[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 41, Number 39 (Monday, October 3, 2005)]
[Pages 1459-1460]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks During a Briefing on Hurricane Rita in San Antonio

September 25, 2005

    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

[[Page 1460]]

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 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.
    Maj. Gen. Mayes. Sir, if I might add, I would say that it wouldn't 
necessarily make it less dangerous. I would tell you 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.

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.