[Senate Hearing 110-454]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 110-454
THE NEW MADRID SEISMIC ZONE: WHOSE FAULT IS IT ANYWAY?
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HEARING
before the
AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE,
LOCAL AND PRIVATE SECTOR
PREPAREDNESS AND INTEGRATION
of the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
DECEMBER 4, 2007
__________
Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs
----------
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Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TED STEVENS, Alaska
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
BARACK OBAMA, Illinois PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri JOHN WARNER, Virginia
JON TESTER, Montana JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire
Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
Brandon L. Milhorn, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE, LOCAL, AND PRIVATE SECTOR PREPAREDNESS
AND INTEGRATION
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas, Chairman
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
BARACK OBAMA, Illinois NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
JON TESTER, Montana JOHN WARNER, Virginia
Kristin Sharp, Staff Director
Michael McBride, Minority Staff Director
Amanda Fox, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Pryor................................................ 1
WITNESSES
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Glenn M. Cannon, Assistant Administrator for Disaster Operations
Directorate, Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security................................ 3
John R. Hayes, Jr., Director, National Earthquake Hazards
Reduction Program, National Institute of Standards and
Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce........................ 5
David Applegate, Senior Science Advisor for Earthquakes and
Geological Hazards, U.S. Geological Survey..................... 7
David Maxwell, Director, Arkansas Department of Emergency
Management and Vice Chair, Central United States Earthquake
Consortium..................................................... 15
Callen Hays, Crisis Management Coordinator, Memphis Light, Gas,
and Water...................................................... 17
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Applegate, David:
Testimony.................................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 44
Cannon Glenn M.:
Testimony.................................................... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 25
Hayes, John R., Jr.:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement with an attachment........................ 35
Hays, Callen:
Testimony.................................................... 17
Prepared statement........................................... 59
Maxwell, David:
Testimony.................................................... 15
Prepared statement........................................... 51
APPENDIX
Background....................................................... 63
Charts submitted by Mr. Cannon................................... 65
``Concepts of Planning and Response to a Missouri Catastrophic
Event (Earthquake) (Missouri State Emergency Operations Plan
Annex Y)'' submitted by Mr. Cannon............................. 67
``Missouri Local Workshop Registration List'' submitted by John
Campbell, Acting Operations Branch Chief of The Missouri
Emergency Management Director's Advisory Committee............. 86
Questions and Responses submitted for the Record from:
Mr. Cannon................................................... 94
Mr. Applegate................................................ 99
Mr. Hayes.................................................... 100
THE NEW MADRID SEISMIC ZONE: WHOSE FAULT IS IT ANYWAY?
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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2007
U.S. Senate,
Ad Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local, and
Private Sector Preparedness and Integration,
of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:40 p.m., in
Room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. David Pryor,
Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senator Pryor.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR
Senator Pryor. We will get underway here. I think we are
all set up here now with our visuals. I want to thank the panel
for being here and I apologize for being 5 or 10 minutes late;
they called a vote on us right at 2:30 and I had to get over to
the Capitol to vote.
Some of the Senators on the Subcommittee may be coming in
later. We have a Commerce Committee markup and some action on
the floor and some other things, so its a busy day. What I will
do is I will leave the record open for a few weeks to allow
Senators to ask questions. Panelists, if you could get us your
responses back as quickly as possible, we would appreciate it.
Let me go ahead and welcome everyone here. I want to thank
all of you for being here today for this hearing before the Ad
Hoc Committee on State, Local, and Private Sector Preparedness
and Integration. We are calling this hearing ``The New Madrid
Seismic Zone: Whose Fault is it Anyway?'' a little bit of a
play on words. I know you earthquake researchers get tired of
that play on words, but we couldn't resist. We are talking
about a very serious subject today, one that touches my State
very directly, as you can see from the map, and that is the New
Madrid fault line.
I want to welcome Dave Maxwell and thank him for being
here. He is in the back of the room. He is on our next panel,
but he is from my home State of Arkansas and we will give him
the proper introduction in a few moments.
As most people who follow earthquakes in this country and
understand the history of earthquakes in this country, in 1811
and 1812, a series of three very large earthquakes struck the
New Madrid region. The earthquakes measured between 7.0 and 8.0
on the Richter scale. The earthquakes were so powerful that
they changed the course of the Mississippi River and the
Mississippi River actually flowed backwards for some time. The
tremors from the earthquakes could be felt as far away as 1,000
miles. In fact, there are recorded stories of church bells
ringing in Boston because the ground was shaking in Boston,
Massachusetts.
Today, we know a lot more about earthquakes than we did
back in 1811 and 1812 and we can see the New Madrid quake zone
and the fault line; it affects seven States: Arkansas,
Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, and
Indiana. Science tells us that if there is a major earthquake
on that fault line, that it could be worse than the earthquake
that we could see in Southern California at some point that
gets a lot more publicity and has a lot more notoriety, by the
way, but this earthquake here is a very serious threat to the
United States. Imagine every bridge along the Mississippi River
on those maps going away, or imagine the levees breaking along
not just the Mississippi River, but all the river systems there
that are impacted here, you can look at locks and dams
breaking, you can look at levees, which almost surely some of
them would surely disintegrate or at least be greatly damaged
with a major earthquake, it doesn't take long to understand how
serious this challenge and this threat is.
Scientists estimate that, depending on how severe the
earthquake might be, it may cost upwards of $500 billion to
this country, and if you look at Hurricane Katrina, as terrible
as it was, and we all know about the tragedy in Hurricane
Katrina, that has cost the government $130 billion so far. So
this one could far outscale the cost and the difficulty, the
challenges that it would present this country.
Since 1812, we have escaped a catastrophe in the region,
but the threat is real and I think it is essential that we
assess the hazard, develop accurate response plans, and educate
the public about the safety precautions that we all can take.
Today, we will hear from several Federal agencies about
their role in preparing for and responding to an earthquake in
the New Madrid Seismic Zone. All the agencies represented--
FEMA, NIST, USGS--play an important role in research,
mitigation, and response.
On the second panel, we will hear about the work being done
at the regional and State level. Finally, we will discuss
preparation efforts that critical infrastructure owners and
operators in the region are taking.
Because there is so much we don't know about the earthquake
hazard in this region and because the area has not suffered a
major earthquake for almost 200 years, it is critical to bring
attention to this topic. I hope we can work together to develop
and maintain open lines of communication between all levels of
government and our critical infrastructure and private sector
partners.
And one more note before we go to our first panel. I know
that a few years ago, FEMA did an analysis and looked at the
biggest challenges that the country may face in natural
disasters and they decided to do two major exercises in the
middle part of the country. One was Hurricane Pam, which
simulated a large hurricane. This was a couple of years before
Hurricane Katrina. And the second one they never did, but they
were supposed to. FEMA was supposed to do a major exercise on
the New Madrid earthquake. So it is my hope that, at some
point, we put that back on the calendar. I know there is
discussion for putting a major planning exercise together for
2011, which I think would be the 200 anniversary of the last
earthquake. But anyway, I hope that we will consider making
that a major and very regional effort.
So with that, what I want to do is introduce the panel. Our
first witness will be Glenn Cannon, Assistant Administrator for
the Disaster Operations Directorate at FEMA. Mr. Cannon is
responsible for coordinating the development and execution of
interagency plans for response operations in Presidential
disaster and emergency declarations. He has an extensive
background in public safety administration and has served in
many leadership roles in the City of Pittsburgh.
The second witness will be Jack Hayes, Director of the
National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program at the National
Institute of Standards and Technology. Mr. Hayes is responsible
for overall program management, coordination, and technical
leadership and facilitation of implementation of earthquake
risk mitigation measures. Prior to joining the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Mr. Hayes was a
leader of seismic and structural engineering research at the
U.S. Army Research and Development Centers Construction
Engineering Research Laboratory.
And our third witness on this panel is Dr. David Applegate,
Senior Science Advisor for Earthquakes and Geological Hazards
at the U.S. Geological Survey. Dr. Applegate is responsible for
coordination of geologic hazards activities across the U.S.
Geological Survey. He also chairs the National Science and
Technology Council's Interagency Subcommittee on Disaster
Reduction and is an adjunct faculty member of the University of
Utah's Department of Geology and Geophysics.
So, Mr. Cannon, please proceed.
TESTIMONY OF GLENN M. CANNON,\1\ ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR
DISASTER OPERATIONS DIRECTORATE, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
AGENCY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Cannon. Thank you, Chairman Pryor, and thank you for
the opportunity to discuss FEMA's Catastrophic Disaster
Response Planning Initiative for a potential earthquake along
the New Madrid Seismic Zone.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Cannon appears in the Appendix on
page 25.
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Successfully responding to the anticipated effects of a
catastrophic disaster is one of the greatest challenges
Federal, State, and local governments face. Recognizing this,
FEMA has implemented a Catastrophic Disaster Response Planning
Initiative designed to enhance disaster response planning
activities by focusing attention on disasters that could
immediately overwhelm existing local capabilities.
Working with our partners at every level of government, we
are identifying high-risk areas, developing loss estimates,
assessing response capabilities and the accompanying
shortfalls, and developing comprehensive planning strategies to
address these shortfalls and enhance capabilities. This
initiative also involves participation by the private sector,
voluntary organizations, non-governmental organizations,
academia, and members of the critical infrastructure sections.
We are collaborating on a number of functional response topics
with a focus on particularly high-risk regions, which are laid
out in greater detail in my written testimony.
But today's hearing is focused on our efforts to improve
overall capabilities to respond to and recover from a
catastrophic New Madrid Seismic Zone earthquake. Our activities
include identifying issues that cannot be resolved based on
current capabilities and proposing recommended courses of
action for decisionmakers.
Our New Madrid Planning Initiative focuses on a no-notice
major earthquake in the central portion of the United States.
Working with our partners, we have conducted risk assessments
that show the wide-ranging impact an earthquake in this region
would have. Estimates of total building loss alone exceeded $70
billion. Approximately 44 million people live in the New Madrid
Seismic Zone area, with 12 million in the highest-risk areas.
An earthquake would have a major impact on the economy,
transportation, lifelines, and other factors of everyday life
across this region and the entire country. Estimating losses is
essential to decisionmaking at all levels of government. It
provides a basis for developing mitigation, emergency
preparedness, and response and recovery plans, policies, and
capabilities.
We are working from the grassroots level up to carry out
all aspects of planning for a New Madrid event. This includes
using a scenario-driven plan development process with area-
specific workshops in both urban and rural areas. The workshops
bring together local, State, and Federal response operators
with emergency planners and other subject matter experts to
develop catastrophic response plans based on real world
modeling. The resulting hazard-specific annexes will supplement
existing base plans for response and recovery.
To date, local workshops and planning activities have been
conducted in Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky,
and Tennessee, and workshops are scheduled in Mississippi and
Alabama for early next year. Several States are also involved
as potential host States to accept those evacuating areas hit
by such a catastrophic earthquake. These States provided
significant evacuee support following Hurricane Katrina. Being
located in and near the New Madrid Seismic Zone, they would
likely be called upon to assist evacuees.
As you can imagine, there are many operational, logistical,
and victim assistance activities that we will all need to
respond to in any catastrophic event. I am proud of the
coordinated and integrated activities that we are taking to be
prepared for responding to a major event. The New Madrid
Seismic Zone Initiative offers significant benefits, such as
greater cross-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary involvement
in the planning, including examining economic stabilization and
post-disaster redevelopment issues. In fact, the lessons
learned from this initiative will be exported to other
catastrophic planning venues across the Nation.
Administrator David Paulison noted recently that FEMA's
mission is based upon the founding principles of this great
Nation: Protecting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The Founding Fathers banded together to create this Nation. In
a similar fashion, we are banded together with our many
partners to provide effective emergency management. None of us
can or should try to do it alone. Working together, we can make
sure that during the next catastrophic event, we have an
integrated response system where all participants at all levels
of government, the private sector, and non-governmental
organizations understand their roles and responsibilities prior
to the event occurring.
Together, we can also educate the public on their role
during disasters. Government, even perfectly synchronized,
cannot provide the entire response. All of our citizens need to
participate in the emergency management process and take
responsibility for their personal preparedness. A catastrophic
disaster, whether in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, along our
Gulf Coast, or anywhere in the country, will impact all of us.
As such we must all work together to be prepared.
This concludes my testimony and I will be pleased to answer
any questions. Thank you.
Senator Pryor. Thank you. Mr. Hayes.
TESTIMONY OF JOHN R. HAYES, JR.,\1\ DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
EARTHQUAKE HAZARDS REDUCTION PROGRAM, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF
STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Mr. Hayes. Chairman Pryor, I thank you and the Members of
the Subcommittee for conducting today's hearing. I appreciate
the opportunity to be here before you to present a brief
overview of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program
(NEHRP), and the role that the National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST), plays in this partnership. NEHRP was
established in 1977 to provide technical assistance for pre-
earthquake mitigation activities by State and local
governments, industry, and the private sector.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Hayes with an attachment appears
in the Appendix on page 35.
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As background, I note that earthquakes strike without
warning. In the past 200 years, very large magnitude
earthquakes have occurred in Alaska, California, South
Carolina, and the New Madrid region. There is evidence that
such earthquakes have occurred in the more distant past in the
Pacific Northwest, Utah, and other areas. A 2006 National
Research Council report noted that 75 million people and half
of our Nation's buildings, worth $8.6 trillion in 2003 dollars,
are located in areas of the United States that are prone to
damaging earthquakes.
The United States has been fortunate not to have
experienced recent severely damaging earthquakes, but
considering our significant urbanization and societal
interconnectivity, the consequences of earthquakes include
significant injury and loss of life in addition to potentially
severe economic and national security consequences. Experts
consistently estimate that a ``big one'' that strikes a major
U.S. urban area may cause over $100 billion in losses.
Most recently reauthorized in 2004, NEHRP is responsible
for three main areas: Improving the understanding of
earthquakes and their effects through interdisciplinary
research; developing effective measures for earthquake hazards
reduction; and promoting the adoption of earthquake hazards
reduction measures. The 2004 reauthorization also directed
NEHRP to develop, operate, and maintain the Advanced National
Seismic System, the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake
Engineering Simulation, and the Global Seismographic Network.
Congress has indicated it intends for NEHRP to provide
better earthquake preparedness for the Nation through
interagency coordination and cooperation with the following
program agency responsibilities. The National Science
Foundation (NSF) supports a broad range of basic research that
is integrated with educating students at all levels, as well as
professional and public outreach. NSF has supported three
National Earthquake Engineering Research Centers, one of which,
the Mid-America Earthquake Center, is headquartered at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
NIST is responsible for performing problem-focused R&D to
improve earthquake-resistant building codes, standards, tools,
and practices. In the recent reauthorization, Congress directed
NIST to assume the program lead agency role.
The U.S. Geological Survey conducts and supports earth
science investigations, produces seismic hazards assessments,
monitors earthquake activity, and coordinates post-earthquake
reconnaissance.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) translates
research results into cost-effective State and local loss
reduction measures. To do that, FEMA provides technical
guidance and information about building codes and practices,
supports public-private partnerships, provides estimates of
potential losses, and supports public awareness education. In
partial fulfillment of these responsibilities in the mid-
continent region, FEMA supports the Central U.S. Earthquake
Consortium. Consistent with the statutory responsibilities,
FEMA leads NEHRP in working closely with the National Model
Building Code organizations through the Building Seismic Safety
Council to ensure that cost-effective earthquake construction
techniques are incorporated in the Nation's building codes.
The four program agencies are jointly developing plans for
earthquake engineering research and outreach efforts that
support this process.
The 2004 NEHRP reauthorization directed several key new
program developments. It directed the formation of an
Interagency Coordinating Committee (ICC), that is composed of
the directors of the four program agencies as well as the
directors of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and
the Office of Management and Budget. The ICC released its first
annual report to the Congress on NEHRP in early 2007 and
recently approved the outline for a new NEHRP strategic plan
that is now under development. The plan will include several
key areas of needed program emphasis that were endorsed by the
ICC in 2006.
The reauthorization also directed the formation of an
Advisory Committee on Earthquake Hazard Reduction that advises
the ICC chairperson on program technical direction. The
committee was formed in early 2007 and has now met twice. At
its most recent meeting in October, the committee provided
detailed feedback for improving and refining the strategic plan
that is now under development.
As I mentioned earlier, NIST is responsible for performing
applied engineering research that links fundamental science and
engineering knowledge with its practical application for cost-
effective design and construction of earthquake-resistant
structures. Until fiscal year 2007, funding had not existed to
support this responsibility. In fiscal year 2007, the Congress
appropriated $800,000 of new monies that allowed NIST to
initiate this NEHRP research. The President's fiscal year 2008
budget request added another $4.75 million for NIST earthquake
research that would enable NIST to undertake a substantial
program of coordinated in-house and extramural research.
In conclusion, NEHRP focuses on pre-earthquake mitigation
activities and has no direct operational responsibilities for
post-earthquake response and recovery. However, NEHRP resources
do support those activities, providing critical information to
address this national hazard.
Thank you very much, sir, for your attention, and I will be
happy to answer any questions you might have.
Senator Pryor. Thank you. Dr. Applegate.
TESTIMONY OF DAVID APPLEGATE,\1\ SENIOR SCIENCE ADVISOR FOR
EARTHQUAKES AND GEOLOGICAL HAZARDS, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Mr. Applegate. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing on a very important topic. From today's perspective,
the three magnitude 7.5 to 8.0 earthquakes that struck the
Mississippi Valley back in the winter of 1811 and 1812 seem
quite distant, but infrequent events nevertheless represent
very real risks, and if those earthquakes were to recur today,
significant damage to buildings, transportation, and critical
infrastructure would occur in at least eight States.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Applegate appears in the Appendix
on page 44.
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At the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), we strive to deliver
the information and tools that emergency managers, public
officials, and citizens need to prevent natural hazards from
becoming disasters. In collaboration with our partners in the
National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program plus State and
local governments and universities, the USGS carries out our
responsibilities under the Stafford Act to provide warnings and
notifications on earthquakes and other geologic events as well
as additional NEHRP roles to assess earthquake hazards, support
targeted research, and help build public awareness.
Now, why are there earthquakes in the Central United
States? Although the large majority of earthquakes occur along
the edges of the brittle tectonic plates that make up the
earth's outer skin, earthquakes do occur far from present-day
plate boundaries as the stresses from those boundary zones are
translated into the more stable interiors, as in the case in
the Central and Eastern United States. Such earthquakes are
less frequent than in California or Alaska, but an earthquake
in the mid-continent affects a much larger area than the same
size earthquake in California, and that is reflected in both of
the diagrams up here,\1\ the one on the dais showing comparison
of a damaging earthquake, the Northridge earthquake in 1994,
with the Marked Tree event in 1895, so that is sort of a
moderate-size quake, and the one over here to my left,
comparing the 1811 New Madrid events to the 1906 earthquake
that destroyed the San Francisco area. You can see that the
damage zones and the zones in which it was felt are much
broader, and that is because in the Central United States, the
crust is older and it is colder and it translates the energy
from seismic waves much more efficiently. In the Mississippi
Valley, in particular, you also have amplification of that
shaking because of the very thick sediment, so that communities
there are more intensely affected.
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\1\ The charts referred to appears in the Appendix on page 65.
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Now, geologic research shows that similar sequences of
major earthquakes to those in 1811 and 1812 have happened at
least twice before, in about 1450 A.D. and 900 A.D. We estimate
that there is a 7 to 10 percent chance of an earthquake the
size of those in 1811 and 1812 striking the region in the next
50 years. However, the occurrence of even a moderate-sized
earthquake like the 1895 event close to urban centers like
Memphis could be locally devastating. And the chances of a
magnitude 6.0 earthquake occurring in this region in the next
50 years is 25 to 40 percent.
Now, turning to response, knowing where shaking is most
intense immediately after an earthquake can save lives by
providing emergency responders with the situational awareness
that they need to concentrate their efforts where they matter
most. For that reason, USGS has been building the Advanced
National Seismic System (ANSS) to modernize the Nation's
seismic monitoring infrastructure and provide the most rapid
information we can about strong shaking. Through ANSS, the USGS
sends rapid reports of potentially damaging earthquakes to over
100,000 users, including the Departments of Defense, Homeland
Security, State and local emergency managers, the news media,
and the public.
USGS monitors earthquakes in the Central United States in
cooperation with the University of Memphis, St. Louis
University, and the University of Kentucky.
Now, within 5 minutes after a potentially damaging
earthquake in the Central United States, notifications are sent
to local, State, and Federal officials with the epicenter and
preliminary magnitude. Within 20 minutes, an initial shake map
is released, and that is shown here.\2\ It is on the left. This
is a scenario shake map that was used for the recent SONS
exercise for an 1811-type New Madrid event, with the strongest
shaking shown in red. That is available in about 20 minutes,
and then the products are refined as more data arrive, helping
to prioritize response.
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\2\ The chart referred to appears in the Appendix on page 65.
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Now, 3 months ago, USGS began delivering a new product
known as PAGER, the Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for
Response, which provides rapid estimates of population exposure
to shaking, giving emergency responders and aid agencies a
quick estimate of the extent of the likely response required,
and that is what is shown on the right.
In addition to shaking that would cause significant damage
to today's buildings and lifelines, the 1811 and 1812
earthquakes also caused landslides along the bluffs from
Mississippi to Kentucky. A type of ground failure called
liquefaction caused soils to flow and may make roadways in the
Mississippi Valley, such as I-55, impassable. It also can
disrupt agriculture and cause levee failures.
The citizens of this region need to be aware of the likely
consequences of earthquakes. Through the Central United States
Earthquake Consortium, testifying in the next panel, the USGS
and FEMA partner with State emergency management agencies and
geological surveys to provide information that they can use in
their planning efforts and to educate the public.
Mr. Chairman, while earthquakes are inevitable, their
consequences to our building environment are not and there is
much we can do as a Nation to improve our resilience to these
and other natural hazards. This concludes my remarks. I will be
pleased to answer any questions.
Senator Pryor. Thank you, Dr. Applegate.
Let me start with you, if I may, just to follow up on some
of your testimony. You did a good job of summarizing them
during your opening statement, I'd like to clarify the
geological differences between an earthquake in the New Madrid
area versus one in California. Tell us the geological reasons
why you could see a more widespread area of damage.
Mr. Applegate. Sure. Well, there are a couple of geologic
factors involved. One of those is that out in the West, where
we have got an active plate boundary, the crust is much more
broken up. You have a much younger crust, a warmer crust. The
energy from earthquake waves doesn't get transferred as far.
For example, in that 1906 earthquake, it was felt about as far
away as Nevada, but that was it. So all the energy was
concentrated in a small area.
In contrast, in the Central United States or the Eastern
United States, this is very old crust. This has been part of
the continent for a long time and it is older, it is colder,
and so basically, just like ringing a bell, the waves are going
to travel very efficiently through this medium. And so the same
kind of waves are going to travel over a much broader area.
And in the case of the Mississippi Valley itself, then you
have a second factor which leads to damage and that is that you
have this very thick accumulation of sediments--whenever you
have a pile of sediment like that, it is just going to shake a
lot harder than, say, a hard rock site. And so those two
factors, I think, lead to increased shaking.
Senator Pryor. Do you call that liquefaction?
Mr. Applegate. Well, then at the surface, those are exactly
the kind of sediments, when if mixed with water, when they are
shaken, they lose all their strength and then you get the
liquefaction, absolutely.
Senator Pryor. And so if you have the phenomenon of
liquefaction on the surface, what does that mean for buildings
and infrastructure?
Mr. Applegate. Well, it means that the ground has lost all
its strength, and so it is essentially, it is turned into a
slurry and so that can be a major challenge for buildings, for
lifelines, and it is certainly one of the aspects in the
catastrophic planning scenario that is being looked at in terms
of the range of damages that could be experienced.
Senator Pryor. And how long does that liquefaction, or
liquefied state, remain on the surface? Is it over once the
shaking stops, or does it remain there?
Mr. Applegate. Well, it partly depends on how much of the
groundwater basically gets squired out. So there are areas
where you are going to get uplift. There are other areas where
you are going to get substance. The whole ground surface is
going to drop. In those areas, you may get flooding. For
example, in certain agricultural areas, you could get flooding
that would last for months. In other areas, it is going to be
over relatively quick, but you are going to be dealing with a
lot of ground rupturing and that sort of thing.
Senator Pryor. Is there any practical rule of thumb on when
you can start rebuilding after you have a major earthquake like
that?
Mr. Applegate. That is where the New Madrid earthquake
poses an extra challenge compared to the kinds of earthquakes
that we tend to see in other parts of the country. This
sequence of large events that happened over a 2-month period in
1811, when we look back at the geologic record, it appears that
there are similar sequences, so that may be sort of the
characteristic way that the stress is relieved, which means
that does need to be factored into the rebuilding, that you
could have not just sort of week-after shocks, but you could
have another major event in a month, and that certainly is
critical in terms of how you make your decisions about
rebuilding.
Senator Pryor. Are those aftershocks predictable?
Mr. Applegate. Earthquake prediction remains a huge
challenge, and in some ways, we look at earthquakes and we have
gotten pretty good at saying where earthquakes occur. The
challenge is knowing when a big earthquake is going to occur.
So our hazard maps are all about saying where--that is an
example of where earthquakes are going to occur. But from a
prediction standpoint, it may be that the earthquakes
themselves don't actually know how large they are going to grow
until the rupture has initiated. So a lot of folks have been
trying, but have not yet succeeded.
Senator Pryor. Geologically, in the New Madrid area, are
you seeing signs that pressure is building or things are
happening under the surface? Can you make an accurate
prediction? You gave some statistics during your opening
statement about a certain percentage chance over so many years.
Could you run through those again?
Mr. Applegate. Sure. The kind of forecasts that I was
referring to are based on the same data that go into our
National Seismic Hazard maps, and that then in turn is what
gets built into building codes. And so we do that prediction or
forecast over a 50-year period, which is sort of the life span
of a typical building. The estimate based on the recurrence
history of these previous large events and moderate-size events
are for about a 7 to 10 percent chance over the next 50 years
for a magnitude 7.0-plus event, but in the area of 25 to 40
percent for another one in the magnitude 6.0 range, sort of
similar to that 1895 event that you have there. So again, those
projections are about where earthquakes are going to occur and
then can be fed into building codes that can make buildings
stronger.
Senator Pryor. And do you know anything about the building
codes? Are people following those building codes out there?
Mr. Applegate. Well, that is part of the handoff we have in
NEHRP.
Senator Pryor. I understand.
Mr. Applegate. We prepare the maps and we work with FEMA to
get those provisions built into model codes and then that is
part of their NEHRP activity--is the actual looking at the
adoptions. We certainly try to do what we can in conjunction in
terms of building public awareness, but that is certainly a
challenge.
Senator Pryor. All right. Mr. Hayes, during your testimony
you referred to FEMA, NIST, NSF, and USGS. We have a lot of
Federal agencies involved here. Could you give us the one-
minute description of the role each plays when it comes to
earthquake planning and response? Could you give us a very
brief summary on that?
Mr. Hayes. Well, within NEHRP, sir, there is not a very
extensive role that NEHRP plays in planning and response. The
statute has NEHRP focusing on pre-disaster mitigation efforts.
Within the legislation, essentially FEMA is levied with the
responsibility for exercising the National Response Plan when
an event occurs and work that USGS, our partners at USGS
provide, as Mr. Applegate has described for you, provide
information that is used in the response activities following
an earthquake. NIST and NSF are responsible for providing
research results that can then be worked by FEMA into the
National Model Building Code process. But we don't actually
play an active role other than what FEMA does and in what USGS
does indirectly in the response activities following an
earthquake.
Senator Pryor. Mr. Hayes, is it your impression that
information is flowing among the agencies as it should be, or
can we improve there?
Mr. Hayes. I think that the information is flowing very
well. We have a very good working partnership, and I suppose
you would expect me to say that anyway, but I really mean it. I
have been asked that question before and it starts with
developing personal relationships with the other people and the
other agencies. I consider this young man here to be a real
good friend and we work together very closely, and he gets so
many e-mails and phone calls from me that he doesn't sometimes
want to open the next one. But I think we are working together
very well.
And I think at the higher levels of the agencies, the
creation of the Interagency Coordinating Committee, which is
comprised of the agency directors----
Senator Pryor. I am sorry, go ahead.
Mr. Hayes. No problem. I think that the creation of the
Interagency Coordinating Committee, which was required by the
2004 reauthorization, has improved the communication process
among the agencies even more because the agency directors or
their representatives are meeting periodically and are in a
room face-to-face to discuss the issues that are before the
people at the working level in those agencies. So I think it is
very good, actually.
Senator Pryor. Good. Mr. Cannon, let me turn to you, if I
may. There is a mystery here on the Subcommittee and it has to
do with the Federal Contingency Plan Report. Apparently the
staff asked FEMA for that last month, last week, and even
yesterday, and we have been given assurances that it exists,
but FEMA has failed to provide it to the Committee. Do you know
anything about that?
Mr. Cannon. What I can speak to is the fact that there is
an Interim Contingency Plan----
Senator Pryor. Right.
Mr. Cannon [continuing]. Which we developed early on in the
process of the New Madrid Seismic Zone effort so that at FEMA
and at the Federal level, we would have a coordinated approach
to a no-notice event. It is just a draft. It is an interim. It
is not a final document. But it is my understanding that this
Friday, FEMA staff will be coming over and we are actually
going to have a chance to go through and look at the event. But
it has not been released because it is not ready yet to be
released.
Senator Pryor. When will it be ready for release?
Mr. Cannon. Well, it is not the planning product, it is
just what we would do in the event of something occurring
tomorrow or next week. So it won't be complete until the end of
all the workshops and all--because it is continually refined.
As we do each State and we complete each State, then we add
more details to it.
But it began as a very generic, normal no-notice response
template. Just as we have a notice template for hurricanes, we
have a no-notice template that we are using for New Madrid. But
it is the same no-notice template that we would essentially use
if we had a terrorist event next week, as well. The primary
difference between notice and no-notice is how much time you
have to prepare to respond, and there are certain things that
have to occur in every one of those events. So specifically,
this one we did for New Madrid, but it is an ongoing process.
So I wish I could tell you it would be done in a month or a
year, but that is really not the case. It will transition into
the final document for New Madrid when all the workshops are
completed.
Senator Pryor. Do you think it will be more than a year?
Mr. Cannon. I do think it will be more than a year, we have
only two more States to do some workshops in in the first
quarter of 2008, so hopefully by mid-year, we might be able to
share something that we could put out publicly. But again, it
is an interim dynamic document. It is not meant to be a
finished document at any point in time.
Senator Pryor. But as I understand what you said a minute
ago, you are going to make it available to our staffs on Friday
of this week?
Mr. Cannon. Yes, sir, in its present form, as it exists
today. And each week you look at it, it is a snapshot of where
we are at that moment in time because it constantly changes as
we gather more information from the planning process.
Senator Pryor. OK. There has been, as I said, a mystery for
this document. I think previously we were given assurances that
we could see it and have access to it and that just never has
happened. Apparently as recently as this week, someone from
your office brought over a stack of documents and a note saying
the report was in there, but it wasn't. So if you are going to
make it available this week, that would be very helpful and we
will follow up accordingly.
Mr. Cannon. Yes, sir. Friday, I understand, there will be a
review of it with your staffs.
Senator Pryor. Great. Let me ask this, Mr. Cannon, if I
can. As I understand it, you have a tentative plan to do a
major exercise relating to the New Madrid fault zone sometime
in 2011, is that right?
Mr. Cannon. Yes, sir. That is the date for the final
completed plan and exercise.
Senator Pryor. Do you know whether that is going to be a
TOPOFF exercise?
Mr. Cannon. No, I don't. Right now, we are building it as
just our final exercise for New Madrid. I don't know if the
next TOPOFF would include that or not.
Senator Pryor. OK. And who makes that decision?
Mr. Cannon. That decision is really done by Preparedness,
which is now part of FEMA. It returned last April. I can
certainly inquire for you if that could be considered as part
of the TOPOFF scenario.
Senator Pryor. Yes, I think that would be great because my
experience with TOPOFF exercises is you just allocate more
resources and more focus. If you look at the maps here, you can
see how this could be a very catastrophic event for the United
States. My sense is you ought to give it strong consideration
for a TOPOFF----
Mr. Cannon. I should also add, sir, that in 2009 and 2010,
we are also scheduled for regional exercises within--there are
four FEMA regions that cover those eight States and so we have
planned on smaller exercises within those regions building up
to the final large exercise. And the other piece is that a
portion of it was exercised in this year's Coast Guard-EPA
Spills of National Significance on the Mississippi.
Senator Pryor. OK. And let me ask you if you know about
building codes. Are you familiar with how builders, etc., home
builders and commercial builders, are doing in terms of
complying with building codes and doing that type of prep work
in anticipation of an earthquake?
Mr. Cannon. I believe that through FEMA's Mitigation
Directorate, we have developed model codes for this area, and I
understand----
Senator Pryor. Are they being followed?
Mr. Cannon. Well, I understand that some have been adopted
at the local level. We will get back with you to report if
there are any at the State level, but in my reading, I didn't
come across that. I only came across that there were local
governments that have adopted some codes.
Senator Pryor. OK. Let me ask you, Mr. Cannon, while I have
you, about the effect a major earthquake would have on
interstate commerce. Has FEMA worked through scenarios about
what would happen if the Mississippi River closed down and if
bridges collapsed across the river? Do you have contingency
plans?
Mr. Cannon. Yes, sir. It is all part of the planning
process, and this is a geographically-based, scenario-driven
planning process that goes from the ground up. What we wanted
to do was to make sure that everyone involved--the initial
first responders, the local governments that would have to be
involved, their State Governments, all are part of this process
so that, one, they get to know each other before the event
occurs, and two, they know what the expectations are of each
other.
So we are looking at this area from our level, at FEMA's
level, as supporting all those local incident commanders and
first responders as part of the National Incident Command
System and Unified Command, but also our planning in how do we
support this if the roadways are gone, river traffic may not be
there, airfields may be disrupted. How are we going to get the
resources in there to support that? And that is all part of our
contingency planning that we are doing for New Madrid. That
will all be included, but basically, we need to surround this
and come in from all sides.
Senator Pryor. The other thing there in that part of the
country, it just happens there is a lot of rail infrastructure
there, and also pipelines with natural gas and oil run through
that area, so an earthquake could be very disruptive. You could
have a major chemical spill either in the Mississippi River or
somewhere in that region--or many places in that region, in
fact. So again, this could be a major catastrophic event.
Mr. Cannon, do you know a lot about the insurance industry?
I know after Hurricane Katrina, there were some very serious
problems with the insurance industry about wind damage versus
water damage. I know that there is such a thing as earthquake
insurance. Does FEMA or your office get into when that should
be recommended and what happens if people don't carry that?
Mr. Cannon. No, sir, not my office. We do operations,
disaster operation response, but I believe we could get you
some information from Mitigation that would provide what you
are asking for.
Senator Pryor. That would be great. One of my concerns
there is after Hurricane Katrina, the wind damage----
Mr. Cannon. Yes.
Senator Pryor [continuing]. Versus the water damage, and
you can have that same type of scenario with an earthquake,
because it may be the earthquake causes a fire and the house
burns down.
Mr. Cannon. Yes, sir.
Senator Pryor. It could be a mud slide or a flood when a
levee breaks or whatever the situation is. It may not be the
earthquake itself. We talked in the Commerce Committee, of
which I am a member, about an all-hazards-approach. I know that
is out of your bailiwick, but I hope that the government and
the insurance industry are talking, so I would encourage FEMA
to reach out and work with Congress and work with the insurance
industry on that.
Mr. Cannon. Yes, sir. We will get back to you with that.
Senator Pryor. You guys did a great job in your opening
statements and you covered some of these questions previously.
Why don't I go ahead and close this panel and I will ask the
second panel to come up, but again remind this panel before you
leave that some of our Members aren't here today and we may
have some follow-up questions. I want to thank this panel for
being here and appreciate your expertise and your looking at
the New Madrid situation. Thank you very much.
Mr. Hayes. Thank you.
Mr. Applegate. Thank you.
Mr. Cannon. Thank you, sir.
Senator Pryor. With that, I will call the second panel up
here, and as they are getting squared away and the two panels
are switching places, let me go ahead and introduce our second
panel of witnesses.
The first witness will be David Maxwell. He is Director of
the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management. As Director,
Mr. Maxwell chairs the Arkansas Homeland Security Advisory
Group and serves on several emergency management committees and
councils for the State of Arkansas. At the national level, he
is Vice Chair of the Central United States Earthquake
Consortium (CUSEC), and participates as a State member of the
National Emergency Management Association.
The second witness we have will be Callen Hays, Crisis
Management Coordinator for Memphis Light, Gas, and Water. Mr.
Hays served as the project manager for the construction of the
Memphis Light, Gas, and Water's new emergency operations
center, which opened last June. He also served as the project
manager for the hazard mitigation study that was commissioned
by Memphis Light, Gas, and Water in 2006. Mr. Hays is a
licensed professional engineer for the State of Tennessee and
has worked with his company for 13 years.
So with that, Mr. Maxwell, go ahead.
TESTIMONY OF DAVID MAXWELL,\1\ DIRECTOR, ARKANSAS DEPARTMENT OF
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AND VICE CHAIR, CENTRAL UNITED STATES
EARTHQUAKE CONSORTIUM
Mr. Maxwell. Thank you, Chairman Pryor, Senator Sununu, and
other Members of the Subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity
to appear before you today. As stated, I am David Maxwell,
Director of the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management
(ADEM), as well as the current Vice Chair of the Central United
States Earthquake Consortium (CUSEC).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Maxwell appears in the Appendix
on page 51.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ADEM's role in planning for an earthquake along the New
Madrid Seismic Zone falls into two areas. The first and primary
area of focus is to establish and implement an earthquake
preparedness program to ensure the safety and well-being of the
citizens of Arkansas from the risks associated with earthquakes
within the State, and second to address those aspects outside
the State which would certainly have a direct effect on
Arkansas.
We take an all-hazards approach when planning and perform a
gap analysis for specific hazards where needed. This requires
the full cooperation of all other State and local government
agencies, departments, and personnel.
CUSEC serves as a coordinating hub for the region,
performing the critical role of coordinating multi-State
efforts of the Central Region. While each individual State is
the primary implementor of emergency management functions,
CUSEC's role is largely facilitative in uniting and
coordinating actions of the eight States in the New Madrid
Seismic Zone--Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky,
Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee.
In 1997, Congress enacted the Earthquake Hazards Reduction
Act in recognition of the fact that earthquakes pose the
greatest potential threat of any single event natural hazard
confronting the Nation. It directed the President to establish
and maintain an effective Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program.
In doing this, Congress created the National Earthquake Hazards
Reduction Program, which gives the responsibility to the
Federal Government to provide direction, coordination,
research, and other support efforts aimed at earthquake hazard
mitigation and preparedness. The Federal Emergency Management
Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Science
Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and
Technology were assigned specific roles.
While national attention focused on the high-risk areas
such as California, the late Dr. Otto Nuttli of St. Louis
University was pioneering research on the dangers of
earthquakes in the Central United States. His research provided
the conclusive evidence that prompted the creation of CUSEC in
1983. FEMA, in full cooperation with the States most at risk
from a New Madrid seismic event, laid the groundwork for the
formulation of CUSEC that year. This partnership was built
around four goal areas: Public outreach and education, multi-
State planning, mitigation, and application of research to
address the hazard and associated risk. The primary mission is
the reduction of deaths, injuries, property damage, and
economic losses resulting from earthquakes in the Central
United States. Authority for CUSEC is vested in the Board of
Directors, which is composed of the Directors of Emergency
Management for the eight member States.
As Director of ADEM, I oversee every aspect of emergency
management for the State of Arkansas. This includes the
planning, mitigation, response and recovery efforts for an
earthquake. My written remarks today deal specifically with
what could happen should a catastrophic earthquake occur in the
area.
There is always work to be done in preparedness. While I
cannot show you where preparedness works, I can show you where
it was not used. We exercise and plan according to current
research and upgrade it constantly to keep up with new
developments. There will always be a need to practice
coordination between local, State, and Federal organizations
involved. A challenge will always be the lack of warning that
an earthquake presents.
Arkansas, as well as the other CUSEC member States, are
constantly improving their catastrophic plans to address issues
that will arise when an earthquake strikes. The biggest
challenge we have is selling the need for preparedness on
earthquakes. Because we do not live in a State where
earthquakes are a regular occurrence, the thought tends to be
that they will not happen. While we all know that earthquakes
cannot be prevented, certainly we can minimize casualties and
damages by being prepared. I cannot overemphasize the
importance of awareness and self-preparation.
Thank you so much for your kind attention. It has been my
honor to be with you today and I will be happy to attempt to
answer any questions.
Senator Pryor. Thank you. It is great to see you again, Mr.
Hays.
TESTIMONY OF CALLEN HAYS,\1\ CRISIS MANAGEMENT COORDINATOR,
MEMPHIS LIGHT, GAS, AND WATER
Mr. Hays. Let me begin with a quick apology. I am currently
battling some laryngitis issues, so I know my voice will come
and go during my statement. Just bear with me.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Hays appears in the Appendix on
page 59.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Memphis Light, Gas, and Water since 1989 has spent $16
million to upgrade our water production facilities. We have
been awarded almost $4 million in FEMA grants to retrofit four
out of eight water pumping facilities and nearly 60 water
production wells. Given the past success of these efforts,
MLG&W felt there were other mitigation opportunities for our
gas and electric systems. Determining the most effective
spending of money relative to size and mitigation is a question
not many utilities have the personnel and the expertise to
handle.
In early 2006, we budgeted for and contracted an all-hazard
mitigation study to R.W. Howe and Associates. This study would
recommend where each network is most vulnerable to various
natural hazards and where the most effective spending of
retrofit dollars reside and the best opportunities to apply for
Federal funding.
No one can predict the exact amount of damage or cost of an
event like this. The majority of damage taking the longest
amount of time to restore would be the water treatment plants
that have yet to be seismically mitigated, underground
pipelines on gas and water distribution systems, and unanchored
transformers at electric substations. There is no economically
feasible way to mitigate underground pipelines. Strengthening
the above-ground collection, control, and distribution points
of all three networks will reduce the down-time. It will be a
lengthy restoration process for customers. It certainly will
take months, not weeks, to restore.
Widespread outages of all three systems varying in
restoration time will occur. The outage time will be based on
many factors that are difficult to quantify: A customer's
location relative to the system failure; condition of
overpasses and bridges that may prevent easy access of
materials, equipment, and mutual aid labor forces from arriving
in the region; the ability of MLG&W's remote monitoring system
to remain intact; and the amount of down time of our wholesale
suppliers of electricity and gas. If TVA's transmission system
is down or there are several breaks along the natural gas
pipelines of our suppliers, then the rigidity and strength of
our system will be inconsequential.
MLG&W's restoration priorities are to preserve life safety
first and foremost, which means reestablishing services to
hospitals, water pumping stations, and sewer treatment plants
are the highest priority.
There are other ways that we are preparing ourselves for
this seismic event. We have been replacing our cast iron gas
distribution system in the inner city of Memphis. Cast iron gas
pipe is more subject to failure with sudden ground motion than
polyethylene pipe, which is much more flexible. Since 1991,
MLG&W has spent $48 million to replace 206 miles of cast iron
gas pipe. MLG&W recognizes and is adopting the National
Incident Management System and the Incident Command Structure
into its emergency response protocol. We require all members of
our crisis response teams to be both NIMS and ICS trained and
certified.
MLG&W bought a new business building back in 2003 that was
seismically retrofitted for immediate occupancy and operability
following a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. We placed all critical
telecommunications, computer network servers, and a new
emergency operations center in this building. The increased
awareness of the constant work that has to be done for business
continuity and disaster recovery planning for MLG&W operations
has justified the process of creating an area department
focused on crisis management.
MLG&W works hard to integrate itself with other local,
State, and Federal Governments, as well as private sector
partners, to discuss ways of improving this area's emergency
management readiness. We have upper management employees that
serve on several local business continuity and disaster
recovery planning committee boards.
We have made efforts to educate the community on how it can
be more self-reliant following a catastrophic event. Partnering
with our local PBS station, we broadcast a show called
``Memphis Energized.'' On one of these shows, we teach our
customers how to shut off their gas and water services in case
of an emergency, how to strap gas-fired hot water heaters to
house framework, and to have a personal emergency plan ready.
Our local EMA office teaches Community Emergency Response Team
classes, or CERT classes, to help residents learn how to endure
a long-term emergency event. The public needs to understand
after a large earthquake it can and will be months, not days,
before many utility services are restored and they need to be
educated on how they can be ready.
There are a couple areas where improvements can be made to
help utilities in this area prepare for an earthquake. The
Federal mitigation money available to support seismic retrofits
for public utility infrastructure is an annual pre-disaster
mitigation program. For 2008, the program only had $100 million
available nationwide, of which perhaps 10 percent was allocated
to utility projects. Given the criticality of utilities to life
preservation and economic well-being of this region and the
Nation, more funding earmarked for seismic utility retrofit
work, as well as giving some priority to our utilities located
in the New Madrid, is needed. MLG&W had the resources to fund a
comprehensive hazard mitigation study. Many rural and small
utility companies cannot afford this type of analysis. Funding
for these types of studies to help guide smaller utilities on
their mitigation strategies would be helpful.
Enhancing public education concerning residential emergency
preparedness is needed. MLG&W voluntarily began mitigating its
utility systems back in 1999. Many utilities and energy
suppliers may not be taking this threat as seriously. Utility
distributors are dependent on wholesale suppliers of
electricity and gas. The government needs to ensure that both
public and private wholesale suppliers of electricity and gas
in the New Madrid Seismic Zone area have considered this threat
and are taking steps to mitigate their own systems.
This concludes my testimony. Thanks.
Senator Pryor. Let me, if I may, start with you, Mr.
Maxwell. You probably heard me quiz the FEMA witness earlier
about this contingency plan. He said it was a draft, it is not
ready yet, it may be a year or more before it is completed. But
from your standpoint, given the position you hold in the State,
have you been contacted to give any input into that report?
Mr. Maxwell. Well, if I understood Mr. Cannon's remark,
they are basing a lot of the State input on the workshops that
we are conducting that FEMA is funding. So they are getting
State input through those workshops.
Senator Pryor. OK. Have you seen a draft of the report at
all?
Mr. Maxwell. No.
Senator Pryor. OK. And also let me ask you about a story
that came out recently that the White House, OMB, may propose
in fiscal year 2009, to eliminate Emergency Management
Performance Grants (EMPG), from the budget in the 2009 fiscal
year. While I understand that nothing has been finalized and
this news report is based on a leak and it is a very tentative
proposal, I would like to get your thoughts on that, about how
the State of Arkansas and other States use EMPG grants and what
would happen if we lost access to that funding source.
Mr. Maxwell. Well, the EMPG grants go to fund part of our
agency and to a large degree funds the local emergency managers
in every county. We share a portion of that grant with our
local officials to help fund the salaries of the local
emergency managers. So the short answer to it all is if you
want to do away with the emergency management system in this
Nation, you do away with that grant.
Senator Pryor. Yes. And you may not know right off the top
of your head, but do you know how much Arkansas has received
from that grant annually?
Mr. Maxwell. Off the top of my head, I believe it was
around $3 million this year.
Senator Pryor. OK. And I assume that other States get a
rough----
Mr. Maxwell. Equivalent----
Senator Pryor [continuing]. Amount of that based on
population and----
Mr. Maxwell. It is based on population----
Senator Pryor. Yes.
Mr. Maxwell. We get about one percent of what is allocated
nationwide.
Senator Pryor. So it would be a considerable detriment to
State and local emergency management efforts?
Mr. Maxwell. Yes, sir. That is putting it mildly.
Senator Pryor. OK. Mr. Hays, I know your voice is not
holding up so well today, but let me ask a few questions. We
are talking about grants. You mentioned that you have received
some grants to retrofit and otherwise strengthen some of your
facilities. How has that gone, and when you do that, do you
report back to the Federal Government on what you are doing and
how that is going? Give us a sense of what that has been like.
Mr. Hays. The reporting structure back, I am not really
familiar with that, but I do know that the $4 million total
that I mentioned earlier is spread out over four different
grants that we were awarded through FEMA and all those grants
were relative to our water production facilities, things like
bracing aerators, filtration systems, pump buildings, some of
our water treatment plants. The theory is you can't keep
underground pipelines from breaking apart when an earthquake
like this happens, but if you can keep an above-ground water
treatment plant that takes years to build, then the amount of
time it takes to band-aid your pipelines, to get them so the
water is flowing through again, quickly and help the
restoration process. So we focused on our grants doing water
treatment.
Senator Pryor. Great. And as part of this effort, it sounds
like Memphis Light, Gas, and Water has gone through a risk
assessment study to understand where the weak links are in the
system, so to speak, and I am sure Memphis Light, Gas, and
Water has tried to predict the results of a serious earthquake.
Give us a sense of what you think might happen in Memphis if
there was a serious earthquake like is depicted on some of
these maps.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The charts referred to appears in the Appendix on page 65.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Hays. We partner with the Mid-America Earthquake, share
that information with them and they have given us some
estimates from their models that show, I think, $56 billion in
economic loss for the State of Tennessee with majority of
losses in the Memphis and Shelby County region and $15 billion
of that is directly related to utility infrastructure costs.
How real those numbers are computer generated based on data and
uncertainty about exactly where the ground is going to liquefy
and the amount of ground shaking relative to where you have
critical infrastructure is unknown. But it is going to take an
extremely long amount of time to repair especially an
underground infrastructure, pipelines. And as you mentioned
earlier, there are also three major natural gas suppliers that
go through Shelby County and that continues on to the north,
Texas Gas, Trunkline, and ANR.
Senator Pryor. Yes.
Mr. Hays. So that needs to be considered, as well.
Senator Pryor. Right. And what about your staffing, because
it seems to me if you have a catastrophic event like this, you
will by necessity be short-handed because a lot of your people
will be out in the metro area when this happens, and will not
be able to come in to you. Do you have contingency plans for
that on how you are going to try to handle the staffing needs
and to try to restore those services as quickly as possible?
Mr. Hays. We have crisis teams already established, an
electric crisis team, gas crisis team, and a water crisis team,
and each person on each of those teams have back-up personnel
and each with their responsibilities. It is going to be
difficult to know who is going to be able to be available for
work and even their back-ups. Everyone will certainly
understand the first day or two will be spent with most people
taking care of their families and making their own personal
life secure. It is almost like, as you know, hope for the best,
having everything backed up and hope they can make it.
Senator Pryor. As someone told me one time, hope for the
best, but plan for the worst.
Mr. Hays. Correct.
Senator Pryor. You heard me talk with the FEMA witness a
few minutes ago about a large-scale exercise where you have all
levels of government working together--Federal, State, local.
Get the private sector involved, volunteer organizations,
health providers, etc., first responders, all that, everybody
doing a large-scale simulation or a big exercise. Have you all
done something like that and did it, or would it benefit you to
do that?
Mr. Hays. We have. We participated in the SONS 2007
exercise this past June that was based on a large-scale
magnitude earthquake and we corresponded with our local EMA
office participating in that drill.
Senator Pryor. And was that beneficial to you?
Mr. Hays. It was. The key weakness that is brought up time
and again is communications. That will be a difficult task to
overcome logistically as one's land lines are cut and cell
phone towers fall or networks are overwhelmed. Using other
means of communications will be difficult.
Senator Pryor. Right. Mr. Maxwell, let me turn to you, if I
can. We talked about CUSEC earlier. You are involved with that
group and I think that is great. And as a member of that group
plus what you do in Arkansas, what sort of guidance are you
getting from the Federal Government in your planning and
response effort? Are they working with you on a regional level
or just on the State level, or tell us how that is going.
Mr. Maxwell. We have a little of both, actually. We are, in
these series of workshops that we are doing that are funded by
FEMA, we did three in the State of Arkansas. We did three local
workshops to enable a lot of local responders and local
officials to be involved to really start to identify the gaps
that are out there that we need to respond to. Then we had a
State-wide workshop to take the information gleaned from the
local workshops and pull it together to see what the State
could do. We are hoping that we can prevail upon FEMA to
release the funds that we did not spend on those workshops to
go back out to the local governments and do a series of
tabletops to really solidify a lot of the information that came
out in the larger workshops.
Senator Pryor. And how helpful are the tabletops? You just
did one last month?
Mr. Maxwell. Yes, sir. Actually, we have done two within a
month. Governor Beebe, as you know, is very interested in all
of this and he has pulled his cabinet together, or certain
segments of the cabinet together to do tabletop exercises. We
have done one on terrorism. The last one we did was on
earthquakes, which was extremely beneficial for us. After that
tabletop, the governor instructed me to, within the next couple
of weeks, which we have done, to run the same scenario again
but with the deputy directors of the agencies, not just with
the directors, to ensure that we don't have major fall-off if
the directors aren't available. So we are looking at that
continuity of operations aspect.
Senator Pryor. Now, when you are doing these tabletops, I
know that is mostly in Arkansas, but when you look at the red
zone here, clearly at a minimum in all these maps, you get
Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee, and in other maps you get a
lot bigger red zone in that. Do you work with Missouri,
Tennessee, your counterparts there?
Mr. Maxwell. Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, I leave here
today and will be attending a CUSEC Board of Directors meeting
with my counterparts in all of those States to discuss issues
and make sure that we are coordinating our efforts.
Senator Pryor. Is the State of Arkansas, as well as these
other States, coordinating with States that may be out on the
rim, like Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, etc., that hopefully
won't be as adversely impacted as us toward the center will be
and to establish mutual aid agreements with them? Have we gone
that far?
Mr. Maxwell. Yes, sir. One of the things that we are
working on very hard and one of the lessons that we learned
from Hurricane Katrina, actually, was that we do have to have
those plans in place to shelter a large number of people from
our State. And so we have had discussions with Oklahoma, Texas,
other States in the FEMA Region 6 so that in the event--we have
a Memorandum of Understanding in writing with Louisiana that
goes two ways. If there is a hurricane, we will accept their
evacuees, and if there is an earthquake, they will accept ours.
Senator Pryor. Great. Mr. Maxwell, in your testimony, you
said something I thought was insightful. You said the biggest
challenge is, ``selling the need for preparedness on
earthquakes,'' especially in our part of the country, because
we just don't have a lot of experience with that. I mean, we
talk about something that happened in 1811 or 1895. There are
just not a whole lot of people around who went through that
before.
So my question is how do you educate the public? Is it
Public Service Announcements? Is it through the public schools?
What can the Federal Government do to better bring public
awareness to the real danger of an earthquake in our State and
this region?
Mr. Maxwell. Well, I think the answer to that is yes to all
of the above. Really, we need to do Public Service
Announcements. We do town hall meetings where we go out and try
to educate the general public. We are going to try some new
things. With all of my gray hair, you can tell I am not really
up on a lot of the newer technology, but we have staff that are
exploring how to use You Tube and other things that the younger
generation automatically uses to put educational messages out.
We are going to try anything that we possibly can that might
work.
A couple of years back, I was sitting in a meeting talking
about earthquakes and somebody that was very involved in
preparedness leaned over to me and said, ``You know, we ought
to put out messages that people need to be prepared.'' We do
that all the time, and so obviously our message isn't being
heard. So our problem is finding a way to get that message out
where it will be heard. It is not working, the traditional
means, so we will try any avenue.
Senator Pryor. Well, I think it is human nature for people
to naturally want to filter out and not pay a lot of attention
to the earthquake threat because they don't feel that sense of
urgency or it is not real to them, but I tell you, if you go
down to New Orleans and you see the devastation they have gone
through, it makes you appreciate the destructive power of
Mother Nature. Anything we can do on the Federal level to help
educate people and provide the resources to do what you need to
do to get the word out to the public, we need to try to do it.
Probably with Memphis, you guys might put bill inserts in
periodically and things like that. We just need to continue to
raise awareness. Even though that first message usually doesn't
work, after people are exposed to that message a number of
times, hopefully, it will start sinking in.
Listen, that is all the questions I had. Again, we are
going to have some Senators who could not be here today who may
submit questions for the record. I just want to thank our two
panels for all that they do and the panelists. I notice that
Dr. Applegate stayed. We appreciate that, and the staff from
the previous panel stayed. We really appreciate that, your
staying to listen.
I just want to tell you that this is something that is very
real. There is a very real danger. We don't know how imminent
it is. That is one of the things that is very elusive here. But
we know that at some point, if it does happen, it could be a
major catastrophic event and we need to do all we can to be
prepared for it.
So again, I want to thank you all for coming here. I know
some of you traveled a great distance to be here and I
appreciate that.
The last thing I was going to say is we are going to leave
the record open for 2 weeks and allow Senators to submit their
questions in writing. So if you all get some questions in
writing, we would appreciate a rapid turn-around.
With that, I want to thank all the Subcommittee staff and
all the Senators and their staffs for doing this and certainly
all the witnesses and the media for being here. Thank you very
much.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:57 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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