[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.