subcommittee on emergency communications preparedness and response will come to order as subcommittee meeting today is to receive testimony regarding preparedness the state of citizen and community preparedness good morning and on behalf of the members of the subcommittee impressive background in homeland security having most recently served on new mexico as director of homeland security and emergency management i'd like to congratulate mr manning on your confirmation as deputy administ washington to discuss the steps that the city of macallan has taken to promote community preparedness i also like to welcome to susan de frances public officer affair officer for the american red cross thank you for being here and initiatives for promoting individual read reading this as you know a recent survey reveals that we have a long way to go we prepared individuals for an emergency slightly more than half of the surveys responded have set aside supplies in case of a disaster only forty four percent reported having an emergency household plan just thirty eight percent reported a similarity with their local resources of public safety information concerning us also is that despite best efforts to boost community preparedness since nine eleven and hurricane katrina citizen awareness on the importance of a parent is virtually unchanged for the last two years we must close  he gaps recognize that is not the most job alone to do so other partners are involved also an emergency preparedness is a shared responsibility and we all must do our part to make sure we are ready when disaster individual readiness the first is the citizen corps program which is a bush administration issued to decide to foster volunteer activities that make communities better prepared to respond to any emergency the second is the ready campaign ready is a public service initiative geared toward educating and empowering americans to become prepared for the sastra g a o has been battling both the citizen corps and ready for this up committee since last year  importantly what his plans are for the city and ready as well as individual preparedness more generally we can't talk about individual preparedness without having our communities at the table and i look forward to getting  from mr francis perspective on the steps that their organizations have taken to foster citizens preparedness i would also like to hear from them what they think should be promoting individual preparedness and what that partnership should look like so with that let me again thank our witnesses for their participation in today's witnesses and i look forward to hearing your testimony and working with you to ensure that my has a clear vision for strengthening citizen and community preparedness that that with and without objection i would like to introduce the following article ideas to improve america's emergent emergency preparedness for the record and so order at this time preparing for this hearing it is extremely helpful to us to thank you for being here this hearing is the chairman say it is being here to look at how prepared americans are to deal with a major disaster we all know that individual parents community parents and business preparedness are extremely important saving lives and property if and when a natural disaster or terrorist attack occurs we've made some important strides over the last several years to enhance community  american samoa this week as well as the flash flooding in many southern states including georgia and my home plate about bama are just some reminders of the own growing risks we face and the importance of being prepared for all types of events fortunately we have not seen a major hurricane hit the u s yet this season but that doesn't mean americans living on the gulf and other regions can't can become complacent when it comes to merge preparedness  responders are our front lines to protect our communities so i want to take this opportunity to thank burst responders for their heroic work that they do and also like the countless people who volunteer to help during a catastrophic event we all appreciate the dedicated service of our capable and courageous emergency responders but we have to remember that these responders make up less than one percent of the total u s population that means individual citizens communities and businesses have to develop their own capabilities and conduct their own planning activities in order to share the responsibility of preparedness you know one thing our witnesses for being here particularly american red cross who continues to be an invaluable partner in fairness through its many outreach activities imperatives and initiat thank you very much  other members of the subcommittee are reminded that under the committee rules opening statements may be submitted for the record at this time again i would like to welcome our panel witnesses our first witnesses mr timoney who serves as the deputy administrator for national preparedness at the me to be here this morning i'm to manning deputy administrator for national federal emergency management agency before i begin my remarks on community preparedness if i may like to mention that on behalf of on the entire emergency management community our hearts go out to all those affected by the tsunami earthquakes in the pacific as well as the flooding and the american south the national response coordination center has been activated since the first earthquake two days ago and will continue to move teams equipment supplies  the affected area and we've been updating you all as as the event has gone on and we will continue to do so until we have completed rescue recovery efforts mr chairman throughout the history of emergency planning considerations for the individual and community preparedness have been inadequate since september eleventh two thousand and one in the creation of department homeland security the united states has invested tens of billions of dollars in bolstering governments preparedness while paying comparatively little attention t personal and community preparedness secretary napolitano administrator fugate ny believe that much more attention needs be paid to these efforts we know and have seen that personal family and community preparedness can have tremendous impact in mitigating the effects of an emergency simple steps taken by individuals to provide for the needs of their families and their neighbors in an emergency can dramatically improve the readiness and resiliency of the american people in the face of a disaster encouraging as many americans as possible to take steps necessary to ensure their own well being will ultimately free government resources to address those most in need during a crisis in order to advance this simple goal we must both engage with the public directly and collaborate with civic leaders at the local level to promote local efforts to increase personal preparedness as a former community organizer with deep belief in the power of active citizenship president obama's made it clear that transparent collaborative government grassroots activism and volunteer and community service are key priorities for his administration leadership it seems as equally committed to increasing our collaboration with state and local governments n g o s and the private sector and under president  secretary nepal tunnels leadership we're reaching out to an unprecedented range of new d h s s stakeholders to bolster our nation's community preparedness and resilience as secretary in a politan said before the council on foreign relations in july for too long we've treated the public as a liability to be protected rather than an asset in our nation's collective security we need a culture of collective responsibility a culture where every individual understands his or her role foundation of the current efforts towards community preparedness and resilience is the cultivation of an effort and an effective organizational structure and a process at the local level to foster this collaboration between government and civic leaders from all sectors and then leverage the structure to reach everyone in a community where we believe the whole of agency effort is required the citizen corps program has been one of the department's key efforts towards us and building on a store approaches to citizen preparedness our strategy moving forward will be based on the following tenants government must collaborate with civic leaders local implementation is essential and national support must both include consistent policy and guidance and the tools and resources adaptable for local use to achieve these goals fema works with state and local partners to establish effective partnerships at the local level to foster a collaborative process between local governments civic leaders small sectors and develop goals and strategies for resilience tailored to specific community vulnerabilities team will continue to work with these community leaders and support their efforts to increase individual and community preparedness and resilience and to assist in getting the message out ready is seen as national awareness campaign and in partnership with the ad council designed to educate  empower the americans prepare for and respond to all emergencies the goal of the campaign is to get the public involved and ultimately to increase the level of basic preparedness across the nation ready and it spanish language version least as individuals take simple steps such as getting a supply kit making a family plan and obtaining information about the different types of emergencies that could occur in their particular community council is declared ready one of the most successful campaigns and it's more than sixty year history ready business is an extension for the private sector and ready they're ready campaign that focuses on children ready kids functions as an effective tool to help parents and teachers educate children of all ages mr chairman ranking member rogers in conclusion secretary napolitano inseam administrator fugate and i are committed to advancing the nation's preparedness through working with nash current national partners and expanding our partnerships and enhancing tools and resources available to local discuss i work on federal efforts to encourage community preparedness for all types of emergencies natural or manmade miti preparedness is an integral part of national disaster preparedness to the extent that individuals and families are prepared for the types of risks their communities face they can increase their chances of survival protect their families and reduce the demands on first responders and the first critical forty eight to seventy two hours following a disaster research shows that americans could be better prepared for disasters two thousand and nine citizen corps national survey estimated that about fifty six percent of u s households are not have disaster supplies and there are even fewer had supplied set aside in their car workplace with even greater concern sixty one percent responded they expected to rely on emergency responders in the first seventy two hours after disaster as we reported in april of this year pima faces a major challenge in developing an all hazards national preparedness system that requires consultation and coordination with wide variety of stakeholders including communities state and local government nonprofit and for profit organizations but locally but doing this requires a clear vision and a statement of desired measurable outcomes and healthy in the plans to achieve those outcomes in coordination with this many partners measures of community preparedness such as the number of established citizen corps council do not provide information on activities undertaken and a contribution of those activities to desire the most challenges measuring the performance of its community preparedness efforts are come pounded by the lack of a strategy that defines how it community preparedness program and efforts including its grants for community preparedness projects are to operate within the context of the national preparedness system they may have not yet articulated a clear vision for its community preparedness efforts in a specific contributions they should make to the national preparedness system in april we recommended that they might develop a preparedness strategy that included measurable goals objectives and identified how thema would measure its progress in meeting those goals and objectives although famous officials stated they're working on a preparedness strategy that includes community preparedness team is not yet set a date for completion and is not clear how community param is will be incorporated into that strategy the answer to whether famous spending too little too much or just the right amount of money and community preparedness cannot be answered until thema defines what it expects what community preparedness efforts they make and then assess the resources needed to achieve the desired result the h s has been working on preparedness metrics called target capabilities for five years and we reported on those efforts in two thousand we recognize that including stakeholders in this effort is both important and takes time to civic metrics for these compatibilities is still a work in these capabilities is still a work in progress one of the eight national priorities in this effort is quote strengthening planning and community service and preparedness capabilities they must recognize that given the diversity of the nation's population and the different risk communities there can be no one size fits all approach to community preparedness the mayor has already drafted different sets of materials for the disabled seniors and kids for example but it is not only the message but the messenger that effects public response to messages encouraging preparedness it is simply a fact that government is not seen as a credible messenger it is not clear how thema plans to evaluate what works what doesn't for different audiences and different means of delivery preparedness message and developing its community preparedness strategy needs to consider what it controls  content of its message that it develops what it influences for example it partners of state and local level and what it was beyond its control for example the media use and timing of public service announcements on behalf of the ready campaign we one hundred thirty thousand located in a three county region of one point two million residents macallan search team is one of seven citizen corps teams in the region annually we train almost fifty new volunteers and three classes the objective of the citizen corps program is to have better trained and therefore volunteers to assist their neighbors coworkers and churches in case of emergency during a disaster well meaning but often untrained good samaritans turn out to help all too frequently they hinder the efforts of our first responders emergency services may be diverted to provide impromptu training for these spontaneous volunteers scenarios the reason that programs such as citizen cor are vitally important community preparedness we know not everyone will be ready regionally we strive to have a total of five hundred trained serve all in tears to deploy wherever they are needed at any given time right now we have approximately one hundred sixty five many of whom assisted in the e e o c during hurricane dolly in two thousand and eight and are just jurisdiction we have waiting lists for searches and a shortage of trainers from the various local government all of the participating local governments provide in kind the cost of trainers facilities and equipment and administrative coordination of the classes seven citizen corps teams and their affiliates in our region are supported by a federal grant of less than twenty thousand dollars i would like to ask for more funding for these programs but i know that's not the usable at this time instead i submit this recommended change utilizing existing funding considering moving categorical funding restrictions within the grant for promotional items appointment and training for example macallan no longer has a need to promote the cert team since there is a waiting list of volunteers however fifteen percent of the grant is allocated to promotional and educational material that funding  better utilized for equipment and training such as c p r classes not currently offered and is enough to allow the city to train an additional team this added flexibility helps us move toward our common goal of training and more importantly retaining volunteers the first seventy two hours of a disaster is the most critical time but it's also the time that emergency responders are overwhelmed with calls for service at no other time is it more important to have your citizens trying to help themselves and each other while these volunteers are not intended to replace first responders they provide immediate assistance when traditional emergency services cannot meet the demand your support of the citizen corps program is greatly appreciated by local governments such as good morning chairman and ranking member rogers and distinguished members of the committee thank you for inviting me here today on behalf of the american red cross and for drawing the public's attention to this very important topic of preparedness as mr rogers said incidents in recent weeks from the arrest of suspected terrorists in the u s deadly flooding in georgia and other southeastern states earthquakes tsunamis typhoons in the pacific school districts close h one n one reminds us that disasters and other emergencies are all too real and all of us must be prepared and get our families neighbors communities and country prepared at the american red cross our mission has been to help prevent prepare for and respond to disasters and we've been doing it for more than a century but as important as our work is in responding after disaster strikes nothing is as important as what we do before a disaster strikes the old saying holds true an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure research shows that a dollar spent on prevention can save about four dollars in response that's a significant return on investment and one our nation should not fail to make preparedness saves lives and livelihoods we also have an obligation to promote preparedness not just to those who can afford it but to those at risk populations the elderly disabled and poor who are the most vulnerable a red cross survey this summer showed that while eighty nine percent of the public agree it's important to be prepared far fewer are actually taking the steps necessary as mr quaoar noted they may be taking some of the steps but they're not really what we would call prepare the levee all of public repair and his remains far too low and at the red cross we are not satisfied people mostly don't care because they don't think it will happen to them interestingly though our polls show that more than fifty percent of people have actually had loss of power and utilities had to evacuate had to offer first aid to someone near them so these everyday emergencies really do happen to people people prepare though when they think something will happen to them and that's why we're seeing a relatively high level of preparedness around h one n one overwhelming majorities report they're taking steps to cover their cough and wash their hands and sixty two percent plan on being vaccinated with the red cross we're continually working to find new and better strategies to reach the public each day an estimated fifty thousand people receive red cross training classes and preparedness education presentations one i would like to highlight is in new orleans where we started what we called a  pillowcase project children were given pillowcases which they could decorate and stuffed with the favorite things they like to take with them if they needed to evacuate in the sense of an emergency we know this project works because when hurricane headed up the same area hit by katrina kids showed up in our shelters and they had their pillow cases and they were filled with supplies so that's progress another effective way to reach people is through the workplace studies have shown that one of every four small businesses that are forced to close because of a disaster never reopen that's why the american red cross developed a web based self assessment tool that makes preparedness easy for businesses of all sizes it's called the ready rating program and membership is free businesses score themselves annually and maintain their membership by developed in implementing emergency response plans giving preparedness information to their employees and improving their overall for just a little bit every year ready raiding was the brainchild of business owners in st louis and received b expand expanded to sixty more cities and we thank congressman gal of the committee for signing on as a member in southeast louisiana as i mentioned the red cross is very focused on educating the public about h one n one we developed and distributed countless information see some of which are at the table here today our philadelphia chapter distributed over two hundred eighty five thousand hand aids at five hundred seventy was stored we use social media to post messages on you tube facebook and twitter red cross use our conducting outreach at schools and colleges and in addition to educating the public during a flu outbreak the american red cross remains committed to its core services of maintaining a safe blood supply and providing disaster relief to those in need our goal is to build a culture of preparedness throughout our nation but no single organization can do it alone this week secretary janet came to the american red cross to deliver an important speech on preparedness she summoned all of us to a grass roots effort to better prepare our community and the american red cross heartily applaud her for this and support her call t action we're also grateful for this committee we commend you mr quaoar for introducing h r one the citizen community preparedness act and will work with you to pass that we are pleased so many members of the committee co sponsored the resolution on national preparedness month by representative clark finally the red cross is also partnering with many faith based and community groups to promote prepared by partnering with people like the more than twenty five are confident we can build a society in which every individual every family every business every school every faith based organization is prepared thank you and i look forward to your question work that the red cross does thank you like to thank all the witnesses i would like to remind each member that she will have five minutes to question the panel and also a lot to recognize the chairman of the full committee mr thompson thank you mr thompson for being here chairman thompson this time i recognize myself for five minutes for questions you know yesterday i was talking to a gentleman named john d insightful different things that i think we ought to be doing for this initiative that we're trying to complete but one of the things that got my attention was twenty asked what does it mean to be prepared because we fundamentally for the individual for the family is that they have taken those steps to prevent an event from becoming a disaster for that family something as simple as having discussed where they can meet if they get separated simple simple things that they can do that  neighbors things where we encourage and provide the tools necessary to community organizations to help their communities before government can get in to provide that extra what do you think the minimal level of preparedness should be why are we at the red cross go by three simple messages and actually we adapted them because we felt it was important to have coordinated messaging to the public so that everybody's on the same page saying the same thing and basically we say you're prepared when you get a kid you make a plan and you stay informed and those three actions we find are important to continue to talk about with the public because it takes a long time to penetrate we noticed during disasters that we have a spike in online sales at our store for preparedness kit so we know people are beginning to get that message but it's important that we reinforce that again and again and we need it to be simple the other thing i would say is yes as we talked about in communities and certainly the red cross is a part of forums on communities but we need to somehow break the attitude that disasters in emergencies won't happen and that you know if they do someone else will importance to the administration politan mistreat if you get nine where we bring the agency forward on individual preparedness is we've been taking really a whole of agency approach that it's not just a community preparedness division within national presence directorate it's not an organizational chart solution to the problem it's something it's bringing the entire resources of the agency to bear on this on this problem i see that there are two different ways we can approach this and what i hope to bring to the to my efforts is both focusing on the enhancement individual resilience providing the tools and information necessary to the individual in the family to take those steps that will help prepare them that will help them withstand severe events be it something as simple as a power outage or a severe as a tsunami or an earthquake or a flood at the same time to continue our engagement through citizen corps with community leaders with civic leaders throughout the country to bring together the partnership of of state local and federal government with the community and civic organizations to reach the individuals to identify those that are willing and able to volunteer their time to help their communities give them an avenue to do so and bring those resources to bear amplify the efforts of government and helping to protect and respond to the needs of their neighbors let me about my time is up but let me just ask you this the g a o in a previous study we are really formulating that as a strategic plan for a preparedness system and we'll be bringing the community preparedness initiatives inside that strategic plan going forward  closely to see the strategic plan the vision the goals the objective performance measures and what we're going to measure on that and i don't want to measure activity i want to make sure we solve and that's very important of working together working collaboratively with everybody involved emergency man is inherently an inner governmental inner departmental community wide initiative an effort  specifically the part of my title as a deputy minister for national preparedness and if not federal preparedness and it's not seen as preparedness is national preparedness and we cannot accomplish that without working closely just as closely with our partners in the state and local communities be at the city and municipal governments or the civic leaders throughout the country we can accomplish in that accomplish that task without working with them as closely as we do with our own partners within fim and the department and the federal inner agency is a part of it i represent a very rural congressional district report rural congressional district and most responders are volunteers to follow our fathers or rescue  squads and my guess is that's probably pretty much the norm throughout america and in most rural settings this famous have been a particular initiative to network with those volunteer units i believe we do we have a number of initiatives a number of communities but specific to your point about volunteer firefighters it's while we work closely with representatives of stakeholder organizations at this level what we try to do is encourage and work through our partners at the state and local level to engage at those levels i have a personal stake in that as having been a volunteer firefighter myself and i understand the limitations and concerns where the governor in my in my experience government pushes out new training opportunities but they're only offer between eight and five on a weekday when everybody's in in the work so it's it's incumbent on us to find ways to provide the information training and resources to those that have chosen to dedicate their lives towards public service while earning their livelihoods in a different manner i've been urging the center for domestic preparedness to you know they've got that ability to take that training on the road to expand the number of teams and the trucks that they have a tractor trailer on if you've seen it because what you're talking about most of these first responders are working somewhere near bolland here and no way they're going to get the strings if you can bring it to them on the weekends typically or in the evenings  would address mr jenkins question he said the same again decide what they expect you know as a part of his before you are going to be able to achieve your goals you've got to set those goals do you anticipate having  determination in a time a near future is what you're expecting to achieve what your goals will be so that geo can then measure with that you've achieved the i believe we did not believe we do i believe we are we are engaged in adapting our existing doctrinal ideas and in our operating plans into a strategic plan with goals and objectives identifying actual outcome driven performance metrics that we can actually see whether or not we've achieved what we're trying to achieve  one of the comments we've we've heard often is that one of the things we've measured in citizen corps for example is the number of his and corps councils that have developed around the country which is to the chairman's point i'm often about activity rather than outcome however at the time w are our goal at that point was was the political ration of of avenues with which to reach communities so that was appropriate measure that it is it is disappointing though from my perspective that you may not have shared the previous administrators and instead give them a way to solve assess and to measure themselves and to do it on a web based tool that's very easy for them to do we hope to really expand this out as i said about sixteen different cities  but we will also be looking for companies like anheuser busch to help support that because we need the resources behind that to do it but we know that small businesses are very obviously to take their employees their employees are like family to them and but they worry particularly if they're ones with just ten people that they don't have somebody they can dedicate is as the preparedness officer but we've tried to make it really simple and also the things that we produce like these i mentioned those are very handy for small businesses to put up in their you know vending room or whatever and we work with small businesses a lot to try to get the message out because we find that getting the message out through the workplace is a very effective tool of reaching people in famil things have you had an opportunity to respond back to the report in the process of doing and if you do can you share with the committee some of that mr chairman i have not had the opportunity to see the full identifying achievable outcomes in a strategic vision for how we are engaging with communities and individuals and further into further into preparedness so that your testimony to the committee on th finalizer published yet i haven't seen the entire report so i am not aware of the full breadth of the recommendations including the report but of what i'm aware and ways been discussed so far in the hearing this morning i am in agreement and  red cross did not reach out into the broader community and involve stakeholders for instance in the south at the time of katrina there was one organization well thank you mr chairman we learned one large lesson in katrina which is the red cross can't do it all in a disaster of that magnitude in size and that we need to reach out to partner organizations to help us do that and so since that time we have worked to expand our partnerships in a number of areas you know in mississippi we've been working with the a m a church with the  the with hope worldwide to train more shelter administrators to make sure that they can get their congregations trained this is the multiplying effect that we're only going to be successful when we do that and as you know warren miller in your state has done a great job with helping us reach out we have now more than one hundred fifty m o use with other groups  organizations to work with those horses are only as good as how they are operational and we're continuing to work on that but we feel that we have made an excellent effort to expand our reach into different  communities and to really try to become a more diverse organization the red cross doesn't have to run every shelter we can give training and and the church organization can run that shelter just about as we can as long as we are there to support them cooperation and coordination between agencies work and we are as a citizen and as a nation the better prepared but i would suggest to you in light of the g a o study that the because the last time we had testimony before the committee staff did a sampling of organizations who had executed m o use and that was just for  thank you very much mr chairman and i want to thank the witnesses for taking time out of your busy schedule and help to enlighten us on the challenges we have going forward and i have couple of questions i'd like to start out with mr francis and i've been struck by your comments just to give us your thoughts on the strategy we use for increased the percentage over the next two years working together well thank you mr olson certainly it's a very tough assignment because as you say there's complacency and people wait to the last minute and in order to change behavior like that it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of resources frankly to really get people to pay attention just like when we put an anti smoking campaigns or anti obesity campaign that takes a long time to change behavior one thing we think is very important is that the message is simple and that they be coordinated across all of our groups and agencies so we're not sending conflicting messages and we're saying the same thing and repeated time and time again which is important we think we need multiple messengers reference can't just come from the government can't just come from the red cross in fact some research i've seen the best the person people listen to most on preparedness whether they are adults or not is their mothers so we have to reach mothers we have a mother's guide for preparedness as well i think children are very effective in sending the message home to their parents we run a masters of disasters program i know in mr rogers day we've distributed a number of c d s a curriculum on masters of disaster and that teaches kids to be prepared and they carry that message home and sometimes i think we're going to have to have a little fun with this message because you know preparedness can seem a little like eating your vegetables but i mean we sent out an e mail this year from jamie lee curtis who was our celebrity spokesperson on preparedness and she told people that she was going to put in her preparedness kit chocolate and dental floss well if we got more people responding to that e mail and opening that e mail because it had a little humor to it so it's tough it's going t more resources and certainly we we thank this committee we know that there is a a lot of money that does go out to local and state antibodies to do this kind of work we've been talking with your staff about ways  nonprofits could help access that those those funds more directly for the work that we do but i think it's great that the secretary of da has summoned us to this and i think it's great that everybody's here talking about it so we can you know really get behind a good primarily church organizations we have a waiting list our trouble is it's primarily with trainers we are our own staff right now which we are happy to do but sometimes that's a challenge and we think also a better way  to engage people would be to make those people have gone through this or program trained in order to teach others to train the trainer program again going back to the number of hours in the day and when that's done we have a challenge also of making that happen with them within the time that the volunteer has available nights and weekend we also try to keep volunteers  between natural disasters primarily is what we work on and so we involve them in our preparedness campaigns and our and our fires we meet with them at least two or three times a chairman on the nature of his questions and i'm glad he referred to katrina which is still a traumatic experience for this country because really was a mirror to the underbelly of the united states of america phantom people we didn't exist in our minds as we do the business of the congress sure it was like an onion one layer at a time each day being covered which being peeled off getting towards the center and never getting to the center of the book just came out four months ago which was for at least three weeks on the bestseller list in response and we do not need a katrina to tell us how we have failed unfortunately it just was a mirror to our failures manning we can all agree on this panel that we have a long way to go before we can feel comfortable that the american people are quick and capable of dealing with a large scale disaster what i'm particularly concerned about is the state of preparedness in different parts of america i come from a district that is centered on a dense urban area is then surrounded by sprawling suburbs all the way out to waterways that consistently cause mass flooding in a number of residential areas it's probably  culturally probably one of the top five diverse districts in the country each of these environments presents a different challenge in terms of preparedness and that's only in one district i wonder how we deal with the different challenges we face throughout this nation and what i would like to know from you is how does seem a train through its programs for these different environments we have to confront are we simply giving the same lesson everywhere or do we have a real targeted strategy t scott that exactly i think the hit on the head one of our shortcomings in the way we have it we as a nation have been undertaking community preparedness for for a very long  time we have we do have national efforts where we use consistent messaging and consistent plans and programs because we do know that consistency is useful consistency is what is required to get people to recognize and take in a message but that said the specific actions that are recommended are as  heterogeneous says as the diversity of our of our nation and it's understanding the specific threats faced by a community by a neighborhood by a city or township by understanding the specific threats that are that face a household that is required before you know what steps to take to mitigate those threats what we have tried to do over the years is engaging local communities providing the tools to local communities to help them more specifically deal with the threats facing those communities so that we don't have a particular one set of recommendations that we at the federal gov will try to enforce around the country we try to give the tools to local communities ready for example as the campaign includes a diverse number of recommendations diverse set of of tools to apply to various conditions and we try to encourage local governments to take those adapt my experience for example in the rural new mexico mountains is that some of the messaging some of the tools that have been proved that were provided me as a community member that were geared towards hurricane preparedness were less helpful for example than something that was geared more towards wildfires or severe weather so we have to take that into account of course in our messaging we have to recognize the socioeconomic diversity of our populations and include in our messaging things that further preparedness beyond essentially the acquisition of material recognizing that while we say and it is absolutely critical to have a kid and a plan and supplies and be prepared that there are families there are households that simply may not know where they're getting dinner tonight much less three days worth of food and water we have to acknowledge that move ask you in about two weeks to come back to us give us even if it's a rough draft of a strategic plan i would ask you to contact mr they're not going to write it for you but they like to get some input from them that when you were in new mexico i know i did my dissertation performance based budgeting i recall that the magical does have strategic planning my correct on that y on this i really even if it's a rough draft but i think a rough draft is better than nothing at all you've got a lot of experience at the state level and i remember have a plan for what i recall i don't have with small businesses i should mention that we have met with the chamber of commerce we've met with the national federation of independent business and that's at the national level and we hope to push that down to like chapter eleven we're going to go ahead and conclude job and i think a great opportunity to really shape it the way you think it should be done so we look forward working with you we are going to follow up you know i'm so interested in bringing in technology there's so many pieces of new technology that's available out there and set up another meeting i'm really want to follow up on this so i want to thank all the witnesses for their testimony and the members for the questions that members of the subcommittee might have additional questions for the witnesses we ask you to respond as soon as you can to those questions in writing and hearing no further business this is a joint thank you very much