[Senate Hearing 112-354]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-354
A REVIEW OF THE STATUS OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before a
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SPECIAL HEARING
JUNE 8, 2011--WASHINGTON, DC
__________
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COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii, Chairman
PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi
TOM HARKIN, Iowa MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky
BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama
HERB KOHL, Wisconsin KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas
PATTY MURRAY, Washington LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California SUSAN COLLINS, Maine
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana MARK KIRK, Illinois
JACK REED, Rhode Island DANIEL COATS, Indiana
FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey ROY BLUNT, Missouri
BEN NELSON, Nebraska JERRY MORAN, Kansas
MARK PRYOR, Arkansas JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota
JON TESTER, Montana RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
Charles J. Houy, Staff Director
Bruce Evans, Minority Staff Director
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Subcommittee on the Department of Homeland Security
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana, Chairman
FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey, Vice Chairman
DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii DANIEL COATS, Indiana
PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi
PATTY MURRAY, Washington RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama
JON TESTER, Montana LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
JERRY MORAN, Kansas
Professional Staff
Charles Kieffer
Chip Walgren
Scott Nance
Drenan E. Dudley
Rebecca Davies (Minority)
Carol Cribbs (Minority)
Administrative Support
Nora Martin
Courtney Stevens (Minority)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Opening Statement of Senator Mary L. Landrieu.................... 1
Prepared Statement of........................................ 3
Statement of Senator Daniel Coats................................ 5
Statement of Senator Thad Cochran................................ 6
Statement of Senator Jon Tester.................................. 6
Prepared Statement of........................................ 7
Statement of Hon. Craig Fugate, Administrator, Federal Emergency
Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security............. 7
Prepared Statement of........................................ 9
Realistic Planning and Preparedness.............................. 9
A ``Whole Community'' Approach to Emergency Management........... 11
Communication in a Disaster Environment.......................... 14
Statement of Rand Beers, Under Secretary, National Protection and
Programs Directorate, Department of Homeland Security.......... 16
Prepared Statement of........................................ 17
Emergency Communications Responsibilities........................ 17
Office of Emergency Communications............................... 18
NECP Goal Assessments............................................ 20
Public Safety Broadband Network.................................. 21
National Communications System................................... 23
Federal Emergency Management Agency and Office of Cybersecurity
and Communications Coordination................................ 24
Dedicated Communications With Critical Infrastructure............ 25
National Capabilities............................................ 25
Emergency Response Systems....................................... 27
Madrid Exercises................................................. 28
Mobile Devices and Mobile Technologies........................... 28
Disaster Relief Fund............................................. 30
Fiscal Year 2012 Disaster Relief Fund Budget..................... 31
Disaster Assistance.............................................. 32
Early Warning System............................................. 32
Hurricane Preparedness........................................... 33
Vermont Flooding................................................. 34
Disasters in Remote Areas........................................ 35
Alaska--Catastrophic Planning.................................... 36
International Partners........................................... 37
Statement of Mark Riley, Chief of Staff, Governor's Office of
Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, State of
Louisiana...................................................... 39
Prepared Statement of........................................ 41
Statutory Initiatives............................................ 42
Interoperability................................................. 43
Individual Communication and Social Media........................ 44
Private Sector Initiatives....................................... 45
Command College.................................................. 46
Urban Search and Rescue.......................................... 46
Homeland Security Grant Program Funding.......................... 46
Statement of David Vice, Executive Director, Integrated Public
Safety Commission, State of Indiana............................ 49
Prepared Statement of........................................ 50
Interoperable Communications in Indiana--``Saving Money, Saving
Lives''........................................................ 50
A Visionary and Inclusive Planning Process....................... 51
Balancing Technology With Financial Reality...................... 51
Timing Is Everything............................................. 51
Why It Keeps Working............................................. 52
Issues for the Future............................................ 53
Statement of Eddie Hicks, International Association of Emergency
Managers-USA, President and Director of Morgan County, Alabama
Emergency Management........................................... 53
Prepared Statement of........................................ 55
U.S. Council of the International Association of Emergency
Managers....................................................... 55
Morgan County, Alabama........................................... 55
Federal Emergency Management Agency Response to the Alabama
Tornadoes...................................................... 56
The Impact of Programs Funded by This Subcommittee............... 57
Some Best Practices.............................................. 58
Communications................................................... 59
Emergency Management Institute................................... 59
Statement of Ron Lane, Director, Office of Emergency Services,
San Diego County, California................................... 60
Prepared Statement of........................................ 62
Local Community Resilience....................................... 62
Additional Committee Questions................................... 69
Questions Submitted to Hon. Craig Fugate......................... 69
Questions Submitted by Senator Mary L. Landrieu.................. 69
Questions Submitted by Senator Frank R. Lautenberg............... 72
Questions Submitted by Senator Daniel Coats...................... 75
Use of Social Media During Disasters............................. 75
Questions Submitted to Rand Beers................................ 76
Questions Submitted by Senator Mary L. Landrieu.................. 76
Questions Submitted by Senator Daniel Coats...................... 79
Interoperable Public Safety Communications....................... 79
A REVIEW OF THE STATUS OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 2011
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Homeland Security,
Committee on Appropriations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met at 2:52 p.m., in room SD-138, Dirksen
Senate Office Building, Hon. Mary L. Landrieu (chairman)
presiding.
Present: Senators Landrieu, Leahy, Tester, Coats, Cochran,
Murkowski, and Moran.
opening statement of senator mary l. landrieu
Senator Landrieu. Good afternoon, everyone. Let me call the
subcommittee to order. This is the Subcommittee on Homeland
Security appropriations hearing to consider the current status
of emergency management in the United States and the important
role particularly that the communications systems play in a
disaster.
Let me begin by apologizing for being just a few minutes
late. I had the honor to present two of my outstanding nominees
before the Judiciary Committee for both the fifth circuit and
the eastern bench, and I was very pleased to do that. And I am
sorry to delay everyone.
I thank Senator Cochran for joining us, and Senator Coats,
my ranking member, will be joining us in a minute. Senator
Tester, thank you.
Today, I welcome two panels of witnesses to discuss the
current status of our emergency management operations in the
United States. I think this hearing is timely considering we
are still battling ongoing disasters and recoveries in almost
40 States of our Union.
Since Hurricane Katrina and the attacks on our country on
September 11, policies and laws have been rewritten, and
significant investments have been made in upgrading our
emergency management systems.
First, including investments in first-responder
capabilities, communication systems, recovery relief, and
rebuilding, significant change has happened at the local,
State, and Federal levels of government, and within the private
and nonprofit sectors as well.
In the United States, emergency management, be it
preparedness, response, or recovery, starts at the level of
government closest to the people. If a local government is
overwhelmed, the State must step up and provide support. If the
State gets overwhelmed in its efforts, then the Federal
Government steps up to provide support necessary to deal with
the disaster in an orderly recovery process. This requires much
advanced coordination and communication, first, to save lives
and property and then to recover and rebuild smartly and
quickly.
While we will look at emergency management as a whole
today, I also want a special focus on communications during a
disaster, and Mr. Beers, that is why we had you attend
especially. The ability of emergency response personnel to
communicate in real time prior to, during, and immediately
after the disaster is critical to establishing command and
control at the scene of an emergency and to maintaining
situational awareness. And it is not only communication between
local, State government, and all the various law enforcement
and first responders on the scene, it is also communication
with constituents, with citizens. As new technology is
developed, it is forging an evolution in the way we can
communicate to be even better and be more responsive. So
keeping up with this evolution is a challenge to the emergency
management community. We will be exploring some of that today.
The massive earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan in
March and the recent unprecedented flooding, tornadoes, and
wildfires here in the United States are reminders that the
Federal Government must continue to be a reliable partner with
State and local governments, as well as with our private
partners, to make sure that every community is prepared as
possible, and can deal quickly and smartly with the disaster at
hand, and then rebuild.
And in tight budgets, which is the situation that we are
in, and difficult political and economic conditions, it is more
important than ever to evaluate and to look at what is
happening out there in the field and allocate our dollars
wisely and carefully.
With that end, I welcome Mr. Craig Fugate, the
Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA), and Under Secretary Rand Beers of the National
Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD).
Mr. Fugate, let me conclude by saying a few things. In your
testimony, you emphasized that it takes a whole community, not
just the government, to ensure effective emergency management.
I appreciate the important improvements FEMA has made, ensuring
the needs of children are taken into account during disasters.
It has been a focus of mine and other Senators as we realized
with some great dismay that they had not been taken into
consideration prior to Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and some of
the other disasters along the gulf. For instance, planning for
juvenile justice centers, pre-staging infant formula, baby
food, and diapers. That is now standard operating procedure. It
is important that the children, all 100 million of them, in our
country should get our support, and I am pleased to see
advancements in that area.
Secretary Beers, you have taken the first step in testing
our interoperable communications in urban areas and ensuring
communications training and technical assistance is available.
I will never forget speaking to the commander of the Alabama
National Guard a few days after Katrina, and he said to me in
between a CNN interview, he said, ``Senator, our communications
is about where it was during the Civil War. We are literally
having runners carry handwritten messages to communicate what
our next steps should be.'' On that conversation, I thought if
I could do something to upgrade our situation, I would, and we
have worked very hard to do so.
Despite progress, we still have a lot to do. FEMA has not
fully institutionalized the changes made by the Post-Katrina
Emergency Management Reform Act. The National Disaster Recovery
Framework has not yet been completed. An effective risk and
preparedness assessment system is not yet fully in place, and
FEMA information systems remain woefully inadequate.
NPPD is working to ensure State and local governments and
the Federal Government stay ahead of evolving technologies and
infrastructure.
Before turning to Senator Coats, I must return to the issue
of the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) shortfall that I raised with
Secretary Napolitano in an earlier hearing. If the Congress
approves the President's request for the DRF, there will be a
shortfall of between $2 billion and $4.8 billion for fiscal
year 2012. Without additional funding, it is very likely that
this fund will be exhausted as early as January 2012. Recovery
efforts, therefore, in all 50 States, including those recently
hard hit by flooding and tornadoes will cease.
The House bill has attempted to make up for only a portion
of this shortfall. However, it came at great cost to Homeland
Security first-responder grants which were cut by 52 percent in
the House version of this bill, by $2.1 billion compared to
fiscal year 2010, and $1.4 billion or 40 percent, compared to
fiscal year 2011. The House also cuts the Coast Guard and FEMA.
It makes no sense to cut funding from the agencies that must
prepare for and respond to future disasters, to use that money
to pay for the cost of past disasters. We have never done that
in the history of this country, and I do not believe we need to
start now.
Following Senator Coats' opening remarks, each of the other
members will be recognized for up to 2 to 3 minutes.
prepared statement
I thank you so much. We are looking forward to this first
panel and then particularly to our second panel that I will
introduce in just a moment after opening statements. We have an
excellent panel of State and local emergency managers and
communications officials who handle day-to-day emergency
management activities. We want to hear from them and I will
introduce them at the appropriate time.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Mary L. Landrieu
Today, I welcome two panels of witnesses to discuss the current
status of comprehensive emergency management in the United States, and
the critical role communications systems play in a disaster.
Since Hurricane Katrina and the attacks on September 11, policies
and laws have been rewritten and significant investments have been made
in an upgraded emergency management system, including first-responder
capabilities, communications systems, and recovery and relief.
Significant change has happened at the local, State, and Federal levels
of government, and in the private and nonprofit sectors as well.
In the United States, emergency management--be it preparedness,
response, or recovery--starts at the level of government closest to the
people. If a local government is overwhelmed, the State provides
support. If the State gets overwhelmed, the Federal Government provides
support. This requires advanced coordination and communication to save
lives and property and to recover and rebuild smartly and quickly.
While we will look at emergency management as a whole today, I also
want a special focus on communications during a disaster. The ability
of emergency response personnel to communicate in real time prior to,
during, and immediately after a disaster is critical to establishing
command and control at the scene of an emergency and to maintaining
situational awareness. However, in numerous after action reports,
communications deficiencies have been revealed. Unfortunately, this
issue was amplified during 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.
Further, technological developments are forging an evolution in the
way government communicates, as well as how we communicate with
citizens during a disaster. Keeping up with this evolution is a
challenge to the emergency management community.
The massive earthquake, and resulting tsunami, in Japan in March;
and the recent unprecedented flooding, tornadoes, and wildfires here in
the United States are reminders that this Federal Government must
continue to be a reliable partner with State and local governments as
well as with private partners to make sure every community is as
prepared as possible.
In tight budgets and difficult economic conditions it is more
important than ever to allocate dollars carefully and wisely.
With that, I will welcome Mr. Craig Fugate, the Administrator of
the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Rand Beers, the
Under Secretary of the National Protection and Programs Directorate
(NPPD).
Administrator Fugate, in your testimony you emphasize that it takes
the whole community--not just government--to ensure effective emergency
management. I appreciate the important improvements FEMA has made in
ensuring the needs of children are taken into account during
disasters--from disaster plans at juvenile justice centers to pre-
staging infant formula, baby food and diapers--important change has
taken place.
Under Secretary Beers, your directorate has taken a first big step
in testing our interoperable communications in urban areas and in
ensuring that communications training, and technical assistance is
available to first responders. With new technologies emerging everyday,
this subcommittee is interested in your strategy to stay afloat.
Despite progress, we still have a lot to do. FEMA has not fully
institutionalized the changes mandated by the Post-Katrina Emergency
Management Reform Act of 2006. The National Disaster Recovery Framework
has not been completed; an effective risk and preparedness assessment
system is not in place; and FEMA disaster management information
systems remain woefully inadequate. NPPD is working to ensure State and
local governments and the Federal Government stay ahead of evolving
technologies and infrastructures.
Before turning to Senator Coats, I must return to the issue of the
Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) shortfall that I raised with Secretary
Napolitano in an earlier hearing. If the Congress approves the
President's request for the DRF, there will be a shortfall of between
$2 billion and $4.8 billion in the fund for fiscal year 2012. Without
additional funding, it is likely that the fund will be exhausted as
early as January 2012. Recovery efforts in 50 States, including those
hard hit by recent flooding and tornadoes, will cease.
The House bill has attempted to make up for a portion of this
shortfall, however it came at a great cost to Homeland Security and
first-responder grants, which were cut by $2.1 billion (52 percent)
compared to fiscal year 2010 and by $1.4 billion (40 percent) compared
to fiscal year 2011. The House also cuts the Coast Guard and FEMA. It
makes no sense to cut funding for the agencies that must prepare for
and respond to future disasters, to pay for the cost of past disasters.
Following Senator Coats' opening remarks, Vice Chairman Lautenberg
and each other member will be recognized for up to 3 minutes of opening
remarks based on order of arrival. After we hear from the Administrator
and the Under Secretary, each member will be recognized in order of
arrival for up to 5 minutes of questions. I now recognize Senator Coats
for any opening remarks he may wish to make.
I would like to recognize our panelists, in the following order,
for their opening statements: Mr. Craig Fugate from FEMA, and Mr. Rand
Beers from NPPD.
I thank our witnesses on the first panel for their contributions
today.
I welcome our second panel. We have an excellent panel of State and
local emergency managers and communications officials who handle day-
to-day emergency management and communications activities. Each of our
witnesses has recently been through significant disasters or major
exercises in their communities.
I would like to take a second to introduce Mark Riley from
Louisiana. Mark Riley serves as chief of staff for the Louisiana
Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. He
came to the agency in 2007 and previously served for 2 years as the
deputy director for disaster recovery, where he managed $11 billion in
public assistance funding and $1.4 billion in hazard mitigation funding
for 24,000 projects throughout the State to support recovery from
Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike. Mr. Riley served for 32
years in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he attained the rank of colonel
and was assigned as legal advisor to the Department of Defense General
Counsel's Office, U.S. Joint Forces Command, U.S. European Command, and
U.S. Northern Command. He received his undergraduate and law degrees
from Louisiana State University and a master of law degree from
Georgetown University with a specialty in tax. He and his wife Susan
live in Baton Rouge with their four children.
Next, I turn to Senator Coats to introduce Mr. Vice, our witness
from Indiana.
Also let me welcome Mr. Hicks, director of Morgan County, Alabama
Emergency Management and president of the International Association of
Emergency Managers; and Mr. Ron Lane, director of Office of Emergency
Services, San Diego County, California. We very much appreciate you
being here today.
I welcome our panelists, in the following order, for their opening
statements: Mr. Mark Riley, Mr. David Vice, Mr. Eddie Hicks, and Mr.
Ron Lane. After we hear from each of the witnesses, members will be
recognized in order of arrival for up to 5 minutes for questions. Mr.
Riley, let's start with you.
Senator Coats. Thank you so much, Senator Landrieu, for
your leadership on this subcommittee.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR DANIEL COATS
Senator Coats. Madam Chair, I thank you also.
I want to welcome our witnesses today, Director Fugate and
Under Secretary Beers, as well as our second panel. I look
forward to working with you. I am new to the subcommittee, but
in that role as ranking member, I look forward to working with
the chair, you, and members of the subcommittee, making some of
the tough decisions that I think are ahead and not helped at
all by the current weather that has devastated so much of our
country and has required so much out of all of you. We really
have a challenge ahead.
We are fortunate in Indiana that we have not had the worst
of the catastrophic disasters like those that have happened in
other parts of the country and impacted the chair's State and
Senator Cochran's State, Missouri, and others. We have had some
recent storms and some flooding. I have just returned from
southwest Indiana where I was viewing that personally and
working with FEMA there, glad to see that they were on the
ground doing the assessments. I was impressed with the
thoroughness and professionalism of their efforts, and so I
commend you for that.
Before we delve into the substance of this hearing, I just
want to reaffirm the statement just made by the chair, and that
is that we have some serious decisions that we have to make
relative to the kind of appropriations and numbers that we are
going to be able to put up to deal with the situations that we
have. This potential shortfall is going to have to be paid for
somehow. We are going to have to be creative in looking for
ways to do that. We know the hurricane season is in front of
us. Hopefully the tornado season is behind us, but we are not
even halfway into the year yet, and already we have had some
significant situations which will require significant funding.
So I hope we will be able to discuss with you both and with
all of our witnesses how we move forward from here, given not
only the fiscal realities that we face as a Nation, but also
the recent catastrophes that have taken place in a lot of
people's lives and dealing adequately with those.
So with that, Madam Chair, I look forward to the hearing.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you.
Senator Cochran.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR THAD COCHRAN
Senator Cochran. Madam Chair, thank you very much for
convening this hearing, and let me join you in welcoming our
witnesses and thanking them for their leadership. As everybody
knows, we have really had to confront some of the most serious
disasters, weather-related, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, all
kinds of challenges throughout our State of Mississippi and in
other southern States as well, including Missouri, Alabama,
Louisiana, and others.
So you have had your hands full with emergency demands, and
we appreciate the dedication and the serious approach that you
have taken to trying to deal with and help recover from these
terrible disasters that have struck our country.
We appreciate this opportunity to discuss with you the
funding needs for the next fiscal year and whatever other ways
we can be helpful in legislative language or otherwise
empowering your Agency to continue to help deal with these very
serious challenges.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you, Senator Cochran.
Senator Tester.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN TESTER
Senator Tester. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Administrator Fugate, first of all, first and foremost, I
want to thank you on behalf of thousands of Montanans that have
been affected by the severe flooding in my State, the job that
you have done. From State officials to county officials to our
citizens, they have been impressed by FEMA's rapid response to
this disaster and truly are appreciative of your efforts.
Special thanks is due to Mike Erdonias and Charlie Bard, as
well as the whole region 18. You can pass that along. Scott
Logan, the travel liaison, is doing a tremendous job. And given
the number of communities across the country that are
experiencing disaster situations of their own, I appreciate
your attention to Montana.
We have got a lot of snowpack that is left to melt. That
does not bode well for the next several weeks. The flooding we
are experiencing right now is due to a rain event. We have
anywhere from 150 to 300 percent snowpack in the mountains that
is just beginning to melt. So your efforts, as we move forward,
are going to be critically important, and I hope we can work
together to ensure the citizens receive the assistance they
need in a timely manner from rebuilding infrastructure like
roads to homes to farms and businesses in the communities.
There was a graph passed out the other day of the number of
States that were impacted by disaster declarations, and at some
point in time, we might want to address why that is. It seems
like it is more than ever.
PREPARED STATEMENT
So thank you for being here, Administrator Fugate and Rand
Beers. Thank you.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Jon Tester
Administrator Fugate, first and foremost, I want to say thank you
on behalf of the thousands of Montanans who have been affected by the
severe flooding across our State.
State officials and everyday citizens have been impressed by the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's rapid response to this disaster
and are truly appreciative of your ongoing efforts.
A special thanks is due to Mike Ordonez and Charley Baird, as well
as the whole region 8 team. Scott Logan, the tribal liaison, is also
doing a tremendous job.
Given the number of communities across the country that are
currently dealing with disasters of their own, I appreciate your
attention to Montana.
We have a lot of snow-pack that has yet to melt. That doesn't bode
well for the next several weeks.
Moving forward, I hope we can work closely together to ensure that
the citizens of my State receive the assistance they need to rebuild
their roads, their homes, their farms, their businesses, and their
communities in a timely manner.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you very much.
If the staff would put up the chart about the disaster,
States that have been impacted, I think it is instructive.
Mr. Fugate, please begin.
This is a chart of all the recent current declared
disasters, the green being disasters declared, and Montana is
on the way because this chart was prepared before the floods
began.
Senator Coats. And Indiana.
Senator Landrieu. And Indiana is on the way. No. I think we
have got Indiana. Oh, no. Indiana is on the way. There is
Indiana.
Senator Coats. Trust me. I know Indiana.
Senator Landrieu. I always think it is more west than where
it is. This is my fault. But there it is right there.
Senator Coats. Where is Mississippi?
Senator Landrieu. Where is Mississippi? Yes.
All right, Mr. Fugate.
STATEMENT OF HON. CRAIG FUGATE, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Fugate. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Ranking Member
Coats, and Senators.
I would first like to respond to the efforts of the team
that I am part of and recognize that often I may get credit for
what a lot of people who do not have the opportunity to come
here and testify are really doing. So, first, I will pass on to
the team your appreciation, but I always remember it is the
team that I am part of. And although I am often recognized and
am here representing the team, it is really the team effort.
To go into my opening statement, Madam Chair, because this
topic was disaster communication, I realize I will have other
questions on some of the issues you and the other Senators have
raised. I want to use the tornado events that have occurred as
examples of the progress we have made since September 11 and
since Hurricane Katrina in dealing with growing and building
capability at the local and State level.
In the tornadoes that struck Mississippi and Alabama and
again the tornadoes that struck Joplin, Missouri, in 2001, it
would have been likely that we would have had to deploy
federally sponsored urban search and rescue teams to do the
primary search. We would have had to deploy a tremendous amount
of Federal communication assets to help rebuild and establish
communication infrastructure. Even though we would work hard to
get those teams in there, they would not have been as fast as
local teams, local mutual aid, in-State mutual aid, and
neighboring States responding rapidly. But that does not just
happen. It takes a lot of work. It takes training and
exercising, and it takes the support to build that capability.
In the outbreaks that we have seen, the first responders,
the local officials, mutual aid, and in-State resources did the
response. Our role at FEMA in all of these disasters has been
one of supporting the recovery. I am not sure we would have
seen that prior to these investments.
I saw an example of communications progress as we were
going from the tornadoes and the flooding that were occurring
into our national level exercise (NLE) 2011, which was focused
on the New Madrid earthquake. I was in the emergency operations
center in the State of Missouri where Governor Nixon was
showing me his interoperable solution with the State radio
system. He was talking to one of the sheriffs in the southeast
part of the State demonstrating the interoperable work they
have done with funding and, more importantly, with the
planning, training, and exercising that we had done. That was
the very system that they implemented in Joplin when the city
was struck, and they had to reestablish communication and begin
bringing in mutual aid from not only within State but from
around the surrounding four-State area.
So we have seen a tremendous improvement in capabilities at
the State and local level, and some of that has been based on
technology.
But I also want to point out the human factor. One of the
primary responsibilities we have in the disaster emergency
communications role is not only in supporting response to a
disaster and supporting local officials and State officials
with emergency communications, it is also our role in
supporting and reviewing the State communication plans and the
regional communication committees that bring together the
various disciplines to decide what will be the strategies and
how they will work together as a team and how they are going to
communicate, and then to look at how we take the work that
Under Secretary Beers' team provides with the technology and
the practices that we can apply.
As former President, the late Dwight D. Eisenhower said,
``Plans are nothing. Planning is everything''. And I think it
is that planning, the exercising, and importantly, the
technology that has allowed us to build more effective
interoperable solutions that allow us to rapidly bring not only
the responders in the immediate area but responders across the
State, in some cases across the Nation, in a rapid manner.
PREPARED STATEMENT
This role that we see for FEMA in our partnership within
DHS and within the Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) is
again one of facilitation and the implementation of these
plans, as well as to continue support as the grants
administrator for the funding to support not only the planning
but also the technology. We talk about the ``whole of
community''. I am reminded that, having come from State and
local government, the fastest response is often your neighbor,
not always the Federal Government. We do have a role to play,
but if we cannot call on our neighbors and we cannot talk to
them, that is not the time to figure out when people need to be
rescued. That prior planning has made the difference, and the
support that we have been able to give and continue to give to
State and local governments and working on those interoperable
solutions is not just about the technology. It is about the
people that can work as a team.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Craig Fugate
introduction
Good afternoon Chairwoman Landrieu, Ranking Member Coats, and
distinguished members of the subcommittee. My name is Craig Fugate, and
I am the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA). It is an honor to appear before you today on behalf of FEMA and
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to discuss the evolution of
emergency management and communication at FEMA.
As you know, FEMA has completely changed the way we do business
over the past several years. FEMA was included in the organizational
realignment that led to the creation of DHS in the aftermath of the
September 11, 2001, attacks. FEMA also underwent major organizational
changes after Hurricane Katrina, and the Congress has provided
increased funding for building emergency management capabilities. As a
result, FEMA is a much more effective agency today than we were just a
few years ago. Our enhanced ability to meet our mission is a direct
result of the tools that we have been able to put in place with your
help and support.
In my testimony today, I will share with you some of the major ways
in which emergency management--from a Federal perspective--has shifted
during my time as the FEMA Administrator. First, we acknowledge the
importance of planning for disasters in a realistic manner, and we
conduct our preparedness, response, and recovery operations
accordingly. Second, we have adopted a ``whole community'' approach to
emergency management, leveraging the expertise and resources of our
stakeholders at all levels, both governmental and nongovernmental. And
third, we have overhauled and improved the way we communicate in a
disaster environment, using cutting-edge technology and availing
ourselves of tools like cell phones and social media in order to more
effectively engage with the public.
The devastating effects of the recent severe storms, including
tornadoes and flooding in Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, and other
States in the South and Midwest continue to serve as a solemn reminder
of the importance of maintaining a robust and efficient national
emergency management capability. FEMA is expected to and will support
the affected States and the region throughout the recovery process.
realistic planning and preparedness
I often say that we can't plan for ``easy;'' rather, we must plan
for ``real''. This means that we must use a realistic set of
assumptions when we plan for disasters. Rather than assuming that a
disaster will respect jurisdictions, we conduct exercises based on
disaster scenarios that cross State lines and regional boundaries.
Further, rather than assuming that the individuals we serve all
share the same ages and abilities, we plan for ``real'' by
incorporating children and people with disabilities into our disaster
planning at the outset, thus ensuring that we consider the ``whole
community''. And rather than assuming that all disasters will be small
enough in scope for the State, local, and Federal governments to
handle, we prepare for a ``meta-scenario'' that might overwhelm the
capabilities of every level of government to respond.
Conducting Realistic Exercises
Exercises play a crucial role in preparedness, providing
opportunities for emergency responders and officials to practice,
assess, and refine their collective capabilities.
Prior to the passage of the Post-Katrina Emergency Management
Reform Act (PKEMRA) in 2006, the Congress authorized several ``top
officials'' exercises, which exercised how key Government officials
would respond to simulated terrorist attacks. With the 2006 enactment
of PKEMRA, the Congress created the National Exercise Program (NEP) in
order to ``carry out a national exercise program to test and evaluate
the national preparedness goal''.\1\ PKEMRA required that exercises be
``as realistic as practicable, based on current risk assessments,
including credible threats, vulnerability, and consequences, and
designed to stress the National Preparedness System''.\2\ These
exercises, referred to as national level exercises (NLEs) in the
statute, must be conducted at least every other year.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006, Public
Law 109-295, 120 STAT. 1355, 1427 (Oct. 4, 2006).
\2\ Id.
\3\ Id. at 1428.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We take very seriously the need to conduct exercises that reflect
real needs and response capabilities in the event of a disaster. For
that reason, in planning exercises, we create a realistic catastrophic
disaster scenario that takes us past the point of failure, rather than
create a manageable scenario that we know will allow us to succeed.
Creating a realistic scenario is required by law and it is also
essential to our ability to identify gaps and make improvements to our
response and recovery plans.
This year's NLE 2011 examined the Federal Government's ability to
implement catastrophic incident response and recovery plans by
simulating a major earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone in Central
United States. The exercise was the first NLE to simulate a natural
hazard and provided the framework for the eight impacted States and
four FEMA regions to test and evaluate regional earthquake response and
recovery plans.
This year's NLE is different from similar exercises held in prior
years because it was the first NLE to benefit from changes made to the
NEP. As a result, it reflected more direct involvement and direction
from senior levels of government, more frequent smaller-scale exercise
elements, and a shorter timeframe for evaluation, after-action
reporting and improvement planning. As the NEP continues to evolve,
future exercises will continue to incorporate these same principles.
NLE 2011 also incorporated a comprehensive and efficient system of
exercise evaluation that focused on the rapid identification,
development, and dissemination of lessons learned, as well as the
development of corrective actions. NEP's rigorous evaluation
methodology will help to ensure that issues identified during the
exercise are remediated. Specific provisions for the NEP evaluation
methodology are detailed in the NEP Implementation Plan.
Finally, this year's exercise fully incorporated all aspects of the
emergency management team, including not only Federal, State, local,
tribal, and territorial governments, but also nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), private sector entities, individuals, families
and communities, engaging FEMA's ``whole community'' approach to
emergency management.
Conducting realistic exercises allows us to practice our protocols,
assess areas of both success and failure, and make necessary
adjustments to ensure that we are as prepared as possible for a
catastrophic disaster.
Incorporating Children and People With Disabilities Into Disaster
Planning
A realistic approach to emergency management means not only
conducting exercises that reflect real disaster scenarios, but
incorporating the needs and abilities of real disaster survivors into
planning and preparedness efforts. Our planning must be inclusive of
people of different ages and abilities and it must meet the access and
functional needs of children and people with disabilities.
In February 2010, FEMA established the Office of Disability
Integration and Coordination, and in July 2010, established the first-
ever Disability Working Group within FEMA. The Disability Working Group
is responsible for ensuring that the access and functional needs of
children and adults with disabilities are fully integrated into all
aspects of FEMA's disaster planning, preparedness, response, recovery,
and mitigation efforts initiated and coordinated at the Federal level.
FEMA is also committed to placing regional disability integration
specialists in each of FEMA's 10 regions. Eight are already on board on
a permanent full-time basis, and an additional one is in place on an
acting basis. During the height of our response to the Southeast
storms, five of these specialists were deployed to the region.
Emergency management officials at all levels need to plan and
prepare for every member of a community, including children, who
comprise approximately 25 percent of the U.S. population. For that
reason, FEMA established a Children's Working Group (CWG) responsible
for coordinating the agency's efforts--in partnership with other
Federal agencies and nongovernmental stakeholders--to ensure that the
unique needs of children are considered and integrated into all
disaster planning, preparedness, response, and recovery efforts
initiated and coordinated at the Federal level.
As an example, when we pre-stage commodities in preparation for
disasters, we include basic items such as water, meals and generators.
However, military-style Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) and other provisions
are not necessarily suitable for the entire population, especially
young children. So we transitioned from MREs to commercial shelf-stable
meals and we pre-stage commodities including infant formula, baby food,
electrolytes, and diapers to anticipate, understand, and specifically
plan for the needs of children.
Planning for the ``Meta-Scenario''
Historically in emergency management, we only planned for scenarios
that we were capable of responding to and recovering from at the
governmental level. That was simply not enough. We must also plan for
the ``meta-scenario'' (or maximum of maximums event) that by its nature
will overwhelm the ability of State, local, and Federal governments to
respond. Because of the possible breadth and scope of a ``meta-
scenario'', we cannot be satisfied with a ``government-centric''
approach to emergency preparedness. Rather, we must incorporate the
``whole community'' into our preparedness, response, and recovery
efforts.
Therefore, in coordinating and facilitating the development of
detailed State and regional response plans for earthquakes, hurricanes,
tsunamis, improvised nuclear device attacks, and other threats, our
catastrophic planning, evacuation and transportation planning, and
emergency communications planning are all based on worst-case scenarios
that are designed to challenge preparedness at all levels, forcing
innovative, nontraditional solutions as part of the response strategy
to such events.
We have identified the highest-priority tasks necessary to save and
sustain lives and stabilize following a catastrophic incident during
the crucial, first 72 hours; and we have begun to work across all
segments of society to identify how we can collectively achieve these
outcomes. While the initial 72 hours following an incident are the most
crucial for saving and sustaining life, our approach spans not only
response operations following a disaster, but also prevention,
recovery, protection, and mitigation activities that occur before,
during and after a catastrophic event. Changing outcomes will require
public engagement and public action, which means fully embracing
dialogue between our public safety and emergency services institutions
and the communities they serve. This planning process results in the
development and identification of existing capabilities that can be
employed using pre-established logistics protocols and deployment
solutions.
Because a ``meta-scenario'' would be of such a catastrophic nature
so as to overwhelm the capability of the Federal Government to respond,
we have incorporated the entire emergency management team, or ``whole
community'', into our planning and preparedness efforts.
a ``whole community'' approach to emergency management
Our planning and preparedness efforts translate into action through
FEMA's ``whole community'' framework. This approach recognizes that
FEMA is not the Nation's emergency management team--FEMA is only a part
of the team. In order to successfully prepare for, protect against,
respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards, we must work with
the entire emergency management community. This ``whole community''
includes FEMA and our partners at the Federal level; our State, local,
tribal, and territorial governmental partners; NGOs like faith-based
and nonprofit groups, the private sector, and industry; and most
importantly, individuals, families, and communities, who continue to be
our greatest assets and the key to our success.
A ``whole community'' approach to emergency management does not
mean that FEMA abdicates its role as the Federal Government's
coordinator for disasters and emergencies. Rather, it means that we
recognize our mission as supporting our citizens and first responders
to ensure resilience to all hazards. In order to fulfill this mission,
we must leverage the resources and capabilities of all aspects of the
emergency management team, both governmental and nongovernmental. As a
result, a ``whole community'' framework means thinking about FEMA
programs and policies in conjunction with how we work to support other
aspects of the emergency management team. I would like to discuss
FEMA's ``whole community'' framework in the context of the recent
severe storms, tornadoes, and floods in the South and Southeast.
Federal Agency Partners
Our partners within the Federal Government bring to the table a
great amount of expertise and resources that we utilize in a disaster
environment through mission assignments, interagency agreements and
advanced contracts for commodities. These partnerships are essential to
FEMA's ability to carry out its mission by leveraging the full capacity
of the Federal Government.
We continue to work closely with our Federal agency partners to
help the States affected by the recent severe storms, tornadoes and
floods in the South and Southeast get back on their feet. One of the
ways we do this is through the use of mission assignments, which are
work orders issued by FEMA to other Federal agencies that direct the
completion of a specific task and are intended to meet urgent,
immediate and short term needs. They allow FEMA to quickly request
Federal partners to provide critical resources, services or expertise.
To date, FEMA has developed 263 pre-scripted mission assignments with
29 Federal agencies.
Since the severe storms and tornadoes devastated the Southeast
beginning in late April 2011, FEMA has directed the completion of more
than 80 mission assignments in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi,
and Tennessee. A few examples of the support these mission assignments
provided include:
--Coordinating with U.S. Northern Command to establish an incident
support base in Maxwell, Alabama. The support base allows FEMA
to move supplies (such as water, infant/toddler kits, and
tarps) closer to the affected areas;
--Activating the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct debris clearance
and removal, infrastructure protection, restoration, and
emergency repair;
--Working with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to
help support housing operations under emergency support
function No. 6--mass care, emergency assistance, housing, and
human services; and
--Activating Environmental Protection Agency personnel to perform the
functions of emergency support function No. 10--oil and
hazardous materials response, by conducting response efforts
relating to oil and other hazardous materials and conducting
short- and long-term cleanup.
These are just a few examples of our coordination efforts with
other Federal agencies. We continue to work closely with our Federal
Government partners to leverage the resources they bring to various
aspects of our preparedness, response, and recovery efforts.
State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Governmental Partners
Coordination with State, local, tribal, and territorial governments
is perhaps the most essential part of our effort to integrate the
entire emergency management community. FEMA's leadership comes from
diverse backgrounds, but we share something vital: direct, on-the-
ground experience in State and local emergency management. Our
experiences have helped us realize and appreciate the important role
that State, local, tribal, and territorial governments play in disaster
preparedness, response, and recovery. FEMA's success is heavily
dependent upon our ability to work closely with these governmental
entities.
FEMA has been in constant contact with all of the impacted States
as they responded to and began recovery efforts from the devastating
storms, tornadoes and floods of spring 2011. At the request of the
respective Governors, FEMA currently has teams on the ground in
Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee, as
well as strategically pre-positioned commodities in the region to
support the States. Federal coordinating officers have been working
closely with these affected States to assist them in meeting the unique
needs of their residents. Deputy Administrator Serino and I have
visited with State and local officials throughout the Southeast,
surveying damage and assisting in response and recovery efforts.
Secretary Napolitano also has traveled to the region to view the damage
first hand and provide her support. President Obama, in addition to
visiting the impacted areas, has issued major disaster declarations
related to severe storms and tornadoes in the Southeast for the States
of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
The States of Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, and
Minnesota have also been granted disaster declarations related to the
Mississippi Valley flooding, with the President issuing an Emergency
declaration for 22 Louisiana parishes. Finally, more than 1,530 FEMA
employees have been deployed to the affected areas.
Our on-going preparedness efforts in support of State and local
governments are paying tangible dividends. As an example, in 2009,
Tuscaloosa Mayor Walter Maddox sent 66 city and county emergency
management and response personnel to a 4-day exercise-based training
program at FEMA's Emergency Management Institute. The integrated
emergency management course they attended occurs every year, and
stresses the integration of functions, resources, organizations and
individuals in all phases of emergency management.
Mayor Maddox recently said in a New York Times article that the
decision to have his city participate in the training ``has done more
to help Tuscaloosa handle the disaster than anything else''.\4\ The
training allows localities to more fully understand roles and
responsibilities during a disaster, identify gaps in emergency
management plans, and address those gaps through developing and
implementing emergency policies to ensure an effective response.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Severson, Kim & Brown, Robbie. Mayor's World Remade in an
Instant, New York Times, May 10, 2011, at A13.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Engaging Nongovernmental Organizations
Government can and will continue to serve disaster survivors.
However, we fully recognize that a government-centric approach to
disaster management will not be enough to meet the challenges posed by
a catastrophic incident. That is why we must fully engage our entire
societal capacity, leveraging trade associations, voluntary, and faith-
based organizations, private industry, and social and fraternal
organizations. These are the organizations that provide the bulk of
services to communities every day, and to the extent that they are
able, they should continue to be the primary provider of such services
in a disaster. The quicker these entities are able to get back on their
feet, the faster communities as a whole will be able to recover.
We are working closely with NGOs in order to respond to and recover
from the flooding and severe weather events of recent weeks. A few
examples of our work with NGOs include the following:
--American Red Cross and FEMA are jointly leading emergency support
function No. 6, the planning and coordination of mass care
services;
--We coordinated with Verizon, AT&T, and other mobile carriers to
make available their ``Stores on Wheels'' to provide docking
and charging stations for customers near disaster recovery
centers (DRC). By helping disaster survivors charge their cell
phones, they can let friends and loved ones know their location
and that they are safe;
--We connected American Red Cross with Tide to provide free laundry
service for disaster survivors in parts of Alabama and Georgia;
--National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (National
VOAD)-member organizations such as American Red Cross,
Salvation Army, Convoy of Hope, and many others continue to be
heavily involved in the disaster response by providing
assistance to disaster survivors. The Red Cross Safe and Well
secure Web site provides a way for people to find information
on those affected by the storms.
We will continue to leverage the resourcing strengths of the
private sector and NGOs, ensuring that they are fully engaged in all of
our efforts.
The Importance of Individuals, Families, and Communities
We work not just with governmental entities and private sector
organizations, but with the individuals, families, and communities who
are our Nation's ``first'' first responders. Our State and local
emergency management experience has taught us that, in the event of a
disaster, individuals and communities are not liabilities; rather, they
are our greatest resources and the key to our success.
FEMA's Individual Assistance Division in the Office of Response and
Recovery helps disaster survivors with housing, crisis counseling,
legal services, disaster case management, and unemployment assistance,
among other services. However, in addition to supporting the
individuals, families, and communities we serve through Individual
Assistance, we also work to engage the public as a valuable resource
through personal preparedness, citizen, and community training, and
two-way communication that helps provide us with situational awareness
in a disaster environment.
Ready is FEMA's national public service campaign in which we
partner with the Advertising Council to educate and empower Americans
to prepare for and respond to all emergencies, including natural
disasters and potential terrorist attacks. The goal of the campaign is
to get the public involved and to increase the level of basic
preparedness across the Nation.
In addition to focusing on personal preparedness, FEMA also taps
into the great capacity of the public to look out for friends and
neighbors in a disaster. In the aftermath of the tragic events of
September 11, 2001, President Bush launched Citizen Corps, a community-
based entity coordinated by FEMA. Citizen Corps recognizes that
effective emergency management and response requires community leaders
to participate in developing emergency plans for their own communities.
These leaders conduct localized outreach to and education for the
public, promote training, participate in exercises, encourage
volunteerism, and form an integral part of the response effort when
disaster strikes. The mission of Citizen Corps is to harness the power
of every individual through education, training, and volunteer service
to make communities safer, stronger, and better prepared to respond to
the threats of terrorism, crime, public health issues, and disasters of
all kinds.
In 95 percent of all emergencies, a survivor or bystander provides
the first immediate assistance on the scene. Because family members,
neighbors, or fellow employees are often the first to provide
assistance, it is important that all members of the community have
access to the training they need to make a difference during an
emergency situation.
Finally, we engage the public as a critical resource by
facilitating two-way communication that allows us to communicate with
the public in a disaster environment rather than talking at the public.
Social media is a key part of this effort, and is discussed in the next
section.
communication in a disaster environment
The ability to effectively communicate during and immediately after
a disaster is essential to fulfilling our mission. When working on a
tight timeframe with many of our emergency management partners, making
sure that everyone is on the same page is absolutely essential. For
that reason, we have completely overhauled the way we communicate with
each other and with the public in a disaster environment, leveraging
cutting-edge technology as well as important social media tools that
the public uses in their everyday lives.
Social Media and Disasters
Social media provides the tools needed to minimize the
communication gap and participate effectively in an active, ongoing
dialogue. Social media is an important part of the ``whole community''
approach because it helps to facilitate the vital two-way communication
between emergency management agencies and the public, and it allows us
to quickly and specifically share information with State and local
governments as well as the public.
FEMA uses multiple social media technologies like Facebook,
Twitter, and YouTube to reach the public. Rather than asking the public
to change the way they communicate to fit our system, we are adapting
the way we do business to fit the way the public already communicates.
In December 2010, FEMA also created a blog (http://blog.fema.gov),
which provides information before, during and after a disaster strikes,
and highlights the best practices, innovative ideas and insights that
are being used across the emergency management community.
To date, FEMA has posted more than 200 messages to its blog,
Facebook, and Twitter accounts relating to the severe weather in the
Southeast, sharing information with disaster survivors, including how
to register for assistance, the role of DRC and other information
related to the Federal Government's support to the affected States and
their residents.
We value social media tools not only because they allow us to send
important disaster-related information to the people who need it, but
also because they allow us to incorporate critical updates from the
individuals who experience the on-the-ground reality of a disaster. The
exigent nature of emergency management makes time a critical resource.
The sooner we are able to comprehend the full scope of the disaster,
the better able we are to support our citizens and first responders.
That is why we must seek out and incorporate information provided by
the public, our most critical emergency management resource.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency's Mobile Web Site
One of the major lessons we learned from the January 2010
earthquake in Haiti was that even if the physical infrastructure of an
area is completely destroyed, the cellular infrastructure may be able
to bounce back quickly, allowing emergency managers to relay important
disaster-related information and enabling the public to request help
from local first responders.
In early 2010, FEMA launched its first-ever mobile Web site, which
allows the public to view Web pages easily loaded on their smartphones.
The mobile site features information on what to do before, during and
after a disaster, along with the ability to apply for Federal disaster
assistance directly from your phone and locate nearby DRC. As we
witnessed during the response to the Georgia and Tennessee floods in
2009 and 2010, disaster survivors often have little with them but their
phones. As a result, providing the ability to register for assistance
from smartphones enables us to immediately mobilize the appropriate
assistance to support our citizens' needs during disasters.
While social media and mobile technology will continue to be
important tools, they are by no means exhaustive of our efforts to
communicate with the public in a disaster environment. In addition to
tapping into communications tools that already exist, we also work to
ensure that we are at the forefront of communications technology that
will allow us to share life-saving and life-sustaining information with
first responders and the public in a disaster environment.
Personal Localized Alerting Network
Last month, I joined New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Federal
Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, and top
executives from AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, in publicly
announcing the creation of the Personal Localized Alerting Network
(PLAN). PLAN is a free service that will allow customers with enabled
mobile devices to receive geographically targeted messages from State
and local emergency management agencies alerting them to imminent
threats to safety in the area.
FEMA developed the PLAN technology to allow any customers of
participating wireless carriers to turn their mobile phones into
personal alert systems. These alerts will be able to get through to
phones whether nearby cell towers are jammed or not. The alerts are
also completely free of charge, and individuals are not required to
sign up in order to receive them.
Disaster Emergency Communications
Of course, in addition to communicating with the public, we must
also help provide communications support to emergency responders in a
disaster environment.
Emergency communications issues presented an impediment to
operations in the immediate aftermath of both the September 11, 2001,
attacks and Hurricane Katrina. As a result, FEMA's Disaster Emergency
Communications (DEC) division was established in 2008 as the lead
integrator of tactical Federal disaster emergency communications. DEC
provides tactical emergency communications support to emergency
managers and first responders when the Federal, State, local, tribal,
or territorial infrastructure cannot support communications needs for
emergency operations.
DEC represents a significant shift in the Federal Government's
organization and integration of emergency communications in disaster
response. Some of DEC's activities include:
--Deploying equipment and personnel for on-scene communications
support;
--Offering operational support to emergency responders in the field;
--Providing mobile emergency response support (MERS) units that
support disaster response by enabling seamless connectivity
throughout the disaster area, State, and local emergency
operations centers, and national-level command and control
facilities;
--Conducting regional emergency communications coordination working
groups, which provide a forum to assess and address the
sustainability and interoperability of emergency communications
systems at all government levels;
--Supporting the establishment of State-specific plans to improve the
Nation's interoperability capabilities. To date, DEC has
provided support in the establishment of 36 State and 3
territory communications plans, and we will deliver 3
additional State plans by the end of this fiscal year; and
--Developing a technology roadmap to evaluate current and emerging
technologies and provide recommendations on which new
technologies FEMA should invest in and which existing
technologies to replace.
FEMA's DEC works closely with the DHS' Office of Emergency
Communications (OEC), which serves as the primary Federal office for
national interoperable emergency communications policy, planning, and
analysis. For example, FEMA DEC coordinates closely with OEC, its
National Communications System, and the Federal Communications
Commission on all 10 of FEMA's regional emergency communications
working groups (RECWGS). The RECCWGS, which are comprised of State,
local, and Federal organizations, serve as planning and coordinating
bodies responsible for providing a forum to assess and address the
survivability, sustainability, operability, and interoperability of
emergency communications systems at all government levels. We will
continue to improve our ability to communicate in a disaster
environment, including communication with emergency managers, first
responders, and the public.
conclusion
With your help and support, we have completely changed the way we
at FEMA approach emergency management: adopting a pragmatic and
realistic approach to preparedness, response, and recovery;
incorporating the ``whole community'' into our efforts; and improving
our ability to communicate with the public and among emergency
responders in a disaster environment. Of course, these are just some of
the ways in which the Congress' significant investment in FEMA over the
past several years has allowed us to improve our ability to support our
citizens and first responders. While I am proud of the progress that we
have made together, I know that there is still more work to be done. So
I look forward to working with you, Madam Chair, and the other members
of this subcommittee, as we continue to build our Nation's capability
to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate
all hazards.
Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you today. I
am happy to answer any questions the subcommittee may have.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you very much.
Mr. Beers.
STATEMENT OF RAND BEERS, UNDER SECRETARY, NATIONAL
PROTECTION AND PROGRAMS DIRECTORATE,
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Beers. Thank you very much, Senator Landrieu. Thank you
for the opportunity to be here. I want to talk about the three
parts of NPPD that are responsible for working on emergency
communications and the particular roles that they play and how
that all works to make our national emergency communications
much more effective than they have been in the past.
The first is OEC, which helps create the foundation of
interoperable emergency communications by setting up the
programs, the people, the training, and the exercises that help
connect the Federal Government to the State, local, tribal, and
territorial organizations.
Second is the National Communications System (NCS), which
supports FEMA in restoring communication systems when they are
disrupted by disaster. Additionally, the NCS also works in
times of disaster to ensure that priority emergency phone calls
get through between State, local, and Federal officials,
particularly during spikes in phone traffic.
And third is the Office of Infrastructure Protection, which
works with all sectors of critical infrastructure to help
owners and operators find best processes and practices to
prepare for disasters. We have protective security advisors in
each State. They provide critical infrastructure owners and
operators with a direct conduit to the Federal Government to
address routine security questions in normal circumstances but
also, and equally important, to offer assistance in times of
emergencies.
I can elaborate more on this, but I just want to highlight
two particular events that I think are demonstrative of how
this team, together with FEMA, works together effectively.
The first is with the Deepwater Horizon event and the
interoperability that was put in place immediately. As a result
of the work of OEC, there was a statewide interoperability
coordinator who developed a statewide plan that allowed the
State of Louisiana to quickly set up the Louisiana wireless
interoperability network immediately upon the event; the
network allowed State and local officials to be able to talk to
one another. That was quickly spread by the movement of
emergency communication systems initially to Alabama and
Mississippi and then to Texas and Florida so that we had
basically a coastal network set up that allowed local officials
working with the Coast Guard to be able to combat that tragic
oil spill.
PREPARED STATEMENT
The second issue or event is the one that Administrator
Fugate spoke to, which is the Joplin tornado, the most trying
of emergency situations. No warning. No chance to prepare in
advance. If you do not have the plan, if you do not have the
people, if they do not know what they are supposed to do, then
it is a little late to make things work. But we have had just
outstanding results in that situation, as well as in the
tornadoes in Alabama and Mississippi. And I think that that is
a testament to the work that has been done since Katrina to
build this kind of a system, to exercise this kind of a system,
and to make sure that we have an opportunity. Is there more
work to be done? Absolutely. But I think we have gone a long
way since that time in terms, Senator, of moving beyond Civil
War communication systems.
Thank you.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Rand Beers
Thank you Chairman Landrieu, Vice Chairman Lautenberg, Ranking
Member Coats, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. It is a
pleasure to join the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to
discuss the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) efforts in support
of emergency management operations across the Nation and our efforts to
improve communications for emergency response providers and government
officials. As we approach the 10th anniversary of the attacks of
September 11, 2001, there is no shortage of reminders of the need for
an effective and efficient emergency response framework to manage
incidents and restore essential services in the aftermath of a
disaster. As just one recent example of many, we are all aware of the
tragic series of tornadoes that ripped through the Nation's heartland
last month, causing billions of dollars in damages, killing hundreds,
and leaving thousands homeless.
A top priority for DHS is improving the communications capabilities
of those who are often the first to arrive at the scene of a disaster
site--the Nation's emergency responders. Public safety personnel must
have access to reliable and instantaneous communications at all times
to effectively coordinate response and recovery operations. The
Department recognizes that establishing emergency communications is not
solely a technology problem that can be solved with just the ``right''
equipment or the ``right'' communications system. All of the critical
factors for a successful interoperability solution--governance,
standard operating procedures, training and exercises, and integration
of systems into daily operations as well as technology--must and are
being addressed through the collective work of our programs.
Effective emergency management and communications are not something
we can accomplish on our own; achieving success requires the continued
partnering with the millions of emergency responders that are the first
to arrive on the scene of an incident, as well as nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) like the American Red Cross, the general public,
and citizens of affected communities. We look forward to discussing our
respective efforts and key accomplishments to make the Nation more
prepared in an all-hazards environment.
emergency communications responsibilities
Within the National Protection and Programs Directorate's (NPPD)
Office of Cybersecurity and Communications (CS&C) are two organizations
that focus on different but converging areas of telecommunications in
support of emergency operations: the Office of Emergency Communications
(OEC) and the National Communications System (NCS). OEC and NCS are
critical to shaping national policy and both work with FEMA and other
departmental components, Federal departments and agencies, multiple
levels of government, and the private sector to improve communications
capabilities and achieve their mission requirements.
OEC was established as part of the congressional response to the
communications challenges faced during the September 11, 2011,
terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Created by the
Congress in 2007, OEC coordinates policy and assists in the development
and implementation of operable and interoperable emergency
communications capabilities for emergency responders at all levels of
government, including Federal, State, local, tribal, and territorial.
OEC also led the development of the first National Emergency
Communications Plan (NECP).
The NCS, transferred from the Department of Defense to DHS in 2003,
was created by Executive order under President Kennedy to support the
telecommunications functions of the Executive Office of the President
and all Federal departments and agencies for Continuity of Government,
Enduring Constitutional Government, and Continuity of Operations.
Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush each issued Executive orders that
evolved the responsibilities and structure of the NCS. Today, the NCS
is an interagency system comprised of the telecommunications assets of
24 Federal departments and agencies, each with significant operational,
policy, regulatory, and enforcement responsibilities. The NCS
coordinates telecommunications preparedness, response, and restoration
activities across its 24-member agencies through the NCS Committee of
Principals, which consists of senior government officials from each of
the 24 member agencies, ensuring a diverse representation across the
NCS that includes the full range of Federal telecommunications assets.
office of emergency communications
The creation of DHS and OEC were key steps toward improving the
communication capabilities of those who are often the first to arrive
at the scene of an incident--the Nation's emergency responders.
Inadequate emergency communications have been a critical gap in our
Nation's preparedness, and previous efforts to address this issue were
hampered by the lack of a strong partnership between the Federal
Government and the public safety community. In addition, the Nation
lacked an overarching strategy to guide emergency communications
planning and build capabilities at all levels of government.
In the last 4 years, OEC has worked to fill many of these and other
gaps, and we are seeing progress in several key areas that enable
emergency responders to interoperate in an all-hazards environment. As
part of its mission, OEC led a comprehensive nationwide planning effort
with more than 150 stakeholders from the emergency response community
to develop the NECP. This included significant feedback and
coordination with the SAFECOM Executive Committee, the SAFECOM
Emergency Response Council, and the National Public Safety
Telecommunications Council. These stakeholder groups represent the
interests of millions of emergency responders, as well as the State and
local governments that public safety communications serves. Involving
these groups from the beginning ensured that the plan took
stakeholders' input into account and would be widely accepted in the
public safety community.
In the almost 3 years since it was released, the NECP has been
instrumental in defining communication priorities for public safety
personnel at all levels of government. OEC has been driving
implementation of the NECP in coordination with its Federal, State, and
local partners, and we are seeing measurable improvements with building
capabilities and closing gaps identified in the plan for governance,
training, operating procedures, and others, including:
Enhanced Statewide Coordination.--The creation of statewide
communication interoperability plans (SCIPs), statewide
interoperability coordinators (SWICs) and statewide
interoperability governing bodies (SIGBs) has improved
coordination of emergency communications activities and
investments throughout all 56 States and territories. Through
the SCIP development and updating process, the SWICs, in
collaboration with their SIGBs, have been effective in helping
States define their communications needs and future investments
and ensuring that Federal funding is directed where it is
needed most. In addition, OEC has conducted nearly 150
workshops over the past 3 years to assist States implement and
update their SCIPs.
Common Plans, Protocols, and Procedures.--The use of standardized
plans and procedures is driving improved command, control, and
communications among emergency responder agencies in the field.
To facilitate this, OEC and FEMA have worked with more than 140
jurisdictions, including urban area security initiative (UASI)
regions, to develop tactical interoperable communications plans
that document formalized interoperability governance groups,
standardized policies and procedures, and emergency
communications equipment inventories. States continue to
develop these communications plans to cover additional regions.
Targeted Technical Assistance.--OEC has implemented a technical
assistance strategy to ensure that all States and territories
can request and receive its targeted, on-site emergency
communications assistance, while also focusing support on the
States and urban areas most in need. These offerings are
tailored to support the priorities in each State's or
territory's SCIP and the objectives of the NECP. Since 2008,
the 56 States and territories have combined to request more
than 750 individual technical assistance services from OEC for
support with the development of governance structures, tactical
and strategic planning, and a variety of engineering services.
Increased Training Opportunities.--OEC has developed
Communications Unit Leader (COML) and Communications Technician
(COMT) courses to improve emergency responders' proficiency
with communications equipment and to assist them with
coordinating roles and responsibilities during an incident or
event. The COML program has been embraced by emergency
responders nationwide, and OEC has trained more than 3,500
responders, technicians, and planners to lead communications at
incidents across the Nation, including local floods, blizzards,
and wildfires. Trained COMLs have also contributed to recovery
efforts throughout the United States, including the recent
outbreak of tornados and massive flooding in the Midwest and
Southeast.
Enhanced Border Communications and Coordination.--OEC has been
actively working with our international partners at the
Northern and Southern borders to improve cross-border
interoperable communications planning, policy development, and
operations communications. Last month, DHS awarded $25 million
in grant funding to States and local communities under the
Border Interoperability Demonstration Project--a one-time
competitive grant program focused on developing innovative
solutions to strengthen interoperable emergency communications
along the United States borders with our partners in Canada and
Mexico.
Improved Governance and Coordination.--OEC is working with
Federal, regional, State, and local agencies to increase
coordination, information sharing, and oversight of
interoperability through formal governance structures and
partnerships. For example:
--Statewide Interoperability Governing Bodies have been created in
every State and territory and include representatives from
all levels of government to coordinate and support
statewide interoperability. The State of Indiana, for
example, has implemented an effective governance process
for emergency communications through the Statewide
Interoperability Executive Committee, which also serves as
an advisory group to the State's Integrated Public Safety
Commission. Many States have also implemented regional
interoperability committees to provide insight into the
statewide strategy from an operational perspective.
--OEC continues to receive insightful feedback and input from
responders, associations, and emergency communications
professionals through the SAFECOM Executive Committee,
SAFECOM Emergency Response Council, and the newly chartered
National Council of Statewide Interoperability
Coordinators.
--OEC recently instituted a regional coordination program to
strengthen collaboration and knowledge sharing with our
stakeholders. OEC has established a regional coordinator in
each of the 10 FEMA regions, and they regularly participate
in the statewide interoperability governing bodies, the
UASI interoperability meetings and their respective FEMA
regional emergency communications coordination working
groups.
--The Emergency Communications Preparedness Center (ECPC) provides
an inter-departmental mechanism to coordinate common
solutions, streamline development of policy and plans, and
jointly engage State, local, and tribal partners. The ECPC
has achieved early successes through defining a strategic
agenda that reflects shared member priorities and
establishes issue-specific focus groups to drive immediate
action. Key accomplishments include:
-- Coordinated inputs on national policy, such as Federal agency
comments on the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC)
National Broadband Plan;
-- Developed and published recommendations for common Federal
grant guidance to synchronize emergency communications
spending across more than 40 grant programs;
-- Initiated efforts to drive capability and resource sharing
through mapping and analyzing existing Federal
communications resources; and
-- Implemented a clearinghouse capability and data repository to
yield improved information sharing and coordination.
--To complement intergovernmental activities, OEC facilitates the
Department's One DHS Emergency Communications Committee.
This subcommittee, comprising DHS headquarters and
component senior executives, provides a vital mechanism for
maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of the
Department's emergency communications investments and
activities. The One DHS Committee reached its most
significant milestone recently with the creation of the
first-ever unified One DHS Emergency Communications
Strategy. The strategy establishes a common vision ``to
ensure access to and exchange of mission-critical
information across the homeland security enterprise
anywhere, anytime, through unified capabilities''. The
strategy also sets goals for coordinating and improving
emergency communications architecture, investment,
governance, and operations.
Further, OEC and FEMA have partnered on the Interoperable Emergency
Communications Grant Program (IECGP), which has been a primary vehicle
for implementing the Department's interoperability goals and has
supported many of these initiatives through its emphasis on:
--Establishing governance bodies that conduct strategic planning and
prioritize investments;
--Supporting SWICs who ensure federally funded projects align to
strategic plans; and
--Funding the implementation of NECP goals, allowing DHS to measure
progress in emergency communications capabilities nationwide.
By focusing on these core capabilities--planning, governance,
training, interagency coordination, and technology support--emergency
response agencies are becoming more equipped to establish and maintain
interoperable communications during response and recovery activities.
One such example of how this is translating into ``real world'' success
can be seen in Louisiana, where recovery operations have benefited from
years of governance planning, relationship building, and communications
training. Using lessons learned and improvement efforts associated with
Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana statewide officials are invested in
improving interoperable and operable communications throughout the
State, including the deployment of a robust statewide communication
systems for public safety use.
The State's standards-based system--called the Louisiana Wireless
Information Network--has effectively supported interoperable
communications performance during evacuation efforts for Hurricane
Gustav and, more recently, the response to the BP oil spill.
Interagency coordination was tested from the moment that the explosion
occurred last April, and local responders were able to successfully
communicate with each other and with the United States Coast Guard.
Louisiana also coordinated with surrounding States to create talk
groups designated for the spill and effectively used trained COMLs to
initiate the process of action planning and lead major communications
efforts throughout operations, including connecting multiple systems
from surrounding States. Of course our hope is that another large
incident in the gulf will never happen, but if it does, Federal, State,
and local agencies have demonstrated that they are more prepared and
coordinated than ever before.
necp goal assessments
More than 85 percent of the NECP milestones have been achieved to
date, and progress is evident in all of the NECP priority areas, such
as governance, training, and coordination. Nevertheless, considerable
work still remains to achieve the long-term vision of the NECP, in
which emergency responders can communicate as needed, on demand, as
authorized, at all levels of government and across all disciplines.
To move the Nation even closer to that vision, OEC is engaged in a
comprehensive, nationwide assessment of emergency communications
capabilities as it implements the NECP goals. When complete, this
assessment will provide a detailed view of capabilities at the county
or county-equivalent level in all 56 States and territories. This
detailed look at emergency communications--the first of its kind--will
generate valuable data for both DHS and the States to use to more
effectively and efficiently focus future resources and improvement
activities.
OEC recently completed the measurement of goal 1 of the NECP, which
focused on emergency communications capabilities in the Nation's
largest cities. To measure NECP goal 1, OEC worked with the UASI
regions to assess their ability to demonstrate response-level emergency
communications during a real-world event in each region. This approach
enabled OEC to evaluate their use of emergency communications in real-
world settings and in an economically efficient manner.
The results have been encouraging. Based on the capabilities
documented at each goal 1 event, all 60 urban areas were able to
demonstrate the ability to establish response-level emergency
communications in accordance with NECP goal 1. This illustrated how the
significant organizational and technical investments made by the UASIs
have improved their emergency communications capabilities in recent
years. In fact, OEC saw measurable improvements over key gaps
identified in the previous DHS assessment of these urban areas in 2007,
the Tactical Interoperable Communications Scorecards report. Some of
these areas of progress were the result of DHS programs and funding,
including the following:
Grants.--The NECP goal 1 results showed an increase in the number
of UASI regions using Project 25 (P25) digital radio standards-
based systems, which are designed to allow interoperability
regardless of equipment vendor. The implementation of P25
systems has been a provision in DHS grant guidance for several
years, including the SAFECOM grant guidance and the Public
Safety Interoperable Communications Grant Program.
Training and Technical Assistance.--As previously discussed, OEC
has been offering a COML training program that has trained more
than 3,500 responders, technicians, and planners to lead
communications at incidents across the Nation. This program
began in part as a response to gaps identified in the 2007 DHS
Tactical Interoperable Communications Plan (TICP) Scorecard
assessment, specifically the lack of trained COMLs. During the
NECP goal 1 events, OEC found that a large majority of the UASI
regions had assigned DHS-trained COMLs to handle planning and
implementing multi-system communications for the event.
Exercises.--Almost all UASI regions reported that agencies within
their regions are now holding communication-specific exercises,
and approximately one-half of them reported that the agencies
are holding these exercises on a regular basis. This represents
significant progress over similar findings from the DHS TICP
report in 2007, which concluded that ``almost no [UASI] region
had completed a communications-focused exercise before the TICP
validation exercise''.
OEC is currently in the process of implementing goal 2 measurement,
which calls for an assessment of emergency communications performance
and capabilities at the county level (or county-equivalent level, such
as parishes in Louisiana). This is a large undertaking, as there are
more than 3,000 counties in the United States. OEC is working closely
with the States and territories to complete this assessment by the end
of this year and will be following up with them on how to use the
results to update their SCIPs and more effectively utilize resources.
From a DHS perspective, we believe the NECP goals assessment will
generate much needed capability data to more strategically direct
Federal and State emergency communications resources--including grant
funds and technical assistance support--to where they are needed most.
public safety broadband network
Earlier this year, President Obama outlined his commitment to the
development and deployment of a nationwide, interoperable wireless
network for public safety, a key recommendation from the 9/11
Commission Report. The administration's program in support of such a
network is a component of its Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure
Initiative, which was outlined in its fiscal year 2012 budget. The
public safety elements of the initiative include an accounting for the
foregone auction revenues resulting from reallocation of the D block
for use in the public safety broadband network; $7 billion in direct
financial support for network deployment; $500 million for development
and testing of broadband public safety requirements, standards and
software applications (to be administered through the National
Institute of Standards and Technology); and $5 billion for support to
rural broadband services, including public safety services. Many of
these proposals are included in legislation that has been introduced in
the Congress.
OEC has been extremely active in support of the President's
Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative and helping prepare
the Nation's responders for the deployment of broadband. This includes
working closely with its Federal partners at the Departments of
Commerce and Justice to help set the broad policy framework for the
planned network, as well as coordinating with its State and local
partners to ensure the public safety community's requirements are fully
represented in network broadband planning and implementation efforts.
More specific examples include the following OEC broadband-focused
programs and activities:
Policy and Planning.--OEC is preparing an update to the NECP for
release later this year that will identify key broadband
challenges and recommend near-term actions to foster the
integration of broadband technologies and data capabilities.
The NECP update also will propose further measures to support
current interoperability efforts and to maintain existing land
mobile radio communications capabilities until broadband
technologies can support mission-critical communications for
first responders.
Outreach and Coordination.--OEC is working with all of its
stakeholder groups--including the SAFECOM Executive Committee
and Emergency Response Council, National Council of Statewide
Interoperability Coordinators, ECPC, and the One DHS Committee
on Emergency Communications--to ensure the views and
requirements of the public safety community are fully
represented in broadband planning and implementation efforts.
--OEC supports outreach efforts related to the development and
deployment of a nationwide public safety broadband network
to include operational requirements, funding, standards,
spectrum requirements, and governance. This includes
support for an Innovation Roundtable with representatives
from government, associations, public safety, and industry.
OEC is also supporting a committee of jurisdictions that
received FCC waivers for early deployment of 700 MHz
broadband systems as they begin their efforts to build
networks. Through these efforts, OEC is continuing to
emphasize the need for planning and good governance, since
these elements of emergency communications have yielded
progress to date.
--OEC continues to coordinate with the emergency response
community, preparing wireless broadband guidance documents
for SWICs, urban area and regional interoperability
coordinators, public officials and executives, and
emergency responders to support current NECP initiatives on
interoperability planning. OEC also continues to provide
emergency response stakeholders up-to-date and
comprehensive information about wireless broadband in the
emergency response environment. In addition, OEC is working
with States and jurisdictions to incorporate broadband
initiatives into the SCIPs.
--To increase coordination of Federal efforts for broadband
implementation, the ECPC is working to identify Federal
broadband requirements, preparing a consolidated view of
emergency communications assets, addressing associated
legal and regulatory barriers, developing departmental
positions on pending broadband regulatory matters and
rulemakings, and establishing standardized grant guidance
and processes. The ECPC has identified the development of
broadband standards and research and development as one of
its strategic priorities for the coming year.
--Concurrently, the One DHS for Emergency Communications Committee,
comprising DHS headquarters and component senior
executives, is providing consolidated departmental input
into Federal interagency efforts, as well as developing
strategies for broadband technology migration (i.e.,
transition from current land mobile radio technology).
Grants.--OEC's current SAFECOM grant guidance, which includes
input from State, local, territorial, and tribal responders,
contains a number of key provisions pertaining to broadband
deployment. Further, the ECPC Recommendations for Federal
Agencies: Financial Assistance for Emergency Communications, a
document for Federal emergency communications grant programs,
will include updated guidance concerning the deployment of the
Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network.
Technical Assistance.--OEC has developed a wireless broadband
technical assistance offering for 2011 to assist State, local,
territorial, tribal, and regional users develop and improve
their use of broadband technology in line with the vision of a
nationally interoperable network. The offering, which can be
tailored for each jurisdiction, will provide informational
briefings, governance models and standard operating procedures,
project planning, and engineering support.
In addition, NCS provides technical advice to OEC regarding
communications standards to ensure the proposed public safety network
is interoperable with the commercial communications networks. NCS also
ensures that the priority functions for national security emergency
preparedness function seamlessly as they operate between the networks.
national communications system
Since its inception, NCS has developed programs and services to
address the unique communications challenges associated with
communications divestiture, deregulation, natural disasters, and
terrorist attacks on our Nation.
As the co-lead for emergency support function No. 2 (ESF-2)--
communications, under the National Response Framework, NCS coordinates
government and industry during planning for and response to disasters
and major outages. The operational arm for communications activities is
the 24/7 National Coordinating Center for Telecommunications (NCC),
which coordinates emergency response operations supporting the National
Response Framework. The NCC is, and has been, a consistent coordinating
mechanism for managing efficient communications restoration and
recovery activity for more than 25 years. The NCC also coordinates the
communications assets of the NCS members to provide communications
assistance during disasters (manmade or natural). During a response,
the NCC also provides requirements priorities to industry partners.
NCS also manages government industry partnerships to assist
decisionmakers in understanding the risks to the communications sector.
Under Homeland Security Presidential Directive-7, NCS is the sector-
specific agency for the communications sector and coordinates
government and industry partners under the Critical Infrastructure
Protection Advisory Committee Act to reduce communications sector risk.
NCS also manages the President's National Security Telecommunications
Advisory Committee (NSTAC), which comprises 19 chief executive officer-
level members from communications, information technology, and defense
corporations. Most recently, the NSTAC examined four scenarios designed
to stress future 2015-level networks, and provided the President with
recommendations for technology enhancements and government investments
that would provide the best network resilience and recovery.
NCS capabilities include the following:
Operational Activities.--NCS develops and maintains national
security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) communications
priority services programs, such as the Government Emergency
Telecommunication System (GETS) and Wireless Priority Services
(WPS), which provide users with priority on commercial
networks. The GETS program is a White House-directed emergency
telecommunications service managed by NCS. GETS supports more
than 274,000 Federal, State, local, and tribal government,
industry, and NGO personnel in performing their NS/EP
communications missions by providing a robust mechanism to
complete calls during network congestion from anywhere in the
United States. Specifically, GETS provides 90 percent or more
call completion rates when network call volume is up to eight
times greater than normal capacity. For example, approximately
10,000 GETS calls were made with a 95-percent success rate
during the 9/11 attacks, and 1,231 GETS calls were made with a
90 percent or more success rate during the 2003 blackout.
WPS is a nationwide program that provides priority NS/EP
telecommunications via selected commercial wireless carriers.
This program enhances the ability of 108,000 NS/EP subscribers
to complete calls through a degraded public switched telephone
network during a crisis or emergency situation. WPS calls
receive the next available radio channel during times of
wireless congestion and helps to ensure that key NS/EP
personnel can complete critical calls by providing priority
access for key leaders and supporting first responders. WPS
service provides authorized cellular users with the ability to
have priority within the public switched telephone network as
well as access to priority channels.
The Telecommunications Service Priority (TSP) program authorizes
and provides priority treatment of NS/EP telecommunications
services. The TSP program provides service providers with an
FCC mandate for prioritizing service requests by identifying
those services critical to NS/EP. For example, a
telecommunications service with a TSP assignment will receive
priority by the service vendor before a non-TSP service. The
TSP program has two components: restoration and provisioning. A
restoration priority applies to telecommunications services to
ensure restoration before any other services. A provisioning
priority is obtained to facilitate priority installation of new
telecommunications services in response to an emergency. In
addition to daily operations, TSP program office personnel are
notified of presidentially declared disasters; activation of
the National Response Framework, ESF-2; and continuity of
operations and continuity of government (COOP/COG) plans. TSP
program office personnel are on call 24/7. TSP can save days to
weeks on the time required to return wireline voice/data
services, and there are more than 200,000 active TSP circuit
assignments in support of NS/EP communications.
NCS continues to migrate GETS and WPS services to work across
evolving networks. NCS works with industry to enhance and
assure these priority programs are compatible with Next-
Generation Network (NGN) technology.
The modeling, analysis, and technology assessments team provides
expertise in modeling and analyzing current and future
protocols, algorithms, network designs, and capabilities that
will impact priority service communications in legacy and NGNs.
The modeling team also maintains a suite of specialized
infrastructure analysis tools to provide critical
infrastructure risk assessments for the communications sector
in the event of a manmade or natural disaster. The assessments
consist of the following:
--Providing technical analysis of current and next-generation
communications systems, new technologies, physical and
logical architectures, and products related to
communications network infrastructures.
--Determining what new and emerging communications technologies
under various congestion and failure conditions to identify
vulnerabilities and predict performance of existing and
next-generation networks.
--Developing products to be used for COOP/COG functions during
disaster response related to Federal, State, local, and
tribal governments.
Standards Activities.--The NCS standards team is an active leader
and contributor to various national and international standards
developing organizations, ensuring industry-wide adoption of
nonproprietary solutions for NS/EP preparedness
telecommunications requirements.
The team provides leadership and representation in standards
bodies to recommend standards that, when implemented in
Internet protocol-based networks, will provide capabilities to
ensure national, State, and local leadership's ability to
communicate during times of crisis.
The Third Generation Partnership Project, known as 3GPP, is
focused on the technical aspects associated with provisioning
priority services in Long Term Evolution networks and is being
pursued under the enhanced Multimedia Priority Service project.
In cooperation with the Alliance for Telecommunications
Industry Solutions (ATIS), NCS is developing an end-to-end NGN
GETS service call flow standard that specifies end-to-end call
flows. ATIS is also developing the baseline text for an
emergency telecommunications service wireline access
requirements standard. This standard details the network
element requirements for wireline access in support of digital
subscriber line, cable, fiber, and metro Ethernet.
National Response Planning.--NCS is working with Federal,
regional, State, and local agencies to increase communications
coordination, information sharing, and oversight of emergency
preparedness activities to improve response to manmade and
natural disasters. NCS works with these entities to ensure a
coordinated response through formal governance structures and
partnerships.
federal emergency management agency and office of cybersecurity and
communications coordination
FEMA and CS&C have collaborated on a number of programs and
activities to improve communications for emergency responders in recent
years and are committed to leveraging collective expertise to
coordinate future programs, services, policies, and activities
supporting emerging communications. This includes key policy and
planning activities, such as emergency communications grants and
implementing the NECP, as well as incident-based, field programs, such
as ESF-2 and the national level exercise. Specific areas of
coordination are as follows:
Grants.--In addition to managing the IECGP, OEC, and the FEMA
Grants Program Directorate have chaired an ECPC focus group
charged with improving the coordination of Federal grant
programs that fund emergency communications with other
departments and agencies. If IECGP is not reauthorized, the
goals, priorities, and activities previously supported through
IECGP must be incorporated into remaining DHS grant programs
that fund emergency communications to preserve the gains that
FEMA and OEC have made toward improving emergency
communications. These activities include:
--Funding for SWICs;
--Funding to complete SCIP updates and reports;
--Funding for activities related the implementation of the NECP
goals; and
--Funding for narrowbanding and public safety broadband activities.
Regional Coordination.--OEC regional coordinators are active
participants in FEMA regional emergency communications
coordination working groups. Together, these regional
coordination efforts work to strengthen emergency
communications capabilities across tribal, local, State, and
Federal governments at the regional level through trusted
relationships, collaboration, and knowledge sharing.
Exercises.--Both OEC and NCS worked with FEMA's National Exercise
Division to develop criteria for the emergency communications
component of the recently completed national level exercise
2011 and provided representatives to monitor and assess the
emergency communications elements of the exercise.
Planning.--OEC and the FEMA Disaster Emergency Communications
Division have worked together to implement dozens of NECP
milestones and key activities and have coordinated on a number
of State and territorial strategic and tactical planning
initiatives for emergency communications.
dedicated communications with critical infrastructure
As this week I transitioned from Assistant Secretary for
Cybersecurity and Communications to the Acting Deputy Under Secretary
of NPPD, I believe it is necessary for me to also highlight the
important work under way within the NPPD Office of Infrastructure
Protection (IP). IP is responsible for leading the national effort to
protect and make resilient infrastructure critical to the Nation and
its way of life. IP plays an important role in ensuring that emergency
responders have the information that they need about the critical
infrastructure in their communities so that their communities can make
effective and risk-informed decisions before, during, and after
incidents.
For example, IP deploys protective security advisors to every State
to help State and local partners identify and protect critical
infrastructure by working in close coordination and collaboration with
the owners and operators of that infrastructure. By creating a
community of interest around critical infrastructure protection and
resilience issues at the local level, IP has helped prepare communities
for incidents, whether natural or manmade.
During incidents, our protective security advisors become
infrastructure liaisons, advising Federal, State, local, and private
sector preparation and response activities. Their advice leverages the
full capabilities of IP and other Federal partners, such as the
advanced modeling, simulation, and analysis provided during incidents
by the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC).
NISAC was created by the Congress ``to serve as a source of national
competence to address critical infrastructure protection and
continuity'', and NISAC analysis helps Federal, State, and local
partners prioritize their response and recovery activities to ensure
that communities impacted by incidents minimize the consequences and
can recover as quickly as possible.
The partnership structure established by the National
Infrastructure Protection Plan, and managed by IP, also helps to ensure
that emergency managers and communities benefit from the full breadth
of expertise available for critical infrastructure protection and
restoration activities. The partnership structure also provides a means
by which to disseminate information to Federal, State, local, and
private sector partners during incidents, enabling the efficient
transfer of knowledge. Such information is both pushed to partners
through dedicated critical infrastructure portals on the Homeland
Security Information Network and pulled from partners who report
infrastructure disruptions to the 24/7 National Infrastructure
Coordinating Center, which is operated by IP.
conclusion
The Department appreciates the subcommittee's support for our
emergency management and interoperable emergency communications
activities. Thank you again for this opportunity to testify. I would be
pleased to answer your questions.
NATIONAL CAPABILITIES
Senator Landrieu. Thank you very much.
Let me begin. We will do a first round of questioning.
Administrator Fugate, you have talked many times about
fundamentally changing how we go about preparing for disasters.
You have been able to implement some of those changes in your
very impressive tenure as Administrator. But we have no common
way right now, it seems, of assessing risks, measuring the
capabilities, and matching those risks to various levels of
government, and then applying limited resources to the best
possible investments.
As you remember, the Congress called for capability
assessment in the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act.
We still do not seem to have that assessment of readiness. In
other words, a measurement to say how ready we are, such as
using an international measurement--and the rule of thumb is if
you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it. So as we are
dealing with these storms, tornadoes and hurricanes, we must
continue to run parallel, dealing with what is happening today
but planning always for the future.
Are we any closer to getting that assessment that we need
or a way to measure how ready communities are? So some
communities might be five-star ready. Some communities could be
three-star ready. Some communities would not have any star at
all. Are we closer to getting that kind of system of
measurement? Because that would really help us as Senator Coats
and I try to allocate resources effectively to the areas that
either need the help and are not quite there yet or stop
funding programs where we have reached where we were trying to
go. And that is an important, I think, focus of my
appropriations leadership that I would like to provide to this
budget. Do we have any measurements? I understand we have spent
about $58 million in a variety of different attempts to achieve
that.
Mr. Fugate. Madam Chair, my question when I got to FEMA was
a question I had before: What is the national level we have to
build to? I think when you start trying to measure below that
level, it really gets away from the focus we should have had at
the Federal level. What is the national threat? What do we have
to respond against? How big is big? You hear the term ``black
swan'' or the events you can never plan for. And then you saw
what happened in Japan with the tsunami and the multiple
impacts of that.
What we have done at FEMA--and it is now written in our
strategic plan--is take the first steps to define what a
national capability requirement looks like. We looked at
several of the scenarios. We modeled them and we ran the
numbers. We looked at an improvised nuclear device detonation
in an urban area. We looked at our earthquake risk and looked
at a maximum of maximums there. And we also looked at similar
programs with hurricanes.
The first step is to define how big it could be. And we
have those numbers. What we do know is there is no way we can
respond to that, nor could we build the capability to do a
government-only solution. But the analysis is giving us the
tools to come back and go, ``What are the things that we need
to do to build a national response, not just a Federal
response?'' And so you talk about those measures. How do we
determine how well prepared we are?
We are finding that maybe we need to come back and go,
``Did we build the right structure?'' We have provided a lot of
funds to State and local governments to build capabilities
based upon their local hazards and statewide risk, but we never
really looked at those as national capabilities. So one of the
things that we know States have done--all 50 States are
currently participants in the Emergency Management Assistance
Compact--is to ask the question, ``Is now the time that we
should start requiring that future funding mandate continued
participation in the Emergency Management Assistance Compact so
we can look at this funding as a national asset versus State by
State?
And then how effectively are States using those resources
in-State? We have seen this in Indiana. We have seen this in
the gulf coast. We saw in the response to Joplin that it was
the mutual aid--these in-State capabilities many times that
responded across State lines--that made the difference. So we
are looking at how to start building that structure while you
continue to define how you build, the national capability, and
then what level each jurisdiction should be building as part of
that on the basis of their hazards.
EMERGENCY RESPONSE SYSTEMS
Senator Landrieu. The quicker we can get the answers to
that, the better we will be able to build a bill to actually
meet the needs of our country and our locals. So I will come
back to you in a minute for dates or suggested dates on that.
But let me ask Mr. Beers. The Office of Inspector General
made three recommendations to improve the efficacy of first-
responder grants to ensure the grants were coordinated to
mitigate duplication, document Agency rules, work with the
Congress, et cetera. Are we making progress on those
recommendations? And we seem to be sort of sitting at the
crossroads on some of those issues. Can you respond?
Mr. Beers. First of all, let me just say that in terms of
trying to measure the capabilities that are currently in
existence, we under the National Emergency Communications Plan
basically have a three-goal measurement process that we are
going through.
The first goal was to look at the major metropolitan areas
and ensure that they were able to respond within 1 hour to an
emergency communications event. Obviously, these are
preplanned, and I think that the success rate that we had so
far--there are differences. Some are better than others, but
they all achieved basically the minimum goals that we have set.
Those were the major cities.
We have gone now to the second phase, which is to take the
non-major areas, and we are running that test to see whether
those in other areas are able to be up and running with some
kind of emergency response system within an hour of a time set.
So we will move on with that and then do some further testing.
But I just want to give you a sense of the effort that we
are making to ensure that we can actually see how capable these
localities' emergency response systems are. And it is not just
in the city itself. It is multijurisdictional. So we need to
make sure the city and the surrounding areas can do that.
With respect to coordination of the grants program, we have
in OEC a major effort to make sure that from the State level to
the local level, those grants are all being coordinated. We
work with the grant guidance that FEMA issues, and we work with
FEMA for the grant awards. So it is actually a common effort
for us on interoperable emergency communications.
Senator Landrieu. Because, as I turn it over to Senator
Coats, it would be very troublesome and very disappointing to
have spent the money that we are investing in communications
systems that do not talk to each other, and we need to make
sure that they are as interoperable as we claim they are and
that it works when the disaster strikes.
Mr. Beers. If I may just add. That is what it showed in the
Louisiana case or the gulf coast case with Deepwater Horizon,
and that is what happened in Joplin, and that is what happened
in Alabama and Mississippi. That was not just one locality that
the tornado went through. It was adjacent localities that all
came together working with FEMA and were able to talk to one
another. So it is not that one locality can talk internally
with itself. It is that they can talk across. And that is a
result of the statewide interoperable plans that they have been
developing. And that backbone allows those emergency responders
to be able to talk to one another across jurisdictions, as well
as to have resilient communications within a jurisdiction.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you.
Senator Coats.
MADRID EXERCISES
Senator Coats. Madam Chair, thank you.
Mr. Fugate, as you know, you have recently conducted a
trial disaster situation relative to the New Madrid fault. Is
there any preliminary information from that that gives you some
insights as to what needs to be done, what was done
effectively, what changes might need to be made in terms of
preparing for a disaster of that nature, and the value of your
test?
Mr. Fugate. This was for NLE 2011, this year's New Madrid
earthquake and other faults. We are still working on the quick
look and the initial findings, but my observation was this was
one of our largest exercises that we have conducted. It was an
exercise in which we saw a lot more local and State
participation as far as bringing teams in from different areas
and working through problems. It continues to reinforce the
need to do these levels of exercises to validate many of our
planning assumptions and to test our communications and to test
our ability to work as a team.
Fortunately--or unfortunately, many of the things that we
practiced in NLE 2011 we actually implemented in Missouri in
the Joplin tornado outbreak. So we know that the level of
participation was good. We saw a lot of different site
activities. We saw a lot of the testing of our equipment
interoperability in the teams and the lessons from that. I
think, as we get those, we will have a better idea where we
have to continue to work.
But one thing that, coming back to Senator Landrieu, is
really key to this is the ability to tie mutual aid and
participation as mutual aid teams, to look at assets not as a
local or State asset but as a national asset as part of the
ability for Governors and local jurisdictions to share
resources.
MOBILE DEVICES AND MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES
Senator Coats. Thank you.
I would like to direct the next question toward the use of
social media to communicate and the interoperability of the
public service connections, particularly in light of the
changing technologies. It is so easy to commit to a certain
program which will provide that interoperability and ability to
communicate only to find that the technology has changed
dramatically and you have got to rework your whole system or
make do with a less viable option. I mean, it is just a matter
of time between laptops and now it is iPads, and if you do not
have an iPad 2, you are not up to speed because the first iPad
is obsolete and you have just spent a bunch of money on this or
that or the other. And as soon as you get the iPad 2, somebody
says you should have gotten a Droid because you can download
more apps for free.
Senator Landrieu. I am impressed, Senator Coats.
Senator Coats. I am learning this the hard way. I actually
ran into somebody. Somebody asked her a question--how is your
social media? And a lady said it is fine, but we have a lot of
groups at church that we get together with and we bowl together
every Tuesday night. Our social network is pretty strong. So
those of us of a certain generation had to catch up with the
technology.
In any event, you get a situation like 9/11 and we were in
the cell phone age at the time, but no one was able to get
through as the lines were jammed or whatever. What types of
considerations do you have to take relative to the use of the
new technologies that will survive and be usable within a
disaster of certain proportions that maybe takes down part of
the network? What do we do then?
Mr. Fugate. I think when you talk about social media and
you talk about cells and other things, I think what we are
really finding is more and more people are moving toward mobile
devices and mobile technologies. And rather than focusing on a
platform, we have to focus on the protocols to get information
out. One of the things that Under Secretary Rand Beers' folks
at the National Communications Service do is work with the
wireless carriers to get restoration quickly.
One of the things that, in working with the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC), we are doing with the
emergency alert system is addressing the issue of cellular
congestion and looking at mobile devices as a way to alert and
warn people during a crisis. Part of that has been working with
industry to implement what is now called the Personal Location
Alert Network (PLAN).
One of the things that cell phones can do that does not
require--or it gets into the issue of congestion--is they are
radio receivers and you can actually broadcast to them versus
making individual calls or text messages and running into
congestion issues. So we recently announced in New York City
with Mayor Bloomberg kicking off the implementation of PLAN,
which will allow people with mobile devices to receive alerts
from the official sources, whether it is the National Weather
Service or local or State officials, on the basis of where they
are, not what they have signed up for. And that system is being
rolled out across the Nation. More than 200 carriers are
participating in this. Device manufacturers are providing the
software updates and are identifying the devices that will
work. And we feel that, over the next several years, this new
tool will allow us to reach mobile users much more effectively
than even some of the existing warning systems. But it is not
based upon a platform or only one type of technology.
But the other part of that is also recognizing we have to
ensure that we communicate the way people communicate, whether
it is going to the bowling alley or it is sending out a tweet
or it is updating a Facebook page or it is walking down the
street and talking to people.
Senator Coats. Thank you.
Mr. Beers. Sir, might I add just one point to that?
The Administrator is talking about talking with the public.
The thing to remember that is always significant here is that
for emergency responders, we are still in a land mobile radio
environment, and we cannot move off that environment until we
have secure, resilient communications. That migration is going
to take some time. To make the cell phone system and that
resilient is, obviously, something we want to do, but for
emergency responders, that has to work all the time. It cannot
be something that does not work. So we are still using land
mobile radios. We will move when we can move, but they are not
going to give those up until they know what they move to is
going to be able to work all the time or effectively all the
time. So we have got that issue to deal with as well.
Senator Coats. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you.
In order of appearance, Senator Tester is next and then
Senator Cochran.
DISASTER RELIEF FUND
Senator Tester. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Administrator Fugate, as we have seen an almost
unprecedented string of weather-related disasters across the
country this spring, the communities and families who have been
impacted will undoubtedly look to FEMA, as they already have,
timely services and assistance to help them get them back on
their feet. That is a significant responsibility that you have.
And as the disaster assistance fund is further depleted, it
is going to force you to make some very difficult decisions.
The Congress needs to do its job and it needs to get you the
funding it needs. There is no doubt about that. But the cost of
those disasters will continue to mount and there are a lot of
folks out there that are in need.
I have several questions, and you can answer them in any
order you want.
Can you provide us with an update on the current DRF
shortfall?
And does the recently passed House Homeland Security
appropriations bill even come close to providing what you need?
It is my understanding it is at least $1 billion short.
Mr. Fugate. In the current fiscal year, we are watching
very closely the obligations for the most recent disasters.
Prior to the most recent flooding and tornadoes, we were
projecting that we would remain above $1 billion to the end of
the fiscal year and not have to implement immediate needs
funding. But with the more recent disasters and the fact that
we do not have completed damage assessments, we are continuing
to assess that very closely to see if the public assistance and
requirements to support the initial response would require us
to do immediate needs funding.
As for the fiscal year 2012, again this goes back to
something the chairlady basically touched on, and that is the
philosophical way of funding disasters. Do we do that through
full appropriations or do we look at that--particularly in the
older disasters that were extreme events that go beyond what we
have historically budgeted for, do we use another tool? And I
think that is a question that needs a lot of discussion. How do
we address the older disasters, as well as should we be
budgeting at a continuation level of disasters we expect to get
and treat these as extraordinary events, or do we look at that
as a budget issue that we would look at in our baseline funding
request?
FISCAL YEAR 2012 DISASTER RELIEF FUND BUDGET
Senator Tester. You know what the needs are out there. The
question I really had was, does the House-passed budget come
close to meeting your needs?
Mr. Fugate. For fiscal year 2012, sir, the answer probably
is going to come back to, given what we had projected on
closing out disasters and putting money back into the DRF, we
were still looking at when we would require immediate needs
funding for 2012. I do not have a timeframe on that, and with
these most recent disasters, all of that projection I think has
got to go back to what we are going to be dealing with this
summer.
Senator Tester. You got 36 States on the map. According to
Senator Coats, he has got 37. I got 38, and God knows what else
is out there. You are the guy on the ground. You are the guy
that this Senate and the House, I think, look to to make sure
that there is adequate funding out there because you know as
well as I do. I ask things of you as a Senator from Montana on
behalf of Montanans. Senator Coats, Senator Landrieu will do
the same thing. It is not unlike any other budget. You got to
tell us. Is it adequate or is it not?
Mr. Fugate. Senator, for this year, we have to add up the
damage to see if we are going to have to go to the immediate
needs for 2012. The continued practice of this administration
and previous administrations has asked for a baseline budget
based upon a level of existing disasters that does not always
factor in existing catastrophic disasters. But the other part
of that is looking at how much of that we are going to need for
the 2012 budget.
Senator Tester. I got you. I do not want to beat you up too
bad.
Senator Landrieu. It is a good line of questioning.
Senator Tester. As I look at this map and as you propose
the budget, because you were around for this budget that was
proposed, did you anticipate the kind of emergency situations
that were going to arise? I mean, I am looking at a map that is
primarily green, and green is not a good color in this case.
Mr. Fugate. No. This year has been rather exceptional. But
I would also point out that, although you have many States that
are green, many of those States are actually operating under
what we call fire management assistance grants. So they do not
have a large-scale event like a hurricane or some other large
outbreak.
Many of these disasters, as unfortunate as they are, have
been very focused. I think the chairwoman would recognize that,
when you get a hurricane, they are so much larger. Again, as
bad as the devastation is, as an example in Joplin, the public
infrastructure losses will probably be primary debris. We only
had a couple of public buildings damaged unlike what we would
see in an earthquake or hurricane. So again, although you have
a lot of States colored, it is not always going to be to the
same level we see in these more catastrophic events.
DISASTER ASSISTANCE
Senator Tester. Look, none of us on this panel want to
spend money that does not have to be spent, but by the same
token, when I flew over southern Montana and see the roads and
the bridges that are out--and I have northern Montana just
getting hit this week. I mean, we have got Roundup that is
going to be flooded again. It probably is already flooded right
now. We got a levee in Glasgow that is about to be breached, if
it is not breached right now, on the Missouri River.
I am going to shut her down. Affected communities. The
representatives of those affected communities--what can they do
to best ensure that they are in the proper position to receive
the assistance that they need in a timely manner?
Mr. Fugate. The most important thing is, again, once a
Governor has requested a disaster declaration--not every
disaster warrants a Stafford Act declaration. We do say no.
That is a fact of life. But when the President has declared
that disaster, the important things are again to get their
documentation, work with the State and with FEMA to get their
claims in that are eligible, and process those quickly. There
is a lot of work on the initial end of these responses. As we
get into the out-years, things can slow down. I think it is
important that as quickly as we can identify what the total
cost impacts will be, the better we can assess where the DRF is
and whether there would be a shortfall requiring any immediate
needs funding restrictions.
Senator Tester. I appreciate that.
And I thank the chair.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you.
And I will call the subcommittee's attention to the chart
that is being put up that gets to the heart of what Senator
Tester was asking. The President has requested $1.8 billion in
the baseline for 2012, but your estimate, your low estimate, is
$3.8 billion and your high estimate is $6.6 billion. So there
is quite a delta that we are going to have to fix to attend to
the needs that the Senator from Montana was raising.
Senator Cochran.
EARLY WARNING SYSTEM
Senator Cochran. Madam Chair, thank you for chairing this
important hearing.
Mr. Fugate, we are aware of the fact that you served as
head of the Florida Division of Emergency Management in your
earlier incarnation as an administrator, having jurisdiction
over many of these programs that we are talking about today.
And I know that our State has benefited from your experience
because of the damages that we have sustained in Mississippi
during the hurricane season and beyond. Recent events have
demonstrated how serious that can be.
Just looking on the television screen and trying to imagine
what it was like during those times when the tornadoes were
coming through our State and neighboring States, it is just
totally unbelievable. And what is really unbelievable is that
people survived it.
Tell me how important the early warning system is and what
was your experience that you gained from these recent events
that helped equip you to know how to respond as a Federal
administrator?
Mr. Fugate. The first part is that the National Weather
Service's approach to forecasting for severe weather is not
much unlike forecasting hurricanes. They have the Storm
Prediction Center, which gave the outlooks. In both of these
outbreaks, they had identified a very significant risk of
violent tornadoes. Actual warning times varied, but 15- to 20-
minute warnings were issued prior to the tornadoes touching
down. And when you ask people if they had somewhere to go, and
they go, ``Well, we did not have a basement. A lot of our homes
are slab on grade''. And when you are dealing with F4 and F5
tornadoes, there are not too many places to go. They did the
things that reduced the loss of life. They got in their
bathtubs. They got in their closets. They did things that
reduced that impact.
The United States had seen a significant reduction in loss
of life for tornadoes, it seemed like, every year, but we are
seeing an uptick. People are questioning why. I think it is
because you are dealing with the rarity of these extremely
violent tornadoes, and I think it goes back to some of the
things we need to look at. And building in these areas, if
people get the warning but have nowhere to go or do not know
what to do, we do not change the outcome. I think we need to
put a renewed emphasis on things such as safe rooms in home
construction, but particularly in public safety buildings where
we may not be able to harden a building for an F5 tornado, but
we certainly should be able to build a space so that
firefighters, police officers, and paramedics have a safe place
to be during the storm so they can respond to their community
after the storm.
HURRICANE PREPAREDNESS
Senator Cochran. In our recent experience with gulf coast
hurricanes, we got another wakeup call. Just because you had
one last year does not mean you are not going to have one this
year. It seems like Haley Barbour, our Governor, has had his
hands full in responding to hurricanes. Katrina was the huge
one.
Were you here in Washington or in Florida when Katrina hit?
Mr. Fugate. I was in Florida for the 2004 and 2005
hurricane season, sir.
Senator Cochran. Do you have any observations about the
budget request now specifically as it relates to hurricane
preparedness and preparedness for Mississippi River flooding
like we have seen this year, like we had not seen since 1924 I
think was the big flood year? What is your estimate of the
sufficiency of the budget request to deal with events like
this?
Mr. Fugate. Again, I think looking at what it would take to
do the initial response--and that is one of the reasons we
watch the DRF so closely. We do not want the balances dropping
below the point where we cannot respond to the next disaster.
We, going into this hurricane season, are in good shape.
But I will tell you this. If we have a large-scale outbreak
or a big hurricane hit, those funds will diminish rapidly. The
costs of responding to these larger-scale disasters are
substantially greater than what we have seen in the recent
response. So that is always a factor when you look at large-
scale impacts from earthquakes or from hurricanes. As bad as
these have been, they have been rather focused in their areas,
and therefore do not require a substantial amount of resources
to complete an initial response to.
Senator Cochran. Do we have a supplemental pending at this
time that contains funding that your Agency needs?
Mr. Fugate. Not based upon the hurricane season, sir. And
we are looking at where we are on our damage assessments to
determine if we would need any additional funds this fiscal
year for the current response to the tornadoes and floods.
Senator Cochran. We do not want you to be shy about sitting
there and not asking for the funds that we need in our States
that have been hit hard by these storms. I hope you will be
arguing in the meetings you have in the administration to be
generous.
Mr. Fugate. Yes, sir.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you, Senator Cochran.
Senator Leahy.
VERMONT FLOODING
Senator Leahy. Thank you very much.
Mr. Fugate, you and I had a nice chat the other day, and I
appreciate you calling me back on what I understand was a very
busy day. I guess most of your days are pretty busy.
As I mentioned in our conversation, I talked about those
series of devastating flooding disasters we have had in
Vermont. I am not suggesting it is like along the Mississippi
River, but for our little State of 600,000, it is virtually
unprecedented.
Lake Champlain, which goes the length of the western side
of the State, is 103 feet above sea level. We have had a huge
amount of snow over the winter that has melted and then the
rain started. We have more thunderstorms coming again tonight.
It is the wettest spring we have ever had. No lives lost, but I
know that in our capital city of Montpelier and in the city of
Barre homes and businesses have been flooded out and destroyed.
I know both of these places very well. I was born in one, and
my father in the other. The Governor, Peter Shumlin, requested
a major disaster declaration from the President. He has the
full support of all of us in the delegation.
And I know the FEMA investigators went up to Vermont to
assess the damage. I appreciate that. They were there right
away. I think your staff was there for weeks. And I think we
certainly met the threshold for a declaration. I hope it can be
issued soon. I hope they will have individual assistance for
the hardest hit communities. Some of these homes and businesses
are totally destroyed. Other buildings that have been there for
100 years without anything hurt are now destroyed. Vermont and
New Hampshire are about the only two States on Senator
Landrieu's chart that have not been hit.
Can you give me an update on Vermont's application?
Mr. Fugate. Yes, sir. We talked to the Governor yesterday
morning. We also got some more information that answered a
couple of questions and that paperwork is now moving. When I
talked to you, I told you I would put my personal attention on
it. We did. We had to get some more information. The State
provided that. They had an amendment they wanted to get into
that original request. So we took that and worked to get that
into the original request. So it is moving, sir.
Senator Leahy. As I said, your folks have been up there and
have been really working hard. And I appreciate that because it
has not been a comfortable or easy time for them, but I suspect
that is part of the rule of the game. When you get called out,
it is not because it is an afternoon on the beach. It is a bad
time.
Mr. Fugate. Again, Senator, in this response to the
flooding, we have been working with the State. Again, most of
the response they have done themselves with their resources.
This is really looking at the economic impacts and that
threshold. Again, the Governor had requested to amend his
original request. We have worked that request, and that is now
moving, sir.
Senator Leahy. Thank you. And please keep or have your
staff keep mine posted. I appreciate it. I am supposed to be at
another hearing, but I wanted to come here and wanted to thank
you for taking my call and for giving it your personal
attention.
Mr. Fugate. Yes, sir, Senator.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you, Senator Leahy.
Senator Murkowski.
DISASTERS IN REMOTE AREAS
Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Administrator, thank you for being here. I appreciate all
that both of you do.
We have had a tough spring in the interior part of Alaska.
We have got two communities that had some pretty exceptional
flooding this year, that of Crooked Creek and Red Devil, both
small villages, interior villages, not a lot of people,
subsistence lifestyle, seasonal economic opportunities, but
very hard hit by the 30 feet of flood waters and ice jams. You
know well about it.
The question that I have today--and I guess more of an
assurance. The situation in Crooked Creek and Red Devil is not
making the national news. It was not on anybody's radar screen
outside of the State of Alaska, but incredibly important, not
unlike what Senator Leahy was speaking about in Vermont. And as
I was home over the recess, I had several come up to me and say
in view of what is happening in Joplin and with the flooding
along the Mississippi, is it a situation that our smaller
communities, perhaps our more rural communities like Crooked
Creek and Red Devil, will be put at the bottom of the priority
list when it comes to gaining the disaster declaration that our
Governor has sought.
And what I would like to hear from you today is in view of
all that you have before you--and I appreciate the enormity of
it, but can you give me some assurances that the disaster
declarations that are being requested from some of our very
remote, very rural areas that again are not making the front
pages will get the attention from your Agency that they
certainly deserve?
Mr. Fugate. The answer simply, Senator, is yes. I think one
of the things that the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform
Act did was to strengthen our FEMA regions. And if we were
trying to do this all from headquarters, we may miss a few
disasters, but because our regional offices, geographically
spread across the country, work directly with our counterparts
at the State level, we do not miss these requests. When the
Governor sends a request from any State or our territories, our
regions work those requests, work with the State, determine if
there is any immediate Federal assistance needed, and will
process the recommendations. Not all requests are declared, but
all requests are treated with the same level of consideration.
And it is our regional staff and offices working day to day
with their State counterparts that ensure we do not miss even
one. As I like to tell my folks, we do not go just where the TV
cameras go. We go where the need is based upon what the
Governors have requested of us.
ALASKA--CATASTROPHIC PLANNING
Senator Murkowski. I appreciate that, and I know that the
people of Crooked Creek and Red Devil will as well.
I want to ask you a couple questions about earthquakes,
tsunamis following the natural disasters there in Japan,
Fukushima, a lot of attention, clearly, on the magnitude of
what Japan felt. Alaska has similarly seen some pretty
substantial earthquakes, our 1964 earthquake, and the result of
a devastating tsunami. And so we pay particular attention.
The question that I have for you is the intensity of FEMA's
planning efforts to prepare or to deal with any--I guess you
cannot prepare, but how do you deal with a catastrophic
earthquake, a tsunami that might impact the State of Alaska.
I am singling out Alaska specifically. Obviously, I
represent an incredible State in terms of its geography but
also recognizing that our geography puts us away from the rest
of the country. And when you were discussing the issue of
mutual aid earlier, we recognize that in so many of our States,
it is not just what that one State provides, it is the
surrounding assistance. We do not have that. And in the event
of a natural disaster that might take out our port, aid could
be 48 hours plus away, if not longer.
Can you speak to just again the planning efforts that might
be underway and whether or not in your view FEMA is working
adequately with the State of Alaska to identify the challenges
that we face as a remote State or a State that is remote from
the rest of the country in terms of any outside assistance,
mutual aid?
Mr. Fugate. Senator, I will do this in two parts. First, I
am going to offer up Ken Murphy, our regional administrator, to
work with your staff to set up a meeting and brief you on the
catastrophic planning that we do with Alaska.
Senator Murkowski. I would like to do that.
Mr. Fugate. We also recognize that, because of the
isolation of Alaska and the fact that many of the lifelines may
be disrupted in this type of scenario, we work very closely
with the State looking at how we would get back to Alaska and
how quickly we can get there. This is going to take a sizable
response capability. We are working with our partners at the
Department of Defense. There are also, in several of these
scenarios, not only the impacts that would occur in Alaska but
maybe also those occurring further south, particularly in
Seattle, that would affect a lot of our shipping, which again
is a key lifeline for the State of Alaska.
So our catastrophic planning initiatives are really based
upon what we call the maximums of maximums. How bad would it
get? What gets severed? What is the backup, and how do we still
get back to these areas?
But I will offer up that our regional administrator get
with your staff and set up, at your convenience, a briefing on
what we are doing with Alaska for the catastrophic plans.
INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS
Senator Murkowski. I appreciate that and would look forward
to that meeting.
You have just gone through this catastrophic disaster
response exercise, the New Madrid fault. And I am assuming
there were good insights and lessons learned from that exercise
that may or may not be applicable to the situation in Alaska.
Can you comment on that, or is that something that I should
discuss further at this meeting?
Mr. Fugate. I think a briefing would probably answer a lot
of those questions. I will tell you, though, one of the things
that we have not done in a lot of our exercises is look at how
we would bring in our international partners. Within the urban
search and rescue (US&R) community, there are a lot of other
nations that are very effective and that we work with through
the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and International
Response. We have not always looked at those resources as to
how they would help us in the United States. I think Alaska
would be a perfect example of working with our neighboring
countries that would have resources in the theater that may
actually be more quick and could get to areas. So one of the
things we are really exploring is not looking just at what we
have within our national capabilities, but what do our
international partners bring that would be specific,
particularly search and rescue because that is such a
specialized application that many countries have worked on with
us and developed those capabilities, often based upon our team
models.
Senator Murkowski. I look forward to the meeting.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you.
The panelists have been very generous with their time. We
are going to forgo a second round of questioning so we can get
to our second panel. We are very anxious to hear from our local
leaders that have traveled a distance to testify.
But Mr. Fugate, I am going to ask you just in closing if
you can tell me today or submit to me in writing within a week
when that Pre-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act
requirement to do an assessment is going to be completed by
your Agency. Do you have a timeframe in mind?
Mr. Fugate. We will submit that within the week in writing,
Madam Chair.
[The information follows:]
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) agrees that we are
at a crossroads of building more readiness capacity and sustaining the
capacity we have built to date. FEMA believes that grant dollars should
go toward developing and sustaining national capabilities that could be
called up by any jurisdiction at any time through national mutual aid.
FEMA has been working to streamline the process and set priorities that
will encourage grantees to build national capacity according to gaps in
coverage of capabilities.
To achieve this, the fiscal year 2011 FEMA grant guidance sets
three new priorities for the grantee:
--whole community strategy;
--building prevention and protection capabilities; and
--the maturation and enhancement of State and major urban area fusion
centers.
Grant applicants will be developing their investment justifications
based, in part, on capability requirements identified through the
Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) process.
THIRA is based on analysis of each State's relative consequences of the
various threats and hazards, and allows the applicant to compare and
prioritize risks. THIRAs will be used to update State homeland security
strategies, which identify the capability gaps that States most need to
fill in order to meet the State's individual risk priorities and FEMA's
priorities. Gaps identified in THIRA will assist FEMA in assessing
national gaps in capabilities and help us further refine grant guidance
to maximize benefit.
From fiscal year 2006 to fiscal year 2009, States identified the
highest funding requirements as communications, intelligence and
information sharing and dissemination, and planning. The States based
these funding requirements on their homeland security strategies, which
include their capability development requirements and grant guidance
provided by FEMA.
The top three capabilities developed through Federal investments,
as collected through progress reports from fiscal year 2006 to fiscal
year 2009, include communications, planning, and critical
infrastructure protection.
FEMA is making a number of key reforms to the design and
implementation of its grant programs to build and sustain national
capability. First, and most important, FEMA is working to implement the
requirements of Presidential Policy Directive-8 which includes the
development of a new national preparedness goal, national preparedness
system, and other key strategic policy doctrine that will help us
better focus where investments go.
Second, we are working closely with State, local, tribal, and
private sector partners and stakeholders to develop a culture of
partnership in everything we do. Last summer, our grant program
developers, managers, and analysts met with our partners at the
National Urban Areas Security Initiative and After Action conferences
in San Francisco over the course of 4 days from June 20-23, 2011, to
review, assess, and improve all aspects of how we work together.
A third key reform lies in our ongoing commitment to improving and
integrating a risk-based approach into the design and implementation of
our grant programs. We are continuing to refine our risk models and
allocation methodologies to ensure that grant funds are deployed across
our grant portfolio in a way that reflects the best possible
information about threats, risks, and vulnerabilities that we face.
Finally, FEMA is evaluating the findings arrived at via direction
from the Redundancy Elimination and Enhanced Performance for
Preparedness Grants (REEPP) Act, in coordination with the National
Academy of Public Administration, to identify and eliminate redundant
reporting requirements and to develop meaningful performance metrics
for Homeland Security preparedness grants. This effort may help FEMA
further measure the effectiveness of grants. FEMA also is evaluating
the recommendations from the Local, State, Tribal, and Federal
Preparedness Task Force Report to improve coordination and
consolidation of FEMA's grant programs, including coordination of
interagency grant programs and more closely linking capability
assessment and grant activities.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you very much. Thank you both, and
we appreciate it. We will have further questions, of course, in
writing and we thank you for your testimony today.
Mr. Beers. Thank you.
Senator Landrieu. Let me quickly, as these two leaders are
moving their chairs, introduce our second panel, as they come
forward.
We are very happy to have Mark Riley from the State of
Louisiana. Mark is the chief of staff to Louisiana's Governor's
Office of Homeland Security. He came to the agency in 2007,
previously served for 2 years as deputy director of disaster
recovery. He has managed an $11 billion public assistance fund,
a $1.4 billion hazard mitigation fund, funding more than 24,000
projects throughout the State for four hurricanes. Prior to
that, 32 years in the U.S. Marine Corps and a master of law
degree from Georgetown University. We are very happy to have
Mr. Riley leading our efforts in Louisiana.
Let me turn to Senator Coats to introduce our witness from
Indiana, Mr. Vice.
Senator Coats. Thank you, Madam Chair.
David Vice is executive director of the Integrated Public
Safety Commission (IPSC) in Indiana. He spent nearly 10 years
with that agency promoting interoperable communications between
local, State, and Federal first responders. Prior to his
appointment as executive director in 2011, he served as the
agency's field coordinator and in this role was the agency's
ambassador to the local and State public safety agencies,
promoting the benefits of joining the State's 800 megahertz
interoperable communications system and a number of other
projects. I am pleased to have him here and thank him for his
service to our State but also to our country and look forward
to his testimony.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you.
And let me welcome Mr. Hicks who is the director of Morgan
County, Alabama Emergency Management and president of the
International Association of Emergency Managers.
And finally, Mr. Ron Lane, director of the Office of
Emergency Services from San Diego County, California.
We appreciate you all being here today, and Mr. Riley, we
will begin with you for your opening statement.
STATEMENT OF MARK RILEY, CHIEF OF STAFF, GOVERNOR'S
OFFICE OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND EMERGENCY
PREPAREDNESS, STATE OF LOUISIANA
Mr. Riley. Madam Chairwoman, subcommittee members, on
behalf of Governor Jindal and Director Mark Cooper, I
appreciate the invitation to speak here today.
As I understand your interest, you are looking for
information on the state of emergency management within
Louisiana focused on communications and interoperability.
Louisiana has been a laboratory for some of the most
significant events in emergency management over the last 6
years. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, followed by
Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008, followed by the Deepwater
Horizon spill in 2010, and most recently the record level
flooding of the Mississippi River.
Since FEMA started tracking in 1953, Louisiana ranked sixth
amongst States in Stafford Act type events. This count does not
include the myriad of other emergency events that are
significant at a local level but do not rise to the level of
requiring a Federal response.
At the State level, the Governor's Office of Homeland
Security and Emergency Preparedness has respond to more than
130 emergency events in the last 3 years, 44 of which have
activated the State Emergency Operations Center for a total of
519 days during that 3-year period. All of these events depend
on the capabilities of emergency managers at the local level.
It is an axiom of emergency management that every disaster
is local. Therefore, we must develop an emergency management
process that thoroughly integrates all levels of government and
the private sector to support local emergency management.
Eighty percent of all the Homeland Security Grant Program
(HSGP) funds received by the State are sent to the parishes to
build a robust and resilient emergency management capability at
the local level.
What is confusing is at the same time the Presidential
Policy Directive-8 on national preparedness cites the need to
support local emergency management through a preparedness
planning for business, communities, families, and individuals,
the State of Louisiana is notified of a 57-percent cut to the
HSGP, a key resource for emergency management at the State and
local levels.
Louisiana is, in fact, the laboratory for emergency
management, and I would like to briefly outline initiatives
Louisiana has taken to enhance the emergency management process
over the past several years.
Within the last 3 years, the State has built the Louisiana
wireless information network which is now the largest 700
megahertz radio system in the country and provides portable
radio coverage across 95 percent of the State. In 2010, there
were more than 60,000 users at the Federal, State, and local
level and more than 95 million push-to-talk accesses.
We have enhanced interoperability through a Google Earth
project known as Virtual Louisiana. We photographed the entire
State using 6'' high resolution and are in the process of
geocoding all infrastructure facilities throughout the State.
We have completed 25 percent of the State's critical
infrastructure. When complete, Louisiana will have the most
extensive geographic information system (GIS) database in the
country available to all first responders to provide critical
and real-time data during an emergency response.
Three years ago, Louisiana aggressively embarked upon a
multimedia awareness campaign focused on individual
responsibility and preparedness. The ``Get a Game Plan''
campaign uses public service announcements like the Louisiana
celebrity Donna Douglas from ``The Beverly Hillbillies'',
provides detailed Web-based information on preparedness and
emergency events, and publishes informational brochures and
maps.
It includes social media tools like Facebook and Twitter.
We have the largest emergency management Facebook following
amongst the 36 States that have a Facebook page. We have the
fifth-largest following on Twitter.
Recently we have rolled out an iTunes application for Get a
Game Plan which can be downloaded to your cell phone.
Last year, Get a Game Plan partnered with WalMart
pharmacies to distribute a hurricane preparedness checklist
with each prescription it filled, more than 600,000
prescriptions.
To engage the private sector, we have established the
Louisiana Business Emergency Operations Center. It includes
representation from several of DHS' 18 critical infrastructure
key resource sectors and supports the State's Emergency
Operations Center. It has the ability to quickly access
resources of the private sector to more efficiently support
response and recovery needs during an emergency.
Louisiana is also developing a comprehensive leadership and
training certification program for emergency management and
homeland security professionals and political leadership, the
Louisiana Command College. The training will result in the
establishment of standardized best practice emergency managers,
knowledgeable political leadership, and a resilient private
sector which understands the need for preparedness and its role
in the response and recovery process.
Louisiana has built three type-3 US&R teams, each of which
has been modeled in accordance with FEMA guidelines. Recently,
the Louisiana USAR teams were deployed to Tuscaloosa, Alabama
to assist in the aftermath of that devastating tornado.
A 57-percent cut in Homeland Security funding includes the
total elimination of urban area security initiatives for the
New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas. We fear this cut will
completely expose the underbelly of this Nation in that it
ignores the interdependencies of the national economy which
flows through Louisiana.
PREPARED STATEMENT
Louisiana emergency management practices are constantly
tested, and we are, in fact, a living laboratory that is
constantly identifying improved emergency management practices.
We would argue that this warrants strategic investment of
Federal dollars to leverage this living laboratory. The end
result of these investments, as illustrated by the practice
outlined above, are in fact best practices that can be rapidly
shared across the Nation resulting in a more resilient Nation.
Remember, every disaster is local and the resources should be
focused to increase the effectiveness of the local emergency
manager and first responder.
Thank you very much.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mark S. Riley
introduction
It is an axiom of emergency management that every disaster is
local. As local as every disaster is, the effects of a disastrous event
are often national in scope. During Hurricane Gustav in 2008 the
Governor of Maine contacted the Governor of Louisiana wanting to know
if Maine's gas prices were going to increase because of a disruption in
the refining and distribution of gasoline in the State of Louisiana, as
occurred during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. During the recent flooding
events along the Mississippi River there was fear that river traffic
would be halted with a multi-billion-dollar effect to commerce. For
example, 40 percent of all fertilizer used in the Midwest farm belt
flows through the Port of New Orleans. The response to this axiomatic
problem is an emergency management process that thoroughly integrates
all levels of government and the private sector to support the
``local'' emergency management process. For this to be effective we
must build and maintain a robust and resilient emergency management
capability at the local level.
For those in the emergency management business, this is not a novel
concept. On March 30, 2011, Presidential Policy Directive-8 (PPD-8),
National Preparedness, was published and it recognizes this concept in
the statement ``Our national preparedness is the shared responsibility
of all levels of government, the private and nonprofit sectors, and the
individual citizens.'' In PPD-8, the President directs the development
of a national preparedness system which shall include ``resource
guidance'', and shall provide ``equipment guidance aimed at nationwide
interoperability; . . . national training and exercise programs . . .
and guidance to support preparedness planning for businesses,
communities, families, and individuals''. What is confusing is that at
the same time this guidance is published, we are notified of a
significant cut to the Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP), which is
a key resource for State and local governments to develop the type of
resilience that is envisioned in PPD-8.
On behalf of the State of Louisiana, I would like to thank this
subcommittee for the opportunity to discuss initiatives we have taken
over the last several years, many of which have been identified in the
emergency management community as best practice, and the anticipated
disastrous effects the HSGP cuts are going to have on Louisiana's
ability to continue these initiatives.
Louisiana is in fact a laboratory for emergency management. Since
FEMA started keeping statistics in 1953, Louisiana ranks sixth amongst
the States in declared Stafford Act type events. In recent years, this
includes Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 (combined, more than four
times larger than the next largest disaster in U.S. history), followed
by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008 (direct impact to public
infrastructure of more than $1 billion), followed by the Deepwater
Horizon oil spill in 2010 (although not a Stafford Act event--the
largest oil spill in U.S. history spilling 205.8 million gallons of
crude oil just 48 miles from Louisiana's coastline with severe economic
impact to oil production and the fisheries industry), and most
recently, the record level flooding of the Mississippi River (flooding
1,482 homes, camps, and business in Louisiana alone to date; placing
almost 3 million sandbags and 9 miles of HESCO bastions). This count
does not include the myriad of other emergency events that are
significant at a local level that include scenarios like tornadoes,
water shortages, wildfires, hazardous cargo spills, oil well fires,
winter weather storms, flooding, and the like. As not all these events
require a Federal response, not all have required a State response
because of the preparedness of the local government. At the State
level, Louisiana Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency
Preparedness (GOHSEP) has responded to more than 130 emergency events
in the last 3 years, 44 of which have activated the State Emergency
Operations Center (EOC) for a total of 519 days during that period.
With this experience Louisiana has become a living laboratory for
disaster innovation which has given rise to several key innovations
since our experiences in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. The below
will discuss actions Louisiana has taken to enhance the emergency
management process in the State and highlight innovations we have
implemented.
statutory initiatives
Louisiana amended its Homeland Security and Emergency Assistance
and Disaster Act in 2006 to re-organize the principle State agency
responsible for emergency management (GOHSEP) and have that agency
report directly to the Governor. Each Parish is required to have an
equivalent office and it is a primary function of GOHSEP to support the
activities of the Parish emergency management office. As discussed
below, 80 percent of HSGP dollars are distributed to the Parishes to
support activities of those emergency management agencies and local law
enforcement. Without these resources it will be very difficult for
local governmental entities to continue the planning, preparedness and
response activities necessary to maintain capability at the local level
given their limited resources and the high risk for emergencies such as
Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike in 2005 and 2008, last year's
Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the recent flooding event along the
Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers.
Recognizing the importance of communications and interoperability,
in 2008 the Legislature amended the Homeland Security Act and created
the Office of Interoperability within GOHSEP. The stated legislative
intent was to create solutions for a secure and interoperable
communications system accessible to public safety agencies and
personnel, first responders, decisionmakers, and the public, allowing
for clear and efficient exchange of voice, data, image, and video
information for emergency management purposes. Again, this effort, as
discussed below, depends heavily on the HSGP for implementation.
During Hurricane Gustav in 2008, Louisiana conducted the largest
single evacuation in U.S. history, evacuating more than 1.9 million
people from coastal Louisiana prior to landfall of the storm. At a cost
of more than $100 million of Federal and State funding, some 25,000
people were sheltered out-of-State. This experience brought home the
inherent disruptive nature of sheltering citizens in other States and
the difficulty of rapidly bringing a community back when its citizens
are gone. By Act 353 of the 2009 legislative session, the State
Legislature declared its intent that Louisiana shall become ``shelter
independent'' by the year 2014. We have targeted two goals to achieve
this independence. One, encourage parishes to clearly identify
sheltering requirements, especially for those categorized as ``critical
transportation needs'' individuals (CTNs). In this endeavor we have
encouraged parishes to create point-to-point agreements with other
parishes that are likely not going to be greatly impact by the most
common weather disaster (hurricanes/flooding). Second, the State has
identified the need to be able to provide up to 50,000 CTN shelter
spaces and is working to identify suitable State facilities for that
purpose. The State has appropriated $7.5 million to develop and upgrade
facilities to meet sheltering standards. We have requested FEMA to
allow the use of Stafford Act Hazard Mitigation funding for the
development of multi-use facilities that can be used for sheltering in
an emergency. The logic is that the use of available Hazard Mitigation
funds to provide for long-term shelter needs will be a logical and
efficient expenditure of Federal dollars and save the Federal
Government millions of dollars in future Hurricane Gustav-type events.
We anticipate that the decrease in HSGP grant dollars will impact
our ability to support in-parish or in-State evacuation and sheltering
plans. Additionally, many of our host States rely on Federal
preparedness grant dollars (SHSP, EMPG, and HM) to support planning,
preparedness, and mitigation efforts to support evacuees who may be
sheltered in their State.
Recognizing the success of the support between States provided by
the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) process, Act 1035 of
the 2010 legislative session provides for the establishment of an
Intrastate Mutual Aid Compact (IMAC) within the State of Louisiana. We
have recognized that too often States default to FEMA and other Federal
agencies to source requirements, and this is logically more expensive
to a response than sourcing locally. The IMAC process will provide an
organized and deliberate method to ensure that resources within the
State are used effectively and efficiently before requesting other
States or Federal agencies for those same resources.
interoperability
During Hurricane Katrina there were multiple disparate systems at
the local and State level that failed causing a significant failure in
communications greatly hampered the emergency response. While the State
was able to bring up the existing analog system fairly quickly, the
system was never designed for the amount of users that had to depend on
it as a lifeline to coordinate operations. As a result there was
considerable congestion and busy signals, impeding operations
throughout the immediate period following Katrina landfall. Following
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, State, and local officials came together
to focus on a single statewide system that all emergency response
officials could use. This system was the first statewide system based
on the recently released 700 MHz spectrum and replaced the State's
existing analog system with a Project 25-compliant digital system.
Using $29 million in Federal recovery dollars, the system was initially
designed to encompass the Greater New Orleans area. However, by
leveraging approximately $40 million of Federal grant funding from
multiple sources, to include HSGP funding, as well as $30 million of
State funding, the State was able to build what is now the largest
statewide radio system in the country which provides daily voice
communications to more than 60,000 users at the Federal, State, local,
and nonprofit levels. Of these users, more than 70 percent are from
local jurisdictions. The system, called the Louisiana Wireless
Information Network (LWIN), is fully maintained by the State, at a cost
of $9 million annually, and charges no fees to its users. LWIN was put
to the test during Hurricane Gustav and the use of the system greatly
facilitated the evacuation of 1.9 million people, the largest single
evacuation in U.S. history. Pivotal to the success of this evacuation
was the ability to achieve multijurisdictional and multiagency
coordination through a single shared radio system. During the 10-day
operational period of Hurricane Gustav, LWIN supported more than 1.2
million push to talk communications with less than 500 busies.
LWIN was also leveraged during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill by
serving as the backbone to link six other systems along the gulf coast
which allowed the United States Coast Guard and other responders to
have seamless interoperable communications from Galveston, Texas to
Pensacola, Florida.
LWIN, when completed in September 2011, will provide 95 percent
portable on street radio coverage throughout the State through 118
individual sites. LWIN is also providing 95 percent in-building
coverage to the nine largest metropolitan areas in the State. In
calendar year 2010, there were more than 95 million push-to-talk
communications which utilized more than 114,000 hours on LWIN. Out of
the 95 million push-to-talks, users only experienced 16,446 busy
signals or ``busies''. Today, LWIN is experiencing a major capacity
expansion that should eliminate virtually all busies and allow
sufficient capacity to continue expanding and adding new users over the
next 10 years.
While the State has achieved great success in voice
interoperability, the State is now embarking on compiling data that can
be used to establish data interoperability through a common operating
picture that is accessible to Federal, State, and local users. Virtual
Louisiana is a Google Earth Enterprise platform that provides secure
access to the first-responder population throughout the State. GOHSEP
is currently in the process of geocoding all infrastructure facilities
throughout the State through the use of Hazard Mitigation Grant Program
funding. The Geospatial Project in the first 8 months of implementation
has allowed GOHSEP to map out 25 percent of the State's infrastructure
and has seen more than 20,000 facilities mapped. Each facility has been
mapped, photographed, and has associated attribute data based on the
critical infrastructure/key resource layers identified by the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Louisiana has, for the first
time, photographed the entire State using 6'' high-resolution imagery,
and the dated layers created by the Geospatial Project can be overlaid
on this imagery for high-resolution viewing. Both the imagery and the
data are available to the first-responder community through Virtual
Louisiana. Upon the completion of this project, Louisiana will have the
most extensive GIS database in the country.
individual communication and social media
As important as the interoperability activity discussed above, is
the ability to provide good planning information to the general public
before a disaster and the ability to quickly communicate at the
individual level during a disaster. GOHSEP has worked extensively to
encourage Louisiana citizens to have their own family plan. Beginning
in 2008 GOHSEP initiated the Get a Game Plan campaign which encourages
self-reliance and preparedness. A major effort of this initiative has
been the Public Service Announcements (PSA) that have been aired
throughout the State with high profiled individuals such as Governor
Bobby Jindal, LSU football coach Les Miles, the band Better Than Ezra,
and football players from the world champion New Orleans Saints
creating messages encouraging our citizens to be prepared for any type
of disaster by having a personal family plan. This year we have added
two new components to the campaign. The first is the Get a Critter Plan
which encourages our citizens to have a plan for their animals during
disasters. Donna Douglas, a Louisiana native who starred on the long-
running comedy hit ``The Beverly Hillbillies'' as Ellie Mae Clampett,
has become our ambassador for this initiative and has appeared in a PSA
to promote pet preparedness. The other new component introduced this
year is the Get a Game Plan App which is now available to download to a
cell phone through iTunes. The Get a Game Plan App contains all the
content on the Get a Game Plan Web site, to include checklists,
evacuation maps, and links to other State and private partners who
provide information to the public during disasters. The intent is to
provide information that encourages family and personal preparedness to
lessen the effects of a disaster and create resiliency. As an example
of the ``whole community'' approach to preparedness and response
promoted by FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, GOHSEP has also engaged in
public, private, and nonprofit partnerships for the Get A Game Plan
Campaign including projects with Walmart, Red Cross, and the United
Way. GOHSEP utilized all of the Walmart pharmacies in coastal
Louisiana, at no cost to the State, to distribute hurricane checklists
and information about our Web site with each prescription that was
filled at a pharmacy. As a result, more than 600,000 prescriptions
included information on how to prepare for the hurricane season and
contact information on our all encompassing Web site. The Red Cross and
the United Way continue to help fund our hurricane evacuation guides
that are made available to residents from coastal hurricane impacted
parishes.
GOHSEP has been very proactive in the area of social media and was
an early adopter of Facebook and Twitter to leverage our ability to
communicate to the citizens of Louisiana.
Louisiana has the largest amount of ``likes'' (followers) of any of
the 36 States that have official Facebook pages. We have recently
identified more than 11,015 followers. The second-highest total is for
the State of Mississippi which has 5,759, followed by Alabama with
4,371. There are only nine States that have more than 2,500 followers
with the average number of followers being 1,638.
Likewise our use of Twitter has been very successful. We have the
fifth-largest following of the 36 States that have official Twitter
accounts, at 4,196. There are only 11 States with 2,500 or more
followers and the average account for the States is 2,067. During the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill GOHSEP's Twitter account was considered one
of the most influential Twitter accounts as determined by a Klout score
of 79 out of 100.
private sector initiatives
As FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate will tell you, ordinarily the
private sector is a missing team member at the table when involved in
the planning or response to an emergency event. That lesson was brought
home to Louisiana during Hurricane Gustav. We planned on the
availability of Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) to provide food for shelters
and to distribute to those without power. Because of the size of the
event, the FEMA logistics pipeline for MREs hit a snag. Concerned about
providing affected individuals with food, the Louisiana Division of
Administration turned to the Louisiana Restaurant Association to
determine what capacity they might provide. For the next several days,
the restaurant industry activated mobile kitchens that provided more
than 500,000 hot meals to needy individuals. The surprise came after
the event when we calculated the cost. The private sector provided hot
meals for less than $6 a meal, compared to the cold meals we would have
acquired from FEMA at a cost of more than $9 a meal. Louisiana realized
it had to bring the private sector (literally) to the table.
In response, the Louisiana Business Emergency Operations Center (LA
BEOC) was established through a partnership among the Louisiana
Economic Development Agency, GOHSEP, Louisiana State University's
Stephenson Disaster Management Institute (LSU SDMI) and the National
Incident Management Systems and Advanced Technologies Institute at
University of Louisiana at Lafayette (NIMSAT). The LA BEOC is both a
physical and virtual structure which houses key representatives from
the business community and volunteer organizations, such as Volunteers
Active in Disasters, along with government counterparts from GOHSEP and
LED. The LA BEOC facility, which is interconnected to the State EOC, is
housed on the LSU South Campus in Baton Rouge and seats up to 40
business leaders, industry trade associations, and organizations across
several of the DHS-identified 18 critical infrastructure/key resource
sectors. When activated, the LA BEOC supports the State's Emergency
Operations Center and its representatives make recommendations to LED,
GOHSEP, and the Unified Command Group from the private sector
perspective. It has the ability to quickly access resources of the
private sector to support response and recovery needs during an
emergency event. It also assists in coordinating volunteer and
nonprofit needs during a disaster with donations made by private
industry. It provides political leadership important information about
the economic impact of a disaster to businesses, which information is
important to identify recovery needs. This innovative government-
industry-university collaboration provides the State numerous
advantages including efficient and economical access to needed response
and recovery resources, enhanced resilience of businesses and the
critical infrastructures that support their supply chains; rapid
recovery of the business community to facilitate the rapid recovery of
the community--all resulting on less reliance on Federal and out-of-
State resources.
The LA BEOC was activated in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil
spill and the current Mississippi River flood fight to provide economic
impact analysis and manage the many offers, vendor proposals, and
response suggestions being received from the active private sector.
Additionally, the LA BEOC assisted in the creation of technical
interfaces with Deepwater Horizon, along with the coordination of a
scientific review panel to review proposed technical solutions. The LA
BEOC has been recognized by FEMA as a model for the public private
partnership. During the Mississippi River Flood Fight the LA BEOC
WebPortal provided an exchange of information between the emergency
management community and the private sector. More than 1,200 businesses
have registered with the LA BEOC to receive situational awareness
reports and respond to resource requests. The development of the LA
BEOC concept and its continued implementation has been supported by
both SHSP and EMPG grant funds. Decreased grant funds will severely
impact Louisiana's ability to continue this innovate project.
To support the resilience of the private sector, GOHSEP and the LSU
SDMI will soon announce the Louisiana Pilot for an International Center
for Small Business Preparedness and Resiliency in order to promote a
cultural shift in the understanding and promotion of small business
preparedness. Currently, the field of preparedness research lacks the
baseline metrics and business benchmarks needed to promote the values
and business case of preparedness to small businesses. LSU SDMI will
engage researchers, agencies, trade associations, chambers of commerce,
existing service providers, and delivery networks across the Nation to
promote programs focused on small business preparedness and disasters.
This initiative will integrate identified best practices of
preparedness, and the results of economic impact studies, surveys, and
focus groups will form the content for mitigation and preparedness
practices to be used by small businesses. A high level summit was
convened in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, this year with DHS, FEMA, and other
major stakeholders, which identified four areas around which to develop
an actionable framework, as follows:
--research and a clearinghouse for coordination;
--messaging and marketing activities;
--communications and message delivery; and
--the development of a business justification for small business
preparedness.
One of the outcomes from this endeavor is the current development
by GOHSEP of a iTunes downloadable business application similar to the
individual application for Get A Game Plan that was released this
hurricane season. The development of both the individual and business
application is being funded by Homeland Security grant funding.
command college
As stated earlier, every disaster is local. Thus local emergency
managers and first responders must be well-trained professionals and
clearly understand the process and terminology of sound emergency
management practices. GOHSEP and LSU SDMI have partnered to provide a
comprehensive leadership and training certification program for
emergency management and homeland security professionals--the Louisiana
Command College. The Command College is currently focused on delivering
quality training to meet the needs of local and State-level emergency
management personnel, to include State and parish executive leadership,
and the private sector and nonprofit organizations. The training will
result in the establishment of standardized, best practice emergency
management practices, knowledgeable political leadership who would not
otherwise have an opportunity to be exposed to emergency management
concepts, and a resilient private sector which understands the need for
preparedness and its role in the response and recovery process. The
goal of the Command College is to evolve into a regional certification
institute around which the Federal, State, local, and private sector
team can coalesce.
urban search and rescue
In response to the aforementioned disasters that have affected
Louisiana and the gulf coast region, Louisiana has invested in a
comprehensive equipment cache and a robust training matrix that
currently supports the State urban search and rescue (US&R) task force.
Louisiana has built three core teams in the New Orleans area, Baton
Rouge area, and the Shreveport/Bossier area, and has six additional
State regional teams capable of making up a FEMA-type I US&R team. Each
Louisiana task force has been modeled in accordance with FEMA
guidelines and is capable of supporting the national US&R response
system. Moreover, Louisiana's central geographic location is ideal to
support the gulf coast region where a gap in coverage currently exists.
Since 2005, Louisiana has experienced four major hurricanes related
federally declared disasters and across the Gulf Coast States during
that time period there have been more than 68 declared emergency events
in which US&R capabilities could have been critical. These events
required the deployment of US&R teams from as far away as California to
assist in search and rescue activities. Given the frequency of these
presidentially declared disasters in the gulf coast region requiring
the deployment of FEMA national US&R teams, our task force in Louisiana
proves to be a highly effective resource for the citizens of our Nation
by lowering the cost of deployment and providing coverage to an area
that statistically requires US&R response all while reducing the time
of response to an incident.
Most recently, the Louisiana US&R teams deployed to Alabama based
on an EMAC request to assist in Tuscaloosa Tornado Incident. This was
far more cost-effective than a request through FEMA for a FEMA national
US&R team. The removal of grant funding to this program will cut needed
training and exercises that threatens the safety of the responders and
the welfare of the public.
homeland security grant program funding
DHS recently notified the State of Louisiana, through GOHSEP, that
Louisiana is losing homeland security program funding. The loss of
funding to Louisiana will directly impact the National Preparedness
System intended to protect this Nation, as outlined in PPD-8.
The Department sent notice that GOHSEP will receive $17.8 million
less in Federal grant funding than last fiscal year, a cut of 57
percent. The notice was part of a larger budget cut that randomly
eliminated $780 million in Homeland Security funding to the States for
fiscal year 2011. Funds from the fiscal year 2011 grants were expected
to be received in August 2011.
As stated, the cut will have significant impact on Louisiana's
local governments and drastically impact the innovative programs
discussed above. More than 80 percent of the Federal Homeland Security
grant funding that the GOHSEP receives is passed down to local
governments to build and enhance national preparedness capability.
New Orleans and Baton Rouge were also determined by DHS to be a low
risk of attack and were among 33 cities across the country to
arbitrarily lose their urban area security initiative (UASI) grant
funding. DHS will continue to fund 31 cities this year. The fiscal year
2011 UASI grant allocated 82 percent of funding to the 11 tier-one
cities, 18 percent to another 20 cities prioritized by size and risk,
and eliminated all other cities from the program. This formula
completely exposes the underbelly of this Nation. The interdependencies
of the national economy flow through Louisiana and the regions that
have been discarded as low risk of attack.
Last year, the New Orleans UASI region, comprised of Jefferson,
Orleans, Plaquemines, and St. Bernard parishes received $5.4 million in
Federal funding and the Baton Rouge UASI region, comprised of East
Baton Rouge, West Baton Rouge, Pointe Coupee, East Feliciana, West
Feliciana, Iberville, Livingston, and Ascension parishes received $2.9
million.
UASI funding is awarded to cities to address the unique planning,
organization, equipment, training, and exercise needs of high-threat,
high-density urban areas, and assists them in building an enhanced and
sustainable capacity to prevent, protect against, respond to, and
recover from acts of terrorism. GOHSEP is required to ensure that 25
percent of the total award is dedicated to law enforcement terrorism
prevention activities.
Louisiana no longer has any UASI regions or funding to provide a
continuous cycle of planning, organizing, training, equipping,
exercising, evaluating, and taking corrective action in an effort to
ensure effective coordination during incident response as defined by
the National Incident Management System (NIMS). This preparedness cycle
is one element of a broader National Preparedness System intended to
prevent, respond to, recover from, and mitigate against natural
disasters, acts of terrorism, and other manmade disasters throughout
the Nation.
GOHSEP has used the majority of the States portion of the UASI
funding to support the Louisiana Wireless Interoperability Network
within the regions and the New Orleans and Baton Rouge US&R task force
program. Both investments directly support local government and their
regions. Other investments include the hardening of security sites,
security assessment initiatives and the creation of a regional fusion
center in New Orleans. UASI funding has sustained core all-hazard
capabilities within these two geographic areas. Our approach to
emergency management and homeland security is based on an all-hazard
approach. Thus, significant cuts to these grants impact the local
jurisdiction's ability to prepare and respond to a variety of
incidents.
Two other Federal grant programs, the Buffer Zone Protection Plan
(BZPP) grant, and the Interoperable Emergency Communications Grant
Program (IECGP) were completely eliminated in Louisiana. Last year,
Louisiana received $1.4 million in BZPP funding that went directly to
local law enforcement to protect the States critical infrastructure and
$945,500 in IECGP funding to improve interoperable emergency
communications, to include communications in collective response to
natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other manmade disasters.
Louisiana received a 12.3 percent cut to the $1.1 million
Metropolitan Medical Response System Program grant and a 19.6 percent
cut to the $161,434 Citizen Corps Program grant.
Louisiana has only been awarded $6.9 million from the State
Homeland Security Program (SHSP) funding, a 50-percent cut from last
year's award. Again, the cut will have significant impact on local
government homeland security initiatives. The GOHSEP awards 80 percent
of the total award directly to local governments and just like the UASI
award is required to ensure that 25 percent of the total award is
dedicated to law enforcement terrorism prevention activities.
GOHSEP has used this funding to support SHSPs, equipment, planning,
training, exercises, and other innovative initiatives, as discussed
above. The SHSP funding allows GOHSEP to proactively support and
protect the States critical infrastructure and fund Homeland Security
stakeholders to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from
acts of terrorism and other catastrophic events.
Programs at risk of being completely or partially cut include:
--planning, training, exercise, and management personnel;
--Command College (Louisiana's training and exercise program);
--three urban search-and-rescue teams;
--Louisiana State Analytical and Fusion Exchange (Fusion Center) in
Baton Rouge;
--Louisiana's Cyber Assurance and Defense Center;
--Louisiana Wireless Interoperability Network;
--State and local interoperable communications;
--Virtual Louisiana;
--Get-A-Game Plan;
--See Something Say Something;
--LA agro-terrorism and assessment teams;
--Louisiana Business Emergency Operation Center (public/private
partnership);
--maritime special response team;
--swift water rescue team;
--hazmat and radiological response;
--terrorism rapid response teams;
--critical infrastructure assessment team;
--public health and medical services;
--Citizen Corps;
--the hardening of critical infrastructure; and
--intelligence and information-sharing initiatives.
In addition to local government, the GOHSEP has awarded Homeland
Security grant funding to numerous stakeholders in support of the
State's homeland security initiatives. Those agencies include:
--Louisiana State Police;
--Attorney General's Office;
--Department of Wildlife and Fisheries;
--Department of Agriculture;
--State Fire Marshal;
--Louisiana State University;
--University of Louisiana-Lafayette;
--Secretary of State;
--House of Representatives;
--Senate;
--Louisiana Sheriffs' Association;
--Louisiana Chiefs of Police Association;
--Louisiana National Guard;
--Division of Administration; and
--the Cyber Innovation Center.
closing comments
All of the initiatives discussed above, many of which are
considered nationwide best practices, would not have been made possible
without the funding provided through the HSGP. Reduced funding and, in
the case of UASI, BZPP and the IECGP, eliminated funding, will greatly
impede our ability to not only maintain what we have been able to
accomplish, but significantly curtail if not eliminate our ability to
continue moving forward as we strive to provide our emergency
management community with the resources necessary to ensure they are
able to respond to manmade and natural disasters as well as communicate
to our citizens as a whole as we encourage them to be self-reliant,
which ultimately allows us to focus our efforts on those within our
communities that truly need assistance.
Louisiana exercises and activates so often that our systems are
constantly tested and there is a natural continuous improvement
methodology embedded into our State emergency management practice. We
would argue that this warrants strategic investment of Federal funds
into these and other innovative programs to leverage the ``living
laboratory'' and those practices earned and learned during large scale
activations.
By tasking Louisiana as well as other critical resource risk States
with these challenges (like evolving and expanding the
interoperability, citizen preparedness, education for emergency
managers, the LA BEOC and Global Small Business Preparedness Center),
these battle-tested innovations and outcomes can be shared quickly and
broadly back out to the national community of emergency managers as
best practice. These programs not only reduce loss of life and
suffering but also engage individuals and the local private sector in
disaster preparedness, response, and recovery; which in turn reduces
Federal costs for FEMA and other responding Federal agencies, reduces
critical interruptions to local economic activities and the tax bases,
and establishes a resilient Nation. Remember, every disaster is local
and resources should be focused to increase the effectiveness of the
local emergency manager and first responder.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you very much.
Mr. Vice.
STATEMENT OF DAVID VICE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INTEGRATED
PUBLIC SAFETY COMMISSION, STATE OF INDIANA
Mr. Vice. Good afternoon, Madam Chair Landrieu, Ranking
Member Coats, and Vice Chair Cochran. It is a great honor to
appear before you today to present information about the
importance of interoperable communications and what we have
done in Indiana to address those issues.
My testimony today will provide you with a brief
description of the state of interoperable communications in
Indiana, three reasons for our success, and a short summary of
what we view to be critical issues that will directly impact
first-responder safety in the near future.
Project Hoosier SAFE-T, as it is known, is an 800-megahertz
trunked voice and data communications system which provides
both day-to-day and mission-critical interoperability for
nearly 60,000 Indiana local, State, and Federal first
responders and public safety officials. The State fully funded
the system build-out and the implementation and funds the
continued operation and maintenance costs. Participation in
Project Hoosier SAFE-T is voluntary and agencies pay no access
or monthly user fees. To date, as I said, nearly 60,000 radio
IDs from all 92 counties are programmed into the SAFE-T
database.
The story of how Indiana got to this level of
interoperability can be summarized into three concepts: one, a
visionary and inclusive planning process; two, a pragmatic
balance between technology and financial reality; and three,
timing.
The IPSC is made up of 12 members representing fire
departments, emergency management agencies, emergency medical
service providers, police departments, elected officials, and
other public safety disciplines. The input of practitioners at
all levels and disciplines, teamed with a governance board
composed of members from these groups, resulted in a plan for
an interoperable communications system that truly reflected the
needs of those people who are using it.
As it turns out, we have been a victim of our own success.
The flexibility, cost savings, and ultimate performance of the
system have attracted new agency users in unforeseen numbers.
In the year 2000, Indiana had a visionary user-driven plan for
interoperable communications in place, but frankly, progress
was slow. A lack of dedicated funding translated to an ever-
changing construction schedule.
Then during the morning hours of September 11, 2001, as we
all know, the inability to communicate was cited as a major
reason so many firefighters lost their lives that tragic day.
Interoperability became the buzzword for successful response.
As a result, two massive financial shifts occurred in
Indiana.
First, the Indiana General Assembly passed the Enrolled Act
1001 which dedicated a portion of existing Bureau of Motor
Vehicle fees to help fund the SAFE-T build-out. This guaranteed
revenue stream allowed IPSC to proceed with site construction
and implementation across the State.
Second, the Federal Government established DHS and funded
new Federal grants that addressed the lack of interoperable
communications.
We have a great working relationship with FEMA and the DHS
Federal partners, especially with OEC. At times, I will admit
that the requirements seem a little onerous, but the result of
many of the requirements is undeniable. For example, the
process of creating our Statewide Communications
Interoperability Plan (SCIP) was difficult but allowed for us
to refocus our efforts and identify the gaps that needed
attention.
We have continued our emphasis on local involvement by
holding an annual Indiana interoperable communications
conference. The Statewide Interoperable Executive Committee,
formerly known as the IPSC Policy Subcommittee, was reorganized
to include a member from each of the 10 Indiana Department of
Homeland Security districts.
As we all know, technology is developing at a rapid pace.
It is impossible to predict and thus plan for the future. One
result of changing technology and proprietary systems is that
many States are now having to address system limitations or
end-of-life issues. Because of the success of the SAFE-T
network, we are now at system capacity. The process of
migrating to a fully P25-compliant system, which will double
our system capacity, is not inexpensive.
PREPARED STATEMENT
On behalf of the staff of IPSC and Indiana's first
responders, I would like to thank you for allowing me to
address you today.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of David Vice
introduction
Good morning, Chairwoman Landrieu, Ranking Member Coats, and
distinguished members of the subcommittee. I am David Vice, and I am
the executive director of Indiana's Integrated Public Safety Commission
(IPSC).
It is a great honor to appear before you today to present
information about the importance of interoperable communications, and
what we have done in Indiana to address the issue.
While I am new to my role as executive director of IPSC, I have
worked for the agency since 2002. I feel quite fortunate to have been
involved ``from the ground up'' in the project that has made Indiana a
national best practice in the interoperable communications arena.
My testimony today will provide you with a brief description of the
state of interoperable communications in Indiana, three reasons for our
success, and a short summary of what we view to be critical issues that
will directly impact first-responder safety in the near future.
interoperable communications in indiana--``saving money, saving lives''
Project Hoosier SAFE-T, completed summer 2007, is an 800 MHz
trunked voice and data communications system which provides both day-
to-day and mission critical interoperability for nearly 60,000 Indiana
local, State, and Federal first responders and public safety officials.
SAFE-T supports both analog and digital radios, and provides greater
than 95 percent mobile and portable radio coverage statewide using 139
communications sites throughout Indiana.
The State fully funded the system build-out and implementation and
provides continued operation and maintenance costs. User agencies
purchase their mobile and portable radios and dispatch consoles along
with mobile radio modems and laptops for access to the mobile data
system. Agencies retain significant autonomy with regard to use the
system, structure/sharing of talkgroups and interoperable
communications planning at the local and regional levels.
Participation in Project Hoosier SAFE-T is voluntary and agencies
pay no access or monthly user fees.
The statewide goal--to make interoperable communications affordable
and available for every community--has exceeded all expectations. To
date, nearly 60,000 radio IDs from all 92 Indiana counties are
programmed into the SAFE-T system database. These numbers include first
responders and public safety professionals from 320 local and county
law enforcement agencies; 439 fire departments; 72 Emergency Medical
System (EMS) providers; 19 State agencies; 41 school districts; 88
hospitals; 29 universities/colleges; and four Federal agencies.
The story of how Indiana got to this level of interoperability can
be summarized into three concepts:
--a visionary and inclusive planning process;
--a pragmatic balance between technology and financial reality; and
--timing.
a visionary and inclusive planning process
Back in the late 1990s, responding to requests from Indiana State
Police officials, State legislators established a commission to address
the severe deficiency in public safety communications. Their primary
goal was to transition to a statewide, all-agency inclusive,
communication system. During the months that followed, the State-
coordinated several focus groups, held four regional meetings, and
conducted three Governor's summits to engage public safety
professionals in the discussion about the benefits of shared resources.
Hundreds and hundreds of stakeholders at all levels participated in
this process.
Based on these discussions, the State issued an RFP in 1999 and
selected a vendor--Motorola--from the eight proposals submitted. Also
that year, the Indiana General Assembly created IPSC to coordinate the
project and to coordinate other multi-agency public safety issues. The
IPSC is made up of 12 members representing fire departments, emergency
management agencies, emergency medical service providers, police
departments, elected officials, and other public safety disciplines.
In January 2000, nearly 500 public safety professionals and local
first responders attended the third Governor's summit to discuss what
was now known as Project Hoosier SAFE-T and the benefits of shared
interagency communications.
The input of practitioners at all levels and disciplines, teamed
with a governance board composed of members from these groups, resulted
in a plan for an interoperable communications system that truly
reflected the needs of those who would be using it.
balancing technology with financial reality
I'll say it up front--we Hoosiers are proud of our frugal
reputation. Some people call us cheap, we prefer to define ourselves as
pragmatic. This characteristic was definitely present as we were making
our decision about which communications technology to adopt more than a
decade ago.
Back then, we had the choice to go ``bleeding edge'' with a fully
P25-compliant system. It was tempting--everyone likes to be viewed as
progressive. The reality, however, was that communications in Indiana
consisted of a variety of technologies and that many local agencies
would be unwilling or unable to migrate to a new system. We also could
have chosen to implement a fully compliant P25 system on a more limited
scale, say for State agencies only. Our goal, however, was to cast as
wide of a net as possible.
This goal led us to choose a phase II P25-compliant 800 Mhz
platform. Our strategic direction was to facilitate and encourage as
many public safety entities as possible to participate in the statewide
800 MHz SAFE-T system, while allowing for the greatest flexibility for
users of other technologies. IPSC established interoperable
communication talkgroups, enabled for the least-capable radio
affiliating with SAFE-T. Support for non-SAFE-T users was supported
through the use of radio caches, gateways, and ``patching''
technologies.
As it turns out, we have been a victim of our own success. The
flexibility, cost savings, and ultimate performance of the system has
attracted new agency users in unforeseen numbers, a success story for
sure, but one that has consequences that I'll briefly address later in
my testimony.
timing is everything
Looking back again, as the new millennium begin in the year 2000,
Indiana had visionary, user-driven plan for interoperable
communications in place. The State legislature had created IPSC, a 12-
member, bipartisan group representing the diverse range of public
safety stakeholders across the State. This governance group, which met
quarterly, using a creative combination of Federal grants and
partnerships with State and local agencies, construction on a handful
of sites for Project Hoosier SAFE-T had begun.
But frankly, progress was slow. A lack of dedicated funding
translated to an ever-changing construction schedule. The financial
incentive of a State-funded system with no user or access fees was
great, but local agencies still had trouble coming up with the dollars
needed to replace legacy VHF and UHF radios. And despite the locally
driven plan, first responders out in the field had doubts that the
statewide system would ever be completed, dampening enthusiasm for
joining the system.
Even though the strong foundation was set, it appeared that
progress would be slower than anyone wanted or anticipated.
And then, during the morning hours of September 11, 2001,
terrorists attacked the United States. As we all know, the inability to
communicate was cited as a major reason so many firefighters lost their
lives that tragic day.
Suddenly, interoperability became the buzzword for successful
response. As a result, two massive financial shifts occurred here in
Indiana. First, the Indiana General Assembly passed House Enrolled Act
1001, which dedicated a portion of existing BMV fees to help fund the
SAFE-T buildout. This guaranteed revenue stream (approximately $13
million annually) allowed IPSC to proceed with site construction and
implementation across the State.
Second, the Federal Government established the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) and funded new Federal grants that address the
lack of interoperable communications. Many local agencies benefited
greatly from these grants, allowing them to upgrade user communications
equipment. Ensuing disasters such as Hurricane Katrina kept the
critical need for interoperable communications at the top of the
funding priority list.
While one can never say that these tragedies were ``good'' for
Indiana, they certainly had a profound influence on the state of public
safety as we know it today.
why it keeps working
IPSC's locally driven foundation, pragmatic approach to
interoperable technology, and the timing of the 9-11 terrorist attacks
are the three largest reasons for Indiana's interoperable
communications success, but several factors continue to influence the
success of the system.
I'm proud to stand before you and say that it has been a truly
bipartisan effort in Indiana. Both parties recognized the urgency of
the issue, and both parties were a part of the solution. To my
knowledge, no one at the local, State, or national level has ever made
claim to ``owning'' the issue or taken credit for the success of our
efforts.
We have a great working relationship with our FEMA and DHS Federal
partners, especially with the Office of Emergency Communication. At
times, I'll admit that the requirements seem a little onerous,
especially since we are such a small agency, but the result of many of
the requirements are undeniable. For example, the process of creating
our Statewide Communications Interoperability Plan (SCIP) was
difficult, but it allowed us to refocus our efforts and identify the
gaps that need attention.
As Director Fugate mentioned in his testimony earlier, DHS' unified
approach to emergency planning and response has yielded measurable
results. IPSC was a major player in the NLE 2011 exercise, both as a
communications restoration agency, but also in our role as the lead
ESF-2 agency. We're still evaluating our response and assessing
internal after action reports, but the exercise was invaluable.
We have continued our emphasis on local involvement. In addition to
user groups, we hold an annual Indiana Interoperable Communications
Conference, during which several hundred first responders and public
safety professionals gather to discuss current and future interoperable
communications issues. Additionally, we recently strengthened our
governance structure to facilitate the flow of information between
local and State agencies. The Statewide Interoperable Executive
Committee (SIEC)--formerly the IPSC Policy Subcommittee--was
reorganized to include a member from each of the 10 Indiana Department
of Homeland Security districts. This change has greatly improved the
bi-directional flow of planning, best practices, and policy
recommendations between local, regional, and State communications
communities.
Based on the reputation and success of the voice system, Indiana is
currently moving into next-generation public safety communications:
--integrated public safety data sharing by deploying a statewide
multi-agency;
--multijurisdiction police, fire, and EMS computer-aided dispatch
(CAD); and
--records management system (RMS).
Implementation of the project is similar to that of the voice
system--the State will provide the infrastructure and central server
systems; user agencies will own, operate, and manage the daily use of
CAD/RMS applications. Deployment and testing is currently occurring in
the Indiana State Police dispatch centers across the State. The system
will be made available to local agencies in 2012.
issues for the future
I mentioned earlier that I would briefly address some of the
looming issues that we face as a State--and I believe as a Nation.
First, as we all know, technology is developing at a rapid pace.
Bleeding edge becomes obsolete at the blink of an eye. It's impossible
for ``normal'' civil servants--even the technologically savvy ones--to
predict and thus plan for the future. Further complicating the issue is
the fact that vendors have been guilty in the past of extreme
proprietary tactics. This has improved somewhat in recent years with
the implementation of new standards, but I believe even greater
emphasis must be placed on changing the old way of doing business. It
is our responsibility as civil servants and as elected officials to
bring about these changes.
One result of changing technology and proprietary systems is that
many States are now having to address system limitation or end of life
issues. Because of the success of the SAFE-T network, we are now at
system capacity. We have had to put a hold on adding additional
agencies to the system id database until we can add capacity. The
process of migrating to a fully P25-compliant system--which will double
system capacity--is not inexpensive. Fortunately, many of our public
officials and budgetary executives in Indiana understand that this is
an infrastructure issue--much as roads and bridges are--but this
understanding cannot overcome the fact that these are lean economic
times. Where will the money come from?
And then, of course, there's the social media conundrum. Weighing
the risks and benefits, getting past legal and security issues, and
then figuring out how to talk about the issue in a room filled with
techno geeks on one side and old-school responders on the other . . .
Let's just say it is proving to be a stickier issue than plain
language.
conclusion
On behalf of the staff of IPSC and Indiana's first responders, I'd
like to thank you for allowing me to address you today. I'd also like
to thank you for your past support and commitment toward improving
interoperable communications. I look forward to working with you in the
future to ensure that we make the most efficient use of all available
resources in our shared goal of ``Saving Money and Saving Lives''.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you very much.
Mr. Hicks.
STATEMENT OF EDDIE HICKS, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF
EMERGENCY MANAGERS-USA, PRESIDENT AND
DIRECTOR OF MORGAN COUNTY, ALABAMA
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
Mr. Hicks. Madam Chair Landrieu, Ranking Member Coats,
Senator Cochran, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to
provide testimony.
I am Eddie Hicks, the emergency management director for
Morgan County in Alabama. I have been a local emergency
management director for 31 years. I also serve as president of
the U.S. Council of the International Association of Emergency
Managers, our Nation's largest association of emergency
management professionals.
We deeply appreciate the support that this subcommittee has
provided to the emergency management community, particularly
your support for the Emergency Management Performance Grant
(EMPG) program, the Emergency Management Institute, and also in
strengthening FEMA.
Morgan County, which is in north central Alabama, has a
population of 160,000. We have a concentration of industries,
chemical plants, steel production facilities, an appliance
manufacturer, and even a maker of rockets. Part of my county is
within the 10-mile emergency planning zone of Browns Ferry
nuclear plant. We have a history of being proactive in
preparing with our industrial neighbors that stretches back to
the early 1980s.
Morgan County faces hazards including flooding, ice storms,
tornadoes, hazardous material incidents, and wildfires.
We utilize a comprehensive planning process, incorporating
nearly 50 agencies, disciplines, and interest groups across our
community. We are also involved in a radiological emergency
preparedness program with the Browns Ferry nuclear plant, and
we conduct annual drills with them.
In April, Alabama experienced more than 103 tornadoes,
killing 241 of our citizens and destroying or damaging more
than 13,000 buildings.
On April 27, my county, Morgan County, was under three
separate tornado watches, 20 separate tornado warnings,
experienced three tornado touchdowns. One was an EF4. Another
was an EF5.
I would like to highlight two good practices that are
Federal partners utilized during this response.
In Alabama, FEMA has appointed liaisons to each of the
counties affected to enhance the flow of communications and
resolve issues. This practice should be continued.
The Army Corps of Engineers initiated Operation Clean
Sweep, a program to remove debris from private property that is
impacting public safety and health.
One area with the potential for improvement is the
timeliness of the availability of post-disaster hazard
mitigation grant program funding. Local communities within
Alabama have requested that the State and FEMA consider making
a significant portion of the anticipated mitigation funding
available more quickly instead of the usual 8 months to 1 year.
This would allow people to take advantage of protective
measures as they are rebuilding.
The Emergency Management Assistance Compact, an agreement
between States to provide mutual aid, is not run by FEMA, but
there are opportunities to improve the timeliness of FEMA
reimbursement associated with it. Slow reimbursements could
eventually result in reluctance to lend critical resources
under this program.
We appreciate that the subcommittee recognizes that EMPG
funding is fundamentally different than the post-9/11 Homeland
Security grants. EMPG funding has a history of more than 50
years and has a 50 percent cost share to demonstrate the
commitment of State and local governments and requires
performance measures. In Alabama, without EMPG support, there
would not be full-time emergency managers in every county.
In Morgan County, we conduct an annual full-scale exercise
which is designed by EMPG-funded local emergency management
staff. Last year's exercise involved working with the Alabama
mortuary team in identifying the simulated victims of a
simulated tornado. Fortunately, our tornado events of April 27
did not produce fatalities in Morgan County, but the experience
gained in the simulation by that team was regretfully utilized
in DeKalb County in Alabama.
Another program we are enthusiastic supporters of is the
Metropolitan Medical Response System (MMRS). The funding from
this program has provided training, exercise, and equipment for
responders and hospitals which are invaluable in our tornado
outbreaks.
Communications before, during, and after a crisis are
critical. During the alert and warning phases and after our
tornadoes, we did have communication challenges, but they were
overcome by a combination of resources and ingenuity.
PREPARED STATEMENT
In closing, I would like to say that there is a more nimble
FEMA on the ground in Alabama.
Thank you.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Eddie Hicks
Chairman Landrieu, Ranking Member Coats, and distinguished members
of the subcommittee, I would like to thank you for allowing me the
opportunity to provide testimony on this critically important topic.
I am Eddie Hicks, the director of emergency management for Morgan
County, Alabama. I serve as the president of the U.S. Council of the
International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM-USA) and while I
am providing this statement on their behalf, I also want to describe
some of the experiences that my county has had in the recent tornadoes,
as well as the experiences of other Alabama counties. I would like to
begin by talking a little bit about IAEM followed by some background
information about Morgan County. After that, I'd like to move into
comments on how the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is
responding, and how the programs this subcommittee helps to fund are
operating in actual disasters and emergencies. I have been a local
government emergency manager for 31 years. I also served three terms as
president of the Alabama Association of Emergency Managers.
u.s. council of the international association of emergency managers
IAEM-USA is our Nation's largest association of emergency
management professionals, with 5,000 members including emergency
managers at the State and local government levels, tribal nations, the
military, colleges and universities, private business, and the
nonprofit sector. Most of our members are U.S. city and county
emergency managers who perform the crucial function of coordinating and
integrating the efforts at the local level to prepare for, mitigate the
effects of, respond to, and recover from all types of disasters
including terrorist attacks. We deeply appreciate the support this
subcommittee has provided to the emergency management community over
the past few years, particularly your strong support for the Emergency
Management Performance Grant Program (EMPG), the Emergency Management
Institute (EMI), and for strengthening FEMA.
morgan county, alabama
My jurisdiction is Morgan County which has a population of 160,000.
We have a major concentration of industries that includes chemical
plants, steel production facilities, an appliance manufacturer and even
a rocket manufacturer. Additionally a portion of the county is in the
10-mile emergency planning zone (EPZ) for the Browns Ferry Nuclear
Plant, one of the largest nuclear power plants in the Nation. The
Tennessee River forms the northern border of the county and is a major
river transportation corridor. We are served by two railroads and an
interstate highway. Morgan County has a history of being pro-active in
industrial emergency preparedness as there was an industrial planning
group active years before local emergency planning committees (LEPCs)
were mandated by the Congress in title III of the Superfund Amendment
and Reauthorization Act (SARA) of 1986.
Morgan County faces a number of different hazards including
flooding, ice storms, tornadoes, hazardous materials transportation
incidents, and wildfires. While our industrial facilities are good
corporate neighbors, we are subject to the vulnerabilities that come
along with the assets they provide to our community.
Many things have changed in emergency management from my first
involvement with it just more than three decades ago. One example of
this is our emergency operations plan. When I was hired in 1979 as the
civil defense director of my county, my first assignment was to update
the emergency operations plan (EOP). While that plan was a good plan
there is little comparison to the comprehensive plans that are standard
in today's modern emergency management offices. In Morgan County we
augment our all-hazard EOP with special annexes that address specific
issues or concerns, examples are:
--mass casualty plans;
--emergency commodity distribution plans; and
--mass medicine distribution plans.
One planning effort that I am especially proud of is our suite of
continuity of operations plans. These plans outline the procedures to
re-establish the critical functions of government after a disaster
would destroy facilities. We have developed these plans for all
essential county and municipal offices including all 21 of our
volunteer fire departments.
I'd also like to take a moment and describe the comprehensive
process and involvement of stakeholders that happens when we make or
update our plans. When our current plan was created, we assembled a
diverse array of stakeholders including, among others, the Morgan
County Sheriff's Department, Police Chiefs from Decatur, Hartsell,
Priceville, Sommerville, Trinity, and Faulkville; the Decatur and
Hartsell Fire and Rescue departments; the 21 volunteer fire departments
within our county; our municipal utilities and a Rural Electric Co-op
(REC); various public works departments; the three school systems
within our county; and, representatives of the local industrial base.
These partners were not only involved in the creation of our EOP, but
they are also helping us to review our plan and planning process
regarding our response to the recent tornadoes. In addition, we also
engage in a Radiological Emergency Preparedness Program (REPP) in
conjunction with the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Browns Ferry
Nuclear Plant. We engage in exercises annually with this facility. The
exercises are ``graded'' by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on
an every other year basis. To further our training and expertise we
regularly exchange staff during emergency drills with the Farley
Nuclear Plant in Houston County in South Alabama.
Our Alabama tornadoes--and those in other States--have made
national news and are rewriting the record books. During April 2011,
Alabama experienced more than 103 tornado touchdowns including tornados
with tracks of 132 miles, 122+ miles, 122 miles, 98 miles, 80 miles,
and 72 miles. According to the American Red Cross, an estimated 7,300
homes were destroyed and an additional 5,800 received major damage. The
death toll for the April 27 tornadoes in Alabama stands at 241. Total
debris from all the April storms in Alabama has been estimated at
8,441,970 cubic yards. According to FEMA, more than 4 million cubic
yards of debris has been removed as of June 3, 2011. Alabama has a
total of 67 counties--and 43 of them have received major disaster
declarations. On April 27, Morgan County was under three separate
tornado watches, 20 separate tornado warnings, and experienced three
tornado touchdowns (one of these was an EF5, and one was an EF4).
federal emergency management agency response to the alabama tornadoes
Next, I would like to address the issue of FEMA response during the
Alabama tornadoes. To do this I asked several of my colleagues in
Alabama counties a series of questions.
What has been going well, and what is going better compared to past
disasters?
Where is there room for improvement in our interactions with FEMA?
What is going well and what is going better compared to past
disasters?
FEMA has responded in a much more efficient way than in past
disasters. One thing, in particular, that most of the counties in our
area agreed on was how beneficial it was when the counties affected by
the tornadoes were assigned a FEMA liaison. This greatly enhanced the
flow of information and coordination, especially during the initial
response phase. During a discussion with one of the FEMA county
liaisons, he said, `` . . . the mind set of FEMA has changed over the
past few years from preparing to respond 3 days after the disaster to
preparing for immediate response in the affected State or 5 days prior
to landfall for a hurricane.''
I was involved in the response during Hurricane Ivan and Hurricane
Katrina and the difference between then and now is night and day.
Anyone working in response activities in Alabama will quickly realize
that there is a true partnership between local, State, and Federal
organizations. The much needed resources are being efficiently
delivered on time and where they are most needed.
In Huntsville, Madison County, 16,000 residents were registered by
FEMA. The disaster recovery centers (DRC) were expanded to include not
only FEMA and the Small Business Administration (SBA) but also the
Social Security Administration (SSA), the Veteran's Administration
(VA), the local builder's association, local real-estate association,
the Better Business Bureau (BBB), crisis counseling, faith-based and
Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD) representatives. The
FEMA folks were actively engaged in providing one-stop service for the
affected families.
FEMA and the Army Corp of Engineers (CoE) have begun to initiate a
new program called ``Operation Clean Sweep''. This program will enable
property owners in the worst impacted areas to apply for assistance to
remove debris from their private property when it impacts public
safety. They must submit a right of entry form to CoE in order to
receive this assistance.
Where is there room for improvement in our interactions with FEMA?
The Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) provides post disaster
assistance. The availability of these funds normally takes from 8
months to 1 year after the disaster happens. At the request of local
communities, both Alabama and FEMA are trying to coordinate the
immediate availability of a significant portion of the anticipated
funding. Our recovery from this tornado will be the largest re-building
effort Alabama has ever faced. People want to start rebuilding now and
may not take protective measures--like in home or community safe
rooms--if mitigation funds are not readily available for another year.
If this first time ``early'' funding becomes a reality our citizens can
start planning and building back for a safer community now instead of
next year. Disaster survivors across our Nation could benefit if this
practice were adopted for future disasters.
While the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) is not a
FEMA-run program, there are FEMA reimbursement issues associated with
it. EMAC is the agreement between all 50 States approved by the
Congress for mutual aid--and it works well to get the right resources
to the right place in time to conduct rescue and response in the
impacted area. However, some States have had problems with the
reimbursement process. Alabama's counties and cities were able to
provide resources to other Gulf States through EMAC within 48 hours and
some counties were still not reimbursed after 30 months or longer.
The Madison Fire Heavy Rescue Unit and a team of Madison County
sheriff's deputies were deployed during the Hurricane Gustav response
in September 2008. While the response was immediate and the mission
only lasted a couple of weeks, it took until January 2010 to get
reimbursed. A number of Alabama counties had the same experience.
It is our fear that slow reimbursement will eventually result in
reluctance to lend critical resources under EMAC due to the adverse
economic impact on local budgets during these difficult economic times.
the impact of programs funded by this subcommittee
Earlier in my remarks, I extended a thank you to the subcommittee
for its support of EMPG. Emergency managers appreciate that this
subcommittee recognizes that EMPG funding is fundamentally different
than the Homeland Security grants which came into existence only 10
short years ago. EMPG funding has a history of more than five decades,
and has a 50-percent cost share to demonstrate the commitment of State
and local governments to being prepared for all hazards. In fact, EMPG
funding has been called the backbone of the emergency management
system. I would like to tell you about some of the specific things that
helped us funded by EMPG or coordinated by emergency managers partially
funded by EMPG.
Emergency management programs at the local level in Alabama have
been able to build partnerships between local governments, volunteers,
nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector. Some of the
specific examples that illustrate this are:
--Partnerships involving volunteer reception centers in our Alabama
counties. These centers provided for a place to receive
volunteers and to match volunteer resources with the unmet
needs in the community. This matching has allowed our
communities to increase their speed of recovery. In addition,
these centers have helped us to control one of the potential
``disasters after the disaster'' by making sure volunteer
resources are applied to areas in need with some logic and
rigor.
--For the last few years the State of Alabama has passed through 65
percent of available EMPG funding to local government emergency
management agencies. The creation of strong local programs and
fostering mutual aid agreements statewide enabled counties to
quickly assess the extent of and begin the response to a truly
catastrophic disaster before the wind stopped blowing. Counties
were helping each other during the initial response and are
still providing mutual aid as we speak.
--Morgan County conducts an annual full-scale exercise typically
designed by EMPG funded staff. Last year's exercise involved
working with the Alabama State Mortuary Team in identifying the
simulated victims of a simulated tornado. Fortunately our
tornado event on April 27, 2011, did not produce fatalities--
but the experience gained in the simulation by that team was
regretfully utilized in DeKalb County.
--Some counties used community emergency response teams (CERT) to
distribute ice, water, food, and tarps in the affected areas.
Others had their CERT teams active in the immediate response.
Billy Green, assistant director for Tuscaloosa EMA, writes:
``I guess my biggest highlight was on Saturday, April 23, 2011,
when I graduated my first Hispanic CERT Team. They were all
members of the Knights of Columbus from Holy Spirit
Catholic Church . . . Who would have ever known that on
Wednesday they would be putting all their skills to use? .
. . Several of them lived in the Alberta city area that
was affected . . . They came together and first began
search and rescue . . . I was actually unaware of them
getting out until we took the tour with the Governor and we
passed a truck. As we passed, I looked up and there was a
truck load of Hispanic guys wearing CERT vests and helmets
. . . Those were my guys. I actually got a call from
Indiana about their use of USAR markings . . . They would
later assist the Tuscaloosa Police Department with
translators. They would later go on to staff a shelter at
Holy Spirit Catholic Church . . . I'm really proud of them
. . . I also had several individuals who graduated from my
Campus CERT class that helped out in the areas where they
lived . . . They however acted individually and not as a
group . . . But they used the training to take care of
themselves which allowed them to help their neighbor. One
of them has gone on and initially volunteered at our
Volunteer Reception Center and is now working for the city
of Tuscaloosa as part of the disaster response . . . ''.
The Metropolitan Medical Response System (MMRS) has been a
cornerstone of our medical and responder team building since 2002. We
have been able to develop plans and purchase medical response
capability across 16 counties in north Alabama with MMRS funding
coordinated by my colleague John ``Rusty'' Russell, the emergency
management director of Madison County (Huntsville) Alabama. We provided
training and exercises that have added cohesion to the way traditional
responders and medical professionals work together during emergencies.
In November 2007 a Huntsville City School bus with a driver and 41
students, plunged 75 feet from an interstate overpass. The bus landed
vertically and toppled over killing three students and injuring several
others. The response was immediate and working within the MMRS plan, 40
students were transported to our two major hospitals within 40 minutes.
Plans were activated and surely helped save many lives as trauma
victims were quickly triaged and cared for. Our MMRS group had provided
an exercise that was called ``eerily similar'' in the weeks preceding
the fatal bus crash. That training and exercises in which responders
and hospital staff had participated enabled them to coordinate and
communicate and provide efficient patient tracking.
After the April 27 tornadoes, the emergency medical equipment and
supplies provided by MMRS were deployed and used in the impacted areas
of even the most rural North Alabama counties. The North Alabama
Medical Reserve Corp, serving 16 counties, was deployed and staffed 211
medical hotlines and temporary clinics in the impacted areas to
administer tetanus vaccine and treatment of minor injuries. The North
Alabama Medical Reserve Corp was developed under MMRS in 2006. The
State mortuary teams--partially funded by MMRS--were deployed in north
east Alabama. Twenty-six deceased victims were processed in DeKalb
County during the initial response to the tornadoes.
some best practices
Since 1971, north Alabama has been drawn together through the North
Alabama Mutual Aid Association which includes 16 counties. The
association consists of local EMAs and the extended community of
response and public safety organizations such as the Alabama Department
of Environmental Resources, Department of Public Health, National
Weather Service (NWS), local, State, and congressional elected
officials' staff members. Every county and city government has signed
the mutual aid agreement. Coordination and response from county to
county has become almost automatic and is encouraged by the State. The
majority of emergency incidents are coordinated locally without help
from the State or Federal agencies. It is the practice of our
association that local resources should be used first.
communications
Communications before, during, and after a crisis are crucial and
there are various different types of communication.
Predisaster Communications.--Communications before a disaster
consist of continuing public education and training programs, public
appearances before almost any group that will give us time to share the
message of preparedness, storm spotter training, the media, and working
with our frontline emergency responders. In the last three instances in
particular we are concentrating on building relationships so that we
know each other well in advance of a disaster. We have a particularly
close bond with our colleagues at NWS. In my county we test our outdoor
warning sirens once a month year-round to determine the status of the
system and to remind the public of what sound the devices make when
activated. An additional purpose of this testing is to remind people to
seek out information as soon as the outdoor warning sirens activate so
they can take appropriate action to save their lives and the lives of
their loved ones from a disaster or emergency.
During the Disaster.--Communications during the disaster are
typically broken down into three areas:
--emergency alert and warning;
--communications among emergency responders; and
--emergency information to the public.
For alert and warning we capitalize on relationships with local
media and activate our outdoor warning devices to indicate that the
public should seek information on how to protect themselves.
Communication among responders involves the use of two-way public
safety radio systems and the issues of interoperability inherent in
those systems. In my county and other areas of Alabama we have multiple
ways of approaching interoperability including ``black box'' solutions
and public private partnerships.
In Morgan County we have a multi-use radio system with the major
industrial facilities to provide warning and coordination during
emergencies. For public emergency information, we rely mainly on our
traditional news media outlets. The State of Alabama is actively
engaged in utilizing social media to get emergency messages out to its
citizens. It is an emerging capability for many of the counties but
lack of personnel in most counties has inhibited its use to the
fullest.
After a Disaster.--Communications after a disaster can pose
numerous problems. In an attempt to provide adequate redundancy, we
have multiple ways to communicate with our neighboring counties and the
State of Alabama. These include ``plain old telephone system'' (POTS),
cellular telephones, 800 MHz statewide two-way public safety radio
systems, and the Internet. As communications systems are restored and
conditions return closer to normal, communications once again assumes a
``pre-disaster'' footing.
Outcomes.--I had conversations with several of the emergency
managers from the most impacted Alabama counties regarding their
communications issues after the April tornadoes. Almost every one of
them said they had challenges but were able to solve most of the
issues. Alabama has eight mobile communication units and all eight were
activated and used to restore communication gaps. Many of the
communication issues involved areas of the State that were underserved
by communications prior to the storm. A combination of augmenting
existing communication towers and networks and sometimes commercial
cell phone providers providing temporary service to the area solved
many of the communication issues. While many areas had less than
perfect communication, the ability to utilize alternate towers and or
frequency in many cases provided basic communication capabilities. In
many cases where power to communication systems was disrupted the
systems continued to work due to battery backups and the ability to
provide generator power to the repeaters. Many of the counties in
Alabama utilize a commercial 800 MHz radio system. This system,
Southern Link, was able to provide dependable service throughout the
whole State. When counties needed additional capabilities they were
provided with additional radios.
emergency management institute
EMI and its predecessor--the Civil Defense Staff College at Battle
Creek, Michigan (1954-1980)--have been essential in the development of
emergency managers and the overall professionalism within our field.
When I began my emergency management career, I attended what was then
called ``The Phase Courses'', followed by a ``Capstone Course'' at EMI.
Over the years, this changed, and my colleagues and I at the local
level--as well as IAEM-USA are thrilled with the development of the new
Foundational Academy at EMI. Once again, EMI will be able to offer the
basics of becoming an emergency management professional--from a
practical perspective--to those who will comprise our next generation.
We urge the subcommittee to continue its support of EMI. We gratefully
note that the Senate Appropriations Committee Report on the fiscal year
2011 Appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security (S. Report
111-222) included $11 million for EMI. If it had been enacted, this
modest increase would have allowed for a more aggressive timeline to
revise, update and modernize their portfolio of offerings.
closing
In closing, we want to make sure and communicate that there is a
new and more nimble FEMA on the ground in Alabama. Our local Alabama
emergency managers especially appreciate having FEMA liaisons to
provide information and solve problems quickly. We are hopeful that the
HMGP program will be made available to our citizens more quickly than
the typical 1-year timeframe so that opportunities for safer rebuilding
can happen now so they are not lost in the future. We are especially
grateful for the support of this subcommittee for EMPG and for EMI.
These are critical elements in the maintenance and development of our
local emergency management capability. Thank you for the opportunity to
provide this information in this hearing. I would be happy to answer
any questions you may have at this time.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you very much.
And Mr. Lane.
STATEMENT OF RON LANE, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF EMERGENCY
SERVICES, SAN DIEGO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
Mr. Lane. Thank you, Madam Chair Landrieu, Ranking Member
Coats, and Senator Cochran, for inviting me here today to
provide you with a large local community's perspective on the
current status of emergency management in our country. My
testimony today is framed in the context of the two major
firestorms that have devastated the San Diego community over
the past 8 years and the continued vigilance and preparedness
needed knowing that there could be another firestorm the next
time the Santa Ana winds blow.
San Diego County is a community of more than 3.1 million
residents. The county is roughly equivalent to the land size of
the State of Connecticut. We have several large military bases,
a nuclear power plant, the world's busiest international land
border crossing, and several stadiums and amusement parks. All
of these attributes, which makes San Diego a great place to
live, also factor into the challenges to ensure San Diego is
safe and prepared for both natural and manmade disasters.
We have all heard the axiom ``all disasters are local'',
but in reality all disasters start local and very quickly
require State and Federal assistance. Emergency management is
very much a team sport and only through tremendous coordination
at all levels of government can we effectively respond and
recover from disasters.
The frequency of major disasters in San Diego has
emphasized the need to focus on community resilience. I define
``resilience'' as the sum of three key components. First, the
sheer number of first responders and their capability to
effectively divert from their day-to-day duties to perform
disaster response duties. Second, a specific and dedicated
emergency management capability; and finally, the overall civil
preparedness of our residents.
As to the first responders, San Diego invests hundreds of
millions of dollars each year in public safety and fields more
than 5,000 law enforcement, firefighter, and Emergency Medical
System personnel. In the past, most first responders did not
have the training, experience, or equipment to most effectively
respond to major disasters or emergencies. But that has
changed, thanks to the Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP),
as we have been able to use Federal grant funds to conduct
hundreds of training programs, dozens of exercises, and to
equip our first responders with the personal protection
equipment and robust communications equipment needed for an
effective initial response to a catastrophic event. Bottom
line, the Federal investment in this area has effectively
leveraged the local investment in our public safety and has
resulted in a tremendously enhanced disaster response
capability.
In addition to helping prepare our first responders,
Federal grant funds have supported our efforts to maintain a
robust and dedicated emergency management and homeland security
capability. Largely through the Emergency Management
Preparedness Grant and Homeland Security grants, the region
maintains significant emergency management capability,
including a state-of-the-art emergency operations center, a
series of plans addressing mitigation, evacuation, recovery,
and continuity of operations, and we also operate 1 of the
Nation's 72 law enforcement fusion centers. While the very
basic and core elements of emergency management and homeland
security capabilities are funded with local funds, the majority
of the enhanced activities have been funded through Federal
investment.
The final component of community resiliency is civil
preparedness. In 2007, San Diego firestorms burned 369,000
acres, destroyed more than 1,600 homes, and resulted in 10
deaths, and forced the evacuation of more than 500,000 people.
The narrative of the 2007 wildfires is replete with stories of
neighbors helping neighbors during the evacuation, of
businesses voluntarily providing cots, food, and water to
shelters, of animal rescue workers saving horses and livestock,
and the list goes on and on. One of the key observations from
the 2007 wildfires is that a disaster response is not just a
government response, but rather a community response. We
wholeheartedly support Administrator Fugate's ``whole
community'' initiative as the resiliency of a community is
truly tied to the civil preparedness and spirit of the
community as a whole.
As the HSGP evolves to reflect the many changes to our
Nation's preparedness levels and budget realities, from a local
perspective we ask that you consider two key concepts.
First, the grant program's primary effort should be to
ensure that we are able to sustain the tremendous capability
that we have achieved over the past 8 years of grant funding.
Sustainment is a priority.
Second, while the level of grant funding is important,
flexibility in how we use grant funds is equally important.
Increased flexibility allows local emergency managers to
maximize the use of funds to achieve the greatest local level
of preparedness. If grant funding is to decrease over time, a
corresponding increase in flexibility in how grant funds are
spent would help mitigate some of the impact.
In sum, Federal investment has been a force multiplier.
PREPARED STATEMENT
I appreciate the opportunities like this one to share and
exchange ideas. Thank you for your interest and support in
local disaster preparedness activity and providing the county
of San Diego the opportunity to participate in today's hearing.
I am happy to answer any questions.
[The statement follows:]
Prepared Statement of Ron Lane
introduction
Thank you Chairman Landrieu, Ranking Member Senator Coats, and
distinguished members of the subcommittee, for inviting me here today
to provide you with a large local community's perspective of the
current status of emergency management in our country. I am Ron Lane,
director of emergency services for the county of San Diego and a
participant in the Big City Emergency Managers' Group. My testimony
today is framed in the context of the two major firestorms that have
devastated the San Diego region over the past 8 years, and the
continued vigilance and preparedness needed knowing that there could be
another firestorm the next time the Santa Ana winds blow.
San Diego County is a community of more than 3.1 million residents,
comprised of 18 cities and a large unincorporated area. The county is
large geographically with its land size roughly equivalent to the State
of Connecticut. San Diego County is landlocked with the Pacific Ocean
to the west, border with Mexico to the south and a desert to the east.
We have several large military bases, a nuclear power plant, the
world's busiest international land border crossing, and several
stadiums and amusement parks. All of these attributes which make San
Diego a great place to live also factor into our mutual effort to
ensure San Diego is safe and prepared for both natural and manmade
disasters. Preparedness in such a large and diverse community is only
achievable through a sophisticated level of coordination, communication
and efficient application of resources. We have all heard the axiom
``all disasters are local'', but in reality, all disasters start local,
but very quickly require State and Federal assistance. Emergency
management is very much a team sport, and only through tremendous
coordination at all levels of government can an effective disaster
response and recovery be achieved. In my remarks today, I will
highlight how the Federal investment in local disaster preparedness and
homeland security has been invaluable, and how this continued
partnership is positioned to ensure that our Nation continues to
achieve its preparedness goals.
local community resilience
The San Diego region is exposed to many potential natural disaster
risks including a year-round fire season and dispositions for
earthquakes or tsunamis. San Diego is also exposed to manmade or
terrorist threats the region's proximity to an International border,
numerous military facilities, and a nuclear power plant. The frequency
of major disasters in San Diego has emphasized the need to focus on
community resilience. Achieving resilience in a local community,
however, requires efforts from all levels of government as well as
businesses, local organizations, and citizens. I define resilience as
the sum of three key components:
--the number of first responders, and their capability to effectively
divert from their day-to-day duties to disaster response;
--the specific and dedicated emergency management capability; and
--the civil preparedness of our residents.
First Responders
San Diego invests hundreds of millions of local dollars each year
in public safety and fields more than 5,000 law enforcement,
firefighter, and Emergency Medical System personnel. At the time of a
disaster or act of terrorism, these first responders become our key
initial response capability. Unfortunately, in the past, most first
responders did not have the training, experience, or equipment to most
effectively respond to major emergencies. The Homeland Security Grant
Program has dramatically changed this equation. Over the past several
years, the San Diego region has used Homeland Security grant funds to
conduct hundreds of training programs on everything from anti-terrorism
to hazard materials, and from incident management to mass casualty
response. We have conducted four regional full-scale exercises and
dozens of functional exercises. Additionally, using Federal grant
funds, we have equipped our first responders with the personal
protection equipment, decontamination trailers, detection equipment,
and robust communication equipment needed for an effective initial
response to a catastrophic event. Bottom line: the Federal investment
in this area has effectively leveraged the local investment in our
public safety and has resulted in a tremendously enhanced disaster
response capability. This is an excellent example of the Federal-local
partnership and how Federal investment can be a force multiplier to
dramatically increase local capability.
Emergency Management Capability
In addition to the traditional first responders, a community needs
to maintain a robust and dedicated emergency management and homeland
security capability. Largely through the Emergency Management
Preparedness Grant (EMPG) and Homeland Security grants, the region
maintains significant emergency management capability, including; a
state-of-the-art Emergency Operations Center; a series of plans
addressing mitigation, evacuation, recovery, and continuity of
operations issues; and caches of critical shelter supplies. The region
tests our plans by conducting regular exercises, training, and
coordination activities. The region has also implemented sophisticated
mass notification systems and an emergency management information
system. The region's 24-hour Staff Duty Officer Program is another
critical function that is largely funded through EMPG. In San Diego, we
have 1 of the Nation's 72 law enforcement fusion centers, and this
center was developed and is maintained with joint local, State, and
Federal staff and funding. The fusion center includes the Joint
Terrorism Task Force and several intelligence analysts, and is the
focal point of our region's local prevention activities. The fusion
center serves as a conduit of two-way information and analysis between
the street level personnel and all levels of the national intelligence
network. While the very basic and core elements of emergency management
and homeland security capabilities in our community are funded with
local funds, the majority of the enhanced activities have been funded
through Federal investments. Again, a relatively small Federal
investment has provided significant and meaningful increase in our
community's preparedness in the San Diego region.
Civil Preparedness
The 2007 San Diego firestorm burned 369,000 acres, destroyed more
than 1,600 homes, resulted in 10 deaths, and forced the evacuation of
more than 500,000 people. The narrative of the 2007 wildfires is
replete with stories of neighbors helping neighbors during the
evacuation; of businesses voluntarily providing cots, food, and water
to shelters; of animal rescue workers saving horses and livestock; of
college students volunteering at the Qualcomm Stadium mega-shelter; and
the list goes on and on. One of the key observations from the 2007
wildfires is that a disaster response is not just a government
response, but rather, a community response. We wholeheartedly support
Administrator Fugate's ``whole community'' initiative, as the
resiliency of a community is truly tied to the civil preparedness and
spirit of the community as a whole. While help and leadership from
citizens, businesses, and organizations will seemingly spontaneously
emerge where needed in disasters, there is much that can be done pre-
disaster to establish conditions for these emergent groups to be as
successful as possible. Civil preparedness, in this context, not only
means that individual citizens and families have taken basic disaster
preparedness steps. True civil preparedness also means that families
and businesses have taken pro-active steps to mitigate the most likely
danger in their area (e.g., wildfires and earthquakes). Support of
neighborhood and community programs like the community emergency
response teams (CERT), business emergency response teams, and community
Fire Safe Councils has proven instrumental in increasing community
resilience--one neighborhood, one small community at a time. It is
equally important to establish coordination and preparedness with other
key community stakeholders. In San Diego, we have a very active
business alliance with more than 300 participating businesses. The
alliance ensures that businesses are provided key training pre-disaster
and vital information during a disaster, and also serves as a resource
for government to obtain critical resources. We have equivalent
partnerships with the military and universities in the area. In the
end, the more that is done to ensure all elements of the community are
included and coordinated with, the more resilient the community will
be.
How can the Federal Government support the building of resilient
local communities?
Accepting the premise of a resilient community outlined above, the
Federal Government policy and funding is critical in assisting local
communities achieve resilience, which in turn strengthens our overall
national preparedness.
Balance Prevention, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery Efforts
While most resources and effort goes to promote prevention and
response activities, there is much that can be done in the mitigation
and recovery realms that can make a meaningful difference. In San
Diego, significant mitigation efforts were conducted after the 2003
wildfires. These included local changes to building codes (e.g., fire-
resistant roofs in high-risk areas), as well as the use of more than
$55 million in Federal funds to remove dead, dying, and diseased trees
near roads and buildings, and to conduct brush management. These types
of mitigation efforts made a monumental impact in limiting the severity
of the even more powerful firestorm to strike our region again just 4
years later.
Likewise, San Diego has implemented an ``advanced recovery''
initiative to take actions pre-disaster to accelerate recovery after a
catastrophic event. This initiative is comprised of four key components
of recovery:
--helping individual citizens recover;
--restoring community lifelines;
--rebuilding the community fabric; and
--readying a trained workforce to conduct recovery activities in our
county.
The goal is to make recovery from a disaster more efficient, rapid, and
effective through advanced planning of recovery activities long before
disaster strikes. Included in this effort are pre-qualification of
debris-removal contracts, pre-planning of local assistance centers, and
plans to understand and mitigate the interdependencies of electrical
power, water, communication, hospital, and transportation systems.
Actions taken by FEMA and through Federal grants that incent and
support community efforts in the mitigation and ``advanced'' recovery
realm would be helpful to balancing the Nation's preparedness efforts.
Foster Effective Communication Systems
In a local response, the ability to communicate is fundamental to
success. In San Diego, we focus on two separate communication systems--
internal agency communications and public communications.
The radio system used by first responders in their day-to-day
operations is the radio system that will be primarily used during a
disaster. Fortunately, the many different cities and agencies in San
Diego long ago took a regional approach to communications, and
developed a ``regional'' 800MHz communication system. By having more
than 200 different agencies, from city fire departments to university
police departments, all sharing a common system, ensuring we have a
capability to communicate effectively during disasters. However,
unquestionably, communication systems are costly to operate and
maintain, and expensive periodic upgrades are required. For example,
during our 2003 wildfires, we identified that our communication systems
towers located throughout our back country were vulnerable to the
wildfires. San Diego County invested more than $20 million to upgrade
our communication infrastructure, and build in needed redundancy. This
investment paid off, as no significant communication issues occurred,
even though 19 separate transmitter sites were damaged/destroyed by the
fire. San Diego has spent a significant portion of our Homeland
Security grants on our communication systems, and conversion to the new
P25 standard will require continued investment in upcoming years.
A second key component of our internal communications is our
emergency management information system. Through this Internet-based
system, we have connected more than 300 agencies, including all local
responding agencies as well as our State and Federal partners. This
information system provides real-time situational awareness between all
agencies, and proved invaluable during the 2007 firestorm. Despite the
tremendous capabilities we have in our primary communication systems,
the very nature of disaster response requires the need for redundant
back-up systems. We have several back-up contingency systems, ranging
from the latest technology in satellite phones, to the 1950s technology
of the ham radio operators.
The second critical communication channel is our ability to
communicate with the public during a disaster. For the wildfires, we
made more than 415,000 calls directly to our citizens homes through our
public mass notification system, AlertSanDiego. This allowed us to
conduct the Nation's largest fire evacuation expeditiously and without
major incident. This system is vitally important because it allows us
to call the home phones of those in danger to give them critical
information about evacuations, etc. We also allow residents to register
cell phones. We currently have around 300,000 cell phones registered.
Ultimately, I believe the best solution for public communication is the
cell broadcast capability being developed under the Commercial Mobile
Alert System (CMAS) program. While the current mass notification to
home landline phones is currently a viable capability, the country is
fast becoming a wireless nation. Already, our analysis shows that more
than 17 percent of the homes in San Diego do not have a landline phone.
Further, the CMAS capability will allow us to not only communicate to
the homes, but also to contact citizens in their cars while they are
evacuating, as well as to notify them on their cell phone when it is
safe to return home. San Diego did a FEMA-sponsored test of this
project last year and look forward to its roll out in the upcoming
months. For this system to be valuable to local agencies, however, it
is important that the system be designed to be managed at the ``cell
tower'' level. Early discussions indicated that alerts would be
controlled at the county level. While this may work in some States,
where counties are relatively small, it would not be feasible in States
like California. The true value in CMAS will be the ability to identify
an area that is threatened or impacted by an emergency, and to contact
the cell phones only in that immediate area.
In summary, the communities in the San Diego area have invested
tens of millions of dollars in our public safety communication systems.
Through Federal Homeland Security grants, we have enhanced and hardened
this day-to-day capability into a robust disaster response capability.
Sustaining and upgrading the systems will require significant continued
investment.
Assist in Creating a ``Culture of Preparedness''
FEMA's ``whole community'' effort is vitally important and should
be supported and enhanced. Ultimately, to truly create a culture where
our citizens make preparedness for disasters a priority, the effort
must begin with our school-aged children. The Local, State, Tribal and
Federal Preparedness Task Force provided a recommendation that
preparedness materials and education should be integrated into
educational curricula. While this recommendation requires State and
local school district support, any national recognition of the
importance of preparedness is helpful.
Implement the National Preparedness System
It is with great anticipation that we look forward to the
implementation of the National Preparedness System that is being
developed in accordance with Presidential Preparedness Directive-8.
From a local perspective, the key to success in this effort will be the
close coordination between all levels of government, as envisioned in
the recommendations of the Local, State, Tribal, and Federal
Preparedness Task Force in their report to the Congress last fall.
While there are a number of ways to implement a National Preparedness
System, I believe the starting point must be a Threat and Hazard
Identification/Risk Assessment (THIRA). Like many large communities, as
part of Hazard Mitigation Plan process, as well as our urban area
security initiative (UASI) security strategy plan, San Diego has
developed a very accurate THIRA in which measure our gaps and
capabilities. The integration of these local and State THIRAs with the
national and multi-State THIRA process currently underway by FEMA will
provide an excellent benchmark and index on which to build the National
Preparedness System. As discussed, our mutual efforts post 9/11 have
resulted in San Diego having a tremendous capability to successfully
conduct prevention and an initial response to a disaster or terrorist
attack. We have also developed significant capability that is readily
available to assist other communities who suffer a catastrophe. Through
the National Preparedness System process, it is hopeful that both
community preparedness gaps, as well as the capabilities each community
has available to assist others in need, can be identified. From a local
perspective, the end result of the National Preparedness System will
be:
--an accurate analysis of the threats and risks throughout the Nation
(at the local, State and national level);
--an assessment of where Federal investment can best be used to
mitigate these threat and risks (i.e., link THIRA to grant
investment justification process); and of critical importance;
--an in-depth analysis of the ``seams'' between local, State, and
Federal response capabilities for each region, and
identification on how capabilities and resources can be shared
and allocated to meet gaps.
Evolution of the Homeland Security Grant Programs
As discussed above, Federal EMPG and Homeland Security grants have
played a critical role in the evolution of preparedness at the local
level. Local governments have been able to build upon their local
funding investment in public safety and leverage Federal funds to
significantly improve preparedness. As we approach the 10-year
anniversary of 9/11, and we take stock of the evolution of preparedness
that has occurred over the past decade, it is entirely fitting that the
various grant programs should be reviewed. Changes in the grant
programs should be made to reflect the changes in budgets, risks,
threats, and preparedness improvements that have taken place. From a
local perspective, we are hopeful that any changes to the grant
programs consider:
Sustainment.--While many grant programs were one-time equipment
purchases, most major improvements funded by the grants require
ongoing sustainment, or the gains made would be lost. For
example, the ongoing funding of intelligence analysts is
critical to maintaining the value of the fusion center
investment. Ongoing training and exercises are necessary, as
are quadrennial updates of key plans and operations.
Flexibility.--At this point, most communities have conducted
fairly extensive risk analysis, and understand their most
critical gaps in relation to their greatest risks. If grant
funding is to decrease over time, a corresponding increase in
flexibility in how funds are spent would help mitigate some of
the impact.
conclusion
The Federal investment in support of local homeland security and
emergency management over the past several years has paid tremendous
dividends in the overall preparedness of our Nation.
I appreciate opportunities, like this one, to share and exchange
ideas. Thank you for your interest in the San Diego region, for your
support of local disaster preparedness activities, and for providing
the county of San Diego the opportunity to participate in today's
hearing. I am happy to answer any questions that you may have.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you very much.
Let me begin. All of you have testified that the Federal
grant program has been effective and useful and essential for
building the operations that you currently have. We,
unfortunately, as Mr. Riley pointed out, were in a position to
have to reduce that funding fairly substantially in the final
negotiations over the last year's budget. This subcommittee, at
least this chair, is committed to hold those cuts to a minimum
moving forward. It is going to be extremely difficult.
So I am going to ask each one of you what would you say to
people that say that this particular program needs another 20-
or 30-percent reduction. Would you say that you can absorb
that? Can you manage with it? What is it actually going to mean
on the ground to you should you lose an additional significant
portion of the Federal money coming your way? We will start
with you, Mr. Riley.
Mr. Riley. What I attempted to say in my testimony was that
funding is important to build a capability at the local level.
If it not there, that capability goes away. And those people
that are saying that we can cut this another percentage are not
looking at the long term because if that capability is not
there, when something does happen, it costs us even more than
the grant funding is to maintain that emergency management
capability. If the emergency managers are not there, if the
first responders are not there, the cost is going to be greater
and the response is going to be more robust.
We have seen time after time where you have effective
emergency managers on the ground, and what they need even from
the State is much less. But if you have someone on the ground
that does not know what they are doing, does not know the
processes, then they default to the State or to the Federal
Government to come in and provide resources.
Senator Landrieu. Mr. Vice.
Mr. Vice. Our agency is a separate State agency from the
homeland security. So we actually get our grant funds passed
through through them. As it relates to interoperable
communications, that lack of funds then affects the ability for
them to get pieces of equipment that allow interoperability. We
have received some funds to do what is called the communication
assets survey and mapping (CASM) tool, which is a community
assets management, which allowed us to determine what each
community needed to be interoperable. So as it affects the
emergency responders, it directly affects the way that they
would be able to interoperate with everyone across the State.
Senator Landrieu. Mr. Hicks.
Mr. Hicks. I can tell you that these grants are really
engaged in building capacity at the local level, and that is
really where the key part of this is. This is teamwork, as you
mentioned in your testimony. It is a team and you have got to
have resilient locals. You have to have strong States, and we
really do need a strong FEMA. In our Alabama tornadoes, 43 out
of 67 counties were declared disaster areas. But I can tell you
that the amounts of funds that will be expended there are less
than they would have been if we did not have strong local
programs, and we have some good programs in Alabama. With our
EMPG funding, we have instituted in our State performance
measures where we just do not get the dollars. We have to back
that up with production from our local counties.
Senator Landrieu. Mr. Lane.
Mr. Lane. A great portion of the Homeland Security funds
that come to us are spent on sustaining what we have already
built, that capacity. So, for example, our fusion center--in
order for it to be functioning, we have to have the
intelligence analysts that now man that. So as we look at
modifying grant programs with the fiscal realities, I think it
is essential that we carefully look at making sure we do not
take steps backwards and that we look at first making sure that
we can maintain and sustain all the capabilities that we have
had moving forward, and then given the fiscal realities, we
have got to be a lot more precise in the types of additional
and new and enhanced capabilities that we continue to buy. And
as long as we do that effectively, I think we can achieve what
we need to do to maintain preparedness.
Senator Landrieu. My last question. Then I will turn it
over to Senator Coats.
As you are all aware, there are 12 Homeland Security grant
programs which focus on terrorism and then only two that
focused on flood map modernization, pre-disaster mitigation
that are specific to natural disasters. Then finally, we have
EMPGs and the fire grants are available for expenses related to
all hazards.
The President has put forth a budget that combines some of
these programs and reduces slightly some of the funding. The
House has taken this budget and reduced it even significantly
more for 2012.
Are you all familiar with the way the President has
proposed the combination of these programs? What are your
thoughts, very quickly, how you would manage under that sort of
new framework? And this is something that will work for you? Do
you support it or not? Mr. Riley.
Mr. Riley. I have not had an opportunity to look at it, but
my kind of kneejerk reaction to it is--and it was something
that was said down the table--having more flexibility, because
I can tell you the State of Louisiana's needs and wants are
going to be different than the State of Vermont. And so having
the flexibility to take that money and address the things that
are important to us in terms of what we respond to is going to
be important.
Senator Landrieu. Mr. Vice.
Mr. Vice. I am sorry. I cannot speak to that. I would not
want to speak for our homeland security agency.
Senator Landrieu. Okay.
Mr. Hicks.
Mr. Hicks. I can tell you the greatest thing that we want
as locals, we want local impact into those grants. We do not
want it to be just passed to the State because it is under
another umbrella. MMRS is one example. We want that local input
because our local counties are the ones that are determining
how that money should be spent and where it is best utilized.
It does not need to be, first of all, coming from Washington
and, second of all, does not need to be coming from Montgomery
and those decisions made that way.
Senator Landrieu. So you like the money being sent down in
a broader range with locals being able to make more choices. Is
that what you are testifying?
Mr. Hicks. Choices and input into how the expenditures are
being made.
Senator Landrieu. Okay.
Mr. Lane.
Mr. Lane. At this point in the evolution of the grant
cycle, every community has different gaps. We have been
spending a tremendous amount of money and effort over the past
several years trying to mitigate gaps. The more flexibility we
have at the local level now because, as Mr. Riley indicated,
every city, every community is in a different place right now
and the less prescriptive the grant money is and the more
flexibility that the money arrives in will allow us to maximize
the use of the grant funds at the local level.
Senator Coats. Thank you all for your testimony. It was
helpful and important for us.
Mr. Vice, you say in your statement that the NLE 2011
exercise was invaluable. I know you are still assessing that,
and I am not going to ask you to get into that, although we
would appreciate, when you do have your assessment in and draw
your conclusions and recommendations, passing them on to us. It
would be very helpful. So I would ask you to do that.
But just from what you have learned to date, what made the
exercise invaluable? Why was it necessary? What was invaluable
about the results, and what changes do you think it will bring
about based on the information that you have received from that
exercise?
Mr. Vice. The first thing, I think that it brings to
everyone's attention when they are made aware that they do not
have communication initially that they have to have other plans
in place. We all become too reliable, thinking that our cell
phone is going to work if our radio does not work and so on. So
sometimes we do have to resort back to the runners. So I think
from our State perspective, that is one of the issues, is
getting all the agencies and the responders to recognize that
there will be a period of time where they probably have no
communication. So they have to have an alternate means.
For our agency, we had people involved at all levels. We
had people involved at Muscatatuck. We had our radio techs
involved all over the State. So we were able to review a number
of functions that our agency is responsible for.
So those two things are probably the most valuable that we
got out of it.
Senator Coats. Madam Chair, that is all I have. Thank you
very much for the hearing.
Senator Landrieu. Thank you, Senator Coats, very much. And
I really appreciate that all the members participated. I think
we have had a very good and thorough hearing.
I thank our witnesses for their testimony. I thank the
thousands of individuals at all levels of government and our
private sector partners who are committed to this mission.
We are going to try to write a bill in our subcommittee
that reflects the needs of the country and the challenges that
are out there.
ADDITIONAL COMMITTEE QUESTIONS
So any questions for the record should be submitted to
subcommittee staff by close of business Wednesday, June 15.
[The following questions were not asked at the hearing, but
were submitted to the Department for response subsequent to the
hearing:]
Questions Submitted to Hon. Craig Fugate
Questions Submitted by Senator Mary L. Landrieu
Question. On March 30, 2011, President Obama signed Presidential
Policy Directive-8 (PPD-8) on National Preparedness. It calls for a
comprehensive approach to assess national preparedness that uses a
consistent methodology to measure readiness for all levels of
government to prevent, protect against, mitigate against, respond to,
and recover from disasters. What specific resources, in funding and
people, will you dedicate to this effort in fiscal year 2011 and fiscal
year 2012?
Answer. PPD-8 represents a significant evolution of our national
preparedness efforts. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
has established a Program Executive Office within its Protection and
National Preparedness/National Preparedness Directorate to assist with
PPD-8 implementation across the Federal Government and through
engagement with the whole community. In support of this office, we are
focusing a number of existing activities to be in greater alignment
with the PPD-8 effort, including the pending revision of the National
Response Framework, our exercise and training programs, assessments and
the development of State and local guidance. For the duration of the
PPD-8 implementation, we have assigned 18 full-time employees to
directly support the implementation. Additionally, 20 percent
(approximately $20 million) of our discretionary funding activities are
aligned in support of specific PPD-8 requirements and for
implementation of the directive. A number of other efforts throughout
FEMA, including our planning activities in the Office of Response and
Recovery, and in Mitigation, are also aligned with this effort.
Question. Budget pressures have forced a reduction in the amount of
funding available for grant programs. Grants were reduced overall by 19
percent from fiscal year 2010 to fiscal year 2011. The House proposal
takes another 40 percent in fiscal year 2012.
We seem to be sitting at a crossroads of building more readiness
capacity and sustaining the capacity we have built to date. While we
are missing a collective way to describe the Nation's capability gap,
evidence demonstrates there is still need. According to the National
Associations of Counties, and Other Associations, grantees devote as
much as 50 percent of State grants to interoperable communications;
grants also fund fusion center operations, specialized emergency
response teams, and critical infrastructure protection.
Administrator Fugate, what are the top three gaps that you, as an
emergency manager, still see in State and local capabilities related to
all-hazards before, during, and after a disaster?
What top three capabilities have been developed through Federal
investments?
What specific reforms can be made to the grant programs to ensure
they are best meeting the needs of the Nation's needed capability to
prevent, prepare for, respond to, mitigate against, and recovery from
disasters?
Answer. The three capabilities for which States have identified the
highest funding requirements from fiscal year 2006 to fiscal year 2009
are:
--communications;
--intelligence and information sharing and dissemination; and
--planning.
The States based these funding requirements on their homeland security
strategies, which include their capability development requirements and
grant guidance provided by FEMA.
FEMA agrees that we are at a crossroads of building more readiness
capacity and sustaining the capacity we have built to date. FEMA
believes that the grant dollars should go toward developing and
sustaining national capabilities that could be called up by any
jurisdiction at any time through national mutual aid. FEMA has been
working to streamline the process and set priorities that will
encourage grantees to build national capacity according to gaps in
coverage of capabilities. To achieve this, the fiscal year 2011 FEMA
grant guidance sets three new priorities for the grantee:
--whole community strategy;
--building prevention and protection capabilities; and
--the maturation and enhancement of State and major urban area fusion
centers.
Applicants will be developing their investment justifications based, in
part, on capability requirements identified through the Threat and
Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) process. THIRA is
based on analysis of each State's relative consequences of the various
threats and hazards, and allows the applicant to compare and prioritize
risks. THIRAs will be used to update their State homeland security
strategies, which identify the capability gaps that States most need to
fill in order to meet the State's individual risk priorities and FEMA's
priorities. Gaps identified in THIRA will assist FEMA in assessing
national gaps in capabilities and help us further refine grant guidance
to maximize benefit.
The top three capabilities developed through Federal investments,
as collected through progress reports from fiscal year 2006 to fiscal
year 2009, include:
--communications;
--planning; and
--critical infrastructure protection.
FEMA is already making a number of key reforms to the design and
implementation of our grant programs to build and sustain national
capability. First, and most important, FEMA is working to implement the
requirements of PPD-8 which includes the development of a new national
preparedness goal, national preparedness system, and other key
strategic policy doctrine that will help us better focus where
investments go.
Second, we are working closely with State, local, tribal, and
private sector partners and stakeholders to develop a culture of
partnership in everything we do. Most recently, our grant program
developers, managers, and analysts met with our partners at the
National Urban Areas Security Initiative and After Action conferences
in San Francisco over the course of 4 days from June 20-23 to review,
assess, and improve all aspects of how we work together. Through town
hall meetings, technical sessions, a training expo, and an all-day
after action feedback session, our team gained a deep first-hand
understanding of what we are doing well, what should be maintained, and
what we need to improve. There is no substitute for working
partnership, as through teamwork we can leverage our grant resources so
much more effectively.
A third key reform lies in our ongoing commitment to improving and
integrating a risk-based approach into the design and implementation of
our grant programs. We are continuing to refine our risk models and
allocation methodologies to ensure that grant funds are deployed across
our grant portfolio in a way that reflects the best possible
information about threats, risks, and vulnerabilities that we face.
Fourth, FEMA is implementing the Redundancy Elimination and
Enhanced Performance for Preparedness Grants (REEPP) Act, in direct
coordination with the National Academy of Public Administration, to
identify and eliminate redundant reporting requirements and to develop
meaningful performance metrics for homeland security preparedness
grants. This effort will help FEMA further measure the effectiveness of
grants. FEMA is also in the process of implementing recommendations
from the Local, State, Tribal, and Federal Preparedness Task Force
Report to improve coordination and consolidation of FEMA's grant
programs, including coordination of interagency grant programs and more
closely linking capability assessment and grant activities. As a
requirement of this act, FEMA has also submitted an initial report to
the Congress on further steps we are taking to reduce burdens on our
stakeholders by refining grant processes.
Finally, in response to Government Accountability Office (GAO) and
Office of the Inspector General (OIG) recommendations and our own
internal process improvement efforts, we are actively exploring
opportunities to consolidate grant programs when it makes sense for
FEMA and our grantees in a way that does not diminish the efficacy of
the overall homeland security enterprise. A March 2011 GAO report,
Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Government Programs,
Save Tax Dollars, and Enhance Revenues (GAO-11-318SP), noted that the
number of FEMA preparedness grant programs has grown from 8 in 2002 to
17 in 2010 as the result of congressional and executive branch actions.
A number of these programs fund common eligible recipients (such as
State homeland security agencies) for similar purposes. The Department
of Homeland Security OIG reported in March 2010 that FEMA's application
process for its preparedness grant programs did not promote
effectiveness and efficiency, because FEMA did not compare and
coordinate grant applications across preparedness programs to identify
and mitigate potential duplications (for example, planning, and
interoperable communications are two activities that can be funded by
almost all of the programs reviewed by OIG); the report recommended
FEMA do so. We are incorporating specific requirements into our grant
program guidance to minimize potential sources of duplication, and over
the longer term we look forward to working with the Congress to
streamline and consolidate program-specific legislation to ensure
alignment and efficiency.
Question. In Mr. Fugate's testimony, the use of social media to
make sure the public and emergency management agencies can share
information quickly is highlighted. Across the Nation, local, and State
emergency management agencies are at greatly varying abilities to be
able to use two-way communications during a disaster. An ability to
harness the power of social media will need both technology
improvements but also personnel and training to manage this emerging
tool.
Can you describe in more detail exactly how social media has been
employed in communities that have used it successfully during a
disaster? In State and local communities who have harnessed this
important communication method, what obstacles did they have to
overcome? For example, if a disaster survivor reaches out to FEMA or
the State with a request for assistance or useful information about
what is happening on the ground, how is that information coordinated
with the local manager who is the lead during the disaster?
Does FEMA have technical assistance programs available to
communities who are venturing into social media, and if so, how much
funding is dedicated to these programs in fiscal year 2012?
Social media is the way of the future for some, but not everyone
uses it. What is the emergency management community doing to ensure
people without technology do not get left behind?
Answer. In the tornadoes that struck Tuscaloosa, Alabama on April
27, social media allowed survivors to connect with one another and
return a sense of normalcy to their lives. For example, thousands of
Facebook users self-organized almost immediately after the storm to
help survivors find precious pieces of debris that were blown miles
from where the tornado struck. This debris consisted of family
photographs, clothing, and personal possessions that offered survivors
a piece of normalcy and emotional support. Over time, the page became
more than survivors finding their possessions--it became a place for
them to share stories and help others find resources if they were in
need. In this way, social media connected survivors with other members
of the public who were in a position to help--either by locating an
item's proper owner or answering others' questions about where to go
for assistance.
While this example is one of many, it shows the power of social
media to connect survivors with resources from the emergency management
team, including the public.
To have an effective social media presence, emergency managers must
be able to devote the time necessary to post content and respond to
questions and comments as necessary. Making time to learn, use, and
adopt social media is often the most formidable obstacle for emergency
managers to overcome. In addition to time constraints, the State and
local agencies we talk to often cite the importance of leadership
support in adopting social media. When management within the
organization is supportive of learning and using social media as a tool
for communicating with the public, favorable policies (such as
information technology, cybersecurity, legal, and privacy) often
follow, helping emergency managers adopt these tools more effectively.
As for the example listed in the question, FEMA or the State should
direct the survivor to contact his or her local emergency management
office for the latest information on the ground. If the local office
has an up-to-date Web site with information on the disaster, then FEMA
or the State should direct the survivor to this resource, as well as to
any social media sites that are providing timely, relevant information.
However, the presence of a useful Web site and/or social media channels
at the local level depends on how much time and effort that local
emergency managers have invested to keep these channels up-to-date.
FEMA currently is exploring ways to help our State and local partners
get involved with social media.
Social media is only one way in which we communicate and engage
with the public, and we are committed to using multiple channels to get
our messages out and to engage with stakeholders before, during, and
after a disaster. After a Presidentially declared disaster, we continue
to use traditional forms of communication such as radio, TV, and print
media to let the people know about available assistance. Also, our
community relations teams go door-to-door in the community to meet with
survivors and provide information on FEMA assistance.
In addition to using the Agency's ability to communicate, we also
leverage the capabilities of the private sector and faith-based,
volunteer and community groups to reach their audiences as well.
Reaching as many people as possible after a disaster requires a team
effort, with multiple channels and methods of communication.
Question. The latest estimate for the fiscal year 2012 the
shortfall for the Disaster Relief Fund is somewhere between $2 billion
and $4.8 billion. In April, the Congress made deep cuts in first-
responder grants in order to pay for the fiscal year 2011 shortfall.
This unfortunate decision was necessary because the President failed to
propose an emergency supplemental.
The House passed their fiscal year 2012 Homeland Security bill.
They make even deeper cuts in the first-responder grants in order to
pay for the fiscal year 2012 shortfall. For months I have been urging
the President to send up an emergency request for the shortfall. When
will we get the request?
Answer. On September 9, 2011, the Office of Management and Budget
submitted an emergency funding request for $500 million to sustain the
Disaster Relief Fund through the end of fiscal year 2011.
______
Questions Submitted by Senator Frank R. Lautenberg
Question. In New Jersey, the stretch of land between the Port of
New York and New Jersey and Newark Liberty Airport was designated the
most at-risk area for a terrorist attack in the United States by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2005. The stretch of land
includes a variety of potential targets, including ports, chemical
plants, airports, and commuter freeways. This is an especially
important area because it is so close to the population center of the
greater New York area, which would magnify the effect of an attack. It
is estimated that 12 million people could be impacted by an attack.
According to the FBI, New Jersey is home to the most at-risk area
for a terrorist attack in theUnited States. This area has targets
ranging from the port to airports to chlorine gas plants. An attack in
this area could impact 12 million people who live nearby.
How are the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) working with State and local
entities in New Jersey to prevent and prepare for a possible attack in
this area?
Answer. Since the inception of the Homeland Security Grant Program,
DHS's FEMA has provided to New Jersey more than $2 billion to support
anti-terrorism and all-hazards preparedness, including funding for
equipment, fusion centers, training, exercises, etc. FEMA also has
provided catastrophic planning assistance to New Jersey through the
Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program (RCPGP). This has
resulted in integrated planning efforts across northern New Jersey, as
well as in New York City and parts of Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
Examples of projects are a Regional Radiological Dispersal Device Plan,
a Regional Housing Recovery Center Plan, and a Regional Mass Fatality
Plan.
In one specific example of improved planning, the New York/New
Jersey/Connecticut/Pennsylvania site has developed critical parts of
its Regional Disaster Housing Plan (different from their Housing
Recovery Center Plan, above) through partnerships with two national
leaders in building design and land use: the American Institute of
Architects and Urban Land Institute. Two-day working sessions co-
organized with these groups put emergency management specialists side-
by-side with experts in housing and planning to develop solutions to
the region's post-disaster housing challenges. The resulting plan is
being used as a primary example by other RCPGP sites nationally. In
addition to progress in developing plans, New Jersey and New York City
have made great strides in improving their regional collaboration as a
result of RCPGP. New Jersey officials have credited these efforts with
improving operations for both the recent helicopter and small plane
mid-air crash over the Hudson River, as well as the safe rescue of
passengers from the water landing of U.S. Airways flight 1519.
Question. FEMA manages the majority of Federal grants for disaster
preparedness and response. The House recently passed its version of the
fiscal year 2012 Homeland Security appropriations bill, which provides
$1 billion for DHS to allocate, at its discretion, funding to nine
State and local Homeland Security grant programs. This amount is 65
percent less than the President's fiscal year 2012 budget request for
these grant programs.
According to reports, evidence found at Osama bin Laden's compound
showed al-Qaeda was planning to attack our rail system and our ports.
The House-passed fiscal year 2012 Homeland Security appropriations bill
includes $1 billion for FEMA and DHS to allocate, at its discretion,
funding to nine Homeland Security grant programs. This amount is 65
percent less than the President's fiscal year 2012 budget request for
these grant programs.
What impact do these cuts have on FEMA's ability to help our Nation
prevent, prepare for, and respond to an emergency such as a terrorist
attack?
Answer. While much has been accomplished with the grant programs
over the past several years, much remains to be done. Cuts in Homeland
Security grant funding directly affect State and local governments'
ability to build and sustain capabilities that they have identified as
necessary based on their homeland security strategies and national
priorities. Homeland security strategies developed by the State and
local governments articulate gaps in capabilities and investment
justifications submitted by the grantees articulate how they will fill
identified gaps. These strategies and investment justifications show us
that more remains to be done. A refined Threat and Hazard
Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) process that has already
started and is rolling out as a part of the fiscal year 2011 grant
programs will further improve our ability to identify and fill gaps in
capabilities.
Since fiscal year 2003, more than $33 billion has been awarded in
preparedness grants and all levels of government have worked to develop
robust preparedness policy, guidance, and priorities. These investments
have helped increase the capabilities of local, State, tribal, and
territorial authorities where, in many cases, only limited capability
previously existed. Grant funds have supported development and
sustainment of emergency operations centers, fusion centers,
interoperable communications systems, information and intelligence
sharing mechanisms, specialized response assets, a multitude of
planning activities, and unprecedented regional collaboration. These
gains were most recently evident in the response to the tornadoes in
the Southeast and in Joplin, Missouri. Responses were handled entirely
at the State and local levels. The 2011 national level exercise
provided the State of Missouri the opportunity to test its
interoperable communications system 2 weeks before the State used these
tools in its effective response to the May 2011, Joplin tornado. Since
9/11, State and local jurisdictions have scheduled more than 10,000
exercises. All 50 States now collaborate to maximize resources and cost
effectiveness. States use the Nation's mutual aid networks daily, and
the Emergency Management Assistance Compact ensures the sharing of
resources between States, averaging 30 exercises per year and 19 real-
world events in 2009 alone.
Despite progress made, any significant reduction in funding
realistically can be expected to impact the ability to sustain the
capability achievements demonstrated above. Grant funds are a critical
component of our Nation's ability to prevent, protect, and respond to
natural and manmade disasters.
Question. FEMA manages the majority of Federal grants for disaster
preparedness and response. The House recently passed its version of the
fiscal year 2012 Homeland Security appropriations bill, which provides
$1 billion for DHS to allocate, at its discretion, funding to nine
State and local Homeland Security grant programs. This amount is 65
percent less than the President's fiscal year 2012 budget request for
these grant programs.
If FEMA and DHS were to receive funding levels below what the
President's fiscal year 2012 budget requests for FEMA State and local
programs, how would it ensure that the country's highest-risk areas
receive adequate funding?
Answer. If funding is reduced below the fiscal year 2012
President's budget amount, funding to build and maintain critical
capabilities will be impacted. However, our commitment is to ensure
that our grant funding at any level is deployed in a manner that
reflects, to the maximum extent possible, the best information about
the threats, risks, and vulnerabilities that we face as a Nation. We
are continuing to integrate a risk-based approach into the design and
implementation of our grant programs, as described below.
Risk is evaluated at the Federal level using an analytical model
developed by DHS in conjunction with other Federal entities. It
includes these related components:
Threat.--The likelihood of an attack occurring;
Vulnerability.--The relative exposure to an attack; and
Consequence.--The expected impact of an attack.
The risk model used to allocate funds considers the potential risk
of terrorism to people, critical infrastructure, and economic security
to estimate the relative risk of terrorism faced by a given area. In
evaluating risk, DHS considers the populations in a particular area
that could be at risk, the concentration of people in the area, and
specific characteristics of their location that might contribute to
risk, such as intelligence community assessments of threat, proximity
to national critical infrastructure, and the economic impact of an
attack. In considering threat, DHS uses the intelligence community's
best assessment of areas of the country and potential targets most
likely to be attacked. For vulnerability and consequence, DHS considers
the expected impact and consequences of successful attacks occurring in
specific areas to people, the economy, national critical
infrastructure, and national security facilities.
Question. When evaluating a request for a Federal disaster
declaration, FEMA analyzes a variety of factors to determine if a
disaster is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is
beyond the capabilities of the State and the affected local
governments. A key factor in the decision process is the statewide per
capita indicator. This statistic measures the estimated public
assistance damages relative to a State's population and is derived by
dividing the value of public assistance damages by the State's
population.
However, the statewide per-capita methodology implies that States
with higher populations have more capacity to respond to disasters.
This approach does not account for anything other than a high
population and it does not recognize the services that a State
typically expends tax dollars on to meet the needs of its population.
Therefore, a State with a high population may have a stronger tax base
but the State government must spend more of that tax base on services.
When evaluating a request for a Federal disaster declaration, does
FEMA account for the increased services that a government responsible
for a high population typically provides?
Answer. In evaluating a request for a major disaster declaration,
FEMA assesses whether the disaster is of such severity and magnitude
that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and
affected local governments and Federal assistance is necessary. When a
Governor requests a major disaster declaration including authorization
of public assistance, FEMA evaluates the request based on a number of
factors as stipulated in 44 CFR part 206, including the estimated cost
of the assistance, localized impacts, insurance coverage, hazard
mitigation, recent multiple disasters, and other Federal assistance.
When requesting a major disaster declaration, Governors are
statutorily required to furnish information describing the State and
local efforts and resources which have been or will be used to
alleviate the results of the disaster. Therefore, FEMA also takes into
consideration any resources that are expended by a State or local
government to respond to or recover from a disaster as well as any
available resources of the State and local governments, and other
disaster relief organizations.
Question. Currently, the only law on chemical facility security is
the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS), which became
law through the fiscal year 2007 appropriations process and provides
temporary authority to DHS to establish regulations for protecting
chemical facilities from attack.
CFATS requires covered chemical facilities to prepare security
vulnerability assessments, which identify facility security
vulnerabilities as well as develop and implement site security plans to
address them. However, it specifically exempts drinking water and
wastewater treatment facilities from security requirements and does not
require any facilities to implement inherently safer technology. Both
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and DHS have testified in the
past that the exemption of water facilities represents a ``critical gap
in the U.S. chemical regulatory framework''.
The existing CFATS--our Nation's only law on chemical facility
security--exempt wastewater and drinking water facilities, even when
those facilities handle hazardous chemicals.
Should these security measures be required at all facilities that
handle dangerous chemicals?
Answer. DHS and EPA have stated that there is a critical gap in the
U.S. chemical facility security regulatory framework--namely, the
exemption of drinking water and wastewater treatment facilities from
CFATS. DHS supports amending the current exemption for drinking water
and wastewater facilities to specify that EPA would have the lead on
regulating such facilities for security, with DHS supporting EPA to
ensure consistency across all sectors while respecting the unique
public health and environmental requirements and responsibilities of
water and wastewater facilities. DHS and EPA are happy to work with the
Congress to address this issue.
______
Questions Submitted by Senator Daniel Coats
use of social media during disasters
Question. What has been the investment to date by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in social media communications?
Answer. FEMA has full-time staff dedicated to digital
communications, at both headquarter and regional offices. We have also
provided training for FEMA employees on the use of social media in
emergency management and the details of FEMA's policy on employee usage
of social media.
Question. How does FEMA plan to forward any information it receives
through social media to local first responders?
Answer. Establishing strong relationships before a disaster is
crucial to success after a disaster strikes. Because of this, we
continue to strengthen relationships with State and local emergency
managers, working through our regional offices across the United
States. As relevant information is received through social media, we
work through our regional offices to make sure our partners at the
State and local levels receive the information.
Question. What resources does FEMA devote today to monitoring and
responding to incoming communications over Facebook or Twitter?
Answer. We monitor comments and questions on Facebook and Twitter
multiple times each day. We also respond to comments and questions as
appropriate. If we cannot answer someone's question, we will point that
individual to the best place to find the information.
On the FEMA blog, Facebook page, and Twitter page, we clearly state
that for emergencies, the public should call their local fire,
Emergency Medical System (EMS), police, or 9-1-1. It's important to
continue to reiterate the message that FEMA is not a first-responder
agency.
Question. Has FEMA made enough investments to be able to respond
when a citizen posts information on the FEMA Facebook or Twitter
account--to connect that individual with the right local first
responder to ensure that assistance will be provided?
Answer. Through monitoring our channels multiple times each day and
working with other members of the emergency management team, we make
every effort to connect individuals with the right resource at the
State and local levels. However, the success of these efforts also
hinges on other members of the team taking steps to provide the
requested information or assistance.
As noted above, on the FEMA blog, Facebook page, and Twitter page,
we clearly state that for emergencies, the public should call their
local fire, EMS, police, or 9-1-1. It's important to continue to
reiterate the message that FEMA is not a first-responder agency.
Question. During 9/11, getting a cell phone call through was nearly
impossible. How does use of social media alleviate that issue?
Answer. For disaster survivors looking to communicate with loved
ones after a disaster, social media provides another way to let family
and friends know their status. This may alleviate some traffic on
cellular telephone networks since survivors are able to contact loved
ones ways besides making a phone call. This is one of the reasons we
encourage every American to have a family communication plan before a
disaster strikes. Having a plan allows all family members to know how
to get in touch with one another after a disaster strikes, whether
through a phone call, text message, Facebook post, or Twitter message.
For those trying to get a call through to 9-1-1 dispatchers just
after a disaster, social media may not alleviate this issue, but add
more complexity to it. Social media provides an additional avenue for
the public to reach out to local responders for assistance. This means
that first responders may become overwhelmed with Facebook or Twitter
messages asking for assistance after a disaster, similar to 9-1-1
dispatchers and systems being overwhelmed just after September 11.
Local response organizations must be strategic about how they will
intake social media messages following a disaster, and what their
capacity is to handle a large volume of requests and traffic.
______
Questions Submitted to Rand Beers
Questions Submitted by Senator Mary L. Landrieu
Question. The National Emergency Communications Plan (NECP) lays
out three specific goals to be accomplished by 2013. The first being
demonstration that 90 percent of all high-risk urban areas can
establish emergency communications with adjoining jurisdictions within
1 hour by 2010. In your testimony, you stated that all 60 urban areas
that were required to demonstrate this did achieve that goal. The
Secretary also cited this accomplishment in her recent testimony, and
she also indicated that in doing the assessments, areas for continued
improvement were identified.
What areas for continued improvement are there and how will the
National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) aid in facilitating
those improvements? What sort of resources and/or incentives will
communities need to continue to make improvements?
The second goal in the plan requires 75 percent of nonurban areas
to be able to establish emergency communications with adjoining
jurisdictions within 1 hour by 2011. What unique challenges do nonurban
areas face? Do you anticipate these areas will be able to achieve the
goal?
The third goal requires jurisdictions to demonstrate emergency
communications during a significant incident--like a catastrophic
event--by 2013. Is NPPD on track to ensure this final and very
important goal is met? Is there any way to expedite this timeframe?
Answer. As addressed in the testimony, all 60 Urban Areas Security
Initiative (UASI) regions (as of July 2008) demonstrated response-level
emergency communications in accordance with NECP goal 1. The
demonstrations illustrate how the significant organizational and
technical investments made by the UASI regions have improved their
emergency communications capabilities in recent years. Primary radio
systems effectively supported NECP goal 1 event responses, and
additional voice and data systems provided redundancy and increased
situational awareness.
The completion of goal 1 represents an important step toward
achieving national interoperability; however, significant work remains.
The results of goal 1 showed that despite an existing culture of
cooperation among law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical services
and other disciplines, coordination across these disciplines is not
fully integrated into incident planning or consistently carried out.
The goal 1 assessments also showed that incident planning and execution
approaches that were segmented by discipline raised concerns about the
ability of UASI regions to achieve similar success during a large-scale
emergency incident where the incident site is not known and responders
face more complex requirements for coordination.
The Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) within NPPD is
addressing these findings and other cross-disciplinary communications
issues through various improvement activities, including training,
technical assistance, stakeholder coordination, and planning efforts.
These activities include specialized, follow-up technical assistance
services to those UASIs that achieved goal 1, but experienced some
complications in achieving response-level communications.
Federal grant and loan programs have played a vital role in helping
State and local jurisdictions build emergency communication
capabilities nationwide. Numerous Federal departments and agencies
administer grant and loan programs that support continued operations
and modernization of communications equipment and systems, as well as
emergency communications planning and governance activities. This
funding has been used to augment capital expenditures (e.g., planning
for, building, and deploying new infrastructure), as well as to offset
operational costs (e.g., training, procedure development, equipment
purchases, operations, and maintenance) based on the specific needs of
the funding recipients.
To drive the further improvement of interoperable communications
capabilities at the State and local levels, DHS and other Federal grant
programs that support emergency communications should continue to
emphasize the following actions:
--Establishing State governance bodies that conduct strategic
planning and that prioritize investments;
--Supporting statewide interoperability coordinators, who ensure that
federally funded projects align with strategic plans; and
--Funding the implementation of NECP goals, which enable DHS to
measure progress in emergency communications capabilities
nationwide.
Further, Federal grant programs have helped States and territories
develop and implement their statewide communications interoperability
plans (SCIPs). All 56 States and territories have developed a SCIP, and
NPPD/OEC has been working with the States to update their plans on an
annual basis. Each SCIP defines a vision and mission for statewide
emergency response communications interoperability across a State or
territory; reflects the current status of State, regional, and local
agency systems and challenges; and identifies key initiatives moving
the State or territory toward integrated statewide interoperability.
In addition, NPPD/OEC will further target the offerings of its
technical assistance program to ensure that all States, localities,
tribes, and territories can request and receive assistance for
emergency communications while also focusing this technical assistance
on those jurisdictions most in need. In 2010, for example, NPPD/OEC
received 260 technical assistance requests from States, localities,
tribes, and territories.
Due to their remote locations, low-population density, and limited
resources, many rural communities continue to experience basic
operability and interoperability challenges. The emergency
communications systems in some rural jurisdictions are often outdated
and hampered by inadequate infrastructure, limited geographic coverage,
and limited capacity because multiple agencies within the locality
sometimes share the available channels.
With goal 2 of the NECP, the Department is for the first-time
assessing the ability of jurisdictions outside of the UASI regions to
implement key operational factors for successful emergency
communications. These factors, which are the same for both urban and
nonurban areas, draw from the SAFECOM Interoperability Continuum and
include:
--the establishment and maintenance of common policies and procedures
for communications;
--the clear definition and execution of responder roles and
responsibilities throughout the response; and
--the availability of high-quality and continuous communications to
foster situational awareness and coordination among responding
agencies.
NPPD/OEC is optimistic that the work that has been done in
jurisdictions across the Nation--including the training of more than
3,500 communications unit leaders--has provided public safety agencies
outside of the UASI regions with the skills and capabilities needed to
successfully demonstrate goal 2 of the NECP.
NPPD/OEC has worked with its DHS partners--including the Federal
Emergency Management Agency--and with other Federal, State, local, and
tribal agencies and governments to improve jurisdictions' emergency
communications capabilities for use during a significant event through
the development of tools, technical assistance, training programs,
grant policies, and other initiatives.
To measure goal 3, NPPD/OEC will assess the jurisdictions' ability
to establish interoperable emergency communications during large-scale
emergency situations where the incident site is not known and where
responders face larger requirements for coordination. These
requirements include their ability to recover from primary
communications loss and to request, activate, and plan for regional,
State, and Federal responders. While NPPD/OEC will work to expedite the
timeframe for assessing goal 3, it is currently on track for completion
at the end of 2013.
Question. The NPPD mission statement says it is responsible for
assuring the security, resiliency, and reliability of the Nation's
communications and cyber infrastructure. While there is an increase in
the President's budget proposal for cybersecurity, the budget request
for communications and infrastructure protection programs are level
funded at $150 million and $322 million, respectively. With evolving
technology and an ever present threat, it seems demand for technical
assistance on telecommunications, vulnerability assessments for
critical infrastructure, and information analysis about the impacts of
disasters on things like power sources and food and agriculture would
be going up.
Is NPPD receiving requests from State and local governments or
industry partners for assistance or information that are going unfilled
in either communications or infrastructure protection? For example, how
many requests were made for technical assistance from OEC in fiscal
year 2010, and how many were fulfilled? How many requests were made for
vulnerability assessments in fiscal year 2010, and how many were
fulfilled?
With an essentially flat budget, how can NPPD programs keep pace
with needs in a dynamic environment? For example, what process is used
to determine the level of NPPD resources dedicated to support current
needs--such as interoperability of radios, and physical security of
infrastructure--and to ensure resources are also dedicated to emerging
topics--such as use of broadband, and building resiliency into new
infrastructure?
Answer. NPPD/OEC is charged with providing technical assistance on
interoperable emergency communications issues to Federal, State, local,
tribal, and territorial agencies through the development and delivery
of training, tools, and onsite assistance. NPPD/OEC provides technical
assistance services on a range of critical emergency communications
issues, including development of effective multijurisdictional and
multidisciplinary governance structures; training and exercises;
systems engineering; radio frequency/channel planning and use;
interoperability needs assessments; and the integration of voice and
data technologies. Each of these service offerings, detailed in the
Technical Assistance Catalog, is designed to prepare States and
localities to communicate during all types of incidents--from routine
to disaster.
On an annual basis, each State and territory is able to request
multiple technical assistance offerings from the catalog, one of which
must be for an urban area. NPPD/OEC prioritizes and fulfills these
requests based on available resources and an assessment of capabilities
and gaps. Each State and territory is provided at least one technical
assistance offering per year upon request. In fiscal year 2010, NPPD/
OEC received 260 individual technical assistance requests from the 56
States and territories. NPPD/OEC prioritized and fulfilled 136 of these
requests with the resources available.
Similarly, the Protective Security Coordination Division within
NPPD's Office of Infrastructure Protection (IP) conducts voluntary
assessments of critical infrastructure through several activities,
including Enhanced Critical Infrastructure Protection (ECIP) security
surveys, Site Assistance Visit (SAV) assessments, buffer zone plan
technical assistance and workshops, and computer-based assessment
tools. In fiscal year 2010, NPPD/IP received and granted 682 requests
for ECIP security surveys.
NPPD/IP does not track the number of requests for buffer zone
technical assistance or workshops; however, in fiscal year 2010, it
conducted:
--50 buffer zone workshops;
--107 computer-based assessments; and
--217 SAVs.
In addition, the National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) within
NPPD's Office of Cybersecurity and Communications conducts
cybersecurity evaluations of critical infrastructure and key resources
(CIKR) networks and industrial control systems. NPPD/NCSD has conducted
these assessments through the Cyber Security Evaluations Program and
the Control Systems Security Program since fiscal year 2009, and the
demand for the program has grown each year. The total number of
assessments conducted to date includes:
--Cyber Security Evaluations Program assessments:
--fiscal year 2009: 17;
--fiscal year 2010: 58; and
--fiscal year 2011 (as of July): 65.
--Control Systems Security Program assessments:
--fiscal year 2009: 20;
--fiscal year 2010: 52; and
--fiscal year 2011 (as of July): 63.
NPPD/NCSD also provides its public- and private-sector partners
with the cyber security evaluation tool (CSET) at no cost to them. CSET
enables users to conduct systematic and repeatable self-assessments of
the security posture of their cyber systems and networks. It includes
high-level and detailed questions related to information technology and
industrial control systems. CSET is available for download at http://
www.uscert.gov/control_systems/satool.html or as a DVD.
NPPD's mission is to lead the national effort to protect and
enhance the resilience of the Nation's physical and cyber
infrastructure. With such a broad and diverse portfolio of
responsibilities, it is critical that NPPD's programs have the
resources to perform their current requirements while having the
flexibility to manage emerging risks effectively.
Like all DHS components, NPPD takes part in the DHS planning,
programming, budgeting, and execution (PPBE) system to determine how to
allocate its resources. The PPBE system is similar to the process used
by the Department of Defense (DOD) and several other Federal
departments and agencies to allocate their resources. Like DOD, DHS
also practices resource planning over the 5-year Future Years Homeland
Security Program period. Outyear planning enables NPPD to take a
strategic approach to resource allocation so that both current and
future needs can be anticipated and budgeted.
To ensure that its programs are adequately resourced, NPPD is
working to improve its internal decisionmaking processes. As NPPD
matures, it is working to link its strategic planning, budgeting, and
performance management processes. NPPD also is working to improve the
integration of business lines across its various subcomponents.
______
Questions Submitted by Senator Daniel Coats
interoperable public safety communications
Question. Resource constraints will make it difficult for Federal
law enforcement and public safety agencies to make significant
investments to continue upgrading mobile land radio systems, and to
invest in broadband communications systems. Just within the Department
of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) has requested no funds to continue to upgrade its tactical
communications in fiscal year 2012. Is the Federal Government falling
behind the States and locals in radio communications due to resource
constraints?
Answer. According to the National Communications Capabilities
Report developed in May 2008, by the Office of Emergency Communications
(OEC) within DHS' National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD),
the ability to achieve interoperable emergency communications varies
widely across the Federal Government as agencies work to meet Federal
communications mandates, deliver reliable communications using legacy
systems, and meet mission-critical communications requirements. DHS
components continue to develop and refine their tactical communications
systems across the United States to meet their mission of protecting
the homeland.
DHS components are focusing efforts primarily on land mobile radio
technology as the current source of mission-critical voice and data
communications. The Department has acknowledged the emergence of
broadband as a significant technology for the future and seeks to plan
and prepare for the convergence of this capability with current land
mobile radio technology.
To avoid a potential technology gap, it is essential that future
public-safety technologies can be used by all levels of government. To
that end, DHS has led efforts to define Federal requirements and
mission assessments for broadband internally in the One DHS Emergency
Communications Committee and among Federal departments and agencies
through the Emergency Communications Preparedness Center.
Through the establishment of high-level requirements, the
Department and the Federal responder community will be better
positioned to invest in and adopt broadband as part of a tool-kit
approach to emergency communications capabilities. DHS, through NPPD/
OEC, also is working closely with key public-safety organizations and
jurisdictions that are implementing next-generation public-safety
technologies such as broadband. Through these relationships with
broadband-waiver recipients, the Federal Government's public-safety and
homeland security organizations are able to maintain awareness of and
fully support the efforts and advancements of technology led by these
entities.
CONCLUSION OF HEARING
Senator Landrieu. This meeting is recessed. Thank you all
for attending.
[Whereupon, at 4:27 p.m., Wednesday, June 8, the hearing
was concluded, and the subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene
subject to the call of the Chair.]
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