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28–263 PDF 2006

THE BIG ONE: HOW DO WE ENSURE

A ROBUST FEDERAL RESPONSE TO

A CATASTROPHIC EARTHQUAKE IN

THE LOS ANGELES REGION?

(109–48)

FIELD HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

TRANSPORTATION AND

INFRASTRUCTURE

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

FEBRUARY 23, 2006 (WHITTIER, CALIFORNIA)

Printed for the use of the

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

(
COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin, Vice-Chair

SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

SUE W. KELLY, New York

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana

ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey

JERRY MORAN, Kansas

GARY G. MILLER, California

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina

ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

SAM GRAVES, Missouri

MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

TED POE, Texas

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington

CONNIE MACK, Florida

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York

LUIS G. FORTUN ̃ O, Puerto Rico

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JERROLD NADLER, New York

CORRINE BROWN, Florida

BOB FILNER, California

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD,

California

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California

BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington

SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada

JIM MATHESON, Utah

MICHAEL M. HONDA, California

RICK LARSEN, Washington

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York

JULIA CARSON, Indiana

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine

LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri

ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado

JOHN BARROW, Georgia

(II)
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND EMERGENCY

MANAGEMENT

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas, Vice-Chair

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York

DON YOUNG, Alaska

(Ex Officio)

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine

LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee

JULIA CARSON, Indiana

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota

(Ex Officio)

(III)

(V)

CONTENTS

TESTIMONY

Page

Hayashi, Ann-Marie, City of Whittier Emergency Services ................................. 18

Jones, Dr. Lucille M., Scientist-in-Charge, Southern California, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior ...................................................... 5

Renteria, Henry, Director, California Office of Emergency Services ................... 18

Stanley, Ellis M., Sr., CEM, City of Los Angeles Emergency Preparedness

Department ........................................................................................................... 18

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES

Hayashi, Ann-Marie ................................................................................................ 35

Jones, Dr. Lucille M. ............................................................................................... 40

Renteria, Henry ....................................................................................................... 73

(1)

THE BIG ONE: HOW DO WE ENSURE A ROBUST FEDERAL RESPONSE TO A CATASTROPHIC EARTHQUAKE IN THE LOS ANGELES REGION?

Thursday, February 23, 2006

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION

AND INFRASTRUCTURE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:00 a.m., in the

Whittier City Council Chambers, 13230 Penn Street, Whittier,

California, Hon. Bill Shuster [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.

Mr. SHUSTER. The Subcommittee will come to order. I want to

start off by first welcoming everyone here today and thanks for the

California hospitality. Coming from Pennsylvania the weather was

not quite as nice. Actually about 35 degrees colder than it is here

so I appreciate that greatly.

I want to thank Mr. Miller for inviting the Subcommittee here

today to Whittier. Can you here me? It sounds like it cut off. Can

you here me? There it is again. Okay. Thanks to Mr. Miller for inviting us here to Whittier to hold this hearing today. Mr. Miller

has been a strong leader for the Committee and we appreciate that.

Because of the great risk California faces from both natural disasters and terrorism, you have ensured that we focus on California

as we look to improve state and local readiness and capabilities.

I know you have a strong interest in preventing a disorganized

federal response to a catastrophic earthquake in California and we

welcome your participation in today’s hearing. Again, thanks for

having us here today. I would like unanimous consent that Mr.

Miller be permitted to sit with the Subcommittee at today’s hearing, offer testimony, and ask questions. Without objection so ordered.

I would also like to thank our witnesses for being here today. We

are meeting this morning to receive state and local input for improving the emergency management capabilities and readiness at

the federal, state, and local levels. Hurricane Katrina revealed

problems in the emergency management system at all levels of government that have to be addressed. You have a role in guiding the

efforts to fix those problems.

Unfortunately this hasn’t always been a collaborative process.

Too often the federal government has failed to take into account

your views. There has never been a greater need for your profes-
2

sional advice and expertise. We have to get this right and we need

your help to do it.

Like hurricane Katrina a catastrophic earthquake in southern

California could paralyze the region, destroy the infrastructure,

and leave tens of thousands homeless. With over 300 faults southern California is at risk for a catastrophic earthquake.

Models of a 7.5 earthquake in Los Angeles basin predict over

18,000 dead, a quarter of a trillion dollars in losses, and 300,000

left homeless. These predictions dwarf losses from 1994 North

Ridge Earthquake and without reforms in the current emergency

management system we will have another uncoordinated federal

response like that in the Gulf Coast.

I was on the House Select Committee that investigated the response to Hurricane Katrina, and our key findings of the federal

failure were that the plan was flawed and the execution was ineffective. There was confusion over who had the authority to make

decisions.

Response capabilities were efficient. In some places, it took a

week before the federal government even arrived. Is southern California prepared to be on its own for a week, even though conventional wisdom says you only need to be prepared for 72 hours?

The House Select Committee report found that the federal response to Hurricane Katrina was slowed because key decisions

were made late, ineffectively, or not at all. Today, these key decisions about how and when to engage federal response assets are no

longer in FEMA. They are with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Also, DHS and FEMA responded to Katrina with a business as

usual attitude. Business as usual means sitting back and waiting

for the state to request assistance, instead of proactively getting

supplies into the field prior to a formal request. Business as usual

does not work in a catastrophic disaster.

Following a catastrophic earthquake, the state and local governments may need federal assistance before there is a clear operating

picture. If federal assistance is needed immediately to save lives

and prevent suffering, should the federal government wait for the

state to follow protocol? Can southern Californians wait for help

while the federal government demands that the state follows bureaucratic procedures? We cannot afford to get it wrong again.

Additionally, the report found that the government failed to effectively execute response plans and authorities. This failure can be

attributed to an inadequate professional disaster work force. At the

time Katrina struck, FEMA had 500 vacancies. This is a small

agency within a big department. They cannot afford to be without

that many people. Without the right number of the right people,

this will never work.

If we are to successfully respond to a catastrophic earthquake,

we must enhance state and local emergency management capacity.

One of the important lessons of Katrina is that the federal government’s ability to respond to a catastrophic disaster is often dependent upon the quality of the state and local disaster system.

Disaster management is a shared responsibility and state and

local governments need to be able to handle most disasters on their

own and be prepared to integrate federal assistance into their oper-
3

ations during larger events. Despite spending about $3 billion dollars a year on first responder grants since September 11th, it is

very difficult to see where those dollars resulted in improved capabilities or readiness in our response to Hurricane Katrina.

The report found that inadequate capabilities and readiness resulted in the federal response being overwhelmed in critical areas

such as logistics, communications, situational awareness, and command and control. It is truly staggering that we have spent so

much on preparedness and have so little to show for it. We have

to do better.

These are systemic failures. Clearly the system needs to be reformed. We are here today to hear about the specific challenges you

face and your recommendations for reform at the federal level. At

the end of the day, if the federal government fails to reform itself,

then the state and local governments will have to face the next catastrophic disaster and its consequences largely alone for the first

week or longer. I look forward to hearing your testimony today.

I would like to turn to Mr. Miller now if you have a statement.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you. Welcome to Whittier. Chairman Shuster, we are quite a way from where you live but it is a lot warmer

here. It was not so last week so we are experiencing some good

weather. Our geography we have in California is different than we

have in a lot of other states. We are here today to determine where

we are in the preparation and planning process to be sure that we

are prepared for the unthinkable.

While state and local government planning is crucial, disaster

preparedness federal coordination is essential to ensure the system

can work. We would like to understand how the federal government can best employ the resources that would be needed in the

aftermath of an earthquake in southern California. Specifically,

how can we ensure adequate resources can flow to the areas in the

need of rescue assistance, debris renewal, and emergency medical

care. These are the questions that today’s hearing will help us to

understand.

You messed my pages up. I have one arm. You will have to forgive me. This is the first day that I have worn a shirt, slacks, and

even put on a tie since I had shoulder surgery. I am right handed.

Try doing everything with your left hand and you will get your

pages out of order, too, I guarantee.

Mr. SHUSTER. You are better than most with one hand.

Mr. MILLER. I am not sure about that. It is fitting today that we

convene this hearing at Whittier, California, the site of the Whittier Narrows Earthquake of 1987. When we discuss this about the

proper location to have this I looked at the entire region and I

thought Whittier really experienced firsthand what can happen

with a 5.9 earthquake. We had eight people die. We had $400 million in damages and that is incredible for a city this size. I was

raised in Whittier and that was quite an impact on our community.

While the Whittier Earthquake was devastating to the region,

the big one that we might have one day would be catastrophic.

Whittier gave us the opportunity to test our preparations for a

larger regional disaster. It also taught us what improvements were

necessary to our plans and improvement to infrastructure and the

services that were needed after an earthquake.
4

I am pleased that Mrs. Hayashi of Whittier is here with us today

to share her perspective from the local level about what is needed

from the federal government to assist in a catastrophic disaster.

Mrs. Hayashi is an expert when it comes to earthquake and emergency preparedness and can help us to understand the ways that

the federal government got it right, the ways that we need to improve in what has happened since to better coordinate the efforts

in the future.

Most importantly, Mrs. Hayashi can shed light on what the federal resources are needed within the local community after a sudden earthquake. While not an earthquake, the devastating event

this past August on the Gulf Coast provided another unfortunate

wake-up call to all of us whom I would hope the catastrophic event

might never happen in southern California.

In the days that followed the hurricane we also witnessed what

could happen when local, state, and federal officials are not adequately prepared to do what is appropriate to coordinate the disaster needs. Not only must we mobilize to make sure our emergency

plans are in place but we must also learn from the mistakes that

we have made in the past to ensure that they are corrected in the

future.

Learning from these past disasters is essential in ensuring that

adequate and complete coverage of what is needed by the local

communities takes place. We hope we never have the major earthquake we talk about having but if it does happen, how can we coordinate it in a way that the federal government can work with

local, state, and federal government. Together we can create a body

that will deal with the needs of the local and I am here today to

basically understand what our local needs are. Thank you very

much.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Miller. What is the

population of Whittier? I would imagine it is probably vastly different. 85,000? When you grew up here it was probably

significantly—

Mr. MILLER. There were about 12 of us here.

Mr. SHUSTER. Again, thank you, Mr. Miller, for having us out

here today. I first want to ask unanimous consent that all our witnesses’ full statements be included in the record. Without objection

so ordered. Since your written testimony has been made part of the

record, the Subcommittee request that you limit your summary to

five minutes. We have two panels today of witnesses. On the first

panel we have one witness, Dr. Lucy Jones with The U.S. Geological Survey.

Dr. Jones is going to provide a presentation that will demonstrate the likely consequences of a catastrophic earthquake in

the Los Angeles region. Just as the consequences of a category 4

storm hitting New Orleans are well known, I believe it is important

that we fully understand what we could face here in a moment’s

notice. Following Dr. Jones’ testimony we will open for questions.

Dr. Jones, welcome again. Thank you for being here and you may

proceed.
5

TESTIMONY OF DR. LUCILE M. JONES, SCIENTIST-IN-CHARGE,

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR.

Dr. JONES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Miller, for having

me.

Mr. SHUSTER. Dr. Jones, let me just say you can take more than

five minutes. I am sure we are going to take more than five minutes trying to understand.

Dr. JONES. Okay. That is quite reassuring because I had prepared a longer presentation than that. We need to get this where

you can hear me.

Mr. SHUSTER. There are all kinds of mics up here.

Dr. JONES. Yeah, there I am. This is a great opportunity. I am

being told to scare you and given free reign to tell you the worse.

I am doing this actually from an interesting perspective. You are

talking about federal versus state. I am a federal employee but

with a regional responsibility.

The U.S. Geological Survey under the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program does the science of earthquakes across the

nation and we do this through regional operations so I am responsible for southern California because although that is only just one

part of one of 50 states, it is half of the nation’s earthquake risk

so it is a very significant problem that we are facing in the region.

I want to start with very briefly just to remind you what an

earthquake is. An earthquake happens because of sudden slip

across the fault that releases shaking as one of the its effects so

that we actually have both phenomena that we need to look at,

how the ground is disrupted, like this picture we are showing on

the right from the KoBay Earthquake in Japan in 1995 and then

also the shaking that is released from it. Both of those will be causing significant effects on our infrastructure. They need to be taken

into account as we get ready for this.

Another point to remember is although you have been hearing

that earthquakes happen at epicenters for a long time it is not

true. They begin at a hypocenter but they happen over a surface.

A good analogy for an earthquake is actually snapping your fingers. When you snap your fingers you put two surfaces in frictional

contact. Because they are pushed together they can’t move so you

push hard enough and overcome the friction and it slips suddenly

and released energy in the form of a sound wave that makes the

air vibrate.

When we slip on that fault, we release energy in the form of

sound and sheer waves that make the ground vibrate but you can’t

snap your fingers at a point. It requires a surface in contact and,

in fact, the bigger the surface is, the bigger the earthquake. The

one thing that really controls how big an earthquake will be is how

long the fault is that moves in that event.

You may not have recognized that the United States had almost

a magnitude 8 just a little over three years ago. It was up in the

Alaska wilderness and did very little damage because of its isolated

location. I want to show you this which is how we look at damage

from an earthquake. You can see these colors are showing you how

intense the shaking is.
6

In this case we have a fault that was over 200 miles long and

you can see there was an area of many tens of thousands of square

miles that recede at shaking. But in that location there were very

few people anywhere nearby. If we were to move this to California,

you can see that same shaking area projected onto a map of California we would be affecting millions of people at a very high level

of shaking.

The level that we here received in the Whittier Narrows Earthquake is shown in orange on this figure. We never got to intensity

9. That is not magnitude, that is intensity that is shown with the

red colors in this region. We had the yellow to orange in a very,

very small area in the Whittier Narrows Earthquake. By comparison when we get to these really big earthquakes we are going to

go to a very different class of disaster.

What controls what the shaking is going to be is three things.

The bigger the earthquake, you release more energy and you have

more energy at every site. Your distance from the fault, the shaking dies off with distance quite rapidly. In fact, the one piece of

good news in California—the bad news is we have a lot of faults.

The good news is they break up the crust and make it a poor transmitter of energy.

You are going to hear tomorrow about how the New Madrid

Earthquake could affect the area in Missouri where the crust is old

and cold and hard and a magnitude 7.5 moved furniture in the

White House. It is felt over a very, very large area.By comparison

here in California it dies off more rapidly.

You can have local soils that amplify the shaking. If you are in

soft ground the waves slow down and to carry the same amount of

energy they have to get bigger. We have been able to map out

where in California. One of the efforts of the U.S. Geological Survey is to look at where we have this effect and we have been able

to put the whole picture together and the upper map here is showing you where we have relative amplification of shaking whatever

the earthquake is.

You can see here in the basin areas wherever it is flat, wherever

you avoid the wildfires, you have an amplification of shaking.

Again, you will hear that tomorrow along the Mississippi River. It

is a very major issue as well.

As I said, this is a national problem but here in southern California we are responsible for half of the nation’s risk. It is a combination of over 300 faults, as the Chairman said, combined with 20

million people. You put it together and we have just got the greatest exposure that we are going to have.

The reason we have so many faults here in southern California

is that we have a plate boundary. The San Andreas fault is the

boundary between very large sections of the earth’s crust. The

North American plate runs from the San Andreas fault all the way

out to Iceland. The Pacific plate runs from the San Andreas fault

out to Japan. These two very large pieces of the earth’s crust are

moving with respect to each other and they come together right

here in California along the San Andreas fault.

We aren’t stopping plate tectonics. There is no way we are going

to stop this movement of just about two inches a year. That is

about the rate that your fingernails grow. If you didn’t cut your fin-
7

gernails for 200 years you would have a pretty big offset and that

is what has built up on the San Andreas fault.

We compounded in southern California by putting a kink in the

San Andreas. You can see the bend in the fault here. Try to imagine taking two pieces of glass and hitting them up against each

other. They are going to shatter and then you will sweep the pieces

around the corner. Well, southern California is shattering along

this network of faults and we are sweeping around the corner. The

end result is a mosaic of faults, several 100.

This is a picture that we put together with the southern California Earthquake Center, a group of academics that we fund through

the USGS that you see this whole network of faults. All the little

dots are the earthquakes we have recorded over 300,000 earthquakes in the last 20 years within the region. Every one of these

is capable of a significant earthquake. Remember the length of the

fault gives you the size of the earthquake. Some of these are very,

very long.

When I try to tell you how bad the worse one could be, it is very

limiting to try and pick only one event out of this whole network

of possibilities so I am going to show you two. One is going to be

the San Andreas. That is our biggest earthquake. It is long enough

to produce a magnitude 8. It is also our most common earthquake.

That fault is moving very fast. They average 200 years apart and

it has been 300 years since the last one in southern California.

Then we are going to look at what happens if you put one in

right under this area. Let us start with the San Andreas. I said intensity 8 was the level that we had at Whittier at Whittier Narrows and we are looking up to intensity 10 on this big earthquake.

You can see it will cover a very large area.

This is a relatively simple level of modeling that we can do that

looks at just how big the earthquake is and what our soil conditions are. It gives us a pretty bad picture. What is really significant

about the San Andreas Earthquake is actually going to be its affect

to the infrastructure.

Like Katrina we are going to have a situation where you can’t

drive away from the disaster. In Whittier Narrows or in North

Ridge you could get in your car and drive for five minutes and buy

a hamburger and a bottle of water. In this earthquake you are not

going to be able to drive out of it because all of southern California

is going to be involved.

We are also going to have a disruption to the infrastructure. On

the left I have a picture of what happened to a dirt road during

an earthquake in Landers in 1992. Here is a picture of what happened to a railway in Turkey. This is going to happen to all of the

freeways and railways coming into Los Angeles. If you go in and

look at the structure that we have, every railroad coming into

southern California crosses the San Andreas fault.

Every major freeway except highway 101 to San Francisco

crosses the San Andreas fault. We are going to have those levels

of disruption, that 20 feet of offset in the road.

Also all of our gas pipelines, 90 percent of our electricity transmission, all of our outside water. Every one of those infrastructure

systems cross the San Andreas and will be disrupted when this

earthquake happens.
8

Here is actually a photo. We have done a very detailed imaging

of the San Andreas fault and you can see here I-15 crossing the

San Andreas fault which is shown by the yellow line. Now imagine

that you have moved one side with respect to the other. You can

see that we are going to have a disruption to our freeways.

This is all something that could be addressed before the earthquake. We could look at the way we are building our freeways to

not have the big berms on the side that will be cutting off the roads

when the offset happens. I will say the Metropolitan Water District

has been extraordinary in their efforts to take this into account.

The water systems have considered this in great detail. All of our

water storage is on this side of the San Andreas fault. We have not

done this so much with the gas pipelines or with the transportation

systems.

Now, let me look at what is going to happen when we actually

have the earthquake. I have got this movie going here. One of the

things that has happened in the last five years is the scientists

have developed new capabilities for really modeling what is going

on during the earthquake, a very exciting time within the field. We

are able to make models of just how the ground is going to move.

This got started quickly on me and you see I stopped. Time since

the beginning of the earthquake 132 seconds. This earthquake is

going to be lasting for several minutes just because the fault is so

long. You can see the level of ground motion going on. You can see

out on the San Andreas it has already stopped moving.

In Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley because of our basins

we are going to set up residences. We are able to model these now

with science. This has not yet been taken into account on things

like our building codes. This is one of the directions that the U.S.

Geological Survey is really interested in going is being able to take

these new advances in the science and turn it into an end-to-end

model.

Let us not just do the geology of the seismology. Let us take it

through into the engineering, into the economics, into the emergency response. We have been in talks with the State Office of

Emergency Services of how to try and do a really big picture modeling that will take this whole thing into account. We have a lot

more that we can tell you. One of the things we have done is we

have taken the data from the earthquake in Alaska and put it into

buildings.

This is a model of what would happen to buildings in the San

Fernando Valley if we had a 7.9 on the San Andreas fault. The

upper building that just came down is the one that is designed to

pre-1994 codes. The redesign that was put in is in the bottom

building and they stand up. This is new to be able to get this capability of modeling and we really do want to take it through to the

complete picture.

The other type of earthquake we could look at that gets pretty

bad is to put one into the LA basin. There are a lot more people

and older buildings. Our biggest single issue is that our building

codes are not retroactive. Most of the city was not built to the most

modern building code. It was built to much older standards and it

becomes the responsibility of individual builders to upgrade. There

is our single largest element of risk.
9

If we had this earthquake, again we do this sort of simple model

of where the earthquake is. This is the study that you referred to.

It ends up telling us that we are looking at a quarter of a trillion

dollars in losses and potentially the majority of buildings. Many zip

codes have the majority of buildings destroyed by the event. This

estimate came up with 450,000 homeless people being created by

this earthquake.

Again, though, we have the capability of doing more advanced

modeling on this. The southern California Earthquake Center has

just put together a new simulation of what will happen during this

earthquake. We will watch it go by and watch how the ground really starts moving. It starts moving right near here and then propagates out across the Los Angeles basin.

I will tell you that when I watched what happened in Katrina,

we all learned different lessons. What I learned as a lesson is that

all of the science by itself isn’t doing any good. It is the science applied that is going to make a difference. I had heard all about what

would happen in Katrina just like I have done this modeling of

what is going to happen here in Los Angeles. What we need to do

is make sure that this information goes into our planning and we

get a better cooperation between the scientists and the emergency

managers.

I would say I think that we do remarkably well at that here in

southern California. I know all of the emergency managers that are

coming to speak here. But we could take this further and get this

used in a lot more effective way.

To summarize what the major impacts are likely to be, we are

talking about disruption to our infrastructure. Extremely concerned

about mid-rise construction built between the 1950s and 1970s.

Major building code change happened because of the San Fernando

earthquake but a lot of Los Angeles was built before that earthquake happened.

We don’t know what is going to happen to the high rises because

we have never put a modern building through a major earthquake.

And our dam systems. A lot of those are quite old and that is

where we could start getting the compounded problems. The other

lesson from Katrina is you go from disaster to catastrophe with the

secondary failures. If the levees had stayed intact, it wouldn’t have

been so bad. We have that potential here as well. The big secondary failures are fires if we have the earthquake during a Santa

Ana condition. We have fires like this without any earthquake at

all. Now let us have an earthquake and 1,000 ignition sources.

That to me is the true nightmare scenario.

I am going to finish with one of the things that the U.S. Geological Survey wants to do about this. As I have repeatedly said,

science alone can’t stop the losses. If you look at the combined picture, the possibility of interactions here in southern California, you

know, we joke about our four seasons of wildfires, earthquakes,

flood, and landslides. The reality is those four disasters are major

issues.

We need to come together with the community to use this to

make a decision so the USGS is proposing in Fiscal Year ’07 to

begin an approach where we have an integrated project bringing

together the four disasters looking at a variety of different science
10

topics in terms of analyzing the San Andreas fault, looking at a

landslide warning system that we partner with the National

Weather Service. But the most important part is that we are going

to have a new process where we guide the research directions with

the input from our emergency managers and other community

partners.

We are going to be bringing together the different hazards that

we study within the U.S. Geological Survey and with the community partners so that we are going to do it in a way that they are

actually wanting us to do. We are bringing it together because we

have—it would be much more efficient. We often use the same

data. We serve the same customers and we all have the same goals

that we are trying to get a safer southern California.

And just with one last piece, there is a lot that we already know.

There is a lot that we can share. There is more that we can do in

the future. One of the things that we are excited about is the possibility of actually getting the information that an earthquake is underway before the earthquake shaking arrives at the more distant

locations.

You notice the San Andreas fault is outside the city and we have

the potential that once the earthquake begins the waves will start

traveling out and reach our seismic station so we can know that

the earthquake has begun before the shaking gets to the city. If we

can transmit that information quickly enough through a satellite

system, we can get this over, process the data and actually get out

a warning before the waves arrive. Because of the geometry here

in southern California, we have the potential for about a halfminute warning.

You don’t make decisions in a half a minute but you do have the

potential for things like automatically stopping train systems, moving elevators to the nearest floor so that people aren’t trapped in

an elevator, ringing an alarm in an operating room so the surgeon

is taking the scalpel outside of your shoulder. It isn’t physically in

your body when the shaking comes down.

Mr. MILLER. That’s a good example.

Dr. JONES. So there is a lot of places where science can help us

and it is our goal to try to get that used because I know how bad

it can be and they knew in Katrina as well. Thank you.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. Wow. I am glad I am going back to

Pennsylvania.

Dr. JONES. Some of us still live here.

Mr. SHUSTER. The first question I have for you, you can get a 30-

second warning but in your modeling of the predictability, how far

out can you—is that at all possible that you can say it looks like

it is going to happen or it may happen?

Dr. JONES. At this point there are a lot of pieces that we can predict. I said this has been an exciting time. There have been a lot

of developments in understand the physics of earthquakes. At this

point we have no way at all in saying there will be an earthquake

3:00 on Friday afternoon.

However, we are starting to develop recognized patterns within

it. In fact, there is a new center that is called the Keck

Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability, a new

grant from the Keck Foundation to our partners at the southern
11

California Earthquake Center to try and actually do this. I think

one of the most exciting things is we finally have the tools to test

predictions. People have been able to claim predictions without actually being successful. We can’t do it now but it is an exciting time

and there is a lot of research going on that have the scientists pretty excited.

Mr. SHUSTER. When you see the plates starting to move, you

can’t with any certainty or any—

Dr. JONES. There is no certainty. What we can do is say that one

earthquake makes another earthquake more likely. Actually we

have a webpage that gives you the probability of an earthquake

shaking in the next 24 hours. What that shows you is what we

know from a long-term geology which we do know very well and

that is not uniform and the probability that one earthquake will

trigger another which is a very common phenomenon. Half the

damage in Whittier Narrows actually happened from the largest

after shock. We can do that and we are hoping to take that further

but at this point we cannot.

Mr. SHUSTER. And you said 24 hours you can predict?

Dr. JONES. It is not that I can predict in 24 hours. When one

earthquake happens others become more likely and I can quantify

how likely that becomes and I can choose to express it on any time

period I want and we are doing a 24-hour map because that is the

most likely time for one earthquake to trigger another one.

Mr. SHUSTER. Right.

Dr. JONES. But it is a decay with time. We have a little bit. We

are sort of on the edge of moving into things but right now there

is no prediction.

Mr. SHUSTER. You also mentioned you can’t drive away from this

accident, this earthquake we are talking about.

Dr. JONES. I think that is the thing that most people don’t understand is that a big earthquake affects so much larger an area. At

North Ridge the fault was 10 miles across and in this earthquake

it is going to be 200 miles. It is such a different scale of disaster.

We have not seen it in the last 100 hundreds. 100 years ago we

have the 1906 earthquake that destroyed San Francisco and it did

eliminate a major city of the United States.

Mr. SHUSTER. What was the magnitude?

Dr. JONES. That was 7.9.

Mr. SHUSTER. And this one we are talking about would be 7.5?

Dr. JONES. 7.9. It’s very similar and it is a different scale than

the earthquakes we have had in between.

Mr. SHUSTER. How frequently are you having the 5’s and the 6’s?

Dr. JONES. We average a magnitude of 5 about three times a

year somewhere in California. Most of the time they aren’t near

people. We have had an earthquake that causes a billion dollars

worth of damage in modern terms about once every 10 to 15 years.

We lose about a billion dollars every 10 to 15 years and then we

have a half-a-trillion dollar earthquake once every 100 years.

Mr. SHUSTER. You talked about the railroads and highways and

pipelines cross the San Andreas fault. Can you predict the ones

that are most suspectable to damage or are they just all?

Dr. JONES. That fault crossing issue, because the San Andreas

moves so much more rapidly than the others, we can address that
12

specific issue and we should. We could go in and build beforehand

ways that would make it easy to recover after the event. They have

done this on the water systems. We could do it on the roads. The

Department of Transportation in California has invested over $6

billion since the Loma Prieta earthquake in strengthening freeway

bridges.

Mr. SHUSTER. When was that?

Dr. JONES. 1989. In the last 16 years they have spent over $6

billion. The state keeps track of this. State investment and earthquake mitigation has just hit $20 billion since 1990 so California

invests major resources in trying to reduce those loses. We are a

lot better off than if we hadn’t done them.

Mr. SHUSTER. You said about the buildings, they are not being

retrofitted or is it cost prohibitive to retrofit these buildings? I

would think it would be.

Dr. JONES. There is no cost incentive. The way the system works

right now if a building owner said, ‘‘I want to do the responsible

thing. I want to invest my building’’ there is no tax credits. There

is no increase in rent because there is no way of communicating to

your tenants. I am also on the California Seismic Safety Commission so I have gotten involved in policy decisions.

One of the things that we have discussed there is imagine if you

had a rating system so that when you go to rent office space you

can be told that, ‘‘This building is an A-rated building. This is what

more likely to be up and functioning and you can recover your business after the earthquake happens. Versus this one which hasn’t

done any retrofitting and it is a C-rated building and we think the

probability is that it is going to be shut for a month for a month

after the big earthquake.’’

Then the person who had invested in the retrofitting would be

able to get a return on his investment by charging more rent. I

would be willing to pay more to be sure of it being up and running

after the earthquake.

Right now we don’t have any way of communicating the extra

safety you have achieved and, therefore, the market can’t work because the information isn’t there.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you.

Mr. Miller.

Mr. MILLER. There are a lot of questions. I have lived here all

my life virtually and I have seen many different types of earthquakes. Maybe you can explain this. I have seen the ones where

you would just get a banging jolt. I have seen some that you would

get just vibrations. Others that you would get shaking from one

side to the other. Other ones you would get a roll. You can actually

see it roll. There was one in the ’80s where you could see the

ground rolling. It was really weird. Could you explain the differences and which are more dangerous?

Dr. JONES. A lot of what you are talking about is a combination

of how big the earthquake was and how far away you are from the

earthquake. When an earthquake happens you release energy in a

lot of different frequency bands. If you are very nearby you feel

them all and the one you notice is the jolt. If you are a long ways

away the high frequency has died off just like if you hear a

boombox going down the street, you can only hear the bass notes.
13

Those low notes, low frequencies transmit farther. If you are a

long ways away from a big earthquake, all that is left is the rolling

motion. How dangerous it is actually depends on what building you

are in because the buildings respond to these different frequencies.

One of the scary things about the really big earthquake is it is

going to have a huge amount of that rolling motion.

By the way, you get more low frequency on a bigger fault just

like you get more low frequency out of a cello instead of a violin.

You get all those low frequencies and they now travel a long ways

away. Really big buildings are going to be vibrating in response to

them. We don’t know all about how that is going to respond. That

is why that model that just came out of Cal Tech of the buildings

showing those big buildings coming down, it is because there is

way more low frequency in there than we had previously modeled.

It is not going to affect a small building. Your single-family home

is just going to ride that out, but the really big building is going

to respond to it. What you are feeling with those different sensations is different parts of the frequency band. Bigger earthquakes

give you more long periods and those long periods travel for a farther distance and you get different combinations at different distances from different sizes.

Mr. MILLER. You commented on retrofit. I guess that raises some

red flags. New standards need to be adopted so we can build accordingly but we required hospitals in California to retrofit a few

years ago. All it did was force some hospitals out of business and

other ones where they say they will have to go out of business because you have market rate on anything. There is a market rate

on health care. There is a market rate on renting an office, a building. Whatever you’re leasing you can only get X amount.

When you start rating them, then all you are impacting is market rate where they drag down what somebody should receive as

a yield for rents and such. How might that really negatively impact

the market place because it is cost prohibitive in many cases to go

out and be able to spend the kind of money you need to spend on

a major building to retrofit.

Dr. JONES. I think that—

Mr. MILLER. I believe in standards being changed but when you

go back to cause ratings of existing, I think you are having a major

impact on the market that is not going to be resolved.

Dr. JONES. Well, the main thing that I would see is that information is always of value so people could choose and say, okay, and

you definitely couldn’t say this building is going to fall down. The

only thing you could say is that this building has a higher standard. This is information that you can find if you go and dig it out.

If you go to rent a building and you go to the building department,

you can find out what were the standards to which it was built.

Mr. MILLER. People don’t do that.

Dr. JONES. People don’t do that.

Mr. MILLER. But if you walk into an office building and say this has an A rating, market is $230 per square foot. This has a D rating and might be a $1.40 a square foot. That is what we are doing

is driving down what they can lease and the cost of retrofitting

some of these buildings that are only 20 or 25 years old is to such

a degree that sometimes you are better off just taking the building
14

down and starting over. That is what hospitals are finding out that

aren’t that old.

Dr. JONES. Right.

Mr. MILLER. They said it would cost more to retrofit than it

would to bulldoze the building and build a brand new one. That is

my concern about ratings. I can see being proactive and saying we

need to go out in the future and change standards. Those standards you are going to change gradually because of the cost and the

technology available to deal with the impact. I think ratings we

should look at cautiously. The main question I have, though we

talk about what impact we might face in California, we have inadequate water storage.

I mean, if you look at the four reservoirs that are proposed in

California, they are all in northern California. We need one to two

more in the region. MWD’s main line crosses over the San Andreas.

The main line we have on the California aqueduct also crosses in

numerous locations. A major earthquake is going to shut both of

those down and those are not going to be put back up and running

in a week or two when that happens.

What impact are we going to face not only on our water but on

our major dams in the area? Proto is an example. If that lets go

and these other dams let go, we have some huge problems. What

do you see as an impact in California just on our water quality?

Dr. JONES. I think water is one of the largest issues we are faced

with in an earthquake. You also forgot the LA aqueduct that comes

down from Owens Valley. That also comes through Collin pass. All

of our outside water systems do cross the San Andreas and will be

offset.

When the California aqueduct was built so that when it hits the

San Andreas fault it actually then runs along it for a while so that

after the offset they could just sort of come in and paste together

back the ends and get it functioning again so it has been designed

to be able to get back up and running quickly afterwards. As I said,

all of the major water storages on this side of the San Andreas are

by design.

I understood that we had six months water supply stored on this

side of the San Andreas fault at the present level of usage. This

is one of the other really significant issues that you look at is that

the population of California is growing dramatically and to what

degree are these foresightful activities that were taken earlier have

been able to catch up with the growth and population.

Mr. MILLER. But getting the water to these areas is a problem.

I know MWD is trying to get a major 15-foot line down to South

Orange County because I know they don’t have the ability to transfer the water. Every one of our aqueducts has major transmission

lines that are going to also be disrupted. It’s scary what could happen if this whole system goes down in our region.

I mean, if you look at not only the slides but the area I live in

has major liquification problems. When this starts shaking this all

turns into oatmeal. Everything just starts to slide and ooze and

reach water level basically. I have too many questions.

Mr. SHUSTER. I will ask for another round.

Mr. MILLER. Okay.
15

Mr. SHUSTER. You talked about the unstable soil. Is that a widespread problem or is that localized? Can you say?

Dr. JONES. There are two levels of concern on soils. One is the

straight amplification. That is a simple thing where just whatever

the speed of the seismic wave is, if you come into a slower rock the

wave has to get bigger to carry the same amount of energy when

it is slowed down. That is where we have about a factor of 5 under

here and we have mapped it out for the California area.

There is a separate issue of liquification which is where you have

lose sandy soil that compacts during shaking and if there is water

in the spaces where it is compacting, the water pressure goes up

because it can’t flow away in the time of an earthquake and it becomes temporarily quicksand. Quicksand does a notably poor job of

supporting buildings.

We tend to see buildings falling over when that happens. Again,

the state of California has mapped out the liquefaction susceptibility. In the actual earthquake it will depend on what the water

table is. It’s the one good side to droughts. It lowers the water

table.

Mr. SHUSTER. And that’s what happens when the water table

rises into the soil.

Dr. JONES. Well, the soil compacts and that forces the water

pressure up so if there is water there—if there was no water there

you could compact the soil and it wouldn’t make a difference. If you

really compact the soil you damage the buildings above it. We can

map it out.

One of the proposals actually under this new program is to do

what we call microzonation mapping, to take the information we

have about the shaking distribution or the soil distribution or the

soil distribution and turn that into a microzonation map. Again,

that has implications of what is going to be the effect on property

values. We have now said this is a more susceptible region and

that is a political issue that would need to be addressed if we really

came up with the detailed maps. We could and have not yet.

Mr. SHUSTER. How much interaction do you have with FEMA

and the federal level when you are talking about issues like this.

Dr. JONES. We have had less communication in the last five

years. The headquarters is in San Francisco and I know the earthquake specialist very well, FEMA’s headquarters. In southern California we tend to work more directly with the state and the locals.

The city and the county are the ones that have the primary responsibility and we do a lot of work with them on getting the detailed

maps.

Mr. SHUSTER. That’s a concern I have. If you have an earthquake

of this magnitude, the state and locals are going to be overwhelmed

and it’s going to take the folks coming in, FEMA coming in coordinating Nevada and Utah the surrounding states to come in and

help so it is important that there is interaction.

Dr. JONES. I can say in North Ridge FEMA set up a disaster field

center in Pasadena and we had a scientist permanently staffed

there to provide the communication between the scientists and

FEMA. We maintain staffing in their field office for six months.

Mr. SHUSTER. You mentioned that the fires were probably the

greatest concern.
16

Dr. JONES. Yes.

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Miller was talking about water and he said if

you have an earthquake and you have all these fires, it is going

to use up the water a lot quicker.

Dr. JONES. It would. The other problem would be the actual distribution of the water. A lot of the water pipes are old and we saw

in North Ridge it doesn’t liquefy if there is no water in the soil but

the soil still collapses and that damaged a lot of pipes in North

Ridge. There is rather a famous picture with a water fountain with

a fire fountain in the middle because the gas pipeline and the

water pipeline broke at the same time. That is also going to impair

our ability to fight the fires.

Mr. SHUSTER. What is your level of concern with the dams in the

region?

Dr. JONES. The newer dams I feel pretty good about. I mean, we

have had strong standards in California for a long time but the

idea that we change the building codes and go forward has been

the philosophy for the last seven years. Especially the newer construction now is built to very high standards. There are older structures especially in the San Gabriel mountains that potentially have

flood plains coming down here that could definitely be addressed in

a systematic study.

Mr. SHUSTER. Is there potential for—I don’t know if you are familiar with the Johnstown Flood in Pennsylvania in 1889.

Dr. JONES. Oh, yeah.

Mr. SHUSTER. Is there the potential for that type of—you have

the earthquake, a dam breaks, and then you have massive loss of

life because of—are the dams out there big enough?

Dr. JONES. Yeah. There was a significant concern. Actually we

came very close to that in 1971. That San Fernando earthquake

damaged a dam in the San Fernando Valley with 50,000 people in

the flood plain below it. It was close. It had been 6.9 instead of 6.7

the estimates are that it would have gone.

Mr. SHUSTER. I have one more question and then I’ll turn it over

to Mr. Miller again for questions if he has any. Are most of your

dams out here constructed of concrete or earthen dams or a little

bit of both? You don’t know?

Dr. JONES. I am a geologist, not an engineer. I know we have

both but I am not sure of the relative distribution.

Mr. SHUSTER. Okay.

Mr. MILLER. I see Councilman Greg Norton back in the room. I

would like to thank you for your hospitality. I hope I am sitting

your chair and wearing it out.

Mr. NORTON. You are a little far right but that is all right.

Mr. MILLER. Story of my life. We talked about the water. Have

you done any extensive surveys on that?

Dr. JONES. No. Definitely not personally because—

Mr. MILLER. Maybe that is our next panel.

Dr. JONES. I am not sure that anyone has quite done—this is

where I was saying that we had been talking with OES about trying to bring the pieces together. One of our goals was to try to do

a real end-to-end scenario. Let us take it all the way through and

consider all of these aspects and that will show us where are the

relative weaknesses.
17

Again, that cost effectiveness issue. Maybe we are focusing on

parts that are very expensive and aren’t going to get us as much

return and we don’t really know because we haven’t tried to look

at the complete picture. There have been individual studies done

on the water issue. MWD has done a lot of work. What we were

talking about is trying to do it as a community.

I can proselytize really easily here. The other Katrina lesson that

I took home was that it was a systemic failure that took us to the

different level. That is the problem that we do face here. It is one

thing to say, ‘‘Okay, here is the water.’’ What if the water causes

more fires? Or you want the electricity to be up and running. Edison can’t sell to customers that aren’t up and functioning but if

they aren’t up and functioning, these other businesses can’t recover

so there aren’t isolated problems.

It is how the system fits together that is really going to determine how we respond to this. I think that is one thing that this

community has seen because we, unfortunately, have a lot of experience working together. We have had plenty of earthquakes and

other disasters but it means that we have the connections and the

relationships to get out there and start doing this broader picture

approach.

A lot of us have gotten together and said this is really what we

need to do is go from the beginning all the way through the economics and through everything and see where the relative weaknesses are. Until we do that I don’t think we know. We can recognize lots of potential problems. Which one is going to be our worse

we don’t know.

Mr. MILLER. You mentioned electricity and such. I know Edison

and LA County Water and Power, most of their major transmission

lines are very close to the San Andreas fault. I mean, it is amazingly close. What kind of destruction to you see in that?

Dr. JONES. I am not sure. There are several variables that come

in there. One is the level of how much we can do between now and

then. I mean, there are a lot of transmission and major installations near the San Andreas fault and something like 90 percent of

the electricity for Los Angeles has to cross the San Andreas fault

somewhere to get in here.

I have also seen towers literally offset by three meters of offset

during an earthquake still up and functioning and transmitting energy. There have been some very good engineering solutions applied. I am not sure where the level of disruption is going to be on

that. I think also a lot depends on whether or not we trigger secondary fires because electrical systems are also quite suspectable

to the fire damage. It is just going to be really bad luck if we have

it during a Santa Ana condition. That is when it is going to go

awful.

Mr. MILLER. If we have the big one we are just in serious trouble. That is all we can say at this point. Every major resource,

transportation, utility, all our infrastructure basically is going to be

impacted in a major way. We have talked about water, transmission lines, but all our communities’ major water mains are

going to blow. House connections are going to pull apart.

It is going to be unbelievable to try to get water anywhere, to try

to get transportation, goods and services moving. We are going to
18

be in a similar situation as Katrina. How do you get goods and

services in the area when our overpasses and our bridges and highways are torn apart? How do you get into the communities?

Dr. JONES. I believe there are engineering solutions that could be

done ahead of time to reduce the losses. It is not a technical decision. It really is a social decision on what is worth spending beforehand to reduce the losses after. We do have the information about

probably what the damages are right now. We have the information of how likely these are to happen over the next 50 years. Then

we have to make a decision on what we are willing to spend beforehand. We could do it. There are lots of technical solutions that

could be added that haven’t yet been done.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Dr. Jones.

Dr. JONES. Thank you.

Mr. SHUSTER. One last question. I guess the final question is it

is not a matter of if it happens, but when it happens.

Dr. JONES. It is absolutely when. It may not happen in our lifetime but it is absolutely when. We aren’t stopping plate tectonics.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you again and appreciate it. You are very

informative and we appreciate you being here today.

Dr. JONES. Thank you.

Mr. SHUSTER. Now I will call our second panel which is comprised of a number of state and local officials who individually have

responsibility for disasters of all types here in California. Why

don’t you come up and we will take a couple-minute break here

while they get seated and stand in recess for just a couple minutes.

[Whereupon, the Subcommittee recessed to reconvene the same

day.]

Mr. SHUSTER. The Committee will come to order. Joining us

today we have Mr. Henry Renteria, Director of the California Office

of Emergency Services. Mr. Ellis Stanley is the Emergency Manager for the City of Los Angeles. Ms. Ann-Marie Hayashi, Emergency Services Assistant for the City of Whittier. Did I get it right?

Ms. HAYASHI. Hayashi.

Mr. SHUSTER. Hayashi. I am sorry. Since your written testimony

has been made a part of the record, the Subcommittee requests

that all witnesses limit their oral testimony to five minutes. There

will be time for questions after all the witnesses have offered their

prepared remarks. We will start with Mr. Renteria. Thank you for

being here today. You may proceed.

TESTIMONY OF HENRY RENTERIA, DIRECTOR, CALIFORNIA

OFFICE OF EMERGENCY SERVICES; ELLIS M. STANLEY, SR.,

CEM, CITY OF LOS ANGELES EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS

DEPARTMENT; ANN-MARIE HAYASHI, CITY OF WHITTIER

EMERGENCY SERVICES

Mr. RENTERIA. Thank you, Chairman Shuster. Good morning and

good morning to the members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for

the opportunity to be here today to address you on this very important topic.

Let me start off by since you are in southern California we arranged for good weather so I am going to give you a movie now.

We will start with a very short video that talks about our emer-
19

gency management system in California which I think will set the

stage for our other speakers also.

[Whereupon, a video was presented.]

Mr. RENTERIA. Okay. The last time I showed this video at another hearing, one of the Committee members asked me when he

saw the levels of response up there, field, local operational area

and state, they noticed that the federal government was not on

there and there is a reason for that. The way our system is designed here in California and in my 30 years of experience as an

emergency manager, FEMA, the federal government, has never

been a response agency.

It has been a recovery agency. It has been an agency that comes

in to support state and local government after the event happens.

So having said that, one of the things that I think this Committee

can help us with is embedding FEMA into the response mode if,

in fact, that is the direction they are going to go because that is

one of the things that I think they have been criticized about but,

at the same time, they are not a response agency.

Response happens at the local level. The local government, city,

county, special district, and the state are the ones that first respond to an event. The federal government, even though we do use

federal assets, national guard, other federal agencies that may be

in the area, we cannot look upon the federal government as a response agency in the immediate aftermath of an event. I think that

needs to be kept in mind.

Having said that, we have learned a lot of major lessons in the

history of disasters that we have had in California. California is no

stranger to disasters. In my 19 years as Emergency Manager for

the City of Oakland I had eight Presidentially declared disasters in

Oakland and Alameda County including the 1991 fire storm, the

’89 Loma Prieta earthquake, and several winter storms and other

fires in that area.

California has learned from its disasters. I have always said that

experience is not what happens to you. Experience is what you do

with what happens to you. We have taken the lessons learned from

our events and incorporated them to prepare for the next one.

I also want to point out that one of the problems we have in responding to disasters and preparing for them, and I think I can say

this for other states in the United States also, is that we are very

prepared for what I call high-frequency and high-risk events.

Things that happen all the time that we are ready to respond to.

For example, wild land urban fires, regular fires that firefighters

respond to, hazardous materials incidents, transportation accidents. Even moderate earthquakes I think we do very well because

they happen to us all the time. We train for them but we also respond to them. By responding to them we get that hands-on experience.

What we are not ready for is what I call the high-risk, low-frequency events and that Katrina was a high-risk, low-frequency

event. The earthquake Dr. Jones just described to you, again, is a

high-risk, low-frequency event. We haven’t experienced those

things yet so major lessons are coming out of that. You can train

for those types of things but until you have actually gone through

one it is not the same.
20

What we have learned from these events, especially with

Katrina, things that are coming out now, we can also apply to lessons that we have learned. We still have issues and problems

across the country and also in California with issues of evacuation.

The evacuation of large populations is a problem. We have never

done that before. Even if we do evacuate large populations, where

are we going to put them? Mass care and sheltering of those populations.

We have a problem with special needs populations. The elderly,

the frail, the poor, the non-English speaking. Those are all major

problems we need to face right now. Alerting and warning, ability

to get rapid, concise information, confirmed rapid concise information to not only our first responders but also to the public. We need

to look at our alerting and warning systems and how we incorporate those all the way from the state level down to the local

level.

And constant public education. We do a lot of public education

for people to understand the hazard that they live with. We all

move to areas where there are hazards. I don’t care where you live

in the United States you are subject to some kind of hazard. The

object is, again, to educate people about your surroundings, educate

people about what you can do to prepare for that type of hazard

and, more importantly, survive.

Ten years ago we adopted the California Standardized Emergency Management System which you just saw in the video.

CSEMS has been proven to work. We have used it over the last 10

years. It is a system that was born out of the Incident Command

System of the Fire Service. ICS is a perfect model to use when you

have multiple agencies responding to an event that requires multiagency command, centralized decision making, and the utilization

of many resources from different areas.

We learned some major lessons in the 1991 fire storm. Like I

said, that happened during my watch. One thing I have always

said is never burn down an elected official’s home because it’s going

to result in legislation. That’s what happened with CSEMS. One of

our elected official’s home burned down and the next thing we

knew we had that legislation but it has been a God send for us in

California because it has now organized and provided an emergency management system that can be used not only at the local

level but all the way up through the state.

And also, as the video mentioned, just in this last year the National Incident Management System has been adopted by the U.S.

Department of Homeland Security. NIMS was patterned after

CSEMS so that is a high compliment to the state of California that

the federal government used that system.

Mutual aid is also a major component of CSEMS and NIMS. Our

mutual aid system has been in place in California for several decades and has proven again that our fire and law services, which

utilize the system more than anyone else, has shown how that system works and neighbor helping neighbor. The ability for one city

to ask request from another city or the county or even the state to

allow resources to be sent to the impacted area.

One thing I do want to point out is that California is very resource rich. We have a lot of first responders, a lot of resources in
21

California. A catastrophic event like a southern California earthquake, yes, we would need help from other outside sources but the

first wave of assistance would come from northern California from

our fire departments and police departments up in the north. They

would be the quickest to respond.

In this past administration Governor Schwarzenegger signed legislation for the state of California to be entered into the Emergency

Management Assistant Compact, EMAC. EMAC is a mutual aid

system for state helping state. California now is part of that system. Forty-nine of the 50 states are part of that.

That allows us to request assistance from Nevada, Arizona, or

Texas if we needed to. We utilized the system in Katrina. California sent 6,500 personnel to the Gulf Coast to support the response

and recovery efforts. By having EMAC as part of the state system

that increases our ability to prepare.

Training obviously is something that cannot be taken lightly.

You train until you get it right and then you train again. Training

is the backbone of our system to respond but, again, training and

actual response also work hand in hand. The ability to continue to

have these types of training and also to have all-hazards approach

to training, not just a specialized type of approach, will help our

disciplines across the board. The consequences of a disaster regardless of whether it’s an earthquake, a terrorist event, a flood, the

consequences are the same. People’s lives are impacted. People get

killed. People are hurt. Property is destroyed.

Communication. It has been said enough but communication is

the key to what we do here. Not only radio communication, the

ability for first responders to talk to each other and talk to the central command post, but also the ability for emergency managers to

communicate with each other, for elected officials to get up to date

information on what is happening so they can respond to their constituents. Communication is a major key of what we do and major

component of our systems.

We do have problems that have been identified in the arena of

interoperability. We are working closely with our local governments

to develop some systems that will support the state of California

but I think this is a problem that is widespread throughout the

country. We do need to address this issue of interoperability. We

have identified some solutions at the local level. There are some

real success stories in California, San Diego, here in the Los Angeles area.

Also in the Bay area some local governments have joined together in a mutual cooperation and identified some systems that

we call the Gateway Project. Gateways are the black boxes that

you have heard about where radio systems can literally be plugged

in in order for responders to talk to each other. We need to spread

that not only state wide but also throughout the nation.

I talked a little bit about resource acquisition. Of course needing

to identify where the resources are in a timely and efficient manner is imperative. It is one thing to know where resources are but

how quickly can they be deployed and how quickly can they be sent

and arrive where they need to be. Databases need to be kept updated which are crucial to the type of work that we do. If we did

have warning of an impending event such as a Katrina, resources
22

then can be deployed and prestaged in areas where they can best

first respond.

I also need to talk about people. Not only do people become victims of disasters but people also are the true first responders.

When something happens in that first few seconds and minutes

after the event, it is neighbor helping neighbor. It is people helping

each other and the more skills that they have and the more awareness that they have the more lives that are going to be saved.

When Loma Prieta hit in the Bay area and that freeway collapsed, the first people who were crawling all over that collapsed

structure were people from the neighborhood. It was a noble and

proud and courageous effort but it was also not a very wise effort

because they didn’t have the training to do what needed to be done

and they were putting themselves in more harm’s way.

Programs have been put in place to help train citizens and employees to be more prepared and we need to concentrate and put

more emphasis on that type of training and that type of assistance

because our neighbors and our co-workers are really the true responders.

Some lessons learned. While we plan for the next disaster, we

can’t always just look at the last disaster, although there are some

very valuable lessons there. There are things like you saw today

in Dr. Jones’ presentation. There is new information coming out

every day. Earthquake science to me is a work in progress and we

have made a lot of progress in it.

Hearing Dr. Jones brings to mind from the first time I heard her

that earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do and infrastructures

do. The more you know about your surroundings and the more we

do to invest in the mitigation of these types of events, the better

off we are all going to be.

Let me close by also just pointing out that since September 11th

I think this country has invested quite a lot of time, energy, and

money into preparing us for terrorism. I applaud that effort but we

also need to be reminded that we haven’t really invested that much

in all-hazards planning. The amount of money that has been allocated for preparedness for terrorism, I think, has also hurt us a little bit, not a little bit but a lot, in dealing with the natural hazards

and disasters that happen all the time.

Since September 11th there have been no terrorist events in

California. There have been six presidentially declared disasters

since September 11th. What do we need to do now? Well, mitigation is another arena that I think you can help us in. There is a

saying that for every dollar you spend on mitigation you say three

dollars in recovery cost. That has been a proven fact.

The efforts that our local emergency managers are having to deal

with to deal with the emphasis of where the resources are going

to come from to continue their programs is important to keep in

mind. While the state continues to work with our local emergency

managers and the local governments to make sure that a system

like CSEMS is in place, it gives us the reassurance that some of

the things you saw in Katrina I really doubt would happen in California because of the systems we have in place.

Are we as prepared to deal with anything? No. There are things

that we still need to be prepared for. The lessons coming out of
23

Katrina are going to just improve our plans and preparedness and

allow us the ability to be better prepared in the future. So, again,

I have a lot of confidence in our system. I have a lot of confidence

in our first responders and in our emergency managers and state.

They do have a proven system that works.

With that I’ll close and entertain any questions if you have any.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you very much. Appreciate that extensive

and thorough testimony. Your reputation precedes you. You are one

of the best in the country in emergency management. Thank you

for being here also.

Mr. RENTERIA. Thank you.

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Stanley, you may proceed.

Mr. STANLEY. Thank you, Mr. Shuster, and welcome to southern

California, and Mr. Miller. I am glad to be here. My name is Ellis

Stanley. I am the General Manager for the Emergency Preparedness Department for the City of Los Angeles. I have over 30 years

of experience in emergency management starting on the eastern

coast, Mr. Shuster, dealing with little things like fixing facilities,

hurricanes, chemical issues, etc.

I move from North Carolina to Georgia working in Atlanta with

major events and things like Olympics, etc. Now I am here in the

second largest city in the country. That is only important from the

standpoint that it is all about disasters being local. It has to do

with development partnerships no matter what size that jurisdiction is and being able to build a cultural preparedness at the local

level and that permeates up.

That is emphasized, as Mr. Renteria said, best, I think, in California with the CSEMS and now with NIMS which is mimicking

that CSEMS process that we had to say that we can work, our

tools will interact, our training is overlaid, etc. It is important that

we have that type of partnership and relationship.

Mr. Renteria really hit on the basis of the emergency preparedness philosophy and all those things. What I would like to do is

just talk with you about a few of the things that we have just done

locally in the past two weeks. Last week we had a major exercise

with the City of Los Angeles with Burbank, the two airports, looking at how we could deal with emergencies that may occur at those

airports.

Why that is important is now we look at things, as Henry indicated, from an operational area perspective, from an urban area

perspective. Last year we had a MetroLink train derailment. Disasters have an odd way of just not reading our plans at all. This train

had the audacity to have an accident right on the border of two cities. It was a seamless response.

Glendale and the City of Los Angeles came together and responded. What happened equally is those outside agencies, those

public and private hospitals, those 15 hospitals that were folded

into the process seamlessly to be able to take those patients and

to resolve that incident. Fortunately, only 11 people lost their lives

but it could have been hundreds of people in that situation. It is

important that we not only look at what is in our boundaries but

also look at what is next to us.

To that end we do an emergency management workshop every

day—every year. I wish we could do it every day. We do it every
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year. The workshop we take 150, 170 people off site. Usually it is

up at Lake Arrowhead. This past year we had the 17 contiguous

cities to Los Angeles to have them in our training, in our planning,

in our exercising so that we understand what capabilities we have,

what gaps we have, and how those capabilities and gaps can be

shared and how the gaps can be filled. It is important that we do

that.

Many of the smallest cities cannot man or spend the money for

an urban search and rescue team. The city and county of Los Angeles can so it is important that we understand how and when those

resources will be called upon. It is important that we have a very

strong mutual aid.

Also yesterday, as a matter of fact, we had an executive level

training that was conducted by Naval Graduate School. It’s from

the high sheriff to the department heads to sit around the table

and look at what is missing, if we have a scenario how are we capable of dealing with it.

One of the issues we are also dealing with this week is

pandemics. We understand whether it is a biohazard created by

men or whether it is something like the bird flu we have to be able

to do those things that we have a capability to handle. For example, it is very little that we as a city can do about producing the

necessary vaccines for this particular bird flu but we can deal with

the need to be able to determine how we are going to prophilax our

people and we do that through exercises, etc.

My last comment, since I have got the red light, is that the private sector is another one of those partners in preparedness that

we do a lot of work with. In our emergency operation center we actually have a seat in there for the private sector. They provide 85

percent of the critical infrastructure resources in this country. It is

important that we have a way to plug them into the process both

beforehand, during, and after the fact.

I will be glad to answer any questions at this time.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Stanley. Just one point to clarify.

The City of Los Angeles, how much does it make up of the County

of Los Angeles?

Mr. STANLEY. Approximately a third. There are about 4 million

people, 500 square miles in the City of Los Angeles. The County

of Los Angeles is 4,200 square miles, 10 million people.

Mr. SHUSTER. Are we in the County of Los Angeles?

Mr. STANLEY. We are in the County of Los Angeles.

Mr. SHUSTER. All right.

Ms. Hayashi.

Ms. HAYASHI. I would like to welcome you to Whittierand thank

you for inviting me to testify today on behalf of the City. I was

asked to testify about what the federal government could have

done better to assist the Cityof Whittier after the 1987 Whittier

Narrows Earthquake.A little background on the earthquake: there

were actually two large earthquakes, as you have already heard.

The first on Thursday, Oct. 1st (magnitude 5.9), and then a large

aftershock on Sunday, Oct. 4th (magnitude 5.5). It felt like two totally separate earthquakes. That is how strong the aftershock was.

Together, the two quakes caused $78 million in damages to Whittier houses and businesses.
25

In order to arrive at some recommendations as to how the federal

government could have provided better assistance to the city after

the earthquake, I’d like to give a short background on Whittier’s

emergency preparedness activities prior to the earthquake. The assignment of emergency services coordinator had been given to the

then-human resources director, who took the extra assignment very

seriously and designed various full-scale disaster exercises for City

employees and other agencies.

There was no statewide standardized emergency management

system yet. CSEMS did not exist at the time, but Whittier and

other California cities had been required by the state to adopt

Emergency Services Ordinances and prepare emergency plans.

Compared to New Orleans with its different levels of government

such as wards and townships, Whittier’s governmental structure is

simple. We have one City Council and it is supported by the commissions and committees. By declaring a local emergency within

four hours after the quake, our City Council was able to initiate

theprocess for making financial grants and loans and other resources available to the citizens of our community.There were several key issues, such as the need for many more building inspectors. The City was fortunate in many ways:

1) The state had registered volunteers to assistwith building inspections;

2) The earthquake happened right after the annual convention of

the International Conference of Building Officials, so the connections our building staff had made at the convention were fresh and

resulted in manybuilding officials offering assistance;

3) Also we have many large cities nearby and they also sent their

building inspectors to supplement our small crew.

Most important of all, there was not the widespread regional

damage that Hurricane Katrina caused, so we had local resources

available that would have been tied up in a regional disaster. Adequate staffing was never an issue.

City Hall and Police Department employees all reported for

work, and the police were able to immediately cordon off the devastated Uptown area. City clean-up was facilitated by the fact that

most of our residents were able to remain in their homes and

therefore were able to do their own cleanup and even volunteer to

assist others.

So what did the federal government do in 1987, and could things

have been improved? The Whittier City Council and employees understood that disasters happen at the local level, so that’s the level

at which we need to be prepared. Key people who were in positions

of responsibility at the time of the Whittier Narrows Earthquake

agree that Whittier was not waiting for the federal government’s

assistance; we had no expectations for, and were not dependent

upon, immediate federal response. Our former Building and Safety

Director said, ‘‘There was no lack of assistance from FEMA, but we

contacted FEMA only for advice, for example, onreimbursement parameters.’’

FEMA, state OES and the Small Business Administration did set

up financial aid facilities in town, but the strongest recommendation for improvement I encountered was that the Disaster Assistance Center should have been set up sooner (it was set up ten days
26

after the first earthquake, and only after much communication

from City officials to our congressman as to the urgency of the matter.) Other comments include:

1) FEMA should have sent at least a few representatives immediately after the earthquake to observe the damage and send firsthand comments back to D.C. The geographic distance between

Whittier and D.C. was quite great so, therefore, FEMA was removed from the event and had a different perspective of the destruction that had occurred;

2) The Disaster Assistance Center was limited in terms of the

type and levels of aid it could offer. Many senior citizens on fixed

incomes did not qualify for the loans and grants available because

of the compressed repayment periods on the loans and the very

high minimum payment amounts;

3) There was poor coordination between funding sources such as

insurance companies and governmental assistance; and

4) Earthquake victims found the forms difficult to complete and

desired more assistance from either volunteers or professionals. I

would like to add that the FEMA representatives who did come to

Whittier were very professional and extremely helpful.

As devastating as the Whittier Narrows Earthquake was for

Whittier, the damage was intense in an area much smaller than

the area affected by Hurricane Katrina. A more comparable situation would be an earthquake with widespread regional destruction,

such as most of southern California. We would most assuredly be

looking for more state and federal assistance in that situation, with

all local resources stretched extremely thin.

Such a regional earthquake would also cause widespread damage

to major components of regional infrastructure, something that did

not happen in 1987. One thing that this points to, the difference

between what happened then and what can happen here is the importance of perhaps our final recommendation and that is coordinated training and exercises for what Mr. Renteria describes as the

very high-impact and low-frequency events. We do practice frequently at the local level coordinating at the operational area level

and it would be a good idea to extend that beyond and be better

prepared for regional events.

As mentioned earlier, even though shelters were necessary, the

vast majority of Whittier residents were able to remain in their

homes, return to their jobs, and clean up the rubble. They were

able to volunteer in numbers to assist their fellow citizens. All this

is unlike what happened in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane

Katrina, andwould not necessarily be the case in a more massive,

involved California earthquake.

I would like to thank the Subcommittee for inviting the City to

testify, and thank your staff for their help. I am happy to answer

any questions you have, or help find the answers for you at any

time.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

I have a couple of questions. First I want to say just how important it is to be in California because when you look at emergency

management across the nation, the two states that the federal government should be looking to is California and Florida because you

have extensive experience. Not only extensive experience but suc-
27

cessful extensive experience. You have the resources and I think

you have the structure in place.

My first question is, if you would, the three of you, and it appears we have tremendous experience with the three of you over

a period of time, can you look back over the last 10 years and grade

FEMA 10 years ago, five years ago, and the last two years to give

me a sense of where you think FEMA has gone over that period.

So 10 years, five years. Ten years ago would be the middle of the

’90s, five years would be pre-9/11, and then the last two years

when FEMA has gone into DHS. Give me a sense of where you

think it has gone.

Mr. RENTERIA. I will be glad to start. My experience with FEMA

started in 1985 when I first came on into the field of emergency

management. I still feel that their role has not changed. They are

not a response agency and I think that is unfair to tag them as

such.

On the other hand, I think FEMA’s high point, their high-water

mark, was in the ’90s when they took on the role of mitigation. I

think when FEMA really grasped mitigation by the collar and said,

‘‘We are going to do something in this country about that,’’ I think

that was the high point in my experience in dealing with FEMA.

They were always a responsive agency when it came to dealing

with the recovery efforts. The relationship that you set up with

them beforehand also helped through their regional offices.

Again, I think their high mark was the mitigation program. I

will point specifically to Project Impact. Project Impact was one of

those programs that put actual dollars into preparing the community for the next event. Also as a result of that, there are now, and

you are still funding, the hazard mitigation planning grants.

After a disaster there is a percentage of the total cost that are

set aside for mitigation programs. That has been a God send to us.

We can show you specific examples throughout the state of how

mitigation money has been used to prevent another disaster from

happening. That was the high point.

I think the down turn has been in these last few disasters where

the focus has been on FEMA as a response agency. ‘‘Why weren’t

you there? Why didn’t you have the troops on the ground? Why

didn’t you have the resources there?’’ That is really a local responsibility. By local I mean the cities, the counties, and the state. It

is our responsibility to deal and prepare for those types of things.

Do we need FEMA to be part of that team? Absolutely. I really

would urge us to look at how FEMA can be put into the response

mode if that is the direction they are going to take.

One of the disadvantages that FEMA has is they are not all

things to all people everywhere at the same time. There is an assumption made that FEMA has these warehouses somewhere full

of supplies. That is not the case. There needs to be a coordinated

effort to provide those resources where needed.

Also I will caution let us not go back to the Cold War era where

we started stockpiling basements of schools with supplies that had

no plan for replenishing those supplies. They got outdated. In fact,

we are still digging some of that stuff up and throwing it away because that was a program that was failed from the very beginning.
28

Again, what can we do about that? One of the things we are

doing in the State of California, and Ellis has been working very

closely with us on this, is developing pubic/private partnerships,

bringing the private sector into this mold and having them be part

of the solution and not part of the problem.

Companies and businesses that are housed in California have resources as you saw in Katrina. Pre-existing agreements with private industry I think would help us get resources quicker. Can

FEMA help us with that? I think there are some issues there that

the federal government has to address and we will go through

FEMA to address them. I am sorry that I ran over but I think

those are some of the things that are more exciting.

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Stanley.

Mr. STANLEY. I have fortunately, or unfortunately, have been

around at the birthing of FEMA in 1979 by President Carter and

I have seen FEMA grow. I have seen it at the best of times and

I have seen it at the worst of times. I have seen it back when Hugo

and they kind of fell on their face in that response to a hurricane

and they did a much, much better job with Andrew when that was

a major catastrophic event on the eastern coast.

I have seen it with generals at its head. I have seen it with other

political appointees at its head. I have never seen it better than

when it had an emergency manager at its head to be able to run

that organization as a professional organization with competency in

the areas of emergency management.

It is said that where you stand is determined by where you sit.

It sat at the cabinet level and was able to with very strong, strong

relationships with the President and the cabinet able to implement

and get things done in a way that bought pride to the citizens and

pride to the government in that response. At the worst of times I

think we have all seen that in our recent times when it fumbled

the ball. I think it comes down to about having strong competent

leadership no matter where it sits in the organization.

Mr. SHUSTER. Ms. Hayashi.

Ms. HAYASHI. Well, I don’t have the breadth of experience and

exposure to FEMA that my colleagues have so if you did compare

FEMA’s response to the Whittier Earthquake and then its very recent response to the January and February storms of last year, I

would say that the comments hold that I made in terms of the

Whittier Earthquake. FEMA was slow to respond with a disaster

assistance center and because we had so many of our residents experiencing damage to their homes and some of them displaced

there was a great need for that.

With the more recent federally declared disasters, and there

were two of them, I can’t fault FEMA at all. They were here in a

very short period of time. It is a little different. We didn’t have people displaced from their homes but they were here in full force, extensive field visits, working on project worksheets in a very timely

manner.

The Hazard Mitigation Program Mr. Renteria mentioned was a

great plus because you don’t want to necessarily put things back

the way they were pre-disaster. Often times there are many better

ways to construct something and hazard mitigation projects recognize that and fund that so we are appreciative of that effort.
29

Mr. SHUSTER. I am going to turn it over to Mr. Miller for questions. Before I do that, I want to make a statement. As we are

going to move through Congress legislation, and I don’t know what

it is going to look like at the end whether you take FEMA out or

leave FEMA in DHS, but that whole structure is going to change,

it is absolutely critical that you folks at the local and state level

are communicating with us because as things happen in Washington sometimes, Congress has one thought, the administration another and we get into this headbutting.

It is so important to hear from you for you and to engage your

members of Congress and talk to them about what your experience

has been and what you would like to see because FEMA should not

be—we are not going create a national fire company that sits

around waiting. We have to depend on first responders locally and

at the state level to do that but they need to be involved at all levels whether it is preparedness, response, recovery, or mitigation.

I would urge you to engage your members of Congress. Mr. Miller comes from a background and has been here in Whittier and

has seen it firsthand but I don’t think most members of Congress

have that experience. I know I didn’t, until I sat on this Committee, really develop a better understanding. So I would encourage

you to engage fully in this debate.

Mr. Miller.

Mr. MILLER. Thank you. I have attended numerous hearings in

Washington on Katrina. Not on the Transportation Committee but

on services we have HUD, Housing, and such. Your testimony is

refreshing and I have to say I agree with it. There has been a lot

of fingerpointing that has gone on. I agree with your statement

that the feds are to assist and locals are to be the first responders.

We witness that here in California time and time again. Two

years ago we had the major fire that started in Lava Creek in the

San Bernardino County and went all the way through LA County.

I watched all the local agencies of the state get involved and do a

wonderful job. The federal government came in and assisted. We

just recently had a fire in the Cleveland National Forest in my district.

It was amazing all the local fire agencies. It is like a brotherhood

out there, fire and policemen. They just all cooperate from city to

city and county to county. I called out to the fire agencies and said,

‘‘Can we assist you?’’ They said, ‘‘We are doing just fine. The local

resources are all we need.’’

There was a huge disconnect in Katrina between the local and

state government. Some of your states that we witnessed that testified said, ‘‘We are in charge. We are in control. We are dealing with

it. We are going to need some help in infrastructure getting the

water systems back, our highways back in place, electrical services,

those type of basic needs.’’

The federal government comes in after the fact, as you so stated,

and assists but this mutual aid that we have in California works

very, very well. I wish more states would use what we do here as

a pilot program for their states because it does work. Then the federal government has never moved rapidly on anything.

The only thing we really do well is fight wars and some people

argue we don’t even do that well anymore. We are a huge elephant.
30

We don’t move like the local government does or state government.

We are responsible for a much larger area and to set up, like you

said, local agencies and warehouses just doesn’t work. Everything

is antiquated before it is even utilized.

I guess, Mr. Renteria, my question is how do you feel the federal

government fits into California’s emergency management plan in

response? How do you see them fitting in?

Mr. RENTERIA. Well, again, I view them as a partner in the recovery and also a partner in resource providing, providing resources to us that we may not have in California and those are federal resources. Before we can even get to that stage, I need to know

what they have. I need to know what they have to deploy, where

it is, and assist them in the process for how to request it.

Because we do have systems in California that makes that type

of request almost seamless through our mutual aid system and

through our ability to respond to neighbor helping neighbor, I

would like to set something up like that with the federal government, too, without expecting everything and all things from them.

I know the limitations everybody has. To make them come to the

table to sit with us as we do with out locals, FEMA should be at

the table with us when we are planning our plans here, responding

to things here. It seems like for whatever reason that has not happened in the last few years.

Mr. MILLER. So you don’t think the feds are integrated in California’s disaster response at this point the way they should be?

Mr. RENTERIA. The way they should be. Correct. I think they

need to be brought into the fold.

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Stanley.

Mr. STANLEY. I would like to answer that. We have actually two

federal governments in our scenario here. Dr. Jones, for example,

is with the federal government but you wouldn’t know it. She is

local. She lives in this area and she is part of this process. We have

local FBI. We have local DHS with the Secret Service, with the

Coast Guard. They are part of our local planning response, exercise

training.

We run into troubles when the other federal come into town out

of the Beltway. That is the different federal that we have. On a

day-to-day basis it is a very seamless response. That mutual aid

that we are talking about is horizontal and vertical. The exercise

I talked about yesterday had sitting around the table FBI. We had

Secret Service. We had U.S. Coast Guard. We had all of the players, the State Highway Patrol, etc. It is a different relationship

when you kind of come in on the white horse out of the beltway

and then there is a different saluting mechanism, if you will.

Mr. MILLER. They don’t understand your local needs.

Mr. STANLEY. They are not plugged in effectively with the local

needs. We do have catastrophic response plans. We know that we

could be overwhelmed. The scenario in which we dealt with was

dealing with 100,000 casualties. Now post-Katrina that may have

been too optimistic. I mean, we probably should have looked at

something different.

Mr. MILLER. Ms. Hayashi, what sort of things do you recommend

we do in the future to speed up the process or make it more efficient for the locals?
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Ms. HAYASHI. Well, to speed up the process, and I know it would

take a while to mobilize such a large organization, but to send out

for example, a scout team for lack of a better word. People from

FEMA who are then connected with their colleagues in D.C. who

would get back first hand reports that they would understand and

it would be credible.

I mean, we had a lot of communication but somehow I think just

because of the geographic distance it just didn’t ring home. Perhaps

if one FEMA to another if they are speaking and some are here,

they would be able to more quickly put together an effective response team.

Mr. MILLER. I want to thank you because there is a lot that you

have demonstrated to us today that we need to do and a lot of information that I have learned from your testimony to take back to

Washington that I think is very viable. We have had too many, in

my opinion, just come back to Washington and point favors that we

weren’t there first, we didn’t have what we needed on the field.

They forgot to look at the locals who are responsible.

I think local government is the best government. You are right

there with people. You know the local needs. You know what you

are going to face, what you have to deal with. Washington is 3,000

miles away. The best they can do is glean from what we tell them.

That is why I thank Chairman Shuster for coming out here today.

This is refreshing. It is good information we need.

It is information I think that we can give to our colleagues that

hopefully it will transfer to their state and local governments so

you can be prepared, understand who is responsible, understand

that the federal government is there to assist and provide what you

do need. After the main first response that is when we have the

ability to come in and assist you with the resources that we have

and get you back on track. I appreciate your testimony.

Mr. SHUSTER. One more question. The Katrina committee came

out and looked at the response five days before and five to seven

days after. The findings appear to support five general reform principles and I’m going to tick them off quickly and just get your general impression. Catastrophic disasters require early presidential

involvement to engage federal resources, one.

Large disasters require DOD support. Again, we are talking

about a catastrophe like Katrina, a 7 or 8 earthquake here in California would be what we are talking about. Third, the disaster preparedness functions need to be closely integrated and managed

with response functions.

FEMA’s essential response capabilities must be restored and enhanced, the professional workforce, logistics, things you mentioned

here today. And the tension between the nation’s hazards emergency management system and terrorism preparedness needs to be

resolved. I’ll go over those points if you didn’t get them all. The

first one is requiring early presidential involvement.

Mr. Renteria, when there is a disaster in California do you have

the Governor’s ear? I mean, do you have direct access to him?

Mr. RENTERIA. Back to what Ellis said earlier about the structure of FEMA. In California I sit on the cabinet. I am a cabinet

member. I was hired by the Governor. He is my supervisor and I

directly report to him. Whenever there is an event, to be honest
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with you, he calls me. He hears about something and he is on the

phone saying, ‘‘What’s happening? Give me an update.’’

The first question out of his mouth is, ‘‘Is this a declared event?

Do I need to declare an emergency?’’ He is in tune with that process and that is my recommendation that I would make to him

based on information that I am getting from the locals. They are

in constant communication with our state operation center so, yes,

that is important. The Governor can declare a local state emergency and then that request is forwarded to FEMA, or the President, rather, for a federal declaration.

A lot of that depends on information, too. I mean, please bear in

mind I hear loud and clear that we need to be quick and rapid in

our response and getting declaration made but the last thing we

want to do is be premature, too. It doesn’t hurt to make a declaration 24 hours after or 48 hours after. I mean, that is not going to

hurt our response. We are going to respond regardless of whether

it is a declared emergency or not.

Obviously we don’t want to wait 10 days after an event before

we have something happening. The matter of hours doesn’t make

any difference because locals will respond immediately. We will be

in touch immediately. The State of California also has a California

State Warning Center.

It is a 24-hour dispatch communication center that is linked to

every single 911 center in the state. We have rapid real time information. Who are we getting it from? From the local first responders. And, quite honestly, from CNN and Fox News also. We need

to remember that they are part of this equation. The media is our

best friend and our worst enemy in a disaster.

They need to be brought to the table, too, because they have a

lot more resources than we do and they are on the scene first and

they need to be responsible in their reporting because they have,

has Katrina showed, a lot of misinformation that went out there

that was unfairly criticized of the federal, state, and local government that never was true.

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Stanley.

Mr. STANLEY. I concur with what Henry has said. I would like

to go where no one has gone today yet and that is to talk about

that money issue. When you talk about all of those five points and

you talk about—and you ask yourself the question have we invested sufficiently in our emergency management program in this

country, one of things you can’t look back at when FEMA was at

the best of times is the EMPG, the Emergency Management Performance Grant.

Why don’t we have an emergency manager in every jurisdiction

in the country? Is it that difficult to do? Two years ago when Mr.

Renteria’s organization did a survey, I think there was a $267 million gap in the needs and what was available. Now we have got a

$13 million cut in those EMPG monies.

Which way are we going? How are we going to get there? We saw

in Katrina the ones that you indicated that were doing a great job

had that relationship, had those resources, had that training and

was able to implement their plans. Those communities that did not

I think we saw the difference there.

Mr. SHUSTER. Ms. Hayashi.
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Ms. HAYASHI. I have nothing to add.

Mr. SHUSTER. I think you make an important point about the

funding, the EMPG funds. I think most of that was redirected to

terrorism. I saw you shaking your head when I said the fifth point

about the tension between terrorism preparedness and emergency

management. What I have learned talking to emergency managers

is a response to terrorism or a natural disaster, about 80 or 90 percent of it is the same. It is just that some of the equipment has

to be different.

Mr. RENTERIA. I just want to tag onto Ellis’ statement. Math is

not my greatest strength so bear with me. I am just guessing. Last

year, 2005, federal money was given to California for terrorism preparedness equated to $7.86 per capita. EMPG money 39 cents.

There is a difference. We need to be investing wisely. Again, how

many terrorist events have we had? I’m not saying that we

shouldn’t be prepared for terrorists.

It is a real scenario but it is just an additional scenario in our

emergency management structure. It is a human cause disaster.

Regardless of whether you are from this country or another country

it is a human cause disaster and it has the same consequences but

we are not investing wisely the funding that is coming down now

to help us prepare. Yet, the biggest frustration that I have at the

state level is when I look at locals, local governments do not have

the support they need to be better prepared and disasters start at

the local level.

Mr. STANLEY. Mr. Shuster, if we use something as simple as pandemic right now and we compare the bio from the pandemic or the

bio from a terrorist event, locally we know that is not geared to a

city. That is a regional or national event, but there are things

locals need to be doing. We need to be bringing the schools together.

If kids have to stay home, is there a distance learning program

in place? How does that impact the private sector? What are they

going to do if a percentage of employees are not at work? If we look

at 40 percent of our own employees that can’t come in, those are

things that we need to be doing and we have control of.

Going back to Dr. Jones when you are talking about the hospitals, we can’t do anything about the retrofit of the hospitals because it keeps getting pushed back by the lobbyists, etc., but we

can look at do we have field hospitals that we can move in place

when we lose a hospital that we can make sure we are keeping—

those are things that can be going on on a day-to-day basis.

Those are real world actions that can be taken if we have the

people and the resources in place to do those and we shouldn’t have

to wait for somebody to come in from federal government. We know

these situations and these predictable surprises as it were. We

know what they are and we know that we have the capabilities and

the resources to be dealing with that now.

Mr. SHUSTER. Well, I really want to thank you very much for

being here in front of us today. This discussion really adds to our

knowledge as we move forward. I’ll make my plea one more time.

Make sure you are engaged with members of Congress because

there are a lot of members of Congress out there and I have heard

some of them say DOD should take over emergency management.
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That is the wrong answer. I can stand up there and Gary can

stand up there and we can make the case for doing this or that but

really if you are in California or if you are in Arkansas or the local

or state emergency management people are talking about what

they want to see.

I have been around enough emergency management folks that

we don’t always see eye to eye on the exact structure of how FEMA

should look or DHS but I think there are some core principles there

that if you are out engaged and you are educating your member of

Congress, we are going to have a lot better chance when we do

something with FEMA whether it is within or without DHS it is

going to be much better for you folks because I couldn’t agree more

with Mr. Miller.

Even at the local response is where it has to take place and that

is where it starts, moves up to the state and to the feds and the

federal government should be there as a support mechanism for

you.

One other point I just wanted to make. I was told that you had

mentioned for every dollar of mitigation it is three dollars in return. We saw a report that said for every dollar it is four dollars

in return. What do they say? An ounce of prevention is worth a

pound of cure. Again, thank you all very much for being here.

I want to ask unanimous consent that the record of today’s hearing remain open until such time as all the witnesses have provided

answers to any questions that may be submitted in writing and

unanimous consent that during such time as the record remains

open additional comments offered by individuals or groups may be

included in the record of today’s hearing. Without objection so ordered. Again, thank you all very, very much for being here.

[Whereupon, at 11:00 a.m. the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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