<DOC>
[108th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:91135.wais]
WHAT IF ISABEL MET TRACTOR MAN? A POST-HURRICANE REASSESSMENT OF
EMERGENCY READINESS IN THE CAPITAL REGION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 3, 2003
__________
Serial No. 108-89
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
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WASHINGTON : 2003
___________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia Maryland
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania Columbia
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio JIM COOPER, Tennessee
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas CHRIS BELL, Texas
WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota ------
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Peter Sirh, Staff Director
Melissa Wojciak, Deputy Staff Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Philip M. Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on October 3, 2003.................................. 1
Statement of:
Marshall, John, secretary of public safety, Commonwealth of
Virginia; Dennis R. Schrader, director for the Governor's
Office of Homeland Security, State of Maryland; and Peter
G. LaPorte, director, Emergency Management Agency, District
of Columbia................................................ 32
Tolbert, Eric, Director of the Response Division, Federal
Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security................................................... 17
White, Richard, chief executive officer, Washington
Metropolitan Area Transit Authority; William J. Sim,
president, Pepco; Admiral Jay Johnson, president and CEO of
Dominion Virginia Power; Jerry N. Johnson, general manager,
D.C. Water and Sewer Authority; Charlie C. Crowder, Jr.,
general manager, Fairfax County Water Authority,
accompanied by James A. Warfield, Jr., executive officer;
and Leslie A. Violette, treasurer, Belle View Condominium
Unit Owners Association Community.......................... 70
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Crowder, Charlie C., Jr., general manager, Fairfax County
Water Authority, prepared statement of..................... 104
Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Maryland, prepared statement of............... 133
Davis, Chairman Tom, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Virginia, prepared statement of................... 4
Johnson, Admiral Jay, president and CEO of Dominion Virginia
Power, prepared statement of............................... 92
Johnson, Jerry N., general manager, D.C. Water and Sewer
Authority, prepared statement of........................... 112
LaPorte, Peter G., director, Emergency Management Agency,
District of Columbia, prepared statement of................ 55
Marshall, John, secretary of public safety, Commonwealth of
Virginia, prepared statement of............................ 36
Moran, Hon. James P., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Virginia, prepared statement of................... 11
Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, a Delegate in Congress from the
District of Columbia, prepared statement of................ 7
Schrader, Dennis R., director for the Governor's Office of
Homeland Security, State of Maryland, prepared statement of 45
Sim, William J., president, Pepco, prepared statement of..... 83
Tolbert, Eric, Director of the Response Division, Federal
Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security, prepared statement of............................ 19
Violette, Leslie A., treasurer, Belle View Condominium Unit
Owners Association Community, prepared statement of........ 119
White, Richard, chief executive officer, Washington
Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, prepared statement of. 73
WHAT IF ISABEL MET TRACTOR MAN? A POST-HURRICANE REASSESSMENT OF EMER-
GENCY READINESS IN THE CAPITAL REGION
----------
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2003
House of Representatives,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Davis (chairman
of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Tom Davis, Norton, and Van Hollen.
Also present: Representative Moran of Virginia.
Staff present: Peter Sirh, staff director; Melissa Wojciak,
deputy staff director; John Hunter, counsel; Robert Borden,
counsel/parliamentarian; David Marin, director of
communications; John Cuaderes, senior professional staff
member; Teresa Austin, chief clerk; Brien Beattie, deputy
clerk; Shalley Kim, legislative assistant; Rosalind Parker,
minority counsel; Earley Green, minority chief clerk; Jean
Gosa, minority assistant clerk; and Cecelia Morton, minority
office manager.
Chairman Tom Davis. The committee will come to order. I
would like to welcome everybody to today's hearing on emergency
readiness in the National Capital Region.
Our region faces unique challenges when it comes to crisis
preparation and response planning. There is a multitude of
local, State and Federal agencies that need to work in unison.
There is the traffic gridlock that plagues us even under the
best of circumstances. There is the fact that the Capitol is a
massive bull's eye for those who seek to do us harm.
This is a followup to the hearing our committee held on
April 10, 2003, examining the state of emergency preparedness
in the Nation's Capital. At that time, the infamous ``tractor
man'' standoff and a spate of snowstorms provided the hearing's
backdrop. Today, our response to Hurricane Isabel offers
another opportunity to reassess our region's readiness for
potential disasters of all types.
Experience is the best teacher. Obviously, hindsight is 20/
20. We are not here to attack or condemn or embarrass anybody;
we are just trying to have a frank, honest discussion about
what happened and what we can learn. But it is my hope that
together we can use the latest crisis to better prepare for
whatever challenges the future may hold.
We need to find out what worked and what didn't and why.
How were decisions made? What procedures are in place to assess
the situation retrospectively? What implications are there for
regional preparedness as a whole in terms of transportation,
power, water, and evacuation procedures? How were residents and
businesses kept informed before, during and after the
hurricane? The bottom line: How can the region better prepare
and respond in the future?
Emergency preparedness is, by its very nature, a
hypothetical exercise, one in which we take what we know and
craft a plan to respond to the unknown. So, while somewhat
tongue in cheek, out title today, ``What if Isabel met Tractor
Man?''--is really meant as a serious hypothetical. Are we ready
to respond if a storm coincides with a protest? What about a
storm coinciding with an attack on the Capital? We need to
realize the world is watching. Just 2 days ago, for example,
there was a Chinese television crew at a local public meeting
on Pepco's response to the storm.
Federal, local and State governments have taken a number of
steps to improve the coordination of emergency preparedness
efforts. Today, it is our hope to examine whether that
coordination is working.
With Isabel came debatable public transportation decisions,
widespread power outages, public health alerts, and
neighborhood evacuations. In the wake of September 11th,
Federal, State and local governments have been charged with
working closely to respond to any disaster, including natural
disasters such as Hurricane Isabel. Our question today is:
Could we have been better prepared?
Isabel tested many systems in the region, particularly
transportation, electric power and water systems. Throughout
the Capital Region, intersections contained fallen tree debris
and malfunctioning traffic lights. Public transportation was
shut down, including Metro, railways, and airports. Viable
transportation is the cornerstone of ensuring the region's
ability to react and respond effectively to any emergency.
The region had an unprecedented number of power outages.
Over a million customers are estimated to have lost power--
129,000 in the District, 360,000 in northern Virginia, and
486,000 in Maryland. It took more than a week for utility
companies to restore power to all customers. Residents and
public officials have complained that it simply took too long.
There were problems with water and sewer plants which
resulted in the public health alert in Fairfax County.
Residents were told to boil water when the systems used to
power the plants lost electricity.
Meteorologists were tracking Isabel days before. This
wasn't a surprise attack. We have to ask, in case of a
terrorist attack, how well prepared will the region be? I hope
that, by the end of this hearing, the committee will have a
good picture of the cleanup efforts in the National Capital
Area, what was learned from the devastation of Hurricane Isabel
and the progress made in developing an effective emergency
preparedness program. Also, the committee hopes to find out
what actions have been taken by the Federal Government and
local jurisdictions to craft after-action reports and, in turn,
improve coordination, readiness, and responses for the future.
We will also find out what, if anything, has been learned
concerning the region's critical infrastructure and what can be
done to keep it on line during a disaster.
Facts don't cease to exist simply because they are ignored.
Let's get all of the facts of what went well and what didn't go
so well. Then we can move forward together to better protect
the Capital Region in the future.
I would now recognize my distinguished colleague from the
District of Columbia, Ms. Norton, for any statements she may
wish to make.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Tom Davis follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1135.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1135.002
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to
specifically thank the chairman for calling today's hearing and
for its more complex and, I believe, more useful framework for
viewing recent disturbances in our region. I believe that this
hearing has the potential to help us connect dots we perhaps
didn't even recognize were there. Within the last 2 years, our
region has been caught by surprise and unprepared three times.
The most tragic was September 11 and the Pentagon catastrophe.
The most absurd was the Tractor Man episode that paralyzed
downtown. The most unavoidable was Hurricane Isabel that
whistled through loudly and destructively 2 weeks ago.
I believe it would be a mistake to think that these three
disasters have nothing in common. To be sure, September 11 was
a terrorist disaster, Isabel was a natural disaster and Tractor
Man was a man-made disaster. Except for Isabel, prevention
remains an arguable issue, but surely it was possible to
prepare for all three. No one can be expected to control future
events, but we all have an obligation to take the necessary
preparations to mitigate the damage and hasten the return to
normalcy.
As a matter of preparation, all three of these events have
much in common, I believe. There is no such thing as a generic
disaster. But these three disasters raise the possibility that
there may be generic preparations that can be tailored to
specific events. Many of the vital actors will be the same, for
example, elected officials, public safety and emergency safety
personnel, medical personnel, and transportation authorities.
Many of the methods that must be used, particularly
coordination and communication, also will be the same or
similar.
Since September 11, our region has been putting in place
procedures and protections against the unknown. Surely the
painstaking preparation for a terrorist attack has carryover
that can help us learn how to achieve better coordination and
to get quicker riddance of Tractor Man or quicker recovery and
cleanup from Isabel and their unknown progeny yet to come.
I hope that today's hearing can promote such thinking and
action. If September 11 did nothing else, it may have moved us
to a day when we can be prepared for almost anything.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1135.003
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. I also see my
distinguished colleague and neighbor in northern Virginia, Mr.
Moran, is here with us. Jim, welcome.
Mr. Moran. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is nice to be with
you and Eleanor. I appreciate being invited to participate in
this hearing. I think it is important for the whole region and
to a great many of our residents because it is going to shed
light on how we can better prepare for future emergencies and
situations like these that we have been faced with over the
last several months.
As my colleagues mentioned, last April it was Tractor Man
and how we can better react to a situation like that. At that
hearing, we learned that we could have done a better job
coordinating responses between the Federal Government and
localities. We also learned that if a tobacco farmer in a
tractor can bring this region to a standstill, which he did,
just think of what a hazardous chemical spill or, heaven
forbid, a terrorist attack directly on the Nation's Capital
could do.
Last winter we had Mother Nature hit us with mounds of snow
and sheets of ice, crippling the region and testing our ability
to respond to inclement weather. After the snow and ice had
melted, we all said we needed to reassess our response to
natural emergencies and establish better procedures. Yet, here
we are again talking about how this region can better prepare
and recover from a situation that again brought the region to a
halt. No doubt, Hurricane Isabel was a Category 3 hurricane
that packed a punch this region hasn't seen since Hurricane
Floyd. For the most part, we were prepared and ready for the
storm.
Our firefighters, police officers and other emergency
responders were selfless in their service to our residents. And
their efforts saved lives, prevented injuries, and protected
millions of dollars' worth of real estate and property from
being damaged even more by the storm. These emergency
responders must have the resources they need to perform their
jobs, and I think it is a responsibility of the Federal
Government to assist States and localities in securing those
investments in our public safety departments around the
country.
I do have concerns, however, that we may have overreacted a
bit about some issues and underreacted to other problems
brought on by the storm's fury. The National Weather Service,
for example, offered the best forecast they could; and
accordingly, Metro and the Office of Personnel Management were
guided in their decisionmaking by their interpretation of the
National Weather Service forecast. But Metro's decision to shut
down service at 11 a.m., prompting the Federal Government to
shut down on Thursday, September 18th, does not seem to have
been a well-thought-out decision. Or was it? Well, that is what
we need to look into, the process and considerations that went
into making that decision. But when Metro decided to shut down
and the Federal Government decided to follow suit, it created a
ripple effect that cost taxpayers about $70 million on that
day. Meanwhile, area businesses lost millions of dollars in
lost productivity because most businesses in the region take
OPM's lead in deciding how to react to emergencies. And yet
nothing happened until considerably later in the afternoon, and
we would have had plenty of time, for example, if the Federal
Government had simply said, ``We will let you leave 2 hours
early,'' instead of shutting down the whole day.
After Hurricane Isabel came through, she left a path of
devastation in select areas of the region. My district was one
of the most affected. Businesses and residences throughout Old
Town Alexandria and the Belle View and new Alexandria sections
of Fairfax County were completely flooded when the Potomac
River spilled over its banks. In the Belle View Shopping
Center, some family businesses were wiped out by the storm,
either by its flooding or by the amount of money that they lost
due to damage and recovery repairs.
One particular business in that shopping center literally
lost absolutely everything as a result of the hurricane, Dishes
of India. It was a small, successful, Indian cuisine restaurant
in the basement of the shopping center. It had been the
lifelong dream of its owner. He and his family had saved for
more than 7 years to open up the restaurant. When the storm
came, the water rushed into the back, into the kitchen, filled
up the restaurant up to the ceiling. When I walked through the
restaurant with them a week after the storm, workers were still
trying to get water out of the basement; the damage will take
months to repair. That family cannot recover unless there is
some Federal help through the Small Business Administration and
FEMA.
Many northern Virginians had smaller scale, but no less
traumatic experiences. As we will hear later, Belle View
Condominiums; 65 buildings were all flooded, all lost their
boilers; there are 17 homes now uninhabitable. They all lost
the belongings that they had kept in their basements, but even
on the first floor, most anything of value was destroyed. The
insurance companies say they will only take care of the
building itself, no insurance for the contents even though they
had flood insurance. So you have to ask, can Fairfax County
have been better prepared for the flooding? Is there something
we could have done to prevent, or at least alerted residents
sooner that 9\1/2\ feet of water was going to spill into their
neighborhood? We want to get some answers to that.
One of the biggest complaints we have heard was with regard
to electricity being out for days, because residents weren't
given accurate information. Compared to Pepco, Dominion
Virginia Power did a decent job of getting the lights back on.
But there is more that both companies could do in that regard.
We live in a country where our daily lives depend on
electricity. Our power companies have to ensure that the lights
are going to stay on regardless of the weather, and residents
need to know, if the power goes out, when service is likely to
be restored, and not be given a song and dance leading them to
believe it is going to be the next day, when it is 4 days
later. Sixty-nine percent of Dominion's northern Virginia
customers had their power knocked out, with 1.8 million out of
2.2 million customers without power. Close to half a million
homes in northern Virginia were affected. It was good for me,
because I had my power out as well, so when people would call
your house and go on and on about the fact that they thought
preference was being given, it was helpful to be able to say,
``No, ma'am, I don't have power either.'' But the fact is, we
all need to figure out a way, because we are just too dependent
upon power. And I know that the power companies are going to
pass on the cost of the storm in rate increases to their
customers. I am not sure that is an appropriate or wise move,
but I think we need to look into it.
I also think that the Department of Homeland Security needs
to perhaps broaden its responsibilities a bit to deal somewhat
better with this situation. I appreciate what FEMA did,
particularly in Alexandria and in the Belle View area. But FEMA
announced then that they would go door to door. They had
contract people go door to door. And they eventually, a week
later, set up a disaster recovery center. But their people,
contract people from States well to the south of Virginia, were
brought up. They had to stay in a hotel in Manassas, and it was
about an hour away, so 2 hours of driving to come up to that
neighborhood. You know, they weren't particularly accessible.
That is not their problem.
But there are a lot of things that we can do to improve the
responsiveness; and while I don't fault any individual, I do
think institutionally there are things that we can do. That is
why this hearing is so important.
With that, Mr. Chairman, again, I thank you for enabling me
to participate.
[The prepared statement of Hon. James P. Moran follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1135.081
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1135.082
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1135.083
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1135.084
Chairman Tom Davis. Well, thank you very much.
The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Van Hollen. Any opening
statement?
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for
holding these hearings on lessons that we can learn in our
region in the aftermath of Hurricane Isabel and how those
lessons might be applied to other situations we may confront in
the future, whether they are hurricanes or other types of
disasters in the region.
I am going to focus on the hurricane response and the
portion of it that most dramatically impacted upon my
constituents, which was the long power outages. And I
appreciate the fact that the head of Pepco, Bill Sim, is here
and is going to be testifying later. I also appreciate the fact
that Pepco has decided to hire James Lee Witt to come in and do
a thorough investigation of this situation. As the chief
executive of Pepco Holdings said recently, ``It is clear
customers have lost confidence in us. That is not something
that we take lightly. We think it is appropriate to bring in
Mr. Witt to help us rebuild that confidence.'' I can tell you
that from the hundreds of letters and e-mails that we received
in our offices in a period of over a week, from people who
would call at home and in the Washington office, in our
district office, people have lost much faith in the ability of
Pepco to respond. Clearly, this was a huge storm of proportions
that we have not seen in this region for a long time. It was
the biggest storm to strike while Pepco was providing service.
It was a monumental task.
I hope that as we go forward we will focus on four areas:
One, what can we do up front to try and prevent such massive
power outages in the future? Obviously we are going to have
some power outages when we have huge hurricanes like Isabel.
But what can we do? Tree trimming? Lines underground? Better
ability to strengthen the infrastructure to prevent the power
outages from being as extensive as they were in the first
place? And as you know, this is not the first occurrence. We
had an earlier power outage this summer that lasted for many
customers as long as a week. So this was a double whammy for
many people.
Second, response preparation. When we know that there is a
hurricane coming, or we know that we are going to be facing
this kind of situation, what can we do to better prepare? More
crews on the ground? From the statements and reports that I
have read and looked at, Dominion Power was able to get many
more crews on the ground up front. They took better advantage
of the warnings that were in place with respect to the size of
this hurricane on its way, and they had more people on the
ground ready to respond more quickly. What else can we do to
better prepare for responses?
Third, managing the expectations of customers. Once the
hurricane has hit, once the power is out, how can we better
manage expectations? The first round of power outages in this
region, Pepco took one extreme. They tried to be very specific,
telling customers exactly when their power would go on, and
they made an effort to do that. Unfortunately, what happened
was, a lot of people's expectations were, ``OK, I am going to
get my power on tomorrow; that is what I have been told. And
when we were unable to provide that power on schedule, people
understandably became disenchanted.'' With the second round, we
had really the opposite extreme. People were really told, even
before the hurricane actually hit, that we can't assure that
your power is going to be on for more than a week later, the
following Friday. Even as additional information became
available as to where Pepco was going to be restoring power,
and Pepco had good reason to believe they would be able to
restore power--not a guarantee of a specific date, but some
ball-park range--people were informed and that had an impact on
their planning. So I am interested in what we can do to better
allow people to know when their power is going to be on.
And finally, courtesy. I know that Pepco has a terrific
team of people. They brought in a lot of good people. But there
are always people who, when they are on the other end of the
phone, for instance there are always some people who forget
that the customer on the end of the phone is frustrated. And
there were many instances, and we got lots of reports from
people who were--where the Pepco person on the other end of the
line was--just brushed them off and said, you know, ``Sorry,
too bad, we just can't do anything about your problem,'' in a
very brusk manner without the kind of understanding of the
frustration that people were going through when they had more
than a week without power, sometimes more. And, finally, these
disconnects where people would be on the phone with their
lights off telling people on the other end, ``My lights are
off,'' and being told, ``No, our system says your lights are
on.'' There is nothing more frustrating than that, or being
told that you have a live--reporting that you have a live wire
by your house, and being told that, ``No, in fact, you don't.''
I mean, that kind of disconnect obviously is something that is
of great concern to consumers.
You know, I have lots of letters, and very thoughtful
letters, letters that aren't just screaming and talking about
how terrible everything is, but really documenting very clearly
personal experiences, phone conversations, outlining them,
specifically when they took place and what was said. So I know
that so many people are hearing a lot of frustration from a lot
of customers and saying, you know, everyone has to understand
that this was a major event. And it was a major event. But at
the same time, we all have to understand that these are people
who were very patient for many days, and at the end of 3 or 4
days began to lose patience, especially when they did not and
could not get the kind of information that I think they were
entitled to get.
So I hope we will address those areas as we consider these
issues. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Our first witness is Eric Tolbert, the Director of the
Response Division of FEMA, under the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security.
It is the policy of this committee that we swear you in
before you testify, so if you would rise with me and raise your
right hand.
[Witness sworn.]
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Your total statement is in
the record. It will be printed in the record. We would like to
keep you to 5 minutes, because Members have read it and are
ready to ask questions on that. So we have a light in front. It
will turn orange or yellow after 4 minutes, and red after 5. If
you can try to keep close to that, that would be helpful. But
we appreciate your being here. Thank you very much.
STATEMENT OF ERIC TOLBERT, DIRECTOR OF THE RESPONSE DIVISION,
FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY
Mr. Tolbert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the
committee. I am Eric Tolbert, Director of the Response Division
of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is part of
the Department of Homeland Security. On behalf of Secretary Tom
Ridge and Under Secretary Mike Brown, I appreciate the
opportunity to testify before you today on the response to
Hurricane Isabel.
Recovery from the disaster is ongoing, and I can assure you
that President Bush is committed to assisting all of the
affected States and local jurisdictions from North Carolina to
Pennsylvania. The Department and FEMA will be there as long as
we are needed. The level of cooperation and professionalism
exhibited by all of the local, State and Federal personnel, the
emergency responders, the volunteers, and the private sector
responders has been outstanding. The American people can be
proud of the work they are doing to help the region recover.
Early on, we recognized that Isabel would evolve into a
significant, multiregional response, so beginning on September
15th, we really started stepping up our coordination and
action-planning activities in advance of the predicted
landfall. Our intent was to make FEMA prepared and in the best
possible position to rapidly and effectively execute our
disaster response operations as directed by the President and
in support of State and local jurisdictions.
FEMA operations were augmented by the activation of the
Emergency Support Team, which is our interagency Federal
response plan organization to help coordinate preparation for
and response to the disaster. At that time, advance elements of
the National Emergency Response Team were also dispatched to
the field, and regularly scheduled video teleconferences were
held with all of the East Coast States that we anticipated
could potentially be impacted by the hurricane, all the way
from Florida to New England. The video teleconferences allowed
us to, first, provide storm information and predictions,
facilitate intergovernmental coordination, develop action plans
anticipating what the requirements would be, and coordinate
preparations among the States, the Department of Homeland
Security and its various elements: the FEMA headquarters, the
White House, the Hurricane Liaison Team that we placed at the
National Hurricane Center, our regional operations centers in
Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Atlanta, our FEMA
mobilization centers that were established in advance of the
event, and the emergency support functions from all of the
Federal agencies and departments. The Hurricane Liaison Team,
which operated around the clock, was invaluable in coordinating
the real-time meteorological updates and predictions from the
National Hurricane Center, the Hydrometeorological Prediction
Center, the Southeast River Forecast Center, the Mid-Atlantic
Forecast Center, and other NOAA components.
Beginning on September 15 and continuing through the post-
disaster period, video teleconferences were conducted at least
twice daily to give the affected States and the District of
Columbia an open line of communications and the opportunity to
raise questions, express concerns, coordinate information and,
most importantly, request assistance and resources to respond
to the disaster. Advanced elements of our Emergency Response
Teams and State liaisons were dispatched before the storm to
the anticipated States that would be affected, and the District
of Columbia, to coordinate disaster preparedness as well as
response activities. I think our proactive stance allowed us to
largely complete our preparedness activities for the storm,
including prepositioning of initial response assets by
Wednesday, September 17th. Action planning was initiated prior
to and continued after the landfall of the hurricane. Our
priorities focused on developing contingency plans for life
support and mass care, including sheltering, feeding, and
medical care, especially for isolated communities.
We also focused our second priority on providing ice,
water, generators, and electrical power for critical
facilities, arranging for mobile feeding sites, establishing
disaster field offices and disaster recovery centers, and
implementing individual and public assistance activities. In
preparation for the disaster, we continually monitored the
availability of supplies in order to meet the immediate
response requirements. We prepositioned advanced, what we call
``AID Packages,'' which consisted of cots and blankets and
emergency meals and portable toilets, plastic sheeting, bottled
water, and generators. We mobilized our emergency response
support assets to the States to ensure that we would have
continuity in communications so that we could ensure the
communications, intergovernmental communication, between the
States. I can go on for the next 10 to 15 minutes explaining
the prepositioned assets and the specialized teams from across
the government that were provided in advance in anticipation of
a landfall. And I would say that we continue today to provide
additional response support in support of the State and local
governments across the area.
I would like to highlight one success--and I realize that I
am going over--but one real success I think we worked out, that
was a significant change, that prohibited us from being delayed
in the response, is that in advance of landfall we had
negotiated a policy and had a process in place for an expedited
Stafford Act declaration by the President. So we communicated
in advance to the Governors and to the Mayor of the District of
Columbia the criteria under which we would entertain and
rapidly respond to an expedited disaster declaration. Only when
we receive that declaration can we employ Federal resources to
support State and local governments in a disaster. And within
hours of receiving those requests, based on our stated
criteria, in fact those declarations did occur.
Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to testify
before you today and would be happy to answer any questions
that you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tolbert follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. We have three panels, so I am going to
move fairly quickly.
The next panel, the State and local panel, is important,
but let me ask you this. Would you do anything differently? Did
you learn anything here that, in retrospect, you might have
done differently?
Mr. Tolbert. A key planning factor that we are revisiting--
let me say that we began our critique process, our ``hot
washes,'' days ago. One of the key areas that we are going to
concentrate on is more deliberate planning and collaboration
with the States.
The Emergency Management System is a vertical organization.
It begins at the grass-roots level, with the municipalities and
counties providing the baseline, initial response, and then the
States provide supplemental response to that, and then we
provide supplemental support to the States. There are
inconsistencies in the division of roles and responsibilities.
That is a planning area that we plan to focus on in our future
emergency response planning so that we have clearly understood
the division of responsibilities between the levels of
government. I think that is an area that is significant for
improvement, a vertical improvement--not just FEMA, but at the
State and the local levels as well.
Chairman Tom Davis. I am going to ask unanimous consent. We
have the written testimony of Michael Byrne, who is the
Director of the Office of National Capital Region Coordination
for Department of Homeland Security.
Let me ask you this. Did you work with Michael Byrne? Did
he play any role in this with you?
Mr. Tolbert. Yes, sir. Mr. Byrne conducted conference calls
with the National Capital Region jurisdictions. He kept us
apprised, and he participated with us on the video
teleconferences with the States on a regular basis. He provided
us real-time information and supported any requests that we
would receive for assistance from the NCR.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just have a couple of questions, Mr. Tolbert. You have an
important basis for comparison. As far as we are concerned, it
happened to us and therefore it is very hard for us to know
anything about the quality of our response, because the only
way to judge that is against others.
I would like you to rate the response to--because of your
broad jurisdiction, because you have seen these same kinds of
disasters in other places, I would like you to rate the
response of the following in relation to other jurisdictions:
transportation decisions and operations; power company
response; and water and sewer response. So let's begin with
transportation decisions and operations. You have seen
hurricanes all over the United States. How would you rate the
response of our transportation officials and operations?
Mr. Tolbert. I haven't given that a lot of consideration.
But based on some of your opening remarks, I did give some
quick thought to it. I believe that the decisions made by the
mass transit systems within the Metro area were appropriate and
effective.
Ms. Norton. Were you consulted on those decisions?
Mr. Tolbert. We were consulted through the Washington area
warning system network. We are a party to that.
Ms. Norton. Did you agree with the decision that the Metro
should be shut down at the time it was?
Mr. Tolbert. Even in retrospect, I would personally concur
with that decision. It reduced the population. It reduced the
Federal workers within the National Capital Region. Even at
what we call ``D minus 1,'' the day before landfall, the
forecast was for in excess of 70-mile-per-hour winds in the
National Capital Region, in the Washington--District of
Columbia.
Based on those, on those forecasts, I think it was
appropriate; and in fact, I think it significantly reduced the
demands on the local emergency response system.
Ms. Norton. Do you think that they would have done that all
over the United States? They would have just pulled the buses
and the subways down? You are telling me that is standard
operating procedure in other parts of the country?
Mr. Tolbert. There are variations from jurisdiction to
jurisdiction. But especially in areas where they cross bridges,
it is normal for transportation systems to be closed at the
point that they reach 40 to 45 miles per hour.
Ms. Norton. All right. Power company responses, compared
with other areas of the country where you have seen similar
hurricanes and disasters.
Mr. Tolbert. I was not at all surprised by the widespread
power outages. It was reminiscent of Hurricane Hugo in 1989,
where we had inland winds at hurricane force in Charlotte, NC,
from a landfall in Charleston, SC. At that time, even with that
storm, we had 14 days before power restoration in Charlotte,
NC. So, as compared to other responses that I have observed
across the country in my 20 years in this business, I would say
that the power response was on average or on a par with what I
normally observe.
Ms. Norton. What about the water and sewer responses?
Mr. Tolbert. Water and sewer response, I think, is an area
that, from a critical infrastructure standpoint, I think is an
area for significant improvement. The electric power grid
impact that we had about a month ago in the Northeast again
emphasized the importance of those critical facilities for
humanitarian support. I think it is an area that we do need to
concentrate on. I am not in a position to give a graded score,
but I think it certainly illustrates a vulnerability in our
critical infrastructure that we have known about that needs to
be addressed.
Ms. Norton. I thank you. One more question, if I may, Mr.
Chairman.
I am a member also of the Homeland Security Committee and
have seen the consolidation of your department into that
department. I would like to know whether it mattered that you
were in the Department of Homeland Security. If so, how did it
matter specifically that you were not FEMA, as you always have
been? It looks like you were using your usual FEMA expertise.
What did it matter that you were in this new consolidated
department?
Mr. Tolbert. I can speak specifically about several
enhancements that occurred really as a result of our being
within this larger department. We had a much more significant
response on the part of the BICE organization, the Bureau for
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They provided surveillance
aircraft for us, as well as additional rotary-wing aircraft
that were on standby and were actually applied to support State
and local operations.
Ms. Norton. And that would not have been the case before?
Mr. Tolbert. It had not been the case before. They even
collocated with us in FEMA's Emergency Operating Center to
ensure that we had those resources prestaged and available.
That was to address a specific known shortfall, which was some
of the National Guard assets that had been deployed from the
Governors, that were not available. So we expected a rotary-
wing aircraft shortfall, and reached out to our other partners.
The same applies to the U.S. Coast Guard, who stood up and
provided lots of aviation assets in support of State and local
governments, as well as our own Federal operations--highly
effective, I think. And the critical infrastructure
organization from the new department also collocated with us to
provide additional intelligence, what they were getting on
critical infrastructure failures.
Ms. Norton. That is all new? That is all new input into
FEMA?
Mr. Tolbert. It is absolutely all new input.
Ms. Norton. That is good news.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Mr. Moran.
Mr. Moran. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask
some questions with regard to my personal experience with the
FEMA folks who were sent down to the southern part of Fairfax
County, where we had 2,200 homes inundated with flooding.
The people who went door to door were not FEMA employees;
they were all contract people. Most of them seemed to come from
Georgia, the Carolinas and so on, not particularly familiar
with the neighborhood or the region. They were nice enough
people, but there didn't seem to be many FEMA people around. Is
that normally the way that things are done?
Mr. Tolbert. Mr. Moran, a lot of the services that are
provided by FEMA are, in fact, provided by contract support.
The personnel you are referring to are housing inspectors. As
victims call the FEMA hotline for tele-registration and we
identify that there are housing impacts, we dispatch contract
inspectors to actually use a handheld computer to document and
record the damages and the type of assistance that is required.
Those personnel are provided through contract support.
FEMA is an organization of about--roughly 2,500 full-time
personnel. And most of the disaster personnel, most of the FEMA
personnel that you see in a disaster wearing the blue coats
with gold FEMA letters are actually our reservist cadre. We
have about 3,500 intermittent employees that we routinely
utilize to support large-scale disaster response and recovery
operations. So they do come from all across the country to
support our operations.
Mr. Moran. I am curious as to why, when the damage that
they were working on was in Alexandria and the part of Fairfax
County that is called Alexandria, why they were housed in a
hotel out in Manassas, so they had to drive for an hour to get
to the site, and then drive back again for an hour. They did
complain about that, although I am sure they don't want me to
share their complaints with you but they wondered themselves.
You couldn't find a hotel on Route 1 in Alexandria?
Mr. Tolbert. I can't adequately respond to that specific
question. I can tell you that it is normal for our workers to
be displaced outside. In fact, our priority is that disaster
victims have first option on available housing within an
impacted area. And I suspect at that time that if there were
large numbers of people without power they resorted to hotel
facilities. That is very common in disasters. I can't speak
specifically to the Fairfax County situation.
Mr. Moran. Well, it seems petty. But the problem was, when
they had early morning meetings--for example, I went to one
early Saturday morning--there were no FEMA people there. But,
on the other hand, it was at 8 a.m. They would have had to
leave at 7 a.m. to get there. It just seemed like it might have
been a little bit more efficient. It doesn't sound like a big
deal, except it made them less accessible than they otherwise
would have been.
I think it would have been good, if I might suggest, to
have someone that was sort of assigned to that particular
disaster situation that could have worked with the community,
the one person in charge, and they could go to the community
meetings and so on. That might have been helpful. All of the
FEMA people were nice people. But I am not sure that there was
a person in charge; at least the residents didn't seem to get
the sense that there was one person that they could go to and
get the answers and who had the authority to direct anyone's
actions.
Mr. Tolbert. That is one of the areas that we are looking
at, is placing liaisons down to the local level, either pre- or
post-impact, depending on what the situation is. That is
something that we have to coordinate very closely with the
States, to ensure that we are not duplicating effort or causing
any additional confusion that may exist in intergovernmental
coordination. But that is an area under review.
Mr. Moran. I don't think the localities would have resented
somebody from FEMA working there side by side with them. When
they found that all of the boilers, for example, were gone in
these 65 multi-family buildings, I was told in the past that
FEMA might be able to do things like set up a place where you
could have showers, because the toxics in the water are a
serious problem. So people, when they handle them, they really
need to be able to shower; and yet they couldn't shower, they
didn't have water, gas or electricity. Has FEMA ever done that?
Actually, I have been told that they have done that in prior
times.
Mr. Tolbert. We do not have those as organic assets of
FEMA. But we do have the ability to contract for portable
shower units, and we did actually provide some. I am aware of
requests in North Carolina for that type of service, and they
are being provided. Also by nonprofit organizations. The
Southern Baptist organization was providing that very service
in Virginia on a number of visits that I observed. So it is a
collaborative effort. We do have some contract capacity, but
not organic capability.
Mr. Moran. I hope it is not because we have enough Southern
Baptists in the community to do that.
Just one last thing. The--15 percent of the money that goes
to a locality is to be spent on mitigation. You probably can't
answer the question now, but I would be very interested in how
you are going to spend that money on mitigation to reduce the
likelihood of a flood in the future. And I understand that is
FEMA's role.
Mr. Tolbert. The current--I assume you are referring to the
Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which previously was funded at
15 percent of the Federal investment in disaster relief.
Current authorization is for 7.5 percent of the Federal
investment. So that Hazard Mitigation Grant Program value,
under current appropriation, will be at 7.5 percent, a 50
percent reduction from the prior amount.
Those priorities, however, are established by the State.
The State has the responsibility for doing hazard mitigation
planning in accordance with the Stafford Act and its amendments
of the year 2000. So we entertain those proposals to
demonstrate cost beneficial measures and will certainly look at
any measure that the State submits to us.
Mr. Moran. Thank you, sir. And thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. The gentleman from Maryland. Any
questions?
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a few.
First, there was a question from Ms. Norton with respect to
the power companies' response to this event in this area, and
in comparison to others. You mentioned Hurricane Hugo and the
2-week response. I just want to make sure I understand. But
that was a response--Hugo hit--where was the greatest impact of
Hugo, what region?
Mr. Tolbert. Charleston, SC.
Mr. Van Hollen. So that is right where it was at the
greatest force. By the time the hurricane hit this area, while
it was a significant hurricane, it was not at the force of
Hurricane Hugo hitting South Carolina.
Mr. Tolbert. But in Charlotte, NC, is where I was referring
to, 14 days after the impact it--Hurricane Hugo also made an
inland path. And 14 days later Charlotte had final power
restoration. So this is normal. It is a normal time line for
disaster recovery operations for power utilities.
Mr. Van Hollen. Well, let me ask you, you mentioned you are
in the process of doing an assessment and evaluation. Is part
of that assessment to look at the response of power companies
in this region, or is that beyond the scope of your review?
Mr. Tolbert. That is beyond the scope of our review.
Mr. Van Hollen. OK. Now, one of the priorities, obviously,
for power companies, when a hurricane hits and power goes out
is to restore power to hospitals, nursing homes. And from all
reports I heard, Pepco had a good response, and the other
utilities may have done that as well in a good and timely
manner.
There is another whole group of people, though, such as
people at home on respirators, people who need insulin and need
to have it refrigerated, people who, in order to stay alive and
keep their health, need electricity and power in their homes.
And those people, I heard a lot from people in very desperate
situations. And I wonder if FEMA has any role at all in
providing emergency services for people who are in those kinds
of situations?
Mr. Tolbert. We do not normally provide that type of
support. Our support is generally to government and nonprofit,
critical facilities, to restore services there. We are,
however, very concerned about the special needs population. In
fact, during this response, we started looking at modifying
some of our shelter supplies because we anticipated
requirements for people with special needs.
So we are very concerned about it. And that is an area that
we are looking at, how we might better provide support. I think
it is more important, though, that local governments and the
States have mechanisms in place to identify people with special
needs. That is one of the more difficult challenges, to first
identify who the people are that require that support so that
they can provide quicker contact and better support for them.
Mr. Van Hollen. Right. No, I agree. I think that is a very
important function of local government. During Isabel there was
an effort to do that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. We appreciate your
being here and we will move on to our next panel.
On our next panel, we have the Honorable John Marshall, the
Secretary of Public Safety for the Commonwealth of Virginia,
Dennis Schrader, the Director for the Governor's Office of
Homeland Security, State of Maryland, and Peter LaPorte, the
Director of the district of Columbia's Emergency Management
Agency. If you will stay standing, I will swear you in.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Marshall, since we have a Virginia
bias on the panel, we will start with you and we will move on
down the way. Thanks for being with us. Congratulations on your
new job.
STATEMENTS OF JOHN MARSHALL, SECRETARY OF PUBLIC SAFETY,
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA; DENNIS R. SCHRADER, DIRECTOR FOR THE
GOVERNOR'S OFFICE OF HOMELAND SECURITY, STATE OF MARYLAND; AND
PETER G. LaPORTE, DIRECTOR, EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY,
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Mr. Marshall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the
committee. I appreciate the opportunity to appear here today. I
am John Marshall, and I serve in the cabinet of Governor Mark
Warner as Virginia's secretary of public safety. I work in
close collaboration with our Office of Commonwealth
Preparedness, and maintain oversight of 11 public safety
agencies, including the State police, National Guard, and our
Virginia Department of Emergency Management, which continues to
coordinate our recovery efforts related to Hurricane Isabel
between Federal, State and local authorities as well as our
citizens.
The impact of the hurricane continues to be felt today
across the Commonwealth. Two weeks after the storm, efforts
continue to ensure the full restoration of power and telephone
service, and to promote a safe and sanitary environment. At the
height of the disaster, nearly 2 million customers were without
power, mainly in eastern, central and northern Virginia.
Individuals and communities are confronted with the monumental
task of cleaning up debris and repairing and rebuilding homes,
businesses and public facilities. More than 6.3 million pounds
of ice, and 1.4 million gallons of water have been distributed
by State and Federal agencies, and this is on top of what has
been provided by the localities.
Hurricane Isabel entered Virginia on September 18th. The
Commonwealth experienced sustained winds near 100 miles per
hour, and tropical storm force winds for 29 hours. The
hurricane produced storm surge of 5 to 8 feet along the coast
and in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Rainfall totals
ranged between 2 and 11 inches along its track, including in
the National Capital Region. Damage due to wind, rain, and
storm surge resulted in flooding, electrical outages, debris,
damaged homes and businesses and interruption of transportation
and other routine daily activities.
At the height of the incident, over 18,000 residents were
housed in 158 shelters. Local officials report that more than
32,000 Virginians were evacuated from their homes; 99 of the
Commonwealth's 134 cities declared local emergencies.
Tragically, 28 people died in the Commonwealth as a result of
Hurricane Isabel, with the majority of deaths occurring in the
days after the storm had cleared the State. Further damages
occurred when a series of thunderstorms and tornados came
through the already-impacted areas of the State on September
23rd.
Governor Warner took a proactive approach to the impending
hurricane by declaring a state of emergency in the Commonwealth
on September 15th, 3 days prior to the arrival of the storm. In
addition, on September 17th, over 24 hours in advance of the
storm, the Governor authorized mandatory evacuation of
designated coastal jurisdictions and low-lying areas. These
actions may have saved hundreds of lives.
Governor Warner requested an expedited major Presidential
declaration that was granted to Virginia on September 18th.
Local officials report that more than 8,000 homes and nearly
300 businesses suffered major damage or were destroyed, coupled
with an estimated $31 million in agricultural damage.
Assessment efforts continue.
Hurricane Isabel's assault on Virginia has left an
indelible mark on the landscape and in the minds of our
citizens. While the task of assessing both our readiness and
performance at the local, State and Federal levels as well
within the private sector is so important, at the present time
Governor Warner and his administration remain focused and
committed to ensuring that all that can be done is being done
to address the needs of our citizens in the aftermath of this
event.
This committee has asked that we address four primary areas
in the aftermath of the hurricane: the assessment of our
decisionmaking process, implications for our regional
preparedness, information flow, and how we can better respond
in the future. While detailed responses to these questions can
be found in my written testimony, in the interests of time
constraints let me briefly address the issues.
Governor Warner has already indicated that he will conduct
a complete review of how the Commonwealth performed in response
to the largest disaster in a generation. Here in the National
Capital Region, like other areas of Virginia, many citizens
heeded the early calls to make storm preparations by stocking
up on water, nonperishable food and other necessities. However,
as Virginia has avoided direct landfall or major inland impacts
in all but a few instances in the last several decades, we must
honestly acknowledge that many citizens did not adequately
prepare.
The most notable success that we had was a series of
conference calls conducted in advance of the storm to
coordinate actions about the closing of government, offices,
businesses, schools, and the Federal work force, as well as
overall storm preparations. While some may question the timing
of the actions, the most important message is that key
decisionmakers across the National Capital Region acted in
unison, to make definitive decisions with the best information
available. In addition, Governor Warner personally conducted
conference calls with the local elected official so that our
preparedness messages were consistent.
In light of the widespread power disruptions that had a
corresponding effect on drinking water systems and perishable
food supplies, clearly the continued assessment of our critical
infrastructures--water, power, telecommunications, and
transportation--and their interdependency on other systems is
critical to understanding our vulnerabilities. In this case, it
was Mother Nature who provided the impetus. We recognize in the
post-September 11th environment that it very easily could have
been terrorists. With regard to the information flow, the media
did an outstanding job of reporting the approach of the storm
and helping those of us in State and local government to get
important information and guidance to our citizens, and we are
indebted to them for this valuable service.
Given the scope and complexity of this disaster, overall we
think information dissemination was good. That is not to say,
though, that information flow was flawless. After the storm,
the accuracy of information and information flow between
private utility companies and the public was an ongoing source
of concern. On the issue of how the region can better respond
in the future, the Department of Homeland Security has
established the Office of National Capital Region Coordination
to provide assistance. Governor Warner, along with his
counterparts, Governor Ehrlich and Mayor Williams, meet
regularly, and among the issues they discuss are emergency
preparedness.
In closing, our collective responses to the problems caused
by Hurricane Isabel have provided a real-world test of our
preparedness thus far in the NCR. We must assess how well we
did or did not perform at all levels of government within the
private sector and among our citizens. We must capture and
build on our successes as well as identify and address any
shortcomings. The identification of problems should not be
construed to suggest that the National Capital Region is not
making significant improvements in readiness. This was a large
and complex weather event that resulted in unprecedented
problems across two-thirds of Virginia and the entire NCR.
Sustaining focus, commitment and funding is the key to better
preparedness for future events. We need not react and
reorganize; rather, we must rededicate our commitment to con-
tinuing enhancements to preparedness in the National Capital
Region.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Marshall follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Schrader.
Mr. Schrader. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Governor Ehrlich
sends his appreciation for your support, and asked me to send
his best, Mr. Chairman.
In Maryland, we have gone down the road of an all-hazards
approach by establishing a homeland security office, and from a
perspective of long-term sustainability and resource
conservation, we are integrating those two efforts so that the
way we respond to a natural disaster will be the same as we
would respond to a man-made disaster. I am not going to read my
remarks, they are in the record, but I did want to leave with
you three points that I will summarize.
Right now, we are in the recovery phase, and one of our
major concerns is making sure that we put as much focus on the
recovery phase as we had on the preparation phase. We are
anticipating that the recovery is going to take several months.
And we will begin our lessons-learned process in a deliberate
way, probably in the early part of November. I would like to
say that FEMA did an outstanding job of being on the ground
very early in the process. A week before the storm actually
came, they were there providing advice and guidance to the
State. And afterwards they put an outstanding gentleman from
Tacoma, WA, Bill Lokey in as the Federal coordinating officer.
He is doing a tremendous job of integrating with our State. I
think the biggest issue on the front end of this was the risk
management decisions that had to be made. It is always easy to
criticize after the fact. But the reality is we really didn't
know how devastating this storm was going to be, and we were
really lucky.
Our biggest fear was that if this storm had stayed for
another 12 hours we would have had significant rains in western
Maryland which would have had simultaneous flooding as well as
the situation that we experienced. So, due to the grace of God,
we were very, very fortunate.
The second point I wanted to make is that the National
Capital Region process, which has been around about a year, is
evolving in concept. The relationships are growing. You know,
we know each other, we meet regularly, and we are making a lot
of progress. There's a $60 million urban area security
initiative that is being managed by the region; and I expect
that, as we look at how we are spending those dollars going
down the next year, the context of the readiness for the storm
will influence the decisions.
The last point I wanted to make was the whole issue of
managing expectations and the communications process. The media
turned out to be one of the best avenues for communicating.
They did a very good job of keeping people informed and we used
that extensively, both TV and radio. We also communicated with
our local emergency operations centers through the weather
service line, and we kept them informed from the State to the
local jurisdictions. As you know, the local government is
really on the front lines of this effort and bears most of the
brunt of the readiness and the response process.
The only other point I wanted to make is that our focus, of
course, is not just the two counties, Prince George's County
and Montgomery County, which are the typical counties referred
to in the National Capital Region, but we also have to look at
the commuting patterns from Anne Arundel County, Frederick
County and southern Maryland, which are of concern to us when
we are thinking about the National Capital Region.
Let me close by saying the one thing that could help in the
future as a lesson learned would be that the FEMA brought to us
an outstanding process of using their 800 line to register
people, but, due to the Privacy Act, they are not able to share
those data with the local and State jurisdictions. For example,
in Prince George's and Montgomery County, we had over 1,400
phone calls, but it did not appear that there was a lot of
damage, and we have been trying to figure out what those calls
were all about. Unfortunately, they are not able to share the
names and numbers, etc. So if in the future there was a way to
evaluate the impact of Privacy Act on Federal sharing of
information with local and State jurisdictions during these
times, it would be very helpful.
I will close there, sir.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Schrader follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. LaPorte. Thanks for being with us.
Mr. LaPorte. Good morning Mr. Chairman, Ms. Norton, members
of the committee. I'm Peter LaPorte, director of Emergency
Management for the District.
A little more than a year ago I had the honor of testifying
before the Subcommittee of the District on Columbia Committee
on Appropriations about the District's preparedness. At that
hearing, I detailed to the chairman, Joe Knollenberg, and the
members of the committee the extensive work that we had done
post September 11. I sit here today proud to explain what we've
done to prepare ourselves, and I'm pleased to say my pride is
not diminished at all. In fact, it is increasing. The District
met the challenge of Hurricane Isabel and continues to prove
itself to the citizens of the District and to the Nation.
Today, I will not dwell on those extensive preparedness
efforts, but I will focus on the key preparation factors that
proved extremely beneficial pre-landfall of this hurricane.
First, when the District drafted its response plan, it
mirrored the Federal response plan. We were convinced that it
would pay dividends to have those two plans match up, and we
proved right in Isabel. We followed our response plan to the
letter. It proved to be a touchstone of our success. The
Federal response plan works, the District response plan works
and they work very well together.
Second, our investment in human resources paid off. We've
conducted over five exercises this year alone. In fact, one of
those exercises dovetailed exactly the track of hurricane
Isabel. That storm, it was very much like deja vu. We have
trained over thousands of District employees, including the
Mayor on down, in all aspects of emergency management. I can
say without reservation that we have some of the best-trained
responders in the country, and we will continue that effort.
Third, our investment in our physical plant and equipment
was worth every dime. We have a new emergency operations center
in the District of Columbia that was funded by a congressional
appropriation. That operations center has really truly made a
difference. We never lost power. We have a communications
capability second to none. We were stable to communicate
entirely with the region as well as a number of stakeholders at
the local level.
Last but not least in our preparations, investment in
community preparedness. We've involved universities, schools,
businesses, advisory commissioners, special interest groups,
individual citizens in community preparedness and outreach.
When Isabel struck, we had open lines of communication with all
those stakeholders.
Now let me highlight our activities prior to, during and
immediately after the storm. We activated our crisis management
team before the storm. Mayor Williams led the early
decisionmaking for preparedness actions several days out. We
staffed our operations center with competent, experienced
emergency liaisons, including every function of our response
plan as well as the appropriate utilities, including PEPCO,
WASA, Washington Gas, a number of our critical leads. We
instituted incident action planning under the incident command
system, developing priorities that the Mayor set down and we
shared our expectations early on with the Federal Government,
anticipating needs before they became reality. The District
handed out over 20,000 sandbags. That started on Monday before
this storm hit. We asked for those sandbags on Sunday night,
and the Corps of Engineers up in Baltimore followed through on
that request. We pursued the Water and Sewer Authority in the
District to clean out catch basins in low-lying areas. They
were very active on Monday and Tuesday pre-storm. That emphasis
in those low-lying areas certainly helped us, especially in
those areas that flooded in August 2001. Two days before the
storm, Mayor Williams convened a meeting with our lead response
leaders in the District as well as the faith community, A and C
commissioners and community leaders enlisting them to go door
to door in certain neighborhoods in the city.
We focused heavily on our interagency coordination of
communications. We participated in the FEMA conference calls.
We set up our joint information center, literally sending out
thousands of updates on our storm on a regular basis. We worked
closely with Metro on its deliberations to suspend services and
the impact of the decision on the government closing and the
public ability to move in the pre-impact phase of the storm.
Again, we coordinated with WASA and PEPCO about potential loss
of power and water supplies and reviewed contingency plans. We
activated our EOC at 8 a.m. on Thursday. We did not close our
EOC until the last person had power restored in the District of
Columbia. The Mayor declared a public state of emergency to
ensure that all District resources were committed to the
response as well as paving the way for potential Federal
assistance. We requested supplies, light towers, heavy duty
equipment from the National Guard and the Corps of Engineers.
We coordinated our response at the height of the storm for
rapid recovery.
One of the things that was very different is, we prestaged
over 300 city employees the night of the storm at local hotels
so on Friday morning we could hit the ground with an active
force. We went door-to-door in some neighborhoods. We updated
our Web site over 150 times. We had 150 crisis counselors out
there. We had over 1,600 fallen trees or large limbs down. That
certainly impacted traffic.
As a result of loss of power to the residents, we supplied
over 750,000 pounds of ice to over 21,000 employees in the
city. Those without power we were very concerned about feeding.
We were able to feed over 22,000 meals to over 15,000
schoolchildren Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday post-storm when
schools were canceled. The District's entire school system was
down and closed on Monday. We worked aggressively with our
schools to get them open on Tuesday, with certain targeting
around those schools.
I could go on and on, just like our partners in Maryland
and Virginia, about just the preparations and response as we
took them. Some of our biggest concerns were traffic lights and
traffic impact. I want to thank the committee. The resources
that the District has received has put us in a state of
readiness that we were able to respond to this storm. Our
preparedness will continue. A lot of lessons were learned from
this event and other events, and we continue to strive to be a
better prepared jurisdiction in this region. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. LaPorte follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you all very much.
Let me ask each of you to respond. Metro closed at 11, I
think, that day. Was that in retrospect--I mean, it is always
easy to second-guess. What's your opinion? I mean, it did help
get people--limit the number of employees in this city that
needed to move out. Schools closed early. You know, the winds
didn't come in, really, until after the school hours. From your
perspective now, good decisions?
Mr. LaPorte. I guess I will take the first start at this
one. I think it was a good decision. It was deliberate. It
was--there was a lot of discussion, and that was the important
part, was the input around the region, and there was a public
safety issue as well as a public transportation issue. The idea
of the strong winds and the determination early on from the
National Weather Service that the winds were going to arrive a
bit early, we needed to make sure that people, if they got on
the system, they could get home; and so, given a date certain
or a time certain to close, that certainly impacted other
decisionmaking and schools in the District government and the
Federal Government. But it was a collaborative effort. So I
think in retrospect it was the right decision. I think there
may be a little bit more we can get from the National Weather
Service to tie down that particular forecast, but I think in
retrospect--and I will stand with Metro in their decision and
for the most part believe that was the right decision.
Chairman Tom Davis. OK.
Mr. Schrader. Mr. Chairman, from our perspective, having
been in the command center when that decision was being made,
it actually was very helpful for us because we--in Maryland, we
take our cues from what OPM is doing here in D.C. and what the
transportation systems are doing in D.C. What was important was
that there was decisiveness and that the decision was made. At
that point, the storm was just beginning. We had a lot of
uncertainty in the work force, a lot of concern about the fact
that the winds were picking up; and people actually wanted to
move on to not get caught in traffic jams and be vulnerable
later that evening. So I would say the important thing is not
so much that--what the decision was, but the fact that the
decision was made, and it was done decisively so that we could
take action that would follow.
Mr. Marshall. Mr. Chairman, I would concur with my fellow
panel members. Ultimately, that decision was one that was based
on public safety. It's my understanding when you're talking
about the Metro and some of the elevated rails and the
impending wind, we've got to react accordingly to the forecast;
and I certainly think in retrospect that was a correct decision
and particularly when it comes to the safety of our children.
We can't be but too safe in that regard. We certainly would not
have wanted to see them at the bus stops or on the streets if
those winds were to arrive as forecasted.
Chairman Tom Davis. Was there coordination among the three
of you on road closings and the like? I mean, it was difficult
getting in. There wasn't a lot of traffic the day after, but as
I was going through northern Virginia the roads were closed
here and there, and I thought the police did a pretty good job
routing as best they could. But in terms of which trees are
going to be cleared first off major roadways that interlock
with the District and Maryland, do you think that was
coordinated? Were you all talking to each other?
Mr. LaPorte. The coordination was outstanding, actually,
knowing--especially northern Virginia on the national parks
roads, Rock Creek Park, George Washington Parkway, which were
impacted significantly. And there was a commuting challenge
that morning, no doubt about it, especially in the District. We
had a number of traffic signals that were out, and we required
police officers to leave neighborhood beats, neighborhood
patrols, to man those traffic routes. It's certainly an after-
action report for us, is our traffic systems as well as
augmenting our police services in those intersections with
nonpolice civilian personnel.
Mr. Schrader. Yeah. We have MDOT in our command center. We
actually started our command center up on Tuesday before the
storm and were operational. Our MDOT folks are in constant
communication. The other thing is that because of the NCR
initiative, we all have each other's cell phones. I have
Peter's; he has mine. George and I talk all the time, and we
have weekly conference calls. So that is just part of the
process so we know how to get ahold of each other and our
staffs are working collaboratively.
Chairman Tom Davis. Is there anything you would have done
differently in retrospect?
Mr. Schrader. No, I don't think so. Not at this point.
Obviously, we are going to have detailed lessons learned, but,
you know, for the purposes of this committee at the level that
you're looking at, I don't think, you know, nothing that I
would say that would be of interest.
Mr. Marshall. With regard to overall, Mr. Chairman----
Chairman Tom Davis. You got hit harder in the south than
you did in northern Virginia, didn't you?
Mr. Marshall. We sure did. You know, Mr. Chairman, training
events are always very useful and you learn a lot from training
events. But, unfortunately, where you really learn the lessons,
unfortunately, is doing an actual event; and that certainly is
the case here. We have seen a lot of success stories, as has
been mentioned, being the proactive approach, the conference
calls, the communication that we had here in the NCR but, in
particular, when it comes to Virginia and the issues we need to
look at when we do our assessment, we've got to look at the
water issues, the ice issues, the power issues, particularly as
they pertain to our water pumping stations. Those are all
issues that we need to work on as if you're somebody out there
that needs your power or needs your water or needs your ice.
You know, it took 4 days to get the ice and the water out
there, and certainly we need to look at working with our
partners to see if we can do that more expeditiously in the
future. So certainly there will be some lessons learned, but
also we did a lot of things right.
Chairman Tom Davis. Did we have enough ice at the end of
the day? I mean, seeing what was coming, getting the orders in
and everything, do you think we----
Mr. LaPorte. From the District's standpoint, we had
tremendous amounts of ice.
Chairman Tom Davis. There were huge lines, I know, in
Fairfax for people getting it, that they didn't seem to have
enough.
Mr. Schrader. Right from the interest of managing
expectations, the reality is, after a couple of days, the ice
really doesn't help because the foods going to spoil anyway.
And, unfortunately, there is an old saying, ``No good deed goes
unpunished.'' The power companies were providing the ice, but,
you know, when they didn't have enough of it people were angry.
Chairman Tom Davis. It's worse than if you didn't offer it
almost.
Mr. Schrader. One of the lessons learned that might be
useful is, maybe they ought to transfer that to something like
Wal-Mart and other chains and let them do it and stay focused.
Chairman Tom Davis. I'm sure they'd be happy to do that.
We'll get to the next panel. Thank you all very much. Ms.
Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to ask all
three of you in the debriefing and what I think is called for
is a lot of self-criticism here. Because we are impressed with
much of what was done, but an example of what I'd like to see
you look again at is the Metro decision. And I'm the first to
understand an act of God. I also bet you anything that this
decision was made by liability lawyers and I can understand
that, too. But the fact is that the domino effect here was
colossal, and many would say that closing down Metro--and here
I'm talking now to the State as it were--closing down Metro was
a good decision to make and you can't hold us accountable to
what hour in the day. Yet we need you to look at the forecast
to see if they were off or if you were overly cautious as to
when this would come in because all of our understanding was
that this was set to strike in the wee hours of the next
morning. Now, we know that God or whoever rules up there can
come at any time he gets ready and that we could be caught
short. But we didn't look good, and there are huge complaints
about that decision and, of course, Metro is getting it. But we
know good and well that if there was pressure from the three
States not to close down that early, that there might have been
some greater balance. I'm not going to ask you to rehearse that
again. I'm going to ask you to be far more self-critical than I
have heard. Yeah this is always a case of cost-benefit. That's
how we have to rule our lives. And it seems to me that the
jurisdictions decided that there should be no risk whatsoever.
Again, I'm not asking you, but I am saying that I think this
needs a far more self-critical look. And, hey, you know, it
happened. And let me just ask you--it happened. Were there any
deaths? Were there any injuries at all in Virginia, in Maryland
or in the District of Columbia and, if so, how many? Surely
that assessment can be made by now.
Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Marshall.
Mr. Marshall. We have had 28 storm-related fatalities in
Virginia.
Chairman Tom Davis. Most of those were in the south.
Mr. Marshall. Yes, sir.
Mr. Schrader. We had eight. Two were traffic fatalities
which were both alcohol-related; we had three carbon monoxide
poisonings from folks having generators in the house; one flood
victim up in Baltimore County and two electrical utility
workers, one in Baltimore County and one in Prince George's
County, who were both from out of State.
Ms. Norton. Mr. LaPorte.
Mr. LaPorte. We had one death related to a four-way stop
early on Saturday morning. It was Michigan and North Capitol,
and that's one of the things as an after action, just better
education of both people understanding that going into that
intersection it is a four-way stop. I think we need to push
that further. I'd love to have some pre-made stop signs early
on to get into those areas quickly. We had two police officers
also injured, struck by vehicles, both somewhat minor, but it
does reflect the fact that they are in harm's way in
intersections, and it certainly was a challenge.
On the decisions on the transit, I think there are some
things that we can look at, the best practices, what are the
wind impacts. What's the--possibly running trains that are in
the tunnels still and underground and protected. Maybe they
can't go that far, but it may make sense. I know the executive
director of the Transit Authority is looking at that, and I
know we're going to engage in those discussions, and I think we
need to hold the light of day to every decision that was made
because, no matter how well we did, we have to get better each
day in this business.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. LaPorte. Let me ask you about as
controversial a decision as any that was made in the District
and that was, when the storm had virtually blown many of the
streets dry, a decision was made--and the decision seems to
have been made in advance--to close schools Thursday and
Friday. Now, you know you can close schools in lots of
jurisdictions and maybe it doesn't make any difference. In this
jurisdiction, you close down a lot. You close down people's
breakfast, people's lunch, the only family people have. What
bothered me, though, was that there was recrimination about the
closing of schools. You know, the Mayor at first seemed to
agree, then he seemed to have some concern about it. I notice
in your testimony that, when you did open, 15 schools of 147
had to remain closed anyway. My question is, why couldn't that
assessment have been made so that as many of the schools as
possible could have opened instead of closing down schools for
2 days in a row, which means that children have 4 days in
which--certainly 2 days in which there would have been no
school and the problems attending that at home. And how was
this decision made? If there were recriminations between the
Mayor's office and the school superintendent, does that mean
that there wasn't the kind of coordination one would have
expected so that this decision could have been reached
collaboratively?
Mr. LaPorte. Additionally, they closed on Monday as well;
and that was really a difficult issue. And the question on
Thursday----
Ms. Norton. Well, they weren't all closed Monday, were
they?
Mr. LaPorte. They were all closed on Monday.
Ms. Norton. So Thursday, Friday and Monday.
Mr. LaPorte. That's when we kicked in our significant
feeding in the school areas. We fed 15,000 schoolchildren, and
it was government employees on liberal leave. We called at 1
a.m., on Sunday morning, Monday morning to get to staff D.C.
General to get into a major feeding of folks. You're right.
You're highlighting an issue that we need to continue to
address with schools. We were in a state of emergency. Schools
come under the purview of the Mayor of District of Columbia
when we are in a state of emergency. The collaboration wasn't
there. The Mayor has spoken to the school superintendent; they
have had discussions. It is something that in our after action,
we will amend, the District response plan to ensure that
collaboration takes place. It was a bit frustrating for the
District, not necessarily for Thursday and Friday. I will say
that was a decision that was collaborative. But the decision
Sunday night into Monday, schools weren't forthcoming with
information regarding schools; it took a tiger team. We put
together with schools--we went and focused with fire, police,
public works inspections around those schools so we could get
them open, and we were frustrated on Monday. We had to do the
feeding. But we assured them they would be open on Tuesday, and
they were open, and we continue to work with schools. We will
redo our District response plan to have a school-specific
annex, because we do not want to face this issue again.
Ms. Norton. Could all of you tell me--Mr. Chairman, this is
just about the food stamps coming out today. You know, 2 weeks
later----
Chairman Tom Davis. Let me just say, Fairfax had their
schools open Monday, and there are many more trees in that
jurisdiction. Other jurisdictions were open in the region, too.
Ms. Norton. Thank you. Yes, my goodness. Final question
among a number I want to ask, but I see we have colleagues that
the chairman wants to certainly get to the last panel. But I do
want to ask about the notion--because I assume this comes
through the jurisdictions of food stamps being made available
today for poor people and even marginally poor people. I mean,
2 weeks later, I don't understand what--if this means
additional food stamps. I want to know what these folks were
doing for 2 weeks. These are the people least able to deal with
food problems.
Mr. LaPorte. For the District, our major disaster
declaration--we requested a food stamp program as well as
unemployment insurance and all of the benefits of a major
disaster declaration. So as we received our individual family
assistance disaster declaration we made sure our food stamp
program was there. We've actually been giving out food stamps
pretty regularly.
Ms. Norton. Are you all telling me that you can't give out
food stamps without--what is it--FEMA that tells you when you
can in an emergency use food stamps? Do you have no authority
of your own to use food stamps for poor people whose power is
gone? Because that may be something that we need to look at,
too.
Mr. LaPorte. It was one of the challenging areas that we
faced, so that's why we went into a significant feeding
program. We gave out vouchers to McDonalds and Popeyes and to
other feeding folks before we got into our feeding program.
Ms. Norton. As long as they weren't vouchers to private
schools, you're fine.
Mr. LaPorte. That's exactly right. Not those kind of
vouchers.
Chairman Tom Davis. Those are coming, though.
Ms. Norton. Go ahead. This is something the chairman and I
just said we want to look into. I don't know, perhaps Maryland
or Virginia can respond in your jurisdictions to the food stamp
dilemma.
Mr. Schrader. I can just tell you that our Secretary of
Human Resources, Secretary McCabe, took an initiative to get
more food stamps out. I don't have the details on it here, but
I can get back to you on it, if that's an interest.
Mr. Marshall. In Virginia, we are running into a few
problems as far as actually at the distribution locations not
having adequate personnel there to handle the long lines and
the demands, and we are certainly working at the State level to
help the localities get them distributed.
Chairman Tom Davis. Please don't hesitate to call us if we
can help with that, too. I mean, the Governor I know in
Virginia just said he's pretty proactivate. We had conference
calls throughout and appreciate your help.
Mr. Moran.
Mr. Moran. Thank you Mr. Chairman. I only have one quick
question for one of the panel members. Mr. Marshall, of the
millions of dollars in reimbursement that you will be getting
from FEMA--three-quarters of the State and local expenditures
for emergency assistance reimbursed by FEMA, I understand--have
you put together any plans for mitigation of flooding along the
banks of the Potomac River which happens every time we have a
major flood? Do you have any idea how you might use that money
since it has to be directed by the State?
Mr. Marshall. Certainly, Congressman Moran, that is a key
issue; and we will look to work with, particularly Alexandria,
and other communities. As mentioned earlier, the pre-disaster
mitigation grant is so important to us; we would certainly
appreciate your assistance in that regard because, as was
mentioned by Mr. Tolbert, that amount has been reduced by 15
percent of what we're reimbursed to now 7.5 percent. So any
assistance in that regard would certainly help us greatly in
our mitigation efforts. But we certainly share your concern
with those areas.
Mr. Moran. Well, we'll discuss it with the Governor. I am
trying to get some money for the Corps of Engineers to do a
study as well, and perhaps the State can direct that some of
the FEMA money be used for the results of the Corps of
Engineers study on how to reduce the siltage buildup along the
banks of the Potomac. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Marshall. We look forward to working with you on that,
Congressman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you, Mr. Moran.
Mr. Van Hollen.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In the interest of time, I only have two quick questions
for Mr. Schrader. Thank you for all you have done.
The first question is, do you have a damage estimate in
terms of dollars and with respect to the damage that is
eligible for some compensation from FEMA? Second question, has
the Governor called upon the Public Service Commission in
Maryland to do an investigation analysis of the power outages
lessons learned, how we can do better?
Mr. Schrader. Let me do the power first, and then I'll get
to the damages. He has directed the chairman of the Public
Service Commission, Ken Schisler, last week to do an inquiry;
and that will be done in the near future. So, you know, we
definitely want to make that inquiry.
On the damage assessments, of course, we are being careful,
but we estimate between State and local government on the
public assistance side there's probably going to be upwards of
about $80 million of damage that we will be looking for
reimbursement. That's both the local jurisdictions as well as
the State. Of course, that could change, but you know it's in
that ball park.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. I appreciate all
of you being here today, and you've been very helpful to us.
We'll do some followup. Thank you.
We'll take about a 1-minute recess as we clear this table
and get the next panel ready to go. Thank you all.
We have now Richard White, the Chief Executive Officer for
WMATA; William Sim from PEPCO; Admiral Jay Johnson, president
and CEO of Dominion Delivery, Dominion Virginia Power; Charlie
Crowder from the Fairfax County Water Authority; Jerry Johnson,
general manager of D.C. Water and Sewer Authority; and Leslie
Violette, the treasurer of the Belle View Condominium Unit
Owners Association. Would you all please rise with me and raise
your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Chairman Tom Davis. I think, just to remind you, we have a
5-minute rule. Your entire statement's in the record already so
our questions will be based on the entire statement. When your
light turns orange, that gives you a minute, and when it turns
red if you could move to sum up about that time.
Mr. White, thank you for being with us. We'll start with
you, and we'll move straight on down.
STATEMENTS OF RICHARD WHITE, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY; WILLIAM J. SIM,
PRESIDENT, PEPCO; ADMIRAL JAY JOHNSON, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF
DOMINION VIRGINIA POWER; JERRY N. JOHNSON, GENERAL MANAGER,
D.C. WATER AND SEWER AUTHORITY; CHARLIE C. CROWDER, JR.,
GENERAL MANAGER, FAIRFAX COUNTY WATER AUTHORITY, ACCOMPANIED BY
JAMES A. WARFIELD, JR., EXECUTIVE OFFICER; AND LESLIE A.
VIOLETTE, TREASURER, BELLE VIEW CONDOMINIUM UNIT OWNERS
ASSOCIATION COMMUNITY
Mr. White. Chairman Davis and members of the committee,
good morning and thank you for asking me to testify at today's
hearing on the National Capital Region's preparedness and
response to Hurricane Isabel.
As the largest transit provider for the National Capitol
region, Metro actively participated in the region's planning,
coordination and response to the threat posed by Hurricane
Isabel. There was an unprecedented level of regional
coordination and collaboration at critical periods before,
during and after the storm. The coordination procedures were
conducted pursuant to the region's Regional Emergency
Coordination Plan using its Regional Incident Communication and
Coordination System [RICCS]. The system enables National
Capital Region entities to quickly review and coordinate
actions that individual decisionmaking bodies were planning to
take and underscores the significant progress the region has
made since the tragic events of September 11.
In the 30 years of bus service and 27 years of rail, WMATA
had no history of dealing with a hurricane with the size and
strength of Hurricane Isabel, but we do, of course, have a
reservoir of experience in dealing with severe weather
conditions. Our actions were guided by an evaluation of two
overarching threshold questions. First, when is it unsafe to
operate and, second, how much advance notice do we provide
regarding our intentions to restrict service? Emphasis was
placed on safety, safety to our customers and employees and
certainly in terms of communicating to the public our decisions
on service.
On the issue of safety, given our lack of experience with
the heavy winds that were being predicted, we sought guidance
from the National Weather Service, emergency management
authorities, the Federal Transit Administration, and transit
agencies that have frequently experienced hurricane-force winds
such as the Miami/Dade system in Florida. Based on these
consultations, a determination was made that our mass transit
operations would be unsafe for customers, pedestrians and our
employees when our weather conditions resulted in sustained
winds at or in excess of 40 miles per hour.
The region conducted two RICCS conference calls on
Wednesday, September 17, under the auspices of the COG Chief
Administrative Officers Committee. Approximately 60 separate
parties participated on these calls, reflecting the
interdependencies of decisions that are made by the Federal
Government, local governments, private employers, schools, and
transportation providers. These calls enabled stakeholders to
make individual agency or jurisdictional decisions in a
regional context that allowed for an exchange of information
discussion and, to the extent possible, regional consensus. The
safety of citizens was the priority consideration for
participants during the RICCS calls.
During the afternoon call, the National Weather Service
confirmed its earlier forecast of sustained winds in the 40 to
45 miles an hour range and with gusts of 60 miles an hour, but
moved up the arrival time on the following day from late
afternoon to early afternoon. As a result of these calls we
were strongly encouraged to shut down the entire Metrorail
system, not just the above-ground portion, out of concern that
we were sending a mixed signal to our customers by
contradicting others who were saying it would not be safe to be
out at all once the hurricane's full force arrived in the
region. Also, during these calls an overwhelming consensus
emerged among the group that, in an effort to avoid ambiguity,
we needed to err on the side of being early rather than late on
announcing and implementing plans and actions. Call
participants wanted WMATA to announce its decision to the
public on Wednesday, rather than to wait till the next day.
This would be consistent with the approaches that were being
taken by other decisionmakers on announcing school and local
government closings and would minimize the potential for chaos
in the region.
Based on these factors, we announced our intention to stop
accepting customers into the Metrorail and Metrobus system at
11 a.m. Thursday morning in order to ensure that our customers
and employees would be out of harm's way by 2 p.m., which was
the National Weather Service forecast for arrival, and that all
local bus systems would complete their services by 2 p.m. as
well. By announcing our decision early Wednesday evening we
were able to get the word out in time for evening newscasts on
radio and television and for the next day's newspapers.
I would like to bring to the committee's attention the
October 2nd letter that was signed by CAO Chair Anthony H.
Griffin and delivered to the committee that further explains
the RICCS conference call process and which provides
considerable additional detailed reports and documentation on
this decisionmaking process.
We are now in the process of doing a self-assessment and
working with our partners to assess the regional coordination
process in ways in which the planning and response to threats
can be improved in the future. We are going to be looking at
our safety criteria in consultation with others, our
operational plans that guided our decisions, exploring ways
that we can improve getting our message out to the public,
reviewing our fare policy, and documenting the impacts to WMATA
of the extra costs and lost revenues caused by the storm.
I want to thank you Mr. Chairman, and the rest of the
members of the committee, for the opportunity to present these
remarks and for the support you have provided to Metro over the
years, and I'll be happy to answer your questions at the
appropriate time.
Ms. Norton [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. White.
[The prepared statement of Mr. White follows:]
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Ms. Norton. Mr. Sim.
Mr. Sim. Thank you, Madam Chairman and members of the
committee. My name is William Sim, and I am president of PEPCO.
As you know, PEPCO's the electric company that serves
Washington, DC, and most of Montgomery and Prince George's
Counties in Maryland. I'm here to talk about PEPCO's overall
preparation and response to Hurricane Isabel and the steps
we're taking to ensure that we can do everything we can to
satisfy our customers' needs and expectations in the future.
We at PEPCO recognize our unique role among electric
utility companies as the company that delivers electricity to
the Nation's Capital. Our single largest customer is the
Federal Government and we deliver power to such critical
installations as the U.S. Capitol complex, the White House, the
FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security, amongst others.
The magnitude of this responsibility does not escape us.
At this point, everyone is familiar with the devastation
caused by Hurricane Isabel. It disrupted electric service to
millions of people in the eastern United States. For PEPCO, it
meant more than half a million customers--two-thirds of our
customers--were without power; and the President declared our
entire region a natural disaster area. However, I am pleased to
report there were no significant interruptions of power supply
to any major Federal facility. A pumping station at the D.C.
Water and Sewer Authority was affected, but it was prioritized
through coordination with the District of Columbia Emergency
Management Agency and was quickly restored. With respect to
State facilities, power supply was interrupted to two
department of motor vehicle offices, one in the District of
Columbia and one in Maryland. Thus, the outages resulting from
Hurricane Isabel primarily affected residential and commercial
customers.
PEPCO made unprecedented preparations prior to Isabel's
arrival. We brought in crews from other States, trained
additional telephone representatives and secured large
quantities of electric equipment and materials for restoration.
As our emergency measures anticipated, the damage was
devastating. Let me give you some brief examples.
In PEPCO's service area, there were more than 5,000 wires
down--that is more in one storm than we see in a year--and
myriad trees uprooted which caused the vast majority of the
damage. Crews had to replace more than 75 miles of cable, along
with record amounts of other equipment. In the face of these
massive challenges, our employees did everything in their power
to restore service to our customers as quickly and safely as
possible. In fact, PEPCO restored service to more than twice as
many customers and repaired more than four times the damage we
did in the same period after the 1999 ice storm.
However, I believe that every event is an opportunity to
learn and improve our service to customers. In the aftermath of
major storm events, PEPCO always assesses its efforts to
restore the system and files reports with the District of
Columbia and Maryland Public Service Commissions. We support
these efforts and will cooperate fully with them.
However, we want to do more; and, as we announced earlier
this week, we are taking a significant additional step. We have
asked an expert in natural disasters, James Lee Witt
Associates, to conduct a thorough and independent assessment of
PEPCO's and our sister company Conectiv's response to Isabel,
including the coordination between the companies and with the
disaster response agencies and others. We believe Mr. Witt is
uniquely qualified to oversee this important work. As Director
of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for 8 years, he led
the Agency response to more than 348 Presidentially declared
disasters. His work included the oversight of emergency
response efforts to a dozen damaging hurricanes. Mr. Witt and
his team will have free rein to ask any questions of any person
on any issue related to our preparation and response to Isabel
and will evaluate all aspects of our performance; they will
seek input from customers, public officials and others. You can
rest assured that his recommendations will get our prompt and
serious attention.
Turning to regional preparedness and coordination, PEPCO
mobilized the entire company in accordance with its Emergency
Response Plan which includes participation in the utility
mutual assistance pact. This pact allows us to pull in system
repair crews from areas that are not impacted by the storm and
generally increases our ability to respond. In this effort, we
had 966 crews working to restore power. Hundreds of these crews
were on loan from other utilities from as far away as Kansas
and Mississippi. PEPCO coordinated with our local emergency
management agencies and provided liaison in the command centers
in the District of Columbia, Montgomery and Prince George's
Counties, as well as coordination with the States.
In terms of outreach, PEPCO's primary way of communicating
with the public was through our call center representatives,
our government affairs staff, our Web site, and our news media.
I personally conducted daily telephone teleconferences with
elected officials and a special phone line in the emergency
command center was manned 24 hours a day by government affairs
staff and staff that handle large commercial accounts. In
addition, there was a special phone line for government
officials also staffed around the clock to provide the most
updated information.
Finally, as we begin to assess our performance in preparing
and responding to Hurricane Isabel one issue comes up time and
time again. Trees. I'll be just 1 second, Mr. Chairman. Local
governments, the National Park Service and all utilities need
to work together to assess the tree issue; and we need an open
dialog of setting priorities for restoration.
This concludes the formal part of my testimony. I'd like to
thank you and members of the committee for your attention. We
will be happy to answer any questions.
Chairman Tom Davis [presiding]. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sim follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Admiral Johnson, thanks for being with
us.
Admiral Jay Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of
the committee. My name is Jay Johnson. I'm the president and
CEO of Dominion Virginia power. We provide electric service to
2.2 million customers in Virginia and North Carolina.
I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before the
committee today. I want to discuss Dominion's role in dealing
with Isabel, but I would also say the implications for
improving future emergency preparedness in the Metro D.C. area
are many, and I commend the committee for stepping forward and
taking this action. Mr. Chairman, you have my written
statement, and I'd just like to highlight a few points if I
could.
Hurricane Isabel, as we know, was the most devastating
natural disaster in Dominion's 100-year history. The hurricane
covered an area the size of the State of Colorado; and at the
peak of the storm 1.81 of our 2.2 million customers--that's 82
percent--were without power. The damage to our electrical
system was catastrophic in much of central and eastern Virginia
and North Carolina. In northern Virginia the damage was less
severe but still very, very significant. In northern Virginia,
for example, 16 area water pumping stations lost power, as did
91 schools across the region; and that's about a quarter of the
schools in northern Virginia. The good news is that no
hospitals in northern Virginia were affected; and other
important facilities, including the Pentagon, Fort Belvoir,
Dulles and Reagan airports and the Metro system did not lose
power. Although we continue to catalog the damages, we know the
storm destroyed more than 10,700 utility poles, broke 14,600
cross arms. We had to replace 13,000 spans of wire and almost
8,000 transformers. More than 60 percent of our 1,600 primary
circuits were badly damaged. The scope and impact of Isabel
were unprecedented, as were our preparations and response.
We placed emphasis in two areas: first, mobilizing the
manpower and materials we needed to safely restore electrical
power; second, providing timely and up-to-date information to
government officials, media and customers before, during and
after the event. We knew this was going to be a big storm. We
initially mobilized a work force of 7,000 which grew to 12,000
over the following days. We had crews from 20 different States
and the Province of Quebec assisting in this restoration
effort. Our top priority, initially, was restoring critical
public health and safety facilities as soon as the hurricane
passed--hospitals, water pumping and treatment stations, 911
services, fire stations, and the like.
Recognizing the crucial importance of the region's water
supply, we also sent members of our management team to work
onsite with our colleagues at the D.C. Water Authority and the
Fairfax County Water Authority soon after the storm hit. We
restored 14 of the area's 16 pumping stations on Friday,
September 19, the day we began restoring power. The other two
pumping stations were located at Occoquan. They suffered major
damage to the electrical infrastructure but were restored
within a week.
I've got a more complete accounting of all of this in my
written testimony, but I would comment that, in many cases,
what we're talking about here is rebuilding the distribution
system, not just simply repairing it. Suffice it to say, our
line crews performed superbly, working long hours under
extremely difficult conditions. I am pleased to report that, as
of today, our crews have restored power to virtually all of
Dominion Virginia Power's 1.8 million customers. When I left
Richmond this morning at 0600 it was under 500 and counting,
and we feel pretty confident we will get the rest of those
today.
In addition to the physical work of setting poles and
pulling wire, we implemented a comprehensive and proactive
public communications plan. Providing up-to-date information to
government officials and the public was a priority before,
during and certainly after the hurricane. Among other things,
we conducted regular briefings for State and local officials.
We exchanged information with local EOCs, Emergency OP Centers.
We issued radio, print and electronic communications to our
customers, including targeted messages to 10,000 customers with
special medical needs 2 days before the storm hit. And, for the
first time, we posted information about the location of repair
crews and their daily work plans on our Internet Web site,
which had over a half a million hits in the first 2 days after
the event. From the outset, we were very clear about our
restoration priorities, and we repeatedly emphasized two things
in our public communications: one, the importance of safety to
our crews and to the public; and, two, the inescapable fact
that the restoration effort would more closely resemble a
marathon than a sprint due to the catastrophic damages
suffered.
By and large, we believe our efforts to keep local
authorities and the public informed were quite successful. That
said, we know we can do better; and we have every intention of
doing so. Dominion's corporate culture is grounded in the mind
set of continuous improvement. Once we complete all aspects of
the restoration effort we are going to take a hard look at
everything we did. We will conduct a thorough assessment of our
planning, our implementation, our materials management, and
communications. The implications for regional emergency
preparedness will emerge more clearly as we examine the entire
Isabel experience with the clarity of 20/20 hindsight. We're
committed to partnering with all levels of government and all
the emergency agencies to address their concerns as part of
this ongoing assessment.
The 12,000 member team we assembled for Isabel was the
largest we have ever fielded. These men and women, some
Virginians, some from other States, some from Canada, performed
extraordinarily well under adverse conditions. We're very proud
of them. I would also say that we are grateful, in closing, to
the many Dominion Power customers who shared a kind word with
our crews, who gave them the thumbs up as they worked hard to
restore electrical service as quickly and safely as they could.
We value our customers' support, and we appreciate their
patience and understanding.
Isabel was a harsh teacher. She brought many hardships to
the area. We intend to learn from her presence here and build
on our restoration success to achieve even greater preparedness
in the fu-
ture. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for giving me the opportunity
to address the committee; and I stand ready to answer your
questions.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Johnson follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Crowder, thanks for being here. I
see Harry Day, your chairman is here as well. I want to
recognize him. And, Harry, welcome to the room.
Mr. Crowder. Chairman Davis, thank you very much.
Congresswoman Norton and Congressman Van Hollen and members of
the committee, good morning. I'm Charlie Crowder, and I'm the
general manager of the Fairfax County Water Authority. I have
over 30 years experience in planning, building and operating
major metropolitan water systems; and I'm pleased to be here
today to discuss tropical storm Isabel and its impact on the
Water Authority and the customers we serve.
Our Water Authority is the largest in Virginia and one of
the 25 largest drinking water utilities in the country.
Approximately 1.2 million people in northern Virginia use our
water. The Water Authority operates two water treatment plant
industrial complexes. Our plants are located on the Potomac
River and on the impounded Occoquan River.
Drinking water systems frequently face power outages caused
by storms, icy weather, high winds, and similar natural
occurrences. Systems like ours that must respond to these types
of outages are generally well prepared with extensive system
architecture, along with trained and knowledgeable personnel.
Outages generally caused by severe weather tend to be of
relatively short duration, impacting small portions of a
system. It is highly unusual for local weather conditions to
have such a devastating impact. In fact, it was the first time
in the 50-year history of the Fairfax County Water Authority
that we lost all the power feeds to our treatment plants.
Now I'd like to recap what occurred 2 weeks ago, then
describe some important reliability improvements the Water
Authority has initiated in recent years and also mention some
prospective facility improvements we are reexamining in the
wake of Isabel. The Water Authority entered the day of the
storm's arrival with our employees mobilized, facilities fully
operational and all of our storage tanks full. We experienced
intermittent power outages, but these impacted only individual
facilities and were quickly restored by the power company, and
our redundant features offset the impacts. However, late on
Thursday, September 18th, electrical power was lost to all four
treatment plants. By 4 a.m. on Friday, some of our customers
began to experience low water pressure and the potential for
contamination from siphonage became possible. Out of an
abundance of caution, our customers were advised to boil that
small portion of their water that they wanted to drink. The
precautionary boil water advisory was lifted at 7 p.m. Sunday,
September 21st.
During this entire time, Dominion Virginia Power responded
with priority service to the Water Authority. The power company
worked through the storm to restore power to our facilities.
Despite those efforts, it still took over 13 hours to restore
power to our Potomac plant, with the other plants regaining
power several hours later. In total, customers who awoke Friday
morning to no water had their water service restored by Friday
evening. With the exception of the inconvenience of boiling
water needed for direct consumption, all water services were
restored in about the same amount of time it takes to fix a
major water main break. However, the fact that this was a
system-wide outage made it serious indeed, and we will take
steps to prevent its reoccurrence. We must have virtually
uninterruptable power for the system by one means or another.
Mr. Chairman, a 13-hour power outage for a public water system
is significant. The Water Authority does not believe this is
acceptable nor do we believe that Dominion Virginia Power does.
The reasons behind the delay in regaining power to the water
system need to be examined and preventive measures put in
place.
Throughout our history, we have made improvements to
increase the water system reliability. We have two sources of
water, two treatment complexes with similar production
capacities at opposite ends of our service area and a strong
interconnected transmission system. These are protections
enjoyed by only a handful of major water utilities. Our Potomac
plant has dual power feeds, with one placed underground to
avoid ice and windstorm outages. Next year, when we bring a new
state-of-the-art 120 million gallons per day water treatment
facility on line at Occoquan, it will further increase our
power supply reliability. We took the initiative with this new
plan to have its power feed and substation connected directly
to the national grid, which will provide extraordinary power
reliability.
Looking to the future, we are re-examining constructing
more elevated storage tanks and we are reexamining onsite
emergency power generation at our facilities, all the while
taking a fresh look at power generation feasibility from a
Fairfax County incinerator. We estimate onsite emergency power
generation could cost as much as $50 million and will require a
significant increase in our water rates.
Although the feasibility and cost of these options have
been considered in the past, it is important to reevaluate
previous assumptions and examine new ones in light of Isabel.
We have already engaged a nationally recognized engineering
firm to conduct an assessment of options and recommended
actions that will allow us to prevent another situation like
the one Isabel inflicted on us.
Let me stop at this point and express that the linkage
between the power sector and water sector is one of the key
infrastructure interdependencies under study at the local and
national level throughout the water industry. Thank you for
this opportunity to address the committee, and I would be happy
to answer your questions.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Crowder follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Johnson. Thanks for being with us.
Mr. Jerry Johnson. Thank you and good morning, Mr.
Chairman, Congresswoman Norton, Congressman Van Hollen. I'm
Jerry Johnson, general manager of the District of Columbia
Water and Sewer Authority. We're pleased to be invited to
provide testimony today on emergency preparedness.
WASA, as you know, provides wastewater collection for the
Nation's Capital and wastewater treatment for Prince George's,
Montgomery and Fairfax Counties as well as the District of
Columbia at the large, advanced wastewater treatment plant that
we call Blue Plains. WASA also purchases 76 percent of the
drinking water produced by the Washington aqueduct and provides
retail water delivery in the District of Columbia to portions
of northern Virginia to include the Pentagon and National
Airport.
Generally, a major storm event can impact WASA's system and
customers in a number of different ways. Fortunately, by 9 a.m.
on Friday, September 19, WASA's emergency operations determined
that WASA had fared very well through the initial hurricane,
had no major damage to our facilities or operations and had no
unusual customer calls or complaints, and cleanup of minor
localized flooding areas and the treatment plant were under way
at that time.
WASA worked closely with the District of Columbia agencies
to ensure timely information sharing coordination and
reallocation among agencies' resources during the storm and for
clean-up operations. Our designated personnel reported to the
EOC Emergency Management Agency at the District of Columbia
upon its activation at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, on September 17.
The WASA Emergency Operational Center was activated Thursday,
September 18th, at 12 noon and continued to operate through
Friday, September 19th, until 3 p.m. WASA EOC was fully staffed
and included extra customer service reps to respond to customer
calls; public affairs and other management staff, who were
available to respond to media inquiries and to contact media
and provide updates or bulletins to help customers be more
informed; procurement staff to insure that equipment services
and other purchases that may have been required for the
emergency were available.
WASA's preparation and mobilization, however, began well in
advance of the activation of the EOC. Operational departments
distributed emergency duty schedules and deployment plans.
Operating departments and procurement cooperated in advance to
ensure that WASA had the flexibility to use contractors and
others sufficient to supplement our own water and sewer
operations and plant maintenance functions in the emergency.
As was noted by Mr. LaPorte in his testimony, WASA
accelerated system maintenance schedules in advance of the
storm's arrival by clearing large areas of catch basins in
flood-prone areas of the city in a successful effort to help
avoid localized flooding. We prepositioned equipment, supplies
and personnel, and certain other facilities. As I said earlier,
WASA and our customers seem to have weathered the storm
reasonably well.
Although I have included additional information in my
testimony, I will comment on a problem that was significant but
of short duration. The storm water pumping station used to pump
runoff away from I-395 roadway as it continues north across the
14th Street Bridge was overwhelmed by rising waters from the
Potomac River and the Washington Canal, causing a closure of
395 on September 19. The facility near the Case Bridge was
simply overwhelmed by the high flows, and the electrical system
failed as water entered the station. I-95 traffic was diverted
around this location, and WASA personnel removed reconditioned
electrical equipment and pumped away the water, but,
unfortunately, it took 48 hours for us to recover from this
flooding incident on the roadway.
WASA is continuing a formal debriefing and will be
informing our Board of Directors. Some of that information that
they will be receiving is included in the testimony. We will
continue to evaluate and enhance our capability as a first
responder for emergencies, focusing on employee training,
facility maintenance, access control, remote monitoring, and
other issues that are critically important for preparing for
either a natural disaster or other catastrophic event. We
continue to work with local and Federal Government, the Council
of Governments and other water utilities in the region on these
challenges we face. Through COG, for example, we are exploring
the feasibility and wisdom of system interconnections where
major intersections can be done with what currently is a
separate system that will allow us to share critical important
water resources in the case of emergencies. We will continue
these efforts, Mr. Chairman and we appreciate the committee's
interest in this important but usually invisible work that we
perform. We also thank this committee for its continued support
of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority and the activities that
we undertake to serve the residents of the District and the
region.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Ms. Violette, last but certainly not
least, thank you for staying with us and being here today.
Ms. Violette. Well, good morning, Mr. Chairman and members
of the committee. I'm Leslie Violette. I am the treasurer and
former president of the Belle View Condominium Unit Owners
Association. This association is comprised of owners of 980
condominium units within the Belle View Condominium and is
responsible for the management and the maintenance of the
common areas of the Condominium. Belle View Condominiums is
located in an area of Fairfax County that lies along the George
Washington Parkway, which is adjacent to the Potomac River.
During the early hours of Friday, September 19, Hurricane
Isabel created a storm surge that pushed a 9\1/2\ foot wall of
water over the banks of the Potomac River and into the Belle
View Condominiums, flooding homes, damaging utilities and
destroying property. All 65 buildings within the condominium
were flooded. Seventeen homes remain uninhabitable; family
heirlooms and mementos have been destroyed; and many residents
today are without hot water, heat, gas, or electricity.
Preliminary estimates of the damage to the Belle View
Condominium common elements alone range between $4 and $6
million. The losses suffered by the Belle View families cannot
even be estimated.
Fairfax County officials issued warnings of this calamity
only 9 hours before the surge occurred, although county
engineers knew as early as the preceding Wednesday night that
the storm surge would flood the Belle View area; in fact, many
Belle View residents learned of the surge only when Fairfax
County firemen notified Belle View residents by knocking on
their doors, beginning 7 p.m. on the night of the storm,
leaving them with precious little time to move vehicles to
higher ground or to remove personal property from basement
storage areas in below grade residences.
Fairfax County officials have described Belle View as the
most vulnerable point in the county, and county engineers knew
days before that a storm surge was likely and as early as the
preceding Wednesday that it was likely that Belle View would be
flooded. However, the county waited until the night before the
storm to hastily announce a meeting of the members of the
boards of directors of area residential associations, including
Belle View. The county official conducting the meeting reported
that he had already been briefing communities for approximately
1 week before the arrival of Isabel. In answer to questions,
the official said that the community could expect that the side
streets, the main roads, and intersections within the community
would likely be covered with 6 inches of water, making them
impassable for a time. He also anticipated a 3- to 5-foot tidal
surge, not the 9\1/2\ feet tidal surge that Isabel delivered.
During this briefing, the county official was uncertain whether
evacuation would be necessary and offered no direction on what
residents should do in the event of an evacuation order or
where we should go if we were evacuated. Those 40 people
attending this meeting and the many residents of Belle View who
were not notified of the meeting were given no further
information by the county until the television stations began
broadcasting the evacuation order and firemen appeared at their
door.
On the Friday and Saturday following the storm, the county
worked to bring together and coordinate resources to assist us
in recovering from the calamity that had befallen us. Several
meetings were held for the Belle View community over these 2
days, but there were continuing problems in coordinating the
meetings and notifying residents and the Association of those
meetings. Since these first 2 days, county officials,
specifically Supervisor Gerry Hyland, Mount Vernon Police
Captain Larry Moser and Fairfax County Fire Chief John Caussin
have been tireless in assisting our residents in coordinating
relief efforts and in communicating with the Association and
our owners. In addition, Congressman Moran responded to our
needs quickly and vigorously, bringing Federal emergency relief
resources such as FEMA and the SBA to bear. Likewise, the
American Red Cross responded immediately to our human needs and
was a godsend to our dispossessed residents.
Our region can and should respond to future emergencies
more effectively. In our particular case, if the area of the
county in which Belle View is situated is the most vulnerable
part of the county, we need to develop better means to protect
it. We need to develop better means for prompt, early
dissemination of information and warnings about approaching
dangers. With more warning than we received here, valuables
could have been preserved, vehicles could have been moved and
special needs residents could have been cared for better.
Long-range planning for emergencies is everyone's business.
The Belle View Board of Directors has already begun steps to
understand what can be done better to protect our physical
plant. We believe a coalition of local governments, businesses
and residents should be developed to work toward improving our
systems for identifying, grading and warning of potential
dangers and to respond to the dangers as they occur. Only now,
after the damage has been done and all the necessary parties
are talking with each other and cooperating with each other,
has something started to really jell. I wish this had happened
before and as the storm approached and I hope this developing
dialog will continue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
opportunity to address you and to report to you what we
experienced.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Violette follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1135.071
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1135.072
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you and thanks for being with us.
Ms. Violette, let me start with you. Some of your residents
there are really tenants, right? You have good condominium
owners, but that lease--is that right?
Ms. Violette. That is correct.
Chairman Tom Davis. And are they going to be covered with
homeowners insurance of any kind or have some of them lost
everything?
Ms. Violette. Well, I will tell you, Mr. Chairman, what
happened is, everybody has--almost everybody has contacted
their homeowners insurance, myself included, and unless you
have flood insurance, which nobody seems to have had or we
thought we had, most of us thought we had a, ``water policy,''
it is not covering our damages.
Chairman Tom Davis. And had the county come 12 hours
earlier or given more warning, obviously, things could have
been salvaged.
Ms. Violette. Right. We could have sandbagged, we could
have moved our vehicles. What happened is people were sort of
lulled into a sense of, well, you know, every time it rains in
Belle View we take on water, and I think when we were told
there was 6 inches of water coming people left their cars
there. Their cars are flooded out, so they are total losses.
When we have a heavy rainstorm, 6 inches of water comes on the
road, so we assumed this is the normal storm in Belle View. Why
leave?
Chairman Tom Davis. The reason people left is because
somebody came to the door; is that right?
Ms. Violette. Right, and said you should leave. And for me,
I had an older dog so I didn't want to take the chance. Some
people took their pets and left, some people had elderly
parents that were there, they came and got those folks, but I
tell you when the firemen came door-to-door, bless them for
coming door-to-door, but I asked them, ``Why are you coming
around? What has changed?'' They said, ``Well, you are going to
flood.'' And we said,``How much?'' They said, ``We don't
know.'' They did not know, so why would someone leave if the
firemen can't tell you why you are leaving.
Chairman Tom Davis. OK. Thank you.
Mr. White, we have heard the testimony on the closing. I
think you did everything right; I mean, as I listen to this,
you had the conference call. You can never predict with
certainty. I remember that day driving home; we held a hearing
that morning, everything else was shut down, and I thought,
``Jeez, why are they closing?'' I understand the process that
went into it and you are never perfect in terms of timing
everything. As you look back, you didn't have the kind of
damage you could have had, but I remember during the last
snowstorm how bad it was and the damage that occurred and
actually you were the only ingress and egress through that
area, so any thoughts afterwards of what might have been
different?
Mr. White. Well, thank you for your comments, Mr. Chairman.
I think our process was as good as it could be. We wanted to
make sure we weren't making any decisions in a vacuum and that
we were consulting with as many people and conferring with as
many people as possible. I was very glad to hear the
observations of Director Tolbert and other members of public
safety management. I think there was a clear understanding that
this was a very serious event, and though one could not predict
when it was going to happen it was a near certainty that a very
severe event was going to take place. In trying to provide
certainty, we could have held off and made the decision the
next day, closer to when events were going to take place, but
we were going to have conflicts with schools and local
governments that were making decisions earlier than that. We
are certainly willing and prepared, and have already told
people in after-action meetings, ``Please give us your
expertise on the decision that came down on.'' This standard or
threshold of 40 miles an hour was really not a safe condition
and, we would be happy to entertain any advice people have
around that technical standard. But I think it really comes
down to that simple matter, that when safety people tell you
there is a threshold condition, you must err on the side of
being conservative and I would much rather be here talking to
you and others about the decision we made and why we did it,
rather than explaining why people got hurt.
Chairman Tom Davis. I don't think there is any question
about that. Had you waited until that day, you could have had
all kind of clusters there, right?
Mr. White. Right.
Chairman Tom Davis. The key is you didn't lose any
equipment, did you?
Mr. White. No, we didn't, sir. We lost power temporarily.
Chairman Tom Davis. I am talking about long-term damage
like you had from the snowstorm.
Mr. White. No, we did not.
Chairman Tom Davis. Let me ask Mr. Sim and Admiral Johnson,
was there a clear cut difference in the loss in power between
those communities that were underground versus those that had
the wires running through the trees?
Mr. Sim. From my point of view, yes, obviously. I think it
is 63 percent of the D.C. system is underground. The downtown
area, basically, was unaffected by this, and remember the
downtown area is underground, as part of the old fire code and
everything else, but, yes, there was a considerable difference.
Admiral Johnson. I would give the same answer, Mr.
Chairman, with one caveat, and that is, we have 35,000 miles of
distribution system. About a third of that is underground, yet
we still lost 82 percent of our customers, so----
Chairman Tom Davis. You lose some along the way?
Admiral Johnson. Yes.
Chairman Tom Davis. And sometimes it is tougher when it is
underground to correct it than when it is above, but there is a
marked difference, it is fair to say. My time goes quickly but
let me yield to Ms. Norton for 5 minutes.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. White, how often
do we get 40 mile per hour winds in this jurisdiction?
Mr. White. Well, we certainly know that we have not had it
since the Metrorail system opened up. I cannot tell you when we
had it before then but I can tell you we have not had it since
the system opened up.
Ms. Norton. In your testimony, you said you were strongly
encouraged, you used those words, to shut down. Who strongly
encouraged you to shut down, the elected officials?
Mr. White. On the COG-RICC's conference call, for which
there were 60 different parties, every official who is the lead
official in county government, the lead staff official in
county government, all the emergency management agencies, the
school support, several members of the Federal Government,
public safety, homeland security and personnel officials from
the States, Michael Byrne from the Office of the National
Capital Regional Coordination, and actually an official from
the White House as well, those were the ones that participated
in the call. As I said, there were more than 60 parties. There
were two separate calls on Wednesday, the day before the event,
and there was one official party that the COG uses as the
authoritative source on the weather event, an official of the
National Weather Service. So that is the process we went
through and those are the parties who participated in the
dialog, and that was the outcome of those dialogs and again,
Ms. Norton and other members of the committee, I would
encourage you to take a look at the letter and attached
documentation that Tony Griffin sent in last night. They have
already prepared the documentation on the 19 separate
conference calls that regional officials participated in, 9 of
which were transportation calls, and they have already done a
preliminary after action assessment report, and all of that
information was contained in that.
Ms. Norton. Mr. White, I would hate to have been in your
position, to have had to make the call, and the last thing we
want to do is to second-guess you, and I do note that there is
agreement among officials, I guess there is, since you say they
were all in audit; I am not sure who had the necessary
expertise. I know if I were on the call, I certainly wouldn't
have had it and therefore I would have had to rely on somebody
who did know more than I knew.
I am impressed that with all of the concerns there have
been, Mr. Sim, with PEPCO, that PEPCO is calling in an outside
analyst to review what happened. The District told me before
they left, the representative of the District told me, that
George Washington University was doing an independent
assessment, but I note, Mr. White, that in your testimony you
say only that Ramada is currently in the process of completing
a self-assessment. Let me congratulate all of you on doing a
self-assessment, but in light of the outcry from residents, the
need to fully understand what happened, your answer to me that
somehow this decision was made collectively by 60 people and
therefore it is hard to know where responsibility lies or
should lie in the future, Mr. White, don't you think that there
should be an outside assessment as well and that you would be
assisted if you were--if you had more than your own self
criticism. And in a real sense, to me it is like if Eleanor
writes something and then she proofreads her own thing, I can't
see anything because it is all in my own head, and I am only
human. If you were only human, wouldn't the better procedure be
to have a fresh side look at what you did and not only your own
eyes?
Mr. White. Well, I agree with you entirely, Ms. Norton. I
didn't mean to imply that we were just looking at this issue
ourselves. As a matter of fact, I have personally participated
in two meetings this week at which regional officials have come
back together to begin the review and after action assessment
process.
The COG chief administrator's----
Ms. Norton. Mr. White, I am really talking about an
entirely--those people were involved in a conference call. Mr.
Chairman, I am not talking about a special council here, but I
am talking about a totally independent, fresh eyes; I had
nothing to do with the decision, but let me look at it. That is
really my question.
Mr. White. We have already asked the State----
Ms. Norton. And I will give you as an example what PEPCO is
doing.
Mr. White. We have already asked the State emergency
management officials as to whether they would be willing to
offer us any such advice about the threshold decisions that we
made on public safety issues.
Ms. Norton. Well, who did you ask, I am sorry?
Mr. White. The State emergency management agencies.
Ms. Norton. Mr. White, I mean, you get my point. You keep--
you are circular. You are asking people who were a part of the
decision to assess the decision. I am making my point by
pointing to Mr. Sim and PEPCO; they have also had an outcry. I
am not looking--we are making no assessment, we are making no
judgment. We just want to make sure that there is improvement
and we are going by standard operating procedure. We thought in
the private sector somebody would come in and, in addition to
our own assessment, do an assessment.
Chairman Tom Davis. You are saved by the red light there,
but we may get another round there.
Ms. Norton. But you do get my point?
Mr. White. I do get your point.
Chairman Tom Davis. OK. Thank you very much. Mr. Moran.
Mr. Moran. Well, he is not exactly safe. I think he would
have been better of if he was just responding to Eleanor,
because I agree with Eleanor, and I appreciate that you want to
be a nice guy, Tom, and normally you ask pretty probative
questions. I don't mean to be dismissive, but, you know, I
think this is a tougher issue than to have all these folks who
work together, all of whom are going to get paid whether they
work on that day or not. I mean, some of them may be docked for
cover time or something, but, you know, they are all folks in
white collar jobs, and it is not a big deal to call off Metro
at 11 a.m. In retrospect, it was the wrong decision. The storm
didn't start until all the weather forecasters said it was
going to start, which was late afternoon, and, you know, if you
had watched the weather reports then all of them were
consistent, all of them said we are tracking the storm.
In listening to the guy that said that he was the one that
wound up closing down the Washington region, all he said was,
it is possible some of the storm could arrive earlier, but, you
know, you have to make an executive judgment, and your judgment
resulted in the loss of $70 million. I like your dad, I think
you are doing a great job, Mr. White, and this is an important
hearing and it is being conducted properly, but, you know, none
of the people who were reliant upon Metro truly for their whole
lives were consulted. There are people who don't have a car,
who can't get around without Metro. Most of them tend to be
low-income people, but we have also got a lot of communities in
Arlington and D.C.; for example high-rise communities. They
don't own an automobile. I mean, they had to leave work whether
they were going to get paid or not, and it was a beautiful day
as it turned out until the storm started coming in the late
afternoon. To dismiss it 2 hours earlier would have saved a lot
of money and would have been a lot less disruptive to people's
lives. Not a question, just an observation.
Mr. Johnson, I am really glad you are heading Dominion
Power. You were a wonderful leader in the U.S. Navy and, boy,
Dominion Power made a great decision to pick you and I don't
have any complaints about your watch, but there are a lot of
places where wires ought to be underground and they are not,
and it is because you have to be competitive with other utility
companies vis-a-vis your shareholders and there is a
disinclination to make the kind of capital investments that
need to be made by utility companies all over the country. That
is one of the reasons we had the blackout that we did. I know
you are aware of it and know you are a proactive person, so I
have no questions but I hope utility companies across the
country--you know, it would be nice if we could take a little
piece of the money we are sending, the $6 billion we are giving
to Iraq, to establish an electric power grid, if we could share
some of that in the United States, but that is a digression.
OK, now. Leslie, thank you so much for being here,
particularly thank you for your leadership. I understand that
you are angry and dissatisfied with the information you got
from the seat of government in Fairfax County, which was pretty
much removed from the scene of the action in southern Fairfax,
but I really appreciate what you said about Mr. Hyland's
office. I know he was deeply involved in this, and particularly
those police and fire emergency responders assigned locally.
Boy, they did a great job, and I really appreciate your giving
the credit that they are due and I know you have done that at
every meeting you have had. But what could the Federal
Government have done better than what we did. We now finally
have a disaster recovery center and that is good and I
appreciate the FEMA people doing that; and SBA was good and
they did come to a meeting. But what are the things that they
could have done, either in direct assistance or to at least
provide information that you think they could look for if we
have a future disaster like this, where they might be able to
be a little more responsive from your perspective, it being
right there on the field and being the first one, one of the
first people that affected residents who asked for advice and
what to do?
Ms. Violette. Well, as far as the Federal Government is
concerned, you know, when the gentleman was here from FEMA and
he was talking about them handing out pots and pans and what
not, I will be honest with you, I never saw any of that. I
never saw any of the things that he was talking about. So I
will be honest with you, we did not see very much of FEMA
onsite in our neighborhood, so the stuff you were talking about
their presence and what not, I have to agree with you. They
just were not around very much in our neighborhood, and that
was one of our concerns. They just were not down in the
neighborhood, down in the trenches, and the problem was that
they were there--they said they were going door-to-door during
the day, but I will be quite honest with you, if they were
going door-to-door during the day they are not going to get
people door-to-door during the day. People do have to work, and
I did tell the gentleman when he called, I said that if you
were hitting people door-to-door during the day, I know for a
fact you did not hit people on my street and I said, ``can you
come at night,'' and he said, ``we don't work at night,'' and I
said, ``well, I work for the Federal Government,'' and I said,
``that is part of the knock on the Federal Government.'' People
think a 9 to 5 job. Well, this is not a 9 to 5 job when you are
in disaster relief. People are not home during the day. You
have to go at night, and there was a sign posted on the door of
my neighbor. I was here between 9 and 5. Well, ``duh,'' she was
working. You are not going to get her, you know. I mean, you
have to be available when the people are available. If you are
not willing to come out in the evening hours, you are not going
to get ahold of people. I am sorry to be so frank, but that is
the truth. You are asking me for the truth, I am telling you
the truth.
Mr. Moran. That is what we wanted and that is why we are
having the hearing, and, Mr. Chair, this is going to be our
last opportunity for questioning? Thank you so much for having
the hearing. We get information that we wouldn't otherwise get
and it was really timely and I really appreciate your letting
us do this.
Chairman Tom Davis. Yes, and this was one of the real
tragedies that happened, down in Belle View, and I hope we can
learn from that and the county can learn from that in the
future. Let me say one thing before I recognize Mr. Van Hollen
and go back to the Metro closing. Sure, you might have moved it
to 3 o'clock or 1 or 2, but you made the decision the day
before, which was critical. Can you imagine not having made
that decision and having people in their offices and people
relying on it and closing it down and I think as we have heard
from the State officials who approved what you did, Congress
closed down that day. Only activity up here was this committee.
Ms. Norton. Because Metro closed down.
Chairman Tom Davis. Well, Members of Congress don't use
Metro.
Ms. Norton. I do, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Tom Davis. Well, Monday morning quarterbacking
aside, I think the decision matrix was good and I came here
prepared to go the other route, but after hearing from our
State and from FEMA and from everyone saying you got a tough
job, as you can see, we can never satisfy anybody up here
either and we can always learn and get a little better at it.
But I just want to reiterate my support for the process and the
way it happened. Sure, if we could go back and revisit it,
maybe we could hone it the second time. It is great to second-
guess. Mr. Van Hollen.
Mr. Van Hollen. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and just for the
record, there are many occasions when this Member of Congress
does actually ride Metro, but I didn't ride it that morning,
and it was a ghost town down here that day.
Let me direct my questions to Mr. Sim, and again I
appreciate you being here. I also appreciate the fact that
during the period of the power outage you had an open line of
communication with the elected officials. I am also glad that
PEPCO has recognized it has a crisis of confidence among many
hundreds of thousands of its customers, and again I commend you
on bringing in an outside expert to evaluate the situation.
I would just like to raise a couple issues and have you
respond if you could. One is the long-term issue. In our
region, there are many people who say that power outages, when
you have storms, are not unusual circumstances. There are
pockets of Montgomery County and Prince George's County where
this is not an unusual occurrence.
Second, with respect to Isabel and the response and
bringing in out-of-state crews, I mean, the reports indicate
that other utilities in the region were able to recruit more
out-of-state people more quickly, Dominion Virginia Power being
one, and the ability to get people's power back online seems to
reflect the fact that was a successful strategy by those
utilities. Just a few figures: by Saturday evening, after the
hurricane Thursday evening, in Virginia, 323,000 of 440,000
customers without power had their power restored versus in the
PEPCO region, 205,000 of 531,000 had had theirs restored. The
following evening, as you know, 86 percent of Virginians who
had no power had their power restored and 60 percent in PEPCO,
according to the report in the Washington Post.
The final issue, and I got so many letters from so many
different people on the issue of, you know, managing
expectations and customer relations. What I would like to do is
just read very briefly excerpts from one as an example of the
kind of issue I think we have to address going forward, and
this is a letter from someone who lost their power in Silver
Spring. It was a live wire situation which I understand should
have been a priority and must be a priority, and she writes, as
follows, and I am reading just excerpts:
PEPCO continually provided us with inaccurate information,
demonstrating an inability to coordinate between crews and
phone representatives as well as an inability to track
information. We lost power mid-afternoon on Thursday, September
18, 2003. Overnight a tree fell on a power line in a front
yard, bringing down one power line and breaking another,
leaving exposed wires. Friday morning, I called PEPCO and was
told that it would be a high priority to see if the wire was
live and to repair it. We hired a contractor to remove the tree
and several others still on our house. On Friday afternoon, I
provided that information to PEPCO. On Sunday and Monday, many
residents in our neighborhood had their power restored.
Tuesday, September 23, PEPCO informed me that they had
completed repairs and had taken us off the list. Unfortunately,
this was far from true. The power line was still down; we had
no power. They asked if we still had a tree on the line and
they said they could not fix it, the tree was there. I informed
them again that the tree had been removed. Wednesday, September
24, a supervisor told me that it looked like the repairs had
been made. When I told her once again that the line was still
down, the wire is still exposed and that we had no problem, she
said that we had been assigned a crew and they would arrive
during the night. Five hours later on the night of the 25th, no
crew had arrived. I called again Friday morning, September 26.
This is more than a week after PEPCO had said they would
originally come out. I was told there was no information
regarding when a crew would arrive and no guarantee they would
make their repairs by 6 p.m. Finally, after losing power,
finally, Friday morning, exhausted and frustrated, I called
several local news stations. A reporter from Channel 9 asked to
interview us and take footage of the live exposed wire. I then
called PEPCO to alert them the reporter was coming and would be
arriving in our home. Less than 20 minutes later a PEPCO crew
arrived on the scene and in less than 15 minutes confirmed that
the wire was live, completed a temporary repair and restored
power to the house.
Now, that is an example. Kind of disconnected between the
information that, you know, people were giving to PEPCO and the
information they were giving back. I mean, they would call 1
day and there seemed to be no ability to keep the information
on a particular consumer so the consumer felt that their
particular case was being actually followed, and I recognize
the fact that you had people calling from all over, but it
seems to me we have to develop a better system for
communicating with consumers and I think this is a perfect
example of it.
Mr. Sim. Well, yeah, let me try and take your questions in
order, Congressman, and I appreciate that and I am sure we have
that issue under investigation right now. With regard to the
pockets of outages, we have that high on our list and we have
actually put in a new outage restoration system that will allow
us to collect that information much more quickly and identify
those areas much more quickly. That is actually under way,
right now, to try to find out the pockets and areas and we have
actually been reviewing those for some time with both public
service commissions and we think we can find these
possibilities more quickly and get these possibilities
restored.
With regard to the Isabel response, I think the history
will show when we have these revisions that the crews were
probably about what were needed. It is very difficult to repair
a system as wide as the Admiral's with us. We all were on the
mutual assistance crews beforehand and identified the crews we
believed necessary for the storm and we had almost 1,000 crews
on our system, and so I think that when the reviews are done we
will obviously be looking at a number of crews on the system
but I really don't believe that this is an issue right now. All
these crews have to be properly equipped, and they were. We
never ran out of equipment on these systems. It has to be done
safely, there have to be people with these crews and we did
that with no injuries and no fatalities on the system. So I
think that will be reviewed.
With regard to overall review of the storm system, I think
there are clearly three areas, even this early, lessons learned
you want to look at. One is clearly communication with
customers. We put in a new outage restoration system that in
normal times will give each individual customer when they are
going to be restored based on the crew going out there,
identifying the damage, putting the equipment in the computer,
and immediately giving that automatically to the customer. In
storms like this, that is difficult to do. We have chosen
because of the damage to tell everybody, giving certainty,
saying it won't be till Friday. We are trying to give people
certainty. However, we understand that is not enough in this
day and age and we were trying to go beyond that. We did some
things like the Admiral; in fact, I just learned some things
from the Admiral that he did that we didn't do that I think
will help. We put outages by zip code on our Web site for those
that can get access to our Web site; we put up scatter
diagrams. We also started identifying in the middle of the
storm the feeders we were working on, so if someone called in
at least the customer rep could tell them we were working on
their feeder. Unfortunately, in a storm like this you have no
idea how long it is going to take to work on the feeder, so
that will be very, very high on our priority to do that job
better.
The other issue we are working very closely with others on
is the wires down situation. We have a system that works very
well, but there are two things that are different now over the
last few years. First of all, there are many, many, many more
wires on those poles than there ever was before due to open
access to those wires in there. Now, we are the ones to say,
when that pole comes down, that wire comes down, you have to
assume that wire is live, and we tell everyone that. Second, we
saw more wires down in this storm than we do in a normal year,
so we need to work with the many, many companies whose wires
are on that line and even more closely with the emergency
management agency, and I think during the storm we were. I will
give you an example in your neighborhood or your county. In
order to respond to this in the middle of the storm, we ran 150
wire down complaints one night; 16 of them were ours; 15 of
them were another electric company and another 120 were other
wires. Now, we need to get better to make sure that, if we
haven't been out there, that we make sure it is identified as
having been out there and so it is a live situation. Then a
decision has to be made on what happens to those wires. So this
is a complex area and clearly one we are going to be spending a
lot of time on.
And the last one at this point is I think we need to have a
better dialog on priorities and what the priorities are and
work with the local communities to figure out what those
priorities should be going forward. Thank you.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Van
Hollen. Let me just--I think we are going to just go quickly to
members to kind of sum up.
Let me ask Mr. Sim and Mr. Johnson: In retrospect, could we
have gotten more crews here. I know they came from across the
country but looking at the severity of the storm in retrospect,
were there even more we could have gotten here?
Admiral Jay Johnson. Mr. Chairman, I think the answer is
yes, we could have gotten more crews here, but as a practical
matter I will tell you that managing a force of upwards of
12,000 people across 30,000 square miles was a pretty sporting
proposition at the start, so I felt that the phasing of the
mutual aid and the contractors in was just about right.
Chairman Tom Davis. You had about all you could handle?
Admiral Jay Johnson. Yes, sir. So, yes, you could have
gotten more. I think we had about the right number to handle
the tremendous task that we had.
Chairman Tom Davis. Mr. Sim.
Mr. Sim. I agree with that. There is a safety issue here,
and even if these people are qualified you do need to have
people with them. But I would agree with that.
The other thing I would like to point out is we did
continue to share crews during this. We added to our people,
and as we finished we passed people on. So the cooperation
continued.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. I can understand that response, but, you know,
this was Category 3. I am not sure what you would have done
given your response if it was Category 5, because it took 12
days for PEPCO with, you know, almost 1,000 people here. So I
think you have to consider in fact, what kind of management
grid you need, in case you needed more folks.
I do want to say to PEPCO, because I spent most of my time
on Mr. White and again I want to reiterate, Mr. White, each of
you have a confidence restoring issue, and you may all be
right, but you got to look at ways that the public can be
satisfied, and we know as elected officials that the public
will grind you. Of course, we have to stand for election, so we
know how to be responsive or at least to act like we are being
responsive, and I suggest that you need to get help, all the
help you can get in this regard.
PEPCO, the communication problem is huge, and I don't know
the answers. I would like to suggest that when schools close,
and here we have a very complex region, they run these scrolls
under the screen, and it is very useful to people, and I tell
you I got tired of TV because they were telling me the same
thing. Some of the information was subject to change, it seems
to me, using e-mail, radio, TV, saying, you know, we are
reliant on--this is going to change but we may get to X, Y or Z
area within some time. I often find in constituent services
that people need to find somebody is paying attention to them.
Then they of course are willing to cut you some slack, but when
they can't get some sense of when you are trying to get to them
is when you really get people pounding on you.
And finally, let me say to PEPCO, there were complaints
that we heard about PEPCO trucks going out doing their job but
unable to do it because of fallen trees yet to be removed. The
notion of that raises a question about coordination, and I am
going to have a written question for you on whether or not it
is possible to deal with that kind of coordination. That is a
wasted trip for that PEPCO employee and further delay.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you, Ms. Norton. Mr. Moran.
Mr. Moran. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. As we all
know, most hearings that we have, we never actually hear from
the direct victims of a situation, and I appreciate your
insight and understanding in inviting particularly Miss
Violette to testify from a firsthand perspective of somebody
who actually was victimized and the leader of a very large
condominium area.
I can understand what you were saying in terms of not
having people on the scene; in other words, people making
decisions that were removed from what was happening on the
scene. It happened at the county level, you have told us in
your testimony, but the supervisor at the scene and the public
safety people at the scene, they knew exactly what to do
because they could see what was happening, and apparently that
is not our responsibility. But our responsibility is what
happens with Federal resources. Apparently, same thing happened
at the Federal Government. You are saying that if you had FEMA
people at the scene, for example, they would have known that
virtually everybody there had a 9 to 5 job, so going door-to-
door to interview them face to face was not going to be
effective because they were not going to see their faces. They
were obviously at work, so one thing FEMA could do is
understand that if you are contracting with FEMA you have to
recognize--and your job is to interview people then you are
going to have to work at night when they are at home if you are
not going to go to their offices during the day. That seems to
be an obvious thing, but apparently that isn't being done.
The second thing is to have a FEMA representative there
onsite so that they could take questions, they could serve as
an information clearing house for other Federal resources and
they could understand what needed to be done when it needed to
be done. That kind of thing I think is very helpful and I know
you don't--you are not the kind of person to be particularly
critical of anybody and appreciative of everybody that helps,
but I think your observation in that regard was very helpful.
Is there anything else that you would suggest from a Federal
response that could have made a real difference?
Ms. Violette. I think, after the fact now, looking back,
you know, something has to be done, I think, like you said,
Congressman Moran, around the area, around the Potomac area,
about the flooding issue. That definitely has to be something,
because if we have another storm of this magnitude--I mean, we
are going to get walloped again. There is only so much we can
do with our physical plant and we definitely have to look at
that issue, and I would ask that you do whatever you can with
the State for addressing not only us but with Old Town
Alexandria, because they are obviously victimized by it, too.
Mr. Moran. So we can't just be reactive every time a storm
comes; we have to be proactive and figure out how to mitigate?
Ms. Violette. Exactly. We are looking at things with our
own association, but there is only so much we can do.
Mr. Moran. Understand. That is a very thoughtful response.
Thank you, Miss Violette.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. Any other questions?
Mr. Van Hollen. No questions, just a brief comment.
Chairman Tom Davis. Yes.
Mr. Van Hollen. First, very briefly, for Mr. White: We
talked today about closing down Metro for a certain period of
time. In the long term, as a region, we have to make sure we
make a large investment in Metro, just to make sure that it
doesn't break down and people are without service. I know that
is a concern to you. You talked about $1.5 billion over a 6-
year period of investment. I know the chairman of this
committee shares the concern of all of us in this region in
making sure Metro is adequately funded, and I look forward to
working with you to make sure that the State of Maryland meets
its commitments, because I feel there is not enough priority in
the State of Maryland given to that, and we are talking about
potential breakdowns if we don't make that investment.
Just in closing, again, Mr. Sim, I would urge you, as part
of this investigation you are launching with an outsider, that
you encourage him to take seriously the testimony and the
statements of the consumers. Again, I will provide to you and
your office the letters that I have; they are very thoughtful
letters. I think we can all learn from some of the suggestions
of people who have been directly impacted, so I urge that he
not just talk with the experts but really go out in the field
and talk to people who have personal experience with the
problem and have some very creative ideas as to how we can
address it.
Mr. Sim. I believe he intends to have some community
meetings in all three jurisdictions.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you, and we appreciate your
sharing your insights with us, all of us. Mr. White, just one
last question: What was the damage Metro incurred in the
snowstorm from keeping trains on the track too long?
Mr. White. In the snowstorm, I don't have a direct answer
on that one. What it was was the extra amount of time that it
basically took to bring our trains back into service, so, I
mean, we spent a considerable amount of time.
Chairman Tom Davis. Maintenance.
Mr. White. And extra effort in terms of overtime to get the
trains back into service.
Chairman Tom Davis. And you didn't lose any this time, did
you?
Mr. White. No, we didn't lose any of our equipment. We were
largely ready for rush hour service on Monday. Obviously, we
had extra expense with the storm and lost revenue with the
storm, too.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you. I just want to thank all the
witnesses for taking the time from your busy schedules to be
with us today. As you learn lessons from this, if you could
forward them to us, it would be helpful for us, and the meeting
is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:43 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings and
additional information submitted for the hearing record
follows:]
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