> FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY
>
> PRESS BRIEFING
>
> September 14, 2001, 1:15 p.m.
>
> \- - -
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Bruce Baughman. I\'m Director of Operations with FEMA.
>
> We\'re right now in day four of our national emergency. We\'re
> continuing to work with state and local government to provide various
> kinds of assistance to New York City and to the response at the
> Pentagon.
>
> A number of the top priorities that we\'re working on right now,
> number one priority is working with the city and private interests to
> restore the financial district in Manhattan in New York. That means
> getting the emergency power situation back in order, getting emergency
> communications back in order. Con Edison has got a number of their
> substations in lower Manhattan back in service, which is greatly
> aiding the effort to do that.
>
> Other things, Search and Rescue, which we\'ll be talking about in a
> little bit more detail, we continue to have eight teams on site
> assisting New York City, but in addition to that, a lot of the
> volunteer workers that are in the area or responders from adjacent
> states like New Jersey, are now in need of emergency supplies, things
> that firemen normally consume in the course of a disaster event, and
> we\'re going to be working to resupply their immediate needs also.
>
> In addition to that the Public Health Service continues to have their
> Disaster Medical Teams in place. We have Disaster Mortuary Teams in
> place, Disaster Veterinary Teams in place supporting our work in
> Search and Rescue efforts. We\'ve also got the USS Comfort that is
> providing additional hospital beds as necessary to support the city of
> New York\'s efforts, and additional doctors and nurses to take care of
> critical care needs.
>
> Third, we\'re working with the various volunteer agencies and the US
> Department of Agriculture to provide food services to emergency
> workers in the area. Donations, we are literally being flooded by
> donations from across the country. The outpouring has been just
> wonderful. The city of New York has set up a volunteer number for
> donations. It is 1-800-801-8092, and it\'s staffed by over 300
> volunteers, and it\'s open 24 hours a day.
>
> Right now there\'s indications that probably no additional volunteers
> are needed. However, financial assistance to the various disaster
> relief organizations are welcome.
>
> What I\'d like to do at this time is to turn it over to Chief Mike
> Tammilow, who is our spokesman on Urban Search and Rescue, to give you
> some of the details as to what we\'re doing in the area of Urban
> Search and Rescue. Chief.
>
> CHIEF TAMMILOW: Thank you, Bruce. I\'m the task force leader for
> Fairfax County\'s Urban Search and Rescue Team which has been
> operating at the Pentagon. I\'ll be confining my remarks to what\'s
> happening at the Pentagon site.
>
> Currently we have four urban search and rescue teams under FEMA,
> supporting the operations of the Arlington County Fire Department, and
> also working in conjunction with military aspects, specifically an
> engineering group out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
>
> The general objective we\'re trying to accomplish is quite simple. We
> would like to remove the debris of the building to allow access to the
> deceased victims, and remove them. The trouble is, as we try to
> accomplish this, it becomes much more difficult. Upon impact of the
> aircraft, about 34 large columns were taken out, supporting five
> stories just to the left of the impact area. This has obviously made a
> very heavy building quite unstable and unsafe to work in, so the
> majority of our efforts have been to reimpose stability to the
> building by using very heavy timber shorings to support these massive
> weights of the Pentagon. So that\'s been the primary focus for all the
> task forces operating around the clock. That has to continue before we
> can put people in the building safely to complete the operation.
>
> The other major operation that we\'ll go into after the shoring
> operation is right at the point of impact, the five stories have
> collapsed on top of themselves. What we do is what\'s termed a
> delayering operation, by using cranes and other heavy equipment,
> literally picking the roof and the floors off, setting them down to
> allow us access to the victims.
>
> That can\'t be done simultaneously because the impact and the movement
> of the heavy machinery can compromise the stability of the area that
> we\'re trying to shore. So it\'s almost like a domino effect. Anything
> we try to do is preceded by something else.
>
> We\'re working around the clock in close coordination with what\'s
> termed an Incident Support Team that FEMA puts in to coordinate the
> operations of all these different entities to allow us to operate more
> effectively.
>
> Thank you. Scott will talk about New York City.
>
> MR. GRAHAM: Thank you, Chief.
>
> I\'m Scott Graham. I\'m with Montgomery County, Maryland\'s Urban
> Search and Rescue Task Force, Maryland Task Force 1.
>
> The city of New York has eight FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task
> Forces that are working. There is one additional task force in route
> from Florida, and there are three other task forces that have been
> alerted and placed on standby, awaiting orders to assist in New York.
>
> There are\--search and rescue operations are continuing on a 24-hour
> basis, working in 12-hour shifts. They continue to work in several
> different areas of the city that have approximately four buildings
> down and several other buildings that are unstable. They\'re removing
> immediate debris and coordinating with the city of New York Fire
> Department and federal agencies there, along with investigations at
> the same time, to remove the debris, to locate victims, and remove
> those victims from the area.
>
> Over the last 24 hours they\'ve been hampered with some severe weather
> that came through in the form of thunderstorms with lightning and
> heavy rain. And the rain should continue throughout this morning, so
> that may slow things down a little bit, but not completely stop their
> activity through today.
>
> There have been some state resources from the state of New Jersey who
> are working in conjunction with the federal resources in the city of
> New York. They will continue to work, along with several other hundred
> volunteers from around the New York City area as well as other fire
> departments from the New York State area.
>
> MR. HESS: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I\'m Charles Hess,
> Chief of Operations at the Headquarters of the US Army Corps of
> Engineers, and I\'ll briefly describe some of the activities that the
> Corps of Engineers is conducting in support of FEMA in regard to our
> emergency support function 3 role, which is public works and
> engineering.
>
> Currently the Corps of Engineers in the New York area has
> approximately 55 individuals deployed in support of the activities
> with respect to the World Trade Center and the surrounding area. Our
> focus at this point in time encompasses two primary areas, one of
> which is the restoration of power in the immediate vicinity of the
> financial district. We have a prime power battalion team, which is
> composed of soldiers from the 249th Prime Power Battalion there on the
> ground with Consolidated Edison, and representatives of the city and
> the financial district, to talk about a strategy and make sure that
> they have the requirements understood and the resources necessary to
> restore power there, and that mission is ongoing this afternoon.
>
> In addition to that we have structural safety assessments individuals
> who are there in support of the Urban Search and Rescue Teams.
> Currently we have 15 individuals who are there on the ground and who
> have been specifically trained in urban search and rescue structural
> requirements. Their primary purpose is to make sure that the
> responders have safe egress into the structures, which obviously are
> severely damaged.
>
> The Corps stands ready to provide additional resources should the
> state and the city of New York request those. In addition, we\'re
> currently working to support with regard to a technical assessment of
> the debris mission in New York City, to help ascertain and scope out
> what the requirements will be specifically in regard to debris
> removal, the reduction of the materials, reducing the volume of the
> materials to put it in a landfill, whether or not there are any
> hazardous materials associated with that debris, looking at ways to
> segregate the material so it can be moved effectively, and those kinds
> of processes.
>
> And that concludes my remarks for this afternoon. Be glad to answer
> questions. I think Bruce Baughman is going to take it from here.
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Thanks, Charlie.
>
> A couple other things I\'d like to mention. One of the things is we
> received generous offers from over 41 countries in the area of search
> and rescue and other types of emergency supplies and emergency teams,
> including the nations of Egypt, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Iceland,
> Israel, Jordan, Argentina, Russia, and we just wanted to say thank you
> to those countries for their offers of support.
>
> The American Red Cross has established five compassion centers in Los
> Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia, to aid
> families of the victims of this disaster.
>
> One other late-breaking item that we have is we\'re working with the
> telecommunications industry, setting up a system to track cell phones,
> pagers and other electronic devices to assist in locating missing
> disaster victims. Family members should begin compiling numbers that
> their loved ones may have been carrying. Once this system is
> established, we will announce that they can get the numbers to us, and
> then what we can use is to pulse those numbers to locate the
> individual disaster victims. So it\'s a way of trying to locate
> missing personnel. And we\'ll get you more details on that as we flesh
> this out a little bit more.
>
> I\'d like to open up for questions at this time.
>
> QUESTION: What companies are you working with on this?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: We\'ve got our communication specialist out here, the
> National Communication Systems. They can give you a list of the
> carriers that we\'re working with on that.
>
> QUESTION: Are there any new numbers as far as \[inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Again, I don\'t have the latest casualty figures, and
> we\'re deferring questions on casualties to New York City and to the
> Pentagon for the official release of casualty figures. Any figures
> that I might give you are going to be dated anyway.
>
> QUESTION: In terms of restoring power, \[inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Right now we don\'t have target dates, and it\'s not
> ourselves; it\'s Con Edison, the other major carriers, can better give
> you a good figure on that. The good news is, is they are getting the
> service back on. When they will exactly have the power back on, I
> can\'t give you that right now. Again, Con Edison would give you the
> best figure on that. We\'ll try and get you those\--that date as soon
> as possible.
>
> QUESTION: Does FEMA have any concerns about \[inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Yeah. Again, the city is working on a plan on that. That
> is one of the questions that came up on a conference call this
> morning. The city\'s Office of Environmental Services, the city\'s
> Public Health, are working on a plan, along with EPA and Public Health
> Service and the State Health Department, to take a look at those
> issues.
>
> Other questions?
>
> Oh. In answer to your question on who we\'re working with as far as
> the industry on this particular issue, working with Sprint, Verizon,
> Lucent, AT&T, Nextel, Voicestream, Motorola, Telecordia Industries,
> Ericsson, Nortel, CTIA, PCIA, Skytel and others. So that\'s pretty
> much all the major carriers.
>
> QUESTION: Can you just go over that again? I mean you \[inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Yeah. What they\'ll do is they\'ll\--you want to?
>
> MR. PERRY: My name is Chatry Perry. I represent the National
> Communication System. This particular program is being organized by
> Lucent Technologies. Lucent Technologies is a sponsor of this
> particular effort, and their telephone number is available. I don\'t
> have it here with me right now, but if you need that information, I
> can provide it.
>
> Are there any other?
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. PERRY: When the telephone number is available, and it has not been
> established at this present time, that number will be published and it
> will be published through a similar announcement like this.
>
> QUESTION: How does this concept work?
>
> MR. PERRY: Well, the intent is that the public would be able to call
> into a call center where the information will be collected about the
> phone number that\'s going to be searched. And then the team of
> companies that have this capability would use that phone number to
> signal a device that might be in the rubble, and help to identify
> where that device is located.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: This is the first time we\'ve used this type of
> technology, first time ever that I know of. And Mike, Chief Tammilow
> has a lot more experience with this internationally, but I believe
> this is the first time we\'ve ever used this kind of technology.
>
> QUESTION: How close can you pinpoint possible victims?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Again, I think that\'s probably something Lucent
> Technologies could better answer. The technical experts could better
> answer than I could. Again, I just got the information.
>
> Any other questions?
>
> QUESTION: Can you tell us how soon you might have that number that
> people can call in?
>
> MR. PERRY: We\'ve been told to expect the details within the next few
> hours, but again, I don\'t know exactly what that time will be. So we
> are working with the telecom industry to get that information
> organized and provided.
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Okay. Any other questions?
>
> If not, thank you for your time.