> P R O C E E D I N G S
>
> MR. BROWN: Hi, Mike Brown, the Acting Deputy Director of the Agency.
> As you may know, President Bush signed an emergency declaration in
> connection with the terrorist event at the Pentagon today. This action
> allows FEMA to provide whatever federal resources are necessary to
> take care of the situation, all of those human needs, and whatever it
> takes to protect public health and safety at the Pentagon.
>
> Tom Davies, one of the members of the Federal Coordinating Officers
> Cadre, has been appointed as a Federal Coordinating Officer, and he
> will be providing additional information at the end of this briefing.
>
> I want you to know we\'re continuing to work around the clock to do
> everything we can to provide all the assistance necessary in New York.
> That includes equipment, personnel, technical assistance, whatever it
> takes. We also are continuing to receive innumerable offers of
> assistance from foreign countries. I\'ve talked to day to the Ministry
> of Defense in Canada, who has offered all of their assistance. We are
> coordinating those through the State Department.
>
> And it\'s actually been overwhelming, the offers of assistance that
> have come from around the world, all of those countries, regardless of
> their feelings, they recognize the immensity of this situation and
> they\'re offering all the help that they can.
>
> Director Allbaugh, as you know, is in New York today. He has been with
> Governor Pataki. He has been with the Mayor. And I just got off the
> telephone with him, and he asked me to convey something to you.
>
> Today he was with one of the urban search and rescue teams. He was
> actually with a couple of the teams. And he was\--he was quite
> emotional about the fact that he had to send one of those teams into
> the rubble to start doing the work to dig for both survivors and the
> bodies.
>
> And he said that he wanted everyone to know that the television
> cameras, the newspaper reports, everything that you see right now and
> that you read, does not convey the impact, does not convey the image,
> does not convey the horrific nature of what exists in New York City.
>
> He said he felt much like a general sending troops into battle, troops
> into war, into a war zone, when he sent those urban search and rescue
> teams in.
>
> He also wanted me to convey to you that whenever those teams come out,
> that we need to offer our prayers and support to those teams, for even
> after being in there for only two hours, just two hours of work, that
> they\'re just absolutely overwhelmed by the immensity of the process
> and the things they have to do in front of them. He just wants to make
> sure that you understand exactly how severe it is in New York City.
>
> FEMA and all the agencies involved in the Federal Government are
> coordinating very well. We\'re all working together quite well, as you
> see, as you look at the group behind me. We have all the different
> agencies involved, coordinating, doing everything we can to provide
> all of the assistance that we need.
>
> The Director will be talking to the Governors tonight on the telephone
> with the Vice President, and asking them to help coordinate all the
> volunteer efforts and everything else that are going on.
>
> I\'ll turn it over to Tom Davies right now to talk to you about the
> situation at the Pentagon, and if you have other questions, we\'ll
> take those.
>
> QUESTION: Have you accepted any offers of assistance from any of the
> foreign countries?
>
> MR. BROWN: I\'ll refer that to the State Department. The requests for
> assistance have ranged from actually sending people and equipment over
> and to providing technical assistance. And of course it requires a
> very coordinated effort. We don\'t want to overwhelm New York with
> additional people that they can\'t handle or don\'t want to handle. We
> want to make sure it\'s very coordinated, that we\'ve got the precise
> people in the right places. So we\'ll continue to work on that and
> kind of ratchet that up to a level where we think the right decisions
> can be made.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BROWN: I don\'t think I\'m at liberty to name the countries. I
> think I did mention I talked to one of the Ministers in Canada this
> afternoon, but I had a list on my desk earlier today that
> had\--actually, we had 18 to 25 different countries that had offered
> assistance.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BROWN: Probably from Canada, I believe. Tom Davies is here. He can
> provide that sort of detail, but it was an emergency declaration.
> That\'s what we did in Oklahoma City in 1995.
>
> Okay, Tom.
>
> MR. DAVIES: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I\'m Tom Davies, the
> Federal Coordinating Officer for the State of Virginia, involved with
> the emergency declaration as a result of the Pentagon.
>
> Currently in a response mode we have four urban search and rescue
> teams on site assisting and working very closely with the state,
> federal and county organizations that are there also, looking to
> recover survivors as well as starting to look for the victims.
>
> I must say that the federal, state and county groups are just doing an
> outstanding job. Early this afternoon I visited the ground zero, to
> talk to the incident commander and assure him of FEMA assistance.
>
> We\'ll be working very closely with the FBI and with the other allied
> federal agencies, the Army Corps of Engineers, GSA, Environmental
> Protection Agency, to provide whatever federal resources we can. Also
> the Defense Coordinating Officer, which will be the element from the
> Department of Defense, to work with us very closely.
>
> We\'ll be setting up in the future applicants briefing to talk about
> assistance, but in general what FEMA will provide in this particular
> event, at least one of the things we\'ll provide, is financial
> assistance and reimbursement back to the county and state agencies
> that are providing the assistance, and doing all that actual work on
> the scene right now. We\'re setting up a disaster field office in
> Arlington that should be up and operational within the next 24 hours.
>
> I\'ll entertain any questions.
>
> QUESTION: On the one search and rescue\--search and recovery
> operations at the Pentagon, are you able to tell us what\--how many
> casualties\--
>
> MR. DAVIES: I would have to defer that to the incident commander on
> the scene. That\'s more of an operational issue and I don\'t have
> those numbers, those specific numbers at this time.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. DAVIES: I believe an urban search and rescue team is about 100
> and\--let me turn this over to Bruce Baughman now. He\'s going to give
> you a broader scope of the entire operation involving New York and the
> Pentagon.
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: In response to your question on search and rescue, six
> 2-member teams. It\'s actually a task force comprised of four teams, a
> search team, a rescue team, a medical team, and a logistical support
> team.
>
> Let me talk a little bit about our priorities. During the last 24
> hours our major priority is pretty much obvious to the American public
> watching television, is supporting search and rescue operations. As we
> mentioned, we\'ve got eight search and rescue task forces currently in
> New York, four in Virginia, working to assist those governments and
> rescuing and recovering disaster victims.
>
> Health and medical issues, the recovery, treatment of disaster
> victims, recovery of the bodies, disposition of the bodies, working
> with the state medical examiner\'s office and city medical examiner\'s
> officer. Emergency communications and emergency power is essential in
> restoration of the financial infrastructure. That is one of the major
> problems in downtown Manhattan right now. And then debris removal.
> We\'re looking at probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 600,000
> tons of debris around six buildings in downtown Manhattan, which is a
> major effort in and of itself.
>
> A lot of the search and rescue operations that we\'re doing is hand
> labor, just like we did in Oklahoma City, bucket by bucket, removing
> that. It\'s not something that you can go in with heavy equipment,
> especially when we\'re looking at finding live victims. So it\'s very
> labor intensive. We\'ve worked up a rotation plan to get those teams,
> as soon as they\'re used up, bring in some additional task forces in
> there. So we\'ve got a rotation plan that extends out 30 days to
> assist the city in that particular area.
>
> Health and medical. Got Captain Stephens from Public Health Service,
> going to talk specifically about some of the things that we\'re doing
> in the health and medical area.
>
> CAPT. STEPHENS: Good afternoon. Today all of the requested and
> prepositioned health and medical resources have been staged in New
> York and also in Pennsylvania. And they\'re either presently
> integrated into existing teams or they\'re awaiting specific mission
> instructions. These teams include our Disaster Medical Assistance
> Teams, Disaster Medical Mortuary Teams, and even including a
> Veterinarian Medical Assistant team. The VMAT, as we call it, are in
> support of the urban search and rescue dog teams.
>
> In addition, the USNS Comfort will also be joining the already on-site
> federal resources, and will add an additional capability comparable to
> none other.
>
> But as time passes the requests for acute and emergent medical aid
> will turn to issues of safety for workers and rescuers and the general
> population in the face of the catastrophic environmental challenges
> brought on by the destruction of these buildings.
>
> In conjunction with New York State local and health authorities, the
> Department of Health and Human Services has called upon all of its
> environmental associated agencies, the CDC, the ATFDR and NIOSH, to
> work closely with the urban search and rescue teams and the Army Corps
> of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency to ensure that
> the population at large and the relief workers have adequate personal
> protection as they go about the task of rescue and recovery.
>
> To date, over 10,000 N95 respirators have been provided to people who
> are working at what we call Ground Zero within the restricted area.
> Also 2,000 goggles have been made available to the workers, and more
> sophisticated respirators are available, over 1,000 of those, for
> specific missions to go into even more dense areas.
>
> We will continue to coordinate the efforts of CDC, ATFDR and NIOSH
> with the EPA with the USAR teams and the Corps of Engineers, with
> local health officials, in monitoring all of the environmental needs
> to ensure the best possible outcome are available for all concerned.
> Thank you.
>
> \[Tape change.\]
>
> CAPT. STEPHENS: N95 respirator. It\'s a small self-contained unit
> that\'s very portable and easy to wear, and it\'s been tested, that it
> will give you the protection necessary to go into the kind of
> environment that we have found there.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> CAPT. STEPHENS: You\'re not carrying your own filter. It\'s a
> filter-type respirator. Thank you.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: No, it\'s a factor, but it\'s not going to have a major
> impact. In Oklahoma City we had a lot of hanging debris from the
> buildings. In this particular case we\'re dealing with flat
> structures. Now, there are still a couple structures that we are still
> assessing their structural stability. We won\'t be doing the
> rescue\--or the city won\'t be doing rescue operations then until they
> have fully assessed that. But right now, while it will hamper
> operations, it will not be a major factor in slowing down response and
> recovery operations.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\] safety of the rescue workers, the air quality,
> the \[inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: They have full personal protective equipment. The City
> of New York, the standard procedure within the fire community is to
> make sure that there is a safe environment before you actually go in
> there and do recovery operations or response operations.
>
> Generally on our urban search and rescue task forces we have hazardous
> material specialists. We have the personal protective equipment that
> they need to operate in this type of environment.
>
> QUESTION: Is there a time frame for \[inaudible\] Pentagon and
> \[inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Tom has been dealing with this. I don\'t know that we
> have been\--the fire chief from Arlington is overall command. I do
> have an incident commander out at the Pentagon, and we do not right
> now have time frames for when that operation will cease.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: I believe that the chief announced this afternoon that
> they are in recovery operations.
>
> QUESTION: And how is that possible for \[inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Normally what happens is that the bodies are extracted.
> They are turned over to the city or county medical examiner\'s office
> and then the normal process to turn over a body to family is followed.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: No, as a matter of fact, that\'s one of the first things
> Tom is going to be doing, is putting together the cost estimates as to
> what this is going to cost. We do have an overall estimate for the
> operation, but I\'d rather not release it at this time because we
> still are working some\--crunching some of those figures right now.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Are you talking about for both?
>
> QUESTION: For both or either.
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: What we\'ve done\--we\'ve been asked to put together a
> proposal for the next\--I think it\'s two weeks of operation, and I
> think the figure that we\'re using is somewhere in the neighborhood
> of\--just for the emergency costs alone, \$200 million, and we know
> that\'s just enough for a couple of weeks, okay?
>
> QUESTION: For both sets?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: For both sets.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: No. As a matter of fact, I think, in talking to the
> Director this afternoon, he pretty much substantiated that it\'s going
> to be a fairly long-term operation, that 30 days is about right on.
>
> QUESTION: 30 days for the search and rescue period or?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: No. I think that, as we talked about yesterday, there is
> an amount of time that after a certain amount of time, that you run
> out of air in a void in a building. So, again, there is no fixed time
> frame for that. And in Turkey, again, we found somebody 10 days into
> the operation. But I\'d say anything after 10 days to 2 weeks, it gets
> real doubtful at that time. So anything past that, we\'re probably
> into a recovery operation, but again, there\'s nothing magic about
> that.
>
> QUESTION: 200 million \[inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Yes. That\'s just to cover the cost of the search and
> rescue teams and the emergency response stuff. That doesn\'t deal with
> any of the recovery costs. The World Trade Center is a public
> jurisdiction, which is eligible for assistance under our program,
> we\'re talking billions of dollars over the long term.
>
> QUESTION: And the 30 days you said was just for recovery?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: That is what I think will be an emergency response
> operation as far as providing federal response. We\'ll probably
> reassess at that time. We could be there 60, 90 days, but at least 30
> days.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: I would say that the cleanup downtown will probably take
> months. You know, we do it in incremental phases. We get the normal
> traffic restored first, emphasis being given to extracting personnel,
> alive personnel from the facility itself. Once all the bodies are out,
> then you have to do something with all the debris. So it\'s literally
> going to take months to clean up debris, dispose of the debris and
> take care of the situation.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: The Pentagon\'s, you know, a much more isolated case.
> The amount of debris that we\'re dealing with is a lot less. Keep in
> mind that DOD is the lead agency for this particular thing. We\'re
> supporting that at a federal facility. And we can get you a figure
> from DOD as to exactly what they think it\'s going to take as far as
> recovery operations over there.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: As mentioned before, we are getting lots of offers, not
> only internationally, but within the United States. It\'s been
> overwhelming as far as the giving of the world and the country to this
> particular incident. And I think that if anything, we\'re getting too
> much. But we certainly don\'t want to discourage anybody from doing
> this, but any particular equipment that we need I think is available
> to us right now.
>
> As we get into the operation and we\'re better able to refine our
> requirements, there may be some specific piece of technical equipment
> that we might be asking for assistance in.
>
> MR. : Let me address that part real quickly. If there\'s a message I
> could get out to all of those urban search and rescue teams anybody
> else in the country is offering, you know, fire fighting assistance,
> that kind of technical assistance, I want everyone to know that we
> absolutely do appreciate that and we will take advantage of that if
> and when necessary. I don\'t want anyone to misconstrue or think that
> because you haven\'t heard back from someone, that we haven\'t
> deployed you and actually brought you in, that we\'re ignoring you,
> that we don\'t want you. That\'s just not the case. We have sufficient
> management resources right now, and we\'d rather have those people
> available if we need them in the future, if we need them somewhere
> else. Just get the message out that we\'re very appreciative and
> don\'t take wrong our not using them right now.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Well, we have some numbers, preliminary numbers
> officially, and we realize these are low, but the official numbers
> that we\'ve been given by the city of New York was confirmed, 94
> fatalities. We know that there are more than that. By that I assume
> that the city means that those are ones that have been identified, and
> they can say this is the disaster victim. So 94 is the official figure
> right now. 3,800 injuries that have been documented that have been
> treated. Again, we know that those figures are low.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: For D.C.? Tom, you got any official figures on that?
>
> QUESTION: For New York?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: For New York. Those were for New York.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Oh, missing. No, don\'t have it. The figures I gave you
> is all the figures we have.
>
> MR. DAVIES: We recognize that it will be much less than the original
> 800 figure that was originally \[inaudible\] a day or two ago, much
> less than that.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. DAVIES: Well, I hate to deal with specific numbers if I don\'t
> have the facts in front of me. We\'re still looking at it. If we get
> more information, we\'ll certainly give it to the press.
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: I want to again explain about casualty figures. We\'re
> not the official source of casualty figures. The city of New York, the
> state of New York are the official source of casualty figures. The
> Pentagon is the official source of casualty figures for the Pentagon
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\] hazardous materials \[inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Yes, there are. And for example, in some of the
> buildings\--and EPA brought this point up and they\'re working with
> the city on it right now\--as the building collapsed and dust went out
> and covered the buildings, the ventilator buildings, as people\--as
> the buildings start turning on their heating ventilation system, it\'s
> going to contaminate those buildings, so that they\'re putting a
> procedure in place with the city to look at how they can prevent that
> from happening.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: As far as blood supply, Red Cross has been giving us
> figures on the blood supply. They\'ve got some current figures out
> there. Right now as of this morning, they told us that was not a
> problem. Again, the response by the American public in donating blood
> has been overwhelming. We did have a concern yesterday about
> transporting the blood, because the airlines are down. That
> has\--we\'ve been able to take care of that. Restrictions have been
> lifted as far as transport of any emergency commodity to support this
> operation.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> MR. BAUGHMAN: Again, that\'s\--we can\'t speak to that. If you want
> the information on that, the FBI can get you the information on that.
>
> QUESTION: \[Inaudible\]?
>
> Mike Brown, he\'s our Deputy Director, Mike Brown, our Deputy
> Director. And I\'m Bruce Baughman, and I\'m directing operations.
>
> Thank you.
>
> \[End of briefing.\]