROOM, one of the two world-premieres that
were scheduled for the year, with New Theatre in Miami, Florida. They
plan to reopen the theatre in May with a production of KIMBERLY AKIMBO
and THE LAST MADAM. They also plan to start offering acting classes
again in the summer. All of this will be done with a drastically
reduced staff of one full-time and two part time employees down from a
staff of 50 before Katrina.
The Gulf Coast Symphony Orchestra
Despite the loss of instruments and homes, the musicians and staff
of the Gulf Coast Symphony Orchestra, located in Biloxi, continue to
bring quality music to the people of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The
Orchestra's venue, the Biloxi Saenger Theater is located just one block
from the edge of the tidal surge. On November 19th, the Orchestra held
its first concert since the hurricanes destroyed the entrance to the
theatre. Displaced musicians and patrons used a back street approach
through heavily damaged areas to perform in and attend one of the first
cultural events to occur on the Mississippi Gulf Coast following the
hurricanes. Virtually every seat in the house was taken as 78 musicians
performed, and nearly everyone on both sides of the stage lights had
been directly affected by the hurricanes; from minor damage to
completely losing everything. While the Symphony Orchestra plans to
hold a January performance, it will likely be forced to cancel the
remainder of the concert season, due to a drastic drop-off in
donations. Nevertheless, the Orchestra regards itself as an integral
part of the recovery and rebuilding effort, providing healing for the
minds and spirits of musicians and audience members, and is currently
hoping to recover in time for the 2006-07 season.
The Gulf Coast Symphony Youth Orchestra is struggling to find its
scattered student musicians and secure undamaged rehearsal space. The
Youth Orchestra will not be back to full strength for the next few
years.
The Columbia Theatre/FANFARE
Southeastern Louisiana University's Columbia Theatre for the
Performing Arts is located 50 miles from New Orleans in Hammond,
Louisiana and was among the hundreds of thousands affected on August
29th when Katrina and its damaging winds hit. Despite the damage,
Columbia Theatre forged ahead with its month-long arts festival,
FANFARE, in October. Determined to keep its doors open, this theatre
served as a coping mechanism for the community. Hundreds came to hear
the music, see the dance and share with each other the sense of
community so desperately needed.
With no phone service or mail and no hotel rooms for the guest
artists, the determined Columbia Theatre purchased beds and asked its
Board members to buy pillows and blankets. For the entire month of
October FANFARE operated a hotel within the theatre's auxiliary spaces,
with a men's dorm downstairs in the conference center and a women's
dorm upstairs in the dance studio. The theatre purchased a bigger hot
water heater for its three showers. In addition to making beds, doing
laundry, preparing food (most caterers were unavailable), FANFARE
presented approximately 55 events. Artists who slept backstage included
the Harlem Gospel Choir (New York City, NY), Toxic Audio (Orlando, FL),
Capitol Steps (Washington, DC), Odyssey Dance Theatre (Salt Lake City,
UT) and Aquila Theatre Company (New York City, NY).
Cultural tourism is a major force in these local economies and tourism
will not rebound until arts and culture rebound.
A vital performing arts community is necessary for the recovery of
the Gulf Coast region. Unfortunately, performing arts organizations are
not eligible for two forms of vital emergency relief. Under current
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) policy, performing arts
facilities are not eligible to receive FEMA relief as a private
nonprofit facility. All nonprofit organizations are not eligible for
economic injury loans from the Small Business Administration that help
with operations costs. The U.S. Small Business Administration can make
federally subsidized physical disaster loans to nonprofit organizations
to repair or replace disaster-damaged property not covered by
insurance, but economic injury loans appear to be only available to
for-profits businesses.
Conclusion
Performing arts organizations are a vital component of community
life, allowing citizens to appreciate our nation's culture and heritage
through excellent artistic programming. The arts illuminate the human
condition, our history, contemporary issues and our future. Arts
organizations in the Gulf Coast region have a strong commitment to
serving their communities, and are dedicated to being a part of the
rebuilding efforts. There is a misconception that federal resources are
available for the nonprofit performing arts in the hurricane-affected
regions. For the nonprofit performing arts to return to the Gulf Coast
region in a robust way, communities will need access to significant,
ongoing support from all sectors.
Statement of Audrey Alvarado, National Council of Nonprofit
Associations
Introduction
The National Council of Nonprofit Associations (NCNA), the
Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations (LANO), and the
Mississippi Center for Nonprofits (MCN) respectfully submit this
testimony to the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Committee on
Ways and Means.
The National Council of Nonprofit Associations (NCNA) is the
network of state and regional nonprofit associations serving over
22,000 members in 46 states and the District of Columbia. NCNA links
local organizations to a national audience through state associations
and helps small- and mid-sized nonprofits:
Manage and lead more effectively;
Collaborate and exchange solutions;
Save money through group buying opportunities;
Engage in critical policy issues affecting the sector;
and,
Achieve greater impact in their communities.
LANO is a statewide network of over 800 nonprofits, foundations and
individuals dedicated to improving the nonprofit sector to provide
quality services to Louisiana citizens. While much of the attention in
the hurricane recovery has focused on the damage to the state's
physical infrastructure and business enterprises, the damage to the
infrastructure of private, nonprofit institutions has been at least as
great and perhaps even more devastating. These institutions care for
the poor, enrich cultural life, extend educational opportunities,
develop communities, and train the unemployed--all functions that are
especially critical to the recovery effort that is now underway. LANO
is working with the Urban Institute to survey all Health and Human
Service providers in the affected area. The data gathered will provide
a clearer picture of the status of the nonprofit sector and the needs
of the community.
MCN is the only nonprofit management center in Mississippi that
serves over 6,000 community and faith-based nonprofit agencies. In the
past four months, it has become clear that the nonprofit and faith-
based communities have become the heroes in recovery efforts,
continuing to do their mission work despite no electricity, food, water
or, often, shelter for their own staff and volunteers. In response to
Katrina's devastation, MCN has organized meetings, conducted
assessments and launched a childcare recovery initiative that has led
to the opening of a Gulf Coast office of the Center. Additionally, MCN
is in constant contact with its organizations who were most affected by
Katrina in order to inform the public, funders, leaders and others
regarding the state of these groups as their needs change.
NCNA represents and serves small- and mid-sized nonprofits with
budgets of less than $1,000,000. These organizations are the face of
the nonprofit sector; they make up 75 percent of the nation's
nonprofits and are on the front lines of some of the nation's most
pressing social problems and solutions. Most recently, small- and mid-
sized nonprofits have been at the forefront of efforts to rebuild the
Gulf Coast region in the aftermath of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.
Small- and mid-sized nonprofits have direct experience with the
enormous challenges that communities face after hurricanes and have
vital information regarding how to address immediate and long term
needs to improve the quality of life and preparedness in communities
across our country. However, they are least likely to have adequate
resources to meet and articulate the needs of their constituents. Their
experience and voices are needed to ensure that we learn from our most
recent experience and prepare for future disasters.
Nonprofits are an important resource that many families and
individuals turn to for direct assistance. Nonprofits have stepped up
and served local communities and helped improve the lives of people in
the region. Unfortunately, the existence of these organizations is
threatened by dwindling budgets, damaged facilities and a fleeing
workforce. Like the business community, nonprofits need the support of
the federal government to rebuild and sustain their efforts.
NCNA, through its state associations in Louisiana and Mississippi,
has gathered information from nonprofits and identified three
legislative actions that would increase nonprofits' ability to serve
and meet the growing demands for services.
We urge Congress to enact the following legislation.
Allow nonprofits a two-year reprieve of the requirement
to secure matching funds in order to receive local, state, and federal
grants. This will provide relief to nonprofit organizations that state
and local governments currently rely on to deliver much-needed services
to local communities without requiring the allocation of additional
resources.
Direct the Small Business Administration (SBA) to revise
its regulations to allow nonprofits to qualify for economic injury
loans, not just physical disaster loans.
Direct FEMA to revise its directional guidance in order
to clarify and expand the eligibility of certain private nonprofit
organizations for disaster assistance.
Two-Year Reprieve to Secure Matching Funds.
Congress can help nonprofits continue to deliver much-needed
services to local communities without requiring the allocation of
additional resources.
We urge Congress to allow nonprofit organizations a two-year
reprieve of the requirement to secure matching funds in order to
receive local, state, and federal grants.
A reprieve from match-requirements would:
Allow nonprofits to continue to receive government grants
that have already been allocated;
Alleviate the burden of fundraising for nonprofits in the
disaster areas;
Support services in the disaster areas by allowing
organizations to focus on serving rather than on fundraising; and,
Enable the nonprofit sector to maintain a critical
portion of its employment base.
Request that FEMA Clarify Eligibility of Private Non-Profit (PNP)
Organizations for Certain Disaster Assistance.
The Public Assistance Program, administered by FEMA, provides
supplemental Federal disaster grant assistance for the repair,
replacement, or restoration of disaster-damaged, publicly owned
facilities and the facilities of PNP organizations. Currently, certain
PNP organizations cannot qualify for this assistance, due to FEMA's
directional guidance rules.
We urge Congress to enact legislation that directs FEMA to revise
Recovery Division Policy Number: 9521.3 in order to clarify the
eligibility of PNP organizations for certain disaster assistance and
have the rule conform to the statutory definition indicated below.
The formal regulatory definition of a PNP organization and facility
used for disaster relief,\1\ as defined by congressional statute, is
less restrictive than the FEMA guidance in regards to ``PNP facility
eligibility'' rules. The regulatory definition indicates that:
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\1\ 44 C.F.R. Sec. 206.221.
There is no specific exclusion of recreational facilities
in the Public Assistance Eligibility Rules;
``Community centers'' are included in the category of
facilities providing essential governmental services; and
Eligible ``public facilities'' specifically include
public buildings used for ``educational, recreational, or cultural''
purposes.
Request that the Small Business Administration (SBA) Amend Regulations
to Allow Nonprofits to Be Eligible for Economic Injury Loans.
Nonprofit organizations are eligible for some forms of federal
disaster relief assistance if they are located in a county declared a
Major Disaster Area (within Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi) or in
a state that is hosting evacuees from Hurricane Katrina (Arkansas,
Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, North
Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia).
The SBA can make federally subsidized physical disaster loans
available to nonprofit organizations to repair or replace disaster-
damaged property not covered by insurance, including inventory and
supplies. Nonprofit organizations, however, are not eligible for
economic injury loans from the SBA that help with operational costs.
Under current federal rules, economic injury loans are only available
to for-profits.
We urge Congress to enact legislation that directs the SBA to amend
its regulations to support the original intent of the statute and allow
certain charitable organizations to qualify as ``small business
concerns'' for the purposes of receiving economic injury disaster
loans.
The limitation to nonprofit eligibility for economic injury loans
is due to the SBA definition of who may qualify for such loans. The
congressional statute governing the SBA provides that the SBA may make
such loans as it determines necessary to any ``small business concern''
located in an area affected by a disaster if the SBA determines that
the concern has suffered a substantial economic injury as a result of
the disaster.\2\ SBA regulations define a ``small business concern'' as
a business entity organized for profit.\3\ This needlessly restricts
some crucial nonprofits from qualifying for assistance.
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\2\ See 15 U.S.C. Sec. 636(b)(1)(B)(2).
\3\ See 13 C.F.R. Sec. 121.105.
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Summary
Nonprofit organizations are on the front lines of the battle to
help our communities in need. The charitable or nonprofit sector has
long been viewed as a significant resource for the social support
system in the United States. In partnership with government and the
private sector, charities have come to fill the gap for needs in a wide
range of areas. Small- and mid-sized nonprofit organizations in
particular have the best experience and expertise to provide cost-
effective services--and to do so locally without multiple layers of
bureaucracy. In the wake of Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, many
charitable organizations are struggling to meet the increased needs of
the people in the Gulf Coast region, without having the necessary
resources to do so. NCNA, LANO and MCN urge Congress to suspend the
matching requirement for nonprofits to receive grants; clarify FEMA
eligibility rules to allow certain nonprofits to qualify for aid; and,
change SBA rules to allow nonprofits to qualify for economic injury
loans. These actions will help ensure that nonprofits are able to
fulfill their missions in partnership with government--and rebuild and
sustain communities devastated by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.
Statement of the National Fraternal Congress of America
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
On behalf of the National Fraternal Congress of America (NFCA) and
our 76 member-societies, representing 10 million fraternalists
nationwide, we appreciate the opportunity to provide this statement to
the Subcommittee's, as it reviews the response of charities to
Hurricane Katrina.
By way of background, the NFCA represents fraternal benefit
societies (fraternals), which are organized under section 501(c)(8) of
the Internal Revenue Code. The governing statute requires that
fraternals meet two requirements that embody the concept of mutual aid.
First, fraternals must operate under a lodge system for the exclusive
benefit of their members and, second, they must provide for the payment
of life, sick, accident, or other benefits to their members and their
beneficiaries. While fraternals are not charities, they nonetheless are
structured and operated to support national and local charitable
activities in communities throughout the country and they always are at
the forefront of disaster relief.
Fraternals are unique organizations with many having been in
existence since the Civil War. In essence, fraternals use the revenues
received from providing insurance and other benefits to members to
support the lodge system, one of the greatest forces for public good in
America today, and to support charitable activities. While fraternal
mutual aid primarily is achieved by providing personal and family
financial security to members, fraternals, through the lodge system,
support local communities throughout the year and provide special
assistance in times of crisis. For example, the lodge system is what
made it possible for fraternals to be a first responder to the
Hurricane Katrina disaster.
In effect, each fraternal has an existing, organized network of its
members that meets regularly to consider and implement community-based
projects. This includes mobilizing quickly to respond to crises. In
2004, our member-societies expended approximately $400 million on
charitable and fraternal projects--excluding special relief efforts--
and volunteered more than 91 million hours nationwide.
When Hurricane Katrina struck, the lodge system went to work
without delay. Within 24-48 hours of Katrina's landfall--and before
governmental relief efforts began--fraternal lodge volunteers were on
the ground distributing water and food in the affected areas. Within
the week, fraternals were providing food, shelter, and supplies to care
for babies and children of displaced families. A number of fraternals
in the South, most notably Woodmen of the World, opened up their summer
camps to displaced families for lodging within a week of the hurricane.
By the third week of September, fraternal volunteers began supplying
cleaning supplies and assisting families trying to get back into their
homes.
Within a month of Hurricane Katrina, fraternals had raised upwards
of $16 million that was specifically targeted to hurricane relief, and
that amount continues to grow. Further, through the lodge system,
fraternalists already have devoted hundreds of thousands of volunteer
hours in support of ongoing hurricane relief efforts.
Fraternal benefit societies provided hurricane relief in two ways.
First, through the lodge system our members directed their own relief
operations, building on existing facilities in the affected region or
using the lodge system to quickly organize relief efforts. For example,
the Louisiana Councils of the Knights of Columbus served thousands of
meals to hurricane evacuees, and organized efforts to deliver ice,
food, water and other supplies through truck convoys to the affected
areas. The Modern Woodmen of America collected and delivered books and
toys for children who were displaced by Katrina and used their regional
network of lodges to organize the delivery of these items. Members of
Thrivent Financial for Lutherans devoted thousands of volunteer hours
and raised almost $1 million for hurricane relief in the weeks
immediately following the disaster.
Fraternals also work with and support existing charitable
organizations. One fraternal has pledged $5 million to Habitat for
Humanity towards new homebuilding for Katrina victims, with another $6
million pledged to directly assist victims in their recovery efforts.
Another fraternal has been instrumental in contributing funds toward
rebuilding local churches, schools and general infrastructure. Still
other fraternals raised funds to assist the American Red Cross in its
efforts, including funds raised through matching programs in which a
fraternal matches funds raised by their members at the lodge level. And
hundreds of thousands of fraternalists support the activities of
organizations such as Habitat for Humanity through personal volunteer
efforts.
It is our understanding that one purpose of the hearing is to
``explore areas where service delivery, preparedness and coordination
could be improved,'' and we would like to offer some observations based
on our experience.
Local presence is extremely important in any significant relief
effort. When conditions require that relief be delivered quickly and
effectively under difficult circumstances, there is no substitute for
having volunteers on the ground and the ability to organize them
quickly. Fraternals, by statute, must be organized under the lodge
system, which means that there is always in place a network of
volunteers who are prepared and motivated, both to devote their time
and personal efforts to assist victims of a national disaster, as well
the ability to very quickly organize fundraising campaigns. Within a
day of Hurricane Katrina, fraternals began relief efforts.
Noting the contribution of fraternals to Katrina relief, Senator
Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) stated in a recent Senate Finance
Committee hearing that ``[w]e have seen that within 48 hours of
Katrina, the nation's fraternal benefit societies were feeding,
housing, providing supplies, clothes, toiletries, cash and beds to
those in need in shelters both in Houston and in New Orleans. During
the first week of this effort, fraternals already had expended upwards
of $14 million on hurricane relief, a sum which is expected to increase
as those efforts broaden.''
Ten million Americans have chosen to join fraternal benefit
societies because they believe that giving back to their communities
should be a way of life. Our members' response to Hurricane Katrina, as
well as to Hurricanes Rita and Wilma, demonstrated once again that
fraternals are a unique national resource that provides community
assistance quickly and effectively.
We urge the Ways and Means Committee to foster and encourage the
growth of community-based organizations like fraternals that always
will be ready, willing and able to lend a helping hand in time of need.
Government efforts are critical and government, of course, has the
greatest resources, but there is no substitute for Americans coming
together at the local level to help friends and neighbors in time of
crisis. This is who fraternals are and what they do and have done for
almost 150 years. And with the Congress' continued support, fraternals
will continue their important role for many years to come.
Statement of Rotary International, Evanston, Illinois
Rotary is an organization of business and professional leaders
united worldwide who provide humanitarian service, help build goodwill,
and support global peace and international understanding. Founded in
1905 in Chicago with four members, in 2005 Rotary celebrated its
Centennial with over 1.2 million members in over 32,000 autonomous
Rotary clubs in 168 countries.\1\
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\1\ This sentence stands out too much. I would cut it. If that's
not an option, I would try to incorporate it into the previous sentence
by saying over 32,000 autonomous clubs.
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Rotary clubs responded immediately to the crisis after the
devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The first priority was to provide
food and shelter to the victims.\2\ Rotary clubs and districts (a group
of 50-70 clubs) from throughout the affected Gulf Coast region sprang
into action to collect necessary food and supplies, raise money, and
provide shelter to evacuees.\3\
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\2\ I'm afraid that this could be interpreted by a non-Rotary
audience as sounding too exclusive. I would say that ``the first
priority was to provide food and shelter to the victims'' instead.
\3\ Some people took a lot of flack for using this term.
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On 31 August, two days after the disaster, Rotary International
President Carl-Wilhelm Stenhammar asked all Rotary clubs in affected
areas to share information with Rotary headquarters so that Rotary's
global network would know how to best support relief efforts. By 1
September, several Rotary members had already contributed funds to
local Rotary districts and donated essential goods.
As evacuees were transported to Texas, Rotary members, particularly
from Rotary District 5890 in Texas, served as critically needed
volunteers to aid victims in Houston's Astrodome. Rotary club members
worked around the clock, dividing coverage with 20-people teams for
every eight hours. Rotary worked alongside the American Red Cross,
local police, fire officials, and the Federal Emergency Management
Association to provide any assistance that was urgently needed.
One story of Rotary's immediate relief efforts includes the rescue
of a British exchange student stranded at the University of Southern
Mississippi. Rotary club members in Ontario, Canada, worked to secure
her school transfer to the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. A
Rotary member in Mississippi waited three hours in line to buy enough
gas to drive the student from her dorm room to the closest town with an
available flight to Windsor. The student was able to continue her
studies with limited interruption to her exchange year.
Within one month of the disaster, Rotary clubs sent and distributed
over 1,400 ``ShelterBoxes'' to the most critically needed areas of the
Gulf Coast. ShelterBox is a Rotary grassroots organization that
customized its usual emergency boxes for Katrina victims to include two
ten-person tents, water purification tablets and miscellaneous tools
and equipment. The ShelterBoxes have helped accommodate some 28,000
people with dry shelter and clean water.
Rotary District 6840, in Louisiana and Mississippi, developed
several projects to help reconstruct devastated areas, including public
libraries, restoration of local child care facilities, repair and
restoration of flooded homes, cleanup, laundry services, the
development of lockable storage units, and the distribution of
Christmas toys and gifts. The district serves as but one example of the
work Rotarians have been doing to serve the victims \4\ of Hurricane
Katrina.
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\4\ Unnecessary.
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District 6840 also joined with Districts 6820, 6880 and 6200 in
Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana to administer over $400,000 in
donations received for Hurricane Katrina Relief. These funds are
available for anyone in need in the affected areas and are not
restricted to use by Rotary members.
To help address the large number of donations offered, Rotary clubs
in 12 Southern and Midwestern states, including Louisiana and
Mississippi, established the Katrina Relief Fund in cooperation with
The Rotary Foundation. The fund has streamlined the flow of
contributions from Rotarians around the world looking to assist victims
of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. More than $1 million has been
contributed through the Katrina Relief Fund in conjunction with The
Rotary Foundation.
The latest update on Rotary's efforts in the area can be accessed
at www.rotary.org.