    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 19 (Monday, May 16, 1994)]
    [Pages 1053-1055]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks at the National Fire and Emergency Services Dinner

    May 10, 1994

        The President. Thank you very much. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,
    for that warm welcome; and distinguished head table guests. I don't know
    about being America's Fire Chief, but I do know whenever I ring the
    bell, Steny Hoyer shows up. [Laughter] So today he rang the bell, and I
    showed up. And I am honored to be in your presence tonight.
        I want to recognize, not only Steny but the other Members of
    Congress who are here. I'm sure they've been introduced already, but
    Congressman Curt Weldon and Congressman Sherry Boehlert, Senator William
    Roth, Congressman Howard Coble. I think you will find that support for
    fire and emergency services is a bipartisan affair in the United States
    Congress. And I think you will find that I have tried to be a good
    partner to them. I also want to recognize some people who are not here,
    including Congressman

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    Dick Durbin and Congressman Bill Emerson, who are the cochairs of the
    House Task Force on Natural Disasters; and to acknowledge the
    legislators of the year you identified, Chairman Norm Mineta and Senator
    Dan Inouye. I also want to thank, for their work in the administration
    and their work to come, our Fire Administrator-designate, Carrye Brown.
    And I'd like to say with a special word of pride how very much I
    appreciate the extraordinary work of one of my fellow Arkansans, James
    Lee Witt, the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
        You know, when I became President there were many jobs, but there
    were two or three jobs that I thought had suffered under previous
    administrations without regard to party, because they had not been
    filled with people who had actual experience doing what they were hired
    to do. One was the Small Business Administration, and I put someone in
    the Small Business Administration, not who had been a long-time
    political associate of mine, although he is a friend of mine, but
    someone who had spent 20 years financing and starting and expanding
    small businesses. It occurred to me that a person that did that job,
    since that's where most of the job growth is in America, would be better
    off if he or she had known something about it before they showed up at
    the door.
        And when it came time to pick a FEMA Director, as a Governor in the
    State that had the highest death rate per capita from tornadoes in the
    country, I knew a little something about what it was like to deal with
    FEMA over a very long period of time, under administrations of both
    parties in Washington. And that's why I asked the person who had done
    the emergency services work in our State and had gone through fires and
    floods and tornadoes and seen whole towns blown away, to do that job.
        Most people think that our administration has done pretty well in
    responding to earthquakes in California, floods in the Middle West,
    hurricanes in the South, severe winter weather that hit so many of our
    States last year. But we know that all the Federal responses in the
    world only work when it is matched with and really supports the courage
    that you show on a daily basis in all of your States and communities.
        I used to tell people that when I was the Governor of my State I had
    a real life. And back when I had a real life, one of the things I did
    was to work on trying to extend fire service to our rural areas with a
    direct funding stream every year that went to volunteer fire departments
    and with a number of other training and other legislative initiatives
    that made it possible during my 12 years of service to create over 700
    volunteer fire departments in our State. I'm very, very proud of that.
    And I'm proud of the work that all of them did and what it did for
    people's fire insurance rates and how many homes and lives were saved as
    a result of that effort.
        On Monday, yesterday, I went to Engine 24 and Ladder 5 in New York
    City, in Greenwich Village, to honor three firemen who 40 days ago paid
    the ultimate tribute: John Drennan, of Staten Island, who hung on for 40
    days with massive injuries over most of his body--his funeral Mass will
    be said at St. Patrick's Cathedral tomorrow--a captain, 49 years old,
    with a wonderful wife, a schoolteacher, and four children; and two young
    firemen, James Young, of Queens and Christopher Siedenburg, of Staten
    Island, who was only 25 years old when he died. Sometimes I think that
    we forget how dangerous it can be to put yourself in the line of natural
    disasters and sometimes manmade disasters for your fellow human beings.
        I was deeply moved when I met the partners of those three firemen
    who died, and I will always remember them. Especially will I think of
    them when I have the privilege and the honor of signing the arson
    prevention act. I am going to be proud to sign this law, not just to
    make your lives easier, but to reduce the number of wasted lives and
    wasted dollars we lose to arson every day, needless and senseless
    tragedies that might otherwise be prevented.
        I want to thank all of you who worked so hard on that law, all of
    you at the grassroots, all of you in the Congress, and the chief
    sponsors, Senator Dick Bryan and Representative Rick Boucher. I can't
    wait to have the chance to sign that. And I'm sure that Congressman
    Hoyer and Congressman Weldon and some of the others here will have some
    idea about

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    exactly how we ought to sign that. And once again, when they ring the
    bell, I will show up.
        I noticed that the title of your annual report was, ``Protecting a
    Nation at Risk.'' I thought you were describing my job. [Laughter] I'll
    say this, there will always be risks involved in the work of freedom and
    the work of holding a civilized society together. The great tension we
    face today all around the world, in some ways, can be seen in the work
    you're doing against arson.
        There is today no cold war, no imminent threat of nuclear
    annihilation, although nuclear dangers remain. Three of the four
    countries in the former Soviet Union that had nuclear weapons have
    committed to getting rid of them, and Russia, which still has nuclear
    weapons, and the United States no longer point their warheads at one
    another. That is a wonderful thing to consider.
        But it's also true that we are fighting a constant battle all around
    the world between order and chaos and between those who wish to live in
    harmony and freedom and those who would abuse that very freedom. You see
    it whether it's in the ethnic brutality and the civil war in Bosnia or
    the rise, the lamentable rise, of organized crime in Russia where
    organized criminal thugs murder bankers at will who are trying to see
    free enterprise take root there or in the work of the gangs and some of
    the horrible tragedies within our own cities and communities.
        Those of you who are willing to literally put your lives on the line
    for other people's interests, for people who are in trouble, are the
    ultimate rebuttal to the cynics who believe we cannot create a world of
    justice and freedom where people live together in peace and honor. But
    we will, all of us, for the rest of our lives be fighting and working to
    make sure that our Nation is not put at risk and that our world can
    become safer by making sure the forces of order win over the forces of
    chaos and that the people who wish to have freedom are also willing to
    exercise it with responsibility. Every day, your lives symbolize that,
    the first and most enduring lesson of our democracy, and I thank you for
    it.
        Thank you very much.

    [At this point, the President was presented gifts, including a statue of
    an American eagle.]

        The President. I promise when I was invited to come, I had no idea I
    was going to receive any of these things. And you probably don't know
    this, Congressman Hoyer, but I have sometime been a collector of eagles.
    I love them very much. And in our State, Mr. Witt and I, we did a lot of
    work trying to preserve the American eagle. And by the time I left
    office, we had the second largest number of eagles of any State in the
    country. They do symbolize what is best about our country, and I will
    treasure this. Of all the ones I have collected, I think I have none
    that is as beautiful as this, and I'm very, very grateful.
        Thank you so much.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:03 p.m. at the Washington Hilton Hotel. A
    tape was not available for verification of the content of these remarks.