[Senate Hearing 109-538]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 109-538
HURRICANE KATRINA: WHAT CAN THE
GOVERNMENT LEARN FROM THE PRIVATE
SECTOR'S RESPONSE?
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 16, 2005
__________
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Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio CARL LEVIN, Michigan
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
TOM COBURN, Oklahoma THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island MARK DAYTON, Minnesota
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico MARK PRYOR, Arkansas
JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia
Michael D. Bopp, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
David T. Flanagan, General Counsel
Amy L. Hall, Professional Staff Member
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Robert F. Muse, Minority General Counsel
Michael L. Alexander, Minority Professional Staff Member
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Collins.............................................. 1
Senator Lieberman............................................ 3
WITNESSES
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
David M. Ratcliffe, President and Chief Executive Officer,
Southern Company............................................... 5
Stanley S. Litow, Vice President, Corporate Community Relations,
and President, IBM International Foundation, IBM Corporation... 6
Kevin T. Regan, Regional Vice President of Operations,
Southeastern United States and Caribbean, Starwood Hotels and
Resorts Worldwide, Inc......................................... 10
Jason F. Jackson, Director of Business Continuity, Global
Security Division, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc........................ 13
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Jackson, Jason F.:
Testimony.................................................... 13
Prepared statement with an attachment........................ 53
Litow, Stanley S.:
Testimony.................................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 39
Ratcliffe, David M.:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 33
Regan, Kevin T.:
Testimony.................................................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 44
Appendix
Diageo and Humanitarian Relief, prepared statement............... 66
HURRICANE KATRINA: WHAT CAN THE
GOVERNMENT LEARN FROM THE PRIVATE
SECTOR'S RESPONSE?
----------
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2005
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in
room 342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M.
Collins, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Collins, Voinovich, Lieberman, Akaka,
Carper, and Pryor.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS
Chairman Collins. The Committee will come to order. Good
morning.
Today, the Committee continues its investigation into the
preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina. Our focus
this morning, at our seventh hearing, is on the effective
actions taken by the private sector before, during, and in the
immediate aftermath of this disaster, and what Federal, State,
and local governments can learn from the private sector.
In the first hours and days after Katrina struck, drinking
water, food, and other vital supplies poured into the
devastated cities and towns of the Gulf Coast. Building
materials, tools, generators, and trained personnel were
brought to the front lines of the disaster to provide shelter,
to reopen roads, and to restore essential services.
This remarkable performance was not the result of a
coordinated effort across all levels of government. Rather, it
was the result of individual efforts by businesses large and
small, efforts that were not directed by a central command, but
rather by a common purpose.
Not only were businesses able to recover and reconstitute
quickly, but they were also able to provide supplies,
equipment, and food and water to aid in the recovery of the
local communities--something for which they should be
commended. We are here today, however, to learn how they were
able to respond so quickly and so effectively when government
did not.
At our hearing last week, we examined the actions of the
principal government agency that responded with similar speed
and effectiveness, the U.S. Coast Guard. As we will learn from
our witnesses today, their businesses and the Coast Guard share
some crucial characteristics that resulted in success.
Like the Coast Guard, these businesses prepared for this
disaster by learning the lessons of previous disasters and by
configuring their disaster preparation and response
capabilities accordingly.
They prepositioned their assets and personnel out of harm's
way so that they would be available to deploy as soon as
conditions allowed. They brought in assets and personnel from
other locations to assist. They anticipated the failure of
conventional communications systems and took measures to
overcome those failures. And perhaps most important, they
empowered their front-line leaders with the authority to make
quick decisions and to take decisive action.
There is, of course, a fundamental difference between the
Coast Guard and the private sector. The Coast Guard's core
mission is to protect the American people. The core mission of
a business is to maintain its operations and its ability to
provide useful goods and services to consumers. But by
protecting their assets and personnel, and by taking steps to
restore their operations so quickly in the storm zone, these
companies were positioned to help others and to serve society
as a whole.
Our witnesses today represent four business sectors that
played key roles in Katrina relief: Retail, hospitality, power,
and technology. Although their individual experiences differ,
they share key success factors of strategic planning, tactical
preparation, and front-line decisionmaking.
As a result of those factors, Wal-Mart was able to use its
massive and highly efficient distribution network to get needed
commodities to those who had lost everything in the storm.
Starwood Hotels used its extensive experience in hurricane-
prone regions to become an invaluable source of shelter during
Katrina, never completely shutting its doors and leading New
Orleans hotels in returning to full operations.
Mississippi Power is a company that, of course, was unable
to move its assets out of the storm's path, and almost every
piece of its infrastructure was devastated. Yet, because it
prepared for just such a possibility, the company was able to
get back up and running ahead of any reasonable expectation.
Through extensive planning, IBM recognized that restoring
communications would be essential in the aftermath of any
disaster. From prioritizing expertise in immediate humanitarian
relief to helping displaced workers find jobs, IBM's
communications expertise has greatly assisted the recovery.
The outpouring of generosity, the demonstration of
competence, and the unleashing of initiative by Americans--
whether individuals or businesses--have been the bright spots
in a story that has, in far too many other ways, been
discouraging. The quick and efficient delivery of private
sector relief to Katrina's victims was not, however, a matter
of luck. It was the result of planning, preparation, and
action.
We have much to learn from the private sector, and we must
do all that we can to apply those lessons to the operations of
government.
Senator Lieberman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN
Senator Lieberman. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
Thanks to the witnesses for being here. I look forward to their
testimony. Thanks, Madam Chairman, for convening this seventh
hearing on our ongoing investigation into the preparations for
and response to Hurricane Katrina.
Today, as you have indicated, we temporarily turn away from
examining the role of Federal, State, and local agencies and
focus instead on the role of private companies that were
prepared and uniquely positioned to help save lives in
emergencies like this one, companies like those represented
before us today. And, of course, we are focused, as you have
said, also on what government might learn from what these
companies prepared for and did after Katrina struck.
In some areas hit by the storm, stores like Wal-Mart,
Target, and Home Depot were virtual lifelines for dazed and
bereft citizens who were fortunate enough to have survived
Katrina's wrath. These companies and their employees became key
distribution points for food, water, clothing, generators, and
other supplies because they were prepared and because they had
the capacity to do what they do every day, which is to move
goods and provide services.
Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, as you
have indicated, was able to restore life-sustaining electricity
to hundreds of thousands of customers well ahead of schedule,
apparently in good part because it has a culture of empowering
managers to make decisions free from bureaucratic authorization
requirements and other entanglements.
Starwood Hotels, which operates three properties in New
Orleans, provided vital services to its customers, employees,
and first responders during and immediately after the storm and
was able to get its hotels back up and operating within days
after the storm. I believe I saw you on CNN.
Mr. Regan. You probably did, yes.
Senator Lieberman. You looked good. [Laughter.]
Mr. Regan. Tell my wife that.
Senator Lieberman. And IBM, one of the world's leading
information technology companies, has much to teach us in terms
of how to harness technology to plan, manage, share
information, and coordinate disaster-related activities better
than government obviously did in response to Hurricane Katrina.
We examine these stories today again to learn lessons that
can help other businesses, but also can help the government be
better prepared to respond when disaster strikes.
I want to, Madam Chairman, make just one broader point here
as we focus on the private sector, which is after September 11,
as we began with a sense of urgency to examine how to protect
ourselves, in that case, from terrorist attack, we became aware
of a surprising fact, which is that the private sector owns 85
percent of our Nation's critical infrastructure, which is to
say our communications networks, power grids, financial and
health services, chemical plants, oil refineries,
transportation systems, and the list could go on. These
companies really form the backbone of our society and economy
and, therefore, must be prepared in the national interest to
respond to crises, and we must work with them in government to
protect them at all costs.
That is why we created an Infrastructure Protection
Division, so-called, literally, in the Department of Homeland
Security, which was the first of its kind at any Federal
agency. The point was that the government needed to work with
the private sector to make sure that systems so crucial to our
lives and way of life are adequately protected, and if attacked
by terrorists or, as we saw in Hurricane Katrina, overwhelmed
by the forces of nature, we are able to recover quickly and
restore services.
Among the lessons reinforced by the witnesses that we will
hear today is that it is the old lesson, but it is true in
these unusual, in some ways unprecedented, times, there is no
substitute for preparation, and that leadership is a key to
crisis response, and in our day particularly, even more than
always, communications are critical to response to a crisis,
particularly, and I suppose self-evidently, by those who are on
the scene, the ability to communicate.
We also learned that the Homeland Security partnership
between government and the private sector must be improved. In
the final analysis, when the lives of the American people are
at stake, whether from terrorist attack or natural disaster, we
must unite as a team, as you and each of your individual
organizations did, using all of the strengths of this great and
extraordinary country, whether from public, private, or
nonprofit sectors. We have to operate as one to get the job
done. You did that, and I hope your testimony today helps us
prepare our country to do better at achieving that kind of
cooperation and unity of effort when the next disaster strikes.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator Lieberman.
I am very pleased to welcome our panel of witnesses this
morning. Our first witness is David Ratcliffe, the President
and CEO of Southern Company, one of America's largest producers
of electricity and the parent company of Mississippi Power. Mr.
Ratcliffe has served as the President and CEO of Mississippi
Power and has been with Southern Company's family of companies
for over 30 years.
Our second witness is Stan Litow. Mr. Litow is IBM's Vice
President of Corporate Community Relations and President of the
IBM International Foundation. Prior to joining IBM, he served
as Deputy Chancellor of Schools for New York City, which is
certainly an interesting background. I won't ask whether there
is a particular link to disaster preparedness there or not.
Mr. Litow. Just a little bit. [Laughter.]
Chairman Collins. We are also pleased to have with us today
Kevin Regan, Regional Vice President of Hotel Operations with
Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide. Mr. Regan is responsible
for Starwood operations in seven States and the Caribbean and
is a 30-year veteran of the hospitality industry. We were
talking prior to the hearing, and we decided that he has the
best job of any of the witnesses today.
And finally, we are joined by Jason Jackson, the Director
of Business Continuity for Wal-Mart. Mr. Jackson, I am
particularly interested to learn that you have undergraduate
and graduate degrees in emergency and security management, and
I will look forward to hearing how that background contributes
to your ability to oversee your duties at Wal-Mart.
Because we are doing an ongoing investigation, we are
swearing in all of the witnesses who appear before us, so I
would ask that you all stand and please raise your right hand
so I may swear you in.
Do you swear the testimony that you are about to give to
the Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, so help you, God?
Mr. Ratcliffe. I do.
Mr. Litow. I do.
Mr. Regan. I do.
Mr. Jackson. I do.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Ratcliffe, we are going to
start with you.
TESTIMONY OF DAVID M. RATCLIFFE,\1\ PRESIDENT AND CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, SOUTHERN COMPANY
Mr. Ratcliffe. Thank you, Chairman Collins and Members, for
the opportunity to appear before you today on behalf of the
Southern Company. I am David Ratcliffe, the President and CEO
of Southern Company. Our company is a Fortune 500 company with
40,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity and over
26,000 employees. We are among the largest energy providers in
the Nation, providing electricity to more than 4 million
customers in Georgia, Alabama, the Southeastern part of
Mississippi, and the Florida panhandle.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Ratcliffe appears in the Appendix
on page 33.
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Hurricane Katrina was the worst natural disaster in the
history of our Mississippi Power Company subsidiary and one of
the biggest operational challenges that Southern Company has
faced in its more than 80 years of existence. Katrina's 140-
mile-per-hour winds and 35-foot storm surge left all 195,000
customers of Mississippi Power Company and 600,000 customers of
Alabama Power Company without power. Nearly two-thirds of
Mississippi Power's transmission and distribution system was
damaged or destroyed. The company's second-largest electric
generating plant was flooded. And its headquarters building in
Gulfport was so damaged that it will not be fully operational
until late next year.
Our employees, with the help of many outside resources,
worked to restore power across the devastated Gulf Coast region
in a remarkable 12 days. Your questions to me were related to
how we accomplished this. Let me hit some of the key elements
of our successful response.
First, extensive preplanning. Based on many years of
experience that go back as far as Hurricane Camille in 1969 and
continue all the way through Hurricanes Ivan and Dennis of last
year, we have developed extensive storm response and
restoration plans. In fact, each year, as part of our annual
planning process, we actually rehearse or drill our restoration
plans. In fact, in Mississippi Power Company, for example, each
employee has a storm assignment. They know exactly what their
responsibility is, and we drill that responsibility prior to
each hurricane season.
Second, we have a discipline of continuous improvement
through rigorous post-storm critique. We learned much from
Hurricane Ivan last year and its impact on our Gulf Power
subsidiary in the panhandle of Florida that helped us better
prepare for Hurricane Katrina. And, in fact, we are now in the
process of debriefing Hurricane Katrina's impact in Mississippi
and throughout the Southern Coast.
Third, a bent toward self-sufficiency and front-line
empowerment. Our Mississippi Power Company management team
began 2 weeks before Katrina to prepare. By the time it hit, we
had spent $7 million in securing equipment and logistical
support and had staged 2,400 out-of-state workers on the fringe
area of the storm to be ready to respond. Being a vertically
integrated company enabled us to provide significant in-company
support.
All of this is how we were able to provide 140,000 gallons
of fuel to 5,000 trucks every day, over 30,000 meals to workers
every day, and to provide our own 250-person armed security
force, and our own internal communications subsidiary, Southern
Link Wireless, allowed us to continue to communicate even the
immediate day after the storm. In fact, it was one of the only
networks available to us.
Next, as the song says, we had a lot of help from our
friends. We received exceptional assistance from Mississippi
Governor Haley Barbour, who had the foresight to call a joint
meeting the day after the storm with the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency,
County EMAs, and Mississippi Power to share plans and
communicate actions. This meeting was instrumental in the
excellent coordination and cooperation between Mississippi
Power and all agencies involved. In fact, we embedded one of
our employees with FEMA and MEMA operations to deal
continuously with issues as they arose. We had no instances in
Mississippi of FEMA confiscating staging areas, fuel, or food.
Through our industry mutual-assistance agreement, we were
able to add 11,000 workers from throughout the United States,
even as far as Canada, to our restoration efforts. Our
suppliers provided significant support. In fact, we never ran
out of supplies.
And last but certainly not least, we have a strong culture
amongst our 26,000 wonderful employees that is driven by
teamwork and trust, superior performance, and total commitment
to our customers. It is an honor for me to have the opportunity
to represent them here today. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Litow.
TESTIMONY OF STANLEY S. LITOW,\1\ VICE PRESIDENT, CORPORATE
COMMUNITY RELATIONS, AND PRESIDENT, IBM INTERNATIONAL
FOUNDATION, IBM CORPORATION
Mr. Litow. Thank you very much. I am Stanley Litow, and I
oversee IBM's corporate citizenship and philanthropic
activities worldwide. Over the last 10 years, IBM has been one
of the leading corporate contributors of cash, technology, and
talent to not-for-profit educational institutions and
government across the United States and around the world, and
we are committed to applying our skill and our ability as an
innovator against the challenges that exist in communities
across the globe, addressing education and societal concerns
and doing so in a fundamental and systemic way.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Litow appears in the Appendix on
page 39.
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As a global company with over 330,000 employees and
customers in more than 165 countries around the world, we have
a unique understanding, we believe, how a single devastating
event in one city in America or in one corner of the world can
be destabilizing for us all. Natural and manmade disasters
remind us just how interconnected we all are and how fragile
our networks can be. But they also remind us how generous, how
resourceful, and how focused we can be as a global community
when we can put political, economic, and other self-interests
aside and pull together, responding in a time of crisis,
whether it happens next door or halfway around the world.
We have a long-term and deep-seated commitment to corporate
citizenship, and our work includes launching the world's first
humanitarian public grid project to help find a cure for
diseases like Alzheimer's and AIDS, raising literacy by finding
a new way to teach children and non-literate adults to read,
and making the Internet more accessible for seniors and people
with disabilities. But through our experience, we have learned
that corporate citizenship is exemplified most clearly in times
of a crisis, and in the face of earthquake, hurricane, and an
act of terrorism, IBM has responded immediately, working
collaboratively with not-for-profit organizations and
government and other private sector players to bring our
expertise and our technology to affected areas as promptly as
possible.
You referenced September 11. After September 11, IBM was on
the ground within 48 hours. We provided the communications
network for the police and for rescue workers and not-for-
profit organizations. We set up an infrastructure for
communications systems, and we also provided a coordinated
system to track services being provided to victims and their
families after September 11.
IBM has a Crisis Response Team that has responded to more
than 70 critical incidents in 49 countries during the last
decade. The team provides immediate 24/7 assistance, including
international humanitarian relief, emergency management, and
on-site services, as well as business services to government
and business entities in the United States and around the
world.
After the tsunami hit in Southern Asia, IBM deployed over a
10-week period our Crisis Response Team and more than 700 of
our employees, business partners, and customer volunteers
across four countries, in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and
Thailand. It was clear within the first week that the
tremendous challenges faced by these governments as well as
relief agencies, businesses, and organizations could be aided
significantly through technology.
So among the solutions we provided were open-source
applications to address a complex set of needs, including the
tracking and identifying of the missing, dead, and injured, as
well as displaced individuals and orphans. We consolidated
services to the United Nations, NGOs, private sector, and
government information, and provided on-the-spot analysis and
reporting systems because communications was critical there,
too. We developed an organization registry, a camp management
system, relief and assistance databases, logistics management,
financial restitution tracking systems. In fact, we deployed a
high-speed wireless data and voice transmission system and a
range of equipment for mobile computers, services, hubs, and
routers to specialized education solutions. And to help the
countries become self-sufficient in managing the ongoing
crisis, we trained thousands of volunteers and government
officials on customized software applications.
After our work concluded in Southern Asia, we left with a
set of customized open-source solutions that we believe could
be easily modified and deployed across other disaster areas, as
well, and they included a relief material management system, a
fund management tracking system, a victim tracking system, a
relief camp management and I.D. card system, including
biometrics fingerprint and photo identification, report
generation, statistical analysis, a help line tracking system,
and a range of systems that could be deployed and customized
across the world in any disaster.
Four days before Katrina hit, we opened our emergency
operations center in Louisiana, and because of our intensive
experience across multiple disasters in the United States and
globally, after Katrina hit and subsequently after Hurricane
Rita, and recently in Pakistan after the earthquake hit, IBM
was able to deploy assistance more effectively and efficiently.
IBM talent, technology, and systems were on the ground and on
the ground quickly.
After Hurricane Katrina hit, our goal was to deploy the
crisis response team, locate it in Baton Rouge, to set up the
Missing Person Reunification Project. A number of websites and
local registries, including two that IBM hosted, one for CNN
and the other for the Urban Broadcast Network, were helping
evacuees and the public locate missing family members, friends,
and colleagues. We worked with the State of Louisiana to
implement the Entity Analytic Solution, a new IBM solution that
integrated these different databases and made it possible to
search for a single, unduplicated, up-to-date list of people to
support reunification.
We set up Jobs4Recovery with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
so that jobs for people who had been displaced could be posted.
Individual businesses could identify what people that they
needed, and people could use them in the not-for-profit or the
government sector.
For the American Red Cross, we set up a disaster relief
self-registration Internet site. We designed it, we developed
it, and we deployed it, working with the Red Cross. The
Internet site captures and stores demographic and family data
in a secure database through a user-friendly webpage. These are
particularly helpful in moving forward with those who are
affected by a disaster and can apply for benefits online. The
Red Cross has the ability to validate information, check for
duplication, and manage the application process.
We worked for the Centers for Disease Control. We provided
support to CDC, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to
address health needs and assure that evacuees had access to
their prescription records and care for both chronic illnesses
and trauma resulting from the disaster.
We set up an online curricula management application
because students from New Orleans who went elsewhere needed
information to their new teachers and new administrators on
their standards and tests out of Louisiana so that teachers in
other States and other geographies could keep track on where
they were.
We also provided trauma specialists, and we worked with
them to train the teachers and welcome evacuees into their
classroom and identified how to provide direct services.
We worked with the City of Houston to develop an
application to track and manage temporary housing and manage
and assign individuals to appropriate facilities, and we helped
Points of Light set up a volunteer website, volunteer.org.
Obviously, things are far from completed, and the IBM team
and resources are still at work in Louisiana. And while we are
still involved, we moved several of those people to Pakistan to
intervene after the earthquake.
In recent years, IBM has learned a great deal about
disaster relief. Let me summarize them.
First, we can't predict disasters, but we can prepare for
them. The degree to which we are able to do so can make a
tremendous difference for the people and governments that move
forward in times of crisis. As a Nation, we must ensure we have
the plans, the resources, the people, and the technologies--we
don't need to duplicate them--that are ready.
Second, advanced planning of people, tools, and technology,
formal agreements among public agencies and voluntary agencies
to share information, be on common databases, to make decisions
is vital and important.
Third, in cases such as Katrina, September 11, or after the
tsunami, rapid response is critical to the assurance of the
safety of the situation. Basic communications systems are
vital. They must be established and restored immediately so
that local and regional officials can get the help that they
need to be able to deploy on-site.
Fourth, local, regional, and national governments, along
with the private and the voluntary sector, must work
collaboratively. Models and best practices are available. They
are critically important to learn from, and technology isn't
something separate that you buy. It is integrated into
everything that you do. It is how you respond in times of
crisis. It can only be effective if it is integrated into a set
of services, operational plans and strategies, and prepared in
advance.
It is a most sobering thought to know that disaster will
strike again, often without warning and always without regard
for the people and places it leaves in its wake. If any good
can come from a disaster, then it must be our ability to take
the absolute best most effective practices from one situation
and bring them to the next. We must be sure to customize our
resources and be ready for the next disaster if and when it
should strike. Thank you very much.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Regan.
TESTIMONY OF KEVIN T. REGAN,\1\ REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT OF
OPERATIONS, SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES AND CARIBBEAN, STARWOOD
HOTELS AND RESORTS WORLDWIDE, INC.
Mr. Regan. Good morning, Madam Chairman and distinguished
Members of the Committee. I am Kevin Regan, Regional Vice
President of Operations for Starwood Hotels and Resorts
Worldwide. Starwood operates 750 hotels worldwide, and we have
three major hotels in New Orleans. Thank you for allowing me
the opportunity to participate in this hearing on behalf of
Starwood to discuss how our company successfully met the
challenges faced from Hurricane Katrina. It is with great pride
that we offer this information so it may provide some insights
that may be helpful to our government in managing future
crises.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Regan appears in the Appendix on
page 44.
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Let me assure you that while we are proud of our
accomplishments, we are also cognizant that the difficulties
Starwood faced in New Orleans were of a much smaller scale than
the entire region faced. In our frame of reference, however,
the challenges were incredibly huge. The lessons we learned
from Katrina, in our view, are the keys to successfully
managing almost any crisis--planning, leadership, teamwork, and
communication.
After Katrina left the city devastated, we were the first
hotels downtown with power, trucked-in water, air conditioning,
and were the first hotels to open back up with restaurants.
While some of the other hotels may have closed and evacuated
their employees for weeks, we were able to accomplish those
things because we had a plan, we had leadership, we had
coordinated teamwork, and because we communicated.
Post-September 11, we had to increase our focus on non-
natural disasters and plan even more for the unexpected.
Development of our new global crisis management plan involved
dozens of Starwood executives worldwide and some key
consultants. Starwood today has in place a comprehensive
emergency and crisis management plan and a preparedness and
response at the corporate, division, and hotel levels. It
instills responsibility and authority at each level, and very
importantly, it provides for ongoing communication throughout
the organization and within the team directly involved in the
crisis.
At the core of all our plans are the mandates to always,
one, do the right thing, and two, to ensure the safety of our
guests and associates above all else. I spoke earlier of
leadership being a key to successfully managing a crisis, and
it certainly was with Katrina. I am personally humbled by the
praise, but I share rightfully with many others at Starwood,
including teams of corporate executives, area managing
directors, local general managers, and other States that we
were fortunate to have with us.
Without any of these, we would be talking today of failure
instead of success because in any crisis, the difference
between success and failure is the quality of leadership. It is
a dedicated team of knowledgeable people that can take the plan
devised during calm and execute the elements of that plan
during a crisis.
A most critical element in success of leadership is
empowering those leaders with the authority to act. At
Starwood, the crisis plan provides for decisionmaking at
different levels of the organization based on needs and
appropriateness, and within the chain of command, authority is
provided at the level closest to the crisis as possible with
other levels in the chain providing support.
For example, our team in New Orleans had full authority to
order whatever equipment and services we felt necessary to deal
with each need, including generators, water trucks,
construction, clean-up crews, and more. Decisions to provide
free housing and food to all evacuated associates for a month
at any Starwood hotel in the country were made at the corporate
level because it impacted the organization more broadly. And
all levels jointly reached the decision to pay all New Orleans-
based associates for 1 month of September regardless of where
they were living after the storm. Those who could return to
work in New Orleans to assist in recovery were paid double.
Our plan calls for a series of actions. At the beginning of
the storm season, we set up communications for all our hotels
in the region to review extensively. We had check-lists of what
must be done in the preparation time frame during the hurricane
season to ensure we had overall readiness. As a possible storm
approaches, our plan helps organize each hotel with the
supplies they need to have on hand and the steps necessary to
secure the safety of both our guests and associates.
Once a hurricane warning is issued, we set up an emergency
command center in each hotel that will give access to
communications, and we begin daily communication between our
regional recovery teams and our corporate leadership team and
property teams and secure all needed assistance prior to the
storm. We begin communicating with guests. We establish
hotlines for our associates, and we establish a final list of
guests and associates remaining on the property.
In the case of Katrina, on Friday, August 26, we began a
series of daily conference calls with the hotel management in
New Orleans, our regional recovery teams on stand-by, and our
appropriate corporate staff in White Plains. Our hotels began
all preparations according to the plan, even though predictions
then said the storm would miss New Orleans. For example, the
Sheraton ensured that there was enough food and water for 1,000
guests for 5 days. Emergency generators were checked, along
with supplies of diesel oil and batteries. Essential personnel
were notified to be on stand-by.
By Saturday, August 27, it was clear that Hurricane Katrina
was headed for the city. Unfortunately, by the time the
evacuation orders came, especially the mandatory evacuation on
Sunday, despite our best efforts, there was neither ample time
nor resources to evacuate many of our guests. Once it was no
longer possible to evacuate, our priority shifted to ensuring
the safety of our guests, associates, and their families within
our facility.
On Sunday, August 28, we transferred the guests from the W
French Quarter Hotel to the W New Orleans, which had greater
emergency resources. At the W French Quarter, we offered to
house the Eighth District Police Command, which turned out to
be helpful in securing the properties in the days to come.
At the Sheraton, we had approximately 1,500 guests,
associates, and family members, with another 600 at the W
Hotel. I am pleased to say none of the guests, associates, or
family members in the hotels suffered any injuries.
While our hotels were taking care of hundreds of details
that I simply don't have time to outline, our regional and
corporate team had assembled the equipment, generators, power
technicians, assessors, and recovery teams and positioned them
in strategic locations for ease of transportation once the
storm had passed. Dehumidifiers, diesel fuel, gasoline, and
replacement supplies of food and water were all staged so we
could bring them in once we assessed the damage.
In most hurricanes, we anticipate more short-term loss of
power and water, but the massive flooding of the city due to
the collapsed levees created substantially greater challenges
than we ever had faced before. We alerted our ground teams in
Atlanta, where we had moved our sales teams, and the corporate
office in White Plains regarding the need for temporary housing
for our 850 associates and their families.
On Tuesday, August 30, the rising flood waters created
intense urgency to evacuate the remaining guests and
associates. At the W Hotel, we found buses in Lafayette and
still took more than 7 hours to get from there to the hotel to
get the guests out. At the Sheraton, we thought we had found
buses, but before all arrangements had been made, the water was
too deep to move them. The team scrambled again to find buses,
eventually arranging for 14 buses from two tour companies out
of Baton Rouge.
By 6 p.m., Wednesday, August 31, all our guests and most
associates had been evacuated to Dallas. Neither the Sheraton
nor the W Hotel at any time sent any guests to any New Orleans
shelters or otherwise added to the burden of the city. In fact,
we are proud of the support we provided to the city and Federal
agencies during the time, including housing the Eighth District
and the Fifth District Police and 400 U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement officers.
On Wednesday, August 31, our corporate team arrived in New
Orleans and immediately gathered at the command center to get
the latest update and determine the priority needs and the next
steps. Our corporate team surveyed the situation and began the
process of releasing equipment we had staged, arranging for it
to come to New Orleans--not an easy task.
Thursday, September 1, we inspected each of our properties
and found that security was the biggest concern, as lawlessness
was everywhere. Out of concern for our remaining managers, I
ordered the evacuation of all but five of our local management
team. The W French Quarter was safe with the Eighth District
housed there, but not the larger W New Orleans. As we pulled
back from the W New Orleans to the Sheraton Hotel, we saw
looters break into the hotel behind us. As part of our daily
conference call with the corporate headquarters team in White
Plains, we decided to contract with Blackwater Security. Their
presence allowed us to return to the W New Orleans and move
safely between our hotels.
Also on Thursday, our big delivery arrived under escort
with dehumidification systems to start pumping cool, dry air
into our hotels to reduce moisture content and stop the growth
of mold and mildew.
On Friday, September 2, we had our first deliveries of
generators from California, and we powered up the W French
Quarter and lit up the New Orleans skyline with the first
lights since the storm.
On Saturday, September 3, we had our next shipment of
generators arrive by 3 a.m. Sunday morning, we had power at the
Sheraton on Canal Street. We contracted to have water brought
in to fill our fire protection system and contracted with a
company to pump the sewage out of the hotel so that we could
then circulate water through, getting into our cooling towers
and condition the air to prevent more mold growth. It was not
until the middle of the next week that we were able to restore
city electrical power at the Sheraton.
By Sunday night, September 4, all hotels' exterior signage
were lit up and a time of celebration for our teams.
In the following weeks, there were continuing challenges,
beginning with construction, repairs, exposed windows, removing
wet carpets, drywall, and the detailed recovery work that
allowed us to get back operating before virtually every other
hotel in the central business district. We took in our first
paying guests at the Sheraton on September 12, 2 weeks to the
day after Katrina struck.
To get the hotels operating again, a significant issue that
we had to face was getting our associates back to New Orleans.
As a hotel company, we had a significant advantage over other
businesses in that we could provide a place for our people to
live. I wish I had the time to talk about all the things that
our incredible people did while we were there.
In closing, the key lessons for our team were to have a
plan and execute the plan well, which also means being flexible
and creative, to expect the unexpected, and to rely on our
people, and most importantly, communicate, communicate, and
communicate. Leadership is more than taking responsibility for
your actions. It is making the decisions when they must be made
and not waiting for someone else to make them for you. It is
having the decisionmaking at the ground level.
New Orleans is a great city with such a rich history. It
is, in fact, my birthplace, and its foundation is built on its
people. The heart of the city isn't the Quarter or the Garden
District. It is the people who live there, work there, and love
there.
I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this
distinguished panel today, and I hope that what I have said
will benefit the city that I love and help solve problems for
the future. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Jackson.
TESTIMONY OF JASON F. JACKSON,\1\ DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS
CONTINUITY, GLOBAL SECURITY DIVISION, WAL-MART STORES, INC.
Mr. Jackson. Good morning, Chairman Collins, Ranking Member
Lieberman, and distinguished Members of the Committee. Wal-Mart
Stores wants to thank the Committee for its work that it is
doing here and for holding this hearing today. We are very
honored to be present and pleased to be part of this process.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Jackson with an attachment
appears in the Appendix on page 53.
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My name is Jason Jackson. I am the Director of Business
Continuity for Wal-Mart Stores. My department is responsible
for mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery to all
types of business disruptions globally, from natural disasters
to manmade disasters, significant epidemiological issues, and
security-related events, such as a terrorist incident.
Wal-Mart is based in Bentonville, Arkansas, and our company
employs approximately 1.3 million associates from all 50 States
and approximately 1.7 million associates worldwide. Each week,
over 138 million customers choose to shop at Wal-Mart, and we
believe that reflects our dedication to providing everyday low
prices to our customers.
Wal-Mart doesn't just operate stores, clubs, and
distribution centers in communities, though. We take a very
pro-active stance in involving ourselves in those communities.
And with crises being the discussion today, really, the
sustainability of those communities is really near and dear to
our hearts.
Each of you has a copy of my written statement for the
record, and I invite you to look at that as it is more detailed
testimony as to what we did during Hurricane Katrina, but I
will briefly sum up the highlights for you today.
Being properly prepared to manage a crisis is critical to
corporate sustainability, and the approach that we take to
crisis management is similar to the government's. We take an
all-hazards approach. And because of Wal-Mart's large footprint
throughout the country, probability suggests to us that we will
have to address crisis on a regular basis at a local, State,
national, and sometimes global level.
Before we start to focus on the hurricane, it is important
to share with you that in the emergency management process,
Wal-Mart really has three basic focuses that we look at, the
first being the welfare of our associates; the second being
continuity of operations and reconstitution of operations; and
the third being community support, and these serve as the basis
for which we build all of our plans.
There are certain elements oftentimes that are specific to
an industry or to a business that we feel are critical to
success. Very quickly, these for us in emergency management are
quick situation identification, knowing what is coming, and
mitigating it as much as possible.
Emergency structure, as far as having good and proper solid
plans in place, having an emergency operations center that
functions 24/7 to watch out for all of our facilities, and work
on a proactive basis to try to mitigate and prepare the company
for potential business disruptions and then also to orchestrate
the response and recovery when those do occur, and also having
good communications processes.
Having scalable and flexible operations, operations that
can change with the variables that present themselves as they
unfold in a disaster, operations that are capable of growing in
size, consummate with the level of the disaster.
Just as important is total company support, again, having
that balance between the strategic that may be coming from the
home office, but also the tactical and the autonomy of the
managers at the local level to make decisions that are the best
for the community and for the situation at hand.
Having efficient communications, and I am not just saying
communications, which we know is key to success, but efficient
communications in the way that we transmit information from the
field, collect it into a big picture, and then disseminate that
back out so that we can take the best action points.
Also, leveraging our strengths. Each of us that sits here
before you has strengths in our company. For us, one of those
things is moving things from point A to point B very
efficiently and effectively. We do it every day, as Senator
Lieberman said, so capitalizing on these strengths becomes very
important during a crisis.
Some of the other strengths that we have is our information
systems and how we utilize our technology to know what the
consumer and the communities are going to need pre-disaster, if
we are offered that opportunity, and then also post-disaster to
make sure that those people have what they need to properly
recover from whatever situation just occurred.
Our logistics system, of course, is very robust, and we
have over 100 distribution centers and thousands of trucks, but
they operate in a very coordinated fashion. This also includes
eight distribution centers that are reserved with disaster
merchandise, square footage that is set aside just for
merchandise should a crisis occur.
Also, understanding the big picture, and while we talked
about Hurricane Katrina and the impact that it had on the
States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, it is
important to note that there is the rest of the Nation that we
still have to look after while the crisis is occurring, so
understanding what the needs are and making sure that the needs
are met for those people in the other portions of the country.
And finally, our corporate culture as one of the key
elements. We teach people to strive for excellence and to do
the right thing, and most importantly, to be active
participants in the situation and not just sit on the
sidelines.
For us in Hurricane Katrina, things really began when the
storm developed into a tropical depression. Most people think,
a lot because of the news media, that the hurricane was more
about Louisiana and Mississippi and the second impact that it
had, but we had a significant investment in Southern Florida
that we had to look after, as well, as far as our associates
and our stores and facilities and operations. So looking at
August 23 is really when our operations started, and from
there, the response that was kicked off as far as the
merchandise that was dispatched into the stores for the
communities, these teams that were staged, the generators that
were staged, and all the other preparative and mitigative
actions that were taken prior to that initial landfall.
Once the storm moved out of Florida, we had to look at then
a recovery operation and community support operation in
Florida, at the same time preparing for the second landfall in
the Gulf States. With that, as the storm moved ashore, it was
actually our moment of peace and quiet because there was
nothing that we could do at that point in further preparing for
that storm.
But as soon as that storm passed through in the Gulf
States, we immediately found ourselves operating on a number of
fronts. We found ourselves taking care of our associates and
making sure that they had food and water, and we are talking
about 34,000 people that were impacted related to our company,
and with that, making sure that they had money and that they
had a job to go to. We operated in restoring our facilities and
reconstituting our own operations. We had 171 facilities that
were impacted in the Gulf States and in Florida, and with that,
we were able to reconstitute operations up to a level of 66
percent within 48 hours after landfall, and then in 6 days, up
to 83 percent.
With that, we also had to provide community support and
relief in liaising with local agencies, finding the needs,
working with the NGOs and other private sector entities to make
sure that the communities were supported. We sheltered police
officers. We fed and clothed people in communities and in the
emergency services located in the immediate impact zone. We
provided resources across the region. We dispatched generators
and provided power to places that didn't yet have power during
the early days, and in some cases continue not to have power.
We provided communications by dispatching in our systems teams
to provide temporary satellites that restored network and voice
communication, and the list goes on as far as the actions that
we took in the immediate area.
But one of the fronts that people sometimes don't discuss
or think about is what happened in the peripheral. At the same
time that we were providing support to the immediate, we were
also providing support to the States that took in all the
evacuees. We saw a mass population shift during Hurricane
Katrina, and it became evident that we would need to help and
be that support mechanism to those States, to those shelters,
and to the communities in the peripheral States.
And in that, we saw ourselves doing things like setting up
donation centers, for instance, at the Astrodome in Houston or
at Fort Chafee in Arkansas, and with that, a tremendous amount
of other actions that we took as a company, including setting
up a web locator website that had over 53,000 posts and 5
million hits, provided computers to 150 shelters, provided
mobile and temporary pharmacies to help with the pharmaceutical
needs of evacuated populations, and so forth.
There were just a few key lessons as you read through my
testimony that you will come to find, and I think they are very
universal, communication being No. 1, internally and
externally, how we communicate with each other,
institutionalizing the process of emergency communications
between the public and the private sector.
Also, development of expectations is also a key point in
making sure that we understand each other, both across the
private sector and across the public and private sector and the
NGOs and the other entities that are involved, to make sure
that we are developing solid plans based upon good information
from each other about what FEMA is going to do or what the
State agencies are going to do or what Wal-Mart is going to do
or what we are capable of doing and what our limitations are.
Additionally, learning from those that know. We know that
we don't know everything. We know that there are best practices
out there in government and in other areas of the private
sector that we can learn from. But at the same time, we can be
a teacher, for instance, our logistics systems, as you
mentioned.
And then partnering for success. Emergency management and
response to emergencies has to be a comprehensive effort on the
part of the private sector, the public sector, and the NGOs and
other entities that are involved.
In life, there are certain absolutes. One of those
absolutes is the fact that we will face another major crisis in
the future. Whether it is a natural disaster, a manmade
disaster, a significant pandemic event, or a terrorist event,
we will all be required to respond again, and whether we are
successful or unsuccessful depends wholly upon whether we learn
the lessons that we are talking about here today and whether we
continue to take advantage of the opportunities that present
themselves.
I thank you for your time and allowing me to speak on
behalf of Wal-Mart.
Chairman Collins. Thank you very much for your excellent
testimony.
As I listened to each of you today, I was struck by the
meticulous planning and the escalating series of actions that
you took in advance of Katrina making landfall. It contrasts so
sharply with the lack of planning and the slow response of
FEMA, which sent only one person in advance of Katrina's
striking New Orleans to be in the city.
Mr. Ratcliffe, I think you said in your testimony that you
start taking action 2 weeks prior to a potential storm, and
then you track it every day and adjust accordingly. You talked
about in the case of Katrina that you had activated your
disaster plan with 20 storm directors implementing their
clearly understood responsibilities, and you talked about that
by the time Katrina struck, you had already spent $7 million in
securing equipment and logistical support.
Mr. Jackson, I think you said in your testimony that by
August 23, you were already preparing and tracking Katrina.
Mr. Regan, I want to ask you, when did Starwood decide that
Katrina was a threat to your operations to which you might have
to respond?
Mr. Regan. Well, early enough, we had Katrina coming into
the Southern part of Florida, which is also part of my region,
so we were dealing with that prior to probably about as soon as
the storm was named, which was a few days in advance. It was a
Category 1 when it came across South Florida, and I think that
from that perspective, as it went across, we were already
planning in New Orleans.
We had planned for a long time in New Orleans because of
the situation there with being below sea level and everything
else. We have all our game plans at the beginning of the
season, which is June 1, we have all our preparedness in place,
and what happens is as soon as a storm is named, we start
tracking it from that point.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Litow, same question for you.
Mr. Litow. Yes. We started our planning several weeks in
advance, 2 to 3 weeks in advance, and we deployed our emergency
response team, our crisis response team, on-site 4 days in
advance of it hitting.
Chairman Collins. To me, that is such a fundamental
difference in the private sector response versus government's
response. On what information did you rely to start to
implement your plans? I think I read in your written testimony
that some of you actually have private meteorologists. Mr.
Ratcliffe.
Mr. Ratcliffe. That is correct. We use a contract
meteorological service. It is the most important information in
trying to get prepared for a storm, to figure out how intense
it is going to be and where it is going to go, and that is
often very difficult to project. When you have a major service
territory, like Mr. Jackson and I are talking about, and even
Mr. Regan, the challenge in trying to be prepared at the right
place at the right time is not insignificant. So having good
meteorological data is an absolute necessity.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Jackson, does Wal-Mart also have a
private meteorologist service?
Mr. Jackson. We do. We contract with a consulting company
that provides that data, but we also utilize the National
Weather Service, National Hurricane Center data, as well. We
are looking at the storms, particularly for hurricane season,
back when they are tropical waves and they are not even a
depression yet so that we have an idea of, this may be coming
in the next 10 days. So we try to go out as far as possible to
make sure that we are taking the proper actions and watching
those storms closely.
Chairman Collins. Another aspect that you all have in
common is you were able through ingenuity to maintain
communications with your employees or with the managers during
the storm. Mr. Regan, I want to ask you, however, what
communications were like from your perspective with the local
and State Government and with the Federal Government, as well.
Mr. Regan. I guess the easiest way is there was a lack of
communication totally on the outside. We would find out
information that was being transferred around the city through
the local police department that was in the hotel.
During the course of time, for about 3 or 4 days, there was
absolutely no communication whatsoever. There was no support
from a standpoint of military or anything else downtown that we
saw. The flood waters, all we would hear from the police were
that the flood waters were still coming up, which they never
came up any higher than where we were. We sat a little bit
higher than everybody else, so we had a little water probably
on the street and that was about it.
But from a communications standpoint, we did not hear
anything. The Mayor did have a hearing at the hotel about 4
days, 5 days after the storm, but he wasn't there. I think it
was one of his representatives or a spokesperson came to talk
about just what things were going on and what they were trying
to do.
The one key thing that I think in any crisis or anything
that you look at is leadership, and the sad part about it in
New Orleans is there was no visible leadership anywhere. The
police department, they had no leadership. They had lost their
precinct. It was underwater. Seeing anybody from the Mayor to
the Governor to the President not there in the first few days
left a lot of things for people to say, who really cares what
is going on? And it also left anarchy in the city. It was very
chaotic.
From my perspective, and strictly the way that we did it,
we hit the ground running. We got there as soon as the levee
broke, and we had plans going in there anyway, so we were all
set. We hit the ground running. And the thing was, we were
there talking to people and the media was there, and there were
people that were looking for stories that they could get out
that were positive. Of course, there were a lot of negatives,
but I think the key to everything is leadership.
And communication-wise for us, we went in with satellite
telephones, but our team in the hotel was able to get us up and
operating right after the storm. So we were down for maybe a
couple of hours at the most.
Chairman Collins. That is very impressive. I think it was
the Fortune magazine piece that was entitled, ``As Government
Broke Down, Business Stepped Up,'' and I think what you have
described is exactly what happened. Thank you.
Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Thanks to the
panel. This is very encouraging, I suppose even inspiring
testimony, which I hope we learn from.
I will say to you that the one Federal agency that we feel
very proud of in its response, and in some sense mirrors, or
maybe you mirror them, was the Coast Guard. They responded to
the weather signals. They did so much of what you have done.
They moved their personnel out of the immediate danger area.
They brought in more personnel from around the country, and
they were right there within hours of landfall to start
rescuing people.
Madam Chairman, I really want to briefly put a statement in
the record.\1\ These four companies are models, but there are a
lot of other companies who jumped right in and helped out. I
just heard a report, and I had my staff write it down, Diageo,
a distilled spirits company, happens to be international. It is
London-based, but it has its North American headquarters in
Norwalk, Connecticut. Four days before landfall, they moved
power generators and water, not distilled spirits----
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\1\ The prepared statement of Diageo and Humanitarian Relief
appears in the Appendix on page 66.
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Chairman Collins. I thought you were going to say they sent
much-needed alcohol to the region. [Laughter.]
Senator Lieberman [continuing]. To Baton Rouge. I was
struck in the report because Senator Collins and I visited Pass
Christian in Mississippi, but it happens that one of those big
generators ended up in Pass Christian, and so thanks to all you
other folks in the private sector who really did well.
Senator Collins' first few questions really got to part of
what I wanted to talk about. The breakdown of communications
here was really unsettling at the government level. Is there
anything else any of you want to tell us about how you were
prepared to maintain your communications so critical to the way
you functioned in a disaster? Mr. Ratcliffe, you made a very
brief reference that I wanted to have you build on a little
bit.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Thank you, Senator. We are fortunate in that
we actually operate a subsidiary company that is a wireless
network and a dispatch mobile radio. We operate it as a
requirement for our own core business, but it has incremental
capacity that we sell in the marketplace, also. It is basically
exactly the same Motorola technology that Nextel sells
commercially and we sell in our footprint. We own and operate
that subsidiary and its infrastructure, and it is absolutely
critical to our success and day-to-day operations.
On day one after the storm, it was the only network
available to us, and I cannot emphasize how important it is
(one of the lessons we have learned) for the first responders
to be able to communicate with each other.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Ratcliffe. That is an absolute necessity, and one of
the things we have to do in this Nation is to build in the
capability in these kind of restoration efforts for first
responders to communicate.
Senator Lieberman. We are going to bring you back, Mr.
Ratcliffe, to testify on behalf of a bill that Senator Collins
and I have that does exactly that, but thank you.
Mr. Ratcliffe. We were the only folks who had the ability
to communicate----
Senator Lieberman. Why was that? What happened to the other
networks that you were able to avoid?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, first of all, we were somewhat lucky.
I would be remiss if I didn't say that.
Second, our design criteria, because of the business we are
in, are more rigorous than other networks.
And third, we stood the test in keeping our systems
running. There were some situations where the other providers
did not have adequate backup generators, did not fuel their
generators----
Senator Lieberman. So that once the electricity went out,
the towers, for instance, were not working?
Mr. Ratcliffe. In some cases, the towers were down.
Senator Lieberman. Or they were down----
Mr. Ratcliffe. In other cases--understand that electricity
drives everything that we do.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Even the switching networks require
electricity. So we have to have backup generators for the
switching stations and the communications network. To the
extent people don't have backup generators or don't provide
fuel in an extended fashion then they are going to fail.
Senator Lieberman. Let me ask this question. One of the
most poignant stories that came out, for me, of New Orleans was
the picture of Mayor Nagin in a hotel room, no communications
ability, one staff member has a personal computer, and over
that computer, they hooked into one or two or three--or I think
it might have been six or seven--phone lines, and that is it
for the Mayor of New Orleans, I think it was Tuesday. It wasn't
even Monday, the day of landfall.
From your own experience, what should New Orleans do as it
rebuilds to make sure that never happens again?
Mr. Litow. I think, first and foremost, you need a
communications plan and strategy in advance. There are two
things that are involved here. One is restoring communications,
and we provided for a whole range of government and non-
government agencies after September 11, and after the tsunami a
communications network that people used.
Senator Lieberman. You mean that you actually brought in
yourself?
Mr. Litow. Yes, we did. The second thing that you can do is
you can make sure that through collaborative software, the
variety of information systems can work with one another. That
is a second and more difficult issue. After the war in Bosnia,
for example, refugees came over the border in a variety of
different sources, and they went into a variety of different
camps. Because of not having one collaborative software system,
they couldn't locate people when they came to different places.
So when you have a core base of information about a victim
being served by a variety of different agencies, you have got
to have an integrated system so that people can understand who
needs what services and everybody can have the same
information, and it is not all that difficult to get everybody
operating on the same page.
Senator Lieberman. Mr. Jackson, my time is almost up. Just
give me a few words about how Wal-Mart prepares itself to
continue to communicate in a crisis like this.
Mr. Jackson. One of the things, and I think we face the
same challenges that a lot of people face when you lose
telephone lines and you lose cellular towers and such, and to
kind of add on to what Mr. Litow was just saying, is to have a
backup plan, also. Having a good communications plan is fine,
but having a backup plan that is separate from that system,
that is tested and----
Senator Lieberman. Were you able to continue to communicate
from Bentonville to your people in the Katrina-hit area during
the storm?
Mr. Jackson. Yes and no. There were periods of blackouts,
for instance, and that is when you have to rely on different
systems, like associate accountability. I am going to go down
the road and check on the store, and if I am not back in an
hour, please send someone for me. Having that accountability
process is much more mundane and fundamental, but still serves
the same purpose.
Senator Lieberman. What is your backup system?
Mr. Jackson. Our backup system is tactically sending in as
quickly as possible our temporary satellite systems that have
voice-over phones.
Senator Lieberman. Just a final question. The two of you
that have the most presence here--maybe I am not being fair to
IBM--in New Orleans, as you watched the weather forecasts
coming in, did your emergency plans include preparation for
response to the possibility of the levees breaking and flooding
occurring, or were you planning simply for response to a bad
hurricane?
Mr. Regan. We had plans--from Starwood's perspective, ours
was basically a plan for the hurricane, and we do have flood
plans, also. So we knew exactly what we were doing. We knew
that we were in trouble from the levee standpoint. If it was
going to hit and it was going to be to the west of the city or
to the east of the city, we were going to get hit no matter
what. It was going to flood. So that has been part of our
preparedness----
Senator Lieberman. So flooding was part of your
preparedness for New Orleans?
Mr. Regan. Yes.
Mr. Jackson. And ours would be the same. We have a flooding
policy in general as far as emergency procedures go. So we knew
that we were going to be looking at a potential flooding
situation in New Orleans and responded accordingly.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Voinovich.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you for
holding this hearing and for your continued investigation into
the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
I am particularly interested in today's hearing, based on
my conversations with many private business executives. They
have expressed deep frustration with FEMA in getting their
respective jobs done.
I believe there is much that the Federal Government can
learn from the private sector in terms of best business
practices and streamlined response in the event of an
emergency. We have heard that sentiment reiterated here this
morning. I believe that in order for our response to Katrina to
be effective, we must have a clearly defined role for the
private sector. If we expect to be successful, we will need a
robust public-private partnership.
I find it troubling that in some instances, private sector
companies were prepared to respond swiftly to the devastation
on the Gulf Coast, while the response from all levels of
government were mired in bureaucracy.
I am frustrated by the Federal Government's seeming
inability to manage offers of assistance from the private
sector. Additionally, I understand that there were a number of
reports that FEMA could not even pay contractors who were
already helping with reconstruction in a timely fashion. Madam
Chairman, I wish that FEMA representatives were here so that
they could hear some of this testimony today.
The first question I want to ask is, to date, has anyone
from FEMA or the Department of Homeland Security contacted any
of your companies to get your perspective on the topics we are
discussing here today?
Mr. Regan. Not with Starwood at this point.
Mr. Jackson. At a lower level, yes, we have had some
representatives, some of the alert networks from Department of
Homeland Security come and benchmark with us this last week.
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Litow.
Mr. Litow. We do work for FEMA and for other Federal
agencies on particular contracts, but in terms of the overall
coordination and planning and advance knowledge, most of the
advance communication and contact with Federal agencies doesn't
take place because people feel that they are precluded for them
bidding on contracts. So there are certain intricacies in the
bidding process that make it difficult for businesses who are
expert in this area to be able to have pre-planning
conversations and discussions that run across a variety of
areas with government agencies.
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Ratcliffe.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Senator, I am not aware that we have been
contacted.
Senator Voinovich. If the Department and Secretary Chertoff
were to put together a task force to look at the way FEMA
interacted with and tapped the private sector, would you be
willing to serve on that task force?
Mr. Litow. Absolutely.
Mr. Regan. Absolutely.
Mr. Jackson. Yes.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Yes.
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Litow, it sounds as if in response
to Katrina you accomplished quite a bit. Of the eight areas
that you mentioned in your testimony--how many were addressed
after Hurricane Katrina hit? Were any actions taken before the
hurricane made landfall? Generally, I'd like to understand what
assets were in place prior to landfall. Were these preparations
made by Homeland Security or FEMA in order to be ready to
respond to a hurricane?
Mr. Litow. Virtually all of the software tools that we
deployed were pre-prepared in a variety of different disasters,
and we refined them after September 11, after the tsunami, so
that when we sent our people on the ground after Hurricane
Katrina, we were able to do a demonstration of a set of
software applications that could be used by State agencies,
Federal agencies, or voluntary agencies----
Senator Voinovich. The question I have is, how much of your
preparation was in conjunction with FEMA?
Mr. Litow. In some cases, it was in conjunction with FEMA.
In some cases, it was in conjunction with the State of
Louisiana. In some cases, it was working directly with
voluntary agencies or school systems in a variety of different
States.
Senator Voinovich. I would be very interested if you would
clarify the answers to the questions I have about the eight
areas that you have listed here. Please provide me with
information about how much of the preparations were in place as
part of FEMA's work with you? Did you have a contract with
FEMA? How many of the assets were established in a reactionary
fashion that occurred when you arrived on the ground?
Mr. Litow. Most of them were customized on the ground.
Senator Voinovich. In other words, they just happened, and
you had the capacity to do it because of your previous
experience?
Mr. Litow. That is correct, Senator.
Senator Voinovich. Who called upon you to do the things
that are listed here?
Mr. Litow. Well, we worked on the ground, and we did
demonstrations for a variety of agencies of what we had and
what we thought we could do, and then we asked them to pick and
choose----
Senator Voinovich. What agencies were those?
Mr. Litow. The State of Louisiana, State Government, city
government, school system, FEMA, Red Cross, and the Salvation
Army. We presented those solutions to a variety of different
agencies. When we work internationally, we present them to
international agencies. After the tsunami, we presented them
and showed them at the United Nations. So they are available.
They can all be viewed. The people can determine which are most
applicable, and they can be customized in any case. It has
nothing to do with whether it is a hurricane or another kind of
disaster. The core systems are universal.
Senator Voinovich. And does FEMA, or did FEMA have a list
of your capabilities to share those with people who might need
the services?
Mr. Litow. I can't answer that. They had some of the
information, but not all of it was shared.
Senator Voinovich. Have any of you had contracts with FEMA?
Mr. Regan. Yes.
Mr. Litow. Yes.
Senator Voinovich. How has that worked out for you?
Mr. Regan. We have a contract for guest rooms at the
Sheraton New Orleans for 750 rooms a night.
Senator Voinovich. In terms of the management of the
contracts and the payment for services, how has the process
worked?
Mr. Regan. No issues.
Mr. Litow. We have a subcontract, three contracts with
FEMA, and everything has worked fine.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Mr. Jackson. One of the issues that arose for us was the
early identification of the payment processes. We are not a
normal contractor with FEMA. During hurricanes and other
disasters, we will be asked to provide certain resources that
we have available to us. But one of the processes that we ran
into was, and again, in the development of expectations, like I
talked about, not necessarily having the request come from a
purchasing agent, which created some problems for us on the
back end. So I think that the further development of those
expectations and communications is what is going to preclude
that from happening in the future.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Akaka.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I am
pleased that you are holding today's hearing, and I must tell
you that I was struck by the impressive contributions of the
private sector during Hurricane Katrina. I also saw that when I
toured the Gulf Coast States with members of the Energy
Committee in September. It is important that we learn from the
experiences of private companies as we determine how to best
improve the Federal Government's emergency management
capabilities.
Senator Lieberman mentioned, and I am so glad he did this,
how effective the Coast Guard was during Hurricane Katrina, and
I understand that GSA also anticipated the direction of the
storm and secured Federal buildings, and being the Ranking
Member of the Veterans' Committee, I learned that the VA was to
be commended for their response and the follow-up to the storm,
so there were Federal agencies that worked out well there.
The lesson may be that government can function well and our
task is to ensure it functions better, so we look forward to
that, but I was really impressed by all of your statements.
Mr. Regan, you said that on Monday, August 29, Starwood
Hotels began lining up buses to evacuate the hotel guests at
the Sheraton. Why did you take the initiative to look for buses
before you knew the levees had failed?
Mr. Regan. Well, really, we started lining up the buses
after the levees had failed. The levees started failing at 11
o'clock on Monday. As soon as the issue happened when the storm
came through at 6 a.m. and then hit New Orleans about 9:30, 10
o'clock, the levees started to breach at 11 a.m. There was no
communication, that was one of the things, but we did have
communication with the police department. When we knew the
levees were breached, we knew the opportunity was going to be
minimal to be able to get buses to get our people out.
Senator Akaka. You also decided to evacuate your guests
rather than relocate them to the Superdome.
Mr. Regan. Right.
Senator Akaka. How did you know that the Superdome was at
capacity, even though local officials kept sending people
there?
Mr. Regan. Well, the way that we knew that the Superdome
was pretty much at capacity is because they started floating
them over to the convention center. That was the backup,
apparently, for the Superdome. So when they started sending
people to the convention center and we had people walking up
Canal Street who were being told, no, you have to go to the
convention center because the Superdome is full, and that is
what people were being told, we decided that it was better to
evacuate our people out of the city because we felt like it
would be a burden put on the city itself.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Jackson, you have described how Wal-Mart
response teams are deployed to disaster areas to secure Wal-
Mart stores. How many response teams does Wal-Mart have
nationally and are these permanent teams or are team members
redeployed from other positions in Wal-Mart when a disaster
occurs?
Mr. Jackson. We actually utilize the existing structure
that we have in place across the Nation and actually around the
globe. We use a pseudo incident command process similar to NIMS
or the ICS systems that are typically used, but with local
incident management teams really being representatives of those
facilities in which they operate normally as well as members of
the asset protection teams and loss prevention teams.
So, long story short, the teams are representatives of the
people that normally function in that area, and so the number
of teams is really not as much the answer to the question as is
the structure that is in place to be able to develop teams
based upon the scope and size of the disaster itself.
Senator Akaka. It would be useful to know if other
businesses have similar response teams to respond to disasters.
Mr. Ratcliffe, you discussed the importance of Mississippi
Power's hurricane recovery plan and the fact that the plan is
regularly exercised and revised. However, one of your storm
directors was quoted in the press as saying the plan is not
utilized by employees during a disaster and that he has not
reviewed the plan in years. I am trying to understand the
extent to which your plan contributed to your successful
response efforts because many government agencies that faltered
during Hurricane Katrina also had response plans. Would you
please comment on the storm director's remarks?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Senator, I think the key to any planning is
the drilling or the rehearsing of the plan. A lot of folks
write plans and put them on the shelf, but if you don't
actually force yourself to go through the practice exercise,
the drill itself, the plan is not much good. You learn a lot in
the practice exercise.
So to the extent we force ourselves to do that every year
in anticipation of the hurricane season, we actually work
through the response so that our people don't have to try to go
find the book on the shelf. They have been through it. They
know what the response is by firsthand experience. I think that
is why the person responded, he hadn't looked at the book. He
knew what to do because he had already rehearsed the drill.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. My time
has expired.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
I want to follow up on Senator Voinovich's question to you
about your contacts with the Department of Homeland Security.
When we wrote the law creating the Department of Homeland
Security, we specifically created an office to be a liaison
with the private sector. In addition, the law provides for a
Private Sector Advisory Council, and it is because we wanted
DHS to have a robust relationship with major players in the
private sector when it comes to disaster preparedness and
response and many other issues that the Department is involved
with.
To the best of your knowledge, does your company have an
ongoing relationship with the Department of Homeland Security?
We will start with you, Mr. Ratcliffe.
Mr. Ratcliffe. We do, and we have been contacted and have
interfaced. One of the things that we have done in our industry
is look at critical infrastructure and had conversations with
Homeland Security about what infrastructure is critical and how
should we try to prepare for protecting that infrastructure
going forward. So there is not only with our company, but with
our industry, a routine interface.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Litow.
Mr. Litow. Yes, we do have regular contact with the
Department, and we do have contracts with them, and we work
with them regularly.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Regan.
Mr. Regan. We don't, to my knowledge.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Jackson.
Mr. Jackson. I believe you are referring to the Private
Sector Office of the Department of Homeland Security.
Chairman Collins. Yes.
Mr. Jackson. We have frequent communications with them, and
during Hurricane Katrina, multiple calls coming into our
emergency operations center from Al Martinez-Fonz's group, Rich
Cooper, and some of the other players from the Private Sector
Office.
Chairman Collins. If you do have that kind of relationship,
which I would hope that you would, I am trying to figure out
why the Department doesn't tap into your expertise more.
Mr. Jackson, staying with you for a moment, each of the
members of this panel have specialized expertise, goods, or
services that were really needed in the response to Katrina. Is
there anything that you saw a need for and actually offered to
government at any level, and yet that was not accepted? Mr.
Jackson.
Mr. Jackson. I don't know necessarily that we stated
certain quantities, but we did reach out across all levels of
government and said, these are the resources we can provide.
Normally, during a disaster, we work on a basis where we want
the agency to ask us for what they need and then we will try to
procure that or deliver that to them so that they are not
getting things that they don't need because they didn't ask.
But I am not aware of any situation where we offered resources
and that they weren't accepted or at least discussed.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Regan.
Mr. Regan. Yes. I am trying to rack my brain, but I don't
believe there was anything during the period of time that I was
there that they turned down that we offered.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Litow.
Mr. Litow. Yes. We did offer to provide the kind of
communications network that we used after the tsunami in South
Asia, and we were told that they had other priorities and they
went down the list and selected other things.
Chairman Collins. And yet the lack of a communications
network greatly hampered the response.
Mr. Ratcliffe, your situation is a little different, I
realize.
Mr. Ratcliffe. I am not aware of anything.
Chairman Collins. OK. Thank you.
Mr. Jackson. Madam Chairman, may I add on to that?
Chairman Collins. Yes.
Mr. Jackson. There was one resource that we did offer
similar to what we did after September 11 and to the private
sector. We offered human resources. In the discussions that we
had, we talked about possibly utilizing some of our logistics
managers to help manage the staging areas or develop a disaster
warehouse in that region, and those conversations basically
just drifted off.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Jackson, following up with you, I
mentioned before the hearing the odyssey of the ice, where FEMA
was frantically ordering ice and 250 truckloads of it got
shipped off to Portland, Maine, not exactly the heart of the
hurricane region. To this day, to my knowledge, 150 of those
truckloads remain in dry storage.
This raises questions to me about how FEMA orders, tracks,
and delivers vital supplies. You were contacted by FEMA and
asked to provide some supplies, such as water. Did you get the
sense that was the result of an assessment of what would be
needed, or was it more a frantic search for the commodities
that are needed?
Mr. Jackson. I would say it sounded more like an
assessment, and the reason I say that is this. When the
purchasing agent from FEMA contacted us, they say, and they
have done this in previous storms, we need 100 trailers of
water, and immediately, our questions are, well, do you have
the logistics network on the other end to offload 100 trailers
of water in a timely manner, or do you know what 100 trailers
of water looks like? The response normally to that question is,
I was just told to go buy 100 trailers of water.
So it would seem that--of course, not seeing their plans--
that they have some type of set, you need to go do this and
here is how much money you have, as compared to directing it to
a specific need.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Thank you again,
all of you.
I was struck when Mr. Jackson and Mr. Ratcliffe,
particularly, talked about the fact that you retain private
consultants as weather forecasters. To ask the question as
directly as I can, does that suggest any lack of respect for or
confidence in the National Weather Service or the Hurricane
Center?
Mr. Jackson. Absolutely not on our end.
Senator Lieberman. So why do you do it, just because you
need more tailored information?
Mr. Jackson. Somewhat. I think from our perspective, it is
more about we want to take in as many pieces of information as
possible.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Jackson. Occasionally, we utilize modeling software to
look at hurricane patterns and such. So it is not just relying
on one source for information, is the key.
Senator Lieberman. Mr. Ratcliffe.
Mr. Ratcliffe. That is the same.
Senator Lieberman. The same?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Multiple inputs.
Senator Lieberman. That is reassuring to hear because we
quite correctly praised the Coast Guard, but it did appear to
me that the National Weather Service performed well here, too,
and, in fact, as you look at the record, they seemed to almost
be screaming by Friday night to everybody, including in our
government, that this is going to really be bad.
Mr. Jackson, as the Director of Business Continuity at Wal-
Mart, it strikes me that you might be described as the
Secretary of Homeland Security for Wal-Mart, maybe
International Security in that sense.
Mr. Jackson. I don't know if my boss would like that, but--
-- [Laughter.]
Senator Lieberman. Senator Pryor said I could use that
title. He will clear it with the management. [Laughter.]
I note as we on this Committee look at organizational
questions and issues that are raised by Katrina and generally
that Wal-Mart has chosen to put a series of major related
functions--mitigation, preparation, planning, response, and
recovery--in the same department under you. I want you to talk
a little bit about what you see as the advantages of that. To
be real explicit, if you want to deal with it--you don't have
to--there are some people who have responded to FEMA's bad
performance in Katrina by saying, the problem is they are in
the Homeland Security Department. Get them out.
Now, we actually put them there because we thought it made
sense to have them with the other disaster preparedness and
response, recovery groups. What does your experience tell us
about that kind of judgment?
Mr. Jackson. Actually, I report to the Vice President of
Global Security, which I think more appropriately has that
title.
Senator Lieberman. He is the Secretary of Defense for Wal-
Mart? [Laughter.]
Mr. Jackson. If you so choose. But in that, really, where
we are positioned in the company is a good place. As far as
having those four components under my area of responsibility, I
think it works best because all four of those areas are
supposed to work together. And so in utilizing the resources
that I have available to me, to have my planners talk to the
people that are working in the emergency operations center,
where they are cross-trained and able to seamlessly work
together and develop the best strategies is the best way to
operate.
As far as the way that the company reacts as a whole, we
had total company support from our CEO all the way down and had
twice-daily conference calls during Hurricane Katrina with the
CEO, his direct reports, and their direct reports, and everyone
knew that they would function through the emergency operation
and use the structure that was in place.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you. Very helpful.
Mr. Regan, you mentioned and the record shows that some of
the hotels in New Orleans are housing first responders and
other government personnel. To the best of your knowledge--I
guess a series of questions. First, was there any pre-disaster
arrangement for that to happen or was it just fortunate that
you stayed in operation and were able to house them?
Second, do you think, because you are in this business,
that as part of our emergency preparedness, the government
ought to have pre-set arrangements for housing the large number
of people we are inevitably going to send into a disaster area?
Mr. Regan. To answer your question, Senator, the first part
was Shaw came in and was looking for accommodations after the
storm. So none was done prior to the storm at all. There was no
anticipation, I don't believe for that.
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Regan. To answer the second part, I think it would make
sense logistically to have housing set up for emergency
personnel that can respond directly from one location. When we
talked about a command center that I brought up before and why
we do that is so that we have a nucleus of a working office so
that everybody can branch out from that point. Bringing our
people and staying in the hotels is probably the most important
thing. We can set up command centers for everybody, and one of
the things we talked about in New Orleans was the lack of the
planning, and it was more reactionary than it was proactive----
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Regan [contining.] And that is probably the biggest
concern that we had.
Senator Lieberman. I agree. I think you just said it, that
there wasn't real planning, it was a reactionary approach, and
when you do that in the midst of a crisis, obviously, you are
running terrible risks, and unfortunately, a lot of people paid
the price.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Senator, might I add a comment there?
Senator Lieberman. Yes, please.
Mr. Ratcliffe. One of the things that we learned in the
response to Hurricane Ivan in the panhandle of Florida in our
subsidiary Gulf Power Company, we traditionally plan on using
the existing infrastructure to house restoration and recovery
workers, but in the case of a hurricane of the magnitude of
Ivan or Katrina, that infrastructure is often destroyed. You
have to have Plan A, but in the event Plan A is not available,
you had better have Plan B to house your own workforce. We
brought in 11,000 people to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and
provided temporary housing. We fed them twice a day. We
showered them. We did their laundry----
Senator Lieberman. How did you do it?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, it is logistics planning. Again, it is
lessons learned from prior experience----
Senator Lieberman. Did you bring in trailers or----
Mr. Ratcliffe. We had trailers. We had tent cities. We had
caterers.
Senator Lieberman. That is impressive. Last question, if I
may, and this is something contemporary. I don't believe your
company serves New Orleans----
Mr. Ratcliffe. No, sir.
Senator Lieberman [continuing]. But we have been hearing--I
have been hearing some complaints from people in New Orleans
who have had to wait for inspections of their buildings or
houses before the power can be restored and the inspections are
slow in coming because the personnel in the city is not up and
running with adequate resources. Are there similar problems
that you are having in your service area, and if so, how are
you trying to get around them?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, let me explain just on the front end
of my remarks. Our focus is obviously starting back up the
system, getting the poles and wires back up so that we can
deliver power is our primary objective. But in situations where
you have had potential damage to the facility, it is absolutely
critical that you get a certified electrical inspector to go in
and make certain before we restore the service, we don't run
the risk of burning the house or the facility down because
there has been some internal damage to the house.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Ratcliffe. That process is something that we don't do.
It is an independent private provider situation. You have to
have electrical inspectors available, and that is one of the
things that often lags, simply because you don't have a staff
of existing people in anticipation of this magnitude of event.
So I think that is what you are running into.
Senator Lieberman. Let me understand clearly. Are these
people who are retained by the municipalities?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Private contractors. They are simply
qualified electrical inspectors.
Senator Lieberman. That you bring on?
Mr. Ratcliffe. No, sir. They are in the communities.
Senator Lieberman. That an individual home owner might have
to retain?
Mr. Ratcliffe. That is exactly right.
Senator Lieberman. OK. And so part of what is going on here
is that there are not enough of them in New Orleans. Same
problem in your service area in Mississippi?
Mr. Ratcliffe. To some extent, yes, sir.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you all very much. Thanks for what
you did in the crisis, which helped a lot of people an awful
lot, and thanks for the lessons that you provided us with this
morning.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Let me ask you each one final question. Our Committee, at
the conclusion of its investigation, will be preparing a report
with our findings and recommendations. We are committed to
improving the Federal Government's preparedness and response so
that the slow, halting, and woefully inadequate response to
Katrina is not repeated, and we are sincerely committed to that
task. What final advice do you have for us on what should be
done to improve the preparedness and response at the Federal
level? I am going to start with Mr. Jackson and work backwards
this time.
Mr. Jackson. I think the same things that we learned out of
Katrina and that we continue to learn, is focusing on
communication. Pro-active communications on the front end are
going to lead us to those discussions about expectations and
limitations, which we can build that comprehensive plan that is
really going to take us to that unprecedented level of disaster
preparedness that we have yet to achieve.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Regan.
Mr. Regan. In our case, we are going through and really
evaluating learned lessons again from Katrina, as we have with
every other storm. I think the one thing is we look at the
process of how we handled it. We look at the process of our
plans, and we change the process of what didn't work, where we
adapted to what did work.
And I think if you go back from the very beginning and you
look at where everything was established, from the breakdown in
communications to the breakdown in deployment to everything
that happened, you need to go through each one of those plans
and determine what part of the process broke down. And once you
determine that, you correct that, then you move forward. And I
think that is really the most important part from a learning
standpoint. It is going back in and finding out exactly what
part of the process broke down and correct that part.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Litow.
Mr. Litow. I would say, sadly, we have been through many
disasters, and in each of them, whether we are talking about
September 11 or the hurricanes or international disasters like
earthquakes or the tsunami, there are good examples of best
practices and practices that are not so good, and we ought to
learn from all of them to be able to prepare a comprehensive
plan and strategy, and then make sure that all the various
sectors who are called upon to respond have a common set of
information. That is public, that is private, that is not-for-
profit, and that is the education sector, as well. Get everyone
on the same page, understanding exactly what went right and
what didn't, and have a comprehensive strategy and plan in
place. The next disaster may not be a hurricane.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. Ratcliffe.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Senator, I would certainly agree with my
colleagues. The only thing I would add would be to try to
create a spirit amongst the leadership in the various agencies
of cooperation and teamwork and a single mindset to make sure
that we are focused on the main objective, which is to restore
order and to restore society to some sense of normalcy. To the
extent we have leadership that cooperates and is driven by
teamwork, we would be much better off.
Chairman Collins. Senator Lieberman and I serve on the
Senate Armed Services Committee, and we spend a lot of time
talking about jointness. I think what you are all talking about
is that jointness needs to exist at the local, State, and
Federal level and in cooperation with the private sector.
We have learned a great deal from your testimony here
today, and I want to thank you very much for sharing your
experiences and your expertise with the Committee.
Senator Lieberman, do you have any other final comments?
Senator Lieberman. I don't, just to join you in thanking
everybody here. There is a lot to learn about preparedness,
leadership, and the cultures it sounds like you all created,
which we did see in the Coast Guard, which is--don't worry
about the bureaucracy. If there is a crisis about to happen,
let us just go according to our pre-prepared plans and get this
done. Sadly, we didn't see that with FEMA, which is supposed to
play the major role here, and that is what we have to correct.
So I thank you again.
Chairman Collins. This hearing record will remain open for
15 days for the submission of additional materials. Your full
written statements will also be included in the record, and
again, thank you so much for testifying today.
This hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:43 a.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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