[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE BIG ONE: HOW DO WE ENSURE A ROBUST FEDERAL RESPONSE TO A
CATASTROPHIC EARTHQUAKE IN THE LOS ANGELES REGION?
=======================================================================
(109-48)
FIELD HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 23, 2006 (WHITTIER, CALIFORNIA)
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
28-263 WASHINGTON : 2006
_____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman
THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin, Vice- JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
Chair NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia
SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland Columbia
JOHN L. MICA, Florida JERROLD NADLER, New York
PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan CORRINE BROWN, Florida
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan BOB FILNER, California
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
SUE W. KELLY, New York JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD,
RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana California
ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
JERRY MORAN, Kansas ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
GARY G. MILLER, California BILL PASCRELL, Jr., New Jersey
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania
HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South Carolina BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania JIM MATHESON, Utah
SAM GRAVES, Missouri MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota RICK LARSEN, Washington
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania JULIA CARSON, Indiana
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York
JON C. PORTER, Nevada MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine
TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
TED POE, Texas ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado
CONNIE MACK, Florida JOHN BARROW, Georgia
JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New York
LUIS G. FORTUNO, Puerto Rico
LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr., Louisiana
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
(ii)
?
Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency
Management
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas, Vice-Chair Columbia
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine
JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New York LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
DON YOUNG, Alaska JULIA CARSON, Indiana
(Ex Officio) JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
(Ex Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
TESTIMONY
Page
Hayashi, Ann-Marie, City of Whittier Emergency Services......... 18
Jones, Dr. Lucille M., Scientist-in-Charge, Southern California,
U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior........ 5
Renteria, Henry, Director, California Office of Emergency
Services....................................................... 18
Stanley, Ellis M., Sr., CEM, City of Los Angeles Emergency
Preparedness Department........................................ 18
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Hayashi, Ann-Marie.............................................. 35
Jones, Dr. Lucille M............................................ 40
Renteria, Henry................................................. 73
THE BIG ONE: HOW DO WE ENSURE A ROBUST FEDERAL RESPONSE TO A
CATASTROPHIC EARTHQUAKE IN THE LOS ANGELES REGION?
----------
Thursday, February 23, 2006
House of Representatives Subcommittee on Economic
Development, Public Buildings and Emergency
Management, Committee on Transportation and
Infrastructure, Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:00 a.m., in
the Whittier City Council Chambers, 13230 Penn Street,
Whittier, California, Hon. Bill Shuster [Chairman of the
Subcommittee] presiding.
Mr. Shuster. The Subcommittee will come to order. I want to
start off by first welcoming everyone here today and thanks for
the California hospitality. Coming from Pennsylvania the
weather was not quite as nice. Actually about 35 degrees colder
than it is here so I appreciate that greatly.
I want to thank Mr. Miller for inviting the Subcommittee
here today to Whittier. Can you here me? It sounds like it cut
off. Can you here me? There it is again. Okay. Thanks to Mr.
Miller for inviting us here to Whittier to hold this hearing
today. Mr. Miller has been a strong leader for the Committee
and we appreciate that. Because of the great risk California
faces from both natural disasters and terrorism, you have
ensured that we focus on California as we look to improve state
and local readiness and capabilities.
I know you have a strong interest in preventing a
disorganized federal response to a catastrophic earthquake in
California and we welcome your participation in today's
hearing. Again, thanks for having us here today. I would like
unanimous consent that Mr. Miller be permitted to sit with the
Subcommittee at today's hearing, offer testimony, and ask
questions. Without objection so ordered.
I would also like to thank our witnesses for being here
today. We are meeting this morning to receive state and local
input for improving the emergency management capabilities and
readiness at the federal, state, and local levels. Hurricane
Katrina revealed problems in the emergency management system at
all levels of government that have to be addressed. You have a
role in guiding the efforts to fix those problems.
Unfortunately this hasn't always been a collaborative
process. Too often the federal government has failed to take
into account your views. There has never been a greater need
for your professional advice and expertise. We have to get this
right and we need your help to do it.
Like hurricane Katrina a catastrophic earthquake in
southern California could paralyze the region, destroy the
infrastructure, and leave tens of thousands homeless. With over
300 faults southern California is at risk for a catastrophic
earthquake.
Models of a 7.5 earthquake in Los Angeles basin predict
over 18,000 dead, a quarter of a trillion dollars in losses,
and 300,000 left homeless. These predictions dwarf losses from
1994 North Ridge Earthquake and without reforms in the current
emergency management system we will have another uncoordinated
federal response like that in the Gulf Coast.
I was on the House Select Committee that investigated the
response to Hurricane Katrina, and our key findings of the
federal failure were that the plan was flawed and the execution
was ineffective. There was confusion over who had the authority
to make decisions.
Response capabilities were efficient. In some places, it
took a week before the federal government even arrived. Is
southern California prepared to be on its own for a week, even
though conventional wisdom says you only need to be prepared
for 72 hours?
The House Select Committee report found that the federal
response to Hurricane Katrina was slowed because key decisions
were made late, ineffectively, or not at all. Today, these key
decisions about how and when to engage federal response assets
are no longer in FEMA. They are with the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS).
Also, DHS and FEMA responded to Katrina with a business as
usual attitude. Business as usual means sitting back and
waiting for the state to request assistance, instead of
proactively getting supplies into the field prior to a formal
request. Business as usual does not work in a catastrophic
disaster.
Following a catastrophic earthquake, the state and local
governments may need federal assistance before there is a clear
operating picture. If federal assistance is needed immediately
to save lives and prevent suffering, should the federal
government wait for the state to follow protocol? Can southern
Californians wait for help while the federal government demands
that the state follows bureaucratic procedures? We cannot
afford to get it wrong again.
Additionally, the report found that the government failed
to effectively execute response plans and authorities. This
failure can be attributed to an inadequate professional
disaster work force. At the time Katrina struck, FEMA had 500
vacancies. This is a small agency within a big department. They
cannot afford to be without that many people. Without the right
number of the right people, this will never work.
If we are to successfully respond to a catastrophic
earthquake, we must enhance state and local emergency
management capacity. One of the important lessons of Katrina is
that the federal government's ability to respond to a
catastrophic disaster is often dependent upon the quality of
the state and local disaster system.
Disaster management is a shared responsibility and state
and local governments need to be able to handle most disasters
on their own and be prepared to integrate federal assistance
into their operations during larger events. Despite spending
about $3 billion dollars a year on first responder grants since
September 11th, it is very difficult to see where those dollars
resulted in improved capabilities or readiness in our response
to Hurricane Katrina.
The report found that inadequate capabilities and readiness
resulted in the federal response being overwhelmed in critical
areas such as logistics, communications, situational awareness,
and command and control. It is truly staggering that we have
spent so much on preparedness and have so little to show for
it. We have to do better.
These are systemic failures. Clearly the system needs to be
reformed. We are here today to hear about the specific
challenges you face and your recommendations for reform at the
federal level. At the end of the day, if the federal government
fails to reform itself, then the state and local governments
will have to face the next catastrophic disaster and its
consequences largely alone for the first week or longer. I look
forward to hearing your testimony today.
I would like to turn to Mr. Miller now if you have a
statement.
Mr. Miller. Thank you. Welcome to Whittier. Chairman
Shuster, we are quite a way from where you live but it is a lot
warmer here. It was not so last week so we are experiencing
some good weather. Our geography we have in California is
different than we have in a lot of other states. We are here
today to determine where we are in the preparation and planning
process to be sure that we are prepared for the unthinkable.
While state and local government planning is crucial,
disaster preparedness federal coordination is essential to
ensure the system can work. We would like to understand how the
federal government can best employ the resources that would be
needed in the aftermath of an earthquake in southern
California. Specifically, how can we ensure adequate resources
can flow to the areas in the need of rescue assistance, debris
renewal, and emergency medical care. These are the questions
that today's hearing will help us to understand.
You messed my pages up. I have one arm. You will have to
forgive me. This is the first day that I have worn a shirt,
slacks, and even put on a tie since I had shoulder surgery. I
am right handed. Try doing everything with your left hand and
you will get your pages out of order, too, I guarantee.
Mr. Shuster. You are better than most with one hand.
Mr. Miller. I am not sure about that. It is fitting today
that we convene this hearing at Whittier, California, the site
of the Whittier Narrows Earthquake of 1987. When we discuss
this about the proper location to have this I looked at the
entire region and I thought Whittier really experienced
firsthand what can happen with a 5.9 earthquake. We had eight
people die. We had $400 million in damages and that is
incredible for a city this size. I was raised in Whittier and
that was quite an impact on our community.
While the Whittier Earthquake was devastating to the
region, the big one that we might have one day would be
catastrophic. Whittier gave us the opportunity to test our
preparations for a larger regional disaster. It also taught us
what improvements were necessary to our plans and improvement
to infrastructure and the services that were needed after an
earthquake.
I am pleased that Mrs. Hayashi of Whittier is here with us
today to share her perspective from the local level about what
is needed from the federal government to assist in a
catastrophic disaster. Mrs. Hayashi is an expert when it comes
to earthquake and emergency preparedness and can help us to
understand the ways that the federal government got it right,
the ways that we need to improve in what has happened since to
better coordinate the efforts in the future.
Most importantly, Mrs. Hayashi can shed light on what the
federal resources are needed within the local community after a
sudden earthquake. While not an earthquake, the devastating
event this past August on the Gulf Coast provided another
unfortunate wake-up call to all of us whom I would hope the
catastrophic event might never happen in southern California.
In the days that followed the hurricane we also witnessed
what could happen when local, state, and federal officials are
not adequately prepared to do what is appropriate to coordinate
the disaster needs. Not only must we mobilize to make sure our
emergency plans are in place but we must also learn from the
mistakes that we have made in the past to ensure that they are
corrected in the future.
Learning from these past disasters is essential in ensuring
that adequate and complete coverage of what is needed by the
local communities takes place. We hope we never have the major
earthquake we talk about having but if it does happen, how can
we coordinate it in a way that the federal government can work
with local, state, and federal government. Together we can
create a body that will deal with the needs of the local and I
am here today to basically understand what our local needs are.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much, Mr. Miller. What is the
population of Whittier? I would imagine it is probably vastly
different. 85,000? When you grew up here it was probably
significantly--
Mr. Miller. There were about 12 of us here.
Mr. Shuster. Again, thank you, Mr. Miller, for having us
out here today. I first want to ask unanimous consent that all
our witnesses' full statements be included in the record.
Without objection so ordered. Since your written testimony has
been made part of the record, the Subcommittee request that you
limit your summary to five minutes. We have two panels today of
witnesses. On the first panel we have one witness, Dr. Lucy
Jones with The U.S. Geological Survey.
Dr. Jones is going to provide a presentation that will
demonstrate the likely consequences of a catastrophic
earthquake in the Los Angeles region. Just as the consequences
of a category 4 storm hitting New Orleans are well known, I
believe it is important that we fully understand what we could
face here in a moment's notice. Following Dr. Jones' testimony
we will open for questions.
Dr. Jones, welcome again. Thank you for being here and you
may proceed.
TESTIMONY OF DR. LUCILE M. JONES, SCIENTIST-IN-CHARGE, SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE
INTERIOR.
Dr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Miller, for
having me.
Mr. Shuster. Dr. Jones, let me just say you can take more
than five minutes. I am sure we are going to take more than
five minutes trying to understand.
Dr. Jones. Okay. That is quite reassuring because I had
prepared a longer presentation than that. We need to get this
where you can hear me.
Mr. Shuster. There are all kinds of mics up here.
Dr. Jones. Yeah, there I am. This is a great opportunity. I
am being told to scare you and given free reign to tell you the
worse. I am doing this actually from an interesting
perspective. You are talking about federal versus state. I am a
federal employee but with a regional responsibility.
The U.S. Geological Survey under the National Earthquake
Hazard Reduction Program does the science of earthquakes across
the nation and we do this through regional operations so I am
responsible for southern California because although that is
only just one part of one of 50 states, it is half of the
nation's earthquake risk so it is a very significant problem
that we are facing in the region.
I want to start with very briefly just to remind you what
an earthquake is. An earthquake happens because of sudden slip
across the fault that releases shaking as one of the its
effects so that we actually have both phenomena that we need to
look at, how the ground is disrupted, like this picture we are
showing on the right from the KoBay Earthquake in Japan in 1995
and then also the shaking that is released from it. Both of
those will be causing significant effects on our
infrastructure. They need to be taken into account as we get
ready for this.
Another point to remember is although you have been hearing
that earthquakes happen at epicenters for a long time it is not
true. They begin at a hypocenter but they happen over a
surface. A good analogy for an earthquake is actually snapping
your fingers. When you snap your fingers you put two surfaces
in frictional contact. Because they are pushed together they
can't move so you push hard enough and overcome the friction
and it slips suddenly and released energy in the form of a
sound wave that makes the air vibrate.
When we slip on that fault, we release energy in the form
of sound and sheer waves that make the ground vibrate but you
can't snap your fingers at a point. It requires a surface in
contact and, in fact, the bigger the surface is, the bigger the
earthquake. The one thing that really controls how big an
earthquake will be is how long the fault is that moves in that
event.
You may not have recognized that the United States had
almost a magnitude 8 just a little over three years ago. It was
up in the Alaska wilderness and did very little damage because
of its isolated location. I want to show you this which is how
we look at damage from an earthquake. You can see these colors
are showing you how intense the shaking is.
In this case we have a fault that was over 200 miles long
and you can see there was an area of many tens of thousands of
square miles that recede at shaking. But in that location there
were very few people anywhere nearby. If we were to move this
to California, you can see that same shaking area projected
onto a map of California we would be affecting millions of
people at a very high level of shaking.
The level that we here received in the Whittier Narrows
Earthquake is shown in orange on this figure. We never got to
intensity 9. That is not magnitude, that is intensity that is
shown with the red colors in this region. We had the yellow to
orange in a very, very small area in the Whittier Narrows
Earthquake. By comparison when we get to these really big
earthquakes we are going to go to a very different class of
disaster.
What controls what the shaking is going to be is three
things. The bigger the earthquake, you release more energy and
you have more energy at every site. Your distance from the
fault, the shaking dies off with distance quite rapidly. In
fact, the one piece of good news in California--the bad news is
we have a lot of faults. The good news is they break up the
crust and make it a poor transmitter of energy.
You are going to hear tomorrow about how the New Madrid
Earthquake could affect the area in Missouri where the crust is
old and cold and hard and a magnitude 7.5 moved furniture in
the White House. It is felt over a very, very large area.By
comparison here in California it dies off more rapidly.
You can have local soils that amplify the shaking. If you
are in soft ground the waves slow down and to carry the same
amount of energy they have to get bigger. We have been able to
map out where in California. One of the efforts of the U.S.
Geological Survey is to look at where we have this effect and
we have been able to put the whole picture together and the
upper map here is showing you where we have relative
amplification of shaking whatever the earthquake is.
You can see here in the basin areas wherever it is flat,
wherever you avoid the wildfires, you have an amplification of
shaking. Again, you will hear that tomorrow along the
Mississippi River. It is a very major issue as well.
As I said, this is a national problem but here in southern
California we are responsible for half of the nation's risk. It
is a combination of over 300 faults, as the Chairman said,
combined with 20 million people. You put it together and we
have just got the greatest exposure that we are going to have.
The reason we have so many faults here in southern
California is that we have a plate boundary. The San Andreas
fault is the boundary between very large sections of the
earth's crust. The North American plate runs from the San
Andreas fault all the way out to Iceland. The Pacific plate
runs from the San Andreas fault out to Japan. These two very
large pieces of the earth's crust are moving with respect to
each other and they come together right here in California
along the San Andreas fault.
We aren't stopping plate tectonics. There is no way we are
going to stop this movement of just about two inches a year.
That is about the rate that your fingernails grow. If you
didn't cut your fingernails for 200 years you would have a
pretty big offset and that is what has built up on the San
Andreas fault.
We compounded in southern California by putting a kink in
the San Andreas. You can see the bend in the fault here. Try to
imagine taking two pieces of glass and hitting them up against
each other. They are going to shatter and then you will sweep
the pieces around the corner. Well, southern California is
shattering along this network of faults and we are sweeping
around the corner. The end result is a mosaic of faults,
several 100.
This is a picture that we put together with the southern
California Earthquake Center, a group of academics that we fund
through the USGS that you see this whole network of faults. All
the little dots are the earthquakes we have recorded over
300,000 earthquakes in the last 20 years within the region.
Every one of these is capable of a significant earthquake.
Remember the length of the fault gives you the size of the
earthquake. Some of these are very, very long.
When I try to tell you how bad the worse one could be, it
is very limiting to try and pick only one event out of this
whole network of possibilities so I am going to show you two.
One is going to be the San Andreas. That is our biggest
earthquake. It is long enough to produce a magnitude 8. It is
also our most common earthquake. That fault is moving very
fast. They average 200 years apart and it has been 300 years
since the last one in southern California.
Then we are going to look at what happens if you put one in
right under this area. Let us start with the San Andreas. I
said intensity 8 was the level that we had at Whittier at
Whittier Narrows and we are looking up to intensity 10 on this
big earthquake. You can see it will cover a very large area.
This is a relatively simple level of modeling that we can
do that looks at just how big the earthquake is and what our
soil conditions are. It gives us a pretty bad picture. What is
really significant about the San Andreas Earthquake is actually
going to be its affect to the infrastructure.
Like Katrina we are going to have a situation where you
can't drive away from the disaster. In Whittier Narrows or in
North Ridge you could get in your car and drive for five
minutes and buy a hamburger and a bottle of water. In this
earthquake you are not going to be able to drive out of it
because all of southern California is going to be involved.
We are also going to have a disruption to the
infrastructure. On the left I have a picture of what happened
to a dirt road during an earthquake in Landers in 1992. Here is
a picture of what happened to a railway in Turkey. This is
going to happen to all of the freeways and railways coming into
Los Angeles. If you go in and look at the structure that we
have, every railroad coming into southern California crosses
the San Andreas fault.
Every major freeway except highway 101 to San Francisco
crosses the San Andreas fault. We are going to have those
levels of disruption, that 20 feet of offset in the road.
Also all of our gas pipelines, 90 percent of our
electricity transmission, all of our outside water. Every one
of those infrastructure systems cross the San Andreas and will
be disrupted when this earthquake happens.
Here is actually a photo. We have done a very detailed
imaging of the San Andreas fault and you can see here I-15
crossing the San Andreas fault which is shown by the yellow
line. Now imagine that you have moved one side with respect to
the other. You can see that we are going to have a disruption
to our freeways.
This is all something that could be addressed before the
earthquake. We could look at the way we are building our
freeways to not have the big berms on the side that will be
cutting off the roads when the offset happens. I will say the
Metropolitan Water District has been extraordinary in their
efforts to take this into account. The water systems have
considered this in great detail. All of our water storage is on
this side of the San Andreas fault. We have not done this so
much with the gas pipelines or with the transportation systems.
Now, let me look at what is going to happen when we
actually have the earthquake. I have got this movie going here.
One of the things that has happened in the last five years is
the scientists have developed new capabilities for really
modeling what is going on during the earthquake, a very
exciting time within the field. We are able to make models of
just how the ground is going to move.
This got started quickly on me and you see I stopped. Time
since the beginning of the earthquake 132 seconds. This
earthquake is going to be lasting for several minutes just
because the fault is so long. You can see the level of ground
motion going on. You can see out on the San Andreas it has
already stopped moving.
In Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley because of our
basins we are going to set up residences. We are able to model
these now with science. This has not yet been taken into
account on things like our building codes. This is one of the
directions that the U.S. Geological Survey is really interested
in going is being able to take these new advances in the
science and turn it into an end-to-end model.
Let us not just do the geology of the seismology. Let us
take it through into the engineering, into the economics, into
the emergency response. We have been in talks with the State
Office of Emergency Services of how to try and do a really big
picture modeling that will take this whole thing into account.
We have a lot more that we can tell you. One of the things we
have done is we have taken the data from the earthquake in
Alaska and put it into buildings.
This is a model of what would happen to buildings in the
San Fernando Valley if we had a 7.9 on the San Andreas fault.
The upper building that just came down is the one that is
designed to pre-1994 codes. The redesign that was put in is in
the bottom building and they stand up. This is new to be able
to get this capability of modeling and we really do want to
take it through to the complete picture.
The other type of earthquake we could look at that gets
pretty bad is to put one into the LA basin. There are a lot
more people and older buildings. Our biggest single issue is
that our building codes are not retroactive. Most of the city
was not built to the most modern building code. It was built to
much older standards and it becomes the responsibility of
individual builders to upgrade. There is our single largest
element of risk.
If we had this earthquake, again we do this sort of simple
model of where the earthquake is. This is the study that you
referred to. It ends up telling us that we are looking at a
quarter of a trillion dollars in losses and potentially the
majority of buildings. Many zip codes have the majority of
buildings destroyed by the event. This estimate came up with
450,000 homeless people being created by this earthquake.
Again, though, we have the capability of doing more
advanced modeling on this. The southern California Earthquake
Center has just put together a new simulation of what will
happen during this earthquake. We will watch it go by and watch
how the ground really starts moving. It starts moving right
near here and then propagates out across the Los Angeles basin.
I will tell you that when I watched what happened in
Katrina, we all learned different lessons. What I learned as a
lesson is that all of the science by itself isn't doing any
good. It is the science applied that is going to make a
difference. I had heard all about what would happen in Katrina
just like I have done this modeling of what is going to happen
here in Los Angeles. What we need to do is make sure that this
information goes into our planning and we get a better
cooperation between the scientists and the emergency managers.
I would say I think that we do remarkably well at that here
in southern California. I know all of the emergency managers
that are coming to speak here. But we could take this further
and get this used in a lot more effective way.
To summarize what the major impacts are likely to be, we
are talking about disruption to our infrastructure. Extremely
concerned about mid-rise construction built between the 1950s
and 1970s. Major building code change happened because of the
San Fernando earthquake but a lot of Los Angeles was built
before that earthquake happened.
We don't know what is going to happen to the high rises
because we have never put a modern building through a major
earthquake. And our dam systems. A lot of those are quite old
and that is where we could start getting the compounded
problems. The other lesson from Katrina is you go from disaster
to catastrophe with the secondary failures. If the levees had
stayed intact, it wouldn't have been so bad. We have that
potential here as well. The big secondary failures are fires if
we have the earthquake during a Santa Ana condition. We have
fires like this without any earthquake at all. Now let us have
an earthquake and 1,000 ignition sources. That to me is the
true nightmare scenario.
I am going to finish with one of the things that the U.S.
Geological Survey wants to do about this. As I have repeatedly
said, science alone can't stop the losses. If you look at the
combined picture, the possibility of interactions here in
southern California, you know, we joke about our four seasons
of wildfires, earthquakes, flood, and landslides. The reality
is those four disasters are major issues.
We need to come together with the community to use this to
make a decision so the USGS is proposing in Fiscal Year '07 to
begin an approach where we have an integrated project bringing
together the four disasters looking at a variety of different
science topics in terms of analyzing the San Andreas fault,
looking at a landslide warning system that we partner with the
National Weather Service. But the most important part is that
we are going to have a new process where we guide the research
directions with the input from our emergency managers and other
community partners.
We are going to be bringing together the different hazards
that we study within the U.S. Geological Survey and with the
community partners so that we are going to do it in a way that
they are actually wanting us to do. We are bringing it together
because we have--it would be much more efficient. We often use
the same data. We serve the same customers and we all have the
same goals that we are trying to get a safer southern
California.
And just with one last piece, there is a lot that we
already know. There is a lot that we can share. There is more
that we can do in the future. One of the things that we are
excited about is the possibility of actually getting the
information that an earthquake is underway before the
earthquake shaking arrives at the more distant locations.
You notice the San Andreas fault is outside the city and we
have the potential that once the earthquake begins the waves
will start traveling out and reach our seismic station so we
can know that the earthquake has begun before the shaking gets
to the city. If we can transmit that information quickly enough
through a satellite system, we can get this over, process the
data and actually get out a warning before the waves arrive.
Because of the geometry here in southern California, we have
the potential for about a half-minute warning.
You don't make decisions in a half a minute but you do have
the potential for things like automatically stopping train
systems, moving elevators to the nearest floor so that people
aren't trapped in an elevator, ringing an alarm in an operating
room so the surgeon is taking the scalpel outside of your
shoulder. It isn't physically in your body when the shaking
comes down.
Mr. Miller. That's a good example.
Dr. Jones. So there is a lot of places where science can
help us and it is our goal to try to get that used because I
know how bad it can be and they knew in Katrina as well. Thank
you.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you. Wow. I am glad I am going back to
Pennsylvania.
Dr. Jones. Some of us still live here.
Mr. Shuster. The first question I have for you, you can get
a 30-second warning but in your modeling of the predictability,
how far out can you--is that at all possible that you can say
it looks like it is going to happen or it may happen?
Dr. Jones. At this point there are a lot of pieces that we
can predict. I said this has been an exciting time. There have
been a lot of developments in understand the physics of
earthquakes. At this point we have no way at all in saying
there will be an earthquake 3:00 on Friday afternoon.
However, we are starting to develop recognized patterns
within it. In fact, there is a new center that is called the
Keck Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability,
a new grant from the Keck Foundation to our partners at the
southern California Earthquake Center to try and actually do
this. I think one of the most exciting things is we finally
have the tools to test predictions. People have been able to
claim predictions without actually being successful. We can't
do it now but it is an exciting time and there is a lot of
research going on that have the scientists pretty excited.
Mr. Shuster. When you see the plates starting to move, you
can't with any certainty or any--
Dr. Jones. There is no certainty. What we can do is say
that one earthquake makes another earthquake more likely.
Actually we have a webpage that gives you the probability of an
earthquake shaking in the next 24 hours. What that shows you is
what we know from a long-term geology which we do know very
well and that is not uniform and the probability that one
earthquake will trigger another which is a very common
phenomenon. Half the damage in Whittier Narrows actually
happened from the largest after shock. We can do that and we
are hoping to take that further but at this point we cannot.
Mr. Shuster. And you said 24 hours you can predict?
Dr. Jones. It is not that I can predict in 24 hours. When
one earthquake happens others become more likely and I can
quantify how likely that becomes and I can choose to express it
on any time period I want and we are doing a 24-hour map
because that is the most likely time for one earthquake to
trigger another one.
Mr. Shuster. Right.
Dr. Jones. But it is a decay with time. We have a little
bit. We are sort of on the edge of moving into things but right
now there is no prediction.
Mr. Shuster. You also mentioned you can't drive away from
this accident, this earthquake we are talking about.
Dr. Jones. I think that is the thing that most people don't
understand is that a big earthquake affects so much larger an
area. At North Ridge the fault was 10 miles across and in this
earthquake it is going to be 200 miles. It is such a different
scale of disaster. We have not seen it in the last 100
hundreds. 100 years ago we have the 1906 earthquake that
destroyed San Francisco and it did eliminate a major city of
the United States.
Mr. Shuster. What was the magnitude?
Dr. Jones. That was 7.9.
Mr. Shuster. And this one we are talking about would be
7.5?
Dr. Jones. 7.9. It's very similar and it is a different
scale than the earthquakes we have had in between.
Mr. Shuster. How frequently are you having the 5's and the
6's?
Dr. Jones. We average a magnitude of 5 about three times a
year somewhere in California. Most of the time they aren't near
people. We have had an earthquake that causes a billion dollars
worth of damage in modern terms about once every 10 to 15
years. We lose about a billion dollars every 10 to 15 years and
then we have a half-a-trillion dollar earthquake once every 100
years.
Mr. Shuster. You talked about the railroads and highways
and pipelines cross the San Andreas fault. Can you predict the
ones that are most suspectable to damage or are they just all?
Dr. Jones. That fault crossing issue, because the San
Andreas moves so much more rapidly than the others, we can
address that specific issue and we should. We could go in and
build beforehand ways that would make it easy to recover after
the event. They have done this on the water systems. We could
do it on the roads. The Department of Transportation in
California has invested over $6 billion since the Loma Prieta
earthquake in strengthening freeway bridges.
Mr. Shuster. When was that?
Dr. Jones. 1989. In the last 16 years they have spent over
$6 billion. The state keeps track of this. State investment and
earthquake mitigation has just hit $20 billion since 1990 so
California invests major resources in trying to reduce those
loses. We are a lot better off than if we hadn't done them.
Mr. Shuster. You said about the buildings, they are not
being retrofitted or is it cost prohibitive to retrofit these
buildings? I would think it would be.
Dr. Jones. There is no cost incentive. The way the system
works right now if a building owner said, ``I want to do the
responsible thing. I want to invest my building'' there is no
tax credits. There is no increase in rent because there is no
way of communicating to your tenants. I am also on the
California Seismic Safety Commission so I have gotten involved
in policy decisions.
One of the things that we have discussed there is imagine
if you had a rating system so that when you go to rent office
space you can be told that, ``This building is an A-rated
building. This is what more likely to be up and functioning and
you can recover your business after the earthquake happens.
Versus this one which hasn't done any retrofitting and it is a
C-rated building and we think the probability is that it is
going to be shut for a month for a month after the big
earthquake.''
Then the person who had invested in the retrofitting would
be able to get a return on his investment by charging more
rent. I would be willing to pay more to be sure of it being up
and running after the earthquake.
Right now we don't have any way of communicating the extra
safety you have achieved and, therefore, the market can't work
because the information isn't there.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you.
Mr. Miller.
Mr. Miller. There are a lot of questions. I have lived here
all my life virtually and I have seen many different types of
earthquakes. Maybe you can explain this. I have seen the ones
where you would just get a banging jolt. I have seen some that
you would get just vibrations. Others that you would get
shaking from one side to the other. Other ones you would get a
roll. You can actually see it roll. There was one in the '80s
where you could see the ground rolling. It was really weird.
Could you explain the differences and which are more dangerous?
Dr. Jones. A lot of what you are talking about is a
combination of how big the earthquake was and how far away you
are from the earthquake. When an earthquake happens you release
energy in a lot of different frequency bands. If you are very
nearby you feel them all and the one you notice is the jolt. If
you are a long ways away the high frequency has died off just
like if you hear a boombox going down the street, you can only
hear the bass notes.
Those low notes, low frequencies transmit farther. If you
are a long ways away from a big earthquake, all that is left is
the rolling motion. How dangerous it is actually depends on
what building you are in because the buildings respond to these
different frequencies. One of the scary things about the really
big earthquake is it is going to have a huge amount of that
rolling motion.
By the way, you get more low frequency on a bigger fault
just like you get more low frequency out of a cello instead of
a violin. You get all those low frequencies and they now travel
a long ways away. Really big buildings are going to be
vibrating in response to them. We don't know all about how that
is going to respond. That is why that model that just came out
of Cal Tech of the buildings showing those big buildings coming
down, it is because there is way more low frequency in there
than we had previously modeled.
It is not going to affect a small building. Your single-
family home is just going to ride that out, but the really big
building is going to respond to it. What you are feeling with
those different sensations is different parts of the frequency
band. Bigger earthquakes give you more long periods and those
long periods travel for a farther distance and you get
different combinations at different distances from different
sizes.
Mr. Miller. You commented on retrofit. I guess that raises
some red flags. New standards need to be adopted so we can
build accordingly but we required hospitals in California to
retrofit a few years ago. All it did was force some hospitals
out of business and other ones where they say they will have to
go out of business because you have market rate on anything.
There is a market rate on health care. There is a market rate
on renting an office, a building. Whatever you're leasing you
can only get X amount.
When you start rating them, then all you are impacting is
market rate where they drag down what somebody should receive
as a yield for rents and such. How might that really negatively
impact the market place because it is cost prohibitive in many
cases to go out and be able to spend the kind of money you need
to spend on a major building to retrofit.
Dr. Jones. I think that--
Mr. Miller. I believe in standards being changed but when
you go back to cause ratings of existing, I think you are
having a major impact on the market that is not going to be
resolved.
Dr. Jones. Well, the main thing that I would see is that
information is always of value so people could choose and say,
okay, and you definitely couldn't say this building is going to
fall down. The only thing you could say is that this building
has a higher standard. This is information that you can find if
you go and dig it out. If you go to rent a building and you go
to the building department, you can find out what were the
standards to which it was built.
Mr. Miller. People don't do that.
Dr. Jones. People don't do that.
Mr. Miller. But if you walk into an office building and say
this has an A rating, market is $230 per square foot. This has
a D rating and might be a $1.40 a square foot. That is what we
are doing is driving down what they can lease and the cost of
retrofitting some of these buildings that are only 20 or 25
years old is to such a degree that sometimes you are better off
just taking the building down and starting over. That is what
hospitals are finding out that aren't that old.
Dr. Jones. Right.
Mr. Miller. They said it would cost more to retrofit than
it would to bulldoze the building and build a brand new one.
That is my concern about ratings. I can see being proactive and
saying we need to go out in the future and change standards.
Those standards you are going to change gradually because of
the cost and the technology available to deal with the impact.
I think ratings we should look at cautiously. The main question
I have, though we talk about what impact we might face in
California, we have inadequate water storage.
I mean, if you look at the four reservoirs that are
proposed in California, they are all in northern California. We
need one to two more in the region. MWD's main line crosses
over the San Andreas. The main line we have on the California
aqueduct also crosses in numerous locations. A major earthquake
is going to shut both of those down and those are not going to
be put back up and running in a week or two when that happens.
What impact are we going to face not only on our water but
on our major dams in the area? Proto is an example. If that
lets go and these other dams let go, we have some huge
problems. What do you see as an impact in California just on
our water quality?
Dr. Jones. I think water is one of the largest issues we
are faced with in an earthquake. You also forgot the LA
aqueduct that comes down from Owens Valley. That also comes
through Collin pass. All of our outside water systems do cross
the San Andreas and will be offset.
When the California aqueduct was built so that when it hits
the San Andreas fault it actually then runs along it for a
while so that after the offset they could just sort of come in
and paste together back the ends and get it functioning again
so it has been designed to be able to get back up and running
quickly afterwards. As I said, all of the major water storages
on this side of the San Andreas are by design.
I understood that we had six months water supply stored on
this side of the San Andreas fault at the present level of
usage. This is one of the other really significant issues that
you look at is that the population of California is growing
dramatically and to what degree are these foresightful
activities that were taken earlier have been able to catch up
with the growth and population.
Mr. Miller. But getting the water to these areas is a
problem. I know MWD is trying to get a major 15-foot line down
to South Orange County because I know they don't have the
ability to transfer the water. Every one of our aqueducts has
major transmission lines that are going to also be disrupted.
It's scary what could happen if this whole system goes down in
our region.
I mean, if you look at not only the slides but the area I
live in has major liquification problems. When this starts
shaking this all turns into oatmeal. Everything just starts to
slide and ooze and reach water level basically. I have too many
questions.
Mr. Shuster. I will ask for another round.
Mr. Miller. Okay.
Mr. Shuster. You talked about the unstable soil. Is that a
widespread problem or is that localized? Can you say?
Dr. Jones. There are two levels of concern on soils. One is
the straight amplification. That is a simple thing where just
whatever the speed of the seismic wave is, if you come into a
slower rock the wave has to get bigger to carry the same amount
of energy when it is slowed down. That is where we have about a
factor of 5 under here and we have mapped it out for the
California area.
There is a separate issue of liquification which is where
you have lose sandy soil that compacts during shaking and if
there is water in the spaces where it is compacting, the water
pressure goes up because it can't flow away in the time of an
earthquake and it becomes temporarily quicksand. Quicksand does
a notably poor job of supporting buildings.
We tend to see buildings falling over when that happens.
Again, the state of California has mapped out the liquefaction
susceptibility. In the actual earthquake it will depend on what
the water table is. It's the one good side to droughts. It
lowers the water table.
Mr. Shuster. And that's what happens when the water table
rises into the soil.
Dr. Jones. Well, the soil compacts and that forces the
water pressure up so if there is water there--if there was no
water there you could compact the soil and it wouldn't make a
difference. If you really compact the soil you damage the
buildings above it. We can map it out.
One of the proposals actually under this new program is to
do what we call microzonation mapping, to take the information
we have about the shaking distribution or the soil distribution
or the soil distribution and turn that into a microzonation
map. Again, that has implications of what is going to be the
effect on property values. We have now said this is a more
susceptible region and that is a political issue that would
need to be addressed if we really came up with the detailed
maps. We could and have not yet.
Mr. Shuster. How much interaction do you have with FEMA and
the federal level when you are talking about issues like this.
Dr. Jones. We have had less communication in the last five
years. The headquarters is in San Francisco and I know the
earthquake specialist very well, FEMA's headquarters. In
southern California we tend to work more directly with the
state and the locals. The city and the county are the ones that
have the primary responsibility and we do a lot of work with
them on getting the detailed maps.
Mr. Shuster. That's a concern I have. If you have an
earthquake of this magnitude, the state and locals are going to
be overwhelmed and it's going to take the folks coming in, FEMA
coming in coordinating Nevada and Utah the surrounding states
to come in and help so it is important that there is
interaction.
Dr. Jones. I can say in North Ridge FEMA set up a disaster
field center in Pasadena and we had a scientist permanently
staffed there to provide the communication between the
scientists and FEMA. We maintain staffing in their field office
for six months.
Mr. Shuster. You mentioned that the fires were probably the
greatest concern.
Dr. Jones. Yes.
Mr. Shuster. Mr. Miller was talking about water and he said
if you have an earthquake and you have all these fires, it is
going to use up the water a lot quicker.
Dr. Jones. It would. The other problem would be the actual
distribution of the water. A lot of the water pipes are old and
we saw in North Ridge it doesn't liquefy if there is no water
in the soil but the soil still collapses and that damaged a lot
of pipes in North Ridge. There is rather a famous picture with
a water fountain with a fire fountain in the middle because the
gas pipeline and the water pipeline broke at the same time.
That is also going to impair our ability to fight the fires.
Mr. Shuster. What is your level of concern with the dams in
the region?
Dr. Jones. The newer dams I feel pretty good about. I mean,
we have had strong standards in California for a long time but
the idea that we change the building codes and go forward has
been the philosophy for the last seven years. Especially the
newer construction now is built to very high standards. There
are older structures especially in the San Gabriel mountains
that potentially have flood plains coming down here that could
definitely be addressed in a systematic study.
Mr. Shuster. Is there potential for--I don't know if you
are familiar with the Johnstown Flood in Pennsylvania in 1889.
Dr. Jones. Oh, yeah.
Mr. Shuster. Is there the potential for that type of--you
have the earthquake, a dam breaks, and then you have massive
loss of life because of--are the dams out there big enough?
Dr. Jones. Yeah. There was a significant concern. Actually
we came very close to that in 1971. That San Fernando
earthquake damaged a dam in the San Fernando Valley with 50,000
people in the flood plain below it. It was close. It had been
6.9 instead of 6.7 the estimates are that it would have gone.
Mr. Shuster. I have one more question and then I'll turn it
over to Mr. Miller again for questions if he has any. Are most
of your dams out here constructed of concrete or earthen dams
or a little bit of both? You don't know?
Dr. Jones. I am a geologist, not an engineer. I know we
have both but I am not sure of the relative distribution.
Mr. Shuster. Okay.
Mr. Miller. I see Councilman Greg Norton back in the room.
I would like to thank you for your hospitality. I hope I am
sitting your chair and wearing it out.
Mr. Norton. You are a little far right but that is all
right.
Mr. Miller. Story of my life. We talked about the water.
Have you done any extensive surveys on that?
Dr. Jones. No. Definitely not personally because--
Mr. Miller. Maybe that is our next panel.
Dr. Jones. I am not sure that anyone has quite done--this
is where I was saying that we had been talking with OES about
trying to bring the pieces together. One of our goals was to
try to do a real end-to-end scenario. Let us take it all the
way through and consider all of these aspects and that will
show us where are the relative weaknesses.
Again, that cost effectiveness issue. Maybe we are focusing
on parts that are very expensive and aren't going to get us as
much return and we don't really know because we haven't tried
to look at the complete picture. There have been individual
studies done on the water issue. MWD has done a lot of work.
What we were talking about is trying to do it as a community.
I can proselytize really easily here. The other Katrina
lesson that I took home was that it was a systemic failure that
took us to the different level. That is the problem that we do
face here. It is one thing to say, ``Okay, here is the water.''
What if the water causes more fires? Or you want the
electricity to be up and running. Edison can't sell to
customers that aren't up and functioning but if they aren't up
and functioning, these other businesses can't recover so there
aren't isolated problems.
It is how the system fits together that is really going to
determine how we respond to this. I think that is one thing
that this community has seen because we, unfortunately, have a
lot of experience working together. We have had plenty of
earthquakes and other disasters but it means that we have the
connections and the relationships to get out there and start
doing this broader picture approach.
A lot of us have gotten together and said this is really
what we need to do is go from the beginning all the way through
the economics and through everything and see where the relative
weaknesses are. Until we do that I don't think we know. We can
recognize lots of potential problems. Which one is going to be
our worse we don't know.
Mr. Miller. You mentioned electricity and such. I know
Edison and LA County Water and Power, most of their major
transmission lines are very close to the San Andreas fault. I
mean, it is amazingly close. What kind of destruction to you
see in that?
Dr. Jones. I am not sure. There are several variables that
come in there. One is the level of how much we can do between
now and then. I mean, there are a lot of transmission and major
installations near the San Andreas fault and something like 90
percent of the electricity for Los Angeles has to cross the San
Andreas fault somewhere to get in here.
I have also seen towers literally offset by three meters of
offset during an earthquake still up and functioning and
transmitting energy. There have been some very good engineering
solutions applied. I am not sure where the level of disruption
is going to be on that. I think also a lot depends on whether
or not we trigger secondary fires because electrical systems
are also quite suspectable to the fire damage. It is just going
to be really bad luck if we have it during a Santa Ana
condition. That is when it is going to go awful.
Mr. Miller. If we have the big one we are just in serious
trouble. That is all we can say at this point. Every major
resource, transportation, utility, all our infrastructure
basically is going to be impacted in a major way. We have
talked about water, transmission lines, but all our
communities' major water mains are going to blow. House
connections are going to pull apart.
It is going to be unbelievable to try to get water
anywhere, to try to get transportation, goods and services
moving. We are going to be in a similar situation as Katrina.
How do you get goods and services in the area when our
overpasses and our bridges and highways are torn apart? How do
you get into the communities?
Dr. Jones. I believe there are engineering solutions that
could be done ahead of time to reduce the losses. It is not a
technical decision. It really is a social decision on what is
worth spending beforehand to reduce the losses after. We do
have the information about probably what the damages are right
now. We have the information of how likely these are to happen
over the next 50 years. Then we have to make a decision on what
we are willing to spend beforehand. We could do it. There are
lots of technical solutions that could be added that haven't
yet been done.
Mr. Miller. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Dr. Jones.
Dr. Jones. Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. One last question. I guess the final question
is it is not a matter of if it happens, but when it happens.
Dr. Jones. It is absolutely when. It may not happen in our
lifetime but it is absolutely when. We aren't stopping plate
tectonics.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you again and appreciate it. You are
very informative and we appreciate you being here today.
Dr. Jones. Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. Now I will call our second panel which is
comprised of a number of state and local officials who
individually have responsibility for disasters of all types
here in California. Why don't you come up and we will take a
couple-minute break here while they get seated and stand in
recess for just a couple minutes.
[Whereupon, the Subcommittee recessed to reconvene the same
day.]
Mr. Shuster. The Committee will come to order. Joining us
today we have Mr. Henry Renteria, Director of the California
Office of Emergency Services. Mr. Ellis Stanley is the
Emergency Manager for the City of Los Angeles. Ms. Ann-Marie
Hayashi, Emergency Services Assistant for the City of Whittier.
Did I get it right?
Ms. Hayashi. Hayashi.
Mr. Shuster. Hayashi. I am sorry. Since your written
testimony has been made a part of the record, the Subcommittee
requests that all witnesses limit their oral testimony to five
minutes. There will be time for questions after all the
witnesses have offered their prepared remarks. We will start
with Mr. Renteria. Thank you for being here today. You may
proceed.
TESTIMONY OF HENRY RENTERIA, DIRECTOR, CALIFORNIA OFFICE OF
EMERGENCY SERVICES; ELLIS M. STANLEY, SR., CEM, CITY OF LOS
ANGELES EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS DEPARTMENT; ANN-MARIE HAYASHI,
CITY OF WHITTIER EMERGENCY SERVICES
Mr. Renteria. Thank you, Chairman Shuster. Good morning and
good morning to the members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for
the opportunity to be here today to address you on this very
important topic.
Let me start off by since you are in southern California we
arranged for good weather so I am going to give you a movie
now. We will start with a very short video that talks about our
emergency management system in California which I think will
set the stage for our other speakers also.
[Whereupon, a video was presented.]
Mr. Renteria. Okay. The last time I showed this video at
another hearing, one of the Committee members asked me when he
saw the levels of response up there, field, local operational
area and state, they noticed that the federal government was
not on there and there is a reason for that. The way our system
is designed here in California and in my 30 years of experience
as an emergency manager, FEMA, the federal government, has
never been a response agency.
It has been a recovery agency. It has been an agency that
comes in to support state and local government after the event
happens. So having said that, one of the things that I think
this Committee can help us with is embedding FEMA into the
response mode if, in fact, that is the direction they are going
to go because that is one of the things that I think they have
been criticized about but, at the same time, they are not a
response agency.
Response happens at the local level. The local government,
city, county, special district, and the state are the ones that
first respond to an event. The federal government, even though
we do use federal assets, national guard, other federal
agencies that may be in the area, we cannot look upon the
federal government as a response agency in the immediate
aftermath of an event. I think that needs to be kept in mind.
Having said that, we have learned a lot of major lessons in
the history of disasters that we have had in California.
California is no stranger to disasters. In my 19 years as
Emergency Manager for the City of Oakland I had eight
Presidentially declared disasters in Oakland and Alameda County
including the 1991 fire storm, the '89 Loma Prieta earthquake,
and several winter storms and other fires in that area.
California has learned from its disasters. I have always
said that experience is not what happens to you. Experience is
what you do with what happens to you. We have taken the lessons
learned from our events and incorporated them to prepare for
the next one.
I also want to point out that one of the problems we have
in responding to disasters and preparing for them, and I think
I can say this for other states in the United States also, is
that we are very prepared for what I call high-frequency and
high-risk events. Things that happen all the time that we are
ready to respond to.
For example, wild land urban fires, regular fires that
firefighters respond to, hazardous materials incidents,
transportation accidents. Even moderate earthquakes I think we
do very well because they happen to us all the time. We train
for them but we also respond to them. By responding to them we
get that hands-on experience.
What we are not ready for is what I call the high-risk,
low-frequency events and that Katrina was a high-risk, low-
frequency event. The earthquake Dr. Jones just described to
you, again, is a high-risk, low-frequency event. We haven't
experienced those things yet so major lessons are coming out of
that. You can train for those types of things but until you
have actually gone through one it is not the same.
What we have learned from these events, especially with
Katrina, things that are coming out now, we can also apply to
lessons that we have learned. We still have issues and problems
across the country and also in California with issues of
evacuation. The evacuation of large populations is a problem.
We have never done that before. Even if we do evacuate large
populations, where are we going to put them? Mass care and
sheltering of those populations.
We have a problem with special needs populations. The
elderly, the frail, the poor, the non-English speaking. Those
are all major problems we need to face right now. Alerting and
warning, ability to get rapid, concise information, confirmed
rapid concise information to not only our first responders but
also to the public. We need to look at our alerting and warning
systems and how we incorporate those all the way from the state
level down to the local level.
And constant public education. We do a lot of public
education for people to understand the hazard that they live
with. We all move to areas where there are hazards. I don't
care where you live in the United States you are subject to
some kind of hazard. The object is, again, to educate people
about your surroundings, educate people about what you can do
to prepare for that type of hazard and, more importantly,
survive.
Ten years ago we adopted the California Standardized
Emergency Management System which you just saw in the video.
CSEMS has been proven to work. We have used it over the last 10
years. It is a system that was born out of the Incident Command
System of the Fire Service. ICS is a perfect model to use when
you have multiple agencies responding to an event that requires
multi-agency command, centralized decision making, and the
utilization of many resources from different areas.
We learned some major lessons in the 1991 fire storm. Like
I said, that happened during my watch. One thing I have always
said is never burn down an elected official's home because it's
going to result in legislation. That's what happened with
CSEMS. One of our elected official's home burned down and the
next thing we knew we had that legislation but it has been a
God send for us in California because it has now organized and
provided an emergency management system that can be used not
only at the local level but all the way up through the state.
And also, as the video mentioned, just in this last year
the National Incident Management System has been adopted by the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security. NIMS was patterned after
CSEMS so that is a high compliment to the state of California
that the federal government used that system.
Mutual aid is also a major component of CSEMS and NIMS. Our
mutual aid system has been in place in California for several
decades and has proven again that our fire and law services,
which utilize the system more than anyone else, has shown how
that system works and neighbor helping neighbor. The ability
for one city to ask request from another city or the county or
even the state to allow resources to be sent to the impacted
area.
One thing I do want to point out is that California is very
resource rich. We have a lot of first responders, a lot of
resources in California. A catastrophic event like a southern
California earthquake, yes, we would need help from other
outside sources but the first wave of assistance would come
from northern California from our fire departments and police
departments up in the north. They would be the quickest to
respond.
In this past administration Governor Schwarzenegger signed
legislation for the state of California to be entered into the
Emergency Management Assistant Compact, EMAC. EMAC is a mutual
aid system for state helping state. California now is part of
that system. Forty-nine of the 50 states are part of that.
That allows us to request assistance from Nevada, Arizona,
or Texas if we needed to. We utilized the system in Katrina.
California sent 6,500 personnel to the Gulf Coast to support
the response and recovery efforts. By having EMAC as part of
the state system that increases our ability to prepare.
Training obviously is something that cannot be taken
lightly. You train until you get it right and then you train
again. Training is the backbone of our system to respond but,
again, training and actual response also work hand in hand. The
ability to continue to have these types of training and also to
have all-hazards approach to training, not just a specialized
type of approach, will help our disciplines across the board.
The consequences of a disaster regardless of whether it's an
earthquake, a terrorist event, a flood, the consequences are
the same. People's lives are impacted. People get killed.
People are hurt. Property is destroyed.
Communication. It has been said enough but communication is
the key to what we do here. Not only radio communication, the
ability for first responders to talk to each other and talk to
the central command post, but also the ability for emergency
managers to communicate with each other, for elected officials
to get up to date information on what is happening so they can
respond to their constituents. Communication is a major key of
what we do and major component of our systems.
We do have problems that have been identified in the arena
of interoperability. We are working closely with our local
governments to develop some systems that will support the state
of California but I think this is a problem that is widespread
throughout the country. We do need to address this issue of
interoperability. We have identified some solutions at the
local level. There are some real success stories in California,
San Diego, here in the Los Angeles area.
Also in the Bay area some local governments have joined
together in a mutual cooperation and identified some systems
that we call the Gateway Project. Gateways are the black boxes
that you have heard about where radio systems can literally be
plugged in in order for responders to talk to each other. We
need to spread that not only state wide but also throughout the
nation.
I talked a little bit about resource acquisition. Of course
needing to identify where the resources are in a timely and
efficient manner is imperative. It is one thing to know where
resources are but how quickly can they be deployed and how
quickly can they be sent and arrive where they need to be.
Databases need to be kept updated which are crucial to the type
of work that we do. If we did have warning of an impending
event such as a Katrina, resources then can be deployed and
prestaged in areas where they can best first respond.
I also need to talk about people. Not only do people become
victims of disasters but people also are the true first
responders. When something happens in that first few seconds
and minutes after the event, it is neighbor helping neighbor.
It is people helping each other and the more skills that they
have and the more awareness that they have the more lives that
are going to be saved.
When Loma Prieta hit in the Bay area and that freeway
collapsed, the first people who were crawling all over that
collapsed structure were people from the neighborhood. It was a
noble and proud and courageous effort but it was also not a
very wise effort because they didn't have the training to do
what needed to be done and they were putting themselves in more
harm's way.
Programs have been put in place to help train citizens and
employees to be more prepared and we need to concentrate and
put more emphasis on that type of training and that type of
assistance because our neighbors and our co-workers are really
the true responders.
Some lessons learned. While we plan for the next disaster,
we can't always just look at the last disaster, although there
are some very valuable lessons there. There are things like you
saw today in Dr. Jones' presentation. There is new information
coming out every day. Earthquake science to me is a work in
progress and we have made a lot of progress in it.
Hearing Dr. Jones brings to mind from the first time I
heard her that earthquakes don't kill people, buildings do and
infrastructures do. The more you know about your surroundings
and the more we do to invest in the mitigation of these types
of events, the better off we are all going to be.
Let me close by also just pointing out that since September
11th I think this country has invested quite a lot of time,
energy, and money into preparing us for terrorism. I applaud
that effort but we also need to be reminded that we haven't
really invested that much in all-hazards planning. The amount
of money that has been allocated for preparedness for
terrorism, I think, has also hurt us a little bit, not a little
bit but a lot, in dealing with the natural hazards and
disasters that happen all the time.
Since September 11th there have been no terrorist events in
California. There have been six presidentially declared
disasters since September 11th. What do we need to do now?
Well, mitigation is another arena that I think you can help us
in. There is a saying that for every dollar you spend on
mitigation you say three dollars in recovery cost. That has
been a proven fact.
The efforts that our local emergency managers are having to
deal with to deal with the emphasis of where the resources are
going to come from to continue their programs is important to
keep in mind. While the state continues to work with our local
emergency managers and the local governments to make sure that
a system like CSEMS is in place, it gives us the reassurance
that some of the things you saw in Katrina I really doubt would
happen in California because of the systems we have in place.
Are we as prepared to deal with anything? No. There are
things that we still need to be prepared for. The lessons
coming out of Katrina are going to just improve our plans and
preparedness and allow us the ability to be better prepared in
the future. So, again, I have a lot of confidence in our
system. I have a lot of confidence in our first responders and
in our emergency managers and state. They do have a proven
system that works.
With that I'll close and entertain any questions if you
have any.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much. Appreciate that extensive
and thorough testimony. Your reputation precedes you. You are
one of the best in the country in emergency management. Thank
you for being here also.
Mr. Renteria. Thank you.
Mr. Shuster. Mr. Stanley, you may proceed.
Mr. Stanley. Thank you, Mr. Shuster, and welcome to
southern California, and Mr. Miller. I am glad to be here. My
name is Ellis Stanley. I am the General Manager for the
Emergency Preparedness Department for the City of Los Angeles.
I have over 30 years of experience in emergency management
starting on the eastern coast, Mr. Shuster, dealing with little
things like fixing facilities, hurricanes, chemical issues,
etc.
I move from North Carolina to Georgia working in Atlanta
with major events and things like Olympics, etc. Now I am here
in the second largest city in the country. That is only
important from the standpoint that it is all about disasters
being local. It has to do with development partnerships no
matter what size that jurisdiction is and being able to build a
cultural preparedness at the local level and that permeates up.
That is emphasized, as Mr. Renteria said, best, I think, in
California with the CSEMS and now with NIMS which is mimicking
that CSEMS process that we had to say that we can work, our
tools will interact, our training is overlaid, etc. It is
important that we have that type of partnership and
relationship.
Mr. Renteria really hit on the basis of the emergency
preparedness philosophy and all those things. What I would like
to do is just talk with you about a few of the things that we
have just done locally in the past two weeks. Last week we had
a major exercise with the City of Los Angeles with Burbank, the
two airports, looking at how we could deal with emergencies
that may occur at those airports.
Why that is important is now we look at things, as Henry
indicated, from an operational area perspective, from an urban
area perspective. Last year we had a MetroLink train
derailment. Disasters have an odd way of just not reading our
plans at all. This train had the audacity to have an accident
right on the border of two cities. It was a seamless response.
Glendale and the City of Los Angeles came together and
responded. What happened equally is those outside agencies,
those public and private hospitals, those 15 hospitals that
were folded into the process seamlessly to be able to take
those patients and to resolve that incident. Fortunately, only
11 people lost their lives but it could have been hundreds of
people in that situation. It is important that we not only look
at what is in our boundaries but also look at what is next to
us.
To that end we do an emergency management workshop every
day--every year. I wish we could do it every day. We do it
every year. The workshop we take 150, 170 people off site.
Usually it is up at Lake Arrowhead. This past year we had the
17 contiguous cities to Los Angeles to have them in our
training, in our planning, in our exercising so that we
understand what capabilities we have, what gaps we have, and
how those capabilities and gaps can be shared and how the gaps
can be filled. It is important that we do that.
Many of the smallest cities cannot man or spend the money
for an urban search and rescue team. The city and county of Los
Angeles can so it is important that we understand how and when
those resources will be called upon. It is important that we
have a very strong mutual aid.
Also yesterday, as a matter of fact, we had an executive
level training that was conducted by Naval Graduate School.
It's from the high sheriff to the department heads to sit
around the table and look at what is missing, if we have a
scenario how are we capable of dealing with it.
One of the issues we are also dealing with this week is
pandemics. We understand whether it is a biohazard created by
men or whether it is something like the bird flu we have to be
able to do those things that we have a capability to handle.
For example, it is very little that we as a city can do about
producing the necessary vaccines for this particular bird flu
but we can deal with the need to be able to determine how we
are going to prophilax our people and we do that through
exercises, etc.
My last comment, since I have got the red light, is that
the private sector is another one of those partners in
preparedness that we do a lot of work with. In our emergency
operation center we actually have a seat in there for the
private sector. They provide 85 percent of the critical
infrastructure resources in this country. It is important that
we have a way to plug them into the process both beforehand,
during, and after the fact.
I will be glad to answer any questions at this time.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you, Mr. Stanley. Just one point to
clarify. The City of Los Angeles, how much does it make up of
the County of Los Angeles?
Mr. Stanley. Approximately a third. There are about 4
million people, 500 square miles in the City of Los Angeles.
The County of Los Angeles is 4,200 square miles, 10 million
people.
Mr. Shuster. Are we in the County of Los Angeles?
Mr. Stanley. We are in the County of Los Angeles.
Mr. Shuster. All right.
Ms. Hayashi.
Ms. Hayashi. I would like to welcome you to Whittierand
thank you for inviting me to testify today on behalf of the
City. I was asked to testify about what the federal government
could have done better to assist the Cityof Whittier after the
1987 Whittier Narrows Earthquake.A little background on the
earthquake: there were actually two large earthquakes, as you
have already heard.
The first on Thursday, Oct. 1st (magnitude 5.9), and then a
large aftershock on Sunday, Oct. 4th (magnitude 5.5). It felt
like two totally separate earthquakes. That is how strong the
aftershock was. Together, the two quakes caused $78 million in
damages to Whittier houses and businesses.
In order to arrive at some recommendations as to how the
federal government could have provided better assistance to the
city after the earthquake, I'd like to give a short background
on Whittier's emergency preparedness activities prior to the
earthquake. The assignment of emergency services coordinator
had been given to the then-human resources director, who took
the extra assignment very seriously and designed various full-
scale disaster exercises for City employees and other agencies.
There was no statewide standardized emergency management
system yet. CSEMS did not exist at the time, but Whittier and
other California cities had been required by the state to adopt
Emergency Services Ordinances and prepare emergency plans.
Compared to New Orleans with its different levels of
government such as wards and townships, Whittier's governmental
structure is simple. We have one City Council and it is
supported by the commissions and committees. By declaring a
local emergency within four hours after the quake, our City
Council was able to initiate theprocess for making financial
grants and loans and other resources available to the citizens
of our community.There were several key issues, such as the
need for many more building inspectors. The City was fortunate
in many ways:
1) The state had registered volunteers to assistwith
building inspections;
2) The earthquake happened right after the annual
convention of the International Conference of Building
Officials, so the connections our building staff had made at
the convention were fresh and resulted in manybuilding
officials offering assistance;
3) Also we have many large cities nearby and they also sent
their building inspectors to supplement our small crew.
Most important of all, there was not the widespread
regional damage that Hurricane Katrina caused, so we had local
resources available that would have been tied up in a regional
disaster. Adequate staffing was never an issue.
City Hall and Police Department employees all reported for
work, and the police were able to immediately cordon off the
devastated Uptown area. City clean-up was facilitated by the
fact that most of our residents were able to remain in their
homes and therefore were able to do their own cleanup and even
volunteer to assist others.
So what did the federal government do in 1987, and could
things have been improved? The Whittier City Council and
employees understood that disasters happen at the local level,
so that's the level at which we need to be prepared. Key people
who were in positions of responsibility at the time of the
Whittier Narrows Earthquake agree that Whittier was not waiting
for the federal government's assistance; we had no expectations
for, and were not dependent upon, immediate federal response.
Our former Building and Safety Director said, ``There was no
lack of assistance from FEMA, but we contacted FEMA only for
advice, for example, onreimbursement parameters.''
FEMA, state OES and the Small Business Administration did
set up financial aid facilities in town, but the strongest
recommendation for improvement I encountered was that the
Disaster Assistance Center should have been set up sooner (it
was set up ten days after the first earthquake, and only after
much communication from City officials to our congressman as to
the urgency of the matter.) Other comments include:
1) FEMA should have sent at least a few representatives
immediately after the earthquake to observe the damage and send
firsthand comments back to D.C. The geographic distance between
Whittier and D.C. was quite great so, therefore, FEMA was
removed from the event and had a different perspective of the
destruction that had occurred;
2) The Disaster Assistance Center was limited in terms of
the type and levels of aid it could offer. Many senior citizens
on fixed incomes did not qualify for the loans and grants
available because of the compressed repayment periods on the
loans and the very high minimum payment amounts;
3) There was poor coordination between funding sources such
as insurance companies and governmental assistance; and
4) Earthquake victims found the forms difficult to complete
and desired more assistance from either volunteers or
professionals. I would like to add that the FEMA
representatives who did come to Whittier were very professional
and extremely helpful.
As devastating as the Whittier Narrows Earthquake was for
Whittier, the damage was intense in an area much smaller than
the area affected by Hurricane Katrina. A more comparable
situation would be an earthquake with widespread regional
destruction, such as most of southern California. We would most
assuredly be looking for more state and federal assistance in
that situation, with all local resources stretched extremely
thin.
Such a regional earthquake would also cause widespread
damage to major components of regional infrastructure,
something that did not happen in 1987. One thing that this
points to, the difference between what happened then and what
can happen here is the importance of perhaps our final
recommendation and that is coordinated training and exercises
for what Mr. Renteria describes as the very high-impact and
low-frequency events. We do practice frequently at the local
level coordinating at the operational area level and it would
be a good idea to extend that beyond and be better prepared for
regional events.
As mentioned earlier, even though shelters were necessary,
the vast majority of Whittier residents were able to remain in
their homes, return to their jobs, and clean up the rubble.
They were able to volunteer in numbers to assist their fellow
citizens. All this is unlike what happened in the immediate
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, andwould not necessarily be the
case in a more massive, involved California earthquake.
I would like to thank the Subcommittee for inviting the
City to testify, and thank your staff for their help. I am
happy to answer any questions you have, or help find the
answers for you at any time.
Mr. Shuster. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
I have a couple of questions. First I want to say just how
important it is to be in California because when you look at
emergency management across the nation, the two states that the
federal government should be looking to is California and
Florida because you have extensive experience. Not only
extensive experience but successful extensive experience. You
have the resources and I think you have the structure in place.
My first question is, if you would, the three of you, and
it appears we have tremendous experience with the three of you
over a period of time, can you look back over the last 10 years
and grade FEMA 10 years ago, five years ago, and the last two
years to give me a sense of where you think FEMA has gone over
that period. So 10 years, five years. Ten years ago would be
the middle of the '90s, five years would be pre-9/11, and then
the last two years when FEMA has gone into DHS. Give me a sense
of where you think it has gone.
Mr. Renteria. I will be glad to start. My experience with
FEMA started in 1985 when I first came on into the field of
emergency management. I still feel that their role has not
changed. They are not a response agency and I think that is
unfair to tag them as such.
On the other hand, I think FEMA's high point, their high-
water mark, was in the '90s when they took on the role of
mitigation. I think when FEMA really grasped mitigation by the
collar and said, ``We are going to do something in this country
about that,'' I think that was the high point in my experience
in dealing with FEMA. They were always a responsive agency when
it came to dealing with the recovery efforts. The relationship
that you set up with them beforehand also helped through their
regional offices.
Again, I think their high mark was the mitigation program.
I will point specifically to Project Impact. Project Impact was
one of those programs that put actual dollars into preparing
the community for the next event. Also as a result of that,
there are now, and you are still funding, the hazard mitigation
planning grants.
After a disaster there is a percentage of the total cost
that are set aside for mitigation programs. That has been a God
send to us. We can show you specific examples throughout the
state of how mitigation money has been used to prevent another
disaster from happening. That was the high point.
I think the down turn has been in these last few disasters
where the focus has been on FEMA as a response agency. ``Why
weren't you there? Why didn't you have the troops on the
ground? Why didn't you have the resources there?'' That is
really a local responsibility. By local I mean the cities, the
counties, and the state. It is our responsibility to deal and
prepare for those types of things. Do we need FEMA to be part
of that team? Absolutely. I really would urge us to look at how
FEMA can be put into the response mode if that is the direction
they are going to take.
One of the disadvantages that FEMA has is they are not all
things to all people everywhere at the same time. There is an
assumption made that FEMA has these warehouses somewhere full
of supplies. That is not the case. There needs to be a
coordinated effort to provide those resources where needed.
Also I will caution let us not go back to the Cold War era
where we started stockpiling basements of schools with supplies
that had no plan for replenishing those supplies. They got
outdated. In fact, we are still digging some of that stuff up
and throwing it away because that was a program that was failed
from the very beginning.
Again, what can we do about that? One of the things we are
doing in the State of California, and Ellis has been working
very closely with us on this, is developing pubic/private
partnerships, bringing the private sector into this mold and
having them be part of the solution and not part of the
problem.
Companies and businesses that are housed in California have
resources as you saw in Katrina. Pre-existing agreements with
private industry I think would help us get resources quicker.
Can FEMA help us with that? I think there are some issues there
that the federal government has to address and we will go
through FEMA to address them. I am sorry that I ran over but I
think those are some of the things that are more exciting.
Mr. Shuster. Mr. Stanley.
Mr. Stanley. I have fortunately, or unfortunately, have
been around at the birthing of FEMA in 1979 by President Carter
and I have seen FEMA grow. I have seen it at the best of times
and I have seen it at the worst of times. I have seen it back
when Hugo and they kind of fell on their face in that response
to a hurricane and they did a much, much better job with Andrew
when that was a major catastrophic event on the eastern coast.
I have seen it with generals at its head. I have seen it
with other political appointees at its head. I have never seen
it better than when it had an emergency manager at its head to
be able to run that organization as a professional organization
with competency in the areas of emergency management.
It is said that where you stand is determined by where you
sit. It sat at the cabinet level and was able to with very
strong, strong relationships with the President and the cabinet
able to implement and get things done in a way that bought
pride to the citizens and pride to the government in that
response. At the worst of times I think we have all seen that
in our recent times when it fumbled the ball. I think it comes
down to about having strong competent leadership no matter
where it sits in the organization.
Mr. Shuster. Ms. Hayashi.
Ms. Hayashi. Well, I don't have the breadth of experience
and exposure to FEMA that my colleagues have so if you did
compare FEMA's response to the Whittier Earthquake and then its
very recent response to the January and February storms of last
year, I would say that the comments hold that I made in terms
of the Whittier Earthquake. FEMA was slow to respond with a
disaster assistance center and because we had so many of our
residents experiencing damage to their homes and some of them
displaced there was a great need for that.
With the more recent federally declared disasters, and
there were two of them, I can't fault FEMA at all. They were
here in a very short period of time. It is a little different.
We didn't have people displaced from their homes but they were
here in full force, extensive field visits, working on project
worksheets in a very timely manner.
The Hazard Mitigation Program Mr. Renteria mentioned was a
great plus because you don't want to necessarily put things
back the way they were pre-disaster. Often times there are many
better ways to construct something and hazard mitigation
projects recognize that and fund that so we are appreciative of
that effort.
Mr. Shuster. I am going to turn it over to Mr. Miller for
questions. Before I do that, I want to make a statement. As we
are going to move through Congress legislation, and I don't
know what it is going to look like at the end whether you take
FEMA out or leave FEMA in DHS, but that whole structure is
going to change, it is absolutely critical that you folks at
the local and state level are communicating with us because as
things happen in Washington sometimes, Congress has one
thought, the administration another and we get into this
headbutting.
It is so important to hear from you for you and to engage
your members of Congress and talk to them about what your
experience has been and what you would like to see because FEMA
should not be--we are not going create a national fire company
that sits around waiting. We have to depend on first responders
locally and at the state level to do that but they need to be
involved at all levels whether it is preparedness, response,
recovery, or mitigation.
I would urge you to engage your members of Congress. Mr.
Miller comes from a background and has been here in Whittier
and has seen it firsthand but I don't think most members of
Congress have that experience. I know I didn't, until I sat on
this Committee, really develop a better understanding. So I
would encourage you to engage fully in this debate.
Mr. Miller.
Mr. Miller. Thank you. I have attended numerous hearings in
Washington on Katrina. Not on the Transportation Committee but
on services we have HUD, Housing, and such. Your testimony is
refreshing and I have to say I agree with it. There has been a
lot of fingerpointing that has gone on. I agree with your
statement that the feds are to assist and locals are to be the
first responders.
We witness that here in California time and time again. Two
years ago we had the major fire that started in Lava Creek in
the San Bernardino County and went all the way through LA
County. I watched all the local agencies of the state get
involved and do a wonderful job. The federal government came in
and assisted. We just recently had a fire in the Cleveland
National Forest in my district.
It was amazing all the local fire agencies. It is like a
brotherhood out there, fire and policemen. They just all
cooperate from city to city and county to county. I called out
to the fire agencies and said, ``Can we assist you?'' They
said, ``We are doing just fine. The local resources are all we
need.''
There was a huge disconnect in Katrina between the local
and state government. Some of your states that we witnessed
that testified said, ``We are in charge. We are in control. We
are dealing with it. We are going to need some help in
infrastructure getting the water systems back, our highways
back in place, electrical services, those type of basic
needs.''
The federal government comes in after the fact, as you so
stated, and assists but this mutual aid that we have in
California works very, very well. I wish more states would use
what we do here as a pilot program for their states because it
does work. Then the federal government has never moved rapidly
on anything.
The only thing we really do well is fight wars and some
people argue we don't even do that well anymore. We are a huge
elephant. We don't move like the local government does or state
government. We are responsible for a much larger area and to
set up, like you said, local agencies and warehouses just
doesn't work. Everything is antiquated before it is even
utilized.
I guess, Mr. Renteria, my question is how do you feel the
federal government fits into California's emergency management
plan in response? How do you see them fitting in?
Mr. Renteria. Well, again, I view them as a partner in the
recovery and also a partner in resource providing, providing
resources to us that we may not have in California and those
are federal resources. Before we can even get to that stage, I
need to know what they have. I need to know what they have to
deploy, where it is, and assist them in the process for how to
request it.
Because we do have systems in California that makes that
type of request almost seamless through our mutual aid system
and through our ability to respond to neighbor helping
neighbor, I would like to set something up like that with the
federal government, too, without expecting everything and all
things from them. I know the limitations everybody has. To make
them come to the table to sit with us as we do with out locals,
FEMA should be at the table with us when we are planning our
plans here, responding to things here. It seems like for
whatever reason that has not happened in the last few years.
Mr. Miller. So you don't think the feds are integrated in
California's disaster response at this point the way they
should be?
Mr. Renteria. The way they should be. Correct. I think they
need to be brought into the fold.
Mr. Shuster. Mr. Stanley.
Mr. Stanley. I would like to answer that. We have actually
two federal governments in our scenario here. Dr. Jones, for
example, is with the federal government but you wouldn't know
it. She is local. She lives in this area and she is part of
this process. We have local FBI. We have local DHS with the
Secret Service, with the Coast Guard. They are part of our
local planning response, exercise training.
We run into troubles when the other federal come into town
out of the Beltway. That is the different federal that we have.
On a day-to-day basis it is a very seamless response. That
mutual aid that we are talking about is horizontal and
vertical. The exercise I talked about yesterday had sitting
around the table FBI. We had Secret Service. We had U.S. Coast
Guard. We had all of the players, the State Highway Patrol,
etc. It is a different relationship when you kind of come in on
the white horse out of the beltway and then there is a
different saluting mechanism, if you will.
Mr. Miller. They don't understand your local needs.
Mr. Stanley. They are not plugged in effectively with the
local needs. We do have catastrophic response plans. We know
that we could be overwhelmed. The scenario in which we dealt
with was dealing with 100,000 casualties. Now post-Katrina that
may have been too optimistic. I mean, we probably should have
looked at something different.
Mr. Miller. Ms. Hayashi, what sort of things do you
recommend we do in the future to speed up the process or make
it more efficient for the locals?
Ms. Hayashi. Well, to speed up the process, and I know it
would take a while to mobilize such a large organization, but
to send out for example, a scout team for lack of a better
word. People from FEMA who are then connected with their
colleagues in D.C. who would get back first hand reports that
they would understand and it would be credible.
I mean, we had a lot of communication but somehow I think
just because of the geographic distance it just didn't ring
home. Perhaps if one FEMA to another if they are speaking and
some are here, they would be able to more quickly put together
an effective response team.
Mr. Miller. I want to thank you because there is a lot that
you have demonstrated to us today that we need to do and a lot
of information that I have learned from your testimony to take
back to Washington that I think is very viable. We have had too
many, in my opinion, just come back to Washington and point
favors that we weren't there first, we didn't have what we
needed on the field. They forgot to look at the locals who are
responsible.
I think local government is the best government. You are
right there with people. You know the local needs. You know
what you are going to face, what you have to deal with.
Washington is 3,000 miles away. The best they can do is glean
from what we tell them. That is why I thank Chairman Shuster
for coming out here today. This is refreshing. It is good
information we need.
It is information I think that we can give to our
colleagues that hopefully it will transfer to their state and
local governments so you can be prepared, understand who is
responsible, understand that the federal government is there to
assist and provide what you do need. After the main first
response that is when we have the ability to come in and assist
you with the resources that we have and get you back on track.
I appreciate your testimony.
Mr. Shuster. One more question. The Katrina committee came
out and looked at the response five days before and five to
seven days after. The findings appear to support five general
reform principles and I'm going to tick them off quickly and
just get your general impression. Catastrophic disasters
require early presidential involvement to engage federal
resources, one.
Large disasters require DOD support. Again, we are talking
about a catastrophe like Katrina, a 7 or 8 earthquake here in
California would be what we are talking about. Third, the
disaster preparedness functions need to be closely integrated
and managed with response functions.
FEMA's essential response capabilities must be restored and
enhanced, the professional workforce, logistics, things you
mentioned here today. And the tension between the nation's
hazards emergency management system and terrorism preparedness
needs to be resolved. I'll go over those points if you didn't
get them all. The first one is requiring early presidential
involvement.
Mr. Renteria, when there is a disaster in California do you
have the Governor's ear? I mean, do you have direct access to
him?
Mr. Renteria. Back to what Ellis said earlier about the
structure of FEMA. In California I sit on the cabinet. I am a
cabinet member. I was hired by the Governor. He is my
supervisor and I directly report to him. Whenever there is an
event, to be honest with you, he calls me. He hears about
something and he is on the phone saying, ``What's happening?
Give me an update.''
The first question out of his mouth is, ``Is this a
declared event? Do I need to declare an emergency?'' He is in
tune with that process and that is my recommendation that I
would make to him based on information that I am getting from
the locals. They are in constant communication with our state
operation center so, yes, that is important. The Governor can
declare a local state emergency and then that request is
forwarded to FEMA, or the President, rather, for a federal
declaration.
A lot of that depends on information, too. I mean, please
bear in mind I hear loud and clear that we need to be quick and
rapid in our response and getting declaration made but the last
thing we want to do is be premature, too. It doesn't hurt to
make a declaration 24 hours after or 48 hours after. I mean,
that is not going to hurt our response. We are going to respond
regardless of whether it is a declared emergency or not.
Obviously we don't want to wait 10 days after an event
before we have something happening. The matter of hours doesn't
make any difference because locals will respond immediately. We
will be in touch immediately. The State of California also has
a California State Warning Center.
It is a 24-hour dispatch communication center that is
linked to every single 911 center in the state. We have rapid
real time information. Who are we getting it from? From the
local first responders. And, quite honestly, from CNN and Fox
News also. We need to remember that they are part of this
equation. The media is our best friend and our worst enemy in a
disaster.
They need to be brought to the table, too, because they
have a lot more resources than we do and they are on the scene
first and they need to be responsible in their reporting
because they have, has Katrina showed, a lot of misinformation
that went out there that was unfairly criticized of the
federal, state, and local government that never was true.
Mr. Shuster. Mr. Stanley.
Mr. Stanley. I concur with what Henry has said. I would
like to go where no one has gone today yet and that is to talk
about that money issue. When you talk about all of those five
points and you talk about--and you ask yourself the question
have we invested sufficiently in our emergency management
program in this country, one of things you can't look back at
when FEMA was at the best of times is the EMPG, the Emergency
Management Performance Grant.
Why don't we have an emergency manager in every
jurisdiction in the country? Is it that difficult to do? Two
years ago when Mr. Renteria's organization did a survey, I
think there was a $267 million gap in the needs and what was
available. Now we have got a $13 million cut in those EMPG
monies.
Which way are we going? How are we going to get there? We
saw in Katrina the ones that you indicated that were doing a
great job had that relationship, had those resources, had that
training and was able to implement their plans. Those
communities that did not I think we saw the difference there.
Mr. Shuster. Ms. Hayashi.
Ms. Hayashi. I have nothing to add.
Mr. Shuster. I think you make an important point about the
funding, the EMPG funds. I think most of that was redirected to
terrorism. I saw you shaking your head when I said the fifth
point about the tension between terrorism preparedness and
emergency management. What I have learned talking to emergency
managers is a response to terrorism or a natural disaster,
about 80 or 90 percent of it is the same. It is just that some
of the equipment has to be different.
Mr. Renteria. I just want to tag onto Ellis' statement.
Math is not my greatest strength so bear with me. I am just
guessing. Last year, 2005, federal money was given to
California for terrorism preparedness equated to $7.86 per
capita. EMPG money 39 cents. There is a difference. We need to
be investing wisely. Again, how many terrorist events have we
had? I'm not saying that we shouldn't be prepared for
terrorists.
It is a real scenario but it is just an additional scenario
in our emergency management structure. It is a human cause
disaster. Regardless of whether you are from this country or
another country it is a human cause disaster and it has the
same consequences but we are not investing wisely the funding
that is coming down now to help us prepare. Yet, the biggest
frustration that I have at the state level is when I look at
locals, local governments do not have the support they need to
be better prepared and disasters start at the local level.
Mr. Stanley. Mr. Shuster, if we use something as simple as
pandemic right now and we compare the bio from the pandemic or
the bio from a terrorist event, locally we know that is not
geared to a city. That is a regional or national event, but
there are things locals need to be doing. We need to be
bringing the schools together.
If kids have to stay home, is there a distance learning
program in place? How does that impact the private sector? What
are they going to do if a percentage of employees are not at
work? If we look at 40 percent of our own employees that can't
come in, those are things that we need to be doing and we have
control of.
Going back to Dr. Jones when you are talking about the
hospitals, we can't do anything about the retrofit of the
hospitals because it keeps getting pushed back by the
lobbyists, etc., but we can look at do we have field hospitals
that we can move in place when we lose a hospital that we can
make sure we are keeping--those are things that can be going on
on a day-to-day basis.
Those are real world actions that can be taken if we have
the people and the resources in place to do those and we
shouldn't have to wait for somebody to come in from federal
government. We know these situations and these predictable
surprises as it were. We know what they are and we know that we
have the capabilities and the resources to be dealing with that
now.
Mr. Shuster. Well, I really want to thank you very much for
being here in front of us today. This discussion really adds to
our knowledge as we move forward. I'll make my plea one more
time. Make sure you are engaged with members of Congress
because there are a lot of members of Congress out there and I
have heard some of them say DOD should take over emergency
management.
That is the wrong answer. I can stand up there and Gary can
stand up there and we can make the case for doing this or that
but really if you are in California or if you are in Arkansas
or the local or state emergency management people are talking
about what they want to see.
I have been around enough emergency management folks that
we don't always see eye to eye on the exact structure of how
FEMA should look or DHS but I think there are some core
principles there that if you are out engaged and you are
educating your member of Congress, we are going to have a lot
better chance when we do something with FEMA whether it is
within or without DHS it is going to be much better for you
folks because I couldn't agree more with Mr. Miller.
Even at the local response is where it has to take place
and that is where it starts, moves up to the state and to the
feds and the federal government should be there as a support
mechanism for you.
One other point I just wanted to make. I was told that you
had mentioned for every dollar of mitigation it is three
dollars in return. We saw a report that said for every dollar
it is four dollars in return. What do they say? An ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure. Again, thank you all very
much for being here.
I want to ask unanimous consent that the record of today's
hearing remain open until such time as all the witnesses have
provided answers to any questions that may be submitted in
writing and unanimous consent that during such time as the
record remains open additional comments offered by individuals
or groups may be included in the record of today's hearing.
Without objection so ordered. Again, thank you all very, very
much for being here.
[Whereupon, at 11:00 a.m. the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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