committee will come to order good afternoon and welcome to todays hearing tsunami warning preparedness and interagency cooperation lessons learned i would also like to welcome ranking member tierney members of the subcommittee and those of you watching live on the webcast at oversight  house gov thank you all for joining us i appreciate your patience we have a lot of votes and things happening on capitol hill today i appreciate the distance that many of you have traveled some short some rather long we appreciate it this is an important topic and we appreciate your participation apologies in advance we get called out for votes also we have a markup going on in the committee i am participating in next door and i may need to go to that as well nevertheless we are glad you are here this is an important topic that literally would affect millions of lives and safety of so many americans and people around the world fifty thousand people were dead and millions more were suddenly homeless in eleven countries our pacific states and territories are also in reach of the damaging effects of tsunamis according to the look at how successful the federal government is in helping local and state authorities develop tsunami resilient communities and how these entities conduct public outreach we will also examine lessons learned from japan and the extent to which they can be applied taxpayers have invested substantial resources to ensure u s preparedness the federal entities principally responsible for this mission are the u s geological survey noaa and the federal emergency management agency career officials from these agencies are here today we have also invited their state counterparts to testify about collaboration with the federal government a representative from the state of alaska is here with us today the states of oregon washington and hawaii have submitted their statements for the record we are only disappointed that this disaster was magnificent so it doesnt belie the fact that we all need to continue to be prepared we can never be too prepared on that and congress has to make sure that there is adequate support for each and every one of these agencies in all of their responsibilities but in particular on this topic with respect to the tsunamis i am a bit concerned when i look at some of the budget proposals being put forward they do reduce the budget for a number of the agencies and i want to hear from the witnesses at some point whether or not that is likely to glackin is the deputy under secretary for operations at the national oceanic and atmospheric administration ms nancy ward is the regional administrator for region ix of the federal emergency management agency kenneth murphy is the regional administrator for region x of the federal emergency management agency and mister john madden is the director of the division of homeland security and emergency management for the state of alaska but if you could keep your verbal comments to five minutes in order to get through this plus the questioning we would certainly appreciate it you should see a nice red light when you get to that five minutes we will start with you doctor leith you are recognized for five minutes mister chairman members of the subcommittee thank you for inviting the u s geological survey to testify at this hearing the usgs is tasked under the stafford act to issue forecasts and warnings for earthquakes volcanic eruptions and landslides tsunami we provide critical science and monitoring support to noaa fema and other agencies we provide hazard alerts to a broad suite of users including the general public the scope of each notification depends on the severity and  extent and possible impact of the event our key users include not only fema and noaa but the nuclear regulatory commission state transportation and water management agencies including utah for example local emergency managers and national and international disaster response organizations to monitor earthquakes in the u s and abroad the usgs operates the advanced national seismic system and in partnership with the national science foundation the global seismographic s west coast hawaii and the pacific territories are all at risk for damage from tsunami generated by earthquakes our shores host two subduction zones that are capable of magnitude nine earthquakes one offshore of alaska which last ruptured in one thousand nine hundred and sixty four and the other in the pacific northwest known as cascadia which last ruptured in one thousand seven hundred this latter one deserves special mention recent investigations of offshore deposits indicate that the zone may have produced magnitude nine size earthquakes perhaps twenty times in the last ten zero years further research is therefore needed to fully document and assess the earthquake potential in this area with in the pacific and historic tsunami of the size that hit japan on march th are not known but the historic and geologic record suggests that the tsunami risk here cannot be dismissed what did we learn from the recent japanese earthquake and tsunami on the day of the earthquake technical coordination between noaa the tsunami warning centers and the usgs national earthquake information center was seamless since then close coordination of post disaster information and response activities has occurred under the protocols of the national earthquake hazard reduction program also while tsunami damage and loss of life were heavy in japan it appears that the investments made there in monitoring and warning systems earthquake resistant construction public information and preparedness activities actually significantly limited the damage and loss of life before the earthquake still the disaster has taught us that scientists need to thoroughly document the prehistoric record of large earthquakes in order to fully assess their likelihood and consequences looking forward the u s can reduc improve public warning and response in three basic areas first continued public education through ongoing efforts in the u s pacific states and territories particularly in hawaii and the pacific northwest second completion of this advanced national seismic system including the enhancement of networks in the eastern united states and the development of earthquake early warning capabilities which were in place in japan and apparently effective and third enhanced research into the frequency and effects of prehistoric tsunamis our recorded history is simply too short to provide adequate probabilities for such rare events mister chairman this concludes my remarks and i would be happy to take any important topic this afternoon noaa plays a critical role in ensuring our nation is warned of many natural and man made hazards and prepared to respond to these the march th japanese earthquake and tsunami served as reminders of  to these hazards and as my colleague has just described there are major threats in our coastal regions a rupture along any of these faults could set off a tsunami relatively close to the shore and impact coastal communities in mere minutes noaa is working to ensure our nation is prepared for such potential catastrophes a comprehensive and effective tsunami warning process requires three parts first observations for detection and models to forecast the path and the impact secondly timely and accurate alerts and perhaps most importantly community education and awareness to ensure the proper public response to alerts and warnings today i want to discuss very briefly how noaa integrates all three of these components and works with our customers and partners to ensure our nation is prepared we provide a host of products and services that minimize the impact of tsunami from advance preparedness of coastal communities to detection and warning service to post event response and recovery efforts noaa operates a suite of instruments and tools including an array of ocean buoys and monitoring stations more to the sea floor sea level gauges at the coastline our polar orbiting satellites are involved and that of our advanced computer modeling noaas services include around the clock forecast and warning centers and extensive public outreach and education efforts within minutes of the japanese earthquake noaa received seismic data from usgs and other partners and issued tsunami warnings and information statements for both domestic and international communities through our two centers in hawaii  alaska wave data from our deep ocean data buoys and coastal data from our tide gauges were related via satellites and integrated into tsunami models our talented professionals translated this into warnings and forecasts these alerts and warnings provided lead times of seven hours for hawaii four hours for alaska and nine hours for the west coast local and national weather service forecast offices that serve the u s coastline issued localized tsunami impact statements together this information helped emergency managers and local officials evaluate the ongoing threat until all the warnings and advisories were finally dropped over thirty six hours after the initial earthquake the best warning information however is worth little unless those at risk are prepared and ready to respond to achieve this level of preparedness noaa is engaged in an extensive array of outreach and education efforts we work with our federal partners with local and state governments through the national tsunami hazards mitigation program this program formed in one thousand nine hundred and ninety five and reauthorized by congress in two thousand and six works to reduce the impact of  state and local emergency management agencies it strives to increase the public awareness of the threat that tsunamis pose improve hazard planning and strengthen warning communication linking the emergency management community with the public currently ther all levels can work together to improve hazard resilience in the united states in summary the investments made by congress and the administration in noaas tsunami warning system and the national tsunami hazard mitigation program directly saved lives in the  distinguished members of the subcommittee i am the regional administrator for fema region ix my region encompasses california hawaii arizona nevada american samoa guam the commonwealth of the northern mariana islands the republic of the marshall islands and the federa states of micronesia i am pleased to be here alongside ken murphy regional administrator for fema region x which encompasses alaska idaho oregon and washington we are honored to be here today i would first like to say that our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of japan as they continue to recover from the devastation of the past several weeks the events in japan also serve however as a reminder of the importance of tsunami preparedness in our own country while tsunamis occur infrequently they have the potential to cause major destruction to the coastal communities in several fema regions because tsunamis present great potential for damage to both people and property all levels of government must be prepared for the threats associated with them we in government also have a responsibility to coordinate our preparedness efforts with non governmental entities including private sector organizations non profit and faith based groups and perhaps most important the individuals and families who live in these potentially affected communities my written testimony discusses femas catastrophic planning efforts state and local partners in the event of tsunami threat just after p m march th fema region was alerted to a magnitude nine earthquake soon followed by a pacific wide tsunami warning the region ix watch center immediately alerted region i senior staff and made contact with our national watch center within the hour the fema regional support team and our regional support coordination center was activated to a level one femas highest activation level our regional on call incident management assistance team was noticed and placed on alert for immediate deployment to a potential tsunami impacted area key federal agency partners were also mobilized and directed to report to the rrcc to emergency support function coordination and assets immediately following activation of our regional response coordination center region ix established lines of communication with our states and territorial partners including fema region x as a communication hub for jurisdictions throughout the pacific  simultaneously in hawaii the fema region ix pacific area office located out in fort shafter in hawaii went operational the pacific area office deputy director was dispatched to the state of hawaiis civil defense emergency operations center and co located with our state partners throughout the entire incident period in the aftermath of the tsunami region ix worked closely with hawaii and california to conduct preliminary damage assessments these pdas resulted in disaster declarations requests for both hawaii and california a disaster declared last week for the state of hawaii and californias request is still under review similarly in region x femas activation and coordination with their states resulted in a disaster declaration for the state of oregon as is both policy and doctrine at fema we worked very closely with all of our federal government partners including invaluable contributions by both noaa and the usgs we also plan train and exercise year around with state local tribal and territorial governments to help with tsunami and other planning education and awareness as an example fema supports the national weather service to promote the tsunami ready campaign we also encourage states and localities to use their grant funding to increase their disaster preparedness while no coastal community is tsunami proof we work with the community leaders and emergency managers to reduce the potential for disastrous tsunami related consequences the  japan have also raised important questions as to how a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami might affect our nuclear facilities and surrounding areas at the direction of administrator fugate we have increased our participation and exercises associated with our nuclear plants we are focused on conducting exercises that provide a true test of our emergency protocols and capabilities this week for instance in san onofre california state emergency experts are leading a mandated biennial exercise of the southern california edison beachfront nuclear power plant stationed in orange county california a site i might add that supports the national weather services tsunami ready designation as would be the case in any actual event the nrc and the state have the primary authority fema region ix is participating in the exercise both as a player and as an evaluator of how the exercise unfolds most important however we work to instill a commitment to personal preparedness april am the director of homeland security and emergency management for the state of alaska i am responsible for confronting the entire range of hazards that nature and humans can inflict on our citizens and economy we are no stranger to disasters we have fires floods storms and cold every year but the seismic hazards of earthquakes and tsunamis give little or no warning and require a different approach to preparedness in our history are many destructive earthquakes the largest was the nine point enterprise a purposeful and industrious undertaking that requires extreme coordination the state of alaska works with many organizations on this enterprise including several that are here at the table today we recently conducted the latest tsunami operations workshop in dutch harbor alaska for communities throughout the one thousand five hundred miles of the aleutian islands the alaskan peninsula and kodiak island many of these communities are within the areas that were threatened by the japanese tsunami each community left that workshop with plans on evacuation emergency operations and solid understanding of warnings advisories and watches which were put to the test just a few weeks ago on march th alaska received almost instant notification of the earthquake and shortly thereafter received the first advisories from the west coast and alaska tsunami warning center this emergency combined four factors that greatly complicated our response the warnings came in the middle of the night in winter in adverse winter and in isolated communities far remote from each other and from the nearest hel we established voice contact with every community in the warning and advisory area and ensured that community leaders had the information necessary for their local decisions alaska was very fortunate that only limited damage occurred in our coastal communities during last months event the tsunami preparedness enterprise worked as designed overall the continuous monitoring yielded immediate detection the computer models determined the potential for and ready to respond as needed most importantly the communities received the information and invoked the plans that had been recently validated the state of alaska strongly supports this tsunami enterprise and particularly the continued authorization and funding of the national tsunami hazard mitigation program within the federal government through funding to the states with tsunami risk this program advances preparedness through tsunami ready communities sirens training exercises signage and much more we also recommend that resilient and redundant communications systems be made the highest priority to ensure continuity of the tsunami warning network the most critical element of the entire enterprise is public outreach and education al the science all the computers all the warnings are useless if the affected community does not know how to respond to that threat we must create and sustain a posture of preparedness in each person living or visiting our coastal communities only through exemplary interagency cooperation can we prepare for this most unpredictable and potentially devastating hazard with the continued support of congress you can provide the partners in this vital enterprise federal state and local governments and the general public with the means to continue effectively to protect lives and property key to all of this is that chain reaction that all starts with the modeling that says here it comes how complete is that as you look at the united states coastline including our territories obviously alaska and hawaii are  particular using some of the resources that we have gotten from the spectrum sale which happened after the indonesian tsunami we have approached this in dealing with where we know there are risk areas for example as  been highlighted off of alaska and off of the cascadia zone there we have a recent report we have gone to the national academies of science to ask for a review of our tsunami warning program overall one of the things that they have encouraged us to do is in partnership with our federal partners and states is to do an overall risk assessment across the united states to really have a handle on what the particular tsunami warning for any part of our coastline it is not that there would not be a tsunami warning we will be able to give you a better where we have the more detailed modeling done we will be able to give you more information about what the potential impacts will be how much inundation and things like that i will have to get back to you with exactly what percentage of all that mister chaffetz and that is the curiosity as to where the vulnerabilities are we have talked a lot about the pacific and my other part of the question is what about the there they can also be caused by landslides under water there is a more technical term for this my colleague knows to do that and so a lot of what we have been doing in partnership is being driven by the seismic assessment of theirs so we have done that risk assessment that has informed how we put out our monitoring stations what we call our dart buoys for doing this so that level is done for us to make more progress we have to do mapping of the inland areas there so we have better handles on how the water will actually roll up mister chaffetz as a follow up i would be very curious again as to where the vulnerabilities are let me go to another part in your written testimony you use exactly the example for this recent event one of the things that noaa does as part of our national ocean service is we do navigational mapping so we went into crescent harbor  in california where there had been so much destruction and our ships did surveys there to identify debris that was on the sea bed floor and allowed the coast guard to be able to we region how good is this information that you are going to get how is the coordination between the two different agencies mister murphy i can tell you that it is very good mister chairman we totally rely actually not only warning centers you can also get your own personal alerts on your smart phone blackberrys computers so i think a lot of that really pays dividends i agree with ms glackin i know that we have reached out to them because we had damage in some of the ports in oregon we had great partners working together to try and get those ports back open because there are so many issues where you need noaa and usgs coast guard a few other agencies to get these communities in a recovery mode and back operating so i think as a group of agencies we really do have to work together pre event and post event mister chaffetz thank you my time is expired i now recognize the gentleman from massachusetts for five minutes mister tierney thank you very much  some of our critical operations we are in the process of putting together a spend plan in terms of going forward in this i think even importantly getting some stability in the full year funding is important because we need to get out becomes sometimes the weather just pulls the moorings out and things like that what we like to do is get out there as soon as possible when we get good weather get our ships out there and get those repaired so we have been delayed in doing that this year because of the lack of historically and can you describe the potential damage that would result and are we prepared as a nation agency in terms of the preparedness on the coastline for that but we are working with noaa and fema and developing scenarios for a large earthquake generated in alaska and its impact all the way down on the coast usgs provides the us appreciate this committee taking the time to have this hearing because i think what we cant afford as a nation is complacency that is the danger with events that are infrequent like tsunamis i think with respect to the vulnerability in this country that our ability to put out warnings as long as we are able to sustain our infrastructure that is there i feel good about i think that there is a real challenge though in keeping the local communities ready to respond for this i really want to make the point to this committee that is in my written testimony but i didnt say here when you have these local tsunamis you really to know to move and not wait for the warning people have to be trained and in tune and when that ground is shaking and the water is receding you move you are not waiting for your cell phone to tell you something and the fact that this is in the coastline where we have so many visitors populations swell there people are unfamiliar with roads it is incredibly important that they are able to move from that coastline and know what to do so that is going to take a continued i think investment and glackin we can never be too prepared as you might well imagine we have so many visitors on the pacific coast both in ms wards region and mine  have to share resources and make everybody a part of that team i can tell you that some of our states in region x oregon and washington you have to partner with the hotel association and get them to make some investments about teaching their  stay in their facilities what to do because somebody from a landlocked state or part of the country may not understand what you need to do in a tsunami i know we promote really dont drive you go up a hill or things like that property damage but i credit that to really how well it operates because of that i asked to be permitted to sit here my main concern of course first and i guess we can start with  statement you felt the continuing resolution has had an impact in terms of the darts not being able to be repaired and so forth i think you said nine are inoperative at this time so can you tell me exactly what impact it would have  given the breadth of activities that we have and the many critical services we provide i didnt go into it here but mentioned elsewhere are things like hurricane services severe weather we have flooding going on in the country now the north central part of the country and dams that are in danger of failing there so we will have very tough challenges in front of us it is premature to say and i am not able to today because decisions havent been made about how we will make all two items on that one is that the emphasis so far has been on the seismic generated tsunamis the major killer in one thousand nine hundred and sixty four were the local tsunamis the earthquake caused half of a mountain to slide down into the the water then proceeded in not at a thirty three feet height but at a two hundred feet height and that gives almost no notice so it is the shaking of the ground which is the only notice that the people have that is why th preparedness is so important the second part is that during this event i am fortunate that the west coast and alaska tsunami warning center is only forty miles from my emergency operations center i put a person in that center with a cell phone and a radio just in case something happened and in this event there was so much worldwide interest that the website could no longer put out their notices they were still putting it out by fax and other means but they lacked the bandwidth to fully accommodate all of the interest and all of the systems demand we accommodated that within our state that served us had it been longer than that we were standing ready to contact our counterparts in hawaii to act as that go between so it is communications system bandwidth and enough capacity to handle a worldwide interest item and that public we dont have california represented and i believe that is part of your region from your perspective the federal government perspective what are the states doing right or wrong how well prepared are they mister chairman i think that along with my counterparts in region x and the state of alaska they are doing the things that they need to do to get out the preparedness campaign all hazards and we have a couple of things t i awareness week that ironically was just last week and we do all hazards and catastrophic planning that we have focused on for the last several years significantly while some of those plans have focused on earthquake specific what we use and what we saw just recently for the state of hawaii as an example is that that planning we use that specific plan that was for a category five hurricane hitting honolulu we used the same elements of that plan those checklists to start our response activities for this event so we feel that they are doing what they need to be doing in partnership with all of us for preparing but as you have heard from the pan the complacency of preparedness especially in an event or scenario that doesnt happen very often but that can have devastating effects to coastlines where we all share at least at this end of the table with tourists who  not doing what they are supposed to be doing from your perspective your professional perspective are there any that are lagging behind or just ignoring the threat ms ward mister chairman i would say no but i would also caution that in these economic times for state governments and our territorial governments that it is a challenge to prioritize these types of activities but it is certainly a priority for all of my states and territories mister chaffetz thank you as we kind of wrap up here maybe you could just will start with mister madden the number one thing you would like to see happen moving forward mister madden the ability for communities to make informed decisions requires the network and on the training and exercise for them so it escalate our efforts in catastrophic planning if we really did have something that would hit the entire west coast you really need a plan that will deal with that so more and continued work ms ward and i would agree with both of them an add that the emphasis on personal preparedness for a plethora of risks is extremely important ms glackin i think what i would say is sustained improvement of the services we have now and going to your first question mister chairman i would say your point about really having the overall national assessment of tsunami risk done for the nation so that we are ensuring that we are covering everything that needs to be done leith thank you i would come in from the technical and scientific side and say that i would very much like to see the completion of a seismic network and delivery system in the united states a modern one that replaces the one that was built over the decades at the last part of the previous century mister chaffetz very good thank you all for attending please if there are additional comment that you wish to submit information that you can provide the committee we would certainly appreciate that your full testimony if you werent able to get through it all will be submitted for the record we appreciate the great length and time we appreciate your understanding we started a bit late given the votes on the floor particularly mister madden who traveled such a great distance we appreciate you all