    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2005, Book II)]
    [September 25, 2005]
    [Pages 1483-1484]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks During a Briefing on Hurricane Rita in San Antonio
    September 25, 2005

    [The briefing is joined in progress.]

        The President. Yes, having said that about Katrina, there were still
    some amazingly heroic efforts in pulling people off roofs. I don't know
    how many sorties were flown in Katrina, but there must have been
    thousands of sorties.
        Maj. Gen. White. Well, as I left last
    Wednesday, it was close to 18,000 sorties flown. Now, sir, that includes
    every agency, and it's a lot of the airlift in there too.
        The President. Your point is, on a Katrina, had there been a better
    coordinated effort between Guard choppers--Coast Guard choppers, regular
    Army choppers, it would have been less dangerous?

        Maj. Gen. White. It would have been a better
    orchestrated plan. You wouldn't have seen a lot of--for instance, one of
    the things that we've learned out of that--we had someone that needed to
    be rescued, and that comes up on the net. Five

    [[Page 1484]]

    helicopters show up at the same place to get one person. That's the sort
    of simplistic thing we'd like to avoid, and we're not maximizing the use
    of our forces to best efficiency.
        Certainly, that was a train wreck that we saw in New Orleans, and I
    know everybody is jumping in, trying to help at one time, and that's the
    right thing to do. But if we can have a national plan that would address
    the search and rescue at this magnitude, is what we're out to try to do.
        The President.  Good.
        Maj. Gen. Mayes. Sir, if I might add, I
    would say that it wouldn't necessarily make it less dangerous. I would
    tell you that the professionalism and the plan came together. I believe
    that all participants would agree that with the fog that we had and the
    weather that we were battling, nighttime, all the things that went into
    that environment, that I'm not sure we can make it less dangerous. There
    may be a factor there, but the main point would be, with a national
    plan, we'll have a quicker jump-start and an opportunity to save more
    people. That would be my input there.
        Lt. Gen. Clark. A national plan, good
    training against the plan, gets you to this state faster in extremis.
    And that's the goal.
        The President. Part of the reason I've come down here and part of
    the reason I went to NORTHCOM, was to better understand how the Federal
    Government can plan and surge equipment, to mitigate natural disasters.
    And I appreciate very much, General, your
    briefing, because it's precisely the kind of information that I'll take
    back to Washington to help all of us understand how we can do a better
    job in coordinating Federal, State, and local response.
        The other question, of course, I asked was, is there a circumstance
    in which the Department of Defense becomes the lead agency? Clearly, in
    the case of a terrorist attack, that would be the case, but is there a
    natural disaster which--of a certain size that would then enable the
    Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading
    the response effort. That's going to be a very important consideration
    for Congress to think about.
        Okay.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:30 a.m. in the headquarters of the Air
    Education and Training Command at Randolph Air Force Base. Participating
    in the briefing were Maj. Gen. John White, USAF, member, Maj. Gen. M.
    Scott Mayes, USAF, member, and Lt. Gen. Robert T. Clark, USA, commander,
    Joint Task Force--Rita. A portion of these remarks could not be verified
    because the tape was incomplete.