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28–264 PDF 2006

HOW DO WE ENSURE A ROBUST FEDERAL RESPONSE TO A CATASTROPHIC EARTHQUAKE IN THE

NEW MADRID REGION?

(109–49)

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 24, 2006 (ST LOUIS, MISSOURI)

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

Burke, William C., Director, Illinois Emergency Management Agency .............. 24

Pawlowski, Michael S., Federal Emergency Management Agency ...................... 7

Reynolds, Ronald, Director, Missouri Stste Emergency Management Agency ... 24

Schweig, Dr. Eugene ′′Buddy′′, U.S. Geological Survey ........................................ 7

Talent, Hon. James, Former U.S. Senator from the State of Missouri ............... 36

Van Uum, Betty, Assistant to the Chancellor, University of Missouri ............... 1

Wilkinson, Jim, Central United States Earthquake Consortium ........................ 7

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES

Burke, William C ..................................................................................................... 41

Pawlowski, Michael S .............................................................................................. 43

Reynolds, Ronald ..................................................................................................... 53

Schweig, Dr. Eugene ′′Buddy′′ ................................................................................ 58

Wilkinson, Jim ......................................................................................................... 78

(1)

HOW DO WE ENSURE A ROBUST FEDERAL

RESPONSE TO A CATASTROPHIC EARTHQUAKE IN THE NEW MADRID REGION?

Friday, February 24, 2006

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

& INFRASTRUCTURE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The subcommittee met pursuant to call at 9:00 a.m. At University of Missouri, One University Boulevard, St. Louis, Missouri

63121, Bill Shuster [chairman of the subcommittee], presiding.

Mr. SHUSTER. The subcommittee will come to order. First I’d like

to recognize Betty Van Uum from the University of Missouri.

Betty.

TESTIMONY OF BETTY VAN UUM, ASSISTANT TO THE

CHANCELLOR, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI

Ms. VAN UUM. Thank you, Mr. Shuster. I’m Betty Van Uum, the

Chancellor’s Assistant from the University of Missouri, and I bring

you greetings on behalf of our administration. We think this is a

great honor, Mr. Shuster, and we’re very pleased to have a congressional hearing on our campus. It’s a great learning experience for

our kids and a great honor for us.

So we thank you very much for coming. We welcome your colleagues. We welcome all of you who are going to testify. I hope you

have a productive morning. I only have one little announcement.

We have coffee and donuts in the hall at the—in the room at the

end of the hall. So if any of you need that to stay awake—no. If

any of you would like that, please feel free to help yourself. And

welcome.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. I really appreciate the University of Missouri for hosting us here today, and

I’ve got to make sure I say this up front. When I look at the New

Madrid line—I want to say Madrid, takes me back to my Spanish.

So if I fall into calling it Madrid, please overlook that, and you

know what I’m talking about.

I want to thank Mrs. Emerson for her work on this issue, including assembling a congressional working group for the New Madrid

Seismatic Zone. I know she has a strong interest in ensuring that

the Federal Government has learned the hard issues, hard lessons

of Katrina, and is prepared to respond to a catastrophic earthquake

in the New Madrid region. I welcome your participation here and

thank you for having us.
2

I also want to thank Mr. Carnahan for his participation today.

Both of you have shown a great deal of interest in the response to

Hurricane Katrina and reforming the current emergency management system. I look forward to your contributions here today also.

I want to ask unanimous consent that Mrs. Emerson and Mr.

Carnahan be permitted to sit with the subcommittee at today’s

hearing and offer testimony and ask questions. Without objections,

so ordered.

I also want to thank our witnesses for being here today. We are

meeting this morning to receive State and local input for improving

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—and you have a role in guiding the efforts to fix those

problems—after all, you are the end users.

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

your help to do it.

Like Hurricane Katrina, a catastrophic disaster in the New Madrid region would destroy the infrastructure, leave tens of thousands homeless and paralyze the region.

The New Madrid ′′seismatic′′ region stretches from Arkansas,

Mississippi, north through Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, and Illinois. Since 1974, over 4,000 earthquakes, most too small to notice,

have been recorded. The large metropolitan areas of Mississippi,

Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri are located in the New Madrid

region.

Because this region lacks widespread seismatic building codes, it

is estimated that a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in the region will

cause a direct economic loss of over 70 billion and the destruction

of over 60 percent of the buildings in the region. Without reforms

to the current emergency management system, we will have another disorganized Federal response like that in the gulf coast.

I was on the House Select Committee that investigated the response to Katrina, and our key findings for the Federal failure

were the plan was flawed and the execution was ineffective. There

was confusion over who had the authority to make decisions; response capabilities were deficient. In some places it took weeks before the Federal Government even arrived.

Is the New Madrid region prepared for a week or even longer?

The conventional wisdom says you only need to be prepared for 72

hours. The House Select Committee report found the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina was slow because key decisions were

made late, ineffectively, or not at all.

Today these decisions about how and when to engage Federal response assets are no longer in FEMA. They are with 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 the formal request. Business as usual does

not work in a catastrophic disaster.
3

Following a catastrophic earthquake, the State and local government 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 the people of the New Madrid region

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 the government failed to effectively execute response plans and authorities. This failure can be

attributed to an inadequate Federal disaster workforce.

At the time Katrina struck, FEMA had 500 vacancies, which is

about 20 percent of their workforce. 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 State and local disaster systems.

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 systems into their operations during larger events. Despite spending over $10 billion on first responders since September 11th, it is very difficult to see where these 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 disaster and its consequences largely alone for the first week

or longer. I look forward to hearing from you today. And thank you.

And I’d like to recognize Mr. Carnahan, if you have an opening

statement.

Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you Mr. Chairman. It’s good to be here,

and I want to thank you for your efforts and your leadership on

this issue and to the committee on which I’m honored to serve.

I also want to recognize Congresswoman Emerson for her leadership in the Congress on this issue. She has been a very key figure

in trying to get this to the attention of the people that are potentially harmed in this region but also in the Congress.

Also, my friend, Congressman Marion Berry from Arkansas

who’s also been very active in the earthquake preparedness caucus

in the Congress.
4

I wanted to share something I learned, actually, this morning

over coffee at home. I’d gotten my neighborhood newsletter from

the Compton Heights neighborhood where I live in South St. Louis,

and I learned a bit of earthquake trivia I had not known before.

And that is, back at the time of the last earthquake in 1812, that

area of St. Louis was a common field, and there were settlements

around it, but it was a common field used by the community. And

it became one of the first Federal Government resettlement areas

after the New Madrid earthquake.

So I did not realize that the very neighborhood that I lived in

had been impacted in the aftermath of that 1812 earthquake.

I want to welcome those from out of town—particularly the

Chairman—to St. Louis and also want to say that I think the time

is especially appropriate that we assess how prepared the Federal

Government is to respond to an earthquake in the New Madrid region.

As we have all seen and as we have discovered through a series

of investigations, the level of preparedness and subsequent response to Hurricane Katrina was inadequate. FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security failed to protect the lives of the

very citizens they were charged to protect. And I think we are all

about trying to learn from the mistakes that were made so they

don’t happen in the future. We need to ensure that a similar response does not occur; Not if, but when, we are struck with the

next damaging earthquake.

Unlike in 1812, when there were very few people that lived in

this region, now over 75 million people live in 39 States directly

vulnerable to a serious earthquake. Moreover, because my entire

district is contained within the New Madrid Seismic Zone, every

one of my constituents is subject to losing their homes, or worse,

their lives, when an earthquake hits our region.

Much of our rich historic infrastructure that makes St. Louis

such a great place to live—we have more historic brick homes and

buildings than just about any region in the country—also makes us

especially vulnerable.

Being prepared for natural disasters is one of the major functions

of FEMA. However, since the subcommittee is in St. Louis today,

I’d like to take just a short moment to address another one of

FEMA’s major functions: disaster recovery.

As the Chairman is aware, the St. Louis region was damaged in

1993 by a record Mississippi River flood, and now more than 12

years later, many parts of this area are still recovering. In particular, some of the recovering area in south St. Louis County has been

placed under the jurisdiction of FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant

Program.

Due to this placement, the land is deed restricted, and further

development on it has been stalled. As a result, I’m seeking assistance to obtain an easement from FEMA to construct a priority

transportation improvement project in south St. Louis County.

This project would facilitate thousands of jobs and revitalize a

devastated area. Members of the Transportation Committee have

been generous with their advice, from Chairman Young on down,

and for that I am truly grateful.
5

Our country has faced many natural disasters, and as this hearing today proves, there is great potential for more. As such, we

must begin to pay attention to FEMA’s ability to facilitate longterm recovery. I ask the subcommittee to begin to consider this

project in south St. Louis County.

Chairman Shuster, once again, thank you for your leadership. I

look forward to working with you, Chairman Young, Ranking Member Oberstar and the entire subcommittee on these important

issues.

And I also want to apologize. I do have to go to another meeting

at 10:00, so I will step out in a few minutes. Thank you.

Mr. SHUSTER. We appreciate you being here today, and thank

you for having us into your—well, I guess it’s close to your district.

Mr. CARNAHAN. Right next door.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you very much for being here today. Now

I’d like to recognize Ms. Emerson for an opening statement.

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really want to thank

you very much for coming to Missouri and to participate in what

is a very important issue, critical issue for all of us in the State

as well as all the contiguous States around us, and I’m very grateful to you.

I also want to thank my colleague, Russ Carnahan, for being part

of our congressional working group, as well as for all the work that

he has done and will be doing in the future to help us try to meet

the expectations that we have in preparing for any kind of a natural disaster.

I also want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today and

for the work that they continue to do. It isn’t easy, but it is very,

very necessary.

Having been to New Orleans, Mr. Chairman, 1 week after Hurricane Katrina befell that city, and then having been to New Orleans

2 weeks ago this week, I haven’t seen a lot of difference. I mean,

obviously, some of the cleanup has been done, but it’s very, very

disheartening to see that our agencies have not been working together at any level in the system.

And so this is very important, and I’m very proud of all of us in

Missouri and all of the States contiguous to us who understand and

realize that we have so much work to do to prepare for any kind

of a natural disaster. And the fact that you are as interested as you

are in it gives me great hope.

You know, having read at least the executive summary of the

House Select Committee’s report ′′A Failure of Initiative,′′ it is very

dismaying and disheartening. And the fact that the report concluded that ′′The preparation for and response to Hurricane

Katrina show we are still an analog government in a digital age,′′ is really something and so very, very true.

And I sit on the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House

Appropriations, and with all of the billions and billions, hundreds

of billions of dollars that we have given to the Department of

Homeland Security, it’s really shocking to me that we still have

failures along every step of the way.

I know that the Department has endeavored to modernize it’s

preparation, mitigation, and response capabilities through reorganization and restructuring, but I think almost everybody can agree
6

that more work still needs to be done to ensure that our emergency

managers and first responders at all levels are properly equipped

to handle the potentially catastrophic situation that could occur in

Missouri, Illinois, and nearly half a dozen other States in event of

a major earthquake in the New Madrid region.

And while I am pleased to note that many initiatives planned by

FEMA, the U.S. Coast Guard, and other DHS agencies to address

preparedness in our area, ′′A Failure of Initiative′′ also showed that

recognition of potential danger does not equal preparedness for the

danger.

We all saw the infamous Hurricane Pam model which obviously

showed us many dangers of a major hurricane making landfall in

the New Orleans area. But, really, relatively little was done to

truly prepare the region for such a disaster. And we cannot, we

must not make that same mistake twice in preparing for a New

Madrid disaster.

As you may know, I, along with Senator Jim Talent, have requested a formal exercise that should include FEMA, Coast Guard,

Corps of Engineers, Department of Defense, State and local law enforcement, health care volunteer agencies and response agencies.

Mr. Chairman, a major earthquake along the New Madrid fault

could have a devastating effect on commerce and infrastructure in

the entire Midwest. I am so grateful to you for holding this hearing

today so that we can draw even more attention to this important

issue, and I look forward to hearing the testimony of the witnesses.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you very much. I’d like to ask unanimous

consent that all our witnesses’ full statements be included in the

record. Without objection, it’s so ordered.

Since your written testimony has been made part of the record,

the subcommittee would request that you limit your summary to

5 minutes.

We have three panels of witnesses today. On our first panel, we

have three witnesses representing the various organizations involved in disaster planning from the New Madrid region:

Dr. Schweig and Mr. Wilkinson are going to provide a presentation that will demonstrate the likely consequences of a catastrophic earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone.

We’ll also hear from Mr. Pawlowski. Did I get that right? My

Spanish is better than my Slavic.

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. Pawlowski.

Mr. SHUSTER. Pawlowski, who will discuss ongoing efforts to plan

for an earthquake in the region. Just as the consequence of a Category 4 storm hitting New Orleans were well-known, I believe it is

important that we fully understand what we could face here at a

moment’s notice.

Dr. Eugene Buddy Schweig is the U.S. Geological Survey—is

with the U.S. Geological Survey, and Jim Wilkinson is the director

of Central United States Earthquake Consortium.

Michael Pawlowski is the acting chief for Incident Response Section of the Response Division at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

We’ll hear from all of our witnesses on the panel before opening

for questions.
7

TESTIMONY OF JIM WILKINSON, CENTRAL UNITED STATES

EARTHQUAKE CONSORTIUM; DR. EUGENE ′′BUDDY′′

SCHWEIG, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY; AND MICHAEL S.

PAWLOWSKI, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY

Mr. SHUSTER. Dr. Schweig, you may proceed.

Mr. SCHWEIG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the

committee, for this opportunity to appear before you to testify in

the likelihood and potential effects of a worst-case catastrophic

earthquake in the New Madrid region.

Now, it’s certainly true there are fewer earthquakes in this part

of the country than there are in California or in Alaska, but by

some measures, the hazards that they pose are actually as great

as many parts of California and Alaska.

And pardon me in advance. The projector has washed out some

of these slides so they’re a little difficult to see. The first thing I

want to show you is this map here.

This is one of the earthquake hazards maps made by the U.S.

Geological Survey; in fact, the one that feeds into many of the

building codes that we have in use by many States and many municipalities.

The reddish colors are the higher hazards, and as you see, the

New Madrid Seismic Zone in the Mississippi Valley there, and it’s

an area of hazard that, although much smaller than the large area

of high hazard in the West, is still as high as many parts of California.

One thing that drives the fact that we consider the hazard high

is the 1811 and ’12 earthquakes. During that sequence we had

three earthquakes that were between magnitudes 7.5 and 8, although, of course, there weren’t any instruments around at the

time, and then thousands of aftershocks following. And the earthquakes continue to this day, and those earthquakes are known as

the New Madrid Seismic Zone.

During the, during the—excuse me. During the earthquakes, the

effects were dramatic. Vast tracts of land sunk and were uplifted.

This is the Reelfoot Lake in northwestern Tennessee. Other areas

in Arkansas and Missouri were the same.

River banks caved all along the Mississippi River. Areas of the

river were unnavigable for weeks. Islands disappeared; new islands

formed. Landslides occurred along the bluffs all the way from

northern Mississippi into southern Illinois and Kentucky.

One of the most dramatic things that remains today are the sand

blows in southeastern Missouri. And these are areas of sand that

erupted during the earthquakes. They stand out starkly against

the Mississippi muds. They can be 100, 200 feet across, very dramatic and still visible today.

And they’re important not just because they tell us about the

earthquake, Because these are a phenomenon that is related to

what’s called liquefaction, and this happens during every almost

large earthquake. You have strong shaking water pressure, increases in the sands that you have below the surface soils until the

sand turns into a liquid, and the soil itself loses its ability to bear

weight.

Many of you may remember the earthquake, the 1989 Loma

Prieta Earthquake in San Francisco in which buildings in the ma-
8

rina district tilted and foundered into the muds. That was due to

this phenomena of liquefaction. And it’s a great hazard in this part

of the world as I’ll show you in a minute.

This is a little washed out, but it’s just supposed to show a picture of one of these sand blows in a drainage ditch. And I just want

to mention that they’re not only a major hazard, but they’ve provided a key record of past earthquakes.

In fact, by studying these prehistoric sand blows, we’ve been able

to show that the 1811–12 earthquakes were not just a one-time

event. We’ve had similar earthquakes in 1450, 900 AD, and other

ones as well.

And perhaps the most important thing is that not only do the

earthquakes happen repeatedly through time, but each time we

have an earthquake, they appear to be sequences, just like in 1811

and 12. Not one earthquake and its aftershocks, but sequences of

many earthquakes in a row.

Another problem that we have that drives the high hazard is

that earthquake waves travel much farther in this part of the country for the same size earthquake like shown here, the New Madrid

Earthquake, as opposed to the similarly-sized 1906 San Francisco

Earthquake. You often have around 20 times the area of damage

in the central and eastern U.S. Than you do in the west due to the

crust of the earth.

But we sort of have a double whammy because we have these

Mississippi Valley sediments shown in the darker color there, and

these Mississippi Valley sediments also amplify the shaking. So we

have two causes for the shaking for the same size earthquake here

to be much greater than it would out west. USGS research is focusing on understanding all these effects so they can be mitigated cost

effectively.

One thing we’re doing is we have the Advanced National Seismic

System which provides realtime ground shaking, and it’s focusing

mainly on vulnerable urban areas, about 26 urban areas, including

Memphis and St. Louis. There’s about 35 of these new instruments

already in place here.

We’re also making urban scale hazard maps. We’ve completed a

map in Memphis, Tennessee. We have just begun one in St. Louis,

and we’re working on another one in Evansville, Illinois—Evansville, Indiana.

We have community intensity maps where people, when they feel

things from the earthquake, they can go onto the Internet, describe

what they felt. It’s very useful to us and makes them feel a part

of the process as well, a very popular Web site.

And, of course, we also do our earthquake notification systems

where we let people know what has happened as it’s happening.

I just—now, this is very washed out, but I think I can still describe it. This is a scenario intensity map, shaking map, for just

one magnitude 7.7 earthquake on that southernmost arm on the

New Madrid Seismic Zone stretching from southeast Missouri into

Arkansas.

And what this is showing is the amount of shaking you would

expect from that earthquake. And this doesn’t include the other

earthquakes that would be expected to follow. And it ranges from

that outer green color is light damage, and the central color around
9

the fault is heavy damage, significant damage even to well-built

buildings. And you see it covers many, many States.

For the other earthquakes that would be expected to follow, that

same pattern would exist, but we’d be shifted more towards the

north.

I just want to mention again liquefaction and landslides. We tend

to think of shaking, which is what that picture was showing, but

liquefaction and landslides would be expected to cause failure of

the bluffs, failure of Earth and levees, local loss of navigation on

the rivers, failure of bridge supports and approaches over a very

large region.

Roadways would often be impassable in the low-lying areas

along, for example, I–55, rupture of pipelines and cables crossing

the Mississippi River and other rivers and buried tanks floating to

the surface; many of the same effects that you had in New Orleans,

as a matter of fact.

And these are the kinds of things that would take the—would

cause economic loss, not just to our area but much of the eastern

United States.

What does such a scenario mean in terms of total losses? Well,

this is a map done with FEMA’s HAZUS program, with a little additional information done by the U.S. Geological Survey. It’s a

county-by-county estimation of losses.

The lighter green color towards the outside, each of those counties has about 25 million or less losses. Shelby County, Memphis,

in southwestern Tennessee, there has about $19 billion in losses

just from one earthquake, the southwesternmost arm. Total losses

from one quake is about 70 billion, perhaps as high as 77 billion.

Similar analyses on the other earthquakes that would be expected

to follow also are in the $70 billion apiece range.

The last slide I want to show you is probabilities of large earthquakes in the next 50 years. This is important to know. By looking

at the record of prehistoric earthquakes and smaller earthquakes

we have now, and our understanding of how earthquakes work, we

believe that a repeat of what happened in 1811 and ’12, magnitude

7.5 to 8, a sequence, is about 10 percent in the next 50 years. And

some people might consider that low. To me that seems actually

quite high.

The probability of a magnitude 6 or greater, which could cause

damage over a local area, is between 25 and 50 percent over the

next 50 years.

And I believe that’s the last slide I have, so thank you again, Mr.

Chairman and Committee.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you very much, Doctor.

Next, Mr. Wilkinson, you may proceed.

Mr. WILKINSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Committee for

taking the time to come to the central U.S. And look at this issue.

My name is Jim Wilkinson, and I’m going to try to cut this down.

I’ve been told we have 5 minutes instead of 10, so I’m going to run

through this pretty quick and try to leave time for questions.

First, I want to set the stage for why we’re even looking at planning and preparedness in the central U.S., look at the regional approaches being taken to address this, and then finally conclude
10

with some of the things that are being done here in the central

U.S.

First, as stated earlier, we had a very small population in the

central U.S. Back in 1811–1812, and today that’s not the case. We

have about 11 million people at risk. Of that 11 million, approximately 7 million fall within the small rural areas of the central

U.S. Most people think of St. Louis and Memphis as the major

areas, and they are as concentrations of population, but we still

have a significant number of people scattered out throughout our

rural smaller areas which needs to be looked at.

As was pointed out just a moment ago, we have been looking at

potential losses in the central U.S. CUSEC, along with FEMA and

the USGS has done a loss estimation on the region looking at potential losses from a magnitude 7.7. This is based on a recommendation from USGS that that would be the magnitude we

ought to use for our planning, and it’s not the worst case.

We then did a modified Level I, which means we added some additional data to the model to give us a more robust view of the

losses. And then we did model each of three segments of the seismic zone. And as was pointed out, this does not reflect the cumulative effect of the earthquakes. These are each individual effects.

There’s a lengthy document that goes into all sorts of statistics

about losses. I’ve just summarized it here looking at building,

transportation, and utility losses. The totals for each of those three

segments of the seismic zone looking at anywhere from 60—68 billion to 77 billion in losses on each of those three arms. And, again,

this is available on our web site, and I have a hard copy to leave

with you as well.

What’s driving these losses is the fact that we do have a lot of

these unreinforced masonry structures, as mentioned earlier, in the

central U.S. We have a high percentage of buildings that just

weren’t built for seismic consideration, and only recently have

building codes brought in the seismic issue. So basically, 1992–3,

seismic considerations started showing up in the building codes.

We’ve got a lot of buildings out there that just weren’t built to resist the effects of earthquake.

We also haven’t had a significant earthquake since 1895. We

have had earthquakes that have caused limited damage throughout

the region, but not on the scale that we expect to see in the magnitude 6 range, which means, again, we’ve got a very large inventory of vulnerable structures out there that are susceptible to damage.

And there’s more pressing issues, unfortunately, that it’s not

being focused on the seismic hazards, and this hearing today is a

good step in helping to bring that awareness to the issue.

So what is being done on the regional approach, regional hazard

here in the central U.S. Is that we’ve taken a regional approach to

this. Back in 1983, FEMA, along with the seven states that originally formed CUSEC, sat down and looked at the complications of

dealing with a hazard that did affect all these States. And there

wasn’t a mechanism for addressing that, so we were formed. We’re

a nonprofit organization that was established to look at the issue

and address the commonalities that these States share, at the
11

same time to augment the State earthquake programs of each of

those States.

I have a board of directors made up of the seven Emergency

Management Directors of their States; actually, it’s eight now. Alabama was just added. We have nine associate States which surround those original States serving as a backup to those States.

The board of directors sets the policy for the organization, determines the direction we’re going, the priorities for addressing the

hazards; and then, day to day, we have earthquake program managers that carry out the work, putting on the workshops, activities

that go on in each of your States.

We have a number of associations that are also umbrellaed

under us which are very effective in helping us address the hazards. Our State Geologic Surveys, our State Transportation Task

Force were all initiatives that were brought on by the board of directors in looking at this hazard and bringing their expertise to the

table.

We also have four FEMA regions that we fall in, which adds to

that complexity of dealing with this hazard when you have those

overlaps of different jurisdictions and how they communicate and

they interact with each other with these States.

My organization is very small. We have five staff persons, myself

and one other work in the field, and then the rest are support. So,

you know, it’s a challenge there to address the needs of all those

States when you have sort of a small organization.

Just to give you a graphic view of where we represent, blue

states are the founding states; the light blue are the associates

states; and there are three other consortia that are supported by

FEMA that cover the western part of the U.S., the northeastern

part of the U.S.; and then there’s one in the Seattle area that looks

at just the Cascadia region.

So pretty much every State is represented by a consortia. We

enjoy a very strong working relationship with FEMA, and I think

it has worked in the earthquake program and is something that we

look forward to trying to continue.

Just to quickly summarize, we have four basic goals that we operate under: public awareness, which drives all the other three;

mitigation, multistate planning, and the application of research.

That’s our founding goals which we have stuck with. It gives us a

balanced approach to addressing this hazard, where we’re not looking at just one area but all areas.

The States have adopted these same areas for their earthquake

programs. I’m not going to read these to you, but it gives you some

idea in each of those program areas what we are engaged in in

working with the States.

And finally, some of the current activities we’re involved with.

This is not a complete list, obviously. We have earthquake program

managers workshop coming up in which all of your State earthquake program managers are getting together and looking at the

regional State issues. We’ve got training that’s been going on. We

were in Kentucky two weeks ago doing the ATC 20. We’ve been in

Missouri quite a bit here lately, Arkansas, Kentucky, doing earthquake town hall meetings. Earthquake awareness week just concluded for these States.
12

So we’re very active, and as you’re about to hear, we’re also engaged in catastrophic planning that’s about to kick off with FEMA

and the eight States. And we just wrapped up a week conference

in Memphis looking at the Spills of National Significance exercise

which will focus on the hazard and looking at testing these plans

we’ve been working on currently.

Basically, we can’t do this alone. It’s a partnership approach. We

have to have your help. We have to have the help of a private sector, all the State agencies, local and Federal, to make this work.

It’s a huge undertaking in addressing this hazard in the central

U.S. The good news is we know what we need to do. It’s

prioritizing what we need to do and setting a course. Thank you.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you very much.

Mr. Pawlowski.

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of

the committee. On behalf of the Federal Emergency Management

Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, I would like to

thank you very much for the opportunity to brief you on the catastrophic disaster readiness program for the New Madrid Seismic

Zone.

My name is Mike Pawlowski. I’m the Instant Response Section

Chief within the operations branch of the response division of

FEMA.

We have a significant concern that there is a potential for a catastrophic earthquake, equivalent to those in the 1800’s, centered on

the New Madrid zone. I would like to begin by stating that DHS/

FEMA has taken the lead on the Catastrophic Disaster Readiness

Program for the New Madrid Seismic Zone.

This project is a cooperative multiFederal agency, multiState and

local government, private sector and tribal nation effort that incorporates examination of the effects on the critical infrastructure.

This is a large-scale project involving the synchronization of efforts of a number of entities and their activities. FEMA’s goal is to

apply the results of the Catastrophic Disaster Readiness Program

for the New Madrid Seismic Zone to earthquake planning efforts in

other parts of the country.

The response division at FEMA is addressing and coordinating

interagency and intergovernmental efforts in such areas as command and control, search and rescue, evacuation, emergency sheltering, hosting, transportation, address special needs populations,

temporary medical control—medical care, access control, and reentry to impacted areas, commodity prestaging and distribution,

donations and volunteer management, and working on other identified regional, State, local, or tribal nation concerns.

FEMA’s Recovery Division is developing guidelines that would be

used to assist host communities in planning for accommodating

large numbers of the evacuees, mass care, temporary housing, and

other long-term issues.

Obviously, in developing those guidelines, we will apply the lessons that we have learned over the last year from Hurricane

Katrina and looking at the 125 recommendations made by the

White House yesterday.
13

Our approach and assumption for this readiness effort is focused

on a no-notice event, an earthquake, but the results of this initiative can also be applied to a no-notice terrorism event.

Our planning venues will present a wide range of intelligence

sharing, commodity prestaging, resource deployment, special needs

evacuation, transportation and routing, and address the critical infrastructure.

I’d like to point out that this would be a cooperative business, industry, and government partnership with many players involved

from the Federal, State, local, tribal nation, and the private sector.

We recognize that there have already been some individual initiatives that have taken—that have been involved in doing prior

planning in the New Madrid zone. For example, CUSEC has been

involved in prior planning, the Spills of National Significance 2007

exercise is now ongoing as a cooperative interagency effort with

FEMA, the U.S. Coast Guard.

The National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center will

be involved in this project as well as the Environmental Protection

Agency, U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Army Corps

of Engineers, the Department of Defense NORTHCOM, Fifth Army

North, and the American Petroleum Institute.

Other partners, such as the Department of Homeland Security

Preparedness Directorate, are also going to be involved as we move

forward. To assure overall coordination of the Catastrophic Readiness Program, an interagency, intergovernmental steering committee will be formed and is expected to be in place by late February.

A project of this magnitude requires synchronization of activities

across government, across regions, across State and local government and tribal nations.

Our requirements to manage this project is to establish a Web

portal for maintaining all the active in-process planning and information sharing. We will utilize the Homeland Security Information

Network to accomplish this. The uniqueness of the New Madrid

Seismic Zone poses many challenges for the Catastrophic Disaster

Readiness Project.

We initially started coordinating this project with the States at

a CUSEC, at the Central United States Earthquake Consortium

meeting in December of last year in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We

have initiated planning with our regional interagency steering committee in February of this year. The project, as you know, involves

eight States, four regions. A lot of synchronization, a lot of coordination will be required.

Our planning will examine extreme weather conditions such as

flooding, snow and ice that could exacerbate the problems of the affected population. There is a variety of potential economic impacts

from an event in the New Madrid Seismic Zone that require a

strong business, industry, and government partnership which includes the critical infrastructure.

We know there is a historic precedent for such an event. If you

were to analyze just a 10-day disruption of the local economies of

the areas structurally damaged by a 1985—by an 1895 earthquake,

due to the fallen power lines alone, the impact would be $50 billion

but would not be centered specifically in the New Madrid region.

Two thousand—two-thirds of that impact would affect the infra-
14

structure across the country. Commodity flows, pipeline, rail, highways, barges would be significantly affected.

How do we go—how do we expect to go about on this project? We

have already coordinated with the States and CUSEC with a strategy to initiate a series of workshops within the area to do the planning that’s required.

We expect to conduct workshops in two urban areas and one

rural area. The two rural urban areas identified would be St. Louis

and Memphis. The rural area would be Cairo, Illinois; Wickliffe,

Kentucky; and Charleston, Missouri.

Potential impacts to be addressed at these workshops include

command and control, saving lives, search and rescue, temporary

medical care, access control reentry, business, industry, and government partnerships, private sector coordination, and the critical

infrastructure.

We will conduct an overall assessment of the earthquake impact

in the area, and we will address the social vulnerability, identify

the social and economic consequences of both the short-term and

long-term effect on the impacted area.

We have established a schedule for completing this Catastrophic

Disaster Readiness Project. In the first quarter fiscal year 2006, we

already established initial coordination on this project. By the end

of this quarter, we will have established our steering committee,

and by the third quarter of 2006, we will have established the

workshop design team and specific scenarios and objectives to be

accomplished in each of the workshops. In the fourth quarter of

2006, we will conduct preworkshop meetings and initiate functional

workshops at the city level.

We will expect to have a complete regionwide coordinated response plan that integrates the effects of all the regions, States, all

the Federal agencies to be in place by fiscal year 2007.

We will participate with the Spills of National Significance Exercise as part of this effort to assure that we have strong coordination among all the partners in this effort, and we will be able to

address any other areas for improvement that may be identified as

a result of conducting this exercise.

I will be glad to entertain questions at this point.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Pawlowski.

I’m going to recognize Mr. Carnahan first for questions, since he

has to depart. Mr. Carnahan.

Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the

panel. I have really two brief questions. The first I want to ask,

and I’ll ask of the panel. I understand there’s a historic cycle of

how these earthquakes have happened in this region of the country, but can you talk to us a little bit about the science, the current

science of monitoring and prediction of these cycles and what the

better monitoring has done in terms of activity that might signal

a quake coming?

Mr. SCHWEIG. Yeah. The U.S. Geological Survey working with

various universities in the region, particularly St. Louis University

and the University of Memphis have been supporting a seismic network in this region for quite a few years, actually, since the ’70’s,

and that network has done a number of things for us.
15

First of all, it helps us locate much more exactly where the

earthquakes have occurred and are likely to occur. We couldn’t

even see this pattern of earthquakes until the instruments were in.

The other thing, and I think this is one of the most critical

things for preparedness and response, these instruments that we

have in the ground are—they allow us, when we have a moderate

earthquake in the region, they allow us to understand how buildings will shake in the case of a large earthquake.

So without these instruments, we would not have the ability to

appropriately build buildings in the region, cost effectively build

buildings in the region to withstand larger earthquakes.

Now, we’re not using—although we’d all love to be able to predict

earthquakes, that’s not what we’re generally using those instruments for. We’re using the instruments to assess the hazard so

that we can cost effectively prepare for earthquakes.

We consider right now, forecasting the likelihood of earthquakes

and what they’re likely to do, a much better use of funds than actually trying to predict them, although, of course, there’s always

background research going on, and we’d all love to be able to predict earthquakes.

Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you. The other question I have is to the

extent that you have worked with architects, engineers, and scientists and groups like the Transportation Infrastructure Security

Partnership in developing industry standards for new buildings or

retrofitting buildings and the type of incentives that could be put

in place to help those be implemented in a better way.

Mr. WILKINSON. Well, we do work very closely with local and

State building code officials in trying to get the improvement of the

building codes. It’s a very difficult situation because you’re going—

in this area, as I pointed out, we didn’t have seismic codes until

the early ’90’s. And, so, when you’re going from something that’s

nothing to something, you’ve ultimately got cost issues involved

with that.

The Memphis Shelby County area right now is dealing with that

very issue, western Kentucky. So what we’re trying to do is to generate these improvements in the codes so that we are reducing our

vulnerability but at the same time trying to factor in the economic

aspects of community development in the region and at the city

and county levels so that, you know, we’re not going backwards.

We’re improving the situation but still helping the community be

healthy economically as we address those very key issues about the

cost of this because, as was pointed out in the science part of this

presentation, there are some comparable measures to the California threat.

And whether or not our code should reflect a comparable code to

what California is under or not is a debate that’s going on right

now. And we work very closely to try to address both sides of that

issue because, you know, from a preparedness side, which I represent, you know, obviously, we’re looking for the strongest, safest

buildings we could have, but at the same time you’ve got to factor

in the economics of all this.

Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
16

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Carnahan. Thanks for having us

here today, and also we look forward to working with you on that

situation you have out here in Missouri, and we’ll be in touch.

Thank you for coming.

I’d like to also now recognize Mrs. Emerson.

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ve got several questions, but Dr. Schweig, just let me ask you one question. It’s a

science question, too, just to follow up.

When you talk about the tendency for seismic events to occur in

sequences, how does that—I mean, just because I don’t understand

it very well—how does this tendency complicate potential response

and relief efforts in the region? And then a scientific question is,

are those sequences likely to occur along the same epicenter?

Mr. SCHWEIG. Maybe I’ll answer the latter part first because it’s

a science question. The—we’re not really sure about whether they

tend to always happen along the same parts of the New Madrid

Seismic Zone, but the science seems to suggest they do.

By looking at the pattern of these prehistoric sand blows, we actually can see that they seem to line up in clusters in 1450 and

900 AD that are almost identical to what we see from 1811 and ’12.

That would suggest that these three arms of the seismic zone, that

we really didn’t have time to talk about, probably each go off,

maybe not in the same order. We really can’t tell that. But they

each seem to go off each time.

And maybe Jim might better address the issue of response, but

the things that are obvious to me are that if you know or if you

strongly suspect that additional large events are going to be happening over the next days to weeks, that’s going to strongly affect

the kinds of structures that you’re going to put people into, where

you want to take them, where you want to evacuate them to, etc.

I don’t know if you have anything additional to say about that.

Mrs. EMERSON. OK.

Dr. Pawlowski, one of the shortcomings of Hurricane Pam was

that the workshops had not been translated into operational procedures. How are you all going to make sure the planning translates

into increased readiness and capabilities this time around.

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. Well, our objective is to review all the State

plans, all the local plans to make sure there is synchronization

across the board. We will have the opportunity to exercise them.

We will make sure that that, that those plans are coordinated

with not only the local communities, the State communities, regionwide amongst the Federal agencies who would have a role to play,

and all the external Federal agencies that would come out—come

in providing assistance.

The procedures will have to be exercised, and through those exercises, we will be able to identify what are the strengths and what

are the areas that need to be improved upon.

And we will use the reports that have been—the after-action reports from Katrina to guide us in making sure that we bring the

best of the recommendations to help us in that matter.

Mrs. EMERSON. Will this have been the first earthquake exercise

that FEMA has ever been involved in.

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. We’ve done catastrophic—we had an earthquake

that was called Catastrophic 97, I believe, which we were involved
17

in. But this is a significantly larger effort because you’re talking

about an effort that’s going to involve the eight States, the four regions coordinating, and also the other Federal agencies from the

top down.

Mrs. EMERSON. OK. I do have a follow-up question to that that

I want to ask. Is that all right, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. SHUSTER. Sure.

Mrs. EMERSON. And then I’m going to ask our State director the

question as well. In preparing for these exercises and for the workshops, are you going to be requiring, if you will, major assessments,

to have major assessments done of where you might place emergency equipment, and, like, you talked about commodity prestaging

and that sort of thing, in areas that can withstand and/or in structures that can withstand, let’s say, a Level 7 earthquake? You

know, how do you determine all of that?

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. That’s part of the planning that we will be

doing.

Mrs. EMERSON. OK.

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. But we will also be looking at transportation requirements. If the infrastructure is disrupted—this week we met

with a special transportation working group that’s looking at the

roadways through the system. We will be addressing the airports.

If you have roadways and you have bridges, which ones have

been seismic—have been taken—have taken the seismic design into

account so that they will be able to survive and provide you support for flowing commodities into and out of the region.

Mrs. EMERSON. OK. But just for an example, say I’ve got—I’m in

a small town. Let’s say I’m in Sikeston, Missouri, for example.

That’s a little north of where Charleston and where you’re going

to have one of the workshops. What happens if, you know, my public safety department, which is police and fire, and they have a

brick building or a cinder block building in which all of, you know,

all of our emergency, our ambulances and all of our emergency response vehicles are housed, are you going to be—are you going

down to that detail in these assessments so that we would know

that that is not a good prestaging area, for example, if it’s in a cinder block building because we wouldn’t be able to get at those

emergency vehicles to get people out of their homes, etc.?

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. That would be our objective because we want to

make sure that we have command and control and continuity of

government, continuity of services.

Mrs. EMERSON. Right. So you will know down to the last building

which, you know, which can or cannot be prepositioned with equipment or commodities or the like. Is that correct.

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. Our objective is to make sure we have communication with every community. Part of our problems with Katrina

was losing communications capabilities and having a command and

control infrastructure.

So our objective is to make sure when we look down to the lowest

level as a result of this comprehensive planning effort that we do

have a capability to communicate; that there is command and control down at the local level; that there is a facility that, either the

facility there or some alternate facility, that local government can

operate from.
18

Mrs. EMERSON. OK. I wasn’t specifically talking about communications. I was talking about prestaging, whether it’s water, commodities, whether it’s ambulances, school buses, whatever you’re

going to do to get people out. You will be assessing those buildings,

and that’s the infrastructure, if you will, of where they would be

housed.

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. Yes. In terms of temporary sheltering of population and commodities that you’re addressing.

Mrs. EMERSON. And equipment to get people out and the ambulances and the like. So we will know all of that down to the

local——

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. That is our objective.

Mrs. EMERSON. OK. I want to come back and ask a follow-up

question. How are you going to make certain that all happens, and,

you know, what is the accountability requirement that you will demand? Jim, do you want to answer that.

Mr. WILKINSON. Well, I’d like to add to that. On the mitigation

side, which is a requirement at the State and local level, they are

identifying those vulnerable areas in all those communities and, a

part of the mitigation plan, to reduce that risk.

So there is a planning effort in all the communities to look at

those structures and determine which ones are vulnerable so that

mitigation dollars can come in to strengthen those buildings that

may be vulnerable. So that detailed look is taking place, but it’s on

the mitigation side, not on the response preparedness side.

I guess the objective here is to make sure that mitigation and

preparedness are talking and making sure the planning efforts are

coming together like they should be, but that is happening through

the mitigation directors.

Mrs. EMERSON. I don’t think I’m articulating my question very

well. Forgive me. I guess when you prestage emergency response,

whether it’s food, whether it’s ambulances, whether it’s buses to

move people, whatever, is, obviously—well, I would hope that you

take into consideration the place where you stage is not a vulnerable place, if you will. That’s what I’m trying to say.

But, I guess, is there going to be one agency designated that is

going to know all of this information, one data base of information

so that everybody can talk to each other, or are we going to have

split responsibilities in such a way that we can’t have—can’t know

all of the things that we need to know to do in just one simple

database?

Mr. WILKINSON. Well, I can tell you for the State of Tennessee,

and I think in talking with Director Reynolds last night about Missouri, they are looking at specific sites to predeploy and store resources.

In Tennessee’s case, they’re looking as forward as they can get

to the area before they start getting into the areas suspected to be

impacted. So they are looking at, I guess what you’re getting at,

is a site in which things are predeployed, stationed, and ready to

go in the event we have an earthquake. Again, I can’t speak for the

other States at this point, but I do know those two States are looking into that.

Mrs. EMERSON. Thanks. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
19

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. I’d like to add to that by stating this is a cooperative local, State, and Federal effort. There will be local prestaging,

State prestaging. The State will do its own planning in terms of

what it needs to do, and we will be looking at what would be the

requirement to support the State in that effort. So it has to be a

coordinated look at sharing information, databases for logistical

support.

Our objective is to get down to the detail. It’s dependent upon

how close we work with the States, and our objective is to work

very closely to make sure that there is that connection from the

bottom up.

Mrs. EMERSON. OK.

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. And we will be using the Homeland Security Information Network as the central portal where everybody will have

access to the information, the plans, the locations for logistical support, prestaging of supplies and equipment.

It will be a significant coordination effort to make sure that that

is managed properly, and we decided the best way to do that is

using the Department of Homeland Security Information—Homeland Security Information Network portal set up for catastrophic

disaster planning.

Mrs. EMERSON. So everybody will know the same thing.

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. Correct.

Mrs. EMERSON. Have you all determined yet whether, if there is

a—is there a minimal or a maximum level? For example, if we

have a 7.5 on the Richter scale earthquake, would that automatically prompt military involvement? Are we going to, you know, decide that because I noticed that, you know, yesterday Ms. Townsend said that, in response to Hurricane Katrina at certain levels

we may have to have DOD take responsibility. Have you all made

any kind of determinations with regard to that.

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. We are doing joint planning with NORTHCOM.

NORTHCOM is a partner to this effort. They’re participating in

SONS ’07. This bill is of National Significance, the ’07 exercise, so

this is a cooperative effort.

We will be looking now as we review the historical basis for—

we will be coming up with different scenarios that need to be

looked at from the standpoint of planning, reviewing the State

plans, the local plans, the national response plans, what the responsibilities are of the Federal agencies, and how we would provide coordinated assistance in this effort. There is going to be an

involvement in the military, yes.

Mrs. EMERSON. But it may well be after you’ve done all these

that you would decide that, let’s say we have a 7.5 or 8 Richter

scale earthquake, that we might just call in the military immediately. I mean, is that a possible scenario? I’m not saying that is.

Is that something you all would consider if everything else is, you

know——

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. The Governor is responsible for his or her State,

and if the local community determines by a request that they need

assistance, they go to the State, and then the State, through the

Governor, would determine what type of assistance the Governor

wants to bring in under a Presidential disaster declaration.

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
20

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. And my question, I think, follows up

to Ms. Emerson’s. I think you get an answer to what her question

is if you held the exercise that she’s requested. We had a Hurricane

Pam exercise. We pretty much knew in New Orleans what was

going to happen and probably what would be needed. We didn’t

learn the lesson from that exercise.

So my question is, she’s requested an exercise here in the New

Madrid region. What’s the status of her request? Are we moving

forward with doing an exercise? How far away are we from doing

something?

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. Currently, we’re coordinating, all the planning

that we’re doing will lead up to the Spills of National Significance

exercise, but——

Mr. SHUSTER. When will that be, approximately?

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. That’s in 2007, June of 2007. But in the meantime, we will be looking at all the individual plans. We’ve just initiated this effort.

Mr. SHUSTER. Right. Exactly. But I think that gets to the core

of what she’s asking. If you have that exercise, you’re going to be

able to see that, ′′Oh, my goodness the State is going to be—not

going to be overwhelmed where it’s going to take a DOD response.

It’s going to take, you know, just other States coming in.′′ Go

ahead, Mr. Wilkinson.

Mr. WILKINSON. We are engaged in exercises on a smaller scale

between now and ’07 because each of these various work groups

are looking at different parts, whether it’s transportation, sheltering, evacuation, and testing that in a small way leading up to this

monumental exercise which will involve, you know, all these four

regions, the States, Federal Government.

So, you know, there’s a big undertaking to pull something like

that together. But that’s not to say that other things aren’t going

on between now and then.

Mr. SHUSTER. Right. Yesterday in Los Angeles, Dr. Jones from

the USGS said that a major earthquake in the Los Angeles, southern California, would cut off people’s ability to drive out of that

area unlike in North Ridge, I guess, when the earthquake was in

’93 or ’94. People drove 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and they could get

water and things they needed. But southern California, it would be

completely cut off, so you’d have millions of people trapped there.

A significant earthquake in this region, what would the scenario

be? Would you cut people off from getting out, or would they be

able to get out of the regions?

Mr. SCHWEIG. I think it’s still necessary to do some more assessments on that. But I think even right now we know that some

areas will be cut off. There are only a couple of the bridges crossing

the Mississippi River. The highway bridges are prepared for the

large catastrophic earthquake we’re talking about. I believe most

of the railroad bridges are not.

And then there’s a problem. We were looking at a study a couple

of weeks ago here that many bridges have been built that, smaller

bridges with overpasses, built to modern standards and may themselves survive; but the approaches to those bridges may not survive. So they’ll stand up, but you won’t be able to get to them.
21

So I think that’s a major issue in this part of the country that

needs to be assessed further.

Mr. SHUSTER. In southern California, the San Andreas fault, virtually every highway, pipeline, rail line goes across it. So if you get

the big one out there, there’s only one way out, and that’s north

of Los Angeles.

The scenario here would be, I saw you have different sort of regions, different scenarios that would seem to me, and this is a

question, but it would seem to me that you’re not going to be cut

off as you would in southern California. Is that——

Mr. SCHWEIG. Well, I think there’s a good chance that you would

be cut off in the sense that, at least in isolated communities, and

I’m not saying anything about how big those communities are. But

it’s certainly possible that approaches in all directions to certain

communities could be down. You can think of communities, you

know, in southern Illinois that have the Ohio River on one side and

the Mississippi on the other and then just one access out after that.

There’s a lot of situations like that throughout the region that

are somewhat analogous to what you have in Los Angeles.

Mr. SHUSTER. Do you have an estimate of how many people you

might have to support for three weeks in the region?

Mr. SCHWEIG. I don’t, no.

Mr. SHUSTER. Anybody? Mr. Wilkinson, you talked about public

awareness, and I think that that was a problem in Katrina. A lot

of people didn’t heed the warnings. They said, ′′Oh, we’ve been

through this before. It’s not that bad.′′ What do you think public awareness is concerning the New Madrid fault line and the potential? Are people educated? Are they

well aware of it, or is it still a long ways to go?

Mr. WILKINSON. Well, I think they’re anecdotally where, you

know, the 1811–1812, they talk about the river running backwards

and some of the things that are, you know, sort of grandiose. But

as far as the details and expectations of what would happen, I don’t

think they’re aware as what they need to be.

We’ve been holding these earthquake town hall meetings, and we

try to get a sense of the concerns that communities have with respect to earthquakes, and it’s clear that more needs to be done you

know, from our elected officials all the way down in understanding

what we’re up against.

You know, we’ve got an active program with our—we have a

working group with our public information officers to help get information out to our schools, to our communities, working through

our State earthquake program managers.

It’s—as I mentioned in my presentation, we have these four goal

areas that drive my organization. My board of Directors made public outreach and education our number one goal because that’s really what’s going to help improve loss reduction and preparedness if

we really understand what we’re up against.

Mr. SHUSTER. Is the media engaged, local media here, do you

think?

Mr. WILKINSON. You know, I hate to say it, but hazards compete

with each other, and the earthquake program nationally, as well as

in the region, has not been a priority. It’s been low. After Katrina,

I had media that I’ve never seen before showing up on my doorstep
22

right there in the Memphis area where I’m headquartered saying,

′′Well, we didn’t even know you were here.′′ I was thankful they

found us. They seeked us out.

So there’s a switch. There’s a lot more focus happening and sort

of perpetuating itself. I’m seeing a lot more interest from all sectors

of society.

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Pawlowski, from FEMA’s viewpoint, I think

that New Orleans was the number one fear we had at FEMA on

the national level in the Category 5, 4–5 hurricane, would overflow,

that the levees wouldn’t hold and would flood the city. Where does

the New Madrid sort of fall on that scale of priorities, if you will?

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. New Madrid is at the top right now that we’re

concentrating our Catastrophic Disaster Readiness Program on

New Madrid. That is our primary objective. We have concerns because of the fact of expectations. How fast can we provide assistance to meet the lifesaving requirements and property saving requirements for the public?

Realistically, an event such as New Madrid, you are going to

have areas that are isolated, to address your concern. And how fast

can we get in based upon the critical infrastructure being immobilized to move, to take care of special needs, medical evacuation,

temporary housing and shelter of the people in the area until we

can provide additional assistance?

It’s going to be a monumental challenge. That’s why we are

working at it on a coordinated basis to bring as many partners together to address this, not just the government, but the private sector as well as local government, State government, and the Federal

Government in a partnership.

Mr. SHUSTER. One last question. The Mississippi River. If we

have a, say, 7.7, 8 earthquake. The Mississippi is important to the

national economy. Is there going to be a period of time that you’re

not going to be able to navigate on the Mississippi, and how long

do your models predict that to be?

Mr. WILKINSON. Well, I can answer part of that, and then Buddy

Schweig can answer the rest of it. You know, as he pointed out, a

lot of the bridges and infrastructure that cross the river weren’t

built for seismic. They’re going to most likely be in the river.

Landsliding issues putting a lot of debris, trees, vegetation into

the river, that’s going to cause it to be unnavigable.

Charleston, Missouri; Wickliffe, Kentucky; and Cairo that we’re

looking at in the rural area, that was picked for two reasons. One,

because they’re rural, they have unique situations that need to be

looked at in dealing with rural communities.

Secondly, it’s the crossroads of the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers. You’ve got major interstate systems going through there. We’ve

got rail, industry. Everything that could go wrong as far as infrastructure is right there. So we’re really trying to get a sense of

what that impact would be because, from the commerce point of

view, every day is millions of dollars lost, whether you’re talking

about the trucking, waterway, air.

And trying to reroute traffic or, in the case of river traffic, you

don’t reroute it. It’s stuck. What can we do to address that? I mean,

we don’t expect things to move for some time because you don’t just
23

pick a bridge up out of the river. So it could be, you know, months,

years.

Mr. SHUSTER. And is it debris is going to be the main reason?

I saw some of the those photographs where the banks spill over,

and so you’ve only got very shallow water. Is that part of the problem?

Mr. WILKINSON. Debris is part of it, including bridges and infrastructure, pipelines that are in there. A big part of the exercise in

’07 is looking at Spills of National Significance, and we’ve got major

pipelines carrying oil and gas under the rivers. You know, there’s

no reason to think that if we rupture those that, literally, the rivers could be on fire.

So, you know, how we deal with those sorts of things are being

folded into the scenario in the catastrophic planning and in trying

to get a better picture of how we address this.

Mrs. EMERSON. Mr. Chairman, may I also respond to you if I

could? And I do want to say that the bridge between Charleston,

Wickliffe, that area would not be—would be gone. It’s probably

gone now, but we can’t afford any new bridges across the Mississippi at least right now, I guess.

But just so you know, we have I70, I57, I40 that, in that whole

area of very, very major highways. We have one seismically-designed bridge between St. Louis and Memphis. That’s our new Bill

Emerson bridge in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

And, you know, obviously, a real question is what other kind of

bridge would handle a 7 event other than the Emerson bridge,

which we know will.

We also have six major pipelines from Houston and the gulf coast

carrying fuel to the entire Midwest. River transportation would, I

would assume, and I think you all could probably attest to this,

that river transportation would be disrupted for weeks if not

months because the bridges are going to be down. You’ve got to

haul the bridges out. Obviously, you’ve got your river banks falling.

I mean, we had river barges—well, we had the barge industry

and transportation up the Mississippi, or down the Mississippi for

us, from New Orleans totally disrupted for several days after Hurricane Katrina, which had a huge impact negative ripple effect on

our agricultural commodities, I mean, our agricultural economy because we couldn’t send our recently harvested corn and other

grains down the river. And, you know, just think of that was just,

I mean, 5 to 8 days.

So I guess I just want to be certain that our study exercise is

going to take all of this stuff into account. And, you know, the Missouri River, the Mississippi River, I mean, it’s just really very critical to the economy of our region, and, really, of the whole country.

Mr. PAWLOWSKI. We’re going to be looking at different scenarios,

and we are going to be looking at the total infrastructure, as I said.

And the points that you brought out are some of the, one of many

points that we will be looking at and different concerns because

whatever happens here will not only have an impact here, it will

affect the whole nation. And that is our concern. That is why this

is a priority planning event for us.

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you.
24

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you three gentlemen for appearing before

us today. You certainly have shed light on the situation, and we

need to make sure that we’re—and I have been and need to urge

other members of Congress to get out and talk to the folks in the

regions around the country to learn about the various disasters

that could occur.

Prior to my chairmanship of this committee, I didn’t realize there

was such a thing as the New Madrid fault line and the seriousness

of it. So it’s something that we need to—obviously, public awareness here is critical, but across the Nation.

So, again, thank you very much. The committee now calls before

it the second panel for today’s hearing, which is comprised of two

officials. We’ll take just a short, probably less than five-minute

break so you guys get situated. So the committee stands in recess.

[Recess.]

Mr. SHUSTER. Committee will come to order. We’ll have our second panel now today. Today joining us is Colonel Ron Reynolds, Director of the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency, and

Mr. William Burke, Director of Illinois Emergency Management

Agency and Chairman of the Central United States Earthquake

Consortium.

Since your written testimony has been made part of the record,

the subcommittee will request that all witnesses limit their oral

testimony to 5 minutes. There will be time for questions after you

have given your prepared remarks.

TESTIMONY OF RONALD REYNOLDS, DIRECTOR, MISSOURI

STATE EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY; AND WILLIAM

C. BURKE, DIRECTOR, ILLINOIS EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

AGENCY

Mr. SHUSTER. I want to start off, probably the way I’ll end up

today is stressing the importance of having folks like you come before your Members of Congress, whether they’re Senate or the

House, to educate them on your needs.

Right now in Washington there’s going to be a great debate, and

it looks like the administration, the White House, and the Capitol

are going to be different sides of the issue as to where we go after

Katrina with FEMA and DHS. And it’s absolutely critical that

State and local voice is heard in Washington, and you need to engage your Members of Congress. If you don’t, if something comes

out of it that you’re not pleased with, if you’re not engaged, you can

only blame yourselves because I think that as we move forward,

you’re the largest end user customer of FEMA, and we need to hear

from you. And I have some concern that the States are not being

heard as they should be as we go through this debate.

So, again, I’ll encourage you to talk to your Senators, your Congressmen, Congresswomen around, around your States to educate

them because Members of Congress, there are—the way Congress

is set up, we sort of become knowledgeable in different areas. There

are not many members of Congress that understand emergency

management.

And prior to me becoming Chairman of the subcommittee, I had

little knowledge, so I’ve learned a lot. But I’ve learned it from the
25

folks that are out in field, the first responders at the local level and

the State emergency management people.

So if I’m going on and on about this, it’s that important that you

two gentleman understand that as we go forward.

So first, Colonel Reynolds, would you proceed?

Mr. Reynolds. Can I defer to my colleague from Illinois?

Mr. SHUSTER. Sure. Absolutely. Is it Burke or Burke?

Mr. Burke. It’s Burke.

Mr. SHUSTER. Burke, OK. All right, Mr. Burke.

Mr. BURKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. It’s really my pleasure to come before you and talk about emergency management in Illinois and especially about the subject of

the New Madrid earthquake fault. Maybe in questions, but perhaps

in my remarks, also, I’ll make some comments about the issue of

DHS/FEMA, not from the standpoint of FEMA being standalone or

should it be in DHS, but the importance that, that based on its

missions, of course, that it has the proper structure and also the

proper interoperability with the whole overall DHS structure, and

that includes the military since there was mention of the military

stepping in.

Before I get into kind of how we’re approaching things in Illinois,

I guess I’ll continue down that track that the military is a great

organization. I, too, am a retired Colonel, lieutenant Colonel in the

military, but I, for one, would tell you that, unless there is the

proper structures in place at the local and State level, that the

military can’t come in and start from zero and be a rescuer.

The military needs to be considered a resource that’s available at

the Federal level just like any other resource that’s available and

come in and become part of the unified command structure within

the State and understand what has occurred and what are the priorities that the State wants to address and utilize their resource

and expertise within that framework.

And in order to do that, they have to be an integral part of the

unified command at the Federal level, whether that unified command is within the Homeland Security operations center or one of

the other centers.

But I think one of the things that the members of Congress and

the Senate need to be impressing upon DHS and the whole Federal

structure is that, while their specific expertise can emanate from

a particular operation center, that there has to be liaisons or the

decision-makers in one central location so that the information that

is being synthesized and the operational and logistic needs that

they’re going to be meeting, they’re being met from a standpoint of,

you know, informed knowledge; and that people are not trying to

second-guess, and they understand what are the barriers or the

problems that might occur based on what some other agency that

has to assist them in that process and the coordination and also

the linkage down to the States on what’s going to occur.

I’ll move on. In Illinois, we’re taking the issue of earthquake preparedness very serious. While we, like many States, have a all-hazard approach, we have decided that earthquake has some unique

aspects, and so I do have an earthquake preparedness officer that’s

working specifically with the, about 37 counties in southern Illinois
26

on the issue of earthquake and looking at things like communication, transportation issue, and mass care.

Fortunately for us in Illinois, kind of how we’re structured is

emergency management is not just my agency. We have a system,

is the way I try to describe it, and it includes, you could say it’s

our Homeland Security System or you could say it’s our emergency

management system. Because we feel that we are getting two for

one.

While we have utilized the Homeland Security dollars within the

guidelines established by DHS, what we have done is create a capability around a strategy for the State of Illinois.

And since we have the city of Chicago, and that being a prime

focal point for terrorism, what we’ve done is we have created a capability that what the city of Chicago has, in a smaller basis, that

same capability is available in any locale within the State of Illinois.

We created 19 regions where—and we created, excuse me, not

only interoperability, but mutual aid across all the First Responder

disciplines. We have mutual aid with about 40,000 firemen, all the

fire departments. We have mutual aid with about 30,000 law enforcement. We have all the public health agencies in the State with

a mutual aid agreement, and we have all of the certified emergency

management organizations in a mutual aid agreement. And then

we have an independent Illinois Medical Emergency Response System, 1,200 doctors and nurses that are available.

When we declare a State disaster, while they have agreements,

community, that are outside of the State, if we declare a State disaster, all these assets, if we ask for them, become a State asset to

help us address a disaster.

We know it works. We sent 900 firemen and 105 pieces of equipment to Louisiana, 300 police officers. Fifty of our medical emergency people ran a field hospital in the Maravich Center and treated five, six thousand people. And that same system is what we

would utilize within Illinois.

We have—because communication is so important, we have communication, mobile communication equipment that’s satellite capable but would also allow for temporary cell phone and data transmission that we’re putting in 13 different locations around the

State, and then also 10 command vehicles to help us have command and control.

Next month I’m having my earthquake planner. We had an

earthquake conference last year, and we had, in 2003 with

NORTHCOM, an earthquake tabletop. But next month in my Region 8 in southern Illinois, on March 2nd and 3rd, we’re going to

do an earthquake conference; and then in Region 11 on the 7th and

8th of March; and Region 9, the 15th and 16th of March. And the

issues that we’re going over is transportation, mass care, and evacuation.

Since Katrina we’re seriously looking at being able to establish

sites, preidentified sites around the State, and especially in the

earthquake area, but all around the State that we would use for

mass shelter and mass care, plus also trying to identify sites for

prestaging of equipment.
27

And the final thing I’ll say, and then I’ll be open to your questions. They mentioned about trying to identify what are some of

the damages that would occur if we had an earthquake. We are

working with the Mid America Earthquake Center, which is

headquartered in the University of Illinois, but it’s made up of

about 12 universities from around the country that are working on

various aspects of earthquake.

And they’ve developed an information model that also is compatible with hazards. And what I’m having them do in Illinois is do

a risk assessment model for me where they’re going to also add in

the GIS data for local communities, and based on a certain seismic

event, tell me what kind of damage I should expect in that community in terms of damage to the infrastructure.

But because they also are doing sociological and economic impact

studies, provide data that would allow us to be able to interact

with the local community and really tell them what they should expect. And this, we believe, will allow communities——

You know, it’s more than about having a plan. It’s about is your

plan realistic? And, you know, that’s even before you get into exercising and things of that nature. And, you know, does the resources

necessary to implement that plan, do they marry up?

And so we feel that this will allow us to really more seriously get

the attention of local communities, but also provide us data where

we can start to work with private businesses about their emergency plans and what the impact potentially of an event might be

and get away from is it going to be 50 years from now or 10 years

from now? But we can then systematically, based on funding and

other priorities, start to work toward building, you know, capabilities to mitigate against that event.

Subject to your questions, that’s all I have right at the moment.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Burke.

Mr. Reynolds.

Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for allowing

me to come here today, and the members. It gives us an opportunity to let you know where we stand and the direction we’d like

to go.

Missouri State Emergency Management Operation Plan was developed in accordance with the FEMA State and local guidelines of

1996. It was in an all-hazards. We followed the National Incident

Management System, NIMS, and the National Response Plan. During a catastrophic event, our incident commander would be our

governor.

After Katrina, we took a look at our all-hazard plan, and we realized that, as far as the earthquake portion of the catastrophic

event, we needed to take and make some changes. So what we did,

we developed some working groups to look at several different

areas, and I’ll go over those. Direction and control, mass care and

sheltering, critical sources and logistics, evacuations, health and

medical, interoperability communication, hazardous material, donation management, and law enforcement, and special need population.

On those working groups, our subject met experts from the Federal level, State and local and nongovernmental representatives.

Our volunteer organizations are very much involved on our work-
28

ing groups. What we’re looking at is those things that need an immediate change, those things that we will exercise leading up to

the SONS exercise.

One of the things that we’re doing, also, is going around and trying to get input from the local jurisdiction. There’s about 47 counties in the State. A little over less than half of our State could be

impacted by a New Madrid 7.7 earthquake. We’ve been able to get

information, the desires, concerns, and let them know the planning

procedures that the State is planning.

We’re also working very closely with our bordering States to the

west. We feel very strongly that’s where most of our support would

come from, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. So that’s what we’re looking at as far as prestaging things. Some of the things and evacuations may be evacuated all the way to Iowa, Kansas, so we are

working and talking to those States about, you know, sheltering

needs that we would have.

Earthquake, it’s not like a hurricane. You know, you have no notice. It just happens. What we’re looking at now is an automatic

respond concept. It was something our National Guard had in their

plan where, if it’s a 6.4 or higher, we automatically, whether we

get a phone call, once we know that’s what it is, we are supposed

to report to our EOC, stand that up, and we start coordinating with

the local, and we ask—if they’ve been able to contact us.

Now, if they don’t contact our EOC, we feel that probably there

is, you know, communication breakdowns. A lot of the tires will go

down, several tires. So we have an automatic response plan that

we’ll be initiating across the entire States.

Certain trigger points. One of the first things we will do is coordinate with the National Guard and our Missouri Department of

Transportation to see what highways are available to, you know,

in and out of the area.

We’ll also look at the bridges, you know, if they can be used or

if they’re ones we need to get someone on the ground. We have

fixed wing as well as rotary wing that will be used for this.

One of the things we’re doing to get some input from our local

jurisdiction, the 47 counties, we sent out a web-based survey to get

input. And we wanted to know as far as the things that could help

in the area, capacities that they can store supplies, you know, the

accessibility in the building itself. We are asking that type of input.

You know, we want some items that will cost money to be stored

in the local communities and then have other areas outside the impacted area to make sure that we have areas that we have to evacuate, move people out of the area.

One of the things that we use very much is we have area coordinators. We have nine regions across the State, nine troop areas,

and we have coordinators who will work with the local jurisdiction

as far as their plans. We’re training in the things that we need to

get information on.

One of the things that we plan on using quite heavily is a structural assessment and eventual evaluation. There is a group of

about 1,000 professional engineers and architects who volunteer

their services and would be available to look at the structures, you

know, after the earthquake. That helps us to know if those build-
29

ings would be able to keep people in them, or would you have to

take and evacuate because they could not go back in them?

So we actually exercise with these folks. You know, we have a

list of phone numbers. We activate their phone calls, and we make

sure that they’re still active. We’re still growing that number. You

know, we’ve used those before in hurricanes—not hurricanes, but

tornados, and it was quite effective.

One of the other things that we use and we will continue, and

that’s our Community Emergency Response Teams, CERT teams.

They’re trained in first aid, triage, and light search and rescue. We

have over 6,000 of those across the State. We’re about fifth in the

Nation as far as CERT teams in the country.

We talked about prepositioning earlier. The conversation was

what we’re looking at doing, and it will cost money, is

prepositioning some items in the Midwest. If you look along the

gulf coast, you’ve got items, critical items that’s prepositioned

there. We really think that something needs to be looked at with

New Madrid. We don’t have the three or four days when you have

a hurricane coming to shore. With an earthquake, again, it just

happens.

So we would encourage at any level, and someone listen to this,

you know. We’ve talked to FEMA and will continue to talk to them

because I think we’re going to submit a formal request because we

think it just makes sense to have items within our State within

close proximity, if not in our State, where we could get those in

very short notice.

Subject to your questions, that’s all I have.

Mr. SHUSTER.Thank you very much, Colonel. As I mentioned earlier, I served on the Katrina committee, and there were really five

general reform principles, and I just want to run over them and

then try to get some of your feedback on what your thoughts are.

First was that catastrophic disasters require early Presidential

involvement to engage Federal resources.

Second, large disasters require DOD support, and we’re talking

catastrophic disasters.

Three, disaster preparedness functions need to be closely integrated and managed with response functions. And today preparedness and response have been split at DHS.

Four, FEMA’s essential response capabilities must be restored

and enhanced, professional work force, a 21st century logistics capacity as well as communications that can survive and are interoperable.

And five, tension between the Nation’s all-hazards emergency

management system. And terrorism preparedness must be resolved.

A couple of those, the first one, the Presidential engagement in

a catastrophic event; and I wanted to ask you, when you have a

disaster in Illinois or Missouri, do you have a direct access to your

Governor? There’s nobody in between you? You’re going to the Governor?

Mr. BURKE. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHUSTER. That’s in both cases?

Mr. BURKE. Yes, sir.
30

Mr. SHUSTER. Which I think we saw in Katrina, that wasn’t—

that didn’t happen the way it should have. Mr. Burke, you mentioned about DOD. I think we’re in the same accord. DOD, although they did a great job in New Orleans, it still takes them

time to move such a large animal, so to speak.

I think one of the real success stories down there were the

EMACs and Florida. The National Guard of Florida came right up

the coast right behind Katrina, so there were 6,500 Florida National Guardsmen in Mississippi as soon as the storm cleared out.

So what are your thoughts? Can you explain a little bit on DOD?

I think they’ve got to be part of the solution.

Mr. BURKE. I don’t want you to misunderstand, Congressman.

Certainly, utilization of DOD should be absolutely considered in a

major disaster. However, this thought or trend that seems to be out

there saying that they should automatically come in and like take

over, I certainly, as an Emergency Management Director, don’t

subscribe to that, and I think it’s potentially asking for more chaos.

As I indicated that the system is a bottom-up system, and DOD

should be considered a resource.

And if there are failings at the lower level—and the reason we

talk about unified command, that means that, like in my State,

FEMA comes into—even for Katrina, while we were, you know, as

part of EMAC, supporting specifically Louisiana quite a bit, but

also Mississippi, well, a representative from regional FEMA came

into my EOC to liaison and understand exactly what was taking

place and what we were, you know, confronting.

So that if I asked them for some kind of assistance for information or something from the Federal side, they understood, you

know, very well what it was, and then they would feed it back to

their regional people, and I’d leave the answer to come back to me,

you know, from that individual.

So all I’m saying is that if the military comes in, as far as I’m

concerned, my Governor, we have a tag, and the National Guard

is an integral part of our emergency preparedness operation. When

we activate the EOC, there is a liaison that sits there, and any

military assets we need, we give that mission to him. They fill the

mission, and they control, you know, how they’re going to fill the

mission, but they have all the information as to if they need law

enforcement assistance and routes or if they need medical emergency assistance. We know that because we collaborate. You know,

everybody is there with all the information, so when it’s passed on,

they have that.

An example is I mentioned sending 900 firemen and 100-andsome pieces of equipment. This was by truck convoy. But the reason they were able to do that is, I mentioned mutual aid. These

firemen not only have interoperable equipment, but they train together. The special teams train together, even though they come

from disparate fire departments. They were from, I think, 105 different fire departments, like two, three, four people. But the command structure is because it was together.

So for the military, they need to be prepared to not think that

they are the single rescuer but that they are a part of the resources

that are going to, you know, come and help us get the situation

under control and get to the recovery stage.
31

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Reynolds, or Colonel Reynolds, you were fairly

critical of the FEMA when it came to all-hazards approach. I think

you said somewhere in there something to the effect that they paid

lip service to it. Can you talk a little bit more about that.

Mr. REYNOLDS. Well, what I would say is it wasn’t FEMA. It

would be the Homeland Security, would say, all-hazards.

Mr. SHUSTER. ODP.

Mr. REYNOLDS. Right. I mean, the definition, you know, it

sounds, you know, OK, it should cover terrorists as well as manmade. Well, a good many opportunities, you know, I think what we

could have had training or had something done using those dollars,

that was not allowed because it didn’t have a terrorist scenario

with it. So I think those things are changing, and I think it’s about

time because I think we can better spend our dollars.

Mr. SHUSTER. That’s changing, in your view, since Katrina.

Mr. REYNOLDS. That’s right, sir.

Mr. SHUSTER. OK. Mrs. Emerson.

Mr. REYNOLDS. One thing I’d like to say, if I could.

Mr. SHUSTER. Sure.

Mr. REYNOLDS. In reference to, you know, what my colleague

from Illinois. As far as the military, the military, they definitely

have a role, but that role should be well coordinated with the State.

You know, our Governor and our Adjutant General, they work

hand in hand, we work hand in hand. And to say that we’re going

to send in NORTHCOM without a request in Missouri, we don’t

think that would ever be the case.

Mr. SHUSTER. Mrs. Emerson.

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Colonel Reynolds. In

case of a catastrophic earthquake, do you at the State, as Director

of the State Emergency Management Agency, feel like you have the

one critical phone number that you need to call for more help, the

one critical phone number to a, a department, an agency that

would be responsive? Do you have that number right now?

Mr. REYNOLDS. And you’re talking about outside the State.

Mrs. EMERSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. REYNOLDS. I do. And I have a very good working relationship

with our Region 7 FEMA director, Mr. Dick Hainje. And we talk,

you know, and I can tell you our relationship is, when something

happens on the news, if it’s something in Missouri he thinks is

going to impact me, I get a phone call from him, or I can call him

for something. So I do have that point of contact.

Mrs. EMERSON. You know, and to you, Mr. Burke, I mean really

to both of you, the scary thing about an earthquake as compared

to a hurricane is you don’t quite know exactly what to anticipate.

You know, I don’t suppose that we even have a map with critical

assets locations as well as transportation infrastructure that would

be standing.

I mean, we don’t even really know what would be standing at

this point in time after a major earthquake, do we? Other than, obviously, I know that my new courthouse in Cape Girardeau, which

is being built to earthquake specifications and the Emerson bridge,

but I mean, we don’t know that stuff yet, do we?

Mr. BURKE. Well, in Illinois—I’m sorry, Ms. Congresswoman.

Mrs. EMERSON. Yes.
32

Mr. BURKE. In Illinois, our Department of Transportation, as far

as transportation, they’ve been retrofitting and looking at bridges

for the last ten years.

The question specifically of what would still be standing is, you

know, I don’t want to uncategorically say that the bridges that

have been retrofitted will absolutely be standing, but they feel,

based on the steps that were taken—they’ve put cables so that

spans won’t drop, and they’ve actually wrapped piers so that the

concrete and stuff won’t crumble and add anchoring systems.

And so we, much like my counterpart, we have the engineers,

volunteer engineers, but engineers from IDOT, they already have

an inspection plan that they would implement to actually tell us

what transportation systems would take, you know, what kind of

loads.

If, in fact, a structure is still up, we would expect in very short

order to be able to determine, like could we have one lane of traffic

as opposed to four. And so, I mean, we certainly are looking at that

and understand that to be something that’s very important.

I mentioned the May Center, and I don’t want to overstate their

capability, but they are really now starting—they, meaning the

consortium of the university, has come forth with outcomes that I

think States can use and even independent universities or other

universities in some of the CUSEC States are starting to do earthquake research.

The reason I did this mitigation contract with the May Center—

which was funded by FEMA, mind you, after we told them what

they were going to do and the capability of what could come out

of it. As I mentioned, we hope to use this information because it’s

supposed to be able to tell us, once we put the GIS in there, it’s

a software simulation that, say, at 6.8 tell you what kind of damage would occur based on the geographic information in the system.

So we should know what kind of damage to buildings, you know,

also, what kind of economic impact for that particular community.

And as I mentioned, we want to use that so that communities

really look at in terms of the damage that may occur, what is it

that they need to be doing to kind of take care of themselves, say,

even until we come, but for us to also understand at the State

level, you know, how quickly even we may need to get there.

But we’re looking at like, say, the State buying and

prepositioning certain aspects and perish—nonperishables. We already prepositioned some medical supplies, but we may actually increase that so that in that community, we have, or within a region,

we have a better response capability.

Right now, absent transportation systems totally breaking down,

we can take the same capability that exists in the city of Chicago

to anyplace in our State in 60 minutes. And, you know, that may

be hampered. But we want to also look at, if we’ve got to bring in

some of our stuff by air, you know, what potentially would be the

locations for us to do that, you know, a helicopter. I mean this,

just, like you say, is something that is unexpected.

So we’re trying to, I guess, mind map as much as we can and

try to think through what are some of the unexpected things we’re

going to have to confront.
33

Mrs. EMERSON. Thanks. Colonel Reynolds, let me just ask you a

quick question. You mentioned in your opening remarks, we have

47 critical counties in the State of Missouri that would be impacted

and that you had also sent a web-based survey to all those first responders.

Do we have communications equipment—or let me say it a different way. Does the first responder community in each of those 47

counties have communications equipment that can talk to you and

vice-versa under any kind of a situation? And, obviously, Webbased probably is not going to be applicable at that point. Is there

some way for us to talk on some interoperable system to everybody

in the case of an emergency?

Mr. REYNOLDS. Right now what we have in place, ma’am, is a,

there’s, I think it’s the number, I think it’s around 37, 38 satellite

phones throughout that area. We’ll rely heavily on that. And we

understand that’s not a cure-all, you know, but right now we think

that is our best opportunity.

Highway Patrol is the lead for it, interoperability communications in the State. What they’re looking at is some different radios,

and I’m not a radio person so I can’t tell you those, but they’re

looking at those. Once, you know, we get those on board, you know,

that would probably be, our probably the most surest way of communicating. But right now satellite phones is what we rely upon.

Mrs. EMERSON. So is that one per county.

Mr. REYNOLDS. I don’t have the breakdown on that, ma’am. I can

get that and get it to you.

Mrs. EMERSON. OK. I was just wondering because what happens

if that one person or the one place in the county that that phone

is housed, if you will, something happens to that person or that

building?

Mr. REYNOLDS. I understand completely.

Mrs. EMERSON. So redundancy, I guess, is really critical.

Mr. REYNOLDS. Again, you know, there’s a cost for every——

Mrs. EMERSON. I was just going to ask you.

Mr. REYNOLDS. I would like to think that we would be able to

do that, but it’s a very good situation, and we probably need to

have more radios there because you don’t have redundancy if

there’s one in the county or one in the city.

Mrs. EMERSON. Well, hopefully, once you all get your assessments completely done, you know, then we’ll all lobby the State

legislatures from both of our States to provide you all with the

funds that you need to be prepared. That’s the only thing we can

do, I guess.

Mr. BURKE. I would have to comment because, as a matter of

fact, my colleague’s, some of his staff was over in my EOC discussing some of this with my folks. I’m sure they’re going to make some

of these recommendations back to Missouri.

What we did is we put—we offered 4,000 Starcom 21 radios to

every emergency management or, actually, every first responder,

including hospital organizations, in the State. Twenty-three accepted them. You know, a few organizations didn’t.

But what that does is that gives us 800 megahertz radio capability by satellite so that they can at least communicate with our

EOC. Now, within their own city or town, they’d have to use what
34

system they have. But at least we would have, at a central point,

information where they could feed into our EOC.

I think that’s something that probably all—I don’t want to say

all, but many States in the country, whether they’ve implemented

it right at this point, are going to be looking at because that’s like

the kind of bottom line rudimentary system, 800 megahertz, that

you would use if all else failed or in the interim while you were

waiting.

In Illinois, one of the things we were able to do for Katrina, we

have some mobile emergency communication equipment that will

give you voice and data, and we did set that up down in Baton

Rouge. But that, you know, you’ve got to transport that and get

it——

Mrs. EMERSON. Sure.

Mr. BURKE. But in the interim, you know, we would look to 800

megahertz. But we’re trying to make sure that all of the first responders and hospital organizations have at least one radio. Now

we’re providing one. They can buy more for, if they want to spread

them around their organization if they think their current infrastructure is not enough.

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. REYNOLDS. One thing. Amateur radios, ham radios, and we

have a good many of those, and they actually exercise. They’re volunteers throughout the regions, and they will use those. So I did

forget about those. But, yeah, the ham radios, that is an old system, but it still works.

Mrs. EMERSON. Excellent. Thank you.

Mr. SHUSTER. My next question to ask you—first of all, how long

have the two of you been involved with emergency management so

I gauge how I ask this next question? You’ve been involved for——

Mr. BURKE. Three years. I’ve been the Director for 3years.

Mr. SHUSTER. Before that, did you have experience within emergency management.

Mr. BURKE. My military experience, but I was the regional administrator for general services, and I logistically supported a number of Presidential disasters.

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Reynolds.

Mr. REYNOLDS. Just a little over a year and prior military.

Mr. SHUSTER. OK. My question that I’ve been asking folks, but

you guys don’t have the—I was going to say 10 years ago, how did

you think FEMA reacted, and how was it operated? So I guess my

question, and I think Mr. Reynolds you’ve already answered you’ve

seen a change since Katrina in FEMA.

What about you, Mr. Burke? In your 3 years have you seen, from

FEMA—you would have started in emergency management just as

FEMA came into DHS. What’s your sense of how it’s worked?

Mr. BURKE. My regional relationship, I think, is excellent, and

my regional director is, you know, a very, very talented guy. I have

no complaints about how that relationship has worked with them.

I would certainly say that the Federal response—and I won’t put

it on one organization—they asked us to be NIMS compliant, and

it has certain principles; and they asked us to use unified command, and it has certainly principles. I think it’s imperative for the
35

system to work that they also use unified command. And if they

do that, I think that coordination will help us all to perform better.

Mr. SHUSTER. Do you have any more questions? I appreciate you

being here today with us and educating us, and Colonel Reynolds,

go ahead.

Mr. REYNOLDS. One thing that’s not been discussed today, and

we’ve talked, you know, about the four different regions of FEMA

that kind of, it has operations control over the CUSEC States.

Should there be a point, you know, a massive earthquake, there’s

a lot of competing resources, you know, from all the districts, you

know, from all the regions.

I think as a Nation, we need to look at that, and it concerns me

because I’m not sure if Region 5, 7 is competing, Region 3 to 5 competing. Tough decisions are going to have to be made for critical

assets and resources.

Mr. SHUSTER. I think that’s why it’s so imperative that we have

an exercise to be able to, if we have an 8, an earthquake 8 point

on the Richter scale, what’s going to happen? Where do things

come from? Do we immediately call DOD in so they’re on the move

as soon as that hits because everybody has been overwhelmed.

So I think you’re absolutely correct, and I think that that exercise goes a long way. I think Mr. Wilkinson said earlier there’s

other smaller exercises that are going on to try to piece that together, but that major exercise is critical, which we saw down in

New Orleans, that Hurricane Pam exercise. It told us what was

going to happen. Fortunately, the devastation, the loss of life

wasn’t as great as Pam said it was. But you’re absolutely correct.

And I appreciate you being here today, and I’ll say again, as I

started off, it’s absolutely critical that you engage your Members of

Congress in the Senate or in the House to bring them up to speed

on what your thoughts are on FEMA because if you don’t, you’re

going to get something coming out of Washington that may not

please you, may not work as well for you. So engage them. Let

them know.

And structure is important. I think Mr. Burke said earlier, somebody said earlier, structure is important, whether it’s in Homeland

Security or outside. I don’t know if that’s as important at making

sure that FEMA is not——

Mr. BURKE. Functions.

Mr. SHUSTER. Exactly. And I think Secretary Chertoff points out,

rightly so, that the Coast Guard did a great job down in Katrina,

but the Coast Guard, while it’s housed in DHS, it’s almost an autonomous, it’s walled off from the competing for funds and manpower and those things. So the Coast Guard would have functioned

well in DHS or outside of DHS because of its walled-off status.

So, again, thank you all very much for being here. Appreciate

you sharing with us. The committee now calls before it its third

panel, our esteemed colleague from the Senate, Senator Jim Talent,

who, working with Congresswoman Emerson, has been leading the

effort for a major preparedness exercise in the New Madrid

Seismatic Zone. That would include State and local entities.

Mr. SHUSTER. Senator Talent, are you ready to launch?
36

TESTIMONY OF THE HON. JAMES TALENT, FORMER U.S.

SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI

Senator TALENT. Sure. And I know your time is short, Mr. Chairman, and I have a statement, which I’m going to submit for the

record, and with your permission I’ll just offer some observations,

I think, in addition to that statements. And I want to focus a little

bit on the request that Congresswoman Emerson and I have made

for this exercise because I think the various investigations and the

results that have been published and that we’ve seen show, again,

the need for an exercise of that kind.

And let me just make the point, particularly with regard to New

Madrid, when we’re dealing with so many jurisdictions and so

many different States, it’s essential that we do the smaller exercises that are necessary to—for us to know what, to know what capacity we have, where we have adequate search capacity, where we

have infrastructure that is earthquake-ready, all the things that

we need to know, and then to do the bigger exercise. And to do it,

I think, confronting the real issue. Do a worst-case kind of scenario

up and down that river and up and down that fault so that we

know what it is we’re confronting, and the problems are problems

that come up in a dry run.

And let me just point out a couple areas where I feel that would

really help deal with some of the problems that we saw in these

investigations.

The first is the whole chain of command/leadership issue, which

I think all of us had a gut sense was a problem with regard to

Katrina. And it’s easy to point fingers here and there.

I don’t know whether the Incident Command System and the

structure that’s set up through that is adequate. I think it would

be good to test it with this kind of a dry run. It is essential that

everybody up and down the system, those at the top and the players near the bottom or on the ground, know who is in charge of

various responsibilities, know what decisions they are supposed to

be making, and then I would add this, feel comfortable or reasonably comfortable making those kinds of decisions.

You know, we don’t send a general out in the field to command

a division in battle without having put him or her through a number of scenarios where he’s had to deal with the kinds of things

that are likely to come up because we want him to understand and

anticipate the decisions he has to make, and we want him to feel

as comfortable as possible in that context.

And yet we have been in situations in the past where we’ve had

political appointees or politically elected officers, and even in some

cases people who are professionals in the area, tossed into situations where they know they have to make very, very difficult decisions. They’ve not been in that—you know, they’ve not been in any

kind of a dry run or scenario like that before. And the natural instinct of human nature at that point is to temporize, is to not be

aggressive in reaching out and making decisions because you’re unfamiliar. You know a lot turns on the decision that you make.

Now, sometimes you get an actor who is such a natural leader,

like Rudy Giuliani is, that, you know, he gets in that situation, and

he just reaches out and decides it and does it. But, you know, I

think it’s human nature to sort of be a little bit tentative in those
37

kinds of decisions. And I think I just ask everybody to examine

whether that isn’t what happened in some of these places with

Katrina.

Well, if we have this kind of a dry run that Congresswoman

Emerson and I are talking about, and of course, we want it for the

New Madrid situation, but other regions should identify the worstcase scenarios in their situation as well.

Not only is it going to give the, you know, the first responders

the opportunity to run through what it is they’re going to need, but

it’s going to give the decision-makers the opportunity to do that.

They’ll see the other decision-makers who are involved in this.

They’ll have presented to them the kinds of decisions that they

have to make.

So if there aren’t enough helicopters, they’ve thought about, well,

where should the helicopters go first? And if there’s an issue with

search capability or interoperability, they’ve at least confronted

those issues in some kind of a context.

So I think the whole leadership issue, which is, I think, underlying a lot of the problems we have, we can help resolve with this

kind of a dry run. It’s especially important in earthquake context

because you have no warning.

I mean, some of this stuff, and this is an issue we all wonder

about with Katrina, and the reports may differ, we could see that

coming. At least you had several days where people should have

been able to prepare. If we have an earthquake here, Mr. Chairman, as you know, you don’t have time to prepare. That just hits.

I mean, under some circumstances, you might get some idea if you

have some preliminary type of quakes, but you certainly, you certainly can’t count on that.

Another issue that we have been concerned about and that my

testimony deals with is communications. And we’re all concerned

about the problem because we have, every different first responder

department has different kinds of radios, analog, digital, and how

do they communicate with each other?

Again, what we could do with a dry run or an exercise like this

is explore what’s happened in other States where they have set up

interoperability type systems over the Internet, Internet protocoltype systems that permit people with different radios to communicate with each other by, in essence, going through this Internet

protocol, which is a kind of switchboard.

That can be set up on a State-by-State basis and then a regional

basis. The Department of Commerce is exploring that on a Federal

level, and I want to push in that area. And I just would urge the

subcommittee to look at what we can do to help deal with this

interoperability of communications issue short of going out and

buying everybody a new radio system that’s interoperable.

I mean, that would be great, but the cost estimates I’ve seen are

like $17- to $50 billion. And that’s a lot of money to spend, and it’s

not going to happen overnight. So we’ve got to look at what we can

do in terms of mutual aid bands and this sort of thing to help people communicate absent that.

I have some other points of a more minor nature I make regarding logistics, etc., in my statement, but really what I’ve seen from

the reports just reinforces my sense that what we need to do here
38

and in other places is do the best we can to set this system up,

analyze what our weaknesses are with regard to individual first responders or cities or localities, and then put together the kind of

exercise that Congresswoman Emerson and I have asked for so

that we can deal with these problems and anticipate as many of

them as we can.

And, again, I will just relate to the military context. I’m on the

Armed Services Committee, have been now for 12 years, and we

would never throw military officers who are trained to make these

kinds of decisions, we would never throw them in these circumstances without trying to anticipate and re-create these decision-making matrixes for them as much as we can. And we should

not put our top leaders or our leaders on the ground in that circumstance, either, without having these exercises.

Mr. SHUSTER. Well, I think you hit the nail on the head. The exercise that we’re talking about, the New Madrid exercise is critical.

If we would have learned the lessons and had probably more experienced leadership at DHS at the time of Katrina, we would have

taken those lessons and been prepared to push forward.

I think that not only can you have these major exercises, but I

think what we’ve done in Homeland Security with FEMA is not

having four pillars of emergency management, of preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation. They’ve all got to be working together. We have two teams. You’ve got a practice team and a game

team. If they’re not one and the same, on game day they’re not

going to work together.

So I just have one question for you: If you’ve come to a conclusion

or what your thoughts are on, do you think it’s better if we leave

FEMA in DHS or take it out? What are your general thoughts on

that?

Senator TALENT. I always appreciated—I’ll answer that question,

Mr. Chairman, against the background of my experience with

FEMA. And my first year in the Congress was in 1993 when we

had the terrible floods of 1993, and my district suffered the biggest

commercial disaster in that flood. I had a whole north half of one

of my counties was under water. And I appreciated FEMA’s response at all levels.

And I thought—the first time that I saw FEMA fail on a fundamental level was after it had been incorporated into the Department of Homeland Security. So speaking for myself, I’m going to

exercise the benefit of the doubt in favor of going back to a scenario

where they’re outside.

Now, I know that works against the bureaucratic logic of having

everybody in the same organization so they can work together. But

I just don’t know whether you can get an organization that is so

big that it becomes more difficult to do that. That’s how I would

approach it.

But I’m open, and I don’t know that we’ve reached a definitive

conclusion, and if the Committee and the other committees of jurisdiction study it and reach the opposite conclusion, I’m not going to

fight you to the death.

Mr. SHUSTER. I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s against the bureaucratic logic, but I think sometimes we need to get ourselves

into more of a corporate or business logic. If you look at many of
39

our companies, they look at their core competencies and say, ′′OK,

we’re building cars. We’re not going to build tires. So let’s put that

into another company.′′ And I think that’s a situation where the core competencies of

DHS should be terrorism prevention as law enforcement is really

what they are. They’re not an emergency response organization. So

I appreciate your views on that.

Senator TALENT. Yeah, I think—I mean, it’s pretty hard not to

conclude, if you look at the experience that when FEMA was more

or less on its own, it had a higher profile, a higher visibility, and

probably got more attention across the board, and I never had a

problem with how FEMA operated.

Now, in fairness, the Katrina thing was, disaster was, of course,

bigger than they ever had to deal with, so we have to judge that

as well. I just think—and I will add this, Mr. Chairman, the exact

bureaucratic setup is probably less important than these other—I

mean, probably either one will work if we do the other things that

we need to do.

Mr. SHUSTER. Well, I don’t know if you were here when I made

the earlier statement. The Secretary points out, quite frequently,

how well the Coast Guard responded. But the Coast Guard, although its within DHS, is really walled off from the competition,

the funding. It’s all appropriated and authorized, and they don’t

have to fight those battles of terrorism prevention versus emergency response. So, with that, Congresswoman Emerson.

Mrs. EMERSON. Thank you, Chairman. I will admit to agreeing

with both of you on the issue of separating FEMA out. Anyway,

Senator Talent, I just want to thank you so much for taking the

lead in the United States Senate on the whole issue of what this

region needs to do to prepare for an earthquake. And you’re doing

a great job, and I appreciate it more than you know.

My one question to you is—excuse me—if you had to prioritize,

what single asset would be the most critical in response to a humanitarian crisis, whether it’s earthquake-related one or widespread flooding, what would you identify as the critical component?

Senator TALENT. I’ll give you a caveat. I have an answer to that,

but I’m going to give you a caveat. I’m a big believer that in something like this, you don’t—you want to believe what you see as you

prepare rather than going in deciding you’re going to see what you

believe according to your preconceptions.

And the whole point of these exercises and the rest of it is so

that we can see what the situation is, and that might very well

change the answer I’m going to give you. OK?

But I think it’s this whole communications situation, addressing

it in some way, shape, or form. We have such good people involved

in the first responder organizations. I mean, I am sure you all have

seen this as you go out and about. I mean, if you’re going to be a

firefighter or a public health authority or a law enforcement person

or in the National Guard or any of these areas, you probably have

a vocation of wanting to help people in these circumstances.

They’re ingenious. They have, most of them, a tradition of mutual aid and protection. If they can communicate with each other

on the ground, it can make up for a lot of sins. I mean, they can

jerry-rig things quickly if they can talk to each other.
40

So my feeling is that I don’t know going in, without having these

exercises, where the greatest need is, but if they can talk to each

other, they may be able to jerry-rig a solution no matter where the

need is. That’s the reason I specifically mention interoperability.

Where we can, we get the new equipment so they can talk directly;

but where they can’t, we have to have and concentrate on other solutions. That would be my answer subject to what we might find

out in an exercise.

Mrs. EMERSON. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Mr. SHUSTER. Senator, do you have anything else to add?

Senator TALENT. No. Just to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your

interest in this whole subject and also for your interest in what

we’re struggling with here in the New Madrid fault, and I hope you

will take back and talk to the other colleagues and tell them that

this is a very significant potential disaster. There’s no other way

to put it.

And we don’t know when that fault is going to go off. We know

that eventually it’s going to. And, you know, if it happens and

we’re not ready, it will be the absolute perfect storm. All these different States and jurisdictions, we have rivers in this context, I

mean, it just—we have to be prepared.

I can’t think of a potential disaster around the country that could

be worse than this, so I appreciate your interest and hope you will

communicate to the other colleagues about it.

Mr. SHUSTER. Well, I certainly will. Thank you for being here

today, and I thank you for your leadership on bringing this to light.

Additionally, I want to thank the other witnesses for being here

today. Your discussion has been very informative and helpful.

And I would 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.

If no one else has anything to add, then the subcommittee stands

adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:15 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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87Æ