**Chairman Tom Davis Opening Statement**

**Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the**

**Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina**

**Hearing on Preparedness and Response by the State of Mississippi**

**December 7, 2005**

Good morning, and welcome to this morning's hearing on the State of
Mississippi's preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina.

We have spent the last three months examining this catastrophic
disaster. Yesterday, we heard from several citizens of New Orleans.
Today, we will hear from government officials from the State of
Mississippi.

Three months into our inquiry, we have assembled and reviewed hundreds
of thousands of documents, interviewed evacuees, government officials,
and representatives from relief agencies, and traveled to Louisiana,
Mississippi, and Alabama.

We have learned much. We continue to discover more about what worked and
plenty that didn't work. As we demystify the process of emergency
management, lessons learned by those who lived them are becoming more
transparent and more significant, as everyone wants to make sure we are
all better prepared for this country's next disaster, whether natural or
man-made.

Today we turn our attention to Mississippi in what is our second of
three hearings focused on state and local preparation and response, and
state and local coordination with the federal government. We will ask
how the Governor, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA)
personnel, and local officials conducted response operations during
Hurricane Katrina, as well as how well the federal government did or did
not provide adequate support.

As we will explore Mississippi's laws, policies, procedures, and its
interface with the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA when
confronting the prospect or reality of a catastrophic disaster, we will
look at the respective roles and responsibilities of the Governor, the
Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, the State Health Officer,
FEMA's Federal Coordinating Officer, and county and local governments.

We are well prepared for today's hearing, in large part due to the
cooperation we have received from Governor Barbour and his staff. Select
Committee staff twice traveled to Mississippi during October and
November to see first hand the devastation left in Katrina's wake,
interview state and local officials, National Guard officers, and visit
the Emergency Operations Centers along the Mississippi Coast.

Pictures, they say, are worth a thousand words. On the monitors are just
a few photographs our staff took during their visits. Unlike the
devastation in New Orleans, where water seeping through broken levees
flooded the city, residents of the coast of Mississippi experienced a
storm surge of 30 feet that reached 10 miles inland in mere minutes.

In examining preparation and response in Mississippi, it is clear that
with his early declaration of a state of emergency, Governor Barbour
quickly established a solid federal-state relationship pre-landfall,
where he took command and established clear goals. The Mississippi
Emergency Management Agency issued its first Katrina situation report on
August 23. State and local government officials in the State of
Mississippi took their leadership responsibilities seriously. They
worked together and with a unified voice to warn their residents of the
coming danger, and to help them evacuate the coast in an orderly manner.
Clearly, teamwork is a word that the people of Mississippi understand.

During the Katrina Response, the National Incident Management System,
the National Response Plan and the Incident Command System were used for
the first time in Mississippi, and well will hear about that.

We will hear that the Governor found that the Mississippi National
Guard, supplemented through Emergency Mutual Assistance Compacts (EMAC),
did an effective job without active-duty, federal military supplement.

We will hear of the vital role of the immediate presence of experienced
Florida personnel in helping with response at all levels of Mississippi
government. Mississippi learned well from Florida's experience.

We will hear that Mississippi relied heavily on faith-based
organizations, which were some of the first responders, arriving
well-trained and self-sustaining, and covering the coast with their
personnel and their gifts of faith, food, water, clothes and shelter --
and continue to do so to this day.

We will hear that the Mississippi Department of Health's relationship
with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and that their
reliance on the National Disaster Medical System served them well.
Planning and training worked to everyone's benefit.

Unfortunately, we will also hear that Mississippi's reliance on FEMA for
commodities was problematic, as commodities asked for and commodities
received bear no resemblance to each other.

As one of our witnesses today, Bill Carwile, wrote in his emails during
the response to Katrina, FEMA's centralized commodity distribution
system was "broken" to the point where he had to work around it. There
is something very wrong when Michael Brown, the head of FEMA and the
Principal Federal Officer on the scene, has to authorize his Federal
Coordinating Officer to work *outside FEMA's own system* in order to
deliver basic supplies, including life-sustaining food and water.

We will hear that FEMA lacked adequate numbers of qualified staff to
assist Mississippi at all levels of government.

We will hear that there is a lack of FEMA operational doctrine so that
state and local personnel are not able to know who does what and how
FEMA operates in the field. It is clear that the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) and FEMA need to adopt a formal planning process. Months
ago, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense Paul McHale
recommended that DHS consider adopting the Marine Corps' expeditionary
forces planning process. It was a good idea then, and it remains a good
idea, today.

And as we heard last month from Alabama officials, Mississippi's
emergency managers are concerned that in the post-9/11 environment,
undue emphasis -- primarily in the form of federal funding is -- placed
on terrorism-based hazards, when natural disasters pose a much more
likely, perhaps inevitable, risk. We need to consider an "all hazards"
approach when we plan for the future. Mississippi had a robust training
process in place prior to Katrina, but like Alabama and Louisiana, the
state and local officials were simply overwhelmed.

This does not mean state and local authorities should give up on
preparation, planning, and training. If Katrina has demonstrated
anything, it is that local communities must be prepared to take care of
themselves for at least one, two, or three days before they can expect
help from the federal government.

Hurricane Katrina careened upwards through the entire state of
Mississippi with hurricane force winds, reaching Jackson, the state
capital, and its northern most counties. We will hear today that lack of
communications hampered all immediate response efforts, as neither
adequate backup systems, nor any progress in communications
interoperability have been effectively implemented in Mississippi.

Before we begin today, I want to acknowledge that 230 citizens of
Mississippi lost their lives due to Hurricane Katrina and we
respectfully remember them and their families. Governor Barbour, our
thoughts and prayers go out to you and all of the good people of
Mississippi.

I also want to acknowledge that that the people of Mississippi, although
not as well covered in the press as New Orleans, suffered much during
this devastating storm and still endure great hardship. Together, we
will recover from the devastation of Katrina. Today we will take another
step towards comprehending the need of our citizens of governments
during disaster.

I look forward to having Mississippi officials share their stories with
us today.