<DOC>
[109 Senate Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:26749.wais]
S. Hrg. 109-403
PREPARING FOR A CATASTROPHE:
THE HURRICANE PAM EXERCISE
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JANUARY 24, 2006
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
26-749 WASHINGTON : 2006
_____________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512ÿ091800
Fax: (202) 512ÿ092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402ÿ090001
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio CARL LEVIN, Michigan
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
TOM COBURN, Oklahoma THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware
LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island MARK DAYTON, Minnesota
ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico MARK PRYOR, Arkansas
JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia
Michael D. Bopp, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
David T. Flanagan, General Counsel
Jennifer C. Boone, FBI Detailee
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Robert F. Muse, Minority General Counsel
F. James McGee, Minority Professional Staff Member
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
------
Opening statements:
Page
Senator Collins.............................................. 1
Senator Lieberman............................................ 3
Senator Levin................................................ 25
Senator Carper............................................... 28
WITNESSES
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Wayne Fairley, Chief, Response Operations Branch, Response and
Recovery Division, Region VI, Federal Emergency Management
Agency, Denton, Texas.......................................... 7
Sean R. Fontenot, Former Chief, Planning Division, Former Chief,
Preparedness Division, Louisiana Office of Homeland Security
and Emergency Preparedness, Baton Rouge, Louisiana............. 10
Jesse St. Amant, Director, Homeland Security and Emergency
Preparedness, Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.................... 13
Madhu Beriwal, President and Chief Executive Officer, Innovative
Emergency Management, Inc., Baton Rouge, Louisiana............. 15
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Beriwal, Madhu:
Testimony.................................................... 15
Prepared statement........................................... 58
Fairley, Wayne:
Testimony.................................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 41
Fontenot, Sean R.:
Testimony.................................................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 47
St. Amant, Jesse:
Testimony.................................................... 13
Prepared statement........................................... 56
Appendix
Response to Questions for the Record from:
Mr. Fairley.................................................. 68
Mr. Fontenot................................................. 75
Ms. Beriwal.................................................. 78
Exhibit B........................................................ 80
Exhibit D........................................................ 90
Exhibit E........................................................ 94
Exhibit F........................................................ 95
Exhibit H........................................................ 100
Exhibit K........................................................ 104
PREPARING FOR A CATASTROPHE:
THE HURRICANE PAM EXERCISE
----------
TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2006
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Susan M. Collins,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Collins, Lieberman, Levin, and Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS
Chairman Collins. The Committee will come to order. Good
morning.
Today, the Committee on Homeland Security continues our
investigation into Hurricane Katrina. Over the last 4 months,
we have conducted 10 hearings on major aspects of the causes
and management of this disaster, including a field visit
exactly 1 week ago to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and to New
Orleans. Our staff has conducted more than 200 interviews and
has reviewed more than 300,000 pages of documents.
Now, we are about to enter the final phase of our work.
Hurricane Katrina proved to be one of the deadliest and
certainly the most costly natural disaster in America's
history. If our Nation cannot give a good account of our
ability to manage such a predicted, known, and trackable event
as a hurricane, we must surely question our preparedness for
dealing with a stealthier, more sinister terrorist attack.
Therefore, based on all we have learned from our previous
hearings, interviews, and document review, this Committee will
undertake over the next 3 weeks a series of hearings to cover
the most troubling aspects of the response to Katrina as a
prelude to drafting our final report.
The focus of today's hearing is the simulation called
Hurricane Pam, a federally funded exercise to plan for a
catastrophic hurricane in Southeast Louisiana. We will examine
both the lessons learned and the lessons that with such
terrible consequences went unlearned. This hearing is intended
to shed light on the following issues: How did Hurricane Pam
come about? Who took the initiative to promote it? What does
its history say about the state of emergency preparedness in
Louisiana prior to Katrina? What roadblocks had to be overcome
to get Federal funding for the exercise in both President
Clinton's and President Bush's Administrations? Do these
roadblocks raise concerns about government priorities in
improving emergency preparedness? What was the scope of
Hurricane Pam, including assumptions about the specific
planning scenarios? How did pre-storm evacuation come to be
largely excluded from the exercise? Did Hurricane Pam create
the impression within FEMA that Louisiana had evacuation under
control? Why was the plan not completed? How did the failure to
complete the plan affect its usefulness in Katrina? What
aspects of the draft Pam plan were used in responding to
Katrina? What aspects could have been used but were not?
The Hurricane Pam exercise was conducted in Louisiana by
FEMA from July 16 through 23, 2004. It brought together as many
as 300 local, State, and Federal emergency response officials.
This fictional storm was designed as a slow-moving Category 3
hurricane that had sustained winds of 120 miles per hour at
landfall. It caused as much as 10 to 20 feet of flooding
throughout most of New Orleans and the surrounding parishes as
the result of heavy rain and a storm surge that overtopped the
levees. Pam's mock damage spread over 13 Louisiana parishes and
was extensive. In the scenario, utilities were knocked out and
chemical plants were flooded. The human cost under the scenario
was staggering. More than a million people evacuated, 175,000
were injured, 200,000 became sick, and as many as 60,000 lives
were lost.
As a dry run for the real thing, Pam should have been a
wake-up call that could not be ignored. Instead, it seems that
a more appropriate name for Pam would have been Cassandra, the
mythical prophet who warned of disasters but whom no one really
believed. In many ways, the hypothetical problems identified in
Pam predict with eerie accuracy the all-too-real problems of
Katrina--overcrowded shelters undersupplied with food, water,
and other essentials; blocked highways with thousands of people
trapped in flooded areas; hospitals swamped with victims and
running out of fuel for their emergency generators. The list
goes on and on.
The history of Pam dates back to 1998, when New Orleans
experienced a near-miss from another hurricane. In the fall of
1999, local, State, and Federal officials met to discuss their
concerns about the adequacy of plans to respond to a direct hit
on the city. The State of Louisiana followed up with a written
request to FEMA in August 2000 for a planning exercise. But
delay followed delay. Then FEMA reduced the funding allocation
so the scope of the exercise had to be scaled back. In
reaction, the State agency chose to exclude the critical issue
of pre-landfall evacuation and the possibility that the levees
could be breached rather than merely overtopped.
The Pam exercise that finally commenced in July 2004 was
supposed to be just the first installment of an ongoing
process. A follow-up session scheduled for September 2004 was
postponed and critical workshops were not reconvened until late
July 2005, with the result being that no additional planning
documents were generated before they were so urgently needed.
Instead, Pam became Katrina. The simulation became reality.
And optimism became the awful truth. We were not prepared.
There are instances in which the Pam exercise did improve
the response to Katrina. For example, the Louisiana National
Guard incorporated lessons regarding the staging and
distribution of such essential commodities as food and water.
The State Department of Health and Hospitals adopted concepts
developed in Pam on how to evaluate individuals saved through
search and rescue efforts.
Our witnesses today represent a wide range of entities
involved in the Hurricane Pam exercise. I'm very interested in
hearing their frank views on the questions that I raised
earlier.
An evaluation of the Pam simulation is important for at
least two reasons. First, the stated purpose of the Hurricane
Pam exercise was not fulfilled when it counted, with
catastrophic consequences. Second, throughout our Nation,
local, State, and Federal emergency response agencies engage in
a great many training exercises at considerable expense in
anticipation of a wide range of natural and manmade disasters.
We must use and learn from the experience of Pam and Katrina to
close the gap between planning and execution so that we are
better prepared the next time simulation becomes reality.
Senator Lieberman.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN
Senator Lieberman. Thanks very much, Madam Chairman, for
convening this 11th hearing in our investigation of how the
government prepared for and responded to Hurricane Katrina, and
as you said, this one begins a 3-week series of hearings in
which we have the opportunity to make public a lot of the hard
work that our staffs have done in investigating what happened.
The title of today's hearing is, ``Preparing for a
Catastrophe: The Hurricane Pam Exercise.'' Preparing for a
catastrophe--the phrase makes a mournful sound when said
against the backdrop of the misery and destruction the world
saw on television last year and that Members of this Committee
still saw last week when we visited the Gulf Coast and held a
hearing in Mississippi. The plain facts are that Katrina was a
very powerful storm, but it would have caused much less misery
and destruction had we prepared for it better.
This enlargement from the New Orleans Times-Picayune,\1\
August 30, the day after Hurricane Katrina hit landfall, really
tells it all. The big banner word is ``Catastrophic,'' which it
was. But in smaller red print at the top, over the masthead, it
also tells it all. ``Katrina: The Storm We've Always Feared''--
the storm people in the Gulf Coast had always feared, the storm
people knew would hit one day, the storm they actually
practiced for in the Hurricane Pam exercise that is the topic
of today's hearing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Exhibit E submitted for the Record by Senator Lieberman appears
in the Appendix on page 94.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the 10 Committee hearings on Katrina we have already
held, in our staff interviews of more than 200 witnesses, in
our review of tens of thousands of documents, we have already
learned enough to be not just disappointed, but truly
infuriated by the poor performance of all levels of government
in preparing for and responding to Hurricane Katrina, and these
conclusions, amplified as I am confident they will be over the
coming weeks, should compel us to achieve top-to-bottom reform
of the way we prepare for and respond to disasters.
Katrina was not just predictable, it was predicted over and
over again. As the FEMA Coordinator for the Hurricane Pam
exercise told our investigative staff last Friday, Katrina was
a ``replication'' of Pam and Pam itself was staged in response
to the flooding in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1998 caused by
Hurricane Georges that made State and local officials of the
Gulf Coast realize they could be overwhelmed if and when the
``big one'' hit. The Hurricane Pam exercise in the spring and
summer of 2004 actually and eerily predicted the emergency
response crises and the devastation that occurred last August
and September.
Today, we are going to hear from four witnesses who
participated in the Hurricane Pam exercise who will tell us
that the problems we saw last August and September were known
long before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, even long before Pam
predicted them. The fictional hurricane of the Pam exercise was
a slow-moving Category 3 hurricane, quite similar to Katrina
except that in the fictional exercise, Pam hit New Orleans
directly, and as we know, thank God, Katrina blew about 15
miles to the east of the city. Had Katrina hit New Orleans
head-on as the Pam exercise predicted for Pam, 67,000 deaths
would have resulted. That is what the Pam exercise projected.
That gives us an idea of how much more catastrophic Katrina
could have been and therefore how much more urgent disaster
preparation should have been.
The Pam exercise also put State and local governments and
FEMA and its parent, the Department of Homeland Security, on
notice that the people of New Orleans would experience exactly
the problems that we all witnessed last August that Senator
Collins has spoken to. The Pam exercise also predicted
widespread flooding throughout New Orleans, hospitals and
nursing homes underwater, hundreds of thousands of people
displaced, and local first responders incapacitated. In this
regard, Pam gave DHS and FEMA explicit notice that State and
local governments would be overwhelmed when New Orleans got hit
with a catastrophic hurricane and that comprehensive Federal
assistance would, therefore, be critically and urgently
necessary.
But despite these warnings from Pam, preparations for
Katrina were shockingly poor. Two to 3 days before Katrina hit,
it became clear that it would be catastrophic. In fact, as
Katrina approached the Gulf Coast 2 days before landfall,
Saturday, August 27, our staff has obtained a document which
shows that FEMA issued a briefing at 9 a.m. on that Saturday
morning before the Monday of landfall which declared that the
Pam ``exercise projection is exceeded by Hurricane Katrina
real-life impacts.'' The failure to heed the fictional Pam's
many warnings compounded the tragedy when Katrina hit in real
time and full fury. That is the sad story that our Committee's
hearings will tell in detail in the 3 weeks ahead.
Before closing and as we embark on this stage of the
investigation, I feel compelled to say a few words about the
conduct of the investigation. First, I want to thank Chairman
Collins and her staff for working with me and my staff to
conduct an aggressive and thoroughly bipartisan investigation.
This has become our norm on this Committee, but I don't want
the Chairman to think that I take it for granted. We have
worked together as all investigative committees in this
Congress should, without partisan division and with a shared
view that our goal is to uncover what happened with respect to
Hurricane Katrina so that we can make sure our government is
much better prepared the next time disaster strikes.
Unfortunately, though, I cannot give the same high marks to
the Executive Branch for its response to our investigation, and
the problems begin at the White House, where there has been a
near total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in
my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation we have a
responsibility to do. Why does this matter? Well, here is an
example.
The Committee has found evidence that we will describe in
the hearings ahead that beginning on Friday before the Monday
of landfall, there are explicit statements in e-mails by high-
ranking officials at FEMA which show they understood the
severity of the storm that was coming--Friday, the document I
quoted earlier on Saturday morning, and then on the evening
before Katrina made landfall, that Sunday, the Department of
Homeland Security circulated to Federal agencies sitting in the
Homeland Security Operations Center a report that the storm had
at that time been upgraded to Category 5 and that ``any storm
rated Category 4 or greater will likely lead to severe flooding
and/or levee breaching. This could leave the New Orleans metro
area submerged for weeks or months.''
Among the offices receiving that memo was the White House
Situation Room, which received it at 1:47 a.m. on Monday,
August 29, several hours before Katrina made landfall. What
happened to that report and the other awareness that FEMA
officials and others at DHS had of the severity of the coming
storm? Why was the President of the United States left so
uninformed that he said 3 days later, ``I don't think anyone
anticipated the breach of the levees.''
At this point, we cannot answer that critical question
because the White House has produced just a very small portion
of the documents we requested. In addition, they have opposed
efforts to interview White House personnel and they have
hindered our ability to obtain information from other Federal
agencies regarding White House actions in response to Katrina.
I have been told by my staff that almost every question that
has been asked Federal agency witnesses regarding conversations
with or involvement of the White House has been met with a
response that they could not answer on direction of the White
House. There has been no assertion of executive privilege; just
a refusal to answer questions.
Indeed, as recently as yesterday in his staff interview,
that is, interview with our staff, former FEMA Director Michael
Brown's agency lawyers advised him not to say whether he spoke
to the President or the Vice President or comment on the
substance of conversations he had with any other high-level
White House officials. This assertion of a kind of virtual
immunity of the White House from this inquiry has obviously
frustrated our Committee's ability to learn and tell the full
story of Katrina. In my opinion, it is unacceptable.
While some agencies like FEMA, and I want to stress this,
have been very cooperative, other executive agencies, including
the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and
Human Services, have essentially ignored our document and
information requests for months and to this day have produced
much less than half the information we asked for. HHS has
produced not a single requested witness for an interview, and
the Department of Homeland Security, which is at the center of
our investigation because it has overall responsibility for
national disaster preparedness and response, including in
Katrina, has produced too little, too late. Repeated requests
for critical witnesses and documents have been ignored or
delayed.
My staff on this investigation believes that the Department
of Homeland Security has engaged in a strategy of slow walking
our investigation in the hope that we would run out of time to
follow the investigation's natural progression to where it
leads. I hope they are wrong, but at this time, I cannot
disagree.
Madam Chairman, I do want to thank you publicly for your
continuing efforts to elicit more cooperation from the
Administration. I hope the Committee will continue to pursue
all these unanswered questions asked of the Executive Branch
until we have the information we need to answer the questions
that must be answered. In the meantime, because hurricane
season begins again in June and the threat of terrorist attacks
persists, and because our staffs together, notwithstanding the
difficulties I have described, have done some excellent
investigative work, these hearings are ready to go forward and
must go forward and the Committee's report must be written as
soon as possible to help American Government be better prepared
to protect America's people from disasters that history tells
us will come, disasters that are natural or unnatural.
In that spirit and with thanks to you, I look forward to
today's witnesses and those that follow in the 3 weeks ahead.
Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Our four witnesses today represent State,
local, and Federal Government, as well as the private sector
entities most involved in the development of the Hurricane Pam
exercise. Wayne Fairley is the Response Branch Chief for FEMA
in Region VI, I believe it is. As such, he oversees regional
operations, logistics, and planning. He has served with FEMA
for 24 years. Before that, he served in the Louisiana State
Government. He was involved in discussions of a federally -
funded catastrophic plan for Southeastern Louisiana since 1999
and was involved in designing, planning, and the exercising of
Hurricane Pam as a member of the steering committee.
Sean Fontenot was in charge of the planning at the
Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency
Preparedness in the late 1990s when the concept of a federally
unded exercise to plan for a catastrophic hurricane was first
discussed. In May 2005, he joined the Innovative Emergency
Management Company as an emergency planner.
Jesse St. Amant is the Director of the Plaquemines Parish
Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. He is
also the President of the Southeastern Louisiana Hurricane Task
Force. He participated in the Hurricane Pam exercises and the
follow-up meetings in 2005.
Madhu Beriwal is President and CEO of Innovative Emergency
Management, Incorporated. IEM is a Baton Rouge-based research
company that works with emergency managers in the public and
private sectors to develop and improve their emergency
preparation and response capabilities. IEM led a team of three
firms that developed the Hurricane Pam scenario under contract
with FEMA.
I want to welcome all of you to the Committee today. We
very much appreciate the cooperation you have already given us,
and we will begin with Mr. Fairley.
TESTIMONY OF WAYNE FAIRLEY,\1\ CHIEF, RESPONSE OPERATIONS
BRANCH, RESPONSE AND RECOVERY DIVISION, REGION VI, FEDERAL
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT ADMINISTRATION, DENTON, TEXAS
Mr. Fairley. Good morning, Madam Chairman and Members of
the Committee. I am honored to appear before you today to
discuss this subject and to further any discussions I have had
with your various staff over the past week and to answer any
questions you may have.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Fairley appears in the Appendix
on page 41.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To start off with, I believe it is best to provide a little
historical background on the Hurricane Pam exercise. As I
recall FEMA's goal based on the 2003 Catastrophic Initiative
was to identify areas of the country that could be vulnerable
to catastrophic disasters and in cooperation with the relevant
State and local governments to examine projected damages and
effects associated with catastrophic disasters, confirm current
disaster response capabilities, identify anticipated response
shortfalls, and to initiate comprehensive planning strategies
to address these shortfalls. Products developed under the
Catastrophic Planning Initiative were envisioned to include
incident-specific response plans for pre-selected geographic
regions and disasters, planning templates that could be applied
to other areas, and new response contingencies.
In late March 2004, FEMA headquarters notified FEMA Region
VI that the State of Louisiana had been funded for a
catastrophic hurricane plan. Thirteen Southeastern Louisiana
parishes, including the City of New Orleans, were selected as
the initial geographic focus for FEMA's Catastrophic Planning
Initiative because of their vulnerability to hurricane
disasters. This resulted in the Southeast Louisiana
Catastrophic Hurricane Planning Project. The initial concept
was to have a draft plan by the end of July 2004.
The Southeast Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane Planning
Project was designed to bring together responders and
decisionmakers from all levels of government and the American
Red Cross to begin analyzing and addressing the overwhelming
operational complexities that would be involved in responding
to a catastrophic hurricane striking Southeast Louisiana.
Accepting the fact that only limited funding and time were
available, topic-specific planning workshops using a
catastrophic hurricane scenario called Hurricane Pam to frame
these discussions were selected as the best approach for
identifying and qualifying the scale of requirements needed to
build a plan for responding to a catastrophic hurricane. The
results were intended to reveal to the Louisiana Office of
Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness and FEMA the
shortfalls in existing plans and to begin developing additional
plans for catastrophic hurricane response.
Existing plans, strategies, policies, and capabilities were
reviewed by LOHSEP before the first workshop. As preplanning
for the first workshop conducted in July 2004, the Louisiana
Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness and
Federal representatives identified a list of planning topics
based on those provided by the State of Louisiana as the most
urgent or complex topics needing discussion, to include
hurricane pre-landfall issues, search and rescue, temporary
medical care, sheltering, temporary housing, schools, and
debris.
During the first workshop, participants were presented with
a catastrophic hypothetical Hurricane Pam disaster scenario to
frame discussions and then divided into breakout groups by
responsibilities and topic for detailed discussions. The
breakout groups identified operational concerns in each of the
topical areas, addressed issues, and drafted plans for dealing
with the identified concerns. To address other urgent subtopics
that emerged during the discussions, additional breakout groups
were established. The following additional subtopics were
discussed: Access control and reentry; billeting of Federal
response workers; distribution of ice, water, and power;
donations management; external affairs; hazardous materials;
transition from rescue to temporary housing; and unwatering of
levee enclosed areas.
It became clear after the first workshop that a series of
workshop cycles would be needed to address the full range of
complex response and recovery concerns associated with this
type of catastrophic event. Additional workshops were held in
November 2004, July 2005, and August 2005 to provide further
input for topics. Topics selected for further discussion during
the subsequent workshops included the following. In November,
sheltering, temporary housing, and temporary medical care. In
July, transportation, staging, and distribution of critical
resources and temporary housing. And in August, temporary
medical care.
The goal of the Southeast Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane
Planning Project was to begin addressing immediate,
intermediate, and long-term needs; create plans immediately
usable by planners and responders in the field; and to seed the
eventual development of a comprehensive and systematic
operational plan The ultimate goal is for the concepts
identified in the Southeast Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane
Planning Project to be integrated into a final catastrophic
plan. The project did not result in a catastrophic planning
document per se, but rather a framework for developing such a
plan.
My participation in the process included working with the
Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency
Preparedness counterpart as a member of the steering committee.
That involved project management, workshop design and
participation, budgeting, and headquarters and contractor
interface. At the workshops, this included monitoring the
workshop sessions; providing FEMA law, regulation, and policy
information; dispute resolution; and overall directional
guidance in meeting our workshop objectives.
Participation included the Louisiana Office of Homeland
Security and Emergency Preparedness, State emergency support
functions, local emergency management staff from the 13
Southeast Louisiana parishes, FEMA Region VI, FEMA
headquarters, FEMA emergency support functions, other Federal
agencies as requested, and private industry partners.
Areas of responsibility were assigned in the workshops
according to existing State and Federal laws, regulations,
policies, procedures, and plans. No planning effort was made to
recreate or modify any existing authority. Directed or
institutional agency authority on any given subject area was
only reviewed and used as guidance by the planning session
participants. However, participants were able to comment and
provide opinions on existing State and Federal laws,
regulations, policies, procedures, and plans and the possible
need for future changes. Two such State plans included the
Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation Plan and the Louisiana
Sheltering Plan.
These planning sessions laid the groundwork for future
detailed subject plans. They identified the primary areas of
concern by the local, State, and Federal agencies and began the
process of identifying who would address these areas and how
they would be addressed. These sessions brought together
persons responsible for the implementation of emergency
management from all levels of government and helped lay a
groundwork of cooperation that had never existed before.
Future intentions were to include continued subject-
specific sessions. Some topics were to be expanded. Some topics
would be added. Some topics would only be maintained with
updated data. It was our hope that the plan would not end or
become stagnant but would continue to be a fresh and growing
plan that included new data and innovative ideas. It was also
hoped that the new-formed working spirit between local, State,
Federal, and private industry would continue to grow and lead
to a concept of ``ours'' versus yours or mine.
Although the catastrophic planning process has been
interrupted by the impacts of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the
workshops and planning process--knowledge of inter-
jurisdictional relationships and capabilities, identification
of issues, and rudimentary concepts for handling the
consequences--have been quite beneficial to all involved in the
hurricane response.
I know that this Committee and others are concerned about
what occurred as a result of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana,
and I want to assure this Committee that all of my fellow
employees at FEMA are also concerned. I want to assist this
Committee in any way I can in ensuring that what occurred never
happens again. I want to thank the Members of this Committee
for their past support of FEMA and appreciate the opportunity
to testify before you today.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Mr. Fairley. Mr. Fontenot.
TESTIMONY OF SEAN R. FONTENOT,\1\ FORMER CHIEF, PLANNING
DIVISION, FORMER CHIEF, PREPAREDNESS DIVISION, LOUISIANA OFFICE
OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS, BATON ROUGE,
LOUISIANA
Mr. Fontenot. Thank you. I would like to thank the
Committee for inviting me today to speak on the events of the
planning exercise known as Hurricane Pam as part of the
Southeast Louisiana Catastrophic Planning Project. With this
event, we began the process of trying to fully understand and
prepare for the effects of a catastrophic hurricane hitting
Southeast Louisiana. These remarks are a synopsis of the
prepared testimony I have already submitted to the Committee.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Fontenot appears in the Appendix
on page 47.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 1998, the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness,
now known as the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and
Emergency Preparedness, realized after Hurricane Georges that
more planning was needed for post-landfall consequences after a
major hurricane. A working group was convened consisting of
Federal, State, and local participants to brainstorm the issues
that Louisiana would be facing if a Category 3 or higher storm
ever hit Southeast Louisiana. This work and a later meeting
held in New Orleans in 1999 led to the development of a white
paper, which outlined the planning proposal that was submitted
to FEMA in August 2000 and then again in August 2001, asking
for FEMA's help in planning and preparing for a catastrophic
hurricane that could hit Southeast Louisiana.
In August 2001, FEMA headquarters awarded a contract to URS
Corporation for catastrophic planning support. However, due to
the events of September 11, 2001, there were many delays. In
December 2001, a kickoff organizational meeting was held in New
Orleans with FEMA headquarters, FEMA Region VI, and LOEP to
organize this planning process. In January 2002, FEMA
headquarters informed the State and Region VI that there would
be no further funding for this project due to budget
shortfalls. Following Hurricane Lili, the process was revived
again for a short period in December 2002, but it also ended
unsuccessfully.
In September 2003, there was a conference call with FEMA
Region VI and FEMA headquarters to discuss the catastrophic
planning. This led to a meeting on November 18, 2003, in New
Orleans on this subject. Attending this meeting was a
representative from the President's Homeland Security Advisory
Council. At this meeting, LOHSEP and FEMA Region VI briefed the
need for catastrophic planning, and he was astonished that as
of that date, we had not completed this type of plan and
promised to do what he could to help us get further funding for
the planning process.
This brings us to the Southeast Louisiana Catastrophic
Planning Project. On March 17, 2004, FEMA headquarters called
FEMA Region VI and the State of Louisiana and informed us that
there was funding for catastrophic planning. The very next day,
LOHSEP and FEMA Region VI organized the Unified Command and
steering committee. Later, a representative from FEMA
headquarters was also added to the steering committee, as well.
The concept was presented and approved by the Unified Command.
On April 7, 2004, another meeting was held during the
National Hurricane Conference in Orlando, Florida, to discuss
the concepts with representatives from FEMA headquarters and to
request that FEMA find a contractor to support this planning
process.
On May 19, 2004, I was at FEMA Region VI working on the
details of the proposed exercise. We were informed by FEMA
headquarters that they intended to award the contract to IEM to
support this planning project.
From the word ``go,'' it was understood that this was not a
typical exercise. In fact, when the concept was first given to
me that we were going to have an exercise to develop a plan, I
immediately disagreed. Usually, you write a plan and then have
an exercise. However, when it was explained to me that we were
going to take an exercise scenario which generated real
consequences and real data and bring operational level people
in so they could make decisions using the real data and
consequences which could then drive the writing of a plan, I
quickly got on board. I championed the fact that we were using
operational people to write this plan because there are too
many times a plan is written without taking the operational
aspects into account and this leads to non-usable plans.
We initially met the contractor, IEM, at FEMA Region VI on
May 20. At this meeting, we presented the exercise concept to
IEM, and I pointed out, and FEMA Region VI agreed, that we had
to work as a team and stick to our game plan to get this event
accomplished in the time period available. We only had 53 days
to put together something that would normally take 6 months to
a year, and we couldn't push it back any further because August
and September are the hot months for hurricanes in the Gulf.
We tried to involve local emergency managers as much as we
could. For instance, when IEM developed a set of consequence
estimates, the planning committee would meet with and poll
local emergency managers to include them in the planning
process from the beginning.
The Hurricane Pam exercise ran from July 16 to 23. On a
typical day, the main exercise had six breakout rooms which had
the same assigned topics for the entire week. Then we had three
action rooms which were assigned topics on a day-to-day basis.
Each day, the breakout rooms were responsible for writing a
certain portion of the action plan based on the template that
we had agreed upon with FEMA Region VI and LOHSEP prior to the
event. The contractor had a facilitator and a recorder in every
room to make sure that the room completed its task for the day.
Also assigned to each room was a Federal and State lead who was
responsible for briefing the Unified Command on a day-to-day
basis. This process lasted for 5 days.
FEMA Region VI and LOHSEP expected that the action rooms
would only produce the beginnings or the framework of a plan
that would have to be fleshed out later. The breakout rooms
were expected to produce more of a complete plan. However, we
also knew that the breakout rooms would not develop a 100
percent answer.
Since this was not a standard exercise, there was no formal
evaluation process. As I mentioned previously, this is an
exercise designed to develop a plan, not test a plan. In my
opinion, the exercise was very successful, not because it
developed the perfect plans, but because it brought
operational-level players to the table to begin the planning
process. We never expected to come up with a 100 percent
solution. It was always felt that if we had a 70 percent start,
that we would be successful.
The scenario-based planning exercise, in my opinion, has
produced the foundation of a very successful plan. However, due
to the funding and time constraints, we had to be very
selective about the topics covered during the main exercise and
during the follow-on exercises.
The planning committee developed a scenario to show that it
did not take a Category 4 or 5 hurricane to cause catastrophic
damages in Southeast Louisiana. The National Weather Service
Southern Region helped in the development of the weather
scenario for Hurricane Pam. I wanted a slow-moving Category 3
hurricane that overtopped the levees of New Orleans, and the
National Weather Service, working with the other NOAA partners,
came up with the exact track and characteristics of the storm.
The overtopping of the levees was included to cause the
catastrophic flooding conditions from the storm surge.
The contractor was responsible for development of the
consequences based on the storm scenario that the National
Weather Service developed. All consequences were reviewed by
the planning committee and the Unified Command. In addition,
certain consequences were reviewed by the parish emergency
management officials. This was to ensure the believability of
the consequences and to get buy-in from the local emergency
management officials. We knew that if the consequences weren't
believable, then the focus of the players during the exercise
would be on disputing the consequence numbers and not on
developing the plans.
One of the primary things LOHSEP recognized at the
conclusion of the exercise was that we needed to update our
State Emergency Operations Plan to reflect the Federal Response
Plan, now known as the National Response Plan. Essentially, we
changed our State plan from a functional format to the
Emergency Support Function, ESF, format, including the 15 ESFs
associated with the National Response Plan. In this process of
updating the plan, all function areas with the exception of one
remained with the existing State agency that had been
responsible for the function prior to the plan update, with the
exception of the ESF-1 transportation, which was moved from the
National Guard to the Louisiana Department of Transportation
and Development. The final result of the plan update was that
we had equivalent agencies at the State level talking to their
Federal counterparts.
Initially, LOHSEP proposed to FEMA that we have a second
major planning event like the Hurricane Pam exercise to focus
on some of the areas that we did not get covered during the
first exercise. It became clear after the first follow-on
workshop that there would not be another large exercise due to
funding. Therefore, FEMA Region VI and LOHSEP decided to use
the second follow-on workshop to focus primarily on
transportation, staging, and distribution of critical resources
because it affected all the other plans in one way or another.
Although I came to work for the Hurricane Pam exercise
contractor, IEM, I recused myself from the Hurricane Pam
follow-on activities due to my previous State responsibilities
in line with counsel I received from the Louisiana State Ethics
Board.
In spite of the funding, scheduling, and policy changes we
faced with the Southeast Louisiana Catastrophic Planning
Project, I felt that we had started down the right path. We
still had a way to go, but we were heading in the right
direction. It is my opinion that the scenario-based planning
activities like Hurricane Pam are the way to go when trying to
formulate plans to deal with catastrophic events. The realism
that is brought to the table during these events really makes
the planning feel more urgent.
I would like to thank the Committee once again for hearing
my testimony.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Mr. St. Amant.
TESTIMONY OF JESSE ST. AMANT,\1\ DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF HOMELAND
SECURITY AND EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS, PLAQUEMINES PARISH,
LOUISIANA
Mr. St. Amant. Good morning, Madam Chairman. Thank you for
having me here today. I certainly appreciate the opportunity to
speak before you and this group. Certainly, I would really like
to thank you, as well, and your staff. They have really done a
terrific job.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. St. Amant appears in the Appendix
on page 56.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
When I look at my notes and my statement I wanted to make,
you two have covered it. I pray that someone is listening. The
voices in the wind for too long have been out there. Time and
again, we have expected and hoped that someone would hear our
plea.
Mr. Fontenot just described to you something that I have
here, a stack of documents going back, just these, from 1993 to
current, and there are a lot more, telling of the horror
stories that you have seen, and I really appreciate the fact
that you have seen it because it is beyond description of what
we are dealing with. So let me encourage you and the people in
this great hall of justice that we are in, don't forget us.
This is just the beginning. The horror story is not what has
happened, it is what is still happening and continues to
happen. I am going to get to that later.
Let me reassure and reaffirm some of the things that you
have made known. Fair warning--Mother Nature has given us fair
warning, and we have tried, as Sean said, to echo that. I
remember telling, as the President of the Southeast Hurricane
Task Force, stating this. If there is any significant loss of
life, I would be the first to volunteer before any
Congressional hearings, as I figured there would be some,
because the fatality count could have been 100,000, not under
1,200. So for me, the Hurricane Pam exercise was really a
success story because some of the lessons gleaned from that
were some of the issues that we took back to our local
jurisdictions to assist us in evacuation. Some of the things
that we took back, we couldn't do alone, which is the reason I
stated I would be glad to testify before anybody because we
needed the continuing support to have a Pam exercise, and my
group of directors representing Southeast Louisiana and some 15
jurisdictions had to beat on the desk a little bit to make sure
that it would be funded because someone didn't think that it
was important.
Well, in any case, we got it done, but Mother Nature has a
sick sense of humor. She showed to us that I will hit you
before you are ready. I hear this diatribe about 50-foot levees
or what they call Category 5 levees that are being planned or
being cried for and being asked for. My experience in emergency
management tells me this. You build a 20-foot levee, Mother
Nature will give you a 25-foot storm surge. The maximum
envelopes of water, the loss of the wetlands, we can blame
everything and his brother for what has happened, but the fact
of the matter is, due to the soil subsidence, due to the loss
of our wetlands, we knew in this business that this was coming.
We tried to say the words, this is coming, time and again.
One of the documents I wanted to show you today was this
one, dated 1994. It gives you the exact scenario of the worst
case scenario that could happen. It was never a case of if, it
was a case of when. This document from the Government
Accounting Office tells you what is going to happen.
But the fact of the matter is that due to the Pam exercise,
we really got a little bit better about getting some people out
of harm's way. I would hate to think what would have happened
had it not been. Maybe the fatality counts, as I said, would
have been greater.
Dr. Bob Sheets, former Director of the National Hurricane
Center, gave this warning. I also happen to have this on video.
New Orleans is the worst case scenario in the continental
United States, surrounded by water, at or below sea level, 1.6
million people, with lack of infrastructure to evacuate in a
timely manner. I submit to you that is not my only concern for
hurricanes, something that we may have 2 or 3 days to see and
to prepare for and respond to or evacuate from. My concern is
what happens if we have some other type of event that doesn't
have that much notice, maybe a chemical spill that we may have
to evacuate people in the short term.
These are the considerations, and let me say one other
thing further. Let us suppose Miami, Houston, Washington, DC.
We are talking about the Hurricane Pam exercise that was
supposed to raise the awareness level of a major catastrophic
event happening in any major city, not just New Orleans.
Folks, we were lucky. There are some things that I am going
to recommend, some of which is, if it is not broken, don't fix
it. My fellow directors from the State of Louisiana have always
said, FEMA used to be a good organization, but somebody decided
we were going to put it under Homeland Security, for whatever
reason. Personally, I feel that the Federal Coordinating
Officer, and the Defense Coordinating Officer, the State
Coordinating Officer, working together, can resolve most of the
problems. I remember some of our response that we did for the
Andrew situation--I had been there a few years--and I thought
they were very good because you had the right people, the
communications, and the coordination.
But the fact of the matter is, when you build top-down
approach, you have got people in cubicles at the top giving
directives to very few at the bottom. Nothing happens. If you
get people who don't listen to the warnings that we are trying
to say and they go unheeded, then nothing happens.
So I believe in us being more proactive than reactive. I
believe in us doing what needs to be done, and if you want to
find out, ask the people who were involved. I think this is why
I admire your tenacity in searching and seeking the people who
should know what this is all about.
Let me assure you of one thing. We will recover and this
will happen again. Will we be prepared? I submit we need to
lead, follow, or get out of the way, and I submit that for a
simple reason. The loss of life this time was just a wake-up
call. As sad and tragic as it is, this was not a direct hit.
This was a glancing blow. If the eye wall of the hurricane had
been 12 miles further west, I would not be here giving this
testimony and a lot of other people wouldn't be on the face of
the earth. The fact of the matter is, this glancing blow did
cause some overtopping and some levee failures, but the City of
New Orleans would look like the lower part of Plaquemines
Parish, where nothing would exist, had it crossed over the City
of New Orleans.
The gallant response, the efforts that were made were
hindered by the lack of communication, the lack of coordination
and damage assessment. No one ever anticipated that 100 percent
of the communications that we had--if you can't communicate
what your problems are, if you can't reach out, then your
response is hindered. I had people 3 weeks after the storm that
were amazed to find out that I was still alive because I
couldn't communicate. When we finally had satellite phones
delivered to us by the State, they were of no use because they
wouldn't work.
I think the President has acknowledged that communications
interoperability has got to be the most important essence of
our response and recovery and preparation. I happen to agree
with that. When you don't have anything, and two tin cans and a
string doesn't cut it and carrier pigeons, as the former
director used to say, don't want to fly in bad weather. It is
tough to cry, I need help, when no one hears you.
Again, I want to wish you luck and continuance on your
endeavor to try to reach a conclusion, and I just hope someone
will listen to what is being said here. This is an opportunity
to go forward and to make sure that the next time it happens,
as it will, we will be better prepared. I thank you for this
opportunity.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Ms. Beriwal.
TESTIMONY OF MADHU BERIWAL,\1\ PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, INNOVATIVE EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, INC., BATON ROUGE,
LOUISIANA
Ms. Beriwal. Madam Chairman, Senator Lieberman, Members of
the Committee, thank you very much for the opportunity to
testify in front of you on catastrophic planning for Southeast
Louisiana, called Hurricane Pam.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Beriwal appears in the Appendix
on page 58.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A lot of the points that I was going to make, the previous
witnesses have already mentioned those, so I won't belabor you
with those issues. I want to start by making, first of all, a
distinction between what Hurricane Pam was and was not. There
has been a lot of confusion and chaos about what Hurricane Pam
was and wasn't.
First of all, if you go back to traditional emergency
planning, in traditional emergency management, you have
essentially a quality cycle that starts with planning. You
prepare a plan. Those plans are generally prepared by either
one person or a small committee of five or six people. It takes
6 to 12 months to prepare a plan. And then you take that
training, and all of the people with primary responsibility for
execution of the plan go through a training cycle. That might
take another 12 months or so to do. And then you have an
exercise. Planning for the exercise generally takes 6 to 12
months to execute. You have an exercise for a few days, and
then your report might come out as soon as 2 or 3 months after
the exercise or sometimes as long as a year after the exercise.
This whole quality cycle takes somewhere between 2\1/2\ and
4\1/2\ years, depending on the complexity of the topic and the
complexity of the region that is involved.
This is not what Hurricane Pam was. Even though Pam was
called an exercise, it was not a traditional exercise in the
sense that there was a plan in place and that we were going to
exercise the plan. I don't mean to imply that there were no
plans in place. The 13 Southeast Louisiana parishes that
participated in Hurricane Pam all had emergency operations
plans. Several of them had hurricane plans. The State of
Louisiana had plans. There were 20 State agencies involved.
Many of them had emergency operations plans in place. And, of
course, the National Government had the Federal Response Plan
when we started and the National Response Plan further on into
the process. So everybody had legally constituted plans.
The effort for Hurricane Pam was to create a bridging
document between all of these local plans, the State plans, and
the National Response Plan. This is a term that was used widely
during Hurricane Pam in the many workshops we conducted, is to
create a bridging document that will be addressing just
catastrophic events.
Most plans deal with a gamut of hazards, everything from
chemical spills, radiological events, hurricanes, floods, and
tornadoes. The intent of Hurricane Pam was to create a plan for
a catastrophic event, a specific event. As some of the previous
witnesses have testified, the intent was to create a sense of
reality. When we were working with this project, we were trying
to describe a worst case but plausible event. That is the
slogan that we had. It has to be plausible because it was very
important that the exercise not degenerate into questioning the
data on the basis of which of the plans would be developed.
We started on May 24, 2004, when we were awarded the
contract. Actually, we had verbal notice to proceed from FEMA
earlier than that, and we met with the FEMA Region VI and
LOHSEP in Denton, Texas, to plan out this exercise. We had 53
days to put an event together of considerable complexity and
magnitude. We understood that, but we were dedicated to making
the Hurricane Pam workshop a success.
It was an 8-day exercise, and in the 53 days prior to the
event, we cascaded from the slow-moving Category 3 storm that
you, Madam Chairman, mentioned and that was briefed by the
National Weather Service. We took the data from the National
Weather Service and their slosh model and predicted a series of
consequences. I would like to tell you some of these
consequences and compare them to Katrina. I know that there has
been a lot of discussion about how similar these consequences
were.
We added 20 inches of rain into Hurricane Pam prior to the
event to create catastrophic conditions both from storm surge
and from rain. As you might know, nine of 10 deaths that occur
in hurricanes are due to storm surge and due to drowning from
rain and storm surge. So we wanted to create 10 to 20 feet of
water in the City of New Orleans, which would constitute a
catastrophic scenario for Southeast Louisiana.
We overtopped the levees. We did not breach them. We also
looked at the Louisiana offshore oil port, and as you know,
Senators, the significance of that oil port is that it handles
12 percent of the crude oil of the United States, and that LOOP
port would close prior to the storm and would come back 2 or 3
days after the storm.
To give you comparable data for these consequences, in
Hurricane Katrina, there was actually 18 inches of rain. The
levees were overtopped as well as breached in places. Louisiana
Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) did close for 5 days before and after
the storm.
We predicted that nine refineries would shut down during
the storm. Actually, seven refineries shut down. We predicted
that 57 chemical plants would be flooded and shut down. Over 50
plants were flooded and shut down.
We predicted that 1.1 million people would be made homeless
from the storm. The actual number is about 1 million.
We expected that Leeville Bridge on Louisiana Highway 1 to
the west of the city would collapse, since we had the track of
the hurricane on the west of the city putting the northeast
quadrant, which is the most damaging part of the storm,
directly over the City of New Orleans. In fact, the New Orleans
Twin Span bridge collapsed to the east of the city since the
storm track of Katrina was to the east.
We expected that 786,359 people would lose electricity at
the initial impact; 881,400 people actually lost electricity
after impact.
We predicted that there would be 12.5 million tons of
debris that would be generated. The estimates right now are
that there are 22 million tons of debris, 12 million tons just
in the City of New Orleans itself.
We predicted that there would be extensive coastal marsh
erosion. The initial indications are that Louisiana lost a
year's worth of coastal marsh erosion in the one day of
Katrina's impact. Just so that you understand what the
significance of that is, in the 33 minutes since the start of
this briefing, an area the size of the greater Washington, DC,
area disappeared in Louisiana, and it is continuing to
disappear at the rate of 25 square miles a year.
We also said the sewage treatment facilities would not work
in the metropolitan area, which is exactly what happened in
Katrina since they are powered and the power would be lost.
We expected that 233,986 buildings would collapse and
250,000 homes are considered to be destroyed from Katrina.
We expected that 15 percent of the 13 parish hospital
supply would be affected and some of it would be completely
destroyed. At present, there is no medical system available in
the City of New Orleans for those that are not insured.
We expected that there would be $40 billion in damages to
commercial and residential structures in Louisiana, and the
Insurance Institute has estimated that the damage to commercial
and residential structures is between $20 and $65 billion.
We expected that there would be 61,290 deaths. Fortunately,
we were wide off the mark on that one. At present, we have
1,100 people known to have died in Louisiana. Another 3,000 to
4,000 are still missing and not presumed dead as yet.
I would like to move away from the consequences, but just
in closing on that particular topic mention that developing
these consequences was very important. We wanted to create a
sense of urgency. We wanted to create a sense of realism in the
exercise which generally does not inform a planning process
when you are dealing with emergency planning. Because we are
all mortal beings, we don't like to look at the face of death
and disaster, and most planning tends to look at the event that
you can manage, not the events that you can't manage. The
Hurricane Pam exercise was designed with detailed consequences
down to the parish level for each of these data elements. We
actually had data on how many people would be affected by
parish so that each of the individual parishes and the State
and FEMA would have tactile information at their fingertips
that they could use in planning.
How much of that got used? I know there has been a lot of
confusion on this topic, too. It seems from some of the reports
that Hurricane Pam did not have any effect. I would beg to
differ. We did have a lot of effect, and I will further on talk
a little bit about what I think we could have done better.
Talking about the things that got used in Katrina, first of
all is the response rate. In Hurricane Pam, we projected that
36 percent of the 1.9 million people, that is 1.7 million
residents of Louisiana and 200,000 tourists, would actually
evacuate. That is 36 percent of 1.9 million people. That would
have left a considerable number of people in the 13-parish
area. Why did we project such a low number? Because history has
indicated from Hurricane Georges in 1998, Hurricane Ivan in
2004, as well as prior storms, that not enough people leave in
the face of a storm.
In Hurricane Katrina, now I am going to give you
information that is not scientifically validated as yet, but at
least indications are that 80 to 90 percent of the people in
the 13-parish area left that region. That is equivalent to
ringing the bell in emergency management in terms of evacuation
for a large metropolitan region. It has not occurred before.
The most validated information on prior storms where there has
been a high rate of evacuation was Hurricane Hugo, where 81
percent of the people evacuated in the face of that storm.
I think most of the credit for that goes to the National
Weather Service, Dr. Mayfield at the National Hurricane Center,
and the media for publicizing the impending storm. But I think
that we can take a small measure of comfort in the fact that
some of the actions of the State, Federal, and local officials
were motivated by the high casualty count of Hurricane Pam and
the consequences projected in this particular planning
exercise.
We also developed a search and rescue process called the
lily-pad operation where people would essentially be plucked
from the flooded areas, brought to the land-water interface,
and from there they would be taken by another set of people to
the shelters or to medical facilities where they would be
treated or taken care of. And when I say ``we,'' I mean the
participants of Hurricane Pam and IEM. We did not see a
division between the company and the customers that we serve.
So this was brought up by the participants. They developed this
concept. You saw that on CNN and FOX News during Hurricane
Katrina operating to save lives.
In the data that they are gathering right now post-
Hurricane Katrina to compare Hurricane Pam and Hurricane
Katrina consequences, we think that somewhere between 60,000
and 100,000 people went through the search and rescue method
where they were rescued from rooftops and from flooded
buildings and brought using the lily-pad method.
Another issue that I wanted to mention is the TMOSA, which
is the Temporary Medical Operations Staging Area. Those were
effectively used in Katrina. We had predicted that there would
be three needed. Three of them were operational, two real ones
at LSU and Nicholls and then the other one was actually the New
Orleans Airport, which effectively became a TMOSA.
Let me close quickly and mention to you a few things that I
think need to be done better. I have worked in emergency
management and homeland security for 26 years now, and I think
that we really need to look very carefully at how we do
emergency management and homeland security. We are spending
about $1 million a minute in homeland security and emergency
management in this country. I think we need to demand better
results.
The first thing that I would mention is that we need to
have an outcome-based emergency management homeland security
process, something where elected officials can say, this is
what I expect the outcome to be, and then emergency management
and homeland security are tasked with delivering those
outcomes. This is no different from the Government Performance
and Results Act or the President's Management Agenda, which has
been mentioned in the last several administrations. We need to
apply the lessons of that management philosophy to emergency
management.
Second, I think that we need in emergency management a way
to measure protection. We came up with a lot of innovations in
Hurricane Pam. A number of them were used at a non-scientific
count, but about 75 percent of those things got used in
Katrina, yet the results were deemed unacceptable by the
President, by the media, and by the American public. We need a
way to calculate protection. I would not want to run my company
without knowing what the profit and loss statement was. How can
we run emergency management without knowing what level of
protection we are providing?
The third thing, we need a reliable and mature emergency
management process, one that creates a professional discipline
out of this field.
And fourth, we need a way to do sustainable development in
our community so that we do not have problems like coastal
erosion and other such factors that affect the vulnerability of
the region to natural as well as unnatural disasters.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Mr. Fairley, I would like to start my questioning with you.
Committee investigators were told by a former colleague of
yours, Mark Wallace, who also worked on designing Hurricane
Pam, that the effectiveness of the project was greatly
diminished by the poor attendance of key decisionmakers, and I
would contrast that to an exercise that Senator Lieberman and I
observed last year called the TOPOFF exercise where the
Governors of New Jersey and Connecticut and the Secretary of
Homeland Security were directly involved in a scenario
simulating a terrorist attack.
Mr. Wallace told the Committee that had the Director of
FEMA, the Governor of Louisiana, and the Mayor of New Orleans
participated in the scenario, that binding agreements could
have been reached, that there would have been a better
understanding of the responsibilities of the entities and the
plans they were to follow. Were efforts made to bring the high-
level key decisionmakers like the FEMA Director, the Governor,
and the Mayor into this process?
Mr. Fairley. I can only speak from the FEMA perspective. I
will then let my colleagues answer for the State and local.
When we put the, what we call the leadership committee or
leadership group together, we extended an invitation for FEMA
headquarters involvement. Naturally, we requested the highest
level that we could get. I am not aware of what decisions were
made as to who would attend. We did receive people from
headquarters who were in lines that could make decisions and
could make recommendations.
I would never argue with anyone, the higher the person you
have at your meeting, the less meetings you would probably need
to have or the more decisions you could have made on the spot,
but we felt comfortable with the leadership that came. I think,
naturally, you would always like to have more, but we felt
comfortable that the people there could relay back what they
found, what they saw, and assist us in getting decisions made.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Fontenot, in your testimony, you
discussed talking about the need to improve planning in
Louisiana way back in 1998. And during the next nearly 6 years,
until the Hurricane Pam exercise was actually funded and took
place, there was a lot of communication back and forth between
the State and FEMA, and I have looked at the documents which
present a very compelling case for the need for this kind of
catastrophic planning.
Could you give the Committee a better understanding of what
happened during that 6-year period? Why did it take so long
from when you first identified a very real and compelling need
and the time that the exercise was actually held?
Mr. Fontenot. First, I think that it is important to
recognize and important to state that we weren't just sitting
on our hands in that 6 years. I mean, we were actually doing
planning on our own and with the local governments and with our
State counterparts, trying to figure out some of the aspects
that we knew that we could handle on our own.
Second, I think that in my written testimony, and in my
verbal testimony earlier, I talked about the different
conference calls we had and the different meetings we had and
some of the conversations that we had with FEMA, FEMA Region
VI, and FEMA headquarters. It also needs to be pointed out that
FEMA Region VI was always a very willing participant in anytime
we went to FEMA headquarters to request funding for these
exercises to take place and this planning event to take place.
I know that on several occasions, my former Assistant
Director of Emergency Preparedness came to Washington and met
with Director James Lee Witt and then Mr. Allbaugh, requesting
that we do this planning event. I know that the gentleman that
had the position of Chief of Plans before I did, or Chief of
Planning, Training, and Exercises, before I took over for him,
I know that he spoke to Mr. Allbaugh about this planning cycle
and the importance of it.
I know that a lot of things that went on, I wasn't always
at every meeting that was conducted and discussions of this, so
I really can't answer what took so long other than we pushed as
much as we could and pushed as much as we thought that we had
the capital to push without really upsetting people for pushing
too hard.
Chairman Collins. Let me talk to you about the question
that I asked Mr. Fairley. Do you think Hurricane Pam's
effectiveness would have been improved if the Director of FEMA,
the Governor of Louisiana, and the Mayor of New Orleans had
directly participated in some of the simulation?
Mr. Fontenot. Well, I think Wayne answered quite adequately
about the Director of FEMA, so I will concentrate on the Mayor
of New Orleans and the Governor. I can tell you that there was
at least one briefing to the Governor's office prior to
Hurricane Pam where the Director of Emergency Management for
the State of Louisiana, which is the Adjutant General, was
briefed and then he briefed the Governor's office.
Unfortunately, there was a couple layers of management above
me, so I really never--I never had any direct dealings with the
Governor or her office, so I don't know exactly what the
conversations were and what happened between them, the Adjutant
General, and the Governor's office as far as inviting the
Governor or her staff to the exercise. They were more than
welcome to come, but I don't know what those dealings were. You
would have to ask him.
As far as the Mayor of New Orleans is concerned, we did
invite the parish emergency managers from all 13 parishes in
the Southeast Louisiana Task Force, and we invited them to
bring whoever they wanted to bring with them. It was up to the
emergency manager on who they chose to bring with them and who
they chose not to bring with them. However, there was financial
constraints, as well, and we had over 300 participants at this
exercise. It needs to be pointed out that we were pretty much
pushing the envelope of how many people we could have handled
without going to an off-site place to hold the exercise, which
we could have done, it just would have cost us some more money.
So that is my answer.
Chairman Collins. Ms. Beriwal, you testified that not
enough people evacuate prior to a storm hitting an area,
despite public officials urging it, despite even mandatory
evacuations. Your scenario predicted that hundreds of thousands
of individuals would not evacuate. Did it concern you, then,
that pre-storm evacuation was excluded from the Hurricane Pam
exercise, given that, as you said today, not everybody or not
as many people as should evacuate do so?
Ms. Beriwal. Pre-storm evacuation is actually a big
problem. In a nutshell, the issue is that about 24 hours prior
to landfall, there is a 50-50 chance that the storm is actually
going to strike the region to which it is destined, and people
make their own determinations. I would like to say that under
carefully controlled circumstances, people do damn well as they
please, and so each individual family and each individual
person in an area decides whether they are going to evacuate or
not evacuate.
However, about 50 to 60 years of emergency management
literature tends to indicate that people leave if they are told
by credible local officials to leave. Since I have worked off
and on with the City of New Orleans since the 1980s, they have
never ordered a mandatory evacuation for the City of New
Orleans until Hurricane Katrina. So you cannot have a high
percentage of people leave unless you have a mandatory
evacuation ordered by people that others recognize and who
essentially stand up and say, ``I am the mayor or the parish
president, and I order a mandatory evacuation of this area.''
Chairman Collins. But if you could answer my question more
directly, did you express concern when the State decided to
exclude pre-storm evacuation from the exercise?
Ms. Beriwal. No, I did not because for the longest time, at
least in my knowledge, for the last 20 to 25 years, every
exercise for hurricanes in Southeast Louisiana has focused only
on the evacuation question, and Hurricane Pam was expected to
be the first post-storm exercise to look at response post-
storm. So the fact that 3 days of the 8-day event were devoted
to pre-landfall and 5 days to post-storm seemed like an
appropriate thing to do.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Thanks to the
four of you. Your testimony has been very helpful, very
troubling, I guess, insofar as you were all involved in an
effort to get ready for what came in Katrina, and to some
extent, I hear you saying it helped, but to a lot of other
extent, it didn't put all those in government in a position to
diminish even further the consequences of what happened.
I think I will pick up, just so I understand exactly, where
Senator Collins left off, which was this fact that--I will
start with you, Mr. Fairley--while FEMA agreed to propose this
exercise Pam in 2001, it doesn't get underway until 2004. In
that time period, can you tell us, to the best of your
knowledge, the reason for the delay?
Mr. Fairley. Senator, the only logical reason I can give
you is that there were not funds available.
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Fairley. Not being part of the budgeting process in
Washington, I am not familiar with all the little nuances.
However, I know that if we propose a project and it is late in
the fiscal year, the agency's budget generally has already been
set and has worked its way through all the committees. So this
request for project and project funding goes into the next
budget cycle. So that could account for up to 2 years
sometimes.
Senator Lieberman. Mr. Fontenot, in your opening statement,
you mentioned, and the question, I just want to get it clear,
that a White House representative attended a meeting in New
Orleans in November 2003 and ``was astonished that as of that
date, we had not completed this type of plan, and promised to
do what he could to help us get funding for this planning
process.'' I didn't get that clear, was that Joe Allbaugh or
was that somebody else, or do you not recall?
Mr. Fontenot. No. I was at the meeting. Actually, it was
Retired General John Gordon, and he was on the advisory
council, Homeland Security Advisory Council.
Senator Lieberman. OK. So----
Mr. Fontenot. He was the gentleman that we were briefing.
Senator Lieberman. Right. And you have some reason to
believe that he went back and helped to facilitate the funding
that resulted in Pam?
Mr. Fontenot. That was my understanding, yes.
Senator Lieberman. OK. Let me now go to the question of
pre-storm evacuation. As Senator Collins said, as we have seen
it in the records, the Committee has obtained early proposals
that became Pam sought funding to study the problems of pre-
storm evacuation. Later, this was removed from the planning
exercise. Mr. Fairley, do you know why that happened?
Mr. Fairley. Yes, sir, in general. When we came together in
the various meetings to discuss items that would result in
planning topics, one of the things that we all experienced was
for every question we asked, instead of coming up with an
answer, we came up with five more questions.
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Fairley. And we realized very quickly that if you look
at putting a catastrophic plan together starting with pre-
landfall, then response, and into recovery, that we could not
finish it in one session. We may not be able to finish it in
one year or several years. So we met with the State and said
that we needed to look at something that we could handle in a
short time frame or shorter time frame, and it was decided
among everyone that response to the hurricane would probably be
more appropriate than to worry about long-term recovery issues,
which the response would probably dictate.
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Fairley. So we went into the phase of eliminating items
that were not considered response.
Senator Lieberman. Looking back, and I know hindsight is
always clearer than foresight, do you wish that you had
included in Pam some element regarding pre-storm evacuation,
which was obviously a big problem in Katrina?
Mr. Fairley. Yes, sir. Hindsight says that evacuation was a
very important element. We went on the basis that local and
State law requires local and State evacuations, and we would
support that.
Senator Lieberman. Understood. Mr. St. Amant, can you tell
us whether the Federal agencies in the Hurricane Pam exercises
were advised that the City of New Orleans and surrounding areas
had no effective way to evacuate people without personal
transportation or were lead agencies advised in Pam of the
city's efforts to prepare long-term for pre-storm evacuation?
Mr. St. Amant. Absolutely, sir.
Senator Lieberman. They were? What was your understanding,
if you had one at that point, of any possible Federal role in
pre-storm evacuation of a catastrophic hurricane?
Mr. St. Amant. There is no question that no area with 1.6
million people, with the lack of intermodal infrastructure, can
move in a very fast or efficient manner on its own----
Senator Lieberman. Right.
Mr. St. Amant [continuing]. Specifically, not any poor
States and poor areas such as Southeast Louisiana. To give you
an idea, in my jurisdiction, I am divided by the Mississippi
River. I have one road on each side to get out and get in. That
is it. I have to get through two other jurisdictions to get my
people safely out of the risk area. The bottom line, at the end
of the day, there is no way that New Orleans, Jefferson, or
anybody in that region is going to be able to meet this
challenge on its own.
We made specific knowledge known to them that as of the
1990 census, the numbers of people in the region who are
dependent upon regional transportation because they don't have
their own automobiles. This effort and the surrounding
challenges of the lack of intermodal transportation resources
caused me great concern, not because of the hurricane that may
give you 2 or 3 days to move, but short-term notice of
evacuation, regarding the resources necessary, sir.
So I will tell you this. Yes, I was there, and by the way,
yes, my parish president did attend some of these sessions. He
didn't have to be there. That is what he hires me to do, to
advise him, to make sure. I answer directly to one man, not a
committee, and that is why we tried to practice what we preach.
Senator Lieberman. Mr. Fairley, from the FEMA point of view
and insofar as you know from the Department of Homeland
Security point of view generally, what, if any, changes
occurred in response to the Hurricane Pam exercise, including
the sense that we get to some extent--Mr. St. Amant just
testified to it--it certainly comes through the Pam report and
plan that in the event of a catastrophic hurricane, State and
local first responders were going to be overwhelmed? Were there
any changes in Region VI, the one that covered New Orleans, in
terms of FEMA preparedness or plans to respond?
Mr. Fairley. Yes, sir. In the frame of mind, there was
great changes. I think a lot of us as a result of these
sessions walked away seeing holes and gaps and fearing that we
would not have things ready in time. As Jesse said, it was not
a matter of if but a matter of when. I think we all were hoping
that we could buy one more year.
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Fairley. Yes, sir, we did try to speed things up. We
tried to change directions. Not everything, of course, was
available. At the time of the very first session, we were not
sure that there would be a second session, so we were looking
at trying to get things done on, I hate to say a fast pace, but
a faster pace than normal. As it turned out, we did get a few
extra sessions. So, yes, there were some changes of philosophy.
When we worked with the locals and some of the State agencies,
we realized that what we had always thought to be standard
practices or were plans that were solid were, in fact, there
were gaps in them, and it was through that cooperation that we
discovered that.
Senator Lieberman. With respect to you, and this is really
a question to be asked of those higher up in FEMA who we will
have before us, in response to the Hurricane Pam exercise,
which was, as I said earlier, actually eerily predictive, what
was necessary was more than a change of frame of mind. In other
words, ideally, there would have been more action put into
effect. I guess the ultimate question is why was FEMA and the
rest of the Federal Government so slow, certainly appearing to
me, in responding to both the clear oncoming of Katrina and
then in responding once it hit?
You know what, I don't even need to have you answer that
question. That is what I am going to ask. But the point is, on
the record, we don't see enough of a response certainly in the
days before and immediately after Katrina hit landfall to
exactly the lessons of the Hurricane Pam exercise and the plan
itself, a very impressive, extensive, and detailed document.
I want to come back on my second round and ask some more
about what happened to the plan. Thanks, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Levin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN
Senator Levin. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and to you and
Senator Lieberman, all of our thanks for your extraordinary and
typical tenacity in digging into this issue and all of its
ramifications. The Nation is again truly in both of your debt
for what you are doing here, and hopefully, it is going to help
us deal with future catastrophic situations.
I am a little uncertain on the question of what happened
immediately prior to Katrina. Given the previous level of
planning, given the previous studies that have been done, is it
clear who was responsible primarily for the evacuation both
pre-Katrina and post-Katrina, that rested in State and local
governments rather than FEMA in terms of primary responsibility
for evacuation? Mr. Fairley.
Mr. Fairley. Senator, in my mind, yes, it was. The State of
Louisiana law requires that Louisiana and its parishes prepare
for evacuation from events. Our role is to support that as
requested or as directed.
Senator Levin. And Mr. Fontenot, is that your
understanding?
Mr. Fontenot. Yes, Senator, that is my opinion. I would
also add that I think that New Orleans also knew that was the
case because before I left State Government there was a meeting
to discuss how the State could help them with that role, and--
--
Senator Levin. OK. And Mr. St. Amant, is that your
understanding, as well?
Mr. St. Amant. The Louisiana Disaster Act clearly
delineates the responsibilities of the emergency managers and
parish presidents, etc. Yes, sir.
Senator Levin. Thank you. Now, Exhibit H,\1\ you all have
exhibit books, it is called the ``New Orleans Hurricane
Shelter,'' and on the first page it says, ``Even under the best
conditions, evacuation will leave at least 150,000 people in
harm's way.'' I think it is the fourth page has something which
is a document headed, ``Louisiana Superdome: Refuge of Last
Resort.'' Do you see those documents, or that document, Exhibit
H? Whose document is that? Is that a FEMA document or a parish
document, a State document, what is that, does anyone know?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Exhibit H appears in the Appendix on page 100.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Fontenot. If I may, I think this is a New Orleans
Parish document. It is not a State document, and I am pretty
sure it is not a Federal document, but I will let Wayne talk to
that.
Mr. Fairley. No, sir, it is not a FEMA document.
Senator Levin. It states here that not all citizens may be
able to evacuate due to medical infirmity or dependency. It
makes the statement that more than 57,000 households in New
Orleans do not have access to an automobile and have not made
adequate arrangements for evacuation. This is a life and death
situation, that the Superdome may be mobilized as a refuge of
last resort. So that was clearly known to whoever prepared that
document, and I think in general is it fair to say that it was
anticipated that a catastrophe of this scope could occur in New
Orleans? Is that a fair statement, that all of you agree that
it was anticipated that a catastrophe or a hurricane of this
size and this impact could and probably or perhaps would occur
in New Orleans? Is that a fair statement?
Mr. St. Amant. Absolutely. It was our worst case nightmare.
Senator Levin. All right, but I want to just go quickly
along. Mr. Fairley, is that a fair statement?
Mr. Fairley. Yes, sir.
Senator Levin. And Mr. Fontenot.
Mr. Fontenot. Yes, sir. We always said it was not a matter
of if, but when.
Senator Levin. OK. Ms. Beriwal.
Ms. Beriwal. Yes, sir.
Senator Levin. Now, after the catastrophe, we have
Secretary Chertoff saying that this catastrophe exceeded the
foresight of the planners and maybe anybody's foresight. How
could he make that statement? Mr. Fontenot, I will start with
you.
Mr. Fontenot. I have no idea. You will have to ask Mr.
Chertoff why he made that statement. I think that we have shown
for years, we have been yelling about this potential disaster.
Senator Levin. Mr. Fairley, have you talked to Mr. Chertoff
about this, or----
Mr. Fairley. No, sir, I have not.
Senator Levin. FEMA is in his Department, as I understand
it, or still there. Mr. St. Amant.
Mr. St. Amant. July 22, 2005, quoted in the Associated
Press where I stated when they released the study on the
evacuation, behavioral study by UNO-New Orleans, that the
results would be beyond comprehension. Anybody who has seen
this, as most of you have, know what I am talking about. It is
beyond comprehension.
Senator Levin. It also was anticipated, was it not?
Mr. St. Amant. Absolutely, but it still wasn't the worst
case. If you think this is bad, no, it is not.
Senator Levin. But nonetheless, a catastrophe of this scope
at least was anticipated.
Mr. St. Amant. Should have been.
Senator Levin. Ms. Beriwal.
Ms. Beriwal. Senator, I cannot comment on what Mr. Chertoff
may or may not have known. I have no knowledge of it.
Senator Levin. But from your perspective, a catastrophe of
this scope was clearly anticipated, was it not?
Ms. Beriwal. Yes, sir.
Senator Levin. Now, immediately prior to the storm, on
Saturday, if you look at Exhibit F,\1\ I guess this goes to
you, Mr. Fairley. The FEMA staff at headquarters gave a
briefing using a five-page Power Point, which is Exhibit F, and
what that exhibit said, and this is the Saturday prior to
landfall, that the Pam exercise projection is exceeded by
Hurricane Katrina real-life impacts. Storm surge could greatly
overtop levees and protective systems. Potential fatalities,
60,000. Incredible search and rescue needs of over 60,000
persons. Displacement of a million-plus population. Do you
know, Mr. Fairley, who gave this briefing?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Exhibit F appears in the Appendix on page 95.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Fairley. No, sir, unfortunately, I do not. On Saturday,
August 27, at around 12 noon, I was packing a suitcase, trying
to get a plane to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, so I was not privy to
this.
Senator Levin. Thank you. Fair enough. So you wouldn't know
who was briefed?
Mr. Fairley. No, sir. I would assume that this was a
briefing in the FEMA NRCC.
Senator Levin. OK.
Mr. Fairley. Excuse me, I'm sorry about using the initials,
the NRCC, which is the National Response Coordination Center.
But I'm not sure which official was making it.
Senator Levin. Do any of you know who gave the briefing and
who was briefed?
Mr. Fontenot. No, sir. I have no clue.
Ms. Beriwal. No, sir.
Senator Levin. All right. Now, the next day, or the same
day, Exhibit K,\2\ there was a computer simulation run at the
National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center. Is that
NISAC, does that sound correct?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Exhibit K appears in the Appendix on page 104.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ms. Beriwal. NISAC.
Senator Levin. OK, at NISAC. This is part of the Department
of Homeland Security, and it was performed on August 27, this
computer simulation, and it is Exhibit K, and there was an
update performed on August 28, and this was delivered to the
White House Situation Room at 1:47 on Monday morning, August
29. This NISAC report stated that the potential for severe
storm surge to overwhelm Lake Pontchartrain levees is the
greatest concern for New Orleans according to the NISAC report.
So Homeland Security knew prior to the breach of the levees, at
least a number of hours before the breach of the levees, that
this was the greatest concern for New Orleans. Do you know
where the NISAC folks got that terminology, Mr. Fairley?
Mr. Fairley. No, sir, I do not.
Senator Levin. But is it fair to say that in terms of the
impact of a severe, catastrophic storm that it was known that
the breach of the levees could be one of the impacts?
Mr. Fairley. Yes, sir, I think in all of the planning
scenarios and past disasters that we always knew that a
breaching or an overtopping of the levee could lead to----
Senator Levin. Either one?
Mr. Fairley. Either one.
Senator Levin. And do you know who got that report at the
White House?
Mr. Fairley. No, sir, I do not.
Senator Levin. All right. Does anyone here know?
Mr. St. Amant. No, but I wish they would have shared it
with us. That might have been nice.
Senator Levin. Are you familiar with this?
Mr. St. Amant. Not at all.
Senator Levin. Is anyone familiar with Exhibit K?
Ms. Beriwal. No, sir.
Senator Levin. Mr. Fontenot.
Mr. Fontenot. No, sir.
Senator Levin. If you look at page 37 of that exhibit--by
the way, we also have the statement of the President that he
says he doesn't think anyone anticipated the breach of the
levees. Now, I don't know how he can say that given the fact
that everybody anticipated the breach of the levees according
to you folks, but I guess that is something the White House is
going to have to respond to. He said that on Thursday,
September 1, on Good Morning America. ``I don't think anyone
anticipated the breach of the levees,'' when it is obvious that
everybody anticipated that was a realistic possibility. But go
to page 37.
Mr. Fontenot. Sir, we don't have a page 37.
Senator Levin. All right. Do they have this exhibit? I am
out of time anyway. I will have to get to that in my second
round. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Senator Carper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. Thanks, Madam Chairman. Our thanks to each
of our witnesses. We are delighted that you are here. We
appreciate very much your testimony and putting some light on
these issues that we wrestle with.
I think I would like to start off with a question for each
of you, if I may, and then I have a couple of individual
questions. We learned a number of lessons about the gaps in
planning during the Hurricane Pam exercise, but there are still
quite a few questions that we know we need to follow up on. I
guess my question for all of you would be this. If you had to
do it all over again, how would you ensure that the lessons
learned during this exercise were better translated into your
particular agency or entity's emergency plan?
Mr. Fairley. That is a very good question, sir, and very
difficult to answer. From the lessons learned, to go back and
do it again, to repeat the process, I think this time we would
look at existing laws, regulations, policies, and procedures to
see where they did not meet the level of what happened, the
reality. We would work closer with the State and the locals in
sharing responsibility, not to assume their responsibility, not
to force ourselves, but to share in implementing those
shortfalls that we saw come to light as the real shortfalls.
As an individual, if I was running the situation, I would
take these lessons learned and put them into some form of
usable, implementable activity that would address--we were
building a partnership where we were beginning to lose the
yours, mine, and ours syndrome--to me, that would be very
necessary to make this part of the lessons learned, is that
everybody has a stake in it. Everybody is a taxpayer. We need
to work together and try to come to, this is not yours, this is
not mine, it is ours and move forward. So that is the biggest
thing that I have learned in this whole disaster, is that we
need to work closer and stop the concept sometimes of local,
State, and Federal Government, but to work more as one unit. I
know that is theoretical sounding, but that is a true belief.
Senator Carper. OK, thank you. Mr. Fontenot.
Mr. Fontenot. I agree----
Senator Carper. Again, the question is, looking back at
what was learned, how would you ensure that the lessons learned
during this exercise were better translated into your
particular agency's emergency plan?
Mr. Fontenot. I agree with what Wayne is saying about the
yours, mine, ours concept, and I think that is something that
needs to be pushed further, and we tried to do that from day
one with the exercise with the contractors. This is a team.
This is not an us versus you type of thing.
What would I have done differently? Given the same
circumstances that I had back then, I don't know if I could
have done anything differently. Rather than getting on the roof
and start shouting and then people thought I was crazy and sent
me to an asylum, I don't know what else I could have done.
Mr. St. Amant. I would listen. My turn?
Senator Carper. Please. You pronounce your last name St.
Amant?
Mr. St. Amant. Yes, sir.
Senator Carper. Thank you.
Mr. St. Amant. Please call me Jesse.
Senator Carper. St. Jesse?
Mr. St. Amant. That is fine. [Laughter.]
What we did----``Louisiana Citizens' Awareness and
Evacuation Guide.'' Plaquemines Parish went out and spent some
money, and they had every one of these delivered to a person's
residential address before the storm hit, about a month before
the storm hit. This was produced with Homeland Security funds.
It tells people what to do when they have to evacuate. That is
one of the results of Hurricane Pam. Public health impacts----
Senator Carper. We get a lot of things at our home in the
mail, and I am sure others do, as well. How do you know whether
people, one, read it; two, internalized it, studied it; and
three, did anything differently as a result?
Mr. St. Amant. That is of no consequence because when we do
mandatory evacuation, we put our volunteers and our sheriff's
office on the street and the bullhorns, and we tell them, you
are under--we don't assume that someone is going to hear the
news in an area. We will make it happen. You can never do that
in emergency management.
The reason--and let me clear something up, if I may. This
agency who put out this dire report or whatever, if it came out
at 9 a.m., it is because the sheriff, the parish president, and
I were on television telling people to get out of Dodge. BOOT,
Be Out Of Town. I don't need somebody from Washington to tell
me, as Emergency Preparedness Director, when to advise the
parish president or the sheriff what we need to do. They are
consummate professionals. They expect me to be one. I expect
the government officials, when I advise them to do something,
to follow my lead.
The bottom line, sir, or I think the point I am trying to
make here, you asked the question, what did we learn? I went
back and I took a look at my hurricane plans again----
Senator Carper. That wasn't my question.
Mr. St. Amant. I made some adjustments----
Senator Carper. No, let me repeat my question again. How
would you ensure that the lessons learned during this exercise
were better translated into your agency's particular emergency
plan? That is my question.
Mr. St. Amant. Because I know the vulnerability assessment,
we know to get out. Pam, I was there as a subject matter expert
as well as the other directors, worked to tell them what they
were going to inherit. If you have to tell me what I am faced
in a Category 2, 3, or 4 hurricane, they have got the wrong guy
for the job. It is my responsibility to prepare that parish to
do what is necessary to get out. It was my responsibility under
the Pam scenario to advise IEM and the FEMA people what they
are going to have to deal with to better prepare them, and to
that end, I strongly suggest that they scrap the Stafford Act,
which is still governing this emergency instead of a National
Disaster Response. But anyway, that is one of the terms that we
asked that we learned from Pam.
The other thing was, have a pre-landfall declaration
because it gives us the authority and gives us the support
necessary to evacuate pre-landfall. Up until this such time, I
have to tell you, and this is what was done for Katrina, and it
was necessary. Was it done soon enough? History will judge us.
But the fact of the matter is, it is one of the few times
in history it is being done. And let me add, if it wasn't for
some of my fellow directors and I trying to beg and almost
demand that we do a Pam exercise, it wouldn't have happened. It
would have gone away. So I just hope someone listens to what is
being said, that is all. Sorry for my frustration, sir. It has
been a long couple of months, too.
Senator Carper. Thank you. Ms. Beriwal. The question is
probably not entirely appropriate for you because I don't
believe you are here representing any particular agency, but
would you comment on it nonetheless?
Ms. Beriwal. I would like to, Senator. Thank you very much.
I think that there are certain things that we are taking as
lessons learned from this as we go about the country and
internationally helping our customers with emergency
preparedness.
First of all, I think what we learned is that a scenario-
based planning exercise process like Hurricane Pam can be quite
effective. Perhaps that is not where your question was going,
but I think this is a finding that we have discovered,
particularly having the planners and the operational people in
the same room so that the operational people have the real-life
operational concerns there, and the planners can look at this
issue from a wider time scale and a wider geographic scale. It
is very effective to have those two groups together.
I think that integrating science and technology like we did
into the consequence assessment was very vital. It was very
important. It gave a sense of reality to the participants which
they carried forward and probably used in Katrina itself. So I
think that was a very important lesson learned from that, that
we need to integrate our scientific and technological knowledge
in this country, which we have a vast amount of, and pour it
into these kinds of events.
The third thing, I think, that I would say is that
leadership does need to be present, and that is what I would
say their role is----
Senator Carper. I am sorry, what needs to be present?
Ms. Beriwal. The leadership does need to be present for the
different layers of government, and one of their primary roles
is in deriving what the outcomes are that they would like to
see. I would say that in Hurricane Pam, we worked with all the
13 parishes and we projected 61,290 dead. That was known in
Pam. Well, 1,100 dead in Katrina is deemed unacceptable, so we
have to define what is acceptable, and that is a role for the
elected officials--to decide what is acceptable.
I do think, also, that we need to have emergency management
where we can actually take our plans, our doctrines, our
training, our exercises, and our equipment and be able to pour
that into a single modeling and simulation capability that
basically gives us, well, how much protection this is providing
because you don't know when you are dealing with hundreds of
variables, all of which could have very many different values.
Where we are at that point is not known unless you pull this
together and are able to quantify protection in some measurable
manner.
And third, I would say that our exercises need to be a lot
more outcome-based so that when we actually do test a plan, we
should be able to see how many people did we save, how many
people died, how many people were injured, and could we have
done better. It has been one of my maxims since right after
September 11--I was actually on the Defense Science Board that
looked at intelligence gathering for terrorism, so it hit home
closer to me when the events of 9/11 occurred. My maxim to my
people was, if we can find a way to save one more person, had
we found one person in the Twin Towers that we would have
rescued and brought out, we would all as a Nation have been
happy. So we would like to find that one additional person that
we can save from trauma or death in these kind of events, and
we can't do that until we actually have an outcome-based
emergency management system.
Senator Carper. Good. Thank you for a very helpful
response. Thank you.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, Senator.
The end product from the Hurricane Pam exercise was the
Southeast Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane Plan, and that plan
includes an appendix that is entitled, ``Transportation,
Staging, and Distribution Execution Time Line.'' The appendix
can be found in your exhibit book after Tab B,\1\ and I would
ask that each of you take a look at it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Exhibit B appears in the Appendix on page 80.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On page two, this document indicates that 50 hours before
landfall, the plan calls for pre-staging 600 buses and 1,200
drivers. I am going to start with you, Mr. Fairley, and then go
across. Was it clear to you whose responsibility it was to
stage those buses?
Mr. Fairley. Yes, ma'am, at the time. Working off our
normal way of business, local has first-line responsibility,
followed by the State, supplemented by the Federal. We came up
with an estimated need of around 600 buses. From that, to get
to the Federal part, we would have subtracted what the locals
would have, followed by what the State would do, and then we
would pre-stage or try to pre-stage the remaining. So, yes,
ma'am, for me, it was clear based on our normal business
activities.
Chairman Collins. So the responsibility was first at the
local level, then at the State, and then Federal, if requested?
Mr. Fairley. Yes, ma'am, that is the normal procedure. We
never tell the Governor what they do or do not need. They will
request us to provide those assets.
Chairman Collins. And was this plan followed?
Mr. Fairley. Yes, ma'am, it was, but it was not successful.
Chairman Collins. Mr. Fontenot, same question for you. Do
you think it is clear whose responsibility it was to stage
those buses and those drivers?
Mr. Fontenot. Senator, first, let me say that this
happened, this session happened after I left the State of
Louisiana.
Chairman Collins. Right.
Mr. Fontenot. I left May 31. This happened in July. But
with not being there, yes, it was very clear in my mind whose
responsibility evacuations was and whose responsibility that
evacuating their citizens was, and it first starts with the
local level. Then it goes to the State level, and it is
whatever the local level cannot handle, they come to the State
and ask for help with, and we try to help them as much as we
can. Then whatever we can't help with, we go to the Federal
Government to ask for help. It also needs to be pointed out,
though, that this is 50 hours pre-landfall----
Chairman Collins. Right.
Mr. Fontenot [continuing]. According to this plan. The
Federal Government under the rules that it is under wouldn't
come in 50 hours to pre-stage buses for us to have access to at
hour 50. They may be pre-staging some assets for later use, but
at this point in time, the declaration wouldn't have been made
and the Federal Government wouldn't have the authority to turn
those buses over to us. However, in my mind, then yes, it was--
it is clear by reading this plan. But again, I wasn't there for
the discussions so I don't know exactly what discussion went
around developing this time line.
Chairman Collins. Mr. St. Amant, you are a very experienced
emergency management official. Was it clear to you and to the
other parishes and to the City of New Orleans who was
responsible for staging those buses 50 hours prior to Katrina
hitting?
Mr. St. Amant. You referenced this booklet, ma'am, and to
answer your question, just if you want to read my exact
quotation, Exhibit D,\1\ the last paragraph, if you don't mind
me reading it, and I will answer the question. Jesse, it says,
``One message to get to FEMA headquarters is a pre-landfall
declaration in a catastrophic situation is very much needed and
should be a requirement. There are a lot of people without
personal transportation. Therefore, if we don't move people out
of New Orleans in an appropriate time, there will be mass
casualties. The city at this moment does not have the resources
or capability to evacuate these people. Therefore, a pre-
landfall declaration is a necessity and a requirement for life
and safety.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Exhibit D appears in the Appendix on page 90.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The issue that I was trying to raise, it was a discussion
of all that, not only evacuation resources, etc. We were under
the impression that is exactly why we were there, to try to
bring out these points of the mass infrastructure lack of
capability and the necessary logistics support that would be
necessary to move that many people outside of the risk area.
Chairman Collins. But there is also a document that is in
Exhibit D which contains the notes from what appears to be the
final briefing of the Unified Command on July 29, 2005, and it
includes a section on transportation. You are listed as a
participant in that briefing. And comments that are attributed
to Don Day note, ``We need to pre-identify the sources for
these buses and have them lined up and ready. There are plans
to evacuate buses and operators out before the storm, but we
are at less than 10 percent done with this transportation
planning when you consider the buses and the people.''
I am trying to get a sense, given that this plan pretty
clearly outlines what needs to be done, why it didn't succeed,
and I am wondering if it is because Katrina hit too soon and
the planning wasn't completed, or whether there was confusion
over who was responsible for what, or whether the State and
local entities were simply overwhelmed by a catastrophe of this
magnitude. But keep in mind, this is pre-storm, so that is why
I am trying to get an understanding. Could you help me better
understand this?
Mr. St. Amant. Lack of planning, lack of coordination, lack
of funding, lack of staff, we can pick any multitude of
reasons, excuses why it didn't happen. I remember having the
situation where I had three busloads of people ready to get out
of a nursing home. This was when I was with the State as an
emergency transportation coordinator. I was working at the
State Emergency Office. I get a phone call, we have got three
busloads of nursing home people, St. Michael's, and two of the
bus drivers got on the plane and went to Atlanta. We had to
provide emergency resources to get them out right before we had
to close the Interstate down.
People panic, and in this case, when you are looking at the
worst nightmare come true, I can understand. It doesn't excuse
the fact that we need to be prepared for this, that you need to
have plans in place. This is what Pam was trying to accomplish.
The fact of the matter is, the lessons learned by these things
that we were actually discussing was going to visit us sooner
than we anticipated. The purpose for which it was intended was
to teach us how and what we needed to do collectively. We
recognized the shortcomings. The fact that they were not put in
place is only because the lessons learned from Pam were not
disseminated down and got to the pubic officials to which it
was supposed to serve.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
Ms. Beriwal, my time has expired, so if you could just give
me a very brief comment in response to this plan and your
assessment of responsibility and whether that was clearly
understood.
Ms. Beriwal. It is my perception that the local authorities
were responsible for evacuation of the public and that they
would ask for resources and the State would provide resources
if necessary, and if States felt that they could not provide
those resources, that they would request it from the Federal
Government, and that was mostly the discussion.
I would like to clarify one thing, which is that phase one
of Hurricane Pam, the four workshops that were held (workshops
1, 1A, 1B), they were all phase one of the planning process
where we were going to create the Incident Action Plans. Phase
two of Hurricane Pam was expected to be a consolidated plan for
the whole area where we would look at the resources and see if
those things that we identified in the Incident Action Plan
could be implemented. That phase has not started. It is not
done, and we are sitting 127 days before the start of the next
hurricane season for Southeast Louisiana.
Chairman Collins. Thank you. Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Madam Chairman.
Let me just pick up there with you, Ms. Beriwal. Just so I
make sure I understand, the document you--first off, you
presented a scenario based on a lot of, I think, very
impressive scientific, meteorological data about what the
impact of a catastrophic storm in New Orleans might be, and am
I correct that in the dramatic and all-too-accurate predictions
you made of flooding, of damage to property, of the impact on
housing and education, hospitals, health care, etc., that you
were assuming the status quo in terms of the government
response, in other words, that it inherently showed that
something more had to be done because obviously you had a
report suggesting that 60,000 people might be killed in such a
storm, so no one in government reading that could have said,
well, that is OK. Am I understanding what the goal of the Pam
exercise was?
Ms. Beriwal. Let me clarify this by giving an example,
Senator.
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Ms. Beriwal. The 61,290 deaths were based on the 36 percent
evacuation rate from the area, and to come up with the 36
percent evacuation, first, we went through the scientific
literature like Jesse mentioned--the UNO study and the Corps of
Engineers study on public behavior after storms in Louisiana as
well as public opinion surveys----
Senator Lieberman. Can I interrupt a second?
Ms. Beriwal. Certainly.
Senator Lieberman. Did that estimate also include your
evaluation of the existing capacity of State and local agencies
to assist in the evacuation?
Ms. Beriwal. Senator, that is exactly where I was going.
Taking those numbers, we went back to the 13 parishes and
shared with them our initial numbers for the expected response
rate for each parish. We worked with Jesse. We worked with the
folks from the other 12 parishes and said, ``these are the
numbers for your parish. Do you think this is credible or do
you have a mechanism to raise this number? Would you like the
number to be higher or lower?'' because we wanted to make it
plausible. So we took our scientific data and then we went back
to the parish experts and said, ``let us adjust these numbers
based on what you think is credible for your parish.''
Senator Lieberman. Credible meaning what more you are able
to do, or what you are able to do with what you have now?
Ms. Beriwal. What you are able to do now.
Senator Lieberman. OK.
Ms. Beriwal. It was really the expectation of your current
plan, your current procedures, your current policies, how much
evacuation would be expected in your parish. And then we rolled
up the numbers based on the feedback from the emergency
management directors for the 13 parishes to come up with the 36
percent number.
Senator Lieberman. OK. And then in the plan, which is quite
extensive and detailed, what you describe is what the
responsibilities of the various agencies, Federal, State, and
local, would be to reduce the impact of a catastrophic
hurricane, correct?
Ms. Beriwal. Right.
Senator Lieberman. Now my question is, what happened then?
Maybe your contract was over at that point. I don't mean
literally over, but what was supposed to happen with the plan
because you have now presented a rather dramatic and disastrous
set of events--property damage, life lost, over 60,000 people
dead as a result of Hurricane Pam projection based on the
status quo of what the government was able to do at that time.
Then what did--well, what did you expect to happen? Was there
any mechanism to implement changes in government so they could
achieve better results?
Ms. Beriwal. Is the question for me, Senator?
Senator Lieberman. Just as a starter, yes.
Ms. Beriwal. If the State of Louisiana did not have the
ability to impact the system, we certainly had a lesser ability
as a contractor. So we were tasked to do Hurricane Pam. We did
the draft, and then they came forward and asked us to do the
subsequent follow-on workshops. We did those, and we were
waiting for further direction on where the government wanted us
to go.
Senator Lieberman. Were the follow-on workshops, they were
after the plan was published? In other words, by my dating, the
plan was published in January 2005. The workshops were a little
bit later. Were those supposed to focus on what changes the
Federal, State, and local governments should enact to try to
diminish the impact of this catastrophic hurricane?
Ms. Beriwal. Actually, the first workshop was in July 2004,
and by January 5, 2005, we had done five versions of the
planning documents. The second workshop was in November and
December 2004.
Senator Lieberman. OK, I have got you. So nothing followed
the plan. So I guess I would ask Mr. Fontenot or Mr. St. Amant,
what happened with the plan at the State and local government
level, and Mr. Fairley to the extent you know what happened at
the Federal Government level, because from what we saw, a lot
of heroic individual effort by governmental employees at each
level of government but also a lot that wasn't done which could
have diminished the impact of the storm. Mr. St. Amant, do you
want to start? What happened to the plan because obviously
there wasn't enough there to mitigate on the status quo the
impact of a catastrophic hurricane, which came.
Mr. St. Amant. There were certain portions of the plan, in
our discussion as a result of our participation, that I was
able to bring back and to adjust some of what we did in my
jurisdiction of Plaquemines Parish. You have to understand, I
was present at all of these planning meetings that I was
invited to. My parish president was at one, and he decided that
is why I am going to have to go to them, so I can keep him
informed----
Senator Lieberman. And is it fair to say that there--I have
some sense of you that you were not shy about saying to
everyone there that the parish and the City of New Orleans, as
far as you could tell, was just not up to dealing with a storm
of Katrina-size consequences?
Mr. St. Amant. I know these two gentleman quite well and
have worked closely. I think you will find that they will
verify that, sir. I am just glad that they still invite me to
these meetings. I have been known to be just a little bit
outspoken because of my passion and concerns for the risk that
we have.
Senator Lieberman. My time actually is up, but if you can--
Mr. Fontenot or Mr. Fairley, if you would respond to the
question. What happened, if anything, to close the gap between
the responsibilities the plan gave the State and Federal
Government and the reality?
Mr. Fontenot. I will speak about what happened at the State
level up until May 31, 2005, when I left the State.
Senator Lieberman. Yes.
Mr. Fontenot. Since I was the Chief of Plans, it was my
responsibility to try to do something with the plans that came
out of Hurricane Pam. One of the things that we recognized
right away was that we need to get our State plan in line with
the Federal plan, or now the National Response Plan. So I went
to my boss at the time, recommended that we--we were at the end
of a 4-year planning cycle anyway. We needed to update our
State plan anyway. So in the middle of this, why don't we go
ahead and just go ahead and do a major revision to the plan to
make it more compatible with the National Response Plan, and
that was step A.
I concentrated the resources that I had at the time with
the State to do that. I thought that was the most important
step in the process. That occurred, and as I was leaving State
Government, that plan was being implemented in the State. It
was being signed off on. It had already been signed off on by
all the signatory agencies that had actions in the plan or
responsibilities in the plan, and it was being sent to the
Governor to be signed off by her, and then I left.
One of my goals that did not get implemented before I left
was to then pull the responsible agencies for certain sections
of the Pam work and also with the State plan and get them
together and talk about and try to do more planning and get
them to figure out where the holes were and how to fix the
holes. However, since I left, I did not get a chance to do
that, but that was one of my personal goals.
Senator Lieberman. I presume, based on what we saw, that
between the time you left in May and the hurricane hit in
August that not much of what was recommended was accomplished.
Mr. Fontenot. Sir, I left government. I can't really talk
about what they did after I left.
Senator Lieberman. OK. Mr. Fairley, actually, in some ways,
I asked you this question last time around. I don't know if you
want to add anything.
Mr. Fairley. No, sir. I can add just a little bit. One of
the things we were doing in the region was taking what we had
developed in these scenarios and taking a very hard look at it
and comparing it to what we had in existence as far as our
hurricane response checklist and any other plan we had,
especially as it went back to the National Response Plan, to
make sure that there were no holes, gaps, or bumps in the road
that we thought would cause us. That was in formulation. We
were also working on requests for additional sessions to go
beyond the funding cycle.
What several of us got out of it, Senator, was the enormity
of what we had gone through and where we needed to go and that
it didn't need to stop. It needed to be permeated out to all
Federal agencies, all State agencies, and all local agencies. A
lot of Federal agencies have participation and some type of
ownership of a lot of things in that area, and we wanted to not
necessarily just have a pretty plan, but we wanted to see other
agencies be funded to do things and provide offshoot
activities. So that is where we were beginning to formulate.
Then, unfortunately, the hurricane hit.
Senator Lieberman. I presume that you, Mr. Fairley, Mr.
Fontenot, and Mr. St. Amant, all concluded after the Hurricane
Pam exercise that your particular level of government, Federal,
State, or local, was not adequately prepared to respond to a
catastrophic hurricane like Pam or the real Katrina, correct? I
am way over my time.
Mr. St. Amant. You are absolutely correct, sir. It is our
opinion that Federal, State, or local government is not
prepared to deal with a catastrophic response.
Senator Lieberman. Correct, Mr. Fontenot?
Mr. Fontenot. Correct.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, and thanks, Mr. Fairley.
Thanks, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Collins. Thank you, and that last answer is why we
are here. It is very troubling with the start of the hurricane
season only a few months away, I wonder if we have learned the
lessons of Katrina much less the lessons of Pam.
I strongly believe that planning and simulations such as
Hurricane Pam can greatly strengthen our preparedness and
response, and I can't help but think that if Pam had been
funded back in the late 1990s or early in 2000, when it was
first discussed, and if there had been more of a sense of
urgency, more clarity as to who was responsible for what, and
better implementation of the plan, that the response to Katrina
would have been better. Katrina would have been a natural
disaster that was overwhelming and taxed all levels of
government regardless, but I can't help but think that
evacuation would have gone more smoothly if the plans outlined
here had gone into effect, and if there had been a better
understanding of the roles of the various entities, and that is
why we wanted to learn from you today and get your insights and
perspectives.
I very much appreciate your sharing your testimony with us
and working with the staff in preparation for this hearing. I
hope that we can learn from your experience and that next time
we will, in fact, be better prepared. But as each of you has
reminded us today, we still have a very long ways to go.
Senator Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Madam Chairman. I couldn't agree
with you more, and in some senses, you go back through this
painful history, you see the predictions, the awareness,
particularly by people in the region and in the city that this
is coming and we are not ready for it. And yet there is some
way in which the problem over the horizon doesn't seem quite as
real as what you are dealing with today. I guess people just
hope and pray that the disaster that everyone says will come
one day doesn't come.
But here it came, and we were just there last week, Senator
Collins and I and four or five other Members of the Senate, and
I must tell you, 4 months after we had been there the first
time, a couple weeks after Katrina hit landfall, it was
stunning and horrific, really. I have been to areas after
natural disasters. I have been to war zones. I was in Kuwait
after 1991. I was in Bosnia and Kosovo, and I have just been to
Baghdad. I have never seen such extensive damage as I saw in
New Orleans and the Gulf Coast generally.
We are motivated by that painful reality and the suffering
that people endured because we live in an age when you just
have to say, we can't kid ourselves, that there are going to be
more natural disasters and, God forbid, there are going to be
some unnatural disasters because of the enemies we face in the
world today. That is the focus of these investigations.
You have set a foundation in what you did in Hurricane Pam.
We are going to try to put it to work so that next time the
governments at all levels are more prepared and respond more
aggressively to the disaster and the harm will be less, we hope
and pray.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Collins. Thank you.
This hearing is now adjourned. The hearing record will
remain open for 15 days for the submission of additional
materials. Thank you very much for your cooperation.
[Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.008
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.011
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.012
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.013
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.014
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.015
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.016
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.017
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.018
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.019
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.020
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.021
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.022
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.023
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.024
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.025
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.026
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.027
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.028
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.029
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.030
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.031
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.032
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.033
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.034
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.035
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.036
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.037
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.038
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.039
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.040
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.041
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.042
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.043
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.044
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.045
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.046
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.047
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.048
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.049
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.050
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.051
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.052
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.053
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.054
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.055
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.056
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.057
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.058
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.059
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.060
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.061
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.062
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.063
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.064
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.065
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.066
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.067
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.068
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6749.069
<all>