**STATEMENT OF\
COMMISSIONER MICHAEL J. COPPS**

**FCC FIELD HEARING**

**ATLANTA, GEORGIA**

**SEPTEMBER 15, 2005**

Today, as in all recent days, our thoughts and prayers go out to those
whose lives have been upended by Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans
flood. Seeing communities ripped apart by wind and water, watching lives
being uprooted and families divided, has made for a difficult
two-and-a-half weeks. Our thanks go out to so many of our fellow
citizens who have worked, often heroically, to rescue the stranded, heal
the hurt and begin the arduous process of rebuilding.

I feel particularly close to this disaster, not only because I used to
live in New Orleans, just blocks from where the now notorious levees
gave way, but because my wife's family lives in New Orleans and is
trying to cope with the devastation that was wrought.

I want to thank Chairman Martin for holding this meeting and commend him
for his leadership in the storm's aftermath. I also want to thank the
FCC's Dan Gonzalez, Ken Moran and so many other colleagues at the
Commission who have worked so tirelessly to aid the recovery effort.

I want to commend our communications industries for their hard work in
the wake of the disaster. Executives and their employees are working
hundreds of extra hours to restore communications and to provide all
sorts of relief and assistance throughout the Gulf Coast area. Last
week, Chairman Martin and I saw first-hand some of the Gulf Coast
devastation and it etched an indelible memory on me. It was daunting and
awful to witness. But there is an even more powerful image that I will
always carry with me---and it is seeing the resilience of the human
spirit at work. On the coast I met innumerable people left only with the
clothes on their backs and the sandals on their feet, and often even
these were borrowed or donated. Their houses, all their belongings,
often gone. Yet they were throwing themselves into the challenge of
recovery, working at their jobs to get communications back up,
sacrificing to help others---those with shelter providing it to those
without, those with food sharing it with those who had none.

I also saw company leaders who spend much of their time competing
against one another pushing their competitive instincts aside and
working in a spirit of mutual help. While we all look for good things
from the world of inter-modal competition that is beginning to take
shape, what we see at work in this emergency operations center right now
is inter-modal ***cooperation***---traditional wireline, wireless,
satellite, radio and television broadcasting, amateur radio, cable, IP
technologies and others coming together in the name of disaster
recovery. I wish all of them could have been on today's panel. My point
is that we need all of them continuing to work together if we are really
going to build a Twenty-first century communications infrastructure for
New Orleans, the Gulf Coast and the country that provides
interoperability, redundancy and synergy among the advanced
telecommunications technologies and services that are becoming
available. If we are going to deploy communications that protect against
the ravages of nature as well as the murder of terrorism, there is no
other way to do it than to combine the efforts of everyone with
something to contribute.

Today the Federal Communications Commission takes some promising steps
forward. It's been a long time coming---too long. Title I of our
enabling statute confers upon the FCC specific national security
responsibility to ensure the safety of our people through secure
communications networks. I think, and have long said, that the
Commission belongs in the vanguard in developing communications
solutions for public safety and homeland security. Why? In addition to
the legislative obligation I just mentioned, we have the best people and
the best expertise in government on communications. I believe we have an
obligation to use these expert resources. It's not that the Commission
hasn't acted; it's that it hasn't done enough. If Hurricane Katrina was
about anything other than nature's wrath, it was about communications.
Communications, or the lack thereof, from those stranded in rising
waters to loved ones on higher ground; communications, or the lack
thereof, among emergency care, law enforcement providers and public
safety workers; communications, or the lack thereof, between leaders of
our federal, state and local governments; and communications, or the
lack thereof, by the media to viewers around the affected area and
around the globe.

Last year, *The 9/11 Commission Report* described a state of
communications unreadiness that seriously hindered our country's ability
to respond to that attack. But it also described a chilling picture of
communications unreadiness three years later---and Hurricane Katrina has
shown that to be still tragically true. Now people are talking again
about the need for full-scale emergency planning. This time we dare not
fail.

We have come to Atlanta to ascertain what further actions, both short-
and long-term, the FCC can take to improve the reliability,
survivability and security of our nation's communications systems. Thank
you to today's witnesses---from communications companies, their
employees and the public safety community---for enriching our
understanding of the communications challenges posed by Hurricane
Katrina and its aftermath. But, in truth, we can only scratch the
surface today. In the weeks and months ahead there will be many, many
tough questions to answer. We cannot shy away from asking the difficult
questions and hunting down the difficult and perhaps unsettling answers.

I am pleased that the Commission is going to establish a blue-ribbon
panel to make recommendations to improve disaster preparedness and
network reliability. This panel's charter must run both broad and deep.
To understand where we need to go, we must understand where we have
been, what worked, what didn't. This panel can not only help the
Commission and help industry; it can assist Congress, our sister federal
agencies, state and local governments, first responders, and the entire
public safety, law enforcement and health care provider communities.

I also support the creation of a separate Bureau dedicated specifically
to public safety and homeland security. I've talked about this for a
long time. In addition to working on specific interoperability and
redundancy challenges, this Bureau should serve as convener, facilitator
and expediter, helping local public safety organizations share ideas,
prepare plans, vet proposals and coordinate them with both government
and industry. Why should every jurisdiction across this broad land have
to start at square one when others have already done a lot of work? The
coordination challenge is enormous, but we need to have both
***strategic*** communications among groups charged with emergency
response and ***tactical*** communications among those on the ground
during a crisis. Some may call this "pie in the sky," but when we watch
search and rescue teams from Virginia, law enforcement officials from
Florida, EMS medics from California and countless others selflessly make
their way to the Gulf Coast to help, don't we owe them a system that
enables them to communicate when they get there?

There is another communications security concern that the Commission
needs to address. It is the challenge of integrating our hospitals into
the nation's emergency response communications system. My family working
in the hospitals of New Orleans in the days after the storm witnessed
the horrors that result when hospital communications are not integrated
with emergency responders. My nephew, Dr. Rusty Rodriguez, is a resident
at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. He lived through experiences no one
should have to live through. No food, no water, no power, people
suffering, people dying. And, of course, no communications. When he
needed to communicate with another hospital down the street, he had to
take a boat. That worked---as long as the snipers were taking a break.
Rusty came through it all and he's our family hero---but I think maybe
we asked too much of Rusty and of all the others who shouldered the
terrible burden of caring for the sick in such sickening circumstances.
We need to find a way to ensure that our hospitals are part of a
reliable emergency communications system that will be able respond,
whether it's a hurricane, a terror attack like 9/11, or something else
like a bio-terror attack. For openers, the FCC should be a forum for the
exchange of ideas and proposals on how to integrate our hospitals into
the heart of a working emergency response system so that our doctors and
nurses will have interoperable and redundant communications available to
them.

These issues compel our attention. We saw the results of communications
failures on 9/11. We saw them during the East Coast black-out, and
now---again---with Katrina. Maybe this time, at last, we can put our
separate resources and talents together to get the job done. In the
final analysis, all of us pulling together is the story of our country
in times of great challenge. It is what always redeems the promise of
America. When the going gets really tough, when challenges threaten our
very safety and survival, we come together and work together for the
common good. It's how we built this country. It's how we can re-build it
in the wake of such calamities as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.