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Release Date: 03/09/06 00:00:00
Washington, D.C.
National Press Association
Annual Government Affairs Conference
March 9, 2006
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Well, I want to thank you, Jerry, for that kind introduction. I want to also thank Liz Parker for greeting me -- from my old home town in New Jersey, and my local newspaper.
I'm really delighted to be before this group. There's a lot of discussion in Washington about the role of the media, and it tends to focus on the role of cable television, and is it becoming more entertainment. And then there's always criticism back and forth, and we get into the issues about leak investigations. There's a lot of kind of very volatile stuff.
But one of the reasons I wanted to come here is because I wanted to recognize that the media still has a very important traditional role that is not much discussed or debated on television and in Washington circles, and that role is to actually give people news. People really rely on newspapers -- and this is particularly true with community newspapers -- to actually find out what is going on and what they have to do, because whatever the pundit chatter and the political prognostication and the horse race analysis, in the end I think what's most important to people in their daily lives is, what are the challenges they face personally, what are the challenges their family face, and how do they deal with those challenges.
And that particularly comes up in the area of preparedness, because preparedness is really how we all -- on an individual level, on a business level and on a level of government -- plan for, build capabilities to deal with, train and exercise against and ultimately perform in the case of a real emergency or catastrophe.
Now of course, the most recent example of this and the importance of preparedness was Hurricane Katrina. At the same time, I think as the conversation in the last year has indicated, there's an increasing concern about the possibility of avian flu and what that might mean if, in fact, it either affected our agriculture here in the United States or even made the jump and became an effective human-to-human pathogen.
And I think in both looking at what we learned in Katrina and looking forward to what we would have to do in avian flu, it's certainly been increasingly evident to me that a critical issue is going to be, how do we communicate with the public in an accurate fashion about what they are facing or what they need to do.
We have a large responsibility to play in this in terms of giving you accurate information. We need to try to give you cautions when we don't know something, and make it clear that there are limits to what we know. And in return, what we ask of you is to accurately and proportionately convey that information to the public. And I think all of us have a role to play in this. I know the President is going to be here tomorrow to talk to you about some of these issues.
Let me review a little bit about Hurricane Katrina and what we're facing in preparedness going forward. Whenever I speak about Katrina, I always begin and, frankly, also always end with this: You can't understand Katrina without understanding the magnitude of the storm. This was simply not a repeat of 2004 or even Hurricane Andrew on a slightly larger scale. This was qualitatively different than any prior hurricane we've had. In fact, what's really remarkable is, we had three mega-hurricanes in a row -- Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Wilma was actually, I think, the most powerful storm recorded in the north Atlantic, and because of the way it hit, it didn't get the same impact because it, in a traditional hurricane fashion, came and went and then left the devastation behind it. But this trio of storms really taxed our capabilities beyond any previous challenge we had faced in the area of natural disasters.
Some statistics: Katrina alone had an impact on 90,000 square miles -- I think that's roughly the size of Great Britain; 770,000 households were displaced; 118 million cubic yards of debris were generated -- that's more than the combined debris of 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew, which was our earlier kind of next big hurricane; 11 times as many homes were damaged or destroyed as was the case in Hurricane Andrew; twice the amount of debris as in the Florida hurricanes of 2004. So it was a tremendous test of our capabilities. And of course, we have a Department which is still in the process of being built, so it really maybe gave us a test beyond what we were ready for, but it's also given us some really powerful and important lessons learned about what we need to be prepared for, not only in the future as it relates to hurricanes, but other kinds of catastrophes -- earthquakes, major terrorist attacks or things of that sort.
And so, we've got to focus on, from our standpoint in the government, understanding how to do some things better than we have done.
Now, we've got a deadline approaching, and that's hurricane season. And I want to be very clear: We could have an event tomorrow. We could have a huge earthquake, and then we're going to be dealing with that. We could have a very mild hurricane season. But for purposes of kind of inspiring everybody and prodding them with a deadline, I've kind of set June 1st as the goal by which we need to be at the next level of preparedness. It's not to say we're going to be done with retooling FEMA and doing everything we need to do on June 1st, but it means we've got to be in a better position on June 1st than we were last June 1st.
And that means a number of different things. First, we've got to remember, at the beginning and the end of the day, the brunt of any disaster is felt locally. And so the first people who are going to feel that challenge are going to be our state and local first responders. What we need to -- and that's as a tribute, by the way, because the people who understand communities best, just as local papers do, are local first responders. They understand the culture, they understand the geography. If Washington were to dictate a set of emergency plans for the whole country, it would make things worse than ever, because we wouldn't understand the particular lines of authority, the particular geographic constraints, and the particular cultural factors that come to play in each locality and state. But what we can do is support state and local responders with planning, with additional capabilities and with resources.
And so what we have done, following on the President's mandate last year in Louisiana, is to go out and meet with representatives in the emergency operation community from the 50 states and the 75 largest urban areas, and we've said, we need to review and sit down with you and tune up your evacuation and emergency plans. Stage one was, we said, we want you to do a self-evaluation. Tell us where you think you're doing well or doing poorly.
We've done that. That was done on February the 10th. There were a fair number of greens, a fair number of yellows, and a fair number of reds, and I suspect people have tended to grade themselves in many cases on a higher curve than maybe we would grade them. We're going out now to validate those results and to start to work on helping states and localities fill their shortfalls with respect to preparedness.
We're going to start this, by the way, first -- most aggressively -- in the Gulf, and I'm going to be saying this over and over and over and over and over again; I'm going to be saying it going down to the Gulf and I'm going to have the FEMA director say it and the preparedness undersecretary say it -- we're going to be in a particularly precarious position this June, July and August, because we're going to be in the middle of reconstruction. Homes are going to be partly repaired, partly built. We're still going to have a lot of trailers on site. And that means that storms that we might not necessarily be too worried about in a year where we were fully constructed are going to be potentially much more dangerous.
There are going to be dislocations, in terms of the number of resources that you have. They're still rebuilding, in terms of municipal services. So we're going to need to have a really candid assessment from state and local officials, working with our officials, about how prepared they are to evacuate or to respond if we have even a comparatively mild hurricane season in the Gulf.
When we get that assessment -- and I have spoken to the military about this -- we're going to be looking to the federal government to see where do we need to fill in with capabilities and resources. It doesn't mean, though, that the state and local governments can abdicate responsibility. It means we have to have a very disciplined and honest discussion about what they should do, what they can do, and what we need to be able to step in to do. And a big part of that is going to be individual responsibility, as well.
There were three types of people who confronted the order to evacuate in the Gulf last year. Some of those were incapacitated -- they were in hospitals and in nursing homes. And let me tell you, anybody who runs a nursing facility or a hospital and doesn't take the steps necessary to evacuate those people who are committed to that institution's care is guilty, in my mind, of gross malfeasance. They have a moral and legal responsibility to make sure they take care of the people committed to their charge, and that has got to be unequivocal.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are going to be -- there are people -- there were people last year who just could have left and didn't leave. They had cars, they had gas, they had money. They were going to ride it out. We see that in every hurricane. We saw it in Wilma on Key West. My message to those people is, shame on you. Because the fact of the matter is, if you miscalculate and you have to be rescued, then the Coast Guard -- somebody who is rescuing you is not available to rescue somebody else. And all of us have, again, a moral and civic responsibility to take care of ourselves when we can so those who cannot take care of themselves can be helped by the responders.
And finally, we come to the third category -- people who are not in the care of others, but also don't necessarily have the means to get out themselves. And that's, I think, where government really has to play a role. We have to make sure we have a planned, trained and executed proposal for getting those people out of harm's way. In the first instance, that means we've got to look to local resources, buses, bus drivers, things of that sort. But we'll be talking very honestly about what we need to do in terms of supplementing that, particularly in the areas of great risk.
In terms of getting our own house in order, again, we've got some long-term retooling to do at FEMA, but we've got some short-term things we've got to do by this June 1.
First, we've got to have unified incident command. We've got to bring together FEMA and DHS and all the elements of the Department, and have total transparency in terms of what is actually being done, what needs to be done, bringing all of our resources to play, and also be closely linked with the military. We're doing that now. We're getting our preparedness people and the military's preparedness people together in the FEMA regions to start working together and training together and exercising together.
Secondly, we've got to have a 21st century logistics system, meaning visibility into where everything is so we know what we have to move and how quickly it's going to get there. And we're going to put that into our contracts going into hurricane season, which had never been done before. We're going to say to the shippers, you've got to -- your commitment, your contractual obligation is to be able to show us in real time where the stuff is, using GPS or wireless or other 21st century technology.
We're going to have contracting to increase our ability and our capacity to deal with people who have to register if they are displaced. And at the same time, I've spoken to the head of the Red Cross about the need to get an accounting for where shelters are going to be in the major -- run by the major NGOs, so that we can put people in to the shelters to start registering people immediately and not have to try to catch up.
We're going to do some things to make debris removal a little easier for states and localities to handle on a local basis, trying to level the playing field between the Army Corps of Engineers and local contractors, because I think it's cheaper and it's better for local economic communities if we give communities those choices.
And, finally, we're going to be doing some additional work in terms of communications. We've asked for money from Congress for vehicles that can go into an afflicted area with portable communications capability that is independent of a wireless system that's knocked down. We're going to have reconnaissance teams we can put into place if we need to get that kind of visibility.
And, finally, we're going to make sure that we continue to move forward on the area of interoperability in the course of this year.
So I've talked about what we have to do at a state and local level, I've talked about what we have to do at the federal level. Let me conclude by talking about what we have to do at the individual level. And here's where I think newspapers can play a big role. And I'm going to step back here and not just look at hurricanes; I'm going to look at the issue of avian flu, as well.
In the first instance, the responsibility for dealing with these challenges always rests with the individual. It's been common doctrine for years that you can't expect responders necessarily to get there within the 48 hours. People ought to have 48 to 72 hours of food and water, necessary medicines, a battery-operated or a crank radio, batteries for flashlights -- things that you would need to be able to be self-sufficient for a period of 48-72 hours.
In addition, people have to plan. They have to really understand, what are they going to do if they're separated. I remember where I was on 9/11, I remember where my wife was, where my children were. And I remember the panic that there was in the community as parents tried to reach their kids. The schools are now much better, I think, about building plans, about what do they do with kids if there is an emergency and a crisis and people have to be maintained in a safe place. But families have to do that, too. You need to know where you would go if people were disconnected and couldn't communicate. And the time to think about that stuff is now, and newspapers can do a lot about educating without alarming.
And then there are going to be some novel challenges. People in hurricane areas understand about boarding up their houses and some of the things they have to do when a hurricane hits. We don't always have that kind of understanding about more novel threats. We talk about avian flu. Sometimes you hear portrayals that are very alarmist, and certainly there are worst-case scenarios that are pretty bad. Sometimes you hear and you see -- you read in the newspapers that avian flu has broken out in a lot of the world, at least among birds, and then bird-to-human transmission, and I don't think it's treated as a very alarming story. We need to give people real information about the whole spectrum of things that can happen. And if we did have an avian epidemic or a pandemic, people will be looking to the local news for information about things like, should I be going to work? Should I be worried about eating chicken? And the answer, by the way, is if you cook chicken thoroughly and properly, you don't have to worry about it. But the danger of misinformation and panic, actually having a worse effect than the underlying event, is a real danger, and that's why particularly news organizations really have a critical role to play in terms of making sure you are conveying accurate, clear and calm information about what's going on.
I think these are issues we want to continue to work with you about. It doesn't mean we want to manage you, it doesn't mean that you have to say we're doing a great job. That's not about any of that stuff. We can -- in a normal course of dealing with the media, we push back and forth. You ask us hard questions, we push back, et cetera. This is something totally different. This has to do with what we tell people about how do you deal with illness if you see an illness, where should you go, should you go to work, should you not go to work -- conveying information that public health experts and veterinary and agriculture experts are going to need to communicate with a large number of people. And if we can communicate about these things and get it right, we will be doing a major public service.
Now I think I'll take some questions.
QUESTION: I realize that FEMA doesn't have direct control over certain conditions, but what role do you see FEMA playing in, for example, the allocation of funds to build the levees, maybe so that there's oversight in those areas, because that flood in New Orleans apparently was a great deal to do with the levees, not the hurricane itself. And, from Michigan, the Palisades Nuclear Plant, what preventative measures are they putting in place to make sure that we're monitoring locally on the safety of those installations?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Excellent question. The levees are maintained and built by the Army Corps of Engineers, which is part of the department of the Army. FEMA doesn't play a role in that. Our input will be that the extent to which the levees are strengthened will have a big effect on the flood maps, and that will have an effect on what people do. My message is basically this -- obviously, I'm going to leave it to the engineers what they need to do to get to the levees and make the levees strong -- what we have to be committed to do is to be honest about what the real threats are. The fact of the matter is, New Orleans will always be sitting in a bowl, and we'll have to be candid in assessing what that means in terms of flood elevation, and not let ourselves be pushed into making lower elevations because it's convenient.
On the nuclear plants, nuclear safety, of course, is -- the NRC plays a major role. But we do work with state and local communities, and we're doing that now on evacuation plans.
Again, communities have to understand what they would do if there were some kind of an event. There are some medicines that are stockpiled, in case there's a radioactive release. But at the end of the day, we have to work with locals who understand what the road situation is and things of that sort.
QUESTION: But those plans are being -- that's for preparedness.
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: That's right, and that's part of what we are doing now. As we go to the states, we'll say, look, what are the things you're most worried about. We're not going to tell them what they should worry about; they've got to tell us. And presumably in Michigan, they'd say, we worry about this issue, and then here's what the plan is. We look at the plan, we say it's good, it's bad, it's in the middle, and then we talk about how to make it better.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, traditionally local emergency response coordinators have involved local newspapers as part of the emergency response plans for major instances, where information flows to the paper for the community and also (inaudible) other outside media. Is that part of your federal programs, to use local newspapers as communications tools in times of disaster?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: It is. And part of what -- a critical part of what we do, and maybe a part that I've come to realize is among the most critical -- is information, conveying information accurately.
Now obviously, here in Washington, we tend to deal with the national media, which is here. But when we get into managing an incident in the field, so to speak, a lot of the emphasis is, in fact, on making sure we are communicating with the local media and local newspapers.
One of the things I anticipate we will do as we get into the run-up on hurricane season -- and Georgia is in the zone, although not in the Gulf -- is actually talking about preparedness with the local media. It shouldn't just be us getting up here in Washington with the big outlets. We should be getting down and talking to local newspapers and local TV stations about the kinds of issues people have to be ready for.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, in the past month, as you know, in Europe there have been a number of cases in avian flu in several countries. At this point, when do you really suspect that we will have a similar case here in the United States? Are you anticipating that will be weeks, months? And do you expect that there will be the same reaction here as there has been in Europe?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Let me first emphasize, in Europe, it has been, of course, largely avian flu with birds. There have been some bird-to-human cases. Let me also put something in perspective. We had not H5N1, but other forms of avian flu, including pretty serious avian diseases, in this country in past years. USDA -- Department of Agriculture -- actually is very well-practiced and experienced in dealing with even high pathogen avian illnesses, from the standpoint of agriculture.
So the first message I'm going to say is, if we get a wild bird or even a domestic chicken that gets infected with avian flu, we're going to be able to deal with it because we've got a lot of experience with that.
That being said, I can't predict, but I certainly have to say we should be prepared for the possibility that at some point in the next few months, a wild foul will come over the migratory pathway and will be infected with H5N1. We keep a lot of our poultry business indoors, so we don't have the kind of situation you get in a lot of countries where there's a lot of mixing of wild foul and domestic foul, but there would be a reasonable possibility of a domestic foul outbreak.
I think there's a critical question you raise, which is how would the public react. I think the public should react with alertness and with care, but not with panic. Avian flu, in domestic foul or domestic poultry, would not be a panic situation. We've dealt with these kinds of issues before, similar issues. We actually are working on a very specific plan to deal with this. We would obviously be monitoring for human health characteristics, but it would not be time to push the panic button.
But it would be time to start to get acquainted with some of the challenges. And I'll repeat it again: Properly cooked chicken does not pose a threat of avian flu. What we would expect to do is have the Department of Agriculture experts explain how you -- if there were any kind of a scare about this -- how do you handle chicken, how do you cook it, things of that sort.
So, again, we'd be interested in getting out really early on the informational front on something like this.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, I'm from the St. Louis area, and St. Louis is along the New Madrid fault, and an earthquake is predicted to happen some day. Is your Department giving special attention to areas like that that haven't been (inaudible)?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: We are -- I have a little map in part of my office that actually shows the dozen worst super catastrophes that could happen, and New Madrid is one of them. We actually -- this happens to be an area we are in the middle of planning. We've got a program of planning over the next year, year-and-a-half, working with local communities specifically to address the issue of evacuation and emergency planning if there were an earthquake.
But building any plan, it's not going to be done overnight. Obviously if we have an earthquake tomorrow there, it's going to be -- we're going to be less far along than we will be if we have another year.
But this is really a critical part of what are now doing in this going out and doing preparedness, is working with the states and locals to make sure we really understand the roles and responsibilities and plans.
And no catastrophe is ever going to be pretty. It's never going to be wonderful like on television. Our obligation is to get it as close to perfect as we can, recognizing that we're never going to hit perfect. But this -- clearly these ultra-catastrophes are ones which we are focused on and every day we're getting better in terms of our planning.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, I've operated in the southern and the eastern suburbs of Baton Rouge. I know you've heard a lot of complaints. I'd like to tell you thank you very much.
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Thank you.
QUESTION: I don't know what we would have done without the federal government, but we've still got a long way to go.
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: I appreciate that. Let me conclude by saying this. The experience of dealing with Katrina is one that we felt as a Department -- and, of course, I felt personally very deeply, as well -- I want to praise Louisiana, because the evacuation in New Orleans, although there were a lot of people who were left, was, my understanding, is better than prior evacuations by a considerable measure. And that made a real difference. As bad as it was, it could have been worse. I think that's important.
Secondly, the heroism and the selflessness of the people -- local, state and federal -- was really inspiring. And I think -- it pains me when FEMA gets branded in a negative way, because I know there were some tremendous, tremendous people who put themselves in harm's way at FEMA, just as they did in the state and local governments.
So I really -- I blame the hurricane, and I think that in the midst of a lot of the criticism -- and there's some valid criticism and we can learn from it -- I think that there is also a lesson about pulling together as a team, which is an important lesson.
QUESTION: I did have a question.
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Oh, I thought I could filibuster it out. (Laughter.)
QUESTION: Senator Obama from Illinois put in a bill in the Senate to establish a Chief Financial Office for FEMA spending (inaudible). He has caught the fancy of this organization by adding requirements in the bill that there be publication of financial transactions in county newspapers, and I think that's an area where FEMA is spending money. Are you aware of the bill, and what are your personal feelings about it?
And the second question, it's been suggested by some members of Congress and others that FEMA be separated from your organization, there being a difference between an attack on the United States and a natural disaster. What are your feelings about that?
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: As far as the first goes, we have a Chief Financial Officer. I'm totally in favor of transparency. Obviously what I don't want to do is get bogged down in a lot of administrative activity where we have to spend a lot of time hunting down information and putting it out. But in terms of opening what we do financially to the public, I have no problem with that.
I haven't seen the particular piece of legislation, so I can't comment on it, but I do actually believe in transparency in financial transactions.
I think it would be a disaster to take FEMA out of DHS. The things that worked best were things where the whole Department got involved. When we got the Coast Guard, we were able to deploy the Coast Guard to do things because they're a part of DHS. When we were able to build an air bridge to speed up the evacuation out of the Superdome by using the airport, we did that with TSA. When we put our law enforcement people into the city, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. We couldn't have done that, it would have been harder to do if FEMA had been a separate agency.
I reject the idea that there's a big difference between response to terrorism and response to all hazards. First of all, there's a lot of overlap. Whether it's evacuation because of a huge bomb that is set off, or evacuation because of a hurricane, whether the levees break because of a structural problem or because someone planted a bomb, there's going to be a lot of overlap. And the idea of having two agencies duplicating effort and preparing to respond strikes me as wasteful, at best, and confusing, at worst.
We're often not going to know whether something is terrorism or not terrorism. Before Katrina -- so I think this gives me a little bit of street cred -- before Katrina, we called in for the first time the emergency managers and the homeland security advisors, because in a lot of states, they do divide them. And we said, we've got to work together. We've got to build a single culture, an all-hazards culture. I continue to think that's right. I think that where we had problems in Katrina, it was because people didn't make use of the full range of resources of the federal government to come into play. Where we did best was when we were able to keep them all integrated in one department. And I think the answer to this is, we've got to finish the job of integrating, rather than reverse course and go back to the old fragmented stovepipe system.
By the way, before I go, one other observation. This argument about pulling apart what we've merged and integrated, you hear this with the intelligence community all the time. There are people who quibble and quarrel because we've now merged together and we're integrating the intelligence community, because there's always the cultural resistance. Understandably, each agency is proud of its heritage, and we don't want to obliterate that legacy. But I got to tell you, I lived with this in the world of intelligence reform, and I now see it here -- it is always better to be integrated and joint than to be separated. That was a lesson the Department of Defense learned over a very difficult 60-year period. And we're not going to take 60 years or even six years to do this, but we are going to finish the job.
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This page was last reviewed/modified on 03/09/06 00:00:00.