one on one on one on on the hearing will come to order welcome everyone to today's hearing on the response of charities to hurricane katrina as we all know the whole world watched as hurricane katrina caused unprecedented devastation along the gulf coast displacing more than one million people and causing over one hundred billion dollars in property damage this destruction is required a massive response from federal state and local governments the hurricane is also inspired the nation's charities to make an historic effort americans have made this effort possible by giving or pledging over two point six billion dollars to help the victims of this terrible disaster charities have provided critically important assistance ranging from food shelter and cash assistance to counseling and job training this is a thing goal largest charitable sponsor to a disaster in our nation's history the subcommittee has a responsibility to review the activities of charities to see where things work where they didn't work and where the response can be made more effective the subcommittee some of you will remember held a similar review after the september eleventh attacks and highlighted areas in which charities needed to improve their response to disasters i hope our efforts today can lead to further improvements as well several of the witnesses today will tell extremely inspiring stories will hear about volunteers who dropped what they were doing so they could help take care of hurricane victims we will hear about churches synagogues providing shelter and food to people who had nothing but the clothes on their backs  about americans generously donating to the american red cross the salvation army and other organizations to provide needed cash assistance to hurricane victims as i said earlier two point six billion dollars in contributions monetary contributions by the american people not withstanding the tremendous humanitarian response other witnesses will describe some significant shortcomings in the charitable response today's hearing will really focus on three main concerns first how coordination between charities can be improved in massive disasters like this one charities both large  small get involved in the response their collective resources capabilities and efforts obviously must be effectively coordinated four years ago this subcommittee discussed the problem of coronation among charities responding to the september eleventh attacks hurricane katrina has unfortunately shown that much work still remains the second area of concern will examine is how all americans can have access to and receive assistance from charitable organizations during disasters it's important that the red cross and other charities not forget communities and individuals who are harder to reach or who need special attention minority populations people with disabilities and low income people today we will hear from two witnesses representing people at this abilities which are of major interest to me and i know other members of the subcommittee these two witnesses will describe the experiences of individuals with disabilities during the disaster and believe me some of those experiences are downright shocking but we need to hear what the red cross and others planning to do are our planning to do to ensure that under served populations are not forgotten or neglected during the next disaster we always know unfortunately there will be the next disaster the third area of concern we need to ensure that charitable dollars are not lost to fraud while disasters bring out the best in most people they also bring out the worst in others and some cases criminals have pretended to be charities and have stolen money intended for actual charities in other cases people pretending to be victims have taken advantage of charities and taken money that could have been used to help actual victims the york times reported that the red cross distributed thirty two million dollars in cash to residents in and around jackson mississippi even though many of them headaches serious little or no significant property damage one pawn shop owner in jackson mississippi told the new york times that many aid recipients cashed relief checks at a shop and immediately bought jewelry guns d v d s and electronics the owner of a western union branch in jackson was quoted as saying and again i'm quoting the owner of the western union branch in jackson mississippi who said surely the red cross has to have a better use of funds unless they just have money they are trying to get rid of for some reason stories like this may discourage donors from giving money for relief efforts therefore we have to understand what the red cross and other charities are doing to ensure that their aid is going to the people who actually need it if this hearing helps document or charities fell short in serving the hurricane victims it can help ensure these problems do not occur again if americans do not have confidence that their donations are being used wisely they may not be so generous when the next disaster strikes this morning i'm sure many of you noted that the american red cross announced the resignation of its president marsha j evans i would like to thank  work i also quite frankly appreciated ms evans candid acknowledgement in september that the red cross responses to hurricanes katrina and rita had been and i'm using her words uneven and that these natural disasters again using her words eclipsed even our direst worst case scenarios close quote in more recent war weeks i've been encouraged by the red cross public vile to address some of the critics systems by seeking greater diversity within its ranks and establishing partnerships with local groups i believe the coming transition at the american red cross offers an opportunity for red cross management to respond to the concerns that have been raised and will be discussed here today this two months ago hurrican katrina corfu the governor region causing an unbelievable destruction tens of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes the area suffer  hundred dollars in property damage charitable organization played a critical role in our country humanitarian response to hurricane katrina americans help these efforts by proportion in fact nearly twenty times larger than anything we have ever faced before at the peak of the emergency the record shelter close to one hundred and fifty thousand people and more than five hundred facilities and respond to hurrican hurricane katrina and hurricane rita rick ross has provided three point forty two million overnight stays in more than one thousand shelter nationwide and given more than one point two million family emergency financial assistance in coordination with the southern baptist convention the red cross has served over fifteen million  more than twelve million hot meals sandwiches and snags to survivors and first responders mr chairman and members of the committee i want to welcome all the witnesses coming before the  the future i share your interest in learning from past experience you conclusion america's charitable responder her countrymen deserve praise i want to give each of you our colleague from louisiana a member of the voice means committee and chairman of the subcommittee on social security and i just want to say before you begin jim that in the wake of hurricane katrina your leadership your hard work here dedicated efforts were truly an inspiration to all of us and to all americans and i want to thank you for all that you did to lead us in the direction of providing the appropriate relief to people devastated by the worst disaster natural disaster in our nation's history i look forward to your testimony welcome to the subcommittee thank you mr chairman thank you for those kind of kind words and i want to thank the full committee of ways and means for being so responsive in the wake of katrina and nationally and now rita in moving bills through the congress through our committee through the congress on another tax bill dealing with incentives to bring investment business investment back to the devastated areas i think this hearing today though is very important mr chairman and i commend you for holding it in an effort to shed light on the positive things that were done as you and mr lewis both talked about and there were a lot of very positive the performed in the wake of hurricane katrina but also to question and highlight the problems that were present in dealing with the aftermath of those storms and today i want to take this opportunity to shed light on some of those shortcomings as i saw them from my perspective as someone on the ground and a part of louisiana that was not touched by katrina my district was not touched at all by the storm but we were touched by the tens of thousands of evacuees that came into my district seeking shelter and so it's that experience primarily that that i want to talk about today before another committee i can talk about fame and some other things but today i'm going to focus on the sheltering activity and who's responsible for that i am concerned in particular with the performance of the american national red cross based on my experiences on the ground from katrina and r american national red cross was not properly prepared to fulfill its emergency role and our national response plan for over one hundred years beginning with the congressional charter of nineteen zero five the federal government has partnered with the american red cross to provide domestic and international disaster relief the current relationship is outlined in the united states department of homeland security's national response plan where the american red cross is named the primary agency responsible for mass care after a disaster this means that the american red cross a nongovernmental organization is primarily responsible for books for providing emergency medical care food and shelter to americans in the wake of natural and manmade disasters after witnessing the red cross is struggles during katrina and rita i question whether it's prudent for congress to place such great responsibility in the hands of of one organization hurricane katrina and the subsequent flooding of new orleans displaced roughly one million people from their homes in southeast louisiana tens of thousands sought shelter in my district it was clear from the beginning that the red cross simply did not have the sheltering capacity to meet immediate needs small independent shelters began popping up by the dozens across northwest really and i'm at the peak there were over forty shelters operating in my district and fewer than ten of those were red cross shelters so mr chairman and members of the subcommittee when you read in the paper or you hear statistics like mr lewis cited in his opening statement about x number of people being fed and so for a lot of those sophistic come from the red cross and they are accurate and so far as the red cross is concerned but there are literally tens of thousands probably hundreds of thousands of people being fed and sheltered that are not accounted for in those figures because the red cross doesn't know about them and that's the experience i had mr chairman immediately after katrina when i was going around my district trying to make sure that evacuees from south louisiana were taken care of we had a number of small shelters some of us a small some of them had three hundred people in a high school gymnasium they weren't that small but i did a number of shelters like that that popped up out of necessity the large shelters in shreveport were full and none were opening at that time so these people were coming up from south louisiana banging on our doors saying help and these communities rightfully so opened their doors created a shelter and when i or the people from those local communities tried to get the red cross to send them blankets or cots or food or diapers they were told sorry we can't help you now i believe that the red cross director in my district was being honest he probably couldn't help because he'd either didn't have the provisions or didn't have the transportation for the provisions he didn't have the volunteers but whose fault is that is the in my view it's the fault of the american national red cross not my local chapter the national red cross poorly planning or are just not planning at all for a disaster of this scope we have known for decades that new orleans was vulnerable to a storm of this sort that flooding was possible that hundreds of thousands of people would be displaced from their homes we have since nine eleven i think anticipated a similar manmade disaster that could be caused by terrorist act why weren't we better prepared i spoke earlier about fema think family was woefully unprepared for the federal government was woefully unprepared our state government was woefully unprepared local governments run prepared and i think the red cross was unprepared as clearly demonstrated so that's my testimony in a nutshell mr chairman i'll be happy to stay and answer questions  that your committee might have well thank you very much for your very compelling testimony i just have a few questions i'd like to ask jim what kind of response did you get when you brought the problems to the attention of the red cross headquarters of the national american red cross what kind of responses you get when you alerted them as to the problems with the shelters the the national organization expressed some surprise at some of the things i was telling them so they were evidently unaware of what was happening on the ground in my district they did pledge to look into it and to try to identify where the problems arose and and fix those and that's why i'm here today i hope i hope i'm not being unduly tough on the red cross but i think we need to talk plainly about the shortcomings of our disaster response and if the red cross is going to be the federal government's primary responder in terms of shelter then i think we we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to the red cross to point out the shortcomings of that effort so that we can be better prepared next time but the national red cross evidently was not well aware of what was going on on the ground at least in my district and they have promised to do to try to rectify those problems  but the initial response was just simply we didn't know i noted from your written testimony that you asserted the national red cross attributed the shortcomings in your district to the local chapter but rather than being an issue of lack of control by the national red cross viz a viz a local chapter you seem to indicate today it's more a lack of planning on nationals part is that that's my perception that there was simply not in place an adequate plan on the part of the red cross to deal with sheltering this many people they just it overwhelm them it overwhelm our local chapter it overwhelmed the national red cross and i understand that it was a very difficult situation this country has never seen anything like it in our history but after nine eleven i think we all knew that something like this could happen somewhere and we should have been better that's all i'm saying mr chairman and i hope the federal government will work with the red cross or or maybe bring in the salvation army or other groups to have a united effort to make sure these kinds of problems are met in the future is one ask one final question and i touched on it a bit my opening statement and you certainly have just touched on it again and that is congress's responsibility to examine the relationship between the federal government and the red cross which you clearly stated so that we could avoid problems that happened in your district from happening again from reap being repeated anywhere else again do you have any suggestion for how we as members of congress can help improve the response by charitable organizations  think that we ought to reexamine the congressional charter that gives the american red cross the responsibility for the initial sheltering and feeding and so forth of victims of national disasters and we ought to examine that relationship and perhaps bring in other organizations make it an umbrella organization i don't know but congress needs to fully examine that and make sure that the plan we have in place with some non governmental organization is the best one to meet such a massive need in case we have this kind of disaster again and let me h chairman that there are lots of volunteers i don't know how many hundreds thousands of volunteers in the red cross in the salvation army united way and lots of organizations that did heroic jobs and i think my local director of the red cross worked twenty two straight days no time off trying to see to the needs of the shelters that they were operating in my area so i certainly want to commend those individuals who volunteered their times and some who were paid and went beyond their their call of duty to perform acts they should be commended but i think congress has to if not share the blame it's at least share the responsibility going forward to make sure that the organization or organizations that we vest with this responsibility is better prepared next time to carry out that responsibility thank you again for your testimony and your outstanding leadership  a worse job don well the best job in my view mr lewis was done by people who were not in the red cross or the salvation army or any other organization they were just ordinary people who came out of their homes and brought diapers and pillows and blankets and food and stayed at the high school gymnasium or wherever the civic center in some small town and cooked for the people who were there who gave them rides to the so security office to make sure they got their checks just performed daily acts of human kindness for people they had very not very much in common with believe me people in north louisiana don't share much culturally with people in south louisiana the cajun catholic french speaking in many cases from south louisiana and protestant rednecks and north louisiana i mean it's like two different states and yet these folks in north louisiana were coming out of their homes every day and every night to take care of people that they didn't know and didn't have much in common with except they were human beings and that was very inspiring to me the worst thing was just the total  lack of planning that was evident in this crisis was insufficient let me just try to seek and i found out something here i believe the red cross is going to testify maybe later that this was a worst level a human the in the history of the organization and you said earlier that the federal government was not prepared the local government to conny this state was not prepared was any charitable organization footpath asserts level of human needs such devastation probably not possible is it possible for someone to be ok and i think that's a fair question and it may not be possible to be prepared for every single contingency associated with a disaster of this scale but mr lewis it's my contention that we could have and should have been much better prepared to meet the contingencies of this kind of disaster than we were  it was not hard to imagine that the numbers of people evacuating south louisiana who did would actually evacuating this scenario has been on the books for years as i've said and we should have been better prepared i'm going to just give you an example i may be in the red cross going to testify and you can ask me about theirs and maybe they have some sound reason why they couldn't do this but in my view they should have from the national office anticipated a huge need for volunteers or for bodies for human beings in areas north of new orleans on the mississippi gulf coast and they should have prepositioned people in dallas and shreveport in jackson maybe atlanta ready to go  for whatever areas were taking those evacuees from those devastated areas and they weren't and my local chapter got zero help for quite a while  well i'm merely reporting to you what happened on the ground the federal government has already made to the state through the congress to enlist the american red cross as the non governmental organization that is on the front lines supposed to meet the needs of the evacuees in shelters and so forth and a disaster we made that decision whether that decision needs to be reconsidered is a question for this congress and i'm posing it today i don't know the answer mr lewis but it's a question we ought to ask and we ought to examine thoroughly and if there's a change necessary we ought to make that change if thanks red cross needs add my thanks to you for your leadership on this and and my sympathy with to all the people affected by these horrible storms and even though colorado is a long way from the impacted area we took in forty two hundred refugees even in faraway colorado about three out of four of them from your state of louisiana and it stressed us a little bit i can only imagine what it must have been like for you in your district jim you've mentioned in considerable detail what what you went through what your local red cross chapter went through we all know that louisiana mississippi alabama were affected by perception jim of the circumstances the struggles the way the whole reaction was managed in other areas was yours unique was this a pattern that was was far too prevalent and i can't speak with any authority on whether similar problems existed in other locales except for the mississippi gulf coast which i did tour and spoke with several public officials in and in the mississippi gulf coast area and there were similar complaints mr beaupr about the red cross and their response to sheltering and assisting shelters  on the mississippi gulf coast what i'm sure you've had some opportunity to talk to some other states florida comes to mind has been hit hit hit again it seems at least it's my perception that how ever they managed to do it they seem to respond pretty well what's the difference in florida i have spoken to some of our colleagues from florida who have also expressed complaints  about fame about red cross about other programs ations in the aftermath of hurricanes in south florida but if you if you're asking about the state's response i think the state of florida  has enough experience that they have learned to be ready and to respond admirably almost state level given that experience and you pointed out clearly that while we didn't know the when or the degree of the devastation it should have come was a mistreated no one that something like this could happen after all we have had other hurricanes not this large but we've had others some i guess anticipation you said the question is as to that the prudence of one organization having the responsibility within our national response plan that the red cross does is  a legitimate question but let me ask you directly in your opinion jim is the thing broken so badly it can't be fixed or what what's your what's your perception right now my belief it can be fixed that it is possible to be better prepared will it take a lot of organization and a lot of work yes i think it will but i do think it's possible to be much better prepared to meet the needs it's look it's we all have run campaigns and we know at least those of us who had tough campaigns at one time and some of us still do we have to organize volunteers and we have to have them ready to get on a bus if necessary and go to some other town to go door to door and hand out leaflets and that's hard work it's hard to have a ready set of volunteers and a phone call to pick up and go i know that it's very difficult but that's the kind of nitty gritty work that i think needs to be done on a national level to have people ready at the drop of a hat to respond and be there have bodies on the ground ready to help ready to give some some guidance and that's all a lot of people in my district wanted they wanted some people there to just direct them look i'm here i'm ready to help but tell me how to do it what do i need to do and there was nobody you know back here out now recognizes gentleman from texas lender thank you michel and thank you jim for all you have done on this issue and all your colleagues and i'm sure you're still working on it every weekend when you get home this eerie  competing element between fema and the red cross i don't know it shouldn't be but i'm glad you brought that up because one thing that was  prevalent in the first say five days following the storm i would finally get in touch with somebody at fema finally and they would say old that's the red cross responsibility and then i get in touch with red cross and they say oh no that's famous responsibility and i coughing about and i say oh no maybe i think that's the state's responsibility call the emergency operation center in baton rouge that's the national guard everybody was doing this you know it's that some of that's somebody else's responsibility so clearly in our national response plan we need to have a better plan or we need to have people better familiar with the plan so that everybody knows what his responsibility is and we don't get this runaround of no that's not us that's him them whoever the people need to know what their responsibility is and take responsibility and give answers and give direction when the time comes is there are reason to question whether we would have a major plan or of shelter and food in a major disaster being a non governmental organization that has a pretty huge budget and as executive director five hundred thousand dollars a year as distant from the government i don't know i think that's the question we need to examine congress has made that decision in the past we have said that the  this case the american red cross is the appropriate organization we're going to not only vest them with that responsibility we're also going to provide them some assets and some assistance and  so i think that needs to be thoroughly examined we can't ignore this week it's going to happen again somewhere it's an earthquake in california it's a category five in south florida or a terrorist cell are a terrorist attack where the terrorists dynamite a dam or infiltrate the water system with pollutants that causes people to have to leave in mass numbers something's going to happen so we owe it to ourselves and our constituents to make sure that we either take the plan that's on the books and make it work or create a new plan but if if an anticipated disaster which we saw coming for several days was unprepared for token be prepared for a nuclear accident that we didn't have any idea was coming you know well certainly something like that where a nuclear device explodes and we don't have any notice of the the problems are going to be different associated with that but some of them could be similar i mean you could have people within a certain radius of the explosion ordered to get out quickly and to evacuate to go somewhere else and you could have the same kinds of problems but certainly every situation would be different but some of them would be the same and we need to be prepared for that my recollection is that after september eleventh she huge sums of money came in to the red cross and they made a executive decision not to spend it all on september eleventh which i believe the board subsequently overturned i think that's from may have cost to have any interest to do any expectation that this is occurring in this in this event i don't  i just don't know but i think i think you raise a legitimate question though which is should we have one organization that is generally recognized as the organization to respond to disasters and as a consequence of that recognition have the all overwhelming majority of private sector donations going to that one organization i think that is a legitimate question the government shares in the responsibility for identifying that one organization i think and so i think that's a question we need to reexamine thank you a disaster and indeed with wilma down in florida and having been a lifetime resident of florida i've seen many many hurricanes but i don't think i've ever seen and i don't think one's ever hit our shores that has cause a devastation and of property even though there's been some with much larger loss of life in florida back in the early days as as katrina looking back on what we have learned i think it's it's easy to overlook much of the good that was done the heroic behavior the generosity of the american people and all these organizations have done a good job in so many in so many ways but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't go back and i appreciate your testimony as to what went wrong and those are the things we should be talking about you won't read about it in the paper unless it is something that went wrong should should call together all these organizations and you talk about a plan well the plan should be in writing and be very very clear there are many breakdowns the first breakdown was an individual responsibility and it was a huge breakdown and particularly in that we should get an oscar for the way our government operated at the local as well as the state level with jeb bush i think that a wonderful job but again i can tell you the press in florida talks about what what went wrong one area that really is a little bit outside the scope of this hearing but mr landor brought up the question of fame of an area that's worrying me and that is  what does of in florida and i'm sure in louisiana mississippi and alabama i don't care how rich you are if you went out and bought a generator they were to they reimburse you up to eight hundred dollars luckily most people didn't know that or i can tell you that it would have been rampant chainsaw squire we buy and people chainsaws i mean it's we all are anxious to get this get the trees out of the road and out of our yards but giving individuals a refund in the money for going out by themselves and ice to change so i don't think is a responsibility of fame now i know with personal individuals if you've got medical emergency something that is really drastic and people can't afford it then i think it is proper to buy a generator to put in someone's personal home but to just simply say all you got to do is buy one one of the one of the justice for fema and going out and looking at where the generator was and being sure that it was properly done and before they before the adjustment found it in a five car garage now i can tell you somebody with a five car garage should not be getting a free generator and on the island of palm beach there were several people there's not a home on the island of palm beach that is worth less than a million dollars that should not happen and as a matter of fact i don't think we should be buying him period except in drastic circumstances did you have the same experience in your area  general sense that feynman was unprepared for this and you know i think the examples that you point out of people abusing fema abound  and that's hard to control because that's human nature to take advantage of a situation sometimes even in florida but what sima can do about that short of her changing the rules i don't know well i did look at what the law is in the law allows team to set the regulation as to what they're going to do and i think we need to be a little more restrictive in the statute so i plan to ask the party appropriate jurisdiction to look into that and tighten up on that because otherwise the word has gotten out now and i can tell you when florida gets another her again there's just the your testimony your leadership in your great efforts in this regard thank you or to working with you to remedy some of the problems that are that you point out the chair and i'll call the second panel for today's hearing if you would come forward please take your seats first cynthia m found the only managing director education workforce and income security us government accountability office joseph becker senior vice president preparedness and response american red cross major todd hawks public affairs secretary and associate national community relations and development secretary salvation army of america and john g davies president and chief executive officer baton rouge area foundation welcome to all four of you witnesses thank you for being here today and will begin please with this i hope i pronounce your name correctly be sure to turn your microphone on that i think now is yes good afternoon mr chairman and members of the subcommittee i'm pleased to be here today to share early findings from ayos ongoing review of charities response to the recent gulf coast hurricanes charities and played a major role in responding to national debt disasters including the september eleventh terrorist attacks and hurricanes katrina and rita they provided food water shelter and other assistance to victims and devastated areas following the recent hurricanes charities encountered and mounted the largest disaster response effort in u s history my statement today will focus on charities progress and incorporating lessons learned following the september eleventh attacks and our preliminary observations on how well charities of coordinated following the gulf coast hurricane g a o reported several lessons learned from the nine eleven response that could help charities enhance their responses to future disasters these included making it easier for eligible survivors to get the help they need enhanced in coordination among charities and with fema educating the public about charities roles in disaster response and planning for future events we recommended that fema convene a working group of charities to address these lessons learned which resulted in the creation of the coordinated assistance network the can can involve seven of the largest disaster response charities and is designed to improve coordination and share information and links electronically about  p s and services provided in response to hurricanes katrina and rita charities have raised more than two point five billion dollars in cash donations according to the center on philanthropy at indiana university the american red cross raised more than half of that total with other organizations raising considerably smaller amounts disaster relief charities took steps to coordinate services through central operation centers conference calls and electronic databases for example in the weeks following katrina the red cross organized a national operation center with fema and other national charities to coordinate services on the ground national voluntary organizations active in disaster or national vote had an umbrella organization of charities organized daily conference calls with federal officials and more than forty charities to share information can activated its case management databases which enabled more than forty participating charities to share data on their clients and the services they provided can also created an activated a shelter database that included information about the operating status and capacity of emergency shelters in the gulf coast region the charity representatives we interviewed reinforce the importance of these efforts but they raised some concerns about the usefulness of these operations and systems for example charity representatives told us that the national though i had conference calls often included too many participants and some types of participants provided inaccurate information some charity officials also told us that because the can databases were still under development they were not ready for use on such a large scale many volunteers had not received sufficient training on the system and some of the technological glitches had not been resolved in addition the databases required internet access and electricity which is not always available in disaster situations we also found that charities had to balance access to services with safety concerns as they responded the hurricanes j o teams visiting the gulf coast in october observed that the red cross did not provide relief in certain areas due to policies intended to protect the safety of service providers and victims these policies included not establishing shelters in flood risk areas or in structures that are vulnerable to strong winds even when victims remain in these areas g a o teams in the field observe that the salvation army and smaller charitable organizations often local churches frequently met victims needs in these locations smaller charities played an important role in responding to this disaster but some concerns were raised about their ability to provide adequate services devic than some charity representatives told us that many of the smaller organizations had never operated in a disaster and made it out of a completely understood the situation some smaller organizations tried to establish tent cities to how the evacuees for example but were not to prove prepared to provide the water sanitation and electricity these shelters required in addition some of the small charities that placed dislocated children in temporary homes did not keep sufficient records about where the children were placed just made it difficult for families to locate their missing children enclosing the devastation of hurricanes katrina and rita has challenged charities abilities to provide large scale aid to disaster survivors at the same time it has provided a critical opportunity to assess how the nation's charities have incorporated lessons learned from responding to nine eleven and ongoing work g a o will continue to examine how well charities coordinate coordinated their response to the gulf coast hurricanes mr chairman this completes my oral statement i'd be happy to answer requests any questions your the subcommittee members may have thank you thank you for your testimony and for making us all accountable mr bakker please chairman my name is joe becker and i had the red cross disaster services and i continue to lead our organization's response to hurricane katrina i'm delighted to be here and i appreciate the opportunity to share about our work for the survivors of the storm the core mission of the american red cross is to provide relief to victims of disasters we are volunteer led and our services are delivered by volunteers and we do this through a network of eight hundred chapters throughout the country we like others deal with the human side of disaster to do that we partner with other nonprofit groups and organizations and we partner with every level of government local state and federal every day we responded victims of disaster from a small as a family whose house burns to his biggest katrina and we help with the same needs we shelter which is to provide a safe place for people to stay during a hurricane in the coming days after until they have a place to go we feed we feed the people in our shelters and we feed in the community and we work with other nonprofits and faith based groups in the larger disasters who come forward to join that effort we provide emergency financial assistance we do this to provide for things like the next set of clothes for people who left home with very little this is usually done now in the form of a debit card we provide mental health counseling and we connect families with loved ones who are missing so we shelter we feed and we provide for immediate emergency financial needs of people for many years the bar that we had set for hurricanes was andrew then we had the four back to back storms last year the sum of which was the largest red cross response ever but in every way of measuring katrina has dwarfed the sum of all four storms last year we said early on in katrina that the response would be bigger than the red cross alone that it would take many americans to respond and it did we did run the shelters as was described about eleven hundred twenty seven states and here in the district we just closed our last katrina shelter a little over a week ago we closed our last wilma shelter last night we did feed over fifty million meals and snacks and were still feeding in the gulf coast at about fifty thousand meals a day we knew early on that there was a need for financial assistance on a totally different scale we didn't have seventy three thousand families needing financial assistance like we did last year in the sum of all four of those storms we knew early on we would have over a million families requiring that assistance we had to build entirely new ways to do that we had very long lines and we had a lot of busy signals at the call centers that we created for the storm but in a matter of weeks we gave over one point two million families an average of about one thousand dollars a family last fall storms cost our organization about one hundred thirty million dollars we projected our response to these storms will cost us over two billion dollars and we continue to raise money to pay those bills about two hundred twenty thousand red crossers have served so far they slept in their trucks they slept in shelters and they did good work they volunteered because they care but there were things that we could have done better after every major disaster we conduct a top to bottom study with a critical eye and our board is leading this study now we intend to take the lessons we learn and work to get better in my written toast testimony i outlined some of our early areas of focus from the study the response was bigger than the red cross so many organizations join the effort many new to the disaster work we have a lot to be proud of we have a lot to be thankful for and we still have a lot to do thank you for allowing me to share with you today thank you mr becker major hawks please mr chairman the salvation army is a part of the universal christian church our mission our fundamental purpose is to provide aid and comfort without discrimination to those in need services are delivered by thirty six hundred uniformed officers one hundred thirty two thousand soldiers and adherence sixty five thousand employees and by three and a half million volunteers are workers have a firsthand knowledge of their individual communities and they are on site when a disaster strikes we have a decentralized infrastructure that allows us to respond to a disaster very quickly and on a large scale in essence the salvation army operations are driven at the local level and communicated upward indeed the role of the national headquarters is to support local efforts our disaster response services are small part of our work each day of the year we are serving the poor the hungry in the homeless and the forgotten people's lives who are in profound crisis our primary objective is to give people  the salvation army has been at the site of every major disaster in america for more than a century and we have developed the following areas of expertise mass feeding to survivors and emergency responders sheltering survivors while attending to their emergency needs providing social service assistance both immediate and long term knowing that no single charitable organization is capable of providing the full range of disaster response services the salvation army has entered into memorandums of understanding with both faith based and secular organizations including cena and the american red cross despite our sizable footprint the stablish role in responding to disasters and history of collaborating with other organizations the salvation army is not mentioned in the national response plan we are concerned about that since were not mentioned in the plan we may be pro clue did from having access to to key local state and federal officials in louisiana for example the army was represented by an interagency volunteer and wasn't permitted to have a liaison officer in the state's emergency operations center and as a result we had to obtain critical information second hand in the immediate aftermath of katrina we were and still are focused in on providing life sustaining commodities within hours after the storm and passed we moved seventy two mobile feeding units into the affected areas and some areas we presented the first opportunities for survivors to obtain water and food today the army has deployed one hundred seventy eight mobile feeding units and served more than twelve million meals and snacks to survivors and first responders we've also distributed more than a hundred fifty cleaning kits hygiene kits and almost two hundred thousand boxes of groceries because of the overwhelming need the army opened two hundred twenty five shelters that house more than thirty one thousand people and as always the salvation army provides emotional and spiritual comfort to disaster survivors emergency workers at some point the nature of our services will change from the immediate life sustaining services to long term recovery services the army employs case management to help people get their lives back to normal we sit down with each family would determine the social services they need some of these clients are referred by other organizations because they present particularly challenging problems in the army is well equipped to help the most disenfranchised members of our society at this time where system more than two hundred sixty nine thousand people who case management the salvation army is also involved in the reconstruction of communities typically we act in partnership with other working as a chanst to achieve our reconstruction goals for example biloxi the salvation army is building a volunteer village for reconstruction teams i want to make one final point about disaster services provided by the army we don't come into a community help out for a few weeks and then leave we don't make exit plans because we live in those communities our presence permanent if congress is inclined to make changes in the federal government's disaster response protocols then the salvation army has a den identified four items for your consideration first the salvation army should be explicitly mentioned  national response plan as a support agency secondly if the federal government is going to rely upon n g o s to deliver disaster services than standardize training is needed especially for new entrants in the disaster services field must understand the government's emergency management systems and the language of those systems thirdly people incorporation send unwanted items to disaster sites their motivation is laudable but the arrival of unsolicited contributions is problematic the federal government could help to channel the generosity of the american people through public education and finally any government policy that makes it more difficult for potential donors to contribute will impact our ability to deliver services therefore we ask congress to make it as easy as possible for donors to contribute to charitable organizations mr chairman this concludes my testimony and i look forward to answering your questions thank you major hawks mr davies please my name is john davies i'm the president and c e o of the baton rouge area foundation a community foundation serving the capital region of louisiana because of our size and location and prior to these the foundation was does ition to be significantly responsive to the challenges brought about by the two hurricanes that devastated our state it is important to stand that after the storm that ridge became the center of activity regarding both the displaced population from south louisiana and the reconstruction effort the foundation was in the midst of the relief effort as a result our staff arrived several conclusions about our experience and we would like to present those to you in hopes that they might be instructive the first is that the lack of coordination among large non governmental organizations local charities local state federal agencies was a huge impediment to service delivery for the first three weeks there was no coherent way for relief organizations to coordinate their efforts to ensure complete service coverage and effective response second within the independent sector there was a yani and gap of communication between the large multinational n g o s and the local organizations logically large charities who work on the international scene know how each other works and understand each other's role in disaster relief local organizations that least in our case were unfamiliar with disaster practices and were on a steep and costly learning curve there was no significant awareness among the local organizations of what the national organizations were doing and vice versa the red cross response felt to us like it was a first time ever for the red cross there was a ride range of competency and experience among right red cross staff and that affected the capacity of local charities and volunteers to quickly and properly plug into the red cross system for the several professionals from different international n g o s commented that the international red cross protocols and practices were different from those of the national red cross this to lead to confusing confusion in the early stages of the relief fourth there was a clear dichotomy between the two types of shelters the red cross shelters of which there are up to five  and then on red cross shelters it grew to seventy in the area the very designation of red cross non red cross shelters defines the lack of communication and collaboration between the two groups the foundation focused on supporting the latter primarily faith based organizations in our greater community that had very quickly responded to the human crises by by opening their churches and buildings to become shelters in our estimation the faith based shelters were hugely important to our communities capacity to absorb the volume  it did in fifty the two one one charitable resource phone call line is critical in these situations the foundation was inundated by generous people from all over the country who wanted to contribute important gifts in kind the use of private jets the use of complete fleets of trucks helicopters offers of free hotel rooms offers of free housing apartments except for the first two weeks after the storm there was no effective two one one system that had been overwhelmed and it took us time way too much time to get it up to capacity to handle the volume of calls and to connect the resources from generous people to those in need the foundation hopes the lessons are learned from the experience of katrina so we don't have to relieve really relive these scenarios and other disasters and we're grateful to the subcommittee on oversight for holding the hearings so we can gather information that may reduce the anguish pain and suffering of those who are affected by crises in the i want to thank all four of you members of this panel for your very helpful testimony i would like to ask of you mr becker and let me first say i think it's short of miraculous that the red cross has already distributed one point three billion dollars in financial assistance to katrina evacuees and believe me as a former board member of my local american red cross chapter in minnesota i appreciate all the good work at the red cross does and certainly we're not here to point fingers but to work with you in a collaborative way and the other  organizations represented on the panels here today to do things better and to correct some mistakes that have been made obviously in a disaster an epic disaster of these proportions that nobody could totally and accurately make all contingency plans and we understand that but again we appreciate the cooperation we're trying to figure out how we can avoid some of the mistakes that were made how we can cut down and waste and fraud like we're trying to do as members of congress every day with respect to the federal government and i know the red cross is under pressure in a disaster like this under immense pressure to get cash out to people who who need it a said already distributed one point three billion dollars in cash at the same time it's discouraging to donors to read about cases where there is fraud or waste of money going to people who really aren't victimized who have minimal or little damage and i cited my opening statement to the experience in his hinds county mississippi in jackson mississippi which was written up in the new york times where initially all residents of the county were receiving cash assistance and then at mid course i understand the red cross corrected the poller change the policy so as damage assessments were required  before the residents of that county could receive cash for first of all and i understand hurricane like that there are too many assurance adjusters or others around to make those kind of assessments preliminary to getting a cash assistance which is usually eminently needed and desperately needed how is that if at all is the red cross changing its policy can consistent with what happened and hinds county mississippi a policy has always been that we give financial assistance to families who have verified disaster caused needs major or destroyed homes in essence and it's our constant tension in the earliest days of katrina was wanting to get that assistance in victim's hands as quickly as we could based on what data we had and so initially we had some counties that we knew were obviously totally destroyed and then beyond that we waited we constantly refined that data as our assessment teams were able to we would lean on fim as data with their overhead satellite imagery and what we did was constantly change the zip codes that we knew everybody in those zip codes had damage then we had other zip codes that no i think we need a home visit here in a traditional disaster we do go str street house to house with our volunteers in a disaster the size of great britain which st diego down first so we relied on macro data in those earliest weeks and then as our on the ground  assessment did come back in and we had the data particularly hinds county we were able to then refine the data and change our zip code a list of who we are giving assistance to we felt like we had a system that yes if you wanted to in some ways defraud the system we might not catch it in the earliest days but when the data was entered we divan surely find out who you were and we've had a large fraud team focused on how many people got assistance double dipped honest went to more than one place or how many people defrauded the system i can quantify that for you at this point out of the one point two million or so families that we gave assistance to we've identified about four thousand families that we are now going back and working with and so far we've recovered over a million dollars from people who have given this the money back we've had wonderful cooperation with the f b i and with local prosecutors who have lowered the dollar threshold that we would prosecute to allow us to prosecute people who defrauded the red cross and the people that gave us the money to give out you mention the number of families mr becker of the one point three billion in cash assistance has been handed out can you quantify how much in your judgment went to fraud fraudulent claims about four thousand families and about an average of a thousand dollars a family four thousand families at about a thousand dollars family well again i thank you  davies i want to ask you a question if i may you make quite an indictment in your testimony and in your remarks today say that for three weeks after hurricane katrina there was no coherent way for relief organizations to coordinate their efforts who in your judgment is responsible for this amazing failure i'm not you're the situation was so overwhelming that it didn't it would have been terribly difficult the frustration of this this is a situation is that we had invited the international rescue committee to come to baton rouge and they deployed for the first time in their history in the within the united states they normally serve overseas they worked in bond i checked we invited them to come to baton rouge because precisely because they had done some point relief work in banda i chain they understood the whole issue of of displaced people  relocation which we saw coming when they arrived within five days after the storm the head of their team of eleven told us in a briefing that the greatest issue we were going to have was to coordinate all the resources that were there  benefit the people and we knew that then and we still couldn't get it pulled together in till three weeks later and a fairly large meeting in our office where finally the state determined to develop a central core nation cent called the family recovery recovery corporation and that was intended to be the central place to which services would be for vied to displaced people and we all know that fema is an adequate response initially  an adequate response to this effect the response of the charities on the ground it may have been a contributing factor i think the enormity of the situation we had so many international groups who'd come to louisiana for the first time we had obviously the red cross and salvation army we had world vision mercy corps save the children international rescue we had many many groups who never worked in louisiana before didn't know our organizations didn't know our the structure of our government they also didn't understand we didn't understand them and their roles i think the nature of relief work at this point at the shelter is chaotic but the chaos should not have been at the level it was when  finally major hawks a question thank you mr davies may be harsh i was surprised to learn in the context of preparing for this hearing that the salvation army is not named in the national response plan i was more than surprised or shocked and of course therefore the salvation army was excluded from bodies in which it could have helped coordinate the response to katrina as a salvation army applied or to become a support agency in the national response plan or do you see that as being desirous to hear and consistent with your goal your mission your other yes mr chairman the salvation army has expressed an interest in being a support agency and the reason that's important to the salvation army is in part because the state as well as the county and the parishes all adopt adopt their local emergency management plans using the federal plan as the model and so with if we're not listed as you've indicated then often we're not included we're included in the voluntary organizations active in disaster in that grouping though and again i thank you for and all of the officers members able to meet many of the charitable need far to reach community just on like everyone everybody was just doing the best they could what happened it was it was unbelievable it was unreal two to answer the last part of your question first mr lewis anything put in place sure i think the what we saw what we see is the most direct response to some of the lessons learned that we and others identified from nine eleven was this effort to have across the coordinated assistance network because it's just something which is designed it's a web based system is designed to help keep track of people so that both people and services so that one thing that happened in nine eleven is survivors had to keep telling their stories over and over again to different organizations and the coordinated assistance next group is supposed to help so once an individual gives information then and signs a waiver privacy waiver than the other charities that share that network can access the information and know something about the individual also the purpose of that network is is probably the most concrete development that's occurred since nine eleven at the same time your comment that i do do and i through the red cross can explain due to some of their policy they did not play shelters in areas where people happened to still be and part of what happened there particularly in places like mississippi is that local organizations stepped in churches and i think the salvation army will tell you they have a little bit more of a roaming kind of approach to things that made it easier for them to move into some areas and kind of fill in where others might not be so i think there's still an open question as to the overall coordination but there's no question that people were trying to fill in where they saw a need and we are i should also say that g a o has of broad set of studies going on this is the piece that deals with charities but we're also we're looking overall at the national response plan how effective how effectively it's been employ and in this situation  what changes if any might need to be made and of course charities are very important a very small piece in that whole picture and even within the emergency support function where the red cross has a lead of a share of the lead with fema so even in that situation there is a federal presence so yes i think there were some lessons learned but still in development and clearly there will be new lessons learned and already are i think from the situation and the fact is with katrina as with other disasters it's not over it's it's this situations are continuing to happen and we will continue to i think there's a distinction between the red cross and the primary role in the national response plan and the red cross as a service provider the role that we take in the national response plan has to do with how does the federal government resource states and what we do in our national response plan role is work at fema is resourcing center to receive recall yes from states and process those to the right federal organization to resource the state that's what we do as the e s f six primary agency that's a very different assignment than what the red cross does as a service provider and what the red cross does as a service provider is work with the salvation army catholic charities many partners to make sure the work gets done the quarterback in a disaster is the parish or county emergency manager and what we're doing in the earliest days of a disaster is making sure that we're we're coordinating on a local basis where do you have a kitchen where do we have a kitchen what church do we know of is feeding the worst thing we could do is set a kitchen down right next to a salvation army kitchen or next to a church kitchen so we're trying to coordinate that and on the county or parish level that's where that coordination happens all role is primary in e s f six doesn't mean that we are responsible for the red cross meeting all of the service delivery needs for feeding sheltering clothing distribution welfare inquiry it's to it's the coordinating role in resourcing states and then we work in partnership with other organizations to actually deliver the service that thank you very much   communication was was in its cream lead difficult maybe to be polite yet in your testimony i don't see much discussion about how we fix that so why don't you expand if you've got ideas you've been through what i guess seen you admit was not a stellar performance by the red cross as well as many other agencies how do we address that how do we how do we get over to clarify the question communication among the nonprofits and the response communications throughout i'm likening this to a battle zone and there's there's always going to be variables that happen in the field of battle critically important that someone take charge someone develops descried a g and someone passes the orders for execution throughout the ranks that seems like there was a tear it seems like from what i understand from the testimony already today that there was an enormous breakdown in that chain of command communication if in fact the chain of command even exists there are several aspects to that i would say the first one is  local relationships among all of the nonprofits that can bring value during a disaster not just the large national organizations but anybody the local food pantry the local crisis center anybody who can bring value when we form the coordinate assistance network it was done by the large national disaster organizations in the united way but the intent was that we would offer that to a community and it's not just the technology it's not just entering cases so that we can all see what we've done for the smith family the better benefit is that we all sit down in that community long before a disaster happens to carve out those roles a little bit more clearly the way a disaster sequences in the earliest days of a disaster what we're focused on is the lifesaving needs the shelter and the food there's a fairly small number of players if you will in that the salvation army and the american red cross and in a very large disaster such as this the faith community would respond as the disaster runs out and people start focus on now where am i going to live and how my going recover that's where the whole group of nonprofits comes together we've all been in the community long before the disaster hit we're going to be in the community after the disasters off the front page of the news how do we work together to do that if we wait till the middle of disaster to exchange business cards with each other we're off to a bad start the value of the chordate assistance network would be that we sit down ahead of time and form those relationships we as a group had received funding to preposition that network in six pilot communities around the country and we had just started to roll that out we received the funding in the spring we did it based on threats and interestingly new orleans was one of those six pilot communities that we chose and so we were off to a little bit better of a start in the new orleans area we now have can the cornices this network in over five hundred communities around the country i think long term it's not the technology it's the relationships among the leaders of the nonprofits to carve those roles out and clarify those expectations in advance but it cept that would confuses me i guess is that this seemed to escape everyone before this disaster happened i stepped the premise you just laid out that the progress maybe is being made but in the time i've got really remaining i guess i'll ask the same question in a slightly different manner to you that i asked to my colleague mr mccurry you know whether or not we want to point a finger at fema local government state government whether we want to point a finger at the collection of n g o s the collective assumption here is we did not do very well and a whole lot of people suffered mightily as a result is thinking of the national response plan is it broke so badly it can't be fixed and if your answer is no we can fix it how soon can we fix organizational view is that the national response plan needs to be seriously re examined and there are public policy issues in that as well but at its core what the national response plan all it does is outline how the federal government is going to resource the state when you really get down to it and it's predicated on when a county has a disaster or a parish that's bigger than it can handle it will turn to the state when a state has something bigger that can handle it will turn to the national response plan structure for that all disasters are local though they're all local and where we have to grow when the parish or county has its disaster plan we craft ahead of time this is where the red cross shelters are going to be these are the other shelters that might open in the community that's dictated typically in a plan if the question is asked what if it's bigger than that the answer on the local level is then we turn to the state where we turn to the feds i think what we need to reexamine on a local level is no what if it's bigger than that what are their local resources bring the faith community into the planning process bring the other non profits into the planning process because the response has to be people from the community first and so it's yes it's the national response plan needs to be reexamined but i think that's too easy for us at the local level to say oh that's the problem our organizations at the local level need to think about what if it's bigger than we can handle before we turn to the state who else in this community can bring value that needs to happen as well thank you mr chairman sure now recognizes the gentleman from north dakota  thank you mr chairman in one thousand nine hundred when the city of grand forks a city of about fifty thousand had a suffered a catastrophic flood the city was evacuated and we were literally years in recovery that was the worst thing we ever thought could happen until hurricane katrina and we saw that things can get the magnitude worse we are still very grateful for the roles played by both the red cross the salvation army and our own  responds and in recovery periods i am troubled however by anecdotal reports that things on the ground and not go as one might have hoped or expected and wondering about key lessons that have been learned as we try to address these issues in talking about coordination in grand forks we literally built a one stop some institutional multiroom and organizational coordinating entity that you will be further constructing and proving in light of what you've learned mr becker and the major hawks on a federal level fema has awarded a very significant grant to the national vote ad and of course the united methodist committee on relief to do th case work for the people going forward while that is being built and what's typical in a disaster each community or each county forms what generically you would call an unmet needs committee you see these all over florida from list last year storms and you're seeing these form in the mississippi go coast that would be the local political leaders the nonprofit leaders the faith community business leaders coming together to say how are we going to meet the longer term needs of these people that's where can was designed to work can was designed to when these people all come together how do they share that data various leaders step forward in communities to take that convening role and i don't think that can be dictated by a federal grant that's a recovery phase though i'm wondering if we can't have an entity that is probably located established for something like this i think quite clearly the there was coordination on the ground or in the relief phase of this organization did not meet what we think you expect and hope for and i'm wondering if you're building  something that will make you invent won't leave us institutionally improved going forward i would agree that that would be one of the key learnings going forward not so much for the recovery phase which is what the learning from nine eleven was how do you deal with the people in the recovery phase but in the emergency response phase those earliest weeks we presume that coordination happens on a local level because the the the key players the county emergency manager i would agree we need that federal level as well major to have insights and i think the the model that's in place nationally statewide as well as locally relates to the void structure of the volunteer organizations active in disaster where all of us as non profit organizations are a part of that that group there's a national group there's a state group there are county groups there are local groups and  thinking those are the those are the groups that need to be strengthened now and then to continue to to communicate right on up to the time of the disaster and throughout disaster now there are another a number of needs groups that have come from the katrina efforts and they all have different names depending on the communities they've all been given different names but the salvation army the american red cross and other organizations faith based organizations are all plugged into those those committees across the coast and involved in the recovery efforts i had of the red cross fall and i had a volunteer dispatched to go down there and worked work with the red cross and i left my personal cell phone number with theirs it's called she ran into problems she and called from down there but she called literally before she'd gotten to her apartment house back in fargo to tell me of her concern relative to lack of oversight management and lack of funds tracking as the client assistance cards were dispersed and this is kind of come up in some of the questions raised here but i was i literally had a constituent call and tell me that they'd be lines in front of the table and one individual claiming on behalf of the family and one line where two lines down was another individual claiming on behalf of the same family and this north dakota volunteer was said well that's not much we can do about that was sufficient information captured at the time of disbursement so that the f b i investigation in duplications the benefits in appropriately can now have a chance to work where we had power and infrastructure that data was captured where we didn't have infrastructure and we were handing out intake forms and entering the data in a remote location there was a period of time before that data got put in that was the comment that i made earlier where you might be able to in essence double dip on us but we know who you were eventually and that's a team independent of my team that has been working on that since then and that's what we did quantify to be about four thousand families that stood in line at one table and then went to another table or in some cases stood in line the community then went to another community this individual's in vat and rouge i think the that power throughout there right in baton rouge we did but we also to get it down the assistance out more quickly we we had a lot of organizations in places that we turned into in take centers and actually in baton rouge was the centralized data processing facility what we were balancing there was the speed of getting the assistance to people and the data and if we had to err we were going to err on the side of getting the assistance in people's hands feeling like if we had to we come back and knock on their door later to talk about the fact they got two checks from the red cross what we've gotten so far the four thousand number might grow but it's about three tenths of one percent fraud out of one point two million cases we that's how many we have so far  michael up a little bit more but anecdotally that was keeping me up at night and it was organizationally for us a risk that we took but we agreed to err on the side of speed this is the immediate emergency assistance before fema can get you your big check or before this is just to get you that next set of clothes or what you immediately need getting it five weeks later ten weeks later doesn't help and our our emphasis was on speed at that point and i'll be brief mr becker i think hit the nail on the head when he said this is not so much a failure of individuals it's a failure of lack of appropriate planning lack of adequate planning for example given the situation in the baton rouge area which is very similar to ours in my congressional district where the red cross simply was not prepared or able to take care of all the evacuees who were flooding into our areas so we called on the local always the director's office emergency prepared directors to call their friends and their acquaintances not just churches you keep using the faith but well you know the slot of the churches help but a lot of these people were just called on the phone by the always the directors they help what have you got that you can bring me well i've got a generator i've got this or that these were people responding the problem was there wasn't any planning for that at least that i could identify maybe there was on paper somewhere but the o e p director didn't seem to know it and the red cross didn't know it and famous or didn't know it so i think that's right we've got to and for whatever organizations choose to participate we've got to get a comprehensive plan to to prepare us for these kinds of contingencies and not some kind of mass disaster for example i think red cross salvation army united way the major charitable organizations and every community every community has some vestige of one or more of those in their communities in their counties or their parishes want to get with the o e p director and each parish and each and some representative of the journal organizations and plan ahead of time this is the first shelter to open in my parish at the local civic center and it can have up to five hundred people here if that's not enough then we'll have spot b as a shelter they can handle fifty people and if that's not enough we're going to have to send them north to the next parish or to sri for all the way to shreveport to the red cross shelter which is got a thousand or twelve hundred fifty hundred people in it he didn't send there didn't seem to be a plan in place like that and unfortunately the red cross when asked would just say sorry we can't help we've got our own problems and i'm sure they did but then you asked fame and fame and well you couldn't even get famous basically communications was terrible mr chairman you couldn't get through to baton rouge all the lines were blocked as they had electricity but they had no phones because the everything was so busy you couldn't get through i mean it was just chaos so if somebody whether it's famous or the lead organization in the national response plan somebody i think has got to sit down with these o e p directors who are by and large volunteers themselves they are not paid they have another job so they just volunteer in their parish or their community their county to do that somebody's got to take them to lunch spend a buck have a famous spend the bodice poor guy a lunch and go over with him just basic stuff if we have a disaster this is what we gotta do and i don't  gotta be a better way because people simply were not where of the plan and if there was a plan and the shelters just popped up plank goodness and finally i got tired of trying to get red cross to help  trying to get fame and help mr chairman and i and my staff said we're going to do this ourselves and we went community by community enlisting the sheriffs the mayors the always be directors and say we're going to handle this we're just going to get the food get the we don't have any cops we can't find any cots but we'll get mattresses and sheets and pillows and clothes and we did we just handled it but the should have been a better plan in place so thank you for your comments and all and thank you mr mccurry  doing now to help people that are coming in you mean with evacuees across the country right in places like atlanta houston a dollar's sandwich or some other place right now where we're between actually in the response and recovery mode i've never been in a disaster before where we spent four months in a response mode where we have a roving canteen still all across the gulf coast and at the same time in other communities we're coast case management with evacuees trying to get people back into homes and back into places with some semblance of normalcy so in over thirty states the salvation army is working with will initially in the response phase we emphasize providing food our roving canteens that i mentioned the seventy two canteens that were initially staged to come in they were staged in adjacent states they were staged in the in the northern parts of the gulf states and then there were almost two hundred more or two hundred total brought in to the area that's what we do really well during the time of response those canteens can provide up to five thousand meals per unit and we have a memorandum of understanding as with the southern baptist and other organizations that will just really just elevate our ability to to prepare food but collaborative way to address the shortcomings again thank you now we would call the third panel for today's hearing marcy roth executive director of the national spinal cord injury association we can go as we traditionally do from your right to left the chairs left or right so will begin with you mr bork off please ok thank you mr chairman thank you to the committee for inviting me  here i also was invited to testify after nine eleven and there's a lot of lessons that that that unfortunately the charities have learned from all of this let me tell you i'm the network up with the american institute of philanthropy and charity watchdog org and we're a charity watchdog group we've since one nine hundred ninety three we've been america's most independent watchdog of the accountability financial governance and promotional practices of charities are later great ratings a place to ask i'm not profit organizations financial performance are published in the charity rating guide and watchdog report and i utilized by thousands of conscientious donors across the nation as we brought out earlier americans responded quickly and generously with over two point five billion dollars of charitable aid for victims of hurricane katrina and rita and ip is pleased to report that the red cross has improved its fundraising performance in the aftermath of the recent hurricanes though it does need to be clear about its financial position position it has taken to heart many of them point lessons of nine eleven the re continues to be a financially efficient organization it receives an a minus grade from the american institute of philanthropy able to spend ninety percent of its total expenses on programs it's cost to raise one hundred dollars about as is twenty two dollars it's going to be a lot less pier for the current fiscal year period because of all the money they pay the millions they've raised in this disaster the red cross unlike nine eleven has honored donor attentions by not trying to raise money for one disaster and using it for another disaster or program certainly in this case with the magnitude of disaster they can't be accused of raising too much money because even a billion dollars when you divide it by the million families is only a thousand dollars per family so it's not a nine eleven situation at all we actually feel that the red cross may have gone overboard when it when it declared that it would not use money for given from one disaster from rita to help kids with katrina or to help katrina with  rita being in this case that we have so many overlapping victims and that the areas were devastated within weeks of each other is the same type as disaster i don't feel that the american public would mind if money given for katrina since that got more coverage and that was focused in new orleans if some of that money was made available to to rita i think rick ross has put himself in a difficult situation there and it would be a shame if the red cross does not have the funding to treat similar victims equally the red cross it did improve its accountability by announcing september ninth only a few weeks after katrina hit its two point two billion goal for providing emergency aid they certainly could could also offer they produce they were producing four times you know daily statistics on how many people they were helping how many meals they were served it would be more helpful if they would actually give you they were giving cumulative totals that they would give you how much they were helping right at that time so people would have an idea of how many people currently need needed help and also if they would say how much money they were spending not just the total number of meals or shelter stays we talked about the the coordinated assistance now worker can and ip is greatly disappointed that the charities were not able to get it together to implement a shared database i mean this is something that after nine eleven that i had written about just the emphasis we've gotta have this we have another major disaster and here we are four years later and we still don't have it it wasn't functional the you know it's so important because the information needs to be shared among the charities to prevent double dipping and allow for more equitable distribution of aid and based on our philanthropy some unnamed charities are not agreeing to sign on to the plan database the ip believes that can needs to disclose which charities are unwilling or unable to participate so that pressure from watchdogs and donors can help gain their participation this is something important another concern that we have is that the red cross is the ultimate brain and for charities the coca cola charities they were september twenty third they were able to raise seventy five percent of all the money raised this fall fell back to sixty five percent come come october six minute rick the salvation army it only raised about eighteen percent of the tao total of two hundred ninety five million but there's when we have a major scale disaster everybody should not just automatically give money to the red cross the beautiful one of the beautiful things about our sector is we have many different groups can help in many different ways and her particularly the local community groups that were able to get to places and help particular groups the minorities vietnamese so forth that we're not able to receive aid and we think that the red cross should reimburse some of these community groups that have incurred money to help people to read cross couldn't get to so if we have another disaster and we need community groups to help people they're going to know there's a chance we're going to get some of that money back and they're be more willing to put out money to help these people i have a concern about the bush clinton katrina fund the former presidents to put together they're probably the third largest provider largest fundraiser they've raised about one hundred ten million dollars they've been very quick at raising money but slow in deciding what to do with it not until december seventh over three months after katrina did apply for tax exempt based partnerships it's fine if they want to raise money for faith based groups but they need to tell the public so the public knows that's what it's for because not everybody wants to give to faith based groups also to they haven't announced since december seventh who is going to board this is something that donors need to know before they make a contribution they need to know who's going to be on the board and i don't you know it's a shame they would tell the public that the red cross even outside of a disaster uses terms to decide describe its disaster response fund they use terms such as empty running on fumes dangerously low and i have a problem with this because it doesn't reflect the complete financial position of the red cross they have you know here's a group with a two point two billion dollar in net assets saying they have no money in their disaster fund it doesn't mean that they don't have any other money available to use to or to disaster next irresponsibly saying if no money for disaster when there's another disaster they would not be prepared for it fortunately they do have money that is available for disaster so that what they need to do and all charities need to do is they need to say what their financial position is how much money it doesn't matter if it's board designated as a board can always undesignated if they have to so charities should also consider whether such claims undermine or international standing as a strong and powerful nation by creating a false appearance of weakness and vulnerability on the on our home front how are the people in iraq going to feel if we're saying if our main disaster group here says they don't have enough money to take care of people in an emergency i also want to say it is the reg that they brought up early about the red cross that that three tenths of a percent of of money lost but the red cross has lost some money through workers and volunteers stealing and that's something that should be brought up the chair would in fairness to the other members of the panel remind the witness of the five minute time rule which is a rule of the subcommittee so if you could wrap up ok just one one quick thing is i'm calling for all the charities to after to offer a six month report as the red cross did after disaster because the financial support reporting rules it may not be killed june fifteenth two thousand and seven before that the red cross required in other churches required to put the stuff out there also multi agency evaluations that will help make charities and others more aware of victims have been neglected or see for services and more some more serie services can be directed towards them thank you for your testimony mr ms ross please good afternoon chairman ramstad mr lewis committee members thank you for the opportunity to testify today my name is marcy ross i'm the executive director and c e o of the national spinal cord injury association the nation's oldest and largest civilian organization serving the needs of people with spinal cord injuries and diseases in our disaster relief efforts we have been working on behalf of all people with disabilities has submitted at twenty five to thirty percent of those affected on september thirteenth two thousand when i first became involved in addressing the urgent needs of new yorkers with disabilities who had survived the terrorist attacks two days earlier i was shocked when i discovered how ill prepared the disaster relief agencies were in the past four years i participated in efforts to better prepare for another emergency on the morning of august twenty ninth i was asked to help the know that to show who was quadriplegic she's been trying to evacuate from her new orleans home for three days but even calls to nine one one have been fruitless i stayed on the phone with her for most of the day trying to reassure her suddenly she told me with panic in her voice the water is rushing in and then we were disconnected i learned five days later that she had been found dead floating next to her wheelchair i'm here today to say some other difficult things after sharing some positive stories i will focus on the most beloved non profitable work of organizations of all the american red cross it's hard to criticize the red cross they do many good things but they have frequently failed to meet the needs of people with disabilities w simultaneously diverting resources from organizations addressing those unmet needs not only has this hurt people with disabilities and the organizations that serve them but it is also added an untold burden on taxpayers through costs associated with preventable secondary complications sadly the needs of people with disabilities have been overlooked by the general public and the media joe shapiro an n p r reporter was one of the few to report about people with disabilities thanks to a very generous donation from robert anita kline who katrina survivors with disabilities fund national spinal cord injury association is able to provide some direct assistance to the disability funders network is distributing five thousand dollars grants to meet and serve needs and the muslim public affairs council stepped in to get donated medical equipment and supplies distributed when none of the relief organizations would provide funds for this several of the international wheelchair distribution organizations also stepped in thanks to the salvation army funds were made available to assist some hurricane survivors who've been dumped into nursing homes while everyone else argued about who was responsible the salvation army provided funds to help survivors regain their independence in contrast many gulf coast residents with disabilities were excluded from red cross shelters and relief assistance services some were separated from caregivers and service animals and then sent to nursing homes when they couldn't maintain their independent people with disabilities were forced to remain on buses while everyone else was invited into certain shelters then they were driven for sometimes hundreds of miles before being taken in when disability experts showed up its shoulders to offer assistance they were frequently turned away one red cross official told me we are supposed to help these people the local health departments do that we can hardly deal with the intact people one woman was sent to a special needs shelter so overcrowded that she slept in her wheelchair for weeks ultimately this landed her in a hospital and then a nursing home after waiting all day in line residents of one red cross shelter were told to travel to another town to register but without excessive ill transportation those with mobility disabilities were unable to make the trip we tried to get experts into the shelters to assist people who couldn't hear announcements over loudspeakers couldn't read signs and forms people who needed medication people who didn't understand how to get food and water and people who couldn't stand in line because they'd lost their wheelchair or couldn't handle the heat one man had to drive to the hospital for weeks every time he wanted to go to the bathroom because the bathroom at the shelter was not wheelchair accessible most people told me they had not received any financial assistance from the red cross a few research received three hundred sixty dollars and while thousands are in need of funds to cover basic necessities sixty six million dollars in foreign donations were distributed by fema to nonprofit organizations but these can only be used to hire staff to train volunteers to provide case management we can even get to the tables were rebuilding decisions are being made by powerful housing nonprofit organizations and this will result in discrimination limited options and institutionalization for all of the planning that has gone on it seems that the needs of people with disabilities will remain unmet when the next disaster strikes however with your help not only can people with disabilities begin to trust their needs will be better met a future disasters taxpayers generous owners and the general public can rest assured that we are maximizing limited resources and minimizing said the needs of people with disabilities and the hope of visionary leadership haven't been lost i know you will invite your colleagues to join you in prioritizing the needs of hurricane survivors with disabilities as next steps are taken in summary let me recommend offices on disability need to be established within red cross the u s department of homeland security fema and in each of the federal members of the interagency coordinating council on emergency preparedness and people with disabilities they must all be staffed by disability experts and given authority to act congress needs to appoint an independent task force to focus on the disaster management needs of people with disabilities our office on disability at the u s department of health and human services needs more resources and more authority please do not compromise the hard won civil rights of people with disabilities so easily dismissed in a time of emergency it is in the notice memory and with great appreciation towards those who have worked tirelessly over the past fifteen weeks in the gulf states in washington in cyberspace and around the country that i close with the following proverb the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago the second best time ranking member louise and representative mccreary and all other members present thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify here today on this vital issue resources for independent living is the center that i represent i'm the executive director board independent living skills training in addition rail is one of the largest personal care attendant services organizations in the southeast region of louisiana i will discuss the services we provide outside of our normal operation scope of operation due to the catastrophe and the devastation the hurricane katrina if we came so apparent days after landfall that our center services were transformed by the overwhelming unmet needs identified by individual disability although the shelters provided housing and food for individuals with disabilities we had to step in and fill the gaps in filling the gap will deliver durable medical equipment and transport a consumer to sites where they could receive other social services such as food stamps so security disbursements unemployment information and benefits in addition we also provided clothing adapted adapted sensibly qui food packages exaggerated to consumers within the shelter hours been identified the media needs of the consumer and we respond our jobs were made more challenging gentleman by the lack of us at the village and the shelves it is disconcerting that decades at the section five zero four was bad access to shelters which in many cases operated by organizations that are recipients of federal funding remains at best problematic that's ability is not only defined in the ability to get physical to physically get into a building but also by the ability to meet the basic living needs of persons with limited mobility and preparation of people for people with disabilities an event of a disaster according to the national council disability of the four hundred eighty four thousand residents in new orleans before hurricane hurricane katrina twenty three percent of those individuals were people with disability charities such as the ray kroc need to find a way to obtain expertise about the needs of persons with disabilities and must develop and implement disaster response plans to visit to address the needs of the vis a vis able community in order to respond in a way that meets the needs of the persons with disabilities the ray kroc needs to rethink is operating principle increasingly the disabled community operates based on an independent living philosophy that promotes maximizing independent and maximizing individual control over their own lives and support networks starting in setting that or as close to fully integrating as possible for them or the red cross and other charities need to embrace the element of independent living philosophy many persons with disability have pet and working d caregivers and assistive technology charities must of must must develop procedures to provide reasonable comedy asians and work with the disability community to ensure their volunteers a well versed in the policy problems  third gaps countered encountered by people with disabilities in shelters operated by charities including the red cross the red cross shelters were not equipped with interpretive they were not equipped the material of services specific to their needs staff and volunteers did not have the skills training and knowledge to work with the disabled munity the staff and our volunteers did not perform basic needs assessment to determine the type of disability individual pay to determine if to consume with had adequate medication on hand or to took to determine if consumed with was on a restricted diet individual often denied entry into shelters if they had a service animal are significant debt adaptive equipment or separated from their families and caregivers in a process of obtaining shelter and placed into institutions recommended to go into institution problems that my organization experience representatives mccreary i understand what you are going through because i was on the ground as well and it was very very difficult gentleman for us to get in and then also to respond which sought notice planning is very vital and we need to be at the table with everyone and we need to know because the second wave that's coming generally is the next hurricane season we have to be prepared we have to be writing all of us have to be on a same page referral referrals to free referrals to consumers of consumers by fema to our organization  interesting that our organization was was a referral base for thema and we took the call to individual disability and we had a loss of power our office was was it was trauma that hit from the hurricane as well but we had to do we had to do to restock respond to the community we don't have the resources that organizations like salvation army or the red cross may have but we did the best that we could do in light of we know that the recall and other charities are operated by individuals with the contained who want to do the right thing however substantial reform is needed in the way that these agencies deliver their services and operate their shelters to ensure that persons with disabilities already caught up in the tragic circumstances of a natural disaster such as a hurricane katrina do not have the tragedy compound it by avoidable human error  feel very fortunate to sit at this table with great colleagues i've heard a lot of the testimony through the whole committee today there are some things that i would like to tell you up front i did wrong or my kept talking about went right where didn't go right all the time i ran a shelter that had twenty seven buyout turns seventy thousand square feet the largest contingency at night i had was a little over fourteen hundred i don't know how many thousands went through the shelter my biggest problem is in preparing to come here and doing interviews with the recall so we pay the mayor's staff and everybody that was involved in our shelter some things came to light and i want to share with you one i was pretty shocked to believe that the red cross information is the reason it took them seven days to start feeding the people at century tale was they were allowing the faith based community to do what they could when i asked the question are you telling me the idea of red cross is to let all the good charitable p we'll do the best they can and when we exhaust that then you step forward was devastated me which meant when red cross closed their last shelter i still have people in hotel rooms i still have all the people who came forward and helped us at the beginning who have depleted their funds now and now according to statistically those shelters are closing those needs are not met i was shocked to know when they tell me oh we could start feeding them the first day really no one was there we called on the churches who fed him for seven days we got caught from red cross only to find out th general motors bought on the point i'm trying to make is we ran into some logistical problems running a shelter i had never run a shelter but i can tell you when i took over the shelter i thought it was the worst assignment that vera had ten days later i would  broke every federal rule ever was getting the man finally gave up the dogs because the dog was as scared as he was in a room with five hundred people getting into are allowed to bring bibles and i stopped that they came in they don't like the idea  a catholic service we did we had my aunts we had a protestant service we had a we had a means we did what that community needed we had fourteen hundred of our neighbors from the south scared henri and lonely that's wh we had it was real hard working with these people when you were doing everything you could twenty four seven and then to find out after the fact things broke down and the truth of the matter is congressman threw it away we started for age but the only person we could get to to get communications statewide for us was congressman rogers office in hand and for him we to really get in trouble some of the things that bother us as they were talking about here is when you have a national organization such as the red cross or anyone else you've got to be able to be flexible enough to adapt to the people's needs such as the philadelphia house was stopped from coming in to the patients that's in sign those types of things we corrected as we found them but the problem is when you come back and say we had a full tree aaj at our place we had  had we could have all comair of course fail they tell me all we can do about it and i said why didn't you provide medical help when you didn't need it in fact when they called and said we have medical help available to you i turned it down i relieve some of that and your answer is we need to involve the community more with community was involved and i have to tell you we made a long distance i can tell you i've learned from it i heard a lot of questions asked today and i'm going to close very quickly with this we're in the process of constructing a fifty five hundred fifty foot structure that will house three to four hundred cots betty clothing water everything necessary for three to five days because in bowser we know one time we're not on the hill for three to five days we don't own it we don't get it about the first six wheelchairs for centuries before central jail close i gave us fifty all we need so it's a matter of organizing and putting a leader in charge and i believe you have to come up with whoever the first person is the step up and say i'm in charge right or wrong it all goes through me and that way everybody can coordinate those activities you know where to get the wheelchair the very blindly and that was there i had to mail him his cane ten days later i put him on an airplane to his brother but i got the i got the state to name for the where she could touch animals and feel safe i had a down syndrome man that i couldn't place in a nursing home because the caretaking mother who was seventy five and his brother which was four years older qualified so we and we're all going to work with this person and if you know we're going to do we don't it's for that because we can't afford ever have a tragedy like this half again with that i'm sorry and over thank you for all thank you mr wyatt it's obvious to the chair that the good people are city louisiana are well served by their homeland security director and thank you for your very compelling testimony when i ask you a couple questions ms ross i know in working with you  venues i know it's co chair of the bipartisan disability caucus for example we held a hearing on some of these and i know you've been involved since september eleventh since the terrorist attacks of september eleventh you've been involved in helping prepare disaster relief agencies meet the needs of people with disabilities but i think everybody was shocked to hear some of the horror stories that happened to people with disabilities and who are hurricane victims who are evacuees was the problem the lack of a plan in place for charities to meet the needs of people in this building or was the plan just not fall i think the problem is very simply lack of leadership outside of the disability community and lack of access within the disability community there's been a tremendous amount of planning the disability community has done a wonderful job of planning for the disaster related needs of people with disabilities but we've been ex clued again and again from the the general relief agencies we've been executed from the opportunity to give our expertise to give our knowledge to those folks that's why we're calling for offices on disability in a place we can and as i think you said so eloquently if somebody steps up and says i'm in charge everybody else darn well better start listening to them disability experts can take charge we're happy to take charge we understand other people don't quite get it but we need to be in a position to be able to step up and hopefully one of the results of today's hearing will be to include people at this building your organizations those of you who represent people disabilities including all the planning for natural disasters and other emergency situations because there must be better prepared as delivery of services to the disabled community and you need to be part of that organization does to provide people with disabilities to allow them to enjoy the dignity of independent living which is so essential to all of us and i just want to ask one of the purposes of this hearing as i said at the outset was to ensure that people in this building these other under served groups are not neglected when the next large disaster strikes what recommendations would you make to charities to ensure better preparedness and delivery of services to the disabled what specific recommendations would you make that we definitely have to be at the table at the planning development in most importantly implementation i think the crucial point is that we need to be organizations and concerning people disabilities and had either of your organizations been consulted prior to katrina or rita as to emergency preparedness for people with disabilities for example how essential access to these shelters is access to the bathrooms within the shelters and other basic questions that affect so directly people disabilities had either the organizations been contacted or consulted my organization has has tried to force its way in wherever we can but we very rarely have been invited even now we're very rarely invited to the table almost never stars we were not invited most importantly i'd like for you guys to understand that when we went to the shelters to get in and identified ourselves we were denied access we had to get very creative to get in because we knew it was vital to get in and once we got in and the volunteers and the staff members understood what we were doing then we were welcomed back continue with we did good people to shelter the officials in charge have a handle they have a directory of people with disabilities in the living in the shelter know so they really didn't have much that one of the problems that we had was then they did not capture information in the first two or three weeks so when we would go back a consumer they weren't banned we don't know where they went so that's very frustrating for us because we know what their needs were and we knew that we needed to get to them so there was no information we were even told that we cannot come in it's confiden and we understand confidential information but we only wanted to get in just to assess their needs and to meet their needs well and this invitation goes to all four members of panel and everybody in this country if there are federal regulations mr y you cited alluded to some that were just nonsensical in terms of this disaster situation and the problems you encountered make make us aware of those submit those if you will so that we can address them here in the congress mr wyatt one thing was brought up earlier and i think would be a good start is we started rich people for across we had no system we took my probation department in the organizational structuring following a person once they've hit a shelter is critical for their money supply it's one of the things that we're fearful for us was when they might decide they would give everyone a two thousand dollars was going to be chaos well again thank you mr white again the chair would just reiterate we are in here is saturday or as monday morning quarterbacks or i guess more exactly tuesday afternoon quarterbacks to point fingers we're here to make sure we identify the problems and that we all work together in a collaborative way so that when the next disaster strikes we don't have a recurrence of  these problems they don't keep resurfacing and victimizing people over and over again and certainly any emergency plans a preparedness an emergency preparedness so warrants the participation of the national spinal cord injury association on behalf of people disabilities warrants the inclusion of resources for independent living your gonna zation as our the national multiple sclerosis society and the disabled veterans on and on with the respective organizations representing people this builds so i hope this a last time you're excluded from planning because the people of america people at this abilities in this country deserve better but you're right now i recognize the distinguish ranking believe the stories to tell them you've been very very moving how is decision made to when a group of people came in and people was placed on planes and buses i've heard people say well a seventy going someplace and we end up in atlanta i end up in minnesota i end up in a state of washington i don't know how was that did it put people with disabilities own plane one of the biggest problems we had was we would get a call that b three buses come in from latvia and we never know when they left who was on them what care they needed and when they were going to arrive after a day or two the frustration of having that we would stop when they tell us like there's a bus come say stop is there anyone on that bus with a cell phone give them our number so we can talk and then to find out what they need and what you care whether they were amatory did they need to go to special needs hospitals which we had a bible but usually you're absolutely right congressman they would show up unannounced i got two buses brought to me about the black panthers in the middle of the afternoon from that have been abandoned to buses that the bus drivers actually ran away was not available and that's what we were needing we were needing somebody step up to the leadership we're going to look over famous we're going to look at red cross we're going to go for salvation army and we're going to guide these things to you we never need so we had to keep doctors round the clock because we didn't know what was walking in the back door where it would be a lot better to be able to place them on call the call back in thirty minutes you're absolutely right great question congressman lewis in regard to our consumers prior to this made contact and our toll free number was up and running they they made contact with us we were told that we were to mention we were we were sent to arkansas we were to alabama why  i don't know why they you know we went over to the red cross shelter and we were at the shelter and they told us ok here's a bus you have to go or they didn't you know this is the one they left the superdome this is the shelter they took them to it was not a decision th they had no idea where they were going they had no idea they were going to be in they had no idea where they were going to be and what we've done to get about this continued to serve them we could not stop serving them so we continue to serve them in with a spinal cord injury arrived at the airport in chicago no plans have been made for him nobody knew he was coming and he was he was about to be sent to a nursing home when folks at the center for independent living in chicago  accept living somebody gave them heads up about the situation they stepped in and one of the staff members came picked up the guy he moved into their house and they were able to to to save him from from being placed in a nursing home there were stories like this across the country also i just i want to add in in response to the issues about the law it's very important that at the same time that we're having these discussions you know there's a there's a piece of pending legislation that's been introduced several times that would require ninety days notification if someone were going to sue the under the americans with disabilities act and it's really important to us to point out that if this is a classic example of if people first had to give notice of of of a need for excess ability ninety days would be a horrible burden for anyone making working with you and your organizations and you're also would like to thank the members of the audience for your interest and for being here today and after seeing no further business before the subcommittee the hearing