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S. Hrg. 111–952 

THE NEXT BIG DISASTER: IS THE PRIVATE 

SECTOR PREPARED? 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE, LOCAL, 

AND PRIVATE SECTOR PREPAREDNESS 

AND INTEGRATION 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

MARCH 4, 2010 

Available via the World Wide Web: 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 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

ROLAND W. BURRIS, Illinois 

EDWARD E. KAUFMAN, Delaware 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada 

LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina 

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Staff Director 

BRANDON L. MILHORN, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

JOYCE WARD, Publications Clerk and GPO Detailee 

AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE, LOCAL, AND PRIVATE SECTOR 

PREPAREDNESS AND INTEGRATION 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

JON TESTER, Montana 

JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina 

DONNY WILLIAM, Staff Director 

RYAN TULLY, Minority Staff Director 

KELSEY STROUD, Chief Clerk 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statement: Page 

Senator Pryor .................................................................................................... 1 

Prepared statement: 

Senator Pryor .................................................................................................... 19 

WITNESSES 

THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 2010 

Stephen C. Jordan, Senior Vice President and Executive Director, Business 

Civic Leadership Center ...................................................................................... 3 

John R. Harrald, Ph.D., Research Professor, Center for Technology, Security 

and Policy, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Co-Director 

and Professor Emeritus, Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management, The George Washington University, and Chair, Disaster Roundtable, 

The National Academies ...................................................................................... 5 

Stephen E. Flynn, Ph.D., President, Center for National Policy ......................... 8 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Flynn, Stephen E., Ph.D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 8 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 33 

Harrald, John R., Ph.D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 5 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 27 

Jordan, Stephen C.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 3 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 22 

APPENDIX 

Chart titled ‘‘Disaster Funding 1989-2011,’’ submitted for the Record by Senator Pryor .............................................................................................................. 21 

Questions and responses for the Record from: 

Mr. Harrald ....................................................................................................... 41 

Mr. Jordan ........................................................................................................ 43 

(1) 

THE NEXT BIG DISASTER: IS THE PRIVATE 

SECTOR PREPARED? 

THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 2010 

U.S. SENATE,

AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE, LOCAL, AND

PRIVATE SECTOR PREPAREDNESS AND INTEGRATION,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Mark L. Pryor, 

Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senator Pryor. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR 

Senator PRYOR. The Subcommittee will come to order. 

I will go ahead and call the hearing to order. I want to thank 

all the witnesses for being here and all the people in the audience 

for coming today. 

This is a hearing for the Subcommittee on State, Local and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration, ‘‘The Next Big Disaster: 

Is the Private Sector Prepared? ’’ 

I really want to thank our witnesses. I am going to introduce you 

here in just a moment. What I would like to do is give each of you 

7 minutes to make your statements. 

Because of some scheduling conflicts around the Senate, I am not 

sure we are going to have any other senators come; but certainly 

if we do, we will do our best to accommodate their schedules. 

Let me just start by saying that when you look at disasters and 

preparedness, in my State, for example, we have had 10 presidentially-declared disasters in the last 2 years. Ten in 2 years. 

The northeast corner of Arkansas is sitting on the New Madrid 

fault which experts say and most agree that it could cause the 

most deadly and destructive earthquake we have had, if and when 

it ever causes an earthquake. 

But we have had floods and tornadoes and ice storms in our 

State and you know that disasters are happening in other States 

as well. 

We have also had two large international disasters in the Americas in the last few weeks, Haiti and Chile. These earthquakes are 

very grim reminders of the devastation that a natural disaster can 

have on communities, economies and the lives of the individuals involved. 

2 

1The chart referred to by Senator Pryor appears in the Appendix on page 21. 

We spend billions in disaster recovery and we probably do not 

spend as much as we should on preparedness. The private sector 

does a good job in many ways depending on the sector and the company on preparedness and dealing with the aftermath of a disaster. 

I wanted to point out the chart to my right.1 If you look at the 

last couple of decades, the bars represent different parts of paying 

for disasters. The first, the blue bar is the Administration’s budget 

request. The red bar is what we actually appropriated through the 

Congress, and then the green bar is supplemental appropriations. 

By the way the purple bar is the recent supplemental request. 

The reason I point out the green bar, the supplemental appropriations, is because we end up paying for disasters one way or the 

other; and to pay for these disasters on the tail end is much more 

expensive than trying to pay for something on the front. There are 

ways that you can prepare and either not have the damage or be 

in a better position to overcome a disaster. 

You can see the tall green bar for fiscal years 2000 to 2011, and 

it is stark how much it has risen from the previous decade. Part 

of that is because of Hurricane Katrina but you have to remember 

we had some other events in the 1990s. Hurricanes and other disasters were expensive too but Hurricane Katrina does make that 

bar a little bit distorted. 

The point is I think that we need to do a better job of thinking 

through preparedness, working together. The private sector again 

has been working together on this. 

What I would like to do now is call on our three witnesses. I will 

do a very brief introduction of each one and you can keep your 

opening statements to 7 minutes. You have a little light system in 

front of you, and I would love for you all to just try to keep to that 

7 minutes, if possible. 

Our first witness is Stephen Jordan, Senior Vice President and 

Executive Director of the Business Civic Leadership Center 

(BCLC). He has a long and distinguished background working on 

public and private partnerships and has been at this for a long 

time. We look forward to hearing from you. 

Our second witness will be Dr. Jack Harrald. He is the Chair of 

the Disaster Roundtable for the National Academies. He has been 

focused in the fields of emergency and crisis management for over 

20 years. He has written on these topics and has worked on disaster mitigation tactics. We appreciate your expertise and appreciate your being here. 

Our third witness will be Dr. Stephen Flynn. He is the President 

of the Center for National Policy. He is a former advisor to the U.S. 

Commission on National Security, and has expertise in emergency 

preparedness and infrastructure protection. 

I could spend three times as much on each one of your resumes 

because all of you bring great things to the table. But, Mr. Jordan, 

would you mind leading us off and take your 7 minutes. Thank 

you. 

3 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Jordan appears in the appendix on page 22. 

TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN C. JORDAN,1 SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, BUSINESS CIVIC LEADERSHIP CENTER 

Mr. JORDAN. Thank you very much, Chairman Pryor. It is a 

pleasure to be here with you today. I greatly appreciate it. 

As the Executive Director of the Business Civic Leadership Center, unfortunately we have had to deal with quite a few disasters 

over the past decade. I really appreciate this opportunity to discuss 

our current national preparedness efforts and some of the lessons 

learned and ideas that have been generated from some of those experiences. 

We work with many companies, chambers of commerce, and also 

government agencies and nonprofit organizations throughout the 

country and around the world. In fact, our help desk right now is 

dealing with about 1,500 cases related to the Haiti and Chile at the 

moment. 

The lessons that we have unfortunately date back to September 

11, 2001, the Southeast Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, floods, 

and fires. Clearly these disasters do not just come in one shape or 

size. 

A lot of the companies and the chambers are telling us there are 

three major reasons that they need to be prepared. 

First, they are very cognizant that the costs of disasters are rising. 

Second, there is no silver bullet. No single agency or entity is 

going to cover every fall-out or every symptom that comes out of 

these disasters. So there is a certain amount of self-help that has 

to be built into the process. 

And, third, disaster preparedness and community resilience, just 

by themselves, even if a disaster does not happen, promote risk reduction which, of course, lowers costs and also promotes operational efficiency. 

But as we move forward, our history shows that you can never 

be prepared enough for a disaster. I mean, the reason they call it 

a disaster is because it is unexpected. It is unprepared for. 

But there are several things that we know ahead of time that we 

really need to start working on and continue to improve. Some of 

these include raising awareness about the process, ‘‘who is doing 

what and where,’’ and figuring out ways to reward prudent behavior. 

Second, we need to invest in infrastructure upgrades. Third, we 

need to really develop this idea of mutual assistance. Earlier, I 

noted how no single entity can do it all. We have to figure out how 

we network together. Fourth, we have to improve information and 

coordination. 

We believe that the country needs to move away from an ad hoc, 

reactive approach to disasters that rewards urgent needs and punishes prudent investment and move toward a proactive policy that 

invests in continuously improving our infrastructure, community 

design and business resilience. 

4 

The first step to achieve this goal is mapping who is doing what, 

where, and how. You know, we really need to invest more in mapping and benchmarking. 

We commissioned Dan Alesch, who is professor emeritus at the 

University of Wisconsin—he did the original Federal Emergency 

Management Agency (FEMA) study on the impact of disasters on 

business—to identify 10 recovery policies that States should have. 

Where we would like to go with this research is now that we 

have a template about some of the recovery policies that have to 

happen, we would like to see how the different States do on the different factors and then be able to provide information to the States 

that are lagging. The information would identify what some of the 

States that are more advanced than others are doing so that we 

create kind of a mutual learning system and continuous improvement. 

We also hold an annual disaster stimulation in DC. We did one 

actually on the New Madrid fault that I think some of the local 

chambers around the region kind of resisted at the start, but then 

they realized that the more that you prepare and look like you are 

engaged in risk reduction the more that people and investors feel 

comfortable about coming to a region because they know that you 

are taking into account the costs. 

So we want to commend organizations like Safe America and the 

Great Shakeout Program in California and other groups that continue to figure out ways we can do more around planning, preparedness, and training. 

We also think that it is vital to have continuous infrastructure 

design improvements and increased systems integration. Cases like 

the Minnesota I–35 bridge collapse, flooding in Cedar Rapids, and 

hurricanes in the Gulf Coast illustrate the fact that almost every 

part of the country needs to be thinking that how to reduce its 

vulnerabilities and improve its critical infrastructures. 

Third, as I said, we need to increase our mutual assistance network capabilities. I will be happy during the Q and A’s to talk 

about things like next-generation versions of Project Impact and 

other things like that. 

Fourth, we need to explore ways to reward disaster preparedness 

and one of the things that we might want to raise awareness about 

is that after September 11, 2001, over 500 local chambers joined 

the Manhattan Chamber; and the Executive Director of the Manhattan Chamber, Nancy Ploeger, took $500, $1,000 and helped 

local businesses south of 14th Street to get emergency loans to replace windows or make payroll or things like that. 

So one of the things we might think about is how do we reward 

companies that invest in mitigation ahead of time with perhaps improved or streamline capital access in the event of a disaster. 

Fifth, if we want businesses to contribute their core competencies, we need to set up better technical assistance systems 

support systems. Seventy-five percent of business contributions 

right now are in cash but this form of assistance leaves on the 

table some of the most vital contributions that companies can 

make. 

For example, logistics companies can help expedite the flow of 

goods. One of the things you would never think of that is important 

5 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Harrald appears in the appendix on page 27. 

after a disaster is convenience stores being open because people 

know if they can get to the milk or the gas, they are willing to 

come back. 

There are some ways that we need to increase the relationships 

between local, State, and Federal officials about badging and 

credentialing and access so that we can streamline getting technical experts into place but streamline the ability of local people 

that are critical for recovery practices to come back in. 

So fundamentally we need to help make businesses and their 

communities more resilient. So we have many companies and 

chambers that are investing in sustainability projects and we think 

that starts with design, with regional sustainable design. 

With that, I will close my remarks at this point but will be happy 

to take questions during the Q and A’s. 

Thank you so much. 

Senator PRYOR. Mr. Harrald. 

TESTIMONY OF JOHN R. HARRALD, PH.D.,1 RESEARCH PROFESSOR, CENTER FOR TECHNOLOGY, SECURITY AND POLICY, VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY, CO-DIRECTOR AND PROFESSOR EMERITUS, INSTITUTE FOR CRISIS, DISASTER AND RISK MANAGEMENT, THE 

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, AND CHAIR, DISASTER 

ROUNDTABLE, THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES 

Mr. HARRALD. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the 

opportunity to be here and to testify. 

The opinions that I am representing today are my own and do 

not necessarily represent the National Academies or other affiliated organizations. 

One of the preliminary titles of this hearing was New Paradigms 

for Private Sector Preparedness, which I thought was appropriate 

and timely. A paradigm shift is a fundamental change in how we 

perceive the world, what we believe, and in the ways we act. 

In my opinion, we are at a point in time where such a shift in 

our policies and actions concerning extreme events is both necessary and possible. This paradigm shift will fundamentally affect 

how both the private and public sectors react strategically and 

operationally to these events. 

The images of Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew, and the September 11, 2001, attacks are receding. The issues identified seem less 

urgent but the recent catastrophic earthquakes in Haiti and Chile 

have once again reminded us that our world view must include extreme events and their impacts. 

We know that United States is particularly vulnerable due to its 

large populations living and working in high risk areas, seismic 

zones, coastal and river flood plains and near urban terrorist targets. 

Catastrophic events can and will happened here. Are we resilient 

enough to ensure that our Nation and society can recover and 

thrive after such an event? 

6 

Understanding and reacting to the risk of low probability, high 

consequence events is a challenge for any society. It is difficult to 

envision that which has not yet happened. 

Many view extreme events as rare exceptions to the normal and 

that preparing for them is a waste of time and money, and that if 

an event should occur, the government, the Red Cross and others 

should be able to meet our needs. 

The U.S. response doctrines imply that disasters produce victims 

that must depend upon the assistance provided by those trained 

and equipped to do so. In reacting to past events, we have created 

larger and more capable government-centric response systems. 

This system has worked well for large events such as the September 11, 2001, attacks and the 1984 Florida hurricanes but has 

failed during catastrophic events such as Hurricanes Andrew and 

Katrina with devastating social and economic impacts. 

How can this paradigm shift to one that will work when we need 

it most? I believe there are three areas where change is occurring 

now, and with leadership and investment will lead to a fundamental paradigm shift. 

The private sector plays a critical and central role in each of 

these elements. The first is building and sustaining community resilience. The second is creating a collaborative and enabling preparedness response culture. And the third is using science and 

technology to replace reactive doctrine with proactive agile systems. 

Community resilience is the key to preparedness. Relationships 

and resources that exist at the local level are the primary predictors of the ability to absorb, adapt survive and thrive when faced 

with extreme events. 

We have historically focused on promoting individual preparedness and supporting business recovery and ensuring government 

continuity of operations. 

Resilience, however, requires the building of a network of collaborative relationships. Significant national steps described in my 

written testimony have already been taken to make the development community and national resilience a strategic objective. 

The disaster management culture is changing albeit slowly. The 

current preparedness response and recovery doctrine based on government-centric control will be replaced by a culture that enables 

collaboration. 

Most people impacted by a disaster are uninjured, healthy and 

willing and able to help those more seriously impacted to rebuild 

their community. As stated by FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, 

these willing and able citizens should be thought of as resources, 

not as victims. 

The objective is not to create government organizations capable 

of doing things for people. We must be able to mobilize national resources, public and private, to work with citizens to help restore social, physical and economic systems. 

Science and technology are providing us with new knowledge, capability and opportunities. We are witnessing a very significant 

shift in how science and technology are used in disaster response 

and recovery. 

7 

Physical science better informs us of our risk exposure and helps 

us to develop credible planning scenarios. Social scientists have introduced the concept of social vulnerability into the preparedness 

response and recovery doctrine and have studied how people behave during the crisis and recovery periods. 

Preparedness must be based on what we have learned from 

science, not on disaster myths and fears. We are rapidly evolving 

a centralized, rigid government closed system to a decentralized, 

agile, open, private sector-owned and operated set of systems. 

The challenges of the future are threefold and will include, first, 

recognizing the new capabilities technology is providing rather 

than being constrained by narrowly designed existing systems; second, creating ways to capture and integrate the flood of information 

from unanticipated sources rather than relying on pre-existing formal lines of communications; and three, creating the relationships 

and networks needed for each event rather than living with artificial organizational and physical constraints. 

Already in 2010 there are two vivid disasters that exemplify the 

use of emerging technologies, the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. 

I discuss examples of this innovation in my written testimony. 

The boards and committees of the National Academies have analyzed the research available for many of these issues and I have 

attached a list of study and workshop reports published by the 

Academies during last 5 years to my written statement. 

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that the private sector 

involvement in leadership is key in all three paradigm changing 

trends I have described, building resilience, creating a collaborative 

culture, and creating new capabilities through technology. 

The policy implications for the Federal Government are, I believe, in three primary areas. The first is implementing policies and 

programs that enable public and private organizations to set local 

and regional priorities and to collaboratively use their local resources and knowledge. 

The second is to ensure that Federal funding and grant programs 

that are intended to create resilience are both adequately funded 

and well-coordinated. The stovepiping of current grants by agencies 

and programs can produce conflicting government mandated priorities that lead to competition for resources and actually discourage 

collaboration at the local level. 

Finally, the creation of trusted relationships is the basis of any 

collaborative network and particularly in disaster preparedness. 

This requires open and frequent information sharing which unfortunately conflicts with the cultural values of much in the public 

and private sectors. Managers in both the private and public sectors are trained in and rewarded for withholding and controlling 

information, not for sharing it. 

In my opinion, the trusted relationships necessary to break down 

these barriers are most likely developed at the local and regional 

level. Thank you. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. Mr. Flynn. 

8 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Flynn appears in the appendix on page 33. 

TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN E. FLYNN,1 PH.D., PRESIDENT, 

CENTER FOR NATIONAL POLICY 

Mr. FLYNN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

It is an honor to be here today to testify on this important issue. 

As I said in my written testimony, I would argue this Subcommittee has the most important element and the most neglected 

element of the Homeland Security portfolio. 

I would suggest that if we had the ability to take a satellite 

image and capture all the national capacity to deal with the issues 

we call Homeland Security, we would see a lot of capacity, but we 

would also see that 90 percent of it or so is non-federal; and how 

to engage that capability has been the missing element of our postSeptember 11, 2001, efforts in my view. 

And that has national security implications. It has economic implications and it has civic implications. I would like to review those 

briefly. 

From a national security perspective, I see this as absolutely a 

paramount effort that we need to be engaged in, engaging our civil 

society and private sector and communities in building resilience. 

The reason for this is understanding the nature of the warfare 

we are confronting. The United States is so dominant militarily on 

the conventional front that the future of warfare regardless of what 

adversary you want to point to is undoubtedly going to be battling 

on the civil and economic ground, not on the conventional military 

ground. 

And the reason for that is because an adversary believes if they 

can conduct acts of terror or other efforts in that arena, they will 

get a big bang for their buck. It should follow that the more resilient we are as a society, the better prepared we are, the less brittle 

we are as a society, then the less value this has as a means of warfare for our adversaries. 

We basically have all our eggs in the basket of preventing future 

acts of terror on U.S. soil. I am frankly a little skeptical about the 

capacities, as good as they are, on the national security, intelligence and law enforcement front to eliminate this risk. 

I think what we end up needing is a capacity as well to demonstrate to the world and to our adversaries not only can we deliver a punch but we can take a punch, and that there is a national 

security value to investing in preparedness. And this is something 

we need to treat with a great deal of urgency. 

The second imperative is the economic one. The one thing I think 

we can safely predict in the 21st Century is that disruption will be 

a constant, whether it is coming from manmade threats or probably 

the natural world, and that could range from the pandemic risks 

to the ground moving as was done in Chile and Haiti to the range 

of storms that hit Arkansas. And you, like Texas, I understand, 

never have a down season on disasters. 

Finally, in a complex, interdependent, global society, systems go 

haywire from time to time. And so it is the communities, the companies, and the countries that are most capable of dealing with disruptive risk where people want to live, where they want to work 

and where people are going to want to invest. 

9 

And an element of our competitiveness as a society will be our 

capacity to manage the risks that are foreseeable, and as your 

charts illustrate here, we could do a lot better job in the blue column than we are doing now in the green column. 

It is a combination that we know every dollar we invest in mitigation is a return on investment because it is so expensive when 

things go wrong and the fact that we can enhance competition 

gives us the opening for a much more robust private-public partnership than we have had to date. 

I raise in my testimony here a few areas where I think we have 

tools that we develop often for other reasons but could very well 

support this effort of advancing preparedness. 

The most straightforward one is developing incentives for the private sector to be an effective partner and to bring the resources to 

bear. That would just be very costly and frankly wasteful having 

this in the public sector sitting in a warehouse somewhere waiting 

for the balloon to go up or for the storm to role in. 

And the basic tools here are typically a form of subsidy or tax 

relief or regulatory relief if you have certain capabilities, and I provide a few examples in my testimony. 

One would be things like backup micro-energy systems that 

could even be mobile where we task facilities that really need to 

have dependable electricity like a hospital or other major company 

with important communications. They have this. They can sell that 

capacity during peak periods to the grid so they can recover some 

of their costs. And if that is a mobile capability, that could potentially be contracted by FEMA to go to another region where the 

grid is going to be down for a period of time. 

So we found that we are going to satisfy a company’s need for 

continuity of service in this case with a backup capability that 

would be expensive to have in a separate column and by using incentives, whether it is subsidies or tax breaks or regulatory relief, 

I think we could go in those kinds of directions. 

Another clear area is the insurance realm, and I talked through 

a few examples of this as well and cite one that comes from my 

Coast Guard background. But in trying to essentially change behavior, the value of insurance is one of providing essentially a costbenefit for doing a long-term investment that may be hard to do 

on a short-term analysis; but also when insurers provide that benefit, they want to make sure people are acting and have the behaviors. So there is often an oversight mechanism there can be combined. 

And clearly whether at the State level it is tax relief or insurance 

policy writing to get a bigger pool of involvements or sometimes the 

government coming in and playing as the ultimate re-insurer, those 

kinds of tools can also very much get us in the kinds of behaviors 

that we want. 

As we saw very much in the story of Florida, such a compelling 

one between Hurricane Andrew when building standards were 

pretty slack and, therefore, we had mass devastation, and the same 

year when we had Hurricane Katrina and we saw three big storms 

come through, every building built after the new codes that were 

put in place—and insurers create incentives for that—those buildVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:36 Apr 14, 2011 Jkt 056891 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\56891.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
10 

ings are still standing. The lawn furniture is tossed around but the 

building is still there. 

So we know how to do this. And in my view it is something that 

we need to step up to do. Again, I offer some examples in my written testimony. 

Let me finish, though, with I think the final and perhaps the 

most important and timely imperative for raising this agenda, and 

that is the civic value of engaging in a national focus on preparedness. 

At the end of the day, we cannot get there from here unless it 

is all hands. It has to be an open and inclusive process. Alex de 

Tocqueville, when he marched through this country in the early 

19th Century, remarked on two characteristics that made America 

stand out for him. 

One, our self-reliance, and second, our volunteerism, willingness 

to come together in times of public need. 

One of the dilemmas we had, I think, in the Cold War era, and 

it sort of evolved as well in the professional protection area, is that 

we ended up with essentially a view by everyday citizens that public safety is an entitlement provided by a very centralized public 

service. 

What we really need to move to is a world where it is all shared, 

and when we do that, remind yourself that we are not Democrats 

or Republicans, we are citizens who need to work together to recognize that public safety and preparedness is, in fact, a public civic 

good and something we should all strive to embrace. 

With that, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to your questions. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. On that I would say amen. That was 

good. I appreciate that. 

Let me start, with just a general question, that may be a little 

bit of an odd way to start. I was looking at this chart a moment 

ago—where can we cut spending but at the same time improve our 

effectiveness. I have a few ideas but I would like to hear yours. 

Are there ways that you are aware of just in our disaster preparedness regime that we have out there, by which we can actually 

cut spending but increase the effectiveness of what we are trying 

to do? 

Does anybody want to take a stab at that? I think in Washington 

what happens is that when you see a problem, you want to throw 

money at it. That seems to have been the pattern in this town for 

a long time. 

And I think certainly there is going to be a very significant Federal portion of disaster preparedness funding but I think there are 

also ways that we can just work smarter and get better results. 

Mr. HARRALD. I will give it a shot. I think obviously we would 

all agree that the easiest place to cut costs is that green bar of just 

being better prepared and that is going to take some investment. 

But the one place where I do think there is potential savings is 

looking at the Federal grants program. As I indicated in my scenario, that is one where a nuclear device in Washington, preparing 

massive population evacuation. 

The people who are looking at the public health aspects or working on public health emergency preparedness grants coming from 

the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The hosVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:36 Apr 14, 2011 Jkt 056891 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\56891.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
11 

pitals are working on hospital preparedness grants coming from 

the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The metro 

is working on grants from the Department of Transportation. The 

Council of Governments is working on Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) grants. 

When you get down to the local level not only do you get some 

duplication you get some competition. What vanishes is the local 

priorities, the local needs. So I think it is very difficult. These are 

stovepiped not only by funds but by agencies, by physical locations 

where the grants come from. 

Senator PRYOR. Mr. Flynn. 

Mr. FLYNN. If I might, in my opening comment, Mr. Chairman, 

one of our challenges is we are not putting side by side our other 

investments in national security vis ́-a`-vis ́ these sets of issues by 

comparison, again because I do think there is such a national security imperative for doing this. 

And of course, the stovepipe that keeps all that review with even 

what we are spending on the homeland defense realm vis ́-a`-vis ́

what we might be spending to support States and locals or encouraging private, we do not have a means, it does not seem to me, to 

look at that very well. 

Aside from the homeland defense budget in the Department of 

Defense, which was in the high 30 billions, we are now talking 

about how we reallocate some very limited resources here on our 

level. So that is the elephant in the room kind of problem. 

But I agree very much with Dr. Harrald that the grant formulas 

are, the management of the grants process is a serious challenge, 

and to some extent it is the worst of all worlds from our Federal 

system of government. 

What I have heard a lot from our States and locals is that even 

if they want to step out and do something that is pretty sensible, 

the mayor or governor says, hey, you try that Federal trough; they 

got some grant money slushing up there, before we make the investment. 

Well, it is actually not a big slush of money and everybody is 

competing and the rules change every year, and everybody has to 

spend a lot of time diverting energy and effort chasing this elusive 

pot of gold. 

We are in sort of one or two situations. Either we need to push 

self-sufficiency back into the State and local level and create some 

incentives for that or it has to be a bigger pot. 

But we are in sort of this no-man’s land right now, enough to 

make it that States and locals think that they can grab this where 

they are and they are not going to come out empty-handed and 

then we are not really getting the capacity that we want in a sustained way. 

So I think still that the grants program is one that needs a hard 

looking at. Again it is spread like peanut butter across the Federal 

apparatus and that makes coherence not, things are pretty incoherent. 

Senator PRYOR. Mr. Jordan. 

Mr. JORDAN. To tell you the truth, beyond Ready.gov, I do not 

think that there are many programs specifically for business preparedness. I think that what we see is a lot of episodic and ad hoc 

12 

initiatives. Some of them are great and we see a number of things 

that are being done through the voluntary sector. 

But to tell you the truth, there really is not a concerted emphasis 

on mitigation and resilience right now. In fact, Win Hallett, the 

head of the Mobile Chamber of Commerce—he is also the head of 

the Chamber Federation—was one of the first chambers to want to 

invest in a sustainability plan for Mobile Bay. 

He said that we have a situation where up and down the Gulf 

Coast we know if we have to rebuild a bridge or a series of bridges 

we are talking millions and millions of dollars. Doing a better design, a better plan might cost two or three million dollars but it 

would save hundreds of millions down the road. 

However, it is a lot harder to get funding for the design work 

than it is to do the post-disaster recovery work which your green 

bar illustrates so much. So I would say on the business preparedness side there is plenty of money being saved right now because 

it is not being spent. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. Fair enough. 

Dr. Harrald mentioned in his statement the need for a fundamental culture change or a new mind set in disaster thinking, a 

change from centralized planning and control to community-based, 

decentralized planning and control. 

Can the other two witnesses, comment on that? Do you agree or 

disagree with that? 

Mr. FLYNN. I could not agree more on that point. It is, I think, 

one of the core challenges, the move away from I would say almost 

an increasingly paternalistic and closed process for protecting the 

American people that assumes when things go wrong there are victims that have to be handled, and I think Administrator Fugate is 

straight on this. 

These are survivors who can be assets. That is the important 

message to go. But Americans are not being treated that way. They 

are essentially told the professionals will take care of this, just go 

about your lives. 

So the culture change, it is not just bottom up. It really is that 

we have to overcome kind of an ethos in these bureaucracies that 

I call sort of professional protectors. This is not business for amateurs. You folks stay out of here. 

So it is important that we find ways to really attack the culture 

at the top as well as develop at the bottom. 

One of the things I write about in my testimony and something 

I have been involved with closely is, and developed down in the 

southeast, is an initiative called the Community Regional Resilience Institute that grew out of work with three southern cities, 

Gulfport, Memphis, and Charleston. 

And what they did there was to go work with the local players, 

the private, the nonprofits, the faith-based organizations, and the 

public officials and said what would make this community be able 

to cope well with a big event. 

The goal is to identify those qualities that make a community essentially able to withstand and recover from these events. We know 

there are huge cost savings if they do that, with the objective of 

if we can identify those standards, we can measure those standards. And then we could rate communities like we do hotels on a 

13 

one through four stars. A four-star community could potentially get 

lower insurance, lower bond ratings because they are a much better and safer investment. You are going to get your money pay 

back if you get this right here. 

Obviously it has something for the Chamber of Commerce to 

crow about because this is a place, if you are a company and you 

locate, that if things come through here, you are going to bounce 

back. 

So the cost, we are talking about potentially something where 

that work could go out to maybe six or eight more cities. It is a 

grassroots effort. It is convening role. It is not a huge overhead and 

we get the insights. 

We look at that and say is there something that we can share 

with the border other communities and create ideally incentives for 

communities to embrace those. So fundamentally I think the message that comes through with all of us here is that the expertise 

for this is really fundamentally often at the grassroots level. 

The capability is ultimately always there. There are just not 

enough professionals to go around. And how we create that incentive of it not just being an expensive, top down national program 

to one that is more about how we convene, how we engage, how 

we capture the best practices and share it with others, that should 

be where the Federal Government is going and I do not see enough 

of that activity. 

Mr. JORDAN. I would like to modify that just a little bit in that 

when a disaster happens, sometimes your local authorities and 

your local networks are traumatized and displaced. 

So one of the challenges that you have is you are working with 

parish presidents or other local officials and their kid is in another 

State and the mom is in the hospital and they lost everything and 

they have a million other things going on and they need help too. 

So that sometimes what you want to do is have an external support 

system that is not necessarily commanding it but supporting it. 

For example, with Chile right now, the head of the American 

Chamber in Chile was asking us to provide examples of what other 

Chambers of Commerce have done, and we had the head of the 

American Chamber in the Philippines and the head of the Manhattan Chamber already sending him information such as, this is 

what happened with us in this situation. These are the kind of 

things we are here to help. 

And I could see kind of a network of, say, mayors or city managers or people from other parts of the country and where the Federal Government, of course, having visibility across the country can 

also be providing kind of a backstop too, especially when you have 

folks who have never been through a disaster and want to have 

kind of the lesson learned from somewhere else on this. 

So I think that we are moving toward a distributed network idea 

where it is not so much a top down system or just a bottom up system, but both. 

I think the other thing that happens right now is that the areas 

of responsibility for people are too nebulously defined. 

For example, after the flood Cedar Rapids officials said they 

needed five billion dollars in housing assistance. 

14 

And I went and I was working with the local chamber, the city 

manager, the local authorities. I said, who is point on housing? 

They said, well, we are. No. Who is responsible for doing this? 

It takes a little while to start to drill down to figuring out who 

is responsible for the different functions; and then how do you help 

the person that is in housing? Do you help coordinate them with 

the person who is responsible for environmental cleanup because 

debris removal, for example, is important. 

Or with the lawyers, because sometimes in low income communities, they do not necessarily have clear title to the property. So 

actually getting the legal title squared away and the debris cleanup 

squared away is a prerequisite to getting the housing situation 

dealt with. 

So one of the things that we need to do is sharpen up the roles 

and responsibilities and then also sharpen up how they connect to 

each other and then sharpen up how these on-the-ground systems 

connect with support systems outside. It is kind of like a threelevel system that we are really looking at here. 

Senator PRYOR. That is helpful. 

Mr. Jordan, let me follow up with you on a different matter. You 

mentioned in your opening statement Project Impact. You just 

glazed over that a little bit. As I understand it, that was a FEMA 

initiative under James Lee Witt, and I am not sure about this but 

I think it was scrapped several years ago under the Bush Administration. 

Tell me about the pros and cons of Project Impact and should 

FEMA be doing that again? 

Mr. JORDAN. We have been talking about the importance of this 

mutual assistance network, the support system between the different groups and then between the government, the nonprofit and 

the private sector. 

You know that famous saying that people always trot out that 

‘‘after disasters is not the time you want to be exchanging business 

cards.’’ I am sure you must have heard that one a million times. 

Well, it is true. 

After a disaster, folk’s bandwidth, gets sliced very thin and they 

are running around and they end up having to fall back on trusted 

relationships. 

So one of the things we think that happened with Project Impact 

was that by 2000 there were 220 more or less communities that 

were involved in it, and what you had was, say, the head of the 

local chamber, the head of the utility, the head of the hospital, the 

head of the school system, the emergency responders, the mayor’s 

office were all meeting together, maybe on a quarterly basis to 

compare notes, and work through different preparedness issues 

with each other. And then James Lee Witt convened all of the communities together so they could know each other. 

So for example, one of the things that happens after a disaster 

is that everybody focuses on the direct impact area. So everyone is 

focusing on New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But we were 

getting phone calls from Texarkana and Little Rock for assistance 

too, and for a smaller community just dealing with a couple of hundred people is a big deal. They needed help with questions like: 

15 

‘‘Who do I go to or who can help me to figure out how to deal with 

things like that?’’ 

Project Impact was kind of a first at creating one of those distributed mutual assistance network models. And I think some kind of 

evolution of that is naturally going to happen. I mean, it is one of 

those things if it was not discovered yet it would be anyway. The 

question then is how do we aid and abet it as effectively as possible. 

So to answer the rest of your question, obviously the cons of it 

is that it could be time intensive, more time intensive than what 

we currently have but I am a firm believer in an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure. So I mean, I think the cons can 

be overcome. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. We have been reminded with Haiti and 

Chile about how devastating an earthquake would be. In this country I think psychologically we think the LA area or the West Coast, 

when we talk about major earthquakes, but we have a fault zone 

in the Boothill of Missouri and down into Arkansas, the New Madrid fault. 

Just based on what you know, if that fault were to cause an 

earthquake today, what is your sense of how prepared we are to 

respond to that? 

Mr. HARRALD. I have been working with FEMA for the last 2 

years on this project so I have been going to a lot of State and local 

meetings and that brings out a lot of the issues that we have been 

talking about. 

It is clearly something that exceeds the capacity of the existing 

response system and it is very unique in that it affects eight 

States, four Federal regions, the coordination aspect, the mutual 

aid aspects are daunting. The numbers are impressive. You will 

have very large populations that will move to areas that have the 

problems even just mentioned of going to areas where they need 

service, things are up and running but they do not have the capacity. 

You will have to bring in large capacities into areas, the Memphis area and the eastern Arkansas area particularly. And this is 

going to be the site of the 2011 national level exercise which will 

be interesting to see. 

But are we prepared? You will see a lot of unmet needs for quite 

a period of time, and it is a good example of the issue, I think, just 

to pick one example of that I think reinforces the point that we all 

are making. 

If you look at collapsed building response and you look at the 

number of people who would be impacted and you run that out 

using the resources needed using FEMA’s own standards for search 

and rescue, urban search and rescue teams, we have 20 search and 

rescue teams. You would need for immediate response 10 times 

that. 

So is the answer training 10 times more national search and rescue teams or is the answer providing capabilities locally and maybe 

training volunteers for light rescue from people who are not 

trapped under collapsed multi-story buildings but are trapped 

under furniture or a beam or whatever else where crowbars and 

jacks and hand tools would work? 

16 

The next step up is the local volunteer fire departments will have 

some local rescue capability. The next step up is mutual aid from 

nearby counties and nearby States. 

So the issue is with the core of expertise and the knowledge that 

we have, how do we leverage that to meet these needs? 

There are many things that come out of that the people really 

are not looking at the ongoing public health needs. When you move 

a million people who have heart problems, diabetes problems, other 

issues and they have left their medications, and you are dealing 

with hundreds of thousands of people like this in shelters, who is 

providing that resource? 

I think some of the preparedness work that FEMA has done outlines these issues. I do not know if we are at the point of really 

looking at creative ways to solve some of the problems. Tendency 

says this is really hard stuff so we are not going to deal with it. 

Senator PRYOR. A lot of that area in northeast Arkansas and the 

Boothill of Missouri is rural. But you have two pretty good size 

urban centers there with Memphis and St. Louis. 

Mr. HARRALD. Memphis would be the major impact area. 

Senator PRYOR. Just one thing I would worry about are the 

bridges over the Mississippi River depending on how bad this thing 

is. 

Mr. HARRALD. Well, the role of infrastructure in that large area, 

both the transportation infrastructure and the power industry, the 

point that Dr. Flynn was just talking about, about micro-energy is 

a potential solution because the long-term recovery of electrical 

power if you have an earthquake in that area in January or February it is one thing living in the streets in Haiti or even in the 

springtime or summer in Chile but not so much in February in 

northeast Arkansas. 

So providing shelters to very large numbers of people is going to 

be a very difficult issue. 

Mr. JORDAN. Two years ago our June workshop focused on the 

New Madrid fault and FEMA graciously organized it for us, organized the scenario for us. And the Memphis Chamber leadership 

participated and they have developed a new business group to promote the resilience of the region more effectively. 

That being said, with every disaster there are always unanticipated consequences. So again one of the things that we think needs 

to happen ahead of time is to raise awareness through preparation, 

drills, training, public awareness, things like that. 

We will support a number of different unintended things that 

came out as a result of the workshop. For example, with an earthquake you might have a situation where people are going to be 

more interested in sheltering in place. 

We are figuring out crazy things like how do we get more helicopters into the region. Things like that. 

So there are going to be a number of curve balls. Again it comes 

to this idea of a distributed network solution. We need to figure out 

who needs a big connected event that will work. 

Senator PRYOR. Does the proximity of the Little Rock Air Force 

Base help? 

Mr. JORDAN. Absolutely. 

17 

Senator PRYOR. And they have the lift capacity with the C–130s 

there. 

Mr. JORDAN. Very much so. 

Mr. FLYNN. I think that the trends overall are not good. We rely 

so heavily on State and local capability for managing these events, 

and States and locals are clearly under enormous stress. So their 

capacity to meet the day-to-day is challenged. 

So meeting a catastrophic event obviously stresses that system 

because we are increasingly living in more urbanized settings and 

more dependent on aging infrastructure. When things go wrong, 

they go very wrong, not because of what mother nature did but 

largely because of how we are living. 

So yes, I very much worry about our infrastructure which is already under strain by age, high use, and low maintenance increasingly and what its vulnerabilities are. 

I will just point back to one of the areas where we are better prepared for earthquakes is Los Angeles. But just imagine sort of the 

nightmare scenario, there is an earthquake that essentially turns 

Terminal Island into essentially mush. It liquefies the island because it is all fill and it fills up the harbor. 

Fifty percent of all the energy west of the Rockies Mountains 

comes from the port of Long Beach, the southern part of their port 

complex. Of that, right today there are about 7 days of refined fuels 

in the entire southern California economy. 

So 28 million people basically depend upon 7 days of fuel that 

is available. That is with people having on average a half a tank 

of gas. That is what is at the filling stations and on-site with refineries. 

So you disrupt that port, the crude cannot come in. The refineries go idle. You are literally out of gas and there is only one pipeline that connects the southern California region to the national 

pipe grid and the feed fuel to Phoenix. 

So the challenges are enormous when we think about these 

events because we are so dependent on infrastructure and particularly in these urbanized areas. We are not doing as much as we 

should on mapping out these risks and thinking about contingencies. 

That seems like an impossible scenario here. But there are basic 

things clearly that we can do. We need some salvage capability to 

open a harbor quickly. We need to know how to do that and that 

is civil infrastructure largely. 

But there are no salvage ships on the West Coast. The nearest 

one is in Pearl Harbor. If the Navy wanted to get one today, they 

would probably have to get it from Singapore or from Pusan, 

Korea, to begin the process of moving something out of the way. 

So those kinds of problems are still there, and of course, that scenario could be a terrorist one as well and again that can bring you 

back to both the national security issue as well as the natural hazard issue that create an incentive for investing more on not just 

preventing but being able to respond and recover, and then that 

has deterrent value. 

So natural disasters we cannot prevent. So there is a lot of opportunity to think about this differently. We are still pretty comVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:36 Apr 14, 2011 Jkt 056891 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\56891.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
18 

partmentalized, when we are looking at dollars and how we can approach it. 

Senator PRYOR. Well, we could go on and on about this. I have 

several pages of questions and probably what I will do is submit 

a few to you all in writing along with some of the other senators 

who could not be here today. 

I really want to thank you all for being here. I am just glad that 

somebody is paying attention to all of this, and I am hoping that 

your work and the work of many others around the country will 

lead to better preparedness so that we can change the green line 

on that chart and change some lines on a lot of other charts as 

well. 

Anyway, thank you all for being here, and what we will do is 

leave the record open for 15 days. That is our custom here in the 

Subcommittee. Leave it open for 15 days and we may get you some 

more questions in writing and we would appreciate your response 

on those. 

And like I said, some of those may come from other Subcommittee Members as well. Thank you all for being here and we 

will adjourn. 

[Whereupon, at 2:02 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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