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Release Date: May 20, 2008
Washington, D.C.
FEMA Headquarters
Secretary Chertoff: Good afternoon everybody. This is Hurricane Preparedness Day, and we’re here to talk to the American public a little bit about what we are doing to prepare for hurricane season which begins on June 1 and perhaps more important, what the public can do, particularly those people who are in areas which are within the zone of risk for a hurricane. Before we get into this, though, I’d like to take a moment just to address another matter briefly from a personal standpoint. I’ve become aware as everybody else has that Senator Kennedy was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Speaking both personally and on behalf of the department, our prayers go out to him. We hope that he will have a complete and speedy recovery. And I’ve had the privilege of working with him on some significant matters over the last years. He’s been an individual of tremendous integrity who’s made a tremendous contribution and we hope to continue to work with him in the years to come.
I’m joined here as you can see by Dave Paulison, the administrator of FEMA, Paul McHale, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense, Mary Elcano, the acting President and CEO of the American Red Cross, Admiral Thad Allen, and a number of other officials. General Swan of the Department of Defense and some of them will be speaking to you in turn.
This year, like every other year, hurricane season is about to be upon us. And this year, like every other year, we cannot predict with certainly when and where a hurricane is going to hit. So our approach has to be to be as prepared as we possibly can, to listen to the direction of our local officials and the professional experts when a hurricane appears to be headed in the direction of the United States, and to take those steps in terms of planning and personal preparation that will lift the burden as much as possible from our first responders, who are always the tip of the spear, so to speak, when we’re dealing with a hurricane. So let me begin from the bottom up, or from the ground up. The first line of defense with respect to a hurricane is the individual steps that every family and business undertake to prepare for the possibility of an emergency event. That includes first and foremost planning about where you would go if there’s an evacuation. Planning and acquiring the necessary staples: food, water, medicine, a battery operated radio. Things of that sort that you would need if in fact you were caught and had to shelter in place, or if you needed to return to an area where services were not up and running. Making sure you have gasoline in the automobile when a hurricane watch or warning is announced so you don’t run out of fuel on the highway. Making sure the family knows where to meet when there’s an emergency. Getting all of these steps in place – the emergency supply kit, the plan – and listening to direction is the cornerstone of hurricane preparedness.
As we move up from the ground level, the next level of response of course are our local responders and state responders. And we’ve worked very hard this year with communities all over the Gulf and up in all the regions that are potentially affected by hurricanes to make sure they’ve updated their plans, that we’re giving them the support that they need when they step forward to deal with a hurricane, and to make sure, perhaps most important, that we are fully linked up with them in terms of everybody knowing who is going to be in a position of responsibility in the event of a hurricane so that we are not introducing ourselves, so to speak, when the emergency actually occurs.
Part of what we’ve done at the federal level to support state and local responders is issue our new National Response Framework, develop new incident management assistance teams who will be literally the first on the scene to be present to be the eyes and ears of FEMA and the whole federal government in the event of an emergency, and who would connect up with our state and local officials to make sure that we have as seamless a response as possible in the event that we do have a hurricane or similar emergency.
Finally, to make sure that we’re capable of deploying all of the tools and all the elements of federal power to support state and local government if necessary, we have got agreements and prescripted missions assignments with 31 federal agencies: a total of 223 assignments that essentially pre-arrange for the deployment of health equipment, a national disaster medical system, military equipment, and whole host of other services in the event that they are necessary to support a state or a locality. By getting this work done in advance, by getting the contracts in place, by doing the planning in advance, by embedding the Department of Defense planners together with DHS and FEMA planners, we have taken a lot of the guesswork out of response and we’ve made it much more possible to deal with an emergency flexibly and efficiently and maybe most important, rapidly.
Administrator Paulison is going to go into some of the details of the additional capabilities we have. We’ll also hear from the Department of Defense, who I must say have been phenomenal partners over the last couple of years and have become really fully integrated with our planning system and our approach in a way that was not the case previously. But there are two or three things I do want to address before I turn it over to Administrator Paulison.
First, the paramount objective at this point in the season, when we don’t quite have the full flush of the season, is to get the message out, educate the public, and remind people that simply because we have not had a major hurricane in the U.S. in the last two years does not mean we are immune to hurricanes. So the time to think about it and get ready is now. As a consequence, working with the Ad Council and our Ready Campaign, we’re going to be launching a round of new public service announcements designed to get people to focus on the simple but necessary steps they need to take to be ready for hurricane season.
Second, as you probably know, last year we pilot tested an integrated public alert and warning system, what we call IPAWS. This adds to the typical radio and TV warning alert, emergency alert system, the capability to do things like text message, use email, use communications for the hearing-impaired, to make sure that the message on evacuation gets out as broadly as possible. For most states, the cost of actually acquiring and -- or, acquiring the service of such a system for the season is going to be less than a couple million dollars. It’s very inexpensive. I want to urge local officials and state officials to sign up for this system. Grant money – federal grant money, homeland security money –will be available to help defray the cost of this. But this tool which will enable local officials and state officials to get the word out as quickly as possible is the cornerstone of getting an effective and fast evacuation, which is really the condition for everything else that we do. It’s going to make it easier for everything else.
Finally, I’d like to address an issue that’s come up in the news. I’d like to drive a stake through the heart of a misapprehension which is out there. Namely, what would the role of the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection be, particularly in places like the state of Texas where we have checkpoints, in the event there’s an evacuation. I want to be crystal clear about this. And this has been conveyed to Texas officials, Customs and Border Protection officials and Border Patrol officials are going to be saying this as well. In the event of an emergency, and the need for an evacuation, priority number one by a country mile is the safe evacuation of people who are leaving the danger zone. Instructions to the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection are clear. They are to do nothing to impede a safe and speedy evacuation of a danger zone. Now, obviously the laws don’t get suspended, but it does mean that our priorities are to make sure we can move traffic along quickly. We’re not going to be bogging people down with checks or doing things to delay the rapid movement of people out of the zone of danger. So I want to put people’s minds at ease if they believe that somehow our plan was to stop all of the automobiles evacuating, because that’s simply not true. We are not going to slow up the process of evacuation. Saving lives is always the paramount responsibility of this department and it’s going to be our number one priority. So, with that, David.
Mr. Paulison: Thank you Mr. Secretary. I appreciate it very much. There’s a couple things over the last two years here where we’ve been working very hard to rebuild this organization and provide this country the response system that it should have. And part of that is what you see up here on this dais, up here is a partnership. We worked very hard over the last two years to develop that engaged partnership with our federal partners that are sitting up here, our local partners – you see some of the people over here from the local level, and also the state level. We have to work in concert. And what the Secretary said about personal preparedness also fits in that. It takes all of us together. It takes the people at the personal level, at the local level, the state level and the federal level all working as a team to make sure we can respond as a team. And that’s the way it should be. This year we have the largest budget FEMA’s ever had in its history. $ 9.7 billion, $2.2 billion of that has gone to state and local grants. $1.9 billion of that has gone for disaster relief funding, and over the last five years we’ve put almost $24 billion in state and local projects to make sure not only FEMA is ready, but also state and local people are ready to respond. We’re working very hard also to make sure we have the right type of equipment out there. As the Secretary mentioned, the National Response Framework has been released. That is going to describe very clearly to all of us how the state, the local, the federal government and the tribal governments are all going to work together and respond to these disasters. We developed a six-team mobile disaster recovery center that we have out there so we can get to people, get them registered in the system. We have a very robust system of evacuations for shelter and housing, working very closely with the Red Cross, by the way, who has been an outstanding partner for us, and will continue to be, to make sure that we’re working together – not only on shelter and evacuations, but also on how we’re going to share supplies. The logistics system that we’ve put together is not just for FEMA. It’s across the entire federal government. So regardless of where the supplies are, we have a handle on where they are and which ones are the closest. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s Red Cross supplies or FEMA supplies or out of the military. We’re going to make sure that the closest supplies get delivered and get delivered very quickly. We have a national child emergency locator center that we did not have before, and also a family registry and locator system to make sure that when -- if we do have a major evacuation like we did in Katrina, we can track people. We can track families; we can track children to make sure those things are in place. FEMA also has the largest amount of people on board that it has ever had. When I took over, we had about 1,500 full time positions, and now we have over 3,400 people on board, and by the end of the ’09 budget we’ll have over 4,000. So we have the largest budget we’ve ever had. We have more people than we’ve ever had, and the system is ready to respond to disaster, should we need to do that. We have not had the big one, but we’ve had over 300 disaster declarations in just the last few years, and FEMA has responded very well to those. So we’re ready to go, but we’re not ready to go alone. We’re ready to go as a team and as partners. Thank you. Paul?
Mr. McHale: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. As Secretary Chertoff noted, the Department of Defense has statutorily assigned roles and responsibilities in responding to domestic catastrophes to include major natural disasters. We have a long history of providing that kind of civil support. In support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Defense supports civil authorities as part of the comprehensive response effort, including major hurricanes. Today, the Department of Defense, active reserve, and National Guard is better prepared to assist civil authorities than at any other time in our nation’s history. We have learned and acted upon key lessons of the past. We have taken special care working in close coordination with the National Guard Bureau to provide to the National Guard along the Gulf Coast and the east coast states the resources necessary for responding to a major hurricane or other natural disasters. Close coordination and detailed disaster planning conducted by NORTHCOM, the National Guard Bureau and the Adjutants General of the United States will ensure prompt and effective mission execution. In short, we believe that this careful preparation, and very, very detailed planning will achieve unity of effort unaffected by the federal or state duty status of the deployed military personnel. With a clear understanding of the likely military tasks and in close coordination with FEMA, the Defense Department is ready to rapidly execute a wide range of missions in support of a national response including evacuation assistance, emergency transport of special needs personnel and patients, logistics staging by FEMA on military bases, search and rescue, emergency delivery of relief supplies, rapid emergency communications deployment, and the purchase, storage, and bulk transportation of MRE’s, water, ice, and emergency power generators. Furthermore, military forces, with a primary reliance on the National Guard, are also prepared to ensure the protection of constitutional rights and the enforcement of law to protect public safety. In summary, our men and women in military uniform are well-prepared to provide substantial, life-saving assistance to FEMA. And with a sense of urgency, we will do so if called upon during the 2008 hurricane season. We’re joined today by two officers who will be available for questions, detailed operational questions, at the conclusion of the conference. Major General Guy Swan, from NORTHCOM, and Major General Bill Etter from the National Guard Bureau. I’ll be followed at the microphone by my good friend Thad Allen, the Commandant of the Coast Guard.
Mr. Allen: Thank you Mr. Secretary. The Coast Guard is proud to be here with our teammates on the dais as we explain to you how we’re making preparations for the hurricane season. We have made continual progress since we’ve all come together -- the Department of Homeland Security, especially under Secretary Chertoff’s leadership. The Coast Guard and FEMA have never been more united in preparations for hurricane season than we are this year. One of the unique things about the United States Coast Guard is that we are a local responder as well. We work with the state and local municipality and the state governments to provide immediate response after the storms occur. You saw this during hurricane Katrina with our helicopter response. All of our regional commanders have exercised their hurricane plans. We have prescripted mission assignments, so we have negotiated with FEMA in advance to cut down on the time necessary. In fact, we will move aircraft and talk later and negotiate later if necessary. We have a prototype, moving FEMA equipment on our large transport aircraft, and recently reinstituted a long standing maritime tradition of flying storm flags in our coastal units along the coast so people may be informed that heavy weather is approaching as a very visual symbol that they need to be prepared. And I would underscore Secretary Chertoff’s comments. This starts with individual preparedness. And even on the water, if you own a boat, you need to understand what you’re going to do with that boat far in advance, because when the winds get in advance -- in excess of 40 knots in our ports, bridges are closed. Movements in harbors are restricted, and you need to think about that in advance as well. So moving into this hurricane season, we are prepared. We are trained and equipped and exercise with our team mates here on the dais and we stand by to respond to any event that might occur. Following Hurricane Katrina, we set up the deployable operations group in the Coast Guard, which puts together oil and hazmat responders. Marine safety and security teams, and other deployable specialized forces and we are prepared for this hurricane season. I’d now like to introduce Mary Elcano, the acting President of the American Red Cross.
Ms. Elcano: Thank you. Thank you Secretary Chertoff and Administrator Paulison. The Red Cross mission as we know and you know is to be the helping hand in times of disasters and emergencies. We feed, shelter, care, and counsel people effected by emergencies and we do it every day across the United States. We supply nearly half the nations blood supply, we provide assistance to the military and their families and we teach lifesaving skills and safety. Whether it’s a hurricane or a heart attack, a call for flood or a call for help, every day in communities across the Unites States the American Red Cross is there. We’re there fulfilling a vital and unique roll. Today in Oklahoma, Georgia, the rest of the south and Midwest the Red Cross is still helping people from the storms that waged through last week and the tornados as well. Around the world, the Red Cross is lending aid in China, and trying to aid in Myanmar.
We have a few new responsibilities in the National Response Framework. We help coordinate between state and local -- state and federal governments and the non-governmental organizations and we are the -- proud to lead integration of the mass care to provide shelter, food, and help to individuals in communities that are in disasters. More than two years ago we promised the nation that we would do better and we would do more efficient activities in the disaster response, and we’ve spent the last two years doing -- getting ready for that. We’ve had plenty of time to do that. We’ve acquired supplies, we’ve improved our training, and we’ve improved our systems. But nature is not linear, and it’s not controllable. We can’t predict or control the severity of a storm or the severity of a disaster or weather event. However, I can say with assurance that the Red Cross has never been better prepared and never been better situated to assist in these important disasters. We’ve stockpiled more than five million shelf-stable meals. We’re prepared to work with our partners to serve hot meals, and we’ve purchased enough cots, blankets and other essentials to shelter 500,000 disaster survivors. We’ve moved those supplies closer to the potential disaster areas, rather than being centralized they’re more decentralized to potential disaster victims and they’re in warehouses located in the high disaster areas. We’ve improved our technology, and that should help us deliver services as well.
The volunteers of the Red Cross are our primary responders. We have an average of 200 disasters a day, every day, in the United States, and the volunteers of the Red Cross are there. We have a network of more than 70,000 nationally trained in national disasters who can deploy across state lines for the bigger emergencies. These disasters create more need than any one state, any federal government agency, or any non-profit or non-government organization can handle and so we must work together with partnerships with other charities, with other non-government organizations, with our federal partners, and with our state and local governments. An example of this partnership was seen with the NAACP and the California wildfires, where they brought hundreds of their volunteers to the San Diego wildfires and the Red Cross was there to assist and to be a coordinator in any way we could. Our outreach has gone to the advocates for the disabled groups. The Red Cross has better training and better service delivery practices for disabled people. We have relationships with other charities, with the catholic charities, with the Southern Baptist Convention, Salvation Army, Church of the Brethren, and with other organizations as I mentioned the NAACP and La Raza, just to name a few. Federal agencies and volunteer organizations and state governments and businesses can do all they can to prepare, but it’s up to every family and every individual to do the response. There’s no guarantee that this hurricane season is going to be as quiet as the last two years, and that if you don’t live in a hurricane prone area, the weather, the storms, the tornados, the winds that follow, the flooding that accompany can crash down on you and your family.
Our surveys show that only 7% of the American public is ready for a plan for a disaster. Only 7% have taken the steps necessary to prepare and our view is that in every disaster, every individual and family should consider themselves to be the real first responders. It’s time to get prepared. We have time. We call it Be Red Cross Ready, and -- as in the Department of Homeland Security, we recommend that you make a kit, get a kit, make a plan, and be informed. We don’t recommend that anyone would be lulled into a false sense of security, that the absence of the hurricanes over the past two years are any indicator of this year. It’s May now, and there’s time. There’s time before the storms hit. It’s the perfect time to dust of your disaster kit, replace expired food, stock-pile food, medicines, and dead batteries -- or replace dead batteries, but most of all, update your family’s communication and evacuation plans. The Red Cross stands ready to help and to assist in any way. You can contact your local chapter. You can go to www.redcross.org and learn more about how to Be Red Cross Ready for a hurricane or for any disaster. We have brochures outside to Be Red Cross Ready and recommend that you take one of those. But we are anxious and thankful to be working with the partners on the stage and the other partners throughout the country. Thank you.
Secretary Chertoff: We’ll take a few questions now. If you would kindly identify yourself and your news organization when you ask a question.
Moderator: Mr. Secretary, can I just introduce the other people on stage? This is Dr. Gerald Parker with the Department of Health and Human Services, Major General Guy Swan with NORTHCOM, Major General William Etter with the National Guard, James Madon, DHS Director of National Communication Systems, and Mr. Lew Southard from United States Forest Service. All right.
Question: Pam Fessler with the National Public Radio. Secretary Chertoff, or director Paulison, what are your plans for housing if there’s a catastrophic disaster, since you’ve already said that you don’t want to use travel trailers anymore for mobile homes?
Secretary Chertoff: I’ll let Dave chime in. Let me just begin by saying our first concern is always going to be to shelter people, so we have put together a very comprehensive plan, particularly in the gulf, which will provide for literally tens of thousands of shelter spaces. Obviously these are short-term capabilities, but something you want to do to move people out of the storm area. We could obviously supplement that with hotels or things of that sort. If we were to have a long term housing situation, which of course would presuppose something like a levy breach like we had with Katrina, that would of course be a different set of issues. And there we’d have to look to all of the available housing stock. Might be housing stock in the region, might be housing stock out of the region. There are some kinds of temporary housing which would be reasonable to deploy on a long-term basis, but I want to go back to the point you said earlier that your kind of basic travel trailer, which has now apparently been determined to have comparatively high levels of formaldehyde, which appear to be unregulated as to safety, which appears to have no scientifically determined safe level for long term habitation. I don’t think that is a long-term solution for housing. So we’re going to have to look for alternatives.
Question: You don’t have anything specific now, right?
Secretary Chertoff: Well, we’ve got housing in various places in the region, including apartments, rental properties, things of that sort. There are forms of housing that would have levels of formaldehyde that would be comparatively low. Those would be in the nature -- for example, mobile homes, perhaps, or these Katrina cottages. But there’s no question it would be challenging if we had to do a long term housing effort more than just a matter of a couple of weeks. Because what was the traditional, not that there was that long a tradition of it, but what was the original default position which has put people in travel trailers for long periods of time which has now been revealed to be an unsatisfactory and unsafe circumstance. Now, I hope the marketplace will rise up and meet the challenge and start to develop formaldehyde free trailers, and other kinds of alternative housing that are going to be safe. We have to deal with the housing stock as we find it, and although I don’t anticipate a need for another long term mass migration, we would have to look at all available safe housing alternatives if we faced that kind of an issue.
Mr. Paulison: The Secretary’s right. The travel trailers as they exist today are not suitable for the type of housing or period of time we’re putting people in those types of things. However, we do have thousands of mobile homes still we can put people in. First choice would absolutely be apartments and hotels and motels to put people in, and then also we have -- we spent $400 million dollars, if you remembered, in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas doing alternative housing and those are coming to fruition. Mississippi has already put several hundred of those on the ground and they’re proven to be very stable, very good types of units. We’re also working with some of the mobile home manufacturers to build the park models, which are larger than a travel trailer but not quite as big as a mobile home, and they’re already produced a couple for us that are formaldehyde free. So I think the Secretary’s right. The industry is going to step up hopefully and start producing a unit that we can use that will take the place of travel trailers. We used to take the travel trailer and back it up into somebody’s driveway. That was an easy fix for us. What nobody anticipated, obviously, was a system like we had in Katrina where people were out for long, long periods of time, and the fact that they’re small. Now we’ve found out that some have formaldehyde in them, so that’s not an option for us this year. But we feel -- we’re comfortable. We have enough mobile homes. We can use hotels and motels. We can use apartments. And the downside is they may not be right in their hometown. They may have to move somewhere else for a period of time.
Question: Mike Ahlers with CNN, and if I could address this to Ms. Elcano. There have been reports that the American Red Cross has approached DHS and the Federal government to help address some financial problems that they’ve had. Can you fill us in on that and where it stands right now? And what exactly the short-fall is?
Ms. Elcano: Yes. Thank you. The Red Cross spends the sum -- first of all, the Red Cross is not a federal agency. It’s a charity. And we spend anywhere from 400 million to 500 million a year on disasters across the country, including the 70,000 disasters that would involve a single family home fire. And one of the actions that we have taken recently was to talk to the Congress, the Senate Homeland Security Committee about seeing if there could be an appropriation of a smaller amount of money in the range of 10 million dollars, under 10 million dollars, for some of the activities that the Red Cross is required to perform under the National Response Framework. And if you compare the amount of money, it’s still -- we are dependent upon our donors for the gracious donations that they give us to perform our mission, which is a federal charter that requires us to do it. So that would be to fulfill some of those activities regarding the National Response Framework, and that would be in reference to the activities and coordination the mass care and acting as an integrator on behalf of the national catastrophes.
Question: So the money would be for what specific purpose?
Ms. Elcano: We’re looking to see -- there’s some requirements that we have, employees and staff, that are contiguous or contingent with the FEMA regions. So it would be to fulfill those activities.
Question: And also there were reports that there was some concern that if the public sees the American Red Cross getting money from the federal government that it might feel it’s not necessary to contribute. Is that a concern? How does that play in to it?
Ms. Elcano: I think the Red Cross is a charity and we get, as I said, almost 500 million dollars in donations for disasters, and then this small amount of money for the activities that we do on behalf of the National Framework. Our view is that we still desperately and very much need the donor dollars that we are so thankful for.
Question: Dan Fowler from Congressional Quarterly. Just an overall question. I mean, would you say that the country is prepared for a 2008 hurricane season? I mean, do you feel comfortable that the country is prepared?
Secretary Chertoff: I think the country is prepared. I think the big question is are individuals taking the steps they need on a family basis to get prepared? Obviously any major hurricane, Category three or above, is going to be a bad event. And it’s going to cause hardship and distress and may cause loss of life. We are planning, our capabilities are much better now than they’ve ever been before at the federal level. I believe at the state level, particularly in the Gulf states, they’re better than they’ve ever been before. The key element though, the cornerstone has got to be that individual preparation. If people are lulled into a sense of complacency because 2006 and 2007 didn’t produce a major hurricane in the U.S., and they don’t do the preparation that we’ve recommended, then there is going to be a problem. If people do take what I think are pretty reasonable steps, I think that’s going to be the most important, the final piece that has to be in place. For those who need to have the nature of the risk more vividly demonstrated, just look halfway around the world. What we see in Myanmar and China. Mother nature is a powerful adversary when she decides she wants to throw a hard punch, and the better prepared everybody is at every level, the better prepared we are to take that punch. And so I think as much as our hearts go out to the people who are suffering in Asia, we also ought to take the opportunity to be inspired to take the steps we can take to prepare ourselves and minimize the burden on the responders who are going to first and foremost, obviously, have to help those who can’t help themselves.
Question: Dustin Diaz, Naval Media Center. I’d like to address this to either Secretary McHale or one of the flag officers. Specifically for our military service members who are or will deploy, what recommendations would you make for them to prepare themselves and their families for disasters?
Mr. McHale: I’m going to ask General Swan in a moment to respond more fully, but first and foremost the preparation should mirror those that we would ask of ordinary American citizens. In that sense, military families are no different from the citizens who live in the same community in which they reside. All of the steps should be taken to prepare the family as a family unit for the requirements of living in a catastrophic environment. The common sense things that you can find, for instance, on the FEMA Web site in terms or proper preparation. Through the military, we’re taking specific steps utilizing the chain of command within the individual services to achieve a level of care and accountability that is unprecedented. And I’ll be candid with you. Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, a number of days passed before we had full accountability for all military personnel and their family members. At that point we had not established a system to track the movement of those families, and so for a period of days we were uncertain as to who had survived and perhaps who had not. We were uncertain as to the location of those families when they moved to a safer ground. Working through the services and under the ultimate authority of NORTHCOM, we are now putting in place a system of tracking and accountability so that families that are well-prepared and families that are perhaps evacuated from a threatened area will be tracked and we will know who is safe and perhaps who is in jeopardy, and that’s a new system that we have not had on previous occasions. With all of that as an introduction, let me turn to Guy and ask for his comments.
Mr. Swan: Just to add on to what the Secretary said, we have taken great effort to reassure families and service members who are deployed that we will take care of their families. One thing that we ask of family members to do is if they are leaving the installation where they’re based, because their family member, or their solider or marine is deployed, and they chose to go back to their hometown, let’s say, is to inform the chain of command so we know that they’re leaving the base of assignment. But we have put in extra ordinary steps now to account for all of our personnel. We do not want to burden other first responders or local communities if we can handle our own family members. So it’s a great question and we put a lot of effort into it.
Mr. McHale: One thing in closing, just one brief comment if I may. We feel a moral obligation to keep our deployed men and women informed as to what’s happening at home. And so let me give you a bedrock assurance. If we experience a catastrophic event, not just a hurricane but any other type, we’re acutely aware of how that affects our deployed forces – the men and women downrange and the concerns that they have for family members here at home. And so should such an event occur, a catastrophic hurricane, and if military families are effected, we will very proactively send all the accurate information we have to those who are deployed to give them the greatest reassurance we can consistent with the truth.
Mr. Paulison: Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
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