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S. Hrg. 113–533 

FIFTY YEARS SINCE THE GREAT ALASKA 

EARTHQUAKE: THE ROLE OF FIRST RESPONDERS 

IN CATASTROPHIC DISASTER PLANNING 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY 

MANAGEMENT, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS, 

AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

FIELD HEARING IN ANCHORAGE, ALASKA 

APRIL 4, 2014 

Available via http://www.fdsys.gov 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

and Governmental Affairs 

( 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

GABRIELLE A. BATKIN, Staff Director 

KEITH B. ASHDOWN, Minority Staff Director 

LAURA W. KILBRIDE, Chief Clerk 

LAUREN M. CORCORAN, Hearing Clerk 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, INTERGOVERNMENTAL 

RELATIONS, AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

JON TESTER, Montana 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

PAT MCQUILLAN, Staff Director 

BRANDON BOOKER, Minority Staff Director 

KELSEY STROUD, Chief Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statement: Page 

Senator Begich .................................................................................................. 1 

WITNESSES 

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014 

Hon. W. Craig Fugate, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency ........................................................................................................................... 4

John W. Madden, Director, Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management .............................................................................................. 6 

George Keeney, Fire Chief, Valdez Fire Department ........................................... 15 

Victor Joseph, President and Chairman, Tanana Chiefs Conference ................. 18 

Danita Koehler, MD, Chair, Rural Committee, National Association of Emergency Medical Services Physicians ..................................................................... 20 

Victor Joseph, President and Chairman, Tanana Chiefs Conference .................

Michael K. Abbott, Assistant Superintendent, Anchorage School District ......... 24 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Abbott, Michael K.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 24 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 54 

Fugate, Hon. W. Craig: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 4 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 29 

Joseph, Victor: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 18 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 44 

Keeney, George: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 15 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 42 

Koehler, Danita, MD: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 20 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 50 

Madden, John W.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 38 

(1) 

FIFTY YEARS SINCE THE GREAT ALASKA 

EARTHQUAKE: THE ROLE OF FIRST 

RESPONDERS IN CATASTROPHIC DISASTER 

PLANNING 

APRIL 4, 2014 

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT,

INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS,

AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BEGICH 

Chairman BEGICH. Good afternoon, let me go ahead and call the 

meeting to order. I want to welcome you all here. This is the Subcommittee of Emergency Management, Intergovernmental Relations and the District of Columbia. Obviously, we are not going to 

be talking about the District of Columbia today. 

Most of our witnesses today are Alaskans, but I want to welcome 

to our State for his first time Federal Emergency Management 

Agency (FEMA) Administrator Craig Fugate. We really thank you 

for being here. He has had already a quick whirlwind tour of Alaska. 

We have taken him out to the Valley and saw some activity out 

there, met with some tribal community leaders and after today, he 

will literally be on a plane in a few hours to Washington State for 

the disaster that they are experiencing there with the mud slides. 

So we thank him for taking his time out here. We know it is a long 

trip from Washington to be here and his job requires him to travel 

quite a bit. So thank you very much for being here. 

We are meeting here today just a week after communities around 

Alaska marked the solemn anniversary of ‘‘The Great Alaska 

Earthquake’’. It has been 50 years since the 9.2 magnitude quake 

centered 75 miles east of Anchorage and rocked our State. The 

quake also triggered tsunamis inundating our coastal villages. 

Happening only a few years after Alaska became a State, our entire focus on how to respond to and recover from disasters has been 

shaped by the earthquake. The lessons we learned have had a big 

impact on how our State has developed and how we continue to 

plan for disasters. 

In 1964, Alaska was a young State with a population of about 

225,000. Since then, we have more than tripled our number and 
2 

our economy has grown significantly and the State’s tremendous 

and critical resources like oil and gas, as well as our military strategic location. 

I can remember, I was only two during the earthquake, but it 

was stories afterwards, because for the younger students here, in 

those days, we did not have DVDs, digital cameras. We had slide 

shows. So we had slides and some of the folks that are my age 

might we remember this you would get a carousel of slides and you 

would show them and all of your trips and I remember growing up 

seeing the earthquake. 

In our house, I lived in east Anchorage, and the only thing that 

broke: we had these three swinging lights that went back and forth 

and smacked into each other and that’s only because we were on 

gravel soil, but I saw these incredible photos of Turnagain Arm and 

what happened in Valdez, which I know we will hear something 

about here and what Valdez is doing on preparedness, but it is an 

amazing—I can still remember Penney’s, for those that go downtown at all, the Penney’s side that faces the garage that faces the 

store had just peeled right off. The side of the Penney’s store just 

peeled right off like a piece of paper coming off of it because the 

earthquake was damaging, but it was incredible to see that and 

where we look back now, the impressive growth over the last 50 

years, an achievement related to all Alaskans, that should be proud 

of, but it does raise the stakes of disaster much higher, because we 

have more to protect and more to be prepared for. 

With additional important infrastructure and assets, there’s additional stress on local and State capacity to assess our 

vulnerabilities and plan to respond to disasters. First responders, 

the police, fire fighters and medical personnel, who are essential to 

any successful response are vital assets. 

They have worked hard over the years to plan and equip themselves to respond to many potential threats to our State and one 

of the best ways, the local, State and tribal and Federal first responders can test their capabilities they have built over the years 

without a real-world catastrophic disaster is by participating in exercises. In addition, the role of an educated engaged public has 

been critical in successful disaster response. 

Later today, we will hear about schools, what schools are planning for disasters, as well as discuss the recent responses to flooding in Galena and in the incident in Valdez with regard to the avalanche. 

This past week, the State, Federal, tribal and local emergency 

management officials came together during a recent Alaska Shield 

exercise, which recreated the massive 1964 earthquake. Preventing 

loss of life is the most important goal, but we must also make sure 

families and communities have the resources they need to recover. 

Failure to provide those resources has the potential for devastating long-term effects on the economic, cultural and social fabric of our State. Our communities faced this very issue last spring 

when flooding along the Yukon forced citizens to evacuate hundreds of miles away to Fairbanks. 

Assuring that all families who wanted to return to their homes 

were able to was not just an effort to keep the community intact, 
3 

it was an effort to assure jobs were not lost, schools were not empty 

and homes were not abandoned. 

Alaskans are tough and independent people, but we know the 

strength of our communities is the most important asset, both before and after a disaster. Assistance from external organizations 

may arrive in communities in the Lower 48 within a matter of 

hours after a disaster. Alaska’s vast geography and the transportation challenges mean that many Alaskans must be prepared to 

cope for days without significant Federal assistance. 

This reality means smart planning. Involving all members of the 

community is essential. Our communities do not have the room for 

error that those in the Lower 48 may have and I am glad that our 

witnesses for today’s hearing represent the diverse collection of 

these communities. 

Response leaders, State emergency management leaders, tribal 

organizations, local fire officials, emergency medical services (EMS) 

professionals and school administrators all play a critical role in 

community preparedness. They are all looked to and relied upon to 

support swift response and recovery efforts. I thank each of you for 

your hard work you have already done to prepare our communities 

and to respond to past disasters. 

While predicting catastrophic disasters like earthquakes is nearly impossible, planning for the aftermath must continue to be a priority for all members of a first responder community. 

I am encouraged by the work our emergency response officials 

are currently doing and I look forward to examining the FEMA 

uses and the lessons learned from Alaska’s Shield to support this 

planning from the Federal level. 

I hope the exercise and Administrator Fugate’s trip have highlighted the economic, transportation, communication and cultural 

realities that make Alaska the great State that it is. I will continue 

to urge FEMA to recognize the unique needs that may not fit neatly into existing policy boxes and to increase its adaptability to 

States like ours. 

Just as we did after the 1964 earthquake, Alaska will keep moving forward. We will keep learning, keep improving and we will 

emerge better prepared to plan for and respond to any disasters 

that may occur in our great State. 

So let me go ahead and again recognize our panels. We have two 

panels. The way this will work today, and we thank you very much 

again to all the panels that are participating. I will ask the first 

panel over here to each give their testimony. I will do a few questions and then I will ask the second panel to do their testimony, 

ask a few questions and then, the way I have done these before is 

there may be a little crisscross; I may hear something over here 

that I want to ask this panel or vice versa. 

It is a formal field hearing, but I try to keep it a little more relaxed in the sense of how we are trying to do this because I think 

it is an opportunity for all of us to learn and improve, especially 

around the issues of catastrophic disaster planning. 

So let me now start with Administrator Craig Fugate, who’s the 

Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency with 

the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Administrator. 
4 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Fugate appears in the Appendix on page 29. 

TESTIMONY OF CRAIG FUGATE,1 ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL 

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF 

HOMELAND SECURITY 

Mr. FUGATE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the other thing we 

normally do at these hearings is that we have these long written 

testimony. So I will formally ask Mr. Chairman to accept my written testimony and we will not read that verbatim. 

Chairman BEGICH. Without objection. 

Mr. FUGATE. Alaska may be one of the youngest States, but you 

joined a particular form of government, is how some people describe it, and I am pretty sure, Senator, if I go to most any Governor, to any senator and talk about their State, there’s always 

something unique about their State that you have to factor in. And 

for those of you that didn’t really pay too much attention in your 

civics class, what’s unique about the United States is we are just 

that, we are not a national government. 

We are a Federal Government, where our constitution said those 

powers not reserved to the Federal Government belong to the 

States and the people and part of that is the ability and responsibility and the authority that is arised from each State’s constitution by how they govern themselves in disasters and where those 

emergency powers come from and each State based it upon their 

history, their needs and in some cases, their history of dealing with 

disasters. 

So when people look to Washington, DC. sometimes for one-size 

fits all answers to problems, that’s not how our government’s established. It has to recognize that each State is unique; each State is 

different and that our Federal form of government recognized that, 

that it could not be just a national government where all decisions 

can be made in D.C. 

We are a representative government where we elect our senators 

and our representatives to help govern, but this is also the basis 

of our disaster model. The Federal Government’s not in charge. A 

lot of times, the national media, when there’s a disaster, you see 

FEMA and people think, ‘‘Well, FEMA’s in charge.’’ We are not in 

charge. The Governor and the State constitution and those authorities vested in local officials, they are the ones managing that response. They are the ones that are leading it. 

Our job at the Federal Government is to support that. We do not 

come in to take over. Our job is to support, but we also have to 

be cautious and recognize that you, as taxpayers, expect this to be 

a shared responsibility, a responsibility that locals and States also 

share, including funding for. 

So we also try to make sure that we support, but not supplant 

local and State responsibilities, and the more complex the disaster, 

the lines get blurred. So we have also learned that we can not wait 

until it is so bad and overwhelms a State before the Federal Government gets ready or begins to prepare. 

We work together as one team, but we have to understand, our 

job at the Federal level is not that we are going to come in and 

take over. Well, first of all, we would not even know what to do 

when we got here in many cases. 
5 

Our job is to come in and support the Governor and their team 

and work with the local officials, and this can be very expensive. 

Your Senator is part of one of the more substantial changes to how 

we fund disasters. Previously, we had to go get additional funds 

every time there’s a disaster because we barely had enough money 

to operate. This could disrupt previous disasters, and it meant that 

there could be delays in response waiting for money to come in. 

Congress has taken a different approach over the last couple of 

years and they have fully funded what many people you talk about 

disaster response, there’s a fund. It is the Disaster Relief Fund 

(DRF). It is very unique in that it is funded, not only for disasters 

we have, but it is also the funding for the disasters that occur 

every day in this country and to make sure we have enough funds 

to respond to that no-notice earthquake, that catastrophic event. 

That funding allowed us to respond to Hurricane Sandy 2 years 

ago without having to shut down every other disaster we were 

working on and it gave Congress time to deliberate and find additional funds for the full recovery, but it is that shared responsibility that as a Nation, we come together to support States in disasters. 

Our primary mechanism for doing that are those funds which the 

Senator has been part of; is ensuring that those funds are there. 

But our job at FEMA is to coordinate on behalf of the Governor’s 

request, the Federal resources and Federal support that they need 

to respond to, but also recover from disasters. 

So those people that think that somehow FEMA’s in charge and 

FEMA does everything, we only do it as part of a team and we do 

it through support of the Governor’s team to the local officials. Sir. 

Chairman BEGICH. Thank you very much. Let me now introduce 

John Madden, Director of Alaska Division of Homeland Security 

and Emergency Management, Alaska Department of Military and 

Veteran Affairs, but also, John, you just finished and did your term 

just end, is that right? 

Mr. MADDEN. Yes, it did. 

Chairman BEGICH. It’s the National Chair of all the emergency 

managers. 

Mr. MADDEN. There are people within my position in every State. 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. MADDEN. And it’s the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA), of which I just finished a year as their President. 

Chairman BEGICH. And let me just say, before you do your testimony to the group here, and just in general, you have been to my 

committee in D.C. more than once and other opportunities, not only 

representing Alaska, but on the national end, and for Alaska to 

have a national representative is just a real plus. So thank you for 

your work you have done there and thank you for kind of—I know 

you represent the national net, but I always knew when you were 

there, we are going to be talking about Alaska issues, so thank you 

for kind of having dual hats at those meetings I had. 

Mr. MADDEN. Well, thank you, sir. It is very widely known within the Nation that if you can get something to work in Alaska, you 

can get it to work anywhere. 
6 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Madden appears in the Appendix on page 38. 

Chairman BEGICH. There we go. That is the motto, if you can do 

it in Alaska, you can do it anywhere. 

TESTIMONY OF JOHN W. MADDEN,1 DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT 

Mr. MADDEN. And that’s why it Is a good opportunity for us to 

address this topic; not only of the first responder, but the second 

responder and then jobs I call the sustaining responder and probably the restoring responder. 

This nation and my State has a proud history and the heritage 

of our citizens stepping forward and being organized for swift response with the hazards we face, but through the years, we have 

learned some very hard lessons. If we wait to respond, then our 

people suffer and our priority and our property is laid waste, but 

this approach for the good of the Nation is fading away and new 

approaches are coming forward to prepare for the inevitable and 

even the unpredictable events that come before us. 

The traditional perceptions of first responder are the fire fighter, 

the police officer, the emergency medical provider, but our society 

and economy are becoming increasingly more complex. So we must 

add others to that; the electrical linemen, the transportation providers, the logisticians and others, as well as our community leaders, but even with this expanded enterprise, we cannot meet the 

extreme needs of the public just by the acts of heroic individuals, 

nor can we isolate or have random acts of response that cannot 

serve the greater needs. 

First responders do not stand alone. So we believe in this State 

that our system supporting them could not be. We need the systems to support the first responder through training, equipment, 

sustainment, planning and exercises. For an example, we in Alaska 

have formed several task forces in peacetime that we anticipate 

needing and using in the disaster in which will enhance the first 

responder. 

Medical and health, housing and shelter, energy, transportation; 

these standing forces study the likely consequences and try to solve 

the problems before they come about and as you said in your opening remarks, sir, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1964 

earthquake, we just finished the largest, most complex exercise our 

State has—or ever designed, the Alaska Shield and in this exercise, 

we recreated the geology of 1964, but we placed it in today’s built 

environment, today’s technology, today’s supply lines. And we tested our plans, and stressed our partnerships, and challenged our assumptions. 

We rigorously tested the concept of the dual status commander 

where a general officer of the Alaska National Guard is empowered 

by both the Governor and the President to command Guard and active duty troops, and their missions they received during this exercise far exceeded the capabilities of either one or the other and 

could only be done jointly. 

So with this definition and the role of the first responder, it must 

expand to include those who lead our communities in our State. In 

this exercise, Governor Parnell was a first responder when within 
7 

minutes of the event, he gave me clear direction and set the priorities for the State. 

Major General Katkus, the Adjutant General, was a first responder when he coordinated the integration of all the active components with the Secretary of Defense. My operations team members were first responders when they deployed across the State to 

serve at the side of mayors and city managers and giving them 

counsel and support. 

Brigadier General Wenke, the dual status commander, was a 

first responder as he shaped the readiness and effectiveness of all 

of the uniformed forces within our State. The members of the 

FEMA Alaska area office were first responders, as they supported 

the State in the early hours as the vanguard of the Nation rising 

up to support the State. 

Lieutenant General Handy of the Alaskan Command and Major 

General Shields were the first responders when we worked to create better methods on the fly to integrate our missions. 

We strive toward the day when every Alaskan and every American when asked their role in an emergency will answer with pride, 

‘‘I am a first responder,’’ and that they contribute through learning 

CPR and first aid, building an emergency kit, a commitment to 

help their neighbors when they cannot help themselves and the 

first responder. Whether in the biggest of our cities or the most remote of our wilderness and all the variations in between, must be 

ready to respond with the needed swiftness and effectiveness to 

make a difference in life and death. And we, the leaders of the Nation and our States and our tribes and our local governments, must 

work together to ensure our efforts to prepare and our actions to 

alleviate suffering are second to none. 

Chairman BEGICH. Thank you very much, John. I have a few 

questions. I will say also something else just for the audience’s 

knowledge, usually the way these hearings work, too, usually the— 

I am here, all these panels are there with your back to them. We 

have done something different when we do them here in Alaska. 

I like to have this format so people see the conversation, rather 

than seeing the backs of heads all the time. So that’s the way we 

like to do it here. 

Let me, first, Administrator Fugate, if I can ask you just a couple—we had a conversation just before we came out here with the 

tribal community and talked about some of their issues, but can 

you—I know we have talked about this. We did not elaborate too 

much, but can you tell me how it is working now with the new language with regard to tribes who are now able to directly ask, and 

just kind of—I know you have done a couple, but what have been 

those problematic areas that you think you have to kind of still 

plow through as you are working through these disasters with 

tribes doing direct requests from them? 

Mr. FUGATE. Well, what the Senator is referring to is with the 

amendments of the Stafford Act, which is the authorizing language 

of the disaster programs, it changed the definition of federally recognized tribes from political subdivisions of the State to having the 

ability to be recognized as sovereign governments with the United 

States, and it is not a small change. 
8 

What it does is allows tribal governments whose sovereignty is 

not underneath the State. It is separate. It is a recognition through 

Federal law that they are separate governments and that they 

have certain rights under the Stafford Act to request disaster declarations. 

So when the law was passed, we did not have any structures for 

tribes to operate under, except for the State structure. So what 

happened, Senator, the first declarations that came through in— 

and I think there was a lot of information going out through a lot 

of the National Congress of American Indians and other Associations that the law had passed. 

Tribes came in and we made a decision of whether postponing accepting applications until we have draft rules. We just used the 

rules as written. So they came in just like a State would come in. 

They had to meet their per capita thresholds. They had to have 

hazard mitigation plans. 

Chairman BEGICH. Their match requirements—— 

Mr. FUGATE. Their match requirements, all their certifications 

and what we found by and large is what we thought we would see 

was for larger tribal governments, this was something they were 

anticipating, prepared to do, but we also recognized that this is a 

very high threshold for many smaller tribes and so we are in the 

process of now developing draft rules of how can we provide more 

flexibility, but recognize that it is still a shared responsibility. 

There’s still cost-share requirements. There’s still the requirements to have mitigation plans and the things that States are held 

to, because again, this is shared responsibility between the tribal 

government and the Federal Government and we are responding to 

disasters, but the most important thing is we want to make it optional. 

We know that in some cases, States do provide cost-share. That 

may not be there if they come separate from the State and again, 

this had to apply across all of the tribes, not just those here in 

Alaska. So it was inherently flexible self-determination, but it does 

recognize their sovereignty. 

Chairman BEGICH. Let me ask you, if I can, a couple more 

things. We have had some disasters, most recently the Galena 

flooding that occurred, and there was a couple of things that came, 

at least when I was out there, but also heard from people a couple 

of things; logistics, personnel on the FEMA end and here’s the two 

kinds of broad examples. 

On the personnel end, sometimes not fully understanding kind of 

the Alaska way of life and the culture and I think we heard actually in a meeting earlier that Victor laid out kind of, just because 

the group is quiet does not mean they are accepting, it is more of 

a listening process. So that’s the first point, and then I will ask the 

question to both of these, and then the other one was how to get 

resources out to some of these remote areas and remote or not; I 

mean even here in the urban areas like Anchorage or Fairbanks, 

or Juneau or Kenai, or so forth, the logistics in winter months can 

radically change in how you can move things. 

Can you give me a sense of what you have done internally? For 

first, the personnel part of it, how they become more aware of the 

local environment they are entering into and two, then on the logis-
9 

tics, how to compensate or deal with some of these unique logistics 

issues and I mean, I was just having a conversation with someone 

just literally as we were walking out of the last meeting and we 

had to get to three villages or not we, but FEMA had to get to 

three villages and their response was, ‘‘Well, we have to take a 

commercial flight.’’ Of course, that’s not happening all in one day. 

That’s what they wanted to do in one day, and yet, the Borough 

said, ‘‘We’ll loan you our plane.’’ It’s a government-owned plane, 

but they could not take it because it was considered—I do not know 

what it was considered, gift or something, but I mean, I just went 

through this experience up in Wainwright where I could not get the 

plane from Barrow to come get me. So I had to take a charter all 

the way from Wainwright to Anchorage, which is not a cheap operation, but I would have been 2 days stuck out there. 

So can you, again, the logistics part on both resources and/or that 

example I just gave you up north, and then the other is personnel 

and how they become more—what are you doing to make them 

more aware of the surroundings and the individuals that are working with them, I mean as—— 

Mr. FUGATE. Well, we do have—— 

Chairman BEGICH. Does that make sense, those questions? 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes, sir. 

Chairman BEGICH. OK. 

Mr. FUGATE. Again, Alaska does have a very small footprint, but 

we have permanent staff up here, a very small office. 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. FUGATE. Most States do not have that. Part of the regional 

office in Seattle was to work with the States and building that competency, but because of the size and geography of Alaska, it is still 

a challenge. So we are looking particularly with tribal, we are 

working with a region now on additional staff tied to all the disasters we have here, and as you saw in our budget, we are doing a 

pretty significant shift internally in our budget across the Nation 

to provide more permanent staff in the tribal, but to be honest with 

you, sir, sometimes the message gets confused between being good 

stewards of the public’s tax dollars and understanding you are in 

a different environment. 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. FUGATE. So things that people get conditioned into of driving 

down our overhead becomes counterproductive if you do not know 

when you have to adjust, because in many cases, it would be cheaper for us in that situation just to charter aircraft and move our 

teams around versus doing commercial, but because in the Lower 

48, you would not think of doing that—— 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. FUGATE. You tend to get locked into being cost effective driving decisions, particularly if we are just dealing with a recovery 

event where there’s not immediate life threat/life savings. So it is 

changing that mind set and a lot of time, headquarters is looking 

at something and looking at cost going, ‘‘Well, this doesn’t make 

sense,’’ and the people in the field are going, ‘‘Well, it makes perfect sense if you know what we are doing with it.’’ So it is trying 

to make sure that we are good stewards of the money. We just 

don’t want to spend money, but also making sure that in the oper-
10 

ational environment that we are in, we may have costs that are 

going to be higher. 

Chairman BEGICH. Is there—— 

Mr. FUGATE. It is just you have to make sure that you understand that going in, versus we are looking at this as, how do I 

maintain lower costs? Well, it is not going to save you much more 

money because you are not going to get things done. 

Chairman BEGICH. Yes, let me give you an example in this—if 

this makes sense and then maybe a question off of this, but for example, to go from Barrow to Anchorage, we had seven people, it 

would have been about $5,000 commercial flight. We were trapped 

in Wainwright. It could have been 2 days. We anticipated afterwards we did learn it would have been 2 days we would have been 

stuck up there, doing that same flight out of Wainwright for the 

seven of us, it was $16,000. 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes. 

Chairman BEGICH. So when you present that back in headquarters, they look at that and they go, ‘‘Are you kidding me?’’ 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes. 

Chairman BEGICH. Wait for the commercial flight. 

Mr. FUGATE. Right. 

Chairman BEGICH. And the problem is, how do you quantify that 

2 days? 

Mr. FUGATE. It goes back to the mission. 

Chairman BEGICH. Is that the—— 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes, that’s part of the challenge, is getting people 

that understand that when we are in a disaster response, we need 

to be doing things expeditiously, particularly if we have things we 

need to get going to get to a point of stabilization. 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. FUGATE. I mean, I would be kind of reluctant if we were 

merely in the process now, projects are working and—— 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. FUGATE. We are just doing the inspections, but if we are still 

in a response phase, it is—— 

Chairman BEGICH. Then you have to measure those—— 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes. 

Chairman BEGICH [continuing.] On time, because time is 

value—— 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes, in your committee and in the whole committee 

you sit on, one of the things you look at is effectiveness and efficiency of fraud, waste and abuse. 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. FUGATE. So you have one mind set day-to-day where you are 

trying to minimize the cost to the taxpayers of how you are doing 

business and then when you get into a disaster, in many cases, you 

do not throw caution to the wind, but you have to shift gears. 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. FUGATE. But so much of your day-to-day is written on the 

day-to-day reducing that cost that you sometimes get that mismatch. So what we try to do is make sure we are doing a better 

job of giving that authority to our Federal coordinating officers that 

until we are stabilized, we are going to have to do things that 

would not be financially, the most efficient way to do something, 
11 

but the outcome is what needs to drive that, not just the cost of 

that travel. 

Chairman BEGICH. Is it helpful, and I will end on this question 

with you, Administrator, and that is, is it helpful—I know Congress knows no administrator likes to hear what I am about to say, 

but I think maybe as a rule, I think we do not do enough of and 

that’s we do not do enough oversight and maybe usually we respond, something bad happens and then we kind of jump on everybody because one item did not work and then we are going to yell 

at everybody, but what I have tried to do, at least in the two subcommittees I Chair, is have this process of review and oversight 

and more of a, let’s have more of this aired, rather than—is that 

a role maybe this committee could take in the sense that as—to 

help educate folks on these unique cost issues? 

I mean, I was in one meeting, as you know, and I think Shaun 

Donovan or who got beat up by one of my Members, I think it was 

Secretary Donovan, on a purchase, and you know, when you are in 

the moment of a disaster, you are trying to manage time. Sometimes money becomes secondary. Time is more valuable, especially 

in a winter climate where you could have disaster and it is 30 

below by the evening, you have lost 4 hours. You could literally 

have created a second disaster. 

Not that I would subject more Members to oversight or—— 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes. 

Chairman BEGICH. Or the poor staff here to do things like that, 

but is that a better—I mean, how do we get this better—explanation out there than the—— 

Mr. FUGATE. Senator, we are always going to have the got-you 

moments of things when people look at it and go, ‘‘How could they 

possibly have done that? What were they thinking,’’ but you are absolutely right on speed. I came up with this down in Florida when 

I realized that speed was paramount stabilization and basically, 

you can have it cost effective, you can have it accurate or you can 

have it fast. Pick one. 

That in responding to this earthquake scenario, if we waited for 

the State’s typical assessments in requesting resources, things 

would not have been in the pipeline fast enough. 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. FUGATE. And in some cases, you are going to be flying things 

here that would normally come in by ship, and that cost of that air 

traffic will in some cases exceed the actual price of the produce retail. 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. FUGATE. But the fact is—— 

Chairman BEGICH. Galena was an example, some of the freight 

costs were—— 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes. You are having to make these decisions based 

upon what is it taking to stabilize the incident. Now once you get 

stabilized and the ports are back up and the conex containers are 

coming in, you stop flying stuff. 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. FUGATE. But when people look at, ‘‘Well, what did that bottle 

of water cost you,’’ and this is what they gave me in Florida. They 

said, ‘‘Well, that bottle of water in Florida in the 2004 hurricanes 
12 

cost you $10. That’s insane. You could have gone to the store and 

bought it.’’ I’m like, ‘‘You don’t understand. There were no stores 

to buy that water from.’’ 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. FUGATE. We had a community that was cutoff. 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. FUGATE. The roads were wiped out, a quarter of a million 

people in high heat, no water. We were flying it by Chinooks. There 

was no other way to get the water there, but I think as the oversight, being able to ask those questions, get those responses, so 

that we are held accountable, but people understand that in disaster response, sometimes you are going to do expensive extraordinary things to stabilize a situation, understanding that the normal order of business, the normal order of procurement, the normal 

safeguards, can actually be counterproductive and so you have to 

have that balance. 

We need to be responsible to the taxpayer not to waste, but we 

are also dealing with a situation where precision is not necessarily 

going to happen. If you wait for all the information, it may be too 

late. 

Chairman BEGICH. Right or it creates a second disaster. 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes. 

Chairman BEGICH. Yes. Thank you very much. John, thank you, 

as always, and I am curious, you just had the pretty significant 

training exercise. If you could pinpoint, one, two, three, what where 

those things that you said, ‘‘Wow, here’s where we better get some 

focus on,’’ knowing that you took an incident from 1964, but transplanted it in current times and then used the logistics chain of 

today, what were those two or three things that you could say, 

‘‘This is where we better get some focus on, because we have not 

done enough or there needs to be significant improvement based on 

an earthquake disaster? ’’ 

Mr. MADDEN. Senator, I designed the exercise so that we would— 

it was an exercise of discovery more than anything else and in the 

first 3 days, while our local communities, and there were a dozen 

or more that had a truly challenging exercise, we needed to discover the areas in which our excellence at the small and medium 

disasters well served the catastrophic or did not, and we found that 

while we have excellent records on the Yukon floods and the 

Kuskokwim River floods and the sea storms, none of those reached 

the complexity of the catastrophic, so I wanted to—and then in the 

middle of it, reconfigure, and what we did was put into place some 

of our thinking over the last 2 years of we are smart enough in 

peacetime to gather people together with the right skills and abilities and authorities to solve most of the problems, the big ones on 

health, on transportation, on public safety, on search and rescue, 

and when we put those into place during this exercise, we found 

that was a good investment. 

The same people we work with in peacetime, we work with in the 

event and that’s a little bit different, because it is not easy for a 

State to maintain those types of groups through peacetime. 

We also found that by having the State being the functional area 

in which our Federal partners fall in on, there would not be that 

confusion about logistics. We would have our Alaskan experts 
13 

alongside of FEMA’s logistical experts and we would start solving 

problems, but the key was the participation in the problem-solving, 

rather than waiting for a mission assignment, rather than finding 

things at the end of the process where there could be an impediment or a problem. Let’s get those impediments and problems at 

the beginning and that’s one we had not done into realistic and rigorous standards, and we did that. 

The other one we found was that we had a little stumble for a 

few hours on the dual status command process about how the Governor requested it and the Secretary of Defense approves it, but 

then all the mechanics of how to get the full weight of thousands 

of troops under this dual status command. 

It turned out very good, but we had underestimated their ability 

to form rapidly and we did not have the right parts of the scenario. 

So late Saturday night, using my own understanding of it, I injected a few things that could only be solved through a joint National Guard and active duty and they formed in very well, but I 

also worked it out so that no mission in this entire exercise was 

the responsibility of one group. 

Every single mission was joint, Federal and State, State and 

local, private sector and public sector, volunteers and other nongovernmentals, requiring it to be tested vigorously on how do we 

work together in peacetime. 

Chairman BEGICH. Because you saw some of those modifications, 

are those things now that are systematically going to be implemented, so you do not have to—like you mentioned the couple of 

hours of bumps there, but systematically that you will be able to 

look back and say, ‘‘OK, this is what we are going to change so we 

do not have that 2, 3-hour delay,’’ or I should not say delay, but 

the bumps that you had there? Is that a systematic change you 

think you can do? 

Mr. MADDEN. It is systematic and—— 

Chairman BEGICH. It sets into play now? 

Mr. MADDEN. Within our uniformed partners, both Guard and 

active duty, we met for hours yesterday to make sure that we captured every one of those things that we need to then institutionalize. The other things of our relationship with private sector, 

our use of the volunteer organizations, our problem-solving enterprises, those task forces, we put those into place in the last 2 years 

and have been using them very effectively on our predictable disasters and this exercise was the one in which we wanted to turn up 

the heat and really try them out. 

We found a few things there about how much we can solve in 

peacetime and how much is going to be relied upon the event. 

Chairman BEGICH. Got you. 

Mr. MADDEN. So that problem-solving and the ability to adapt— 

the biggest discovery I think we had across all of the people participating is that realization that a plan cannot and does not make a 

decision, a leader does, and to have the plan, such that has guidelines and that the plan is a point of adaptation and I think many 

times throughout the Nation, we have exercises in which the disaster is moved over to fit the plan—— 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 
14 

Mr. MADDEN [continuing.] Rather than the plan adapting 

over—— 

Chairman BEGICH. So you have more situational awareness? 

Mr. MADDEN. Yes, sir, and then when we had 300 people: 100 

from the State, 200 from our Federal partners all together in the 

Egan Center with their joint field office. It was heartening as to 

how rapidly that group changed over to this approach of problemsolving leading to decisions, leading to the missions and the missions were far more coordinated. We will be taking our discoveries 

and refining them so that we can make it last. 

Chairman BEGICH. More systematic then? 

Mr. MADDEN. Yes, sir. 

Chairman BEGICH. Let me ask you one last question because I 

want to move to the other panel and give time, but this is one that 

actually came up in the last meeting, and for the folks that are 

here who talked to me about pets, this is one that’s interesting. I 

became more and more aware of it as I have been chairing this 

committee, but also just in my work when I was Mayor. 

In that planning, and I think there’s a fair statement that would 

be made, that we saw it in Hurricane Katrina and others where 

people will not leave their homes without their pets and they create a bigger problem, and then here in Alaska, it has dual issues, 

pets, but also dogs can be transportation issues in the smaller villages in the wintertime. 

So how do one of the concerns we have heard is there’s not 

enough effort by the State to recognize that as a part of the broader picture or making sure there’s an organization ready to be able 

to be pulled locally or within the region. This is kind of a new issue 

for me, so I am just going to put it on the table and I do not know 

if you have a response, but I would love to get your thoughts and 

maybe now or into the future on this. 

Mr. MADDEN. There were two components of this, Senator, and 

one is on the local and several of our jurisdictions that participated 

in the Alaska Shield did have pets as part of their sheltering function and in—— 

Chairman BEGICH. Pets with families or pets separated? 

Mr. MADDEN. Pets adjacent to. 

Chairman BEGICH. OK. 

Mr. MADDEN. And I think Cordova had several of their high 

school students be part of that response to aid in the shelter and 

also aid with the pets just immediately outside. In a larger sense, 

within the joint field office, we had the professional assistance from 

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that has a primary Federal role to supporting this. 

We ran missions of how do we obtain the right number of cases 

and dog cages and food as part of those problem-solving, and the 

reason we gave this such an emphasis, sir, is that in the ‘‘Life’’ 

magazine from April 1964, it had a full page picture of a gentleman, one of our elders with his big dog in his lap asleep because 

the dog was too frightened from the earthquake. 

Chairman BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. MADDEN. The dog’s name was Beauty and the headline what 

the man said was; ‘‘All I have now is my Beauty. I have nothing 

else to live for.’’ That’s what I show to all the people so they can 
15 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Keeney appears in the Appendix on page 42. 

get it—it is not the numbers. It is the humans and where there’s 

humans, there are the animals. 

We found that we needed to pick up the pace and be able to do 

things earlier, which is part of the reason why we exercise. 

Chairman BEGICH. Very good. Thank you very much. I thank 

both of you for this first panel. Let me move to the second panel 

and I will start with George Keeney, Fire Chief of the Valdez Fire 

Department and again, I thank all four of you for being here and 

thanks for—we will pass that microphone as it goes, but I appreciate it. Thank you very much. 

Is that mic on? Make sure. Is it green? 

Mr. KEENEY. It’s green. 

Chairman BEGICH. OK, you are good. 

Mr. KEENEY. Can you guys hear me? 

Chairman BEGICH. For some reason, get ready, we might swap 

mics here in a second. 

Chairman BEGICH. Is that good? 

Mr. KEENEY. How about if I go closer? 

Chairman BEGICH. There we go. 

TESTIMONY OF GEORGE KEENEY,1 FIRE CHIEF AND 

EMERGENCY MANAGER FOR THE CITY OF VALDEZ 

Mr. KEENEY. I’m George Keeney. I am the Fire Chief and Emergency Manager for the city of Valdez. The question on first responders in my definition is everyone. In my community, I rely on 

everybody to respond, no matter what age. 

You do not have to be a medic or a fireman or anybody, in a 

sense, you have to be part of a family or part of the community and 

that’s what we pull in. Part of this, though, is the training of those 

folks. 

Believe it or not, in Valdez, I am well known for my disasters, 

especially with Alaska Shield. It seems like we planned for Alaska 

Shield—I have lots of disasters before that hits, practicing for the 

exercise. 

Chairman BEGICH. Your real-life practice? 

Mr. KEENEY. It is real-life. The one thing, though, is we teach 

our youth and we start out from elementary school—we have 

backpacks for their drills, for their evacuation. We have a web page 

where they can go on there. They can fill out information about 

their families and so forth. So we teach our youth. 

You folks in the crowd right here, I am glad to see the youth are 

here because you are the ones that actually are the responders that 

I want to make sure I train. I can train us older folks and hopefully, they will learn, but you guys are the ones that I want to really teach and that’s what we do. 

We try and hit everybody from elementary all the way through 

high school. I run an Explorer Post and in that is in my fire department, and those young adults are actually taught to be CERT instructed or CERT trained and then also, they’re usually taught 

emergency trauma tech (ETT), and what they do then is, since they 

volunteer for me, I use them the best I can. 
16 

I have them go to all the games and stuff, and standby. So that 

gets their skill level real good and my daughter’s a real good athlete and she’s actually one of my ETTs, so she might be playing or 

doing something, somebody falls down and gets hurt, she will automatically go into that role of an emergency trauma tech. She will 

take care of that person. So my youth actually take care of us old 

folks, because it is usually us that fall down and get hurt. 

The other thing is we try and teach as much first aid and CPR 

in our classes as we can. I teach probably 100 to 150 people a year 

first aid classes myself. I teach all kinds of EMS. I am an EMS instructor. Through Mary Carlson and her crew over there, she 

makes sure I do it right, but anyway, what we do is we teach as 

much into our public and then as they all know, once I do my roster, my roster then becomes part of my emergency plans, because 

now I have your name and your phone number and your email address and I can get you at any time. So I use those folks. 

Drills and stuff, we use as much in drills as we can on an annual 

basis. If we have an exercise, whether it is an oil spill, whether it 

is a plane crash, I will moulage, fix them up so they look real bad 

and then I will have all the responders, I will even pull in boy 

scouts and girl scout teams to actually go in there and take care 

of their kids or their—actually adults and—I use those kids in my 

drills. 

The one thing I have found that those kids love to be the victims. 

Well, believe it or not, as victims, you learn a lot about your care 

and you learn, what they are doing to you and you can see that, 

and so the youth that we use, I use them as my volunteers. I will 

throw them out there in all the exercises and they will see that too. 

This last Alaska Shield, like you brought up, we have thrown 

about 300 people at different locations into all kinds of disastrous 

stuff. I have even thrown people in the water in this drill and actually, it is cold. We had the Coast Guard responding to those folks 

and they did a fantastic job, along with a State Trooper vessel that 

we had out there and the State Parks and actually, I used one of 

my State Park rangers, because he is a good medic, I put him in 

a dry suit and moulaged him up and threw him up. I said, ‘‘You 

are one of the casualties.’’ So they had to take care of him ,too. So 

he got to see the whole thing. 

The one good thing out of all of these exercises, the more we do 

it, the more muscle retention you have as to exactly what you are 

doing and then that skill stays in the brain, and what is neat is 

seeing those exercises work in our community. It works in a true 

emergency or disaster. 

We have had quite a few accidents lately in our community 

where this last big one was a 50-person mass casualty. We had a 

school bus full of cross-country skiers and the chaperones run into 

the back of a semi-truck. We set up an alternate care site at the 

elementary school. We had teachers, parents coming in there, responding to that incident just like they would on any time I ask 

for help. 

We also had medics and Explorers at the alternate care site. We 

were able to use those folks to actually take care of the young kids 

and adults, and then get them to the hospital as we needed to or 

as we could and yes, the critical ones went right there, but that 
17 

type of training, as we work it through the whole process, we teach 

our youth and our residents in the community. They see that too 

and what is neat about Valdez is they pull in on all these exercises 

and we have more and more want to play. 

We just finished up Alaska Shield this last week and then we 

ended up having a first aid class taught by the National Guard 

crew and believe it or not, I had 40 people and the residents there 

that wanted to take that class, too, a 2-day course. That’s how involved they are in our community. 

You, as the youth, and—you need to push it that the youth need 

to learn about what hazards they have in their community and be 

able to respond to it. As an emergency manager, I love teaching all 

the aspects of emergency management and in that, I push all the 

education to the kids. 

The one thing that I know our FEMA Director said that, they are 

there to help the State and guess what, the State helps the city, 

but it is the residents in that city, it is their problem. It is their 

emergency. They control it. They respond to it. We, as the city or 

local government, yes, we are there to help too, and we are going 

to do it. It is all of our city organization, it is our accident. It is 

our emergency. It is our disaster and we respond to it. 

We ask the State—and what’s fantastic about this State is I have 

some folks over here too, I know these folks by their first name. 

I do not have to say, I can say Mr. Madden because I usually call 

him Mr. Madden anyway, but I could actually go up to him and 

say, ‘‘John, I need your help,’’ and I can call him 24 hours a day 

and he would respond or his team. Mike and Brian and the rest 

of them over here, they would actually respond. So it is that firsthand knowledge that has gotten through the exercises, and what 

we have learned and how we have learned it to where we can actually call them up. 

I can call these folks up 24 hours a day and even in damalanche, 

which is not a nasty name. It was an avalanche that created a dam 

in Keystone Canyon. Believe it or not, my city manager and the police chief and I were sitting in an office and we were discussing it 

and quickly he said, ‘‘I need to talk to an expert. I have to talk to 

an expert about this avalanche, because I do not know if I want 

to take and shut down this subdivision and set up a shelter.’’ He 

says, ‘‘What do I do?’’ I said, ‘‘Well, let’s talk to the expert.’’ 

So I called Cary over there at the SEOC, just called their 800 

number and said, ‘‘I need to talk to Cary down there in the SEOC.’’ 

I said, ‘‘I need an expert.’’ Within about 2 minutes, he had someone 

in from River Watch, one of the professors, and she was able to get 

on there and believe it or not, with technology, she said, ‘‘Hold on 

a second, I am looking at something,’’ and then pretty quick she 

said, ‘‘I am looking at your site there. Yes, you guys got a problem 

and it is a big one,’’ and then at that time, she was able to tell us 

within a couple of minutes what her opinion was about that disaster. Well, that technology did that and also the fact that we had 

the State SEOC that was set up to where they can respond to our 

emergency within seconds and actually take care of our situation, 

and provide that technical expert to where we can turn around and 

tell the people in that subdivision, ‘‘You have to move out, folks. 

You need to voluntarily move out.’’ 
18 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Joseph appears in the Appendix on page 44. 

We had 885 million gallons of water behind that dam. That’s 

what the low river gave us. So Alaska Shield, we were testing 

tsunamis and I was ready to test a tsunami in Keystone Canyon. 

So it was a little bit scary. 

That inter-relationship has to stay. The inter-relationship with 

health and social services, I do the same thing with Mary Carlson 

and her crew. It is a one name type thing. I can call her or any 

of her crew. I know them personally because all these exercises we 

do. It helps the community, but it takes those in the community 

to be able to respond. 

So when, as a planner, as an emergency manager, I love teaching 

this. I will respond to everything that we have in our community, 

but the one thing is I definitely have to have that back up and 

that’s what we use. 

Chairman BEGICH. Thank you very much for that. Let me go 

ahead and go to Victor Joseph, who’s the new President and Chairman of Tanana Chiefs. It is very good to have you here. Thank you 

very much, Victor, for being here. 

TESTIMONY OF VICTOR JOSEPH,1 PRESIDENT AND 

CHAIRMAN, TANANA CHIEFS CONFERENCE 

Mr. JOSEPH. Thank you, Senator Begich. Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC), serves 42 tribes throughout the Interior of Alaska. 

The comments and descriptions I will be discussing today are written to highlight TCC’s work in emergency response, problems experienced and some ideas for solutions to move forward. 

TCC has taken an active role in disaster response since the 

break-up floods in 2009, when it appeared that quick action was 

needed to protect health and safety and again in 2013. 

TCC prepares every spring for breakup flooding. Our preparations include making a list of medically fragile patients in each 

community, coordinating with the State Department of Homeland 

Security, Red Cross and others, working with the airlines to prepare for evacuation charters, purchasing supplies and keeping staff 

and others informed. 

TCC has made significant efforts over the years to encourage and 

assist emergency planning at the local level in TCC villages. During the disaster response, TCC seeks to do what is necessary to 

protect the health and safety of community members throughout 

the TCC villages. 

TCC has provided the following responses during disasters; evacuate medically fragile village residents, charter flights to evacuate 

village populations at large, purchase and deliver emergency supplies, shelter evacuees, act as a vendor for the State of Alaska, provide health care and assist in setting up emergency supplies and 

treatment services. 

In a recovery stage, TCC engages in the recovery process, although not to the degree that we engage as in the response. The 

main task TCC takes during our recoveries are: helping communities with project worksheets and reimbursements, assist tribes 

with recovering public buildings and facilities, such as, clinics, 

water treatment plants, wastewater facilities and landfills. 
19 

The problems that we see in planning and preparedness, the 

most significant problem in the area, is creating effective plans in 

each community and a lack of training at the local level. 

Planning and preparedness solutions that we see is provide 

training for local employees that can lead the planning effort and 

ensure the plan is exercised annually. 

Response problems, the biggest problems with the response effort 

has been coordination. Once again, I would be looking at the Galena flood as I am talking about this. The lack of coordination and 

the number of parties involved in the Galena evacuation was very 

confusing. There were airplanes showing up at the airport full of 

evacuees and nobody knew who was coming or going, and it happened very haphazardly and people were put throughout the State 

of Alaska. 

Part of that confusion was when we were ready to send charters, 

the State of Alaska was not prepared at that time to authorize the 

flights. 

In summary, the lack of communications during the Galena evacuation proved very difficult. Confusion during the evacuations, 

State policy conducting rescues, not evacuations led to the slow response, slow emergency evacuations and a lot of confusion. 

Response solutions are improve the State policy on authorizing 

an evacuation, and locate facilities and purchase supplies ahead of 

time. 

Recovery problems, TCC does not normally interact with FEMA 

until the recovery stage of the disaster. Once the recovery begins, 

many problems become apparent. The dual State FEMA damage 

assessment is a problem for home owners and tribal governments. 

It appeared to add delays and seemed duplicative and unnecessary 

to people trying to rebuild their homes. 

Some of the policy that FEMA applies is not consistent throughout. There were several procurement issues that also led throughout this process and established a lot of concerns about getting 

things that may be a little more appropriate for the area. 

Over the past several disasters, TCC has developed a good working relationship with the State of Alaska Department of Homeland 

Security and I really appreciate that. It has meant a lot to our region, but it—and FEMA’s communication with the local government, individuals and regional problems, that is some of the concerns and we would like to see how we can establish better relations there. 

So our solutions for recovery are combine:, the dual damage assessment process, to expedite that, develop a checklist or flowcharts to make the process of seek and assistance from FEMA easier to understand, improve communication with the tribal governments, potentially include regional 8(a) profit corporations in the 

process and ensure that information is getting to the affected individually timely. 

I would like to see that FEMA and TCC establish a relationship 

similar that we have established with the Department of Homeland 

Security to expedite the process. In my report that I submitted, 

there’s Appendix A, Senator Begich, and that’s from the city of Galena, the tribe and the comments that they offered. Thank you very 

much. 
20 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Koehler appears in the Appendix on page 50. 

Chairman BEGICH. Fantastic. Thank you very much and just for 

the record, not only testimony, but the submitted information also 

is all part of the official record. So I want to make sure and I got 

a good packet from you. So I thank you for that, Victor. 

Let me move to the next panelist, Dr. Koehler, Chair of the 

Rural Committee on National Association Emergency Medical Service Physicians. Doctor. 

TESTIMONY OF DANITA KOEHLER,1 MD, CHAIR RURAL COMMITTEE, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF EMERGENCY MEDICAL 

SERVICES PHYSICIANS 

Dr. KOEHLER. Thank you for holding out, everybody. I Am going 

to switch up a little bit with your permission, Senator? 

Chairman BEGICH. Sure. 

Dr. KOEHLER. Because what has been said, George and I are 

both field people. So I have two challenges. First, to the people in 

the audience, some of the new leaders in disaster management, the 

challenge is to get involved now in your volunteer local agencies, 

EMS, ambulance services is the common name. We need your help. 

We’re in a crisis in recruitment and retention of volunteers. 

As George will tell you, there is nothing more gratifying that saving a life. Come join us, and with that, if the gentleman that I met, 

who is in search and rescue, could you stand up, please? 

What I am saying is dedicated to him and 49 plus other search 

and rescue organizations in this State, 49 that are composed of volunteers. EMS in this State is also largely a volunteer system. 

These are selfless, dedicated volunteers who are out there at 2 in 

the morning, 40-below, responding when you call 911. 

We have taught the public to call 911, sir, and they do anytime 

day or night. We need your help. There’s just a few of us. Most of 

us have been doing this for 30-some odd years. It is a wonderful 

career and the next generation of EMS is preparing for career progression that includes disaster management interweaving, lots of 

opportunity. 

The second challenge is to the Federal disaster preparedness and 

your Senate Subcommittee. I apologize, some of this will be boring. 

Emergency medical services providers are the initial health care 

providers at the scene of disaster. 

They are often the first to recognize the nature of disaster and 

can immediately evaluate the situation and determine the need for 

resources. Response is provided by various levels. In our State, we 

have a unique program called Emergency Trauma Technician 

Training and you all can get that at the high school level and you 

should. 

Everyone in this audience needs to be proficient at hands-only 

CPR. You can save a life. It is the most gratifying thing you will 

do. 

It is important to understand, sir, that EMS providers may be 

the first to apply crisis standards of care. The dispatch and field 

providers are integral partners in local, State, tribal and territorial 

efforts related to development and implementation of crisis standards of care planning. 
21 

In crisis standards of care, the goal is not necessarily to save everyone. That’s a hard thing to get your head around. It is rather 

about saving as many lives as possible with the resources that are 

available. Prehospital EMS is the only safety net of access to emergency care on a day-to-day basis for everyone in this audience, and 

for all who are listening in, but in fact, during a disaster, Senator, 

EMS is the gatekeeper of protection to a nation’s health care infrastructure. 

EMS is responsible for approximately 1 percent of the country’s 

health care cost, but such a small train drives approximately 40 

percent of our overall health care expenditures. While our daily 

mission is to triage, treat and transport patients to the right medical facility the first time, in a case of a biochemical attack, ambulance crews must recognize and ensure only decontaminated patients arrive at the door of an emergency department. Failure to 

do so will result in cross-contamination and an infrastructure crisis 

from hospital closures. In Alaska, there’s 24 hospitals. In Fairbanks, there’s one. In many of our regions, there’s one. 

EMS matters and it needs to be, this is according to the feds, it 

needs to be at the table of every policy conference, and needs to be 

targeted with specific funding and a lead Federal agency. 

There are eight major sources of funding for EMS, again, thank 

you for your patience with me, one, Center for Disease Control 

(CDC) and Prevention. This is primarily for public health departments to build a capacity for infectious disease emergencies. 

A young person in the audience that talked to me about vaccinations, CDC operates this area. Eighty percent of State EMS offices 

have no or occasional involvement in this grant program. 

The second of eight EMS potential funding areas, Pandemic Flu 

Supplemental funding. More than half of State EMS offices reported no or occasional involvement in this grant program. Third, 

Emergency Management preparedness grants. Eighty-five percent 

of State EMS offices have no or rare involvement or were not eligible for these funds. 

Fourth, Public Health and Human Block grants, although all 

State EMS offices were eligible for funding, 65 percent reported no 

involvement in this grant. Fifth, Hospital Preparedness Program, 

Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, more than half 

of State EMS offices have no or occasional involvement or were not 

eligible to participate in this grant. 

No. 6 of eight, Department of Homeland Security grants, 62 percent of State EMS offices have no or occasional involvement in this 

grant program. No. 7 and eight are important for you in Alaska in 

the rural areas, Urban Areas Security Initiative, 2⁄3 of State EMS 

offices have no or occasional involvement in this grant. 

No. 8, Metropolitan Medical Response System, nearly 3⁄4 of all 

State EMS offices had no or occasional involvement in the Medical 

Response System for metropolitan areas. 

For rural and remote areas, for tribal areas, where is the equivalent of Urban Area Security Initiative? Where is the equivalent of 

Metropolitan Medical Response System? So as to not sound doom 

and gloom, Mary Carlson, will you stand up? 

Mary Carlson is your Chief of Emergency Programs in the State 

of Alaska and truly a dedicated selfless serving person who is a 
22 

mentor, a friend. Thank you for the work you do, Mary, and thank 

you for these lessons learned from the Capstone Alaska Shield 

2014. 

The information gained at the local, State and Federal level from 

Federal partners from Alaska Shield could not have been replicated 

without full scale play. So thank you, our Federal partners. Forward patient movement from the disaster to casualty collection 

points, alternative care sites, and disaster air medical staging facilities are complex actions involving multiple agencies, and they 

are only understood when practiced. 

For you young people, wouldn’t that be fun to play in next time? 

We learned, for example, that even using every available transport 

asset equipped for litters, ambulances, an ambulance bus, a dual 

use fill vehicle that we could transport a maximum of 24 patients, 

when the receiving medical treatment facility could have handled 

50. 

Bariatric and special needs patients will require special transportation knowledge during disaster, as equipment and care requirements are different and affect maximum throughput for patient 

evacuation. 

For example, a bariatric patient will be required to lay flat on 

a military medical transport during the flight with current arrangements for standard transport of a medically unstable patient. 

The litters are available, but this limits the total number of patients transported in a single flight. 

The ability of EMS providers and hospital personnel to be aware 

of these fine distinctions in the triage and resource allocation are 

critical to the success of the overall mission, and what about children? We also learned there are minimal military resources available with specific pediatric capabilities and those require deployment time. 

Specific funding and training for critical pediatric stabilization 

and transport must be strengthened in order to respond effectively. 

This is not just in Alaska. This is throughout the country. 

In the small port town of Valdez, my friend George, and further 

up north toward Glennallen, we clearly illuminated the crisis in 

volunteer EMS systems that struggled to sustain daily operations, 

and do not, I repeat, do not have the ability to surge the uniformly 

throughout this Nation, not just Alaska, are the forgotten heroes 

of first responders. 

I recommend a concerted effort by all States to access the true 

value of their volunteer EMS systems, Mr. Madden, and transform 

the next generation of EMS to be supported by volunteer labor, but 

not solely reliant on it. You will not miss us until we are gone. 

Some of the best practice and most interesting things, sir, for 

your Subcommittee are this; Alaska was the first State to stand up 

and operate a State-owned former Federal medical station now 

known as the Alaska Medical Station. 

The purpose of alternate medical treatment sites are to decompress hospitals and allow access to care for those patients less seriously injured or ill. In this exercise, local EMS providers worked 

side-by-side with military medics, as well as volunteer nurses, physicians, support staff and the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. This is another opportunity for you all to volunteer. 
23 

What we learned is that while the roles of basic responders are 

clear, anything beyond basic life support demonstrated a lack of 

interoperability between military and civilian licensed EMS, nursing and medical providers. Support in a catastrophic event and 

during recovery will be hampered if States are not part of the proposed interstate compact for licensure of EMS personnel. To not 

bore the audience, more information is in the written part of my 

testimony. 

I will say this one thing that is not in that extra information in 

support of my tribal partner, the interstate compact for licensure 

of EMS personnel is exactly what we need, but for the places in 

this country that are impoverished, for those places in this country 

that are tribal reservations, that are off-road where there are so 

few volunteer EMS providers, this interstate compact, before it is 

fully vetted, must ask these people what will work for them. It is 

one gap that we need to address. 

A second and last—thank you for your time and patience with 

me. A second best practice that I think your Subcommittee members from the rural States need to know about; the frontier extended stay clinic model is a best practice for rural States. 

Alaska’s frontier extended stay model of 24/7 emergency care on 

a day-to-day basis, as well as in disasters, is a best practice model 

of disaster preparedness for rural and remote areas of our Nation. 

These federally qualified health centers are located in communities 

in Alaska where hospitals are not easily accessed and are designed 

to address the needs of seriously ill or injured patients who cannot 

be transferred quickly. 

This matters even to you in Anchorage and Fairbanks and other 

urban centers in this country. These few clinics that are positioned 

in the areas where you go to travel, to recreate. 

They have the ability to initially provide life-saving emergency 

care, monitor and observe patients for up to 48 hours. Why this is 

important to preparedness on the Federal side, sir, is that during 

the very time that hospitals are in most need of decompressing 

from receiving patients, these frontier extended rural clinics have 

the ability to stabilize, treat, monitor and observe patients during 

that first 48 hours. 

It is a little known pilot project which was started in 2003 and 

again, important for Members of your Subcommittee from Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota. 

Chairman BEGICH. Doctor, can I have you summarize your comments? 

Dr. KOEHLER. Thank you for the opportunity. How’s that? 

Chairman BEGICH. That’s pretty good. Thank you. I know you 

had more testimony and additional information in your written, I 

thank you. We are right at the time, but I want to—very important 

to have the last speaker, Mike Abbott, Assistant Superintendent of 

Anchorage School District, so you go ahead with your testimony. 
24 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Abbott appears in the Appendix on page 54. 

TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL K. ABBOTT,1 ASSISTANT 

SUPERINTENDENT, ANCHORAGE SCHOOL DISTRICT 

Mr. ABBOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, on behalf of the 

Superintendent, the Anchorage School Board, the students and the 

staff here, let me welcome you to South Anchorage High School. 

This is one of our newer buildings. It is a great school. The wolverines of south Anchorage are nationally acclaimed for many academic, as well extracurricular activities, and I know they are very 

proud that the Subcommittee is with them here today. 

I will be very brief, Mr. Chairman. We have presented written 

comments that we are more than happy to respond to questions 

about at any time of the Subcommittee’s desire. The school district 

is—I believe sets a national standard for preparation and preparedness for disaster response, both at the school level, our annual 

emergency action planning efforts, as well as our community support efforts, I believe are among the best in the Nation. 

Our partnerships, especially with the Municipality of Anchorage 

and also with the State and our Federal partners, our partners 

with the Department of Defense (DOD), as you know, the JBER operation has a large percentage of Anchorage’s population, as well 

as a number of Anchorage School District facilities on the installation. 

We work with all of those folks closely and I believe we are well 

prepared in the event of an emergency here in Anchorage and we 

take that responsibility very seriously. I think if you spoke with 

any building principal, you would find that their No. 1 priority is 

to make sure that their students and staff are safe, whether that’s 

on a regular school day or in the event of an emergency. 

The planning, preparation, drills and exercises that they participate on at their buildings, as well as the district systematically, I 

think put us in the excellent position to be successful. 

On any given day, perhaps even earlier today, approximately 10 

percent of the population of the State of Alaska is in an Anchorage 

School District facility. As a result, we have a very significant 

working responsibility to be prepared in the event of an earthquake 

or a wildfire or any number of other types of emergencies that 

might call on our students and our staff to equip themselves well, 

both for their personal protection, as well as to offer support for the 

rest of the community and Anchorage. In our partnerships with the 

rest of the community, we feel that we have invested both time and 

resources in that preparation effort and Senator, with that, I will 

close my comments this afternoon and make sure we are available 

for any questions there might be. 

Chairman BEGICH. Fantastic, I know we are over time, but I will 

ask just a couple of quick questions, but first, I will start with you, 

Mr. Abbott, thank you very much. Thanks for the tour of the facility outside. We got to see one of the 22—— 

Mr. ABBOTT. Twenty-two. 

Chairman BEGICH. Twenty-two locations that you have designated. What happens, how is the school district prepared knowing—let’s say there is a disaster that occurs, let’s say it is here or 

let’s say it is any one of the schools, but you know you have par-
25 

ents and community members who might be working or living in 

Girdwood, Mat-Su, wherever else. How does that work with managing those kids and making sure the parents have that information as quickly as possible? 

This is one of those common kinds of questions. We had an incident in Washington, DC. My son goes to school there during the 

school year and then back here, obviously, during the summer and 

the school was on a shutdown, and how that communication 

worked, it was very efficient and no matter where we were, I was 

actually traveling and I was able to get a text message very quickly 

on what the status was. How does it work in the school district 

here and how do you deal with parents who do not live in the Anchorage Bowl? 

Mr. ABBOTT. You bet. The school is prepared to provide immediate shelter and support for the entire student population and the 

staff, as well. So if there was an emergency, the initial priority of 

the building would be to ensure the safety and security of the students and staff that were on the site at the time of the event. 

Immediately thereafter, once that has been secured, once the facility and the people have been made as safe as possible, then we 

begin to try to communicate with parents and families. If the normal communication tools that are available to us normally are 

available, we will use those and we have a variety of systems that 

allow us to use telephonic and digital communication to reach folks. 

We also take advantage of the media, as well. We encourage families to, if they can, to come and get their kids and in a situation 

like a secondary school, like a high school like this, many of our 

students might well decide to discharge themselves and make their 

own way back and there’s a procedure where we are able to determine whether the students are in a position to do that or not, and 

we follow that procedure. 

For dealing with elementary school age kids, obviously, we are 

not going to release them, unless there’s an appropriate adult. We 

insist on getting the best possible emergency contact information. 

That’s why it is very important that you not only make sure that 

parents themselves are listed, but any other adults that might be 

in a position to support your family in the event of an emergency 

are also listed as school contacts, because we want to make sure 

that if someone comes to the school and says, ‘‘Hey, I should take 

John home with me. I live next door.’’ We want to make sure that 

we are in a position to help make a good decision as to whether 

that’s the appropriate option for Johnnie. 

If there are children that ca not get home for whatever reason, 

we have plans in place to make sure that we concentrate, if you 

will, the kids from a variety of buildings that might not be available to—or might not be able to get home. We concentrate them 

and we are prepared to take care of them for as long as necessary, 

days, weeks, whatever’s appropriate and with that, of course, the 

whole community would be involved in the response at that point, 

and would be supporting the district in making sure that those 

kids were well-taken care of. 

Chairman BEGICH. Thank you very much. I am going to ask two 

last questions, and I know the Administrator has to catch a plane. 

So I am going to be very quick here because I know many of you 
26 

and Doctor, I am going to probably not ask you one, because you 

gave me so many ideas I have written down here, but also, I know 

your testimony is very strong in the sense of some of your recommendations. 

I know also, Victor, you had some good recommendations. So I 

want to ask you—one statement that you made, I want to make 

sure I understand what you do. Is it right that as TCC, you do an 

annual assessment of those that may need special care to be transported out in case of emergency? What I was not sure I caught that 

100 percent. I want to make sure I understand that, and that leads 

to my question for the Chief I am going to ask next, so—— 

Mr. JOSEPH. OK. 

Chairman BEGICH. Did I hear that right or—— 

Mr. JOSEPH. Almost. 

Chairman BEGICH. OK. 

Mr. JOSEPH. What we do is as we are following the report and 

as it is breaking up or if a community’s endangered, we start looking immediately at those ones that are medically frail. 

Chairman BEGICH. So they are at—when that community’s becoming potentially at risk, you do a quick inventory of what individuals may—— 

Mr. JOSEPH. Yes, but we consistently have that information onhand so it does not take us very long to bring it up through our 

electric health records. 

Chairman BEGICH. Got you. OK, that’s what I think that’s a 

great idea. I think that’s fantastic. For the Chief, you had mentioned, and I thought it was interesting, you had talked about all 

these resources from volunteers and people you are training and so 

forth. 

Can you at any given time say, ‘‘OK,’’ because Valdez is one of 

those communities that could be isolated, right? We have seen that, 

right? 

Mr. KEENEY. Yes. 

Chairman BEGICH. So do you know at any given time within your 

community, here’s an inventory of people who have had certain 

training or, ‘‘Gees, we know maybe they were a physician, but 

they’re retired, but they are in this practice,’’ so you could call on 

them or, someone, like I would use Donny Olson as an example up 

north. He’s an attorney. He’s a doctor. He’s a pilot. Two of those 

are good in emergencies. I will leave you to try what the third 

one—I can say that, but I mean, right, so you kind of can, I know 

if I am with Donny, I am feeling pretty good, but tell me, do you 

have that kind of inventory or is that something that—I mean, I 

was thinking that’s a great idea of all the people you are training—— 

Mr. KEENEY. Yes, the medical corps actually does have that same 

process. In Valdez, what we do is I have a list of those folks that 

have been retired, have any medical training, all my first aid/CPR 

classes, all those rosters. What’s amazing, too, is just like the bus 

crash, I sent out word that I needed a few more medics, and within, I would say 30 minutes, I had 45 medics right there at my gym 

and they were ready to respond and yes, we had some that had not 

been in the service right away or active, but yet, they were quickly 
27 

pulled in. We do have a list and also the hospital has a list of those 

that are in the area. 

Chairman BEGICH. That you can tap into? 

Mr. KEENEY. That we can tap right into and then Mary Carlson 

and her group, they are working on credentialing and so forth. 

That’s the one big issue. If I have the City Manager or the Mayor 

declare a disaster, then there’s some other forms that we can pull 

credentialed people in on and so we even have that option, too. 

Chairman BEGICH. Let me end on this with a comment for the 

Doctor. You mentioned quite a few things and they were very good, 

frontier hospitals are something I aggressively support for all the 

reasons you said, 24/7, it is a fantastic program. I think some of 

the urban centers do not understand the value of those, and it is 

something we are constantly working to educate, but not for today, 

but I would like to get going to have my team followup with you 

on the eight grants or eight funding sources, I should say, and 

some of your data points, because I would be very interested in 

what we can do functionally within our role of how to increase that 

capacity of engagement, because I think that’s a good point. 

I’m a believer in EMS. I have been saved by EMS. I remember 

the Spirit of Youth organization, which I will be at an event tomorrow night. Many years ago, we presented an award to a group of 

young women under the age of 18 that had already become EMS 

or gone down that path of being trained. 

It’s incredible. You know what I’m talking about? I can not remember the group. They had a name and it was very catchy name, 

but very powerful of what they can do. So I want to make sure my 

team follows up with you, if that’s OK, because I think you had 

some really interesting data points that are worthwhile for us to 

figure out what can we do to create that engagement, if that’s OK. 

Well, first, let me say, again, to the witnesses, to our guests and 

always our regular guest, kind of like a talk show host, John, you 

are always here, thank you for being here and thank you for the 

information. This has given my Committee more information that 

we can use to help craft policies that we hope will be improving 

and can improve emergency response, may they be in catastrophic 

or otherwise, and so we thank the panels for being here, and to 

staff, do I need to do anything technically here? OK, the record will 

be open for 15 days for other questions or additional information 

that may be desired by other Committee Members, and we do 

thank everyone for being here and again, thank you to the panelists that were here today. 

At this time, the meeting is adjourned. 

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