U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

82–746 PDF 2014

S. Hrg. 113–218 

HOW PREPARED IS THE NATIONAL CAPITAL 

REGION FOR THE NEXT DISASTER 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY 

MANAGEMENT, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS, 

AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JULY 31, 2013 

Available via http://www.fdsys.gov 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

and Governmental Affairs 

( 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Staff Director 

KEITH B. ASHDOWN, Minority Staff Director 

LAURA W. KILBRIDE, Chief Clerk 

LAUREN M. CORCORAN, Hearing Clerk 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, INTERGOVERNMENTAL 

RELATIONS, AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 

MARK BEGICH, Alaska Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

JON TESTER, Montana 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

PAT MCQUILLAN, Staff Director 

BRANDON BOOKER, Minority Staff Director 

KELSEY STROUD, Chief Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statement: Page 

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

WITNESSES 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 2013 

Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Representative in Congress from the District 

of Columbia ........................................................................................................... 3 

Christopher T. Geldart, Director, District of Columbia Homeland Security 

and Emergency Management Agency ................................................................ 6 

Kenneth J. Mallette, Executive Director, Maryland Emergency Management 

Agency ................................................................................................................... 9 

Barbara Donnellan, County Manager, Arlington County, Virginia, and Chair, 

Chief Administrative Officers Homeland Security Executive Committee, 

Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments .......................................... 10 

James H. Schwartz, Fire Chief, Arlington County Fire Department .................. 12 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Donnellan, Barbara: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 10 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 41 

Geldart, Christopher T.: 

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

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

Mallette, Kenneth J.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 36 

Norton, Hon. Eleanor: 

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

Schwartz, James H.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 12 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 52 

APPENDIX 

Peter Crane, Counsel for Special Projects U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, prepared statement ..................................................................................... 57 

Questions and responses for the Record from: 

Mr. Geldart ....................................................................................................... 62 

Mr. Mallette ...................................................................................................... 64 

Ms. Donnellan ................................................................................................... 68 

Mr. Schwartz ..................................................................................................... 70 

(1) 

HOW PREPARED IS THE NATIONAL CAPITAL 

REGION FOR THE NEXT DISASTER 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 2013 

U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS, AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:02 p.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Mark Begich, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senator Begich. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BEGICH 

Senator BEGICH. Thank you very much, Congresswoman. How 

are you? I apologize. Unlike the House, at times, you never have 

hard votes that people are confused on their positions, and so I 

apologize for being delayed. We are still in the middle of a vote as 

I speak right now. We are trying to get the right number of votes. 

I will leave it at that, and I apologize. We were down there working 

it. 

Let me make my comments. I will try to be quick and brief. And 

then I will turn it to the Congresswoman. I know you have been 

patiently waiting, so I appreciate that very much. 

The hearing, again, comes to order. Good afternoon. Welcome to 

this hearing of the Subcommittee on Emergency Management, 

Intergovernmental Relations, and the District of Columbia 

(EMDC). 

Today, I want to explore and examine the disaster response and 

coordination of the Federal, State, and local entities in the National 

Capital Region (NCR). We appreciate you all being here and your 

willingness to participate in this discussion. This is an important 

topic as we sit in our Nation’s capital. We must remember Washington, DC. and the surrounding region is under near constant 

threat. 

I would like to take a brief moment to thank the emergency responders who work to keep the capital and surrounding region safe 

from harm. They deserve our thanks for their service. The sheer 

size of this metropolitan area, which includes significant national 

security infrastructure, multiple State and local governments, and 

broad scope of threats, makes this for a unique and complex coordination challenge. 
2 

And to broaden this discussion to the national level, from the recent terrorist bombing at the Boston Marathon to natural disasters 

like the wildfires burning across the country, it is critical for the 

Federal Government to look proactively at our disaster response capabilities and coordination with State and local agencies instead of 

reactive once a disaster has occurred. 

Although the National Capital Region is unique in many ways, 

improving coordination and communication in emergency operations is a challenge that exists in most major metropolitan areas 

across this Nation. Specifically in my own home State of Alaska, 

we do a good job on Federal, State, and local coordination for disaster preparedness and being prepared for any type of disaster. 

The University of Alaska, for example, of Fairbanks, held successful emergency management exercises which tested emergency 

responders and Emergency Operations Centers’ (EOCs) capabilities 

should the campus be a target of violence. Volunteers from nearby 

Eielson Air Force Base joined, a great example of civilian and Air 

Force members working together. 

In March, the Alaska National Guard’s 103 Civilian Support 

Team held an exercise to test its ability to respond to a chemical, 

biological, radiological threat to Southeast Alaska’s commercial 

fishing and agriculture industry. Many participants, including the 

Coast Guard, U.S. Army, Alaska Division of Homeland Security 

and Emergency Management, the Sitka Fire Department—this 

drill went very well and tested the interoperability among very diverse stakeholders. 

And Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER), in my home town 

of Anchorage just last month did an exercise to prepare for incidents including aircraft malfunctions, injured personnel, or terrorist attacks were held. After the exercise, service members from 

different JBER entities were pleased with the successful operation 

and said it helps solidify relationships and remind people what exactly to do in an emergency. 

When it comes to emergencies, preparation is key, and response 

exercises in Alaska, the Lower 48 States, and the National Capital 

Region are essential to saving lives when disaster strikes. And 

throughout the disaster preparation exercise and mitigation process, we must continue to look for ways to streamline efforts to reduce costs, and I believe in this time of declining budgets and fiscal 

uncertainty, we must find more efficient ways of strengthening our 

interagency partnerships. 

It is no secret we can do more to modernize our approach to disaster response. I think we can all agree this will be better accomplished by coordinating all Federal, State, local, and private sector 

efforts to adequately support but not replace local operations. 

As a former mayor, I know that cities and local governments are 

well positioned to understand their individual concerns and 

vulnerabilities. I think you will agree the private sector should not 

be an afterthought, but should be involved in the local planning, 

training, and exercising that leads up to successful response and 

missions. 

I look forward to hearing from today’s witnesses about the work 

in the Nation’s Capital Region. This area is fortunate to have the 
3 

immense resources of the city, State, and Federal Governments, 

but we know there are changes coming and more work to be done. 

Recently, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 

announced a proposal to move the National Capital Region’s coordination office from FEMA headquarters here in Washington to 

FEMA Region 3, located in Philadelphia. As most of you probably 

know, this office is the key player in coordinating Federal entities 

through its chairmanship of the Joint Federal Committee. It has 

come to my attention that FEMA did not adequately consult with 

the stakeholders from the National Capital Region or congressional 

authorizers or appropriators before making this decision. I have 

some real concerns about this and hope, moving forward, that 

FEMA will be more responsive to my requests for information and 

hope they will work with the National Capital Region stakeholders 

to discuss unresolved concerns. 

Again, before we start, again, I want to thank all the folks that 

will be lining up, and let me first introduce Congresswoman Norton. Thank you very much for being here. We appreciate you for 

being very patient. I apologize. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 

Ms. HOLMES NORTON. Well, no apology necessary, Mr. Chairman. 

I just hope you get the votes. 

Senator BEGICH. Well, we are one short. We are working on it. 

Ms. HOLMES NORTON. I want to thank you for this hearing and 

for inviting stakeholders from the region to come, in addition to 

me. I may be wrong, Mr. Chairman, but I do not believe that there 

has been a hearing on this office since the office was set up after 

September 11, 2001, when we created the Department of Homeland 

Security (DHS). So it is about time. 

Of course, all are aware of the unprecedented attack—and I am 

going to summarize my testimony and not read it to get through 

it quickly—the unprecedented attack on this region, on the Pentagon itself, and we believe but for the brave residents who took 

down the plane in Pennsylvania that the Capitol itself would have 

been attacked. The first time we were attacked on our own shores 

in this way, it shook the Congress in ways that it had never felt 

before. 

Since that time, I am very pleased that we have not been faced 

with an attack or anything close to it, and that has a lot to do with 

the way in which we have proceeded with homeland security. But 

this office was not set up just to prepare for, respond to terrorist 

attacks. It also, of course, has the same mission that the Department of Homeland Security has, to deal with natural disasters, 

and, Mr. Chairman, as you must know better than I, in this country, we have far more natural disasters than, I am pleased to say, 

we have terrorist attacks. 

Here, we have had, for example, since September 11, 2001, the 

so-called Snowmageddon, the worst snow anyone can recall—— 

Senator BEGICH. I experienced that. 

Ms. HOLMES NORTON. You were here then. 

Senator BEGICH. Yes, I was here. [Laughter.] 
4 

Ms. HOLMES NORTON. Not to mention the earthquake. Who ever 

heard of an earthquake in this region? 

The entire region is affected. It is a region without walls. So 

major disasters and terrorist attacks that occurred, for example, in 

Virginia essentially occurred in the District of Columbia. Our first 

responders were in Virginia. We have to prepare as if the attack 

occurred precisely in a particular jurisdiction. 

The region was picked out for a special office for a reason that 

should be clear. An attack on the region is an attack on the Nation 

itself because this region is the seat of the Federal Government, of 

all of its headquarters, agencies, and many secure officials. And it 

was felt that after going through 9/11, the least we should do 

would be to coordinate and have an office to coordinate our preparedness, our response, our recovery from natural and, heaven 

forbid, terrorist disasters. 

Mr. Chairman, I must tell you, I was stunned to receive word 

from my staff that there were some officials from the Department 

of Homeland Security who wanted me to take a call about how they 

were about to move the office that was set up to protect the National Capital Region to another region altogether, to Philadelphia. 

I refused to take that call. I had not been consulted. For someone 

from the Federal Government to call and say, this is what we intend to do and we just thought we ought to let you know it did not 

seem to me to be the appropriate way to consult with Congress, 

and so I tried to find out whether other Members of Congress or 

stakeholders had been consulted and could not find that they had. 

So, I wrote to the appropriators, who I knew were considering 

the Homeland Security appropriation, and asked for language 

which they have now included in their appropriation, barring any 

kind of move, until the Congress is satisfied that any such move 

would not jeopardize the National Capital Region. 

I am very concerned, Mr. Chairman, of the failure of this office 

to follow the quite explicit mandate in the statute, for example, to 

coordinate the activities for disaster preparedness related to the 

entire region. We have not seen much evidence of that. And the 

Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, which I cite in my 

testimony, indicates that the office, the National Capital Region 

Coordinator Office, views its duty as to act as a coordinator for 

other Federal agencies instead of coordinating with the regional officials, the stakeholders, the people who run the counties and— 

there is only one big, large city, the District of Columbia—the ones 

who would have to respond to an attack. And the GAO makes a 

number of recommendations that I summarize in my testimony. 

Mr. Chairman, the statute is very clear, that we set up this office 

because we have a region that has a large city. It has small towns. 

It has huge counties, like Fairfax and Montgomery. It has land or 

terrain, vastly different. The whole point was not to tell a region 

what to do, but to coordinate with the stakeholders in the region 

so as to prepare for attacks. And we do not know how the office 

got off to coordinating with Federal agencies. We have no objection 

to that. Our objection is to the failure to follow the statute and the 

coordinating mandate of the statute. 

Mr. Chairman, in light of the recent attack in Boston, we could 

not be more serious about this office. The point of this office is to 
5 

help the region expect the unexpected, and we are not going to be 

able to do this, we are not going to be able to share on these matters as we should if the coordinator is not coordinating. It is important that the coordinator have a direct relationship also with the 

Secretary. This is, after all, the National Capital Region. 

So I urge you, Mr. Chairman, and the members of this important 

Subcommittee to work with other Members of the House and Senate and the appropriators to ensure that the National Capital Region Office addresses the needs that Congress created it to meet 

and that it consults continually with Congress, and especially concerning any proposed changes. 

May I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator BEGICH. Congresswoman, thank you very much. And I 

will tell you, also as an appropriator—I sit on both here, in the Appropriations Committee and on the Subcommittee on Homeland Security, so you can rest assured. 

When I was mayor, the city’s size, geographic size, was 1,900 

square miles, so you can imagine the many different areas we had 

kind of—it was unified, but it still had communities within that 

considered themselves small town cities, even though they were 

part of the same municipality. So we ran our Emergency Operations Center with all the different agencies and private sector in 

a coordinated manner, not a, ‘‘this is what we want to do,’’ because 

we had far-flung communities 50 miles away, almost, that were 

still in our city. 

So when you think about the logistics, and I am very sensitized 

to what you have just described in your testimony, and you can 

rest assured in the role I have here, but also the role I have in the 

Appropriations Committee as the language we have been able to 

put into the bill, we will be hearing your message clear. 

Ms. Holmes Norton. Well, thank you very much for that. I did 

not know you were a member of the Appropriations Committee, as 

well, Mr. Chairman, and I certainly appreciate having your watchful eye on both these Committees. 

I must say, this is a city 10 miles square, so when you tell me 

a city 50 miles—— 

Senator BEGICH. Nineteen-hundred. 

Ms. HOLMES NORTON. But, I tell you, that is a city the size of 

this region. 

Senator BEGICH. Right. 

Ms. HOLMES NORTON. So I think you can understand exactly 

what I am talking about. 

Senator BEGICH. Very good. Again, Congresswoman, we greatly 

thank you for being patient, and your testimony, and your representation for the area here. 

You are right, I think this might be one of the first times this 

office has had a hearing. We have tried to be very active in this 

Committee around emergency preparedness, but also the D.C. region issues. As you know, we moved a couple judges out and a few 

other things because we want to become very active, but also a participant in making sure the D.C. region has what they need. 

And this is one area where I think, my former mayor roots are 

coming out. The fact that why local stakeholders are not included 

is a surprise to me. So that is why we wanted to have this discus-
6 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Geldart appears in the Appendix on page 27. 

sion, and also talk about what you said very clearly, and that is 

it is not just about the terrorist attacks. We hope none happen. But 

it is the natural disasters that are more frequent, may they be 

storms, may they be earthquakes, snow, floods, the list is long, and 

we have experienced—since I have been here, I have to say, in 41⁄2

years, I have seen more disasters here from snow and trees falling 

down and power out for a week in this region, and it is actually 

somewhat surprising to me. 

So, being Chair of this Committee, maybe I can at least lend a 

little bit of help and support. 

Ms. Holmes Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator BEGICH. Thank you very much, Congresswoman. 

Let me move to the next panel, if we could, and we will let the 

transition occur here. Staff will do their magic by putting names 

up there and then you will know exactly where you are sitting. 

Again, we want to thank all of you for being very patient, and I 

apologize because the issue that is on the floor is one that I am actively involved in, so I am getting e-mails in regards to our activity, 

so I apologize. 

As everyone sits down, I will do a quick introduction and then 

we will just kind of go down the row here, if that is OK. 

Christopher Geldart is the Director of the District of Columbia’s 

Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, serving 

as the Homeland Security Advisor to the Mayor and Emergency 

Management Director. Again, we appreciate you being here today. 

We also have Kenneth Mallette, who is Executive Director of the 

Maryland Emergency Management Agency and is responsible for 

coordinating the State’s response in any major emergency or disaster and coordinating the integration of Federal grant programs 

and others. 

Barbara Donnellan is the County Manager of Arlington County, 

Virginia, representing the Metropolitan Washington Council of 

Governments, where she serves as Chairwoman of the Chief Administrative Officers Homeland Security Executive Committee. You 

all have long titles. 

James Schwartz is the Fire Chief of the Arlington County Fire 

Department, a very short title and it is self-describing. Chief 

Schwartz has been in Arlington County for more than 27 years. 

Let me, if I can, just start with you, Christopher, and if you can 

keep your testimony as tight as you can, and then we will go into 

some questions. But I appreciate you all being here today. 

TESTIMONY OF CHRISTOPHER T. GELDART,1 DIRECTOR, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA HOMELAND SECURITY AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY 

Mr. GELDART. Thank you, sir. Good afternoon, Chairman Begich. 

I would like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you 

today to discuss incident response coordination in the National 

Capital Region and how we work with public and private partners 

at all levels of government to enhance regional preparedness. 

Specifically, I would like to discuss the unique character of the 

NCR, as the Nation’s Capital, home of hundreds of thousands of 
7 

Federal employees, a hub for mass events like marathons, demonstrations, ceremonies, and Presidential Inaugurations, and a 

major target for manmade and natural disasters. I also appreciate 

the opportunity to highlight the critical nature of special event 

planning and our efforts in regional coordination in preparedness 

and response. 

I would like to add some context to the District of Columbia’s 

role within the National Capital Region. The 68 square miles of the 

District is home to approximately 632,000 residents. It is the destination for 17 million visitors annually, the center of all three 

branches of government, and headquarters to 12 of the 15 executive cabinet level Federal agencies. The District of Columbia hosts 

a plethora of special events every year, and each is subject to a full 

and individual preparedness and response effort. 

I chair the Mayor’s Special Events Task Group, which brings together all District public safety entities and relevant Federal agencies to address public safety and other logistical concerns surrounding special events. Annually, the group coordinates over 100 

special events, including the Presidential Inaugurations. More than 

800,000 people attended the 2013 Presidential Inauguration, and in 

2009, 1.2 million attendees set the record for largest attendance for 

any event in Washington, DC.’s history. 

We also know very well the kind of public safety plan that goes 

into marathon events, like the Boston Marathon. The District holds 

multiple races each year, including the Marine Corps Marathon, 

the Nike Women’s Half Marathon, and the Nation’s Triathlon. 

In addition to our unique character as a special events hub, the 

District of Columbia is a nucleus for Federal employees. More than 

300,000 Federal employees work in the District of Columbia every 

day. This character creates a distinct synergy between the Federal 

Government as an employer and the emergency planning and response efforts we do as a city. Because of this synergy, the District 

of Columbia must maintain a close working relationship and continuous link with Federal entities, such as the Office of Personnel 

Management (OPM), the Department of Homeland Security, and 

the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in order to coordinate 

information such as governmental closings, liberal leave, early dismissals, shelter in place, and evacuation. 

The region has developed people, processes, and tools necessary 

to effect a coordinated incident response. For threat and warning, 

the region has invested in four Fusion Centers, the Washington Region Threat Analysis Center, the Maryland Coordination Analysis 

Center, the NCR Intelligence Center, and the Virginia Fusion Center. The Directors of these Fusion Centers have regular meetings 

to share pertinent information, best practices, and joint intelligence 

projects. We closely coordinate joint threat assessments for inauguration planning, Fourth of July, and any special events that warrant collaboration. 

For situational awareness, the District’s Joint All Hazards Operations Center housed at the District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, is a 24/7 Emergency Operations Center that facilitates the District and assists in coordinating regional situational awareness. During an incident, the 

NCR, through the region’s Emergency Managers, uses the Incident 
8 

Command System as a primary means for coordinating responses 

from the Incident Commander on the ground through the region’s 

EOCs. 

The region has also developed inherent capabilities for interoperable communications, both data and voice, which enables a highly 

coordinated response amongst jurisdictions. In addition, the region 

performs mutual aid operations on a daily basis and has the means 

to scale mutual aid for larger disasters. The NCR has developed 

unique capabilities, including nine Type 1 bomb squads, swift 

water rescue, and HAZMAT teams and associated equipment. The 

region has also outfitted every firefighter in the NCR with two sets 

of personal protective equipment. 

The region has developed the capability to track patients 

throughout an incident, from initial triage all the way through unification to their families, and to assist in managing hospital bed 

numbers. The region is also working on the ability to link our Computer Aided Dispatch systems. 

The region conducts numerous training and exercises to ensure 

these capabilities can perform to standard, health and medical 

point of distribution exercises, Incident Command System drills, 

functional exercises, and communication training. We recently conducted a 4-day exercise that tested our response capabilities in the 

event of a ten-kiloton improvised nuclear device detonation. This 

exercise tested the close coordination amongst regional partners at 

the State, local, and Federal level. 

In addition to the people, process, and tools for preparedness and 

response to be effective, the NCR also requires unique administrative and collaborative efforts. Two critical entities in this are the 

Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and the National 

Capital Region Coordination Office, each with distinct yet complementary functions. the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG), serves as a convener of the participating NCR 

governance bodies and the responders that work for them across 

the region. 

MWCOG has a key role in providing information sharing and coordination during incident response, convening conference calls for 

senior leaders across the region. For example, MWCOG conducts 

snow calls prior to predicted snowstorms to allow the region’s leadership to discuss potential action plans and develop clear regional 

understanding of response needs. MWCOG is a liaison for these 

calls, not an agenda setter or decisionmaker, but it is a pivotal role. 

In the past, the National Capital Region Coordination Office has 

provided the key connection and coordination point with the local 

Federal entities in the NCR, those agencies with buildings and employees within the National Capital Region which would be affected 

by a natural or manmade disaster in the region. The office has a 

pivotal role like MWCOG in coordination during a response. For 

example, during a number of real world and planned special 

events, the NCRC Director has convened key DHS and FEMA officials with Regional Homeland Security advisors and Emergency 

Management Directors, Governors, and mayors to share information and action plans. The NCRC’s Watch Desk within the National 

Watch Center is pivotal and singular in providing Federal agencies 
9 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Mallette appears in the Appendix on page 36. 

and their Emergency Operations Centers with information from the 

Regional Operations Centers. 

Having held positions in the NCR for the last decade, and as a 

current Homeland Security Advisor and Emergency Management 

Director for the District of Columbia, I believe that the region has 

come a long way in producing the capabilities and capacity to effectively prepare for, respond to, and recover from events that could 

affect our region. Our unique region has formed organizational 

structures that, though still developing, have enabled a District, a 

State, and a Commonwealth, and three branches of Federal Government to plan, train, and respond together in an effective manner. 

From an emergency management perspective, the NCR is one of 

the most challenging regions in the country. The region will continue to have challenges going forward, and as the Director of DC’s 

Emergency Management Agency, I feel confident in the relationships and professionalism of my partners from all levels of government in responding to and meeting those challenges. 

Senator BEGICH. Thank you very much. Kenneth. 

TESTIMONY OF KENNETH J. MALLETTE,1 EXECUTIVE 

DIRECTOR, MARYLAND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY 

Mr. MALLETTE. Thank you, Chairman, and on behalf of Governor 

Martin O’Malley, I want to thank you for the opportunity to share 

my thoughts regarding preparedness and response capabilities in 

the NCR. 

As you indicated earlier, the Maryland Emergency Management 

Agency is the lead agency in our State for coordinating preparedness efforts and responses to major events. Our local police, fire, 

and emergency medical services are often the first to respond to 

emergencies, but when their resources are exhausted and they 

need additional capabilities, they turn to the Maryland Emergency 

Management Agency for assistance. 

Maryland works very hard every day with local and regional response partners to strengthen the NCR’s ability to respond. I serve 

on the region’s Senior Policy Group, along with Homeland Security 

Advisors and the heads of emergency management for Maryland, 

Virginia, and my counterpart, the District of Columbia, as well as 

the Director of FEMA’s Office of the National Capital Region Coordinator. This group meets regularly to identify gaps in the region’s 

response capabilities, sets targets and goals, evaluates the progress 

and participates in preparedness exercises and training. 

As an Emergency Manager, situational awareness is among our 

most important responsibilities. Thanks to strategic investments of 

Homeland Security grants within the region, the response agencies 

are able to share real-time information on emergency response activities through our Web-based emergency management software 

system. We monitor the region’s roadway conditions using a system 

known as the Regional Integrated Transportation Information System (RITIS). Our public health responders use a biosurveillance 

tool called ESSENCE to detect the presence of biological agents 

and other infectious public health threats. 
10 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Donnellan appears in the Appendix on page 41. 

Every jurisdiction in the NCR has systems in place to push emergency information to the public through text messages, social 

media, and traditional public communications means. 

The NCR jurisdictions also recognize the importance of preparedness training and exercises to ensure that first responders and executive leaders are ready when events and disasters occur. Last 

year, Maryland Emergency Management Agency helped lead a series of workshops throughout the NCR to identify specific emergency level response training and preparedness needs. The resulting training and exercise plan will help us build the specialized 

skills needed to respond to terrorist attacks or natural disasters in 

the future. 

Active engagement with Federal agencies in the NCR is critical 

to the region’s ability to effectively respond. As you know, for more 

than 10 years, FEMA’s Office of the National Capital Region has 

served as a single point of contact for the NCR local emergency 

managers to help them coordinate response plans with the hundreds of Federal departments, agencies, and offices that operate in 

their jurisdictions, including at least 23 in Maryland. 

As home to the Nation’s Capital and many Federal assets that 

are critical to maintaining continuity of government, the NCR 

should continue to have access to FEMA resources that are dedicated to meeting the region’s preparedness needs. Although I am 

pleased that the Office of the National Capital Region will continue 

to have a presence in the region, I believe that the Office will be 

better able to serve the NCR’s jurisdictions by being able to report 

to and draw resources from the highest levels within FEMA headquarters. 

It is not difficult to imagine the attacks of this year’s Boston 

Marathon happening at any one of the major public events that 

draw thousands of participants to the National Mall each year. The 

tools and capabilities that Boston effectively deployed in response 

to the bombing—interoperable voice systems, specialized bomb and 

the Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosives 

(CBRNE) detection equipment, and information sharing platforms—are similar to the response capabilities that the NCR has 

invested its resources for the past 10 years. 

Although we can never predict with complete certainty how 

emergency events will unfold, the NCR is well positioned for responding effectively to notice and no-notice events. 

Mr. Chairman, again, thank you for allowing me to testify. 

Senator BEGICH. Thank you very much, Kenneth. Barbara. 

TESTIMONY OF BARBARA DONNELLAN,1 COUNTY MANAGER, 

ARLINGTON COUNTY, VIRGINIA, AND CHAIR, CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICERS HOMELAND SECURITY EXECUTIVE 

COMMITTEE, METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON COUNCIL OF 

GOVERNMENTS 

Ms. DONNELLAN. Good afternoon, Chairman Begich, and thank 

you for the opportunity to testify this afternoon. 

As you have stated, for the last 2 years, I have served as Chair 

of the Chief Administrative Officers Homeland Security Executive 
11 

Committee at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, COG. In this role, I have worked closely with the Senior 

Policy Group to manage homeland security programs in the National Capital Region. I am very pleased to be here with my colleagues from the region because our homeland security coordination work is detailed and continues throughout the year. All of us 

have become not only colleagues, but good friends. We know these 

relationships are critical to enhancing the safety of this region. 

The terrorist attacks of 2001 required us to reassess how we 

were working together to address the security needs of the NCR. 

There is no doubt that as the seat of Federal Government, we will 

continue to be a high-priority target for those who seek to do harm. 

Additionally, the unique nature of the NCR, which spans two 

States, the District of Columbia, 14 local jurisdictions, and nearly 

240 Federal agencies, requires the full integration of Federal, 

State, regional, and local efforts. To accomplish this integration, we 

established a regional governance structure to coordinate planning, 

emergency management operations, and funding across the NCR. 

Importantly, this structure has also provided for enhanced coordination with the private and nonprofit sectors. They are important 

partners in our preparation efforts. 

Working through COG and in coordination with the Office of National Capital Regional Coordination (ONCRC), we have developed 

one of the most robust regional homeland security programs in the 

Nation. Guiding our work is the NCR Homeland Security Strategic 

Plan. Initially, it was developed in 2006 and it was updated in 

2010. It provides the strategic framework for our efforts and our 

investments. 

The NCR’s Strategic Plan identifies four goals. One, to ensure 

the interoperability of communication capabilities. Two, to enhance 

information sharing and situational awareness. Three, to enhance 

critical infrastructure protection. And four, to ensure the development and maintenance of regional core capabilities. 

Flowing from this Strategic Plan, we have developed an NCR Investment Plan to accomplish our strategic goals. We have an Annual Work Plan to guide our investments, and we are continuing 

to work on a Performance Measurement Plan to monitor and evaluate our progress. 

After every major event, not only across this country but, indeed, 

throughout the world, we are constantly reevaluating our plans 

and our capabilities to assess our ability to prevent, respond to the 

threats that we face each day. Each event provides us with an opportunity to ask the important question: Are we prepared for this 

type of an event, and how would we respond to it if it occurred? 

This evaluation includes not only manmade disasters and events, 

but natural ones, as well. We in the NCR have seen our share of 

those in the last few years, as was mentioned—the earthquake in 

August 2011, followed by Hurricane Irene several weeks later, the 

derecho, and then Hurricane Sandy. These events also teach us important lessons and help us to identify areas where additional attention is required, particularly in the area of critical infrastructure protection. 

I want to thank Congress for recognizing the Federal role required for our region and for providing Federal funding to support 
12 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Schwartz appears in the Appendix on page 52. 

the significant investment in regional emergency management programs that have been vital to our work. This funding has been critical as we seek to address the unique homeland security and emergency management needs of our region. You continue to direct support to the essentials for maintaining and continuously improving 

the readiness of the NCR. 

An issue of considerable concern to the local jurisdictions in the 

region is the future of the ONCRC and FEMA’s announcement to 

reorganize the Office program delivery and communication functions. We understand that FEMA has agreed to put the plan on 

hold in order to receive input from its regional partners. We look 

forward to this opportunity to work together to develop the best design for the ONCRC to meet the goals of this region, consistent 

with the congressional intent. 

In closing, I would like to emphasize again that because of planning, coordination, and exercises we have sponsored, as well as our 

cooperation with the Federal, State, and community partners, the 

NCR is significantly better prepared for the next emergency and all 

other threats and hazards that may come our way. 

Again, I would like to thank you for holding this hearing today 

and for your continued support for the NCR. We look forward to 

continuing work with this Committee and the Congress to meet the 

homeland security needs of our region. I am very pleased to answer 

any questions. 

Senator BEGICH. Thank you very much. 

Thank you again, all of you, for being here today. James. 

TESTIMONY OF JAMES H. SCHWARTZ,1 FIRE CHIEF, ARLINGTON COUNTY FIRE DEPARTMENT, ARLINGTON COUNTY, VIRGINIA 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would like to 

take the opportunity to thank you for your interest and attention 

to preparedness efforts in the National Capital Region. I also appreciate the opportunity to be here today representing the first responders of the National Capital Region as we work to secure the 

region for our citizens, businesses, and visitors. 

I would like to note, as you have heard from some of my colleagues, that the region has a very special set of working relationships among the different disciplines and different governments 

here. We use those relationships every day of the week, and it is 

those relationships that have been and will be leveraged for the 

next event that we might experience here, whether it be a Bostonlike attack, a coastal storm, or something more catastrophic. 

The National Capital Region is well versed in managing largescale events, from those that occur without warning to those that 

involve the coordination of dozens or even hundreds of agencies in 

support of national special security events. 

On September 11, 2001, the Arlington County Fire Department 

was the lead agency for the response to the attack on the Pentagon. 

I served as the Incident Commander in a unified command effort 

recognized nationally and internationally as a model of intergovernmental and interdisciplinary collaboration. The success of that 
13 

response was the result of many lessons learned from previous 

tragedies in the region, including the importance of mutual aid, the 

need for joint planning, and the use of the Incident Command System, which after September 11, 2001, became national doctrine. 

Since September 11, 2001, the NCR has developed hundreds of 

new regional capabilities, most of which have been enhancements 

to the foundation of resources and services funded by local governments throughout the region. Allow me to provide a few examples 

of ways the NCR has improved its preparedness for a host of hazards. 

With regard to mass casualty incidents, we have deployed a total 

of 23 Mass Casualty Response Units, each carrying supplies for between 50 and 100 victims. We have also deployed 10 ambulance 

buses throughout the region. These buses are capable of carrying 

20 non-ambulatory or 25 ambulatory patients. And all of these resources are used in the region through a Mass Casualty Incident 

Plan applied the same way in each of the jurisdictions. 

The region has also implemented, or is in the process of implementing, a patient tracking system that, as you heard from Mr. 

Geldart, will assist in the distribution of patients and the tracking 

of those patients from incident scene all the way through medical 

care and assist in the family reunification process. 

The region has embarked on the implementation of Tactical 

Emergency Casualty Care (TECC), which seizes on the lessons of 

combat medicine for trauma care learned in the fields of Afghanistan and Iraq and adapts them for civilian use. TECC has already 

been taught to several fire and EMS departments in the region, 

and as we speak, thousands of law enforcement officers are being 

taught the techniques and being equipped with individual kits that 

can be used when they or a fellow officer are injured. 

In a further effort to prepare for the unthinkable, we have studied the 2008 Mumbai attack and some departments have developed 

a capability for EMS personnel to enter an area where casualties 

from an active shooter may lay before the gunman is subdued. This 

capability includes the use of TECC and the extraction of victims 

to a casualty collection point where more advanced medical procedures can be provided out of harm’s way. 

Again, as you heard from Mr. Geldart, the NCR is the home to 

seven local and two State bomb teams. Unique among this effort 

in the National Capital Region is that these teams are highly integrated. They are interoperable, with standardized equipment and 

procedures, and they provide backup to each other through the region’s system of mutual aid. 

While these and many other resource capabilities represent significant capacity, it is important to observe that these discrete capabilities are useful only when deployed under an effective Incident 

Management System. The region’s successful response to the 9/11 

attacks was largely due to two factors: The Incident Command System was already well understood in the region and practiced daily 

for smaller incidents, and key leaders, especially at the operational 

levels, had grown to know and trust each other. This continues 

today. 

In closing, I would like to emphasize that the NCR has made significant improvements to its preparedness efforts, especially over 
14 

the last 12 years. It is worth acknowledging that there is more to 

be done, and each investment that we make must be regularly 

evaluated for its currency, and we must continue to ensure that the 

capabilities that we have developed are well maintained and can 

be properly executed when necessary. The strength of the NCR continues to be the strong relationships that have existed and continue 

to be fostered in recognition of the special nature of our region. 

Again, I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest on this topic today and I look forward to answering your 

questions. 

Senator BEGICH. Thank you again, all of you, for your testimony. 

I have a few questions, but I again thank you for doing this. 

Let me, if I can, maybe—this is kind of a general question, 

maybe for any of you to answer. I know when I was mayor, we did 

something that I thought was very successful and actually kind of 

increased our capacity of emergency response, and I think you have 

all identified it is not just terrorists but it is all the other pieces 

that are somewhat more frequent, which we do not like, but the 

fact is they are more frequent, these natural disasters. 

We set out on a course to train every single one of our municipal 

employees in emergency preparedness in the sense of 

cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training and some other additional training. CPR was the core, and then if someone wanted to 

advance up, we would do that. We had 3,000 employees, and the 

goal was that we could turn the dial very quickly for those that 

were available to at least have some training that we did, and CPR 

was the first, to make sure that everyone had that training. 

In any of your regions, are you experimenting with anything like 

this, or have done something like this? I just think about how 

many government workers live in this region, and when there is a 

disaster—one I remember distinctly is the snow disaster, when people just were stuck on the freeway and some people just got out of 

their cars. To me, that was crazy, but that was what people did. 

But, any thought on that, how to activate so everyone is kind of 

a partner, but not one you can call on them when you want? Does 

anyone want to comment on that? 

Mr. GELDART. Sure. I will take a stab at it. 

Senator BEGICH. OK, maybe start. Sure. 

Mr. GELDART. So, Mr. Chairman, in the District of Columbia, we 

have 32,000 employees at the District Government level. Many of 

them do CPR training, and our D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical 

Service is going around and doing that and we are rolling it out 

even more. So that is the start point. We also have many that are 

trained to come work within our ICS structure, so within the EOC 

and other areas to help out, as well. 

We do specialty bomb training and situational awareness training, just general awareness, because our Department of Public 

Works (DPW) crews, our Department of Transportation (DOT), 

Traffic Control Officers (TCOs), are out on the street all the time 

when we are doing special events. So we utilize, and Cathy Lanier, 

our Chief of Police, pushes that out there to them, to have a watchful eye. 

Senator BEGICH. Got you. 
15 

Mr. GELDART. Is there something that does not look right? What 

does a suspicious package look like? What does a suspicious individual look like? And they really become eyes and ears for the Metropolitan Police Department in that sense. 

And it is a great point you bring up, though, sir. We had Joe 

Bruno and Kelly McKinney come down from New York City to brief 

the region on the after-action from Hurricane Sandy and what they 

did well and what they think they could have improved on, and one 

of the things they mentioned in there was the amount of training, 

and I think New York is something crazy like 300,000 employees—— 

Senator BEGICH. It is unbelievable. 

Mr. GELDART [continuing]. Or something like that, but all of 

them are, to a certain extent, trained, but also become volunteer 

workers, if you want to call it that, emergency workers—— 

Senator BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. GELDART [continuing]. For the city when something bad happens. So it is a very good point and I think that is being picked 

up by a lot of the municipalities right now. 

Senator BEGICH. Very good. 

Any additional comments? Barbara. 

Ms. DONNELLAN. Just a couple thoughts. That is a very ambitious goal, to get the CPR for that. We have close to 3,700 employees, as well, and I would say that we do not do it to that degree, 

but what my staff is involved in is incident command. 

Senator BEGICH. Mm-hmm. 

Ms. DONNELLAN. So we do train them so that when we set up 

for an emergency, I have people from all walks of life—— 

Senator BEGICH. All the different agencies are involved. 

Ms. DONNELLAN [continuing]. Every single agency involved, and 

then they have to retrain different teams—— 

Senator BEGICH. Right. 

Ms. DONNELLAN [continuing]. Because you need more than 24 

hours if it should continue on. 

Senator BEGICH. Right. 

Ms. DONNELLAN. So we do that. But in addition to that, we have 

a robust volunteer program where we train the community as the 

Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), the citizens in the 

community to help us to go out and do that. 

Senator BEGICH. Yes. 

Ms. DONNELLAN. And the other thing is, we are doing more of 

this, and Jim can talk to what he has just mentioned to me about 

teachers, but another way of thinking about it is the active shooter 

issue. Houston had done an incredible tape on how to respond to 

active shooter in a workplace—— 

Senator BEGICH. Mm-hmm. 

Ms. DONNELLAN [continuing]. And we modified that tape, because it is a little bit scary, and put a nice introduction to it to say, 

unfortunately, we live in these times and it is important for you 

to know this information. We hope it never happens. And I was 

anxious about putting that out to the entire workforce, but I did. 

And when I got responses back, they were thrilled to have that 

knowledge on how to respond. And sometimes it is just the training 

and the thinking that goes into the beforehand that helps employ-
16 

ees think about things and how they can help the community, as 

well. 

Senator BEGICH. That is great. We actually have a bill that I 

have introduced—the President has taken it up in one of his packages—on mental health first aid for, basically, individuals within 

educational environments—universities, K through 12, post-secondary—and the whole goal is that they get the skills. I actually 

took this idea from what they do in Memphis, I think it is Crisis 

Intervention Team (CIT) where we got the idea to train our police 

officers on emergency response when someone has a mental illness, 

because you may have a different kind of response. And in the 

school setting—— 

Ms. DONNELLAN. Absolutely. 

Senator BEGICH [continuing]. It is a whole different situation. 

And the idea is to deaccelerate the situation as quickly as possible, 

protect the people that are there. And the idea of this mental 

health first aid, which has been endorsed by many of the mental 

health groups, the White House has picked up on it—we put some 

funding, actually, in the appropriations bill this cycle to try to push 

that out to the schools to give some tools. And it is not to say, here 

is how it should be done, but here are some resources to schools 

to prepare your teachers or others not to be the manager of the incident, but understand how to deal with an incident when it may 

occur in your classroom or in your setting. And it is for police officers, first responders, educational institutions. And so it is very interesting that you are doing that. 

Ms. DONNELLAN. Yes. 

Senator BEGICH. Any other quick comment on that? Kenneth, 

and then I am going to jump to another couple questions. 

Mr. MALLETTE. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Just one thing is that, as you 

are familiar with, the Community Emergency Response Team program, this is the last year that FEMA will be funding that program, and it has been a very successful program, not only for local 

jurisdictions, but many—— 

Senator BEGICH. Can I interrupt you? How long has FEMA been 

funding that, do you recall right offhand? 

Mr. MALLETTE. Since 2003, I think. 

Senator BEGICH. Two-thousand-three. And this is their last fiscal 

year—— 

Mr. MALLETTE. Fiscal year. 

Senator BEGICH. This Fiscal Year we are in right now—— 

Mr. MALLETTE. Is the last year that they are going to fund that 

program. But we have really taken that program to not only the 

public sector, but also the private sector. Many large businesses are 

putting together Community Emergency Response Teams. And so 

it has been a very effective program and we are going to try to use 

some State and local funding. But that is one of the most successful 

programs. And also COOP, Continuity of Operations, where we are 

teaching people to take on not only their primary role, but also a 

secondary role during emergency response. 

Senator BEGICH. Would you all agree that funding that FEMA 

has utilized for the CERT teams have been helpful? 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. Very much so. 

Ms. DONNELLAN. Yes. 
17 

Senator BEGICH. Very much so. I mean, it is always—with our 

tight budgets—everyone has them—but it seems like the limited 

amount of money that goes through that program augments what 

you are doing locally, the private sector as well as State. So you 

think that money is a helpful piece of the equation. 

Mr. MALLETTE. Absolutely. 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes. 

Senator BEGICH. Let me ask some specific ones, and then let me 

kind of focus for a minute on Mr. Geldart and the District of Columbia, and that is, tell me—you kind of mentioned it, but I want 

to get more specific here—with the utility folks, do you do joint 

training? They are always the ones we hear about on the radio, not 

necessarily in D.C., I would say in Maryland and Virginia. But do 

you have joint training exercises for how they can respond in case 

of a disaster, natural and/or manmade, terrorist? Any—— 

Mr. GELDART. Yes, sir. So, Mr. Chairman, we started post the derecho, under the Mayor’s leadership, did a task force that looked 

at how do we start to deal with the issue, specifically with inside 

the District of Columbia, of power reliability and resiliency for 

storms and for other things. That has run its course. We have a 

report that came out from that we are working with the Potomac 

Electric Power Company (PEPCO) on. They are our sole provider 

for power inside the District of Columbia. 

However, we started a process off of that in working with the 

power companies that started back about a year ago now, where we 

sat down with the operations folks on the power company side, 

those that do restoration, those that bring in the crews when we 

have large-scale disasters and large-scale outages, and we sat down 

with them to start the dialogue to say, look, we are missing something here between the emergency management folks, those that 

are working response on the government side, and you all on the 

private sector side. Something is not happening, because we can be 

doing a better job. 

And so we sat down with them and we came up with a couple 

of areas where we thought it could really make some improvements, in which we had a discussion-based exercise held at the 

Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments with all of not 

only the members here within the NCR, but then also actually 

going up the 95 corridor all the way up to New York City, because 

the power providers—— 

Senator BEGICH. Right. It is the whole grid. 

Mr. GELDART [continuing]. Do not know those kind of boundaries. 

Right. So we took it in a true regional context, the I–95 Corridor 

Region, and sat down with them and basically came up with two 

areas. One involves fleet movement for mutual aid response from 

within the power companies themselves. 

Senator BEGICH. Mm-hmm. 

Mr. GELDART. So, wherever they get trucks from and crews from 

and things like that, that will come in to do the repairs. 

Senator BEGICH. Got you. 

Mr. GELDART. How do we help them, from a public sector perspective, get their people here quicker—weigh stations, toll booths, 

all those kinds of things they have to traverse through the region 

to get to the most affected areas. So how can we, as the public sec-
18 

tor, those that own those toll booths and those weigh stations and 

other things, how can we help them move quicker? That was one 

thing we are taking on. 

The second one was the power companies provide an Emergency 

Liaison Officer to us in our Emergency Operations Centers. They 

should be able to give us much better information on estimated 

time for recovery, when we can be back up, what exactly is down, 

and a better coordination of—we do well on this, but a better coordination of what are our key, most important things we need restored and when, so our prioritization list. 

Senator BEGICH. I just have an additional question on the utility 

one, and then I have just a thought on snow, and I am going to 

then move down. 

Mr. GELDART. Yes, sir. 

Senator BEGICH. But on the issue on the utility, you folks in the 

District of Columbia are now doing underground—you are on some 

pathway to do undergrounding, if I recall this right. Is that—— 

Mr. GELDART. Yes, sir. 

Senator BEGICH. And I know in Anchorage, what we did many 

years ago required the utility, which they get cost recovery through 

their rate structure—I think it is 4 percent a year for our utility 

lines—because we were finding with heavy snow or weather conditions—icing, mostly—— 

Mr. GELDART. Right. 

Senator BEGICH [continuing]. That the lines could come down instantaneously or create other situations. We have been very successful in that, and new construction—— 

Mr. GELDART. Right. 

Senator BEGICH [continuing]. Is all required underground. 

Mr. GELDART. Absolutely. 

Senator BEGICH. Can you just give me a little flash point on 

that—— 

Mr. GELDART. Sure. 

Senator BEGICH [continuing]. And what is going on there. 

Mr. GELDART. And that was a very big part of the conversation, 

and there is a full plan within the—— 

Senator BEGICH. Utility companies hate it, because it costs them 

money. I know that, but—— 

Mr. GELDART. They were actually—— 

Senator BEGICH. They understand the repairs are better, to have 

them not have to go out there in freezing cold weather, so—it is 

a mixed view, I know, sometimes. 

Mr. GELDART. Sure. The bigger issue really is, it is easier for 

them to run a line and put a new pole up than to dig it underground. 

Senator BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. GELDART. So you will have less, potentially, frequent power 

outages, but potentially longer time for recovery because they have 

to find where it is underground. So there is a tradeoff and all. 

Senator BEGICH. Except, I would say, the new, and they call 

them Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems—— 

Mr. GELDART. Yes. 

Senator BEGICH. Unbelievable technology. 
19 

Mr. GELDART. Yes, sir. 

Senator BEGICH. And today, they can track them—I know we do 

this, because we have to—— 

Mr. GELDART. Right. 

Senator BEGICH [continuing]. With weather conditions. Our 

depths are probably much deeper—— 

Mr. GELDART. Right. 

Senator BEGICH [continuing]. There than where we have to plant 

those lines here, water, sewer, and others. 

Mr. GELDART. Right. 

Senator BEGICH. The SCADA systems are unbelievable now. 

Mr. GELDART. And that is a huge help—— 

Senator BEGICH. So, is that moving along at—— 

Mr. GELDART. Yes, it is. 

Senator BEGICH. So you feel like there is acceptance? Everyone 

is participating? They recognize—— 

Mr. GELDART. Yes, sir. 

Senator BEGICH [continuing]. This is a long-term value. 

Mr. GELDART. And so there is a long-term plan that has come out 

of that and how we are going to do it and where do we start to 

do undergrounding, and then took into account those areas that 

you start to do that work on, when you start to do that, where does 

it become fragile and where should we work on first, vice second, 

in case of emergencies and things like that, so—— 

Senator BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. GELDART [continuing]. We have looked at that. 

Senator BEGICH. Let me throw out one thought and then I am 

going to go down the line here, and I am going to watch our time. 

And again, I apologize. We started late. This is just one—coming 

from snow—I never thought I would actually be in this position to 

be able to say this, so you are here, I am here. This is a great opportunity. 

So, I experienced a snow—it is very unique how you manage 

snow here, not necessarily you, but—— 

Mr. GELDART. Right. 

Senator BEGICH. Let me just pause there for everyone’s own 

thought on that. But it always surprises me, when we had that big 

snowfall, and we had a couple others, but that one big one, the way 

snow removal occurs, which causes more problems for emergency 

vehicles and other things. And it seems logical, because we—and 

I say ‘‘we’’ collectively in the District here—if there is a snow coming, we send people home. I mean, basically, everyone starts to 

abandon the city. And what is unique about that is every government parking lot is now empty. 

Why do we not have a plan that says, for citizens, like Zone 6, 

Zone 3, whatever, these are your designated parking locations in 

a snow disaster. So, they are empty. Do not park on the street. You 

will park in this area, because mostly it is in this dense zone here. 

So, then the snow removal can move much quicker, because in 

some cases, it took a week because you had to wait for it to melt. 

Mr. GELDART. Sure. 

Senator BEGICH. And every day, I walked by these empty parking lots and it just made no sense. Is that something—because 

those are federally controlled—is there something we can help you 
20 

with, with the General Services Administration (GSA)? It just 

seems those massive parking lots, and they are empty and everyone is jammed up on the—I call it the war for the parking spaces, 

because you shovel it all out—— 

Mr. GELDART. That is right. 

Senator BEGICH [continuing]. And then you have someone standing out there—— 

Mr. GELDART. That is right. 

Senator BEGICH [continuing]. Protecting your parking space because you know someone might sneak in. It is the most amazing 

thing. But then trash stops getting picked up. Emergency vehicles 

become very problematic. 

Mr. GELDART. Sure. 

Senator BEGICH. Is there a thought there, or are you thinking of 

that, or is there something we can help you with our friends at 

GSA that sometimes I know is—we have to have long conversations at times with them. 

Mr. GELDART. Sure, and—— 

Senator BEGICH. I am being polite. Any thought there? 

Mr. GELDART. Sure. That is—using the Federal parking lots 

would be a great idea, either for the cars or the snow, either way 

you want to do that. 

Senator BEGICH. Right. Yes. 

Mr. GELDART. But it really does come down to, those are not our 

areas. 

Senator BEGICH. OK. 

Mr. GELDART. And we cannot authorize—— 

Senator BEGICH. But is it an asset that, if you are in this region—— 

Mr. GELDART. That would be great. 

Senator BEGICH. Because I am just thinking of all those cars, 

they could all park in there. And I saw an emergency vehicle. I 

said, there is no way if someone had a heart attack, I mean, your 

vehicles, your paramedics, or your fire truck, forget it. Paramedic, 

maybe—— 

Mr. GELDART. Right. 

Senator BEGICH [continuing]. Because of the dimension of the vehicle. But forget a fire truck. 

Mr. GELDART. We have actually—there has been a lot of work 

that has been done since that large snowfall in the way in which 

we do snow removal throughout the city. Bill Hallin, who runs our 

Department of Public Works, has done a lot of good work with his 

folks. We actually have a—they call him the Snow Czar—a gentleman that is what his job is. 

Senator BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. GELDART. And he is actually up in at Emergency Management Institute (EMI), teaching something on that right now to 

other cities, on some of the changes that they have done. So I think 

they have looked at that. The thought of using Federal parking 

lots—— 

Senator BEGICH. And it is just temporary. You move the cars 

off—— 

Mr. GELDART. Sure. 
21 

Senator BEGICH. You are there until your street is cleared. Then 

you can go back and park there. 

Mr. GELDART. Sure, and the one thing that I have learned in 

being in the job here and being in the region, getting the availability to use the parking lots may become a lot easier than convincing people that they need to park there instead of right in front 

of their homes, so—— 

Senator BEGICH. I understand, where they cannot get to their 

home because they have four feet of snow—— 

Mr. GELDART. Right. 

Senator BEGICH. But just a thought. And if it is worthwhile and 

your Snow Czar or you think it is of value, please let me know—— 

Mr. GELDART. Yes, sir. 

Senator BEGICH [continuing]. And I would be happy to followup. 

It is always—literally, I walked past them. I thought, my God, 

there is a lot of real State there that is sitting there. And I, of 

course, was thinking, well, it is Federal jurisdiction. They probably 

cannot touch them. And yet they are fenced off and locked down. 

It makes no sense. So just a little food for thought. 

Mr. GELDART. Yes, sir. 

Senator BEGICH. Let me, if I can, go to a couple, and Barbara, 

you had mentioned this, and all of you kind of mentioned this, but 

what do you think in regards to the Federal grants that we are 

issuing, and you noted one that is a concern. We just had a hearing 

on Federal grants and how that is working. Any of you could really 

answer this, but I know in some of your testimony, you talked a 

little bit about it. 

But do you think the grants are successful? Are we or you measuring them in a way that we can really determine, these grants are 

working? As you know, there is criticism from some of my colleagues that we give these grants, we do not know what the results 

are, and they want more. Do you think we have—and, really, anyone could answer this—the right tools in place, or should we look 

at some additional tools to determine the effectiveness of the multiple grants that we give out. Even though it is a diminishing 

amount, and I recognize that, is there something we could do better 

here from FEMA or partnership with the stakeholders on this? 

Ms. DONNELLAN. It is interesting. We have spent the last couple 

years at COG trying to really figure out what is the right thing to 

be spending money on and how this grant could be best utilized 

based on how we have used it in the last number of years. And this 

year, particularly, we did not fund everything that came through 

that was asked for in past years. We wanted more information and 

what is the data to justify certain things. And also, I have been 

having a conversation with my local counterparts to say, as Federal 

funds diminish, what really is sustainable that we must continue 

to have funding for that we may have to pick up if there is no Federal funds? 

The difficulty, though, is there is always going to be needs that 

have not been met yet—— 

Senator BEGICH. Correct. 

Ms. DONNELLAN [continuing]. Such as cybersecurity or things 

like that we are beginning to embark on a little bit more—— 

Senator BEGICH. Mm-hmm. 
22 

Ms. DONNELLAN [continuing]. Which has to do with power grids 

and different things like that, as well. 

But one of the things that I think the Chief might talk to is— 

that FEMA could do, and you mentioned something earlier which 

I thought was interesting, was the mental health, kind of response 

to that. What would be helpful is if we could know what best practices are throughout the country that are really successful so that 

you can say, well, this Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) fund 

really makes sense to use for these certain things, and that when 

we have success, like there are a number of things that we have 

done that we think are really credible and really would be helpful 

in instances, we can share that information. 

Or if there is something that is a total failure, why—no one tells 

us and says, well, that failed in three other cities. You should not 

do it. That would be helpful, as well. 

Senator BEGICH. So, FEMA kind of supplying kind of the best 

practice list. 

Ms. DONNELLAN. Yes. 

Senator BEGICH. Chief. 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes, Mr. Chairman. What I would say is what we 

have somewhat lost sight of is the fact that the original intent of 

these grants was not just to help resource local governments in 

service to their communities, but to create, really, a nationwide architecture of preparedness—— 

Senator BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. SCHWARTZ [continuing]. So that both vertically and horizontally, we were more connected in developing an adequate system of prevention, response, recovery. 

Senator BEGICH. Can I give you a thought there, just to interrupt 

you—— 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. Sure. 

Senator BEGICH. And that is, I am thinking of when I was 

mayor, my friend Martin O’Malley was mayor, and I remember 

when Hurricane Katrina happened, we could not—he had a heck 

of a time trying to get the coordination, because they wanted to 

bring supplies from Maryland down South and he just gave up and 

decided just to go do it, which I thought was great. And mayors did 

that. 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. Right. 

Senator BEGICH. We just said, we could not—well, what is the 

best way to do this and how to create this, and that really did not 

exist then, a national—— 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. Well, in that particular instance, it was the 

Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) that people 

were trying to work through, and I give a lot of credit. EMAC has 

refined a lot of the obstacles that I think were—— 

Senator BEGICH. Right, but that is part of the overall national 

architecture, is that right? 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. It is certainly—yes. It is an acknowledgement 

that resources in Maryland may end up in Louisiana—— 

Senator BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. Or resources in California need to go to Texas. 

Senator BEGICH. Right. 
23 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. But to Ms. Donnellan’s point, the ability for, 

whether it is a UASI jurisdiction or just a State administering 

their statewide grant programs, to know what has been successful 

or what has not been so successful would be extremely useful. It 

would create much more efficiency. We might not be wasting 

money on very good efforts that we simply do not know have already been tried somewhere else. 

Senator BEGICH. Mm-hmm. 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. I think as importantly, FEMA could identify 

some priorities, in consultation with the stakeholders, and 

incentivize through the grant programs—as an example, the patient tracking program that I talked about. 

Senator BEGICH. Yes, that is interesting. 

Mr. SCHWARTZ [continuing]. To the best of my knowledge is fairly 

unique. Nobody else in the country has tackled this yet. 

Senator BEGICH. No, I was going to say, I am unfamiliar until 

you brought it up. 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. And, quite frankly, we tried it once and it did not 

work. So we spent some money and did not get the results that we 

wanted. We went back, retooled it, and I think we have hit that 

sweet spot now. The ability of other jurisdictions to take what we 

have done, perhaps incentivized by FEMA—FEMA says, look, this 

grant cycle, we really want to—we are going to earmark a portion 

of our grant money for people that pursue patient tracking projects, 

and here is an example of where it was example—— 

Senator BEGICH. Got you. 

Mr. SCHWARTZ [continuing]. Go talk to the National Capital Region, or something, a different kind of project that might have been 

created in another area of the country. Where does that information get shared and how do we really take advantage of what has 

been successful and, quite frankly, again, what has not panned out 

quite so successfully. 

Senator BEGICH. It is an interesting idea. I know when I participated as mayor to the U.S. Conference of Mayors that we shared 

a lot. Mayors will sit down, because we have to deal with this stuff. 

When I was mayor, there was no one else to go to. You were it. 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. Yes. And do not get me wrong. There are a lot 

of professional groups that do share that information. 

Senator BEGICH. Yes, but FEMA seems like they could have a 

real role here, is what you are saying. 

Mr. SCHWARTZ. Correct. Yes. 

Senator BEGICH. Kenneth, did I see you wanted to say something 

on that? 

Mr. MALLETTE. Yes, Mr. Chairman. One of the things that is 

probably going to be a challenge, as we have seen through a lot of, 

especially last year, the national-level exercise that FEMA sponsors, is this concept of mission ready packages—— 

Senator BEGICH. Mm-hmm. 

Mr. MALLETTE [continuing]. So that these issues—so if a county 

or a city, and you as a former mayor want to send, or Governor 

O’Malley when he was a mayor of Baltimore City, hey, I want to 

send resources to Louisiana, have a mission ready package that is 

available that is prepackaged—— 

Senator BEGICH. That they can just push right out the door. 
24 

Mr. MALLETTE. And just goes, a package that includes not only 

the resources, but the stuff that first responders and myself, as a 

former first responder, do not want to deal with, is the administrative nightmare that goes with that. And so when you have this 

mission ready package, it is to produce resources, but it is the cost 

tracking of the resource so that we can then backtrack through the 

Emergency Management Assistance Compact to be able to ultimately pay for that. 

Senator BEGICH. Very good. Christopher, and I apologize, you are 

probably the last person to speak, only because our time is tight 

and I already am now again backed up, but go ahead. 

Mr. GELDART. I just wanted to—— 

Senator BEGICH. Yes. 

Mr. GELDART [continuing]. Pick up on a little bit of what Jim 

said, because I think he is right on. The purpose of these grants 

really was to build that national capability. The Federal Government has capabilities to do certain things. 

Senator BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. GELDART. They do not have a Federal Fire Department. They 

do not have Federal teams that we are building at the State, and 

the State does not have the teams that we are building at the local 

level. It is just kind of the way the process works. 

So, looking at how do you measure the successful expenditure of 

these funds, or how do you look at it being successful going forward, I think that is really it. I mean, we are not running into anything new on the disaster front. 

Senator BEGICH. Mm-hmm. 

Mr. GELDART. You have a hurricane. You are getting flooded. 

You are getting wind and water. 

Senator BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. GELDART. If you have a terrorist attack—— 

Senator BEGICH. It is pretty standard to know what you are begging. 

Mr. GELDART. You pretty much know the consequences of these 

things. 

Senator BEGICH. Yes. 

Mr. GELDART. So, looking at the measurement of the capability 

that has been built and which it can be shared nationally, I think, 

I would agree with Jim wholeheartedly with that. And EMAC is 

not the sole answer, because as a city, when New York City was 

going through its trials and tribulations with Hurricane Sandy, 

here I am a city and I have the mission ready packages put together and I know Joe Bruno up there, the Emergency Manager—— 

Senator BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. GELDART [continuing]. And I am calling him and telling him, 

I want to send you this stuff, and I can send it to you. Just get 

your stuff through EMAC, because the District is the only major 

metropolitan area that is a signatory to EMAC. 

Senator BEGICH. Got you. 

Mr. GELDART. So I can send that. But if I need that from New 

York City, they cannot send to me. And until the State says, that 

team from inside New York City now is a State asset somehow, 
25 

that is the only way they can EMAC that to me. That is why the 

Conference of Mayors is so on, how do I send stuff city to city? 

Senator BEGICH. Right. 

Mr. GELDART. And I was in Maryland when Mayor O’Malley sent 

stuff down to—— 

Senator BEGICH. So you know that experience. 

Mr. GELDART. I was part of the State team that helped him get 

that EMAC mission to do it. So it is a problem that still exists out 

there, and we have come to John Madden, who is now the 

Chair—— 

Senator BEGICH. Yes. 

Mr. GELDART [continuing]. Who is the President of NEMA—— 

Senator BEGICH. From Alaska, yes. 

Mr. GELDART [continuing]. Who I am going to be out in your area 

with him next month. 

Senator BEGICH. Oh, good. 

Mr. GELDART. And we have talked to him about how do big cities 

help other big cities and not so big cities when things like this happen, because EMAC does not work for everybody. 

Senator BEGICH. Well, I would say this to all of you. I have some 

more questions, but I will probably send some of these to you. But 

I would be very anxious—the danger was for the Chairman of the 

full Committee to put a former mayor as Chairman of this Subcommittee, because I lived this for many years, and I will just 

throw one last idea, which I know some cities are doing. 

We worked an agreement with Home Depot, Sam’s, Lowe’s, for 

the first 72 hours. We gave them a Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) list, 

a list of product they cannot sell until we determine to release it, 

because what was happening, as you know, in disasters, people, oh 

my God, they go in and buy every piece of plywood that you might 

need. So we actually have a list, a predetermined pricing so there 

is no gouging or anything, but also a predetermined list, and as our 

first responders determine they do not need a certain product level, 

they let the Emergency Management Team know, of the private 

sector in our EOC, to cut those loose. We did this probably about 

9 years ago, 10 years ago, and it has worked very well. 

One of the best parts of it is, as you know at the private sector, 

they keep an inventory better than anyone in the world. They 

know exactly where everything is at any time, where it is on the 

road. They have it GPS-ed all the way down. And we determined 

to use their warehousing capacity to supplement our work, and it 

did not cost us a dime. There were agreements we just signed as 

a community member. So there is no retention fee or any of that 

some people might think you have to have. 

And I think there is a lot of innovation out there. And you are 

right, we know what is coming, water, wind. We know. It is just 

what we do with the assets. 

And I think what we are going to try to do here is, with this Office, again, having this hearing, is to try to understand what their 

role should beg in a more expansive way, understanding they did 

not engage with stakeholders at the level they should have, and 

finding—and I like some of these ideas of what more can they do 

to make a difference for not just this region, but for the rest of the 
26 

country in regards to emergency response. So your information, 

your testimony is helpful and I really appreciate that. 

We will keep the record open for 14 days. I will submit some additional questions, I hope you do not mind answering. It will be 

helpful for us. 

And you should not hesitate, as people in this region, that if you 

see areas that we could help, maybe the crazy parking lot idea I 

have or whatever it might be, you should not hesitate to let us 

know and we will do what we can, because for all the reasons you 

all stated in each one of your testimony, the amount of assets that 

we have here as a public, and as Congresswoman Norton said, I 

mean, it is an unbelievable place and we have to do everything we 

can, and it is a big court. I mean, when you described how many 

different communities and cities, I just was a mayor. Nineteen-hundred square miles was a lot, but we only had 300,000 people, so 

it was somewhat easier, and this is much more complicated with 

the layering that goes on. So, please do not hesitate to work with 

our Committee as you see ideas that we should be exploring with 

FEMA or just the regional efforts that we are doing. 

Thank you all very much for being here today. This meeting is 

adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:12 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 
(27) 

A P P E N D I X 

* * * 

Statement of 

Christopher T. Geldart 

Director 

District of Columbia 

Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency 

Before the 

United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental 

Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal 

Workforce, and the District of Columbia 

Hearing Title: 

"How prepared is the National Capital Region/or the next disaster?" 

Wednesday, July 31, 2013 

2:00 p.m. 

Dirksen Senate Office Building 

Room 342 
28 

Good afternoon Chainnan Begich, Ranking Member Paul, and Subcommittee Members. I would 

like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss incident response 

coordination within the National Capital Region (NCR), and how we work with public and 

private partners at all levels of government to enhance regional preparedness. Specifically, I will 

discuss our unique character both as the Nation's Capital for hundreds of thousands of federal 

employees, a hub for mass events like marathons, demonstrations, ceremonies and presidential 

inaugurations, and a major target for man-made and natural hazards. I appreciate the opportunity 

to highlight the critical nature of special event planning and regional coordination in 

preparedness and response. 

National Capital Region Coordination 

Pre-Incident Coordination 

I would like to add some context to the District of Columbia's unique role within the NCR. The 

District is 68 square miles and home to approximately 632,000 residents. It is a destination for 

17 million visitors annually, the center of all three branches of government, and headquarters to 

12 out of the 15 executive cabinet-level federal agencies. 

The District of Columbia hosts a plethora of special events every year, and each is subject to a 

full and individual preparedness and response effort. This constant special event planning effort 

is so large that it requires a designated coordinating body, led by the District of Columbia 

Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA). I chair the Mayor's 

Special Events Task Group, which brings together all District public safety entities and relevant 

federal agencies to address public safety and other logistical concerns surrounding special 

events. 
29 

Annually, the group coordinates over 100 special cvents, including presidential inaugurations. 

More than 800,000 people attended the 2013 Presidential Inauguration and in 2009, the 1.2 

million attendees set a record for the largest attendance of any event in Washington, D.C.'s 

history; it was also the largest attended presidential inauguration in United States history. 

We also know very well the kind ofpubJic safety planning that goes into marathon events, like 

the Boston Marathon. The District hosts multiple races each year - including the Marine Corps 

Marathon, the Nike Women's Half Marathon, and the Nation's Triathlon. Respectively, each 

year, these events draw approximately 23,000, 15,000, and 5,000 participants and tens of 

thousands of spectators. In addition, the District of Columbia is a regular destination for 

organized mass gatherings that can draw hundreds of thousands of attendees. 

In addition to our unique character as a special events hub, the District of Columbia is a nucleus 

for federal employees - more than 300,000 federal employees work in the District every day. 

This character creates a distinct synergy between the federal government as an employer and the 

emergency planning and response efforts we do as a city - an evacuation of federal buildings 

puts thousands of employees on District streets. Because of this synergy, the District of 

Columbia must maintain close working relationships and a continuous link with federal entities 

such as the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Department of Homeland Security 

(DHS), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in order to coordinate 

information such as government closings, liberal leave, early dismissals, and shelter in place. 

2 
30 

In addition to local, state and federal partnerships, pre-incident intelligence is cornerstone to 

NCR coordination. Intelligence efforts are implemented through four fusion centers - the 

Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center, the Maryland Coordination and Analysis 

Center, the NCR Intelligence Center, and the Virginia Fusion Center. The directors of these 

fusion centers have regular meetings to share pertinent information, best practices, and joint 

intelligence products. We closely coordinate joint threat assessments, such as for inauguration 

planning, the Fourth of July and any special events that warrant collaboration. The region also 

has a planning program management office where planners come together to share and develop 

coordinated plans for priorities such as resource management and special needs populations. 

Coordinated Incident Response 

The District's Joint All Hazards Center, housed at the District of Columbia Homeland Security 

and Emergency Management Agency, is the region's 2417 emergency operations center that 

facilitates District and regional situational awareness. Among other things, the Center 

disseminates emergency communications such as D.C. Alerts and the Regional Incident 

Communication and Coordination System messages. It also serves as the control point for the 

Washington Area Warning System. 

During an incident, the NCR, through the region's emergency managers, has adopted the 

Incident Command System (ICS) as a primary means for coordinating responses. All first 

responders are trained in the National Incident Management System (NIMS), and key personnel 

that staff the region's emergency operations are further trained in ICS response principles. This 
31 

training is conducted through the Urban Area Security Initiative - funded NIMS officers in each 

jurisdiction. 

The region has also developed inherent capabilities for interoperable communications, data and 

voice, which enables a highly coordinated response among jurisdictions. In addition, the region 

performs mutual aid operations on a daily basis, and has the means to scale mutual aid for larger 

disasters through agreements that have been developed through the Metropolitan Washington 

Council of Govemments (MWCOG). Additionally, the NCR developed capabilities include nine 

Type I Bomb Squads, swift water rescue and hazmat equipment and personnel. The region has 

also outfitted every firefighter in the NCR with two sets of personal protective equipment. 

On the health and medical front, the region has developed the capability to track patients 

throughout an incident - from initial triage all the way through unification to their families - and 

to assist in managing hospital bed numbers. The region is also currently working on the ability 

to link our Computer Aided Dispatch systems, which will reduce response times and streamline 

mutual aid. 

The region has conducted a number of exercises to ensure that these capabilities can perform to 

standard, including health and medical point of distribution exercises, incident command system 

drills and functional exercises, and communications training. Recently, HSEMA and the 

Maryland Emergency Management Agency with FEMA's national Incident Management 

Assistance Teams conducted a four-day exercise that tested our response capabilities in the event 

4 
32 

of a ten kiloton improvised nuclear device (IND) detonation. This exercise required close 

coordination among regional partners at the state, local and federal level. 

As stated, the approximate 300,000 federal employees that work in the District are part of the 

larger federal workforce that lives and works in the NCR. A critical element of regional 

coordination is communicating with these hundreds of thousands of employees. In the past, the 

Office of National Capital Region Coordination (NCRC) has been the entity tasked with 

coordinating the federal government presence in the regional planning and governance structures 

of the NCR. Specifically, the office convened the NCR Joint Federal Committee, worked with 

federal building owner/tenants, and coordinated with OPM on workforce status, situational 

awareness, and information sharing. 

Looking Fonvard 

What I have described is a broad picture of the roles, capabilities and processes employed 

throughout the NCR for preparedness and response. The other critical component in this effort is 

the administrative and collaboration management piece. Currently, this component is led by the 

MWCOG and NCRC, each with distinct yet complementary functions. 

MWCOG serves as a convener of the participating NCR governance bodies and the responders 

that work for them across the region. The MWCOG governance structure consists of an 

Emergency Preparedness Council (local elected officials, federal officials, and private sector 

entities), Senior Policy Group (homeland security advisors and emergency management directors 

from the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia and the Director ofNCRC), Chief 
33 

Administrative Officers (county leadership from the MWCOG membership), and the Regional 

Emergency Support Functions (RESFs) (organizations of police chiefs, fire chiefs, public health 

officials, and others from across the region). MWCOG provides meeting support and program 

management functions to the RESFs across the region, and its leadership participates with the 

governance bodies to develop strategic plans, program area focus, and project management for 

preparedness projects and capability development. 

In addition, MWCOG has a key role in providing information sharing coordination during 

incident response, such as convening conference calls for senior leaders across the region. These 

calls include the chief administrative officers, as well as the homeland security advisors and 

emergency management directors from across the region. For example, MWCOG conducts 

"snow calls" prior to predicted snow storms to allow the region's leadership to discuss potential 

action plans and develop a clear regional understanding of response needs. MWCOG is a liaison 

for these calls - not an agenda-setter or a decision-maker - performing the vital role of 

convening high-level responders for collaborative action. MWCOG also facilitates the key 

function of organizing the after-action products that allow the region to learn from coordinated 

incidents and improve capabilities. 

In the past, the NCRC has provided the key connection and coordination point with the "local" 

federal entities in the NCR those agencies with buildings and employees within the NCR, 

which would be affected by a natural or manmade disaster in the region. The NCRC works 

through the NCR Joint Federal Committee to forward preparedness efforts across the federal 

workforce and all three branches of government. The Office also has a pivotal role, much like 

6 
34 

MWCOG, in coordination during a response. For example, during a number of real world and 

planned special events, the NCRC director has convened key DHS and FEMA officials with 

regional homeland security advisors, emergency management directors, governors and mayors to 

share information and action plans. 

The Office has also conducted several senior official exercises involving the Mayor, Governors, 

and DHS Secretary to ensure that in the initial hours of an event, the NCR's message on critical 

protective actions and response measures are common across federal, state and local 

jurisdictions. Though the NCRC has no role in dedicating resources, administering FEMA 

programs, or controlling assets from the federal government, its coordination role, its 

understanding ofthe NCR, and its ability to bring the right people together at the right time is 

invaluable. 

The NCRC's Watch Desk within the National Watch Center is pivotal and singular in providing 

federal agencies and their emergency operations centers with information from regional 

operations centers. Without the NCRC, this regional coordination information currently has no 

other means of dissemination. There exists a federal Concept of Operations that delineates the 

roles in coordination and notification responsibilities of the NCRC, the National Watch Center, 

the FEMA Region III, and the DHS National Operations Center for the first six hours of an 

incident in the NCR. The development of this Concept of Operations was necessary to show the 

importance of information flow in the Nation's Capital. The ability of the NCRC director to 

quickly and directly engage the DHS Secretary and the FEMA Administrator at the onset of a 

7 
35 

major event in the NCR is critical to ensuring the safety of the federal workforce and the unity of 

response efforts in the NCR. 

Having held regional positions in the NCR for the last decade, and as the current homeland 

security advisor and emergency management director for the District of Columbia, and the State 

Administrative Agent for the NCR, I believe that the region has come a long way in producing 

the capabilities and capacity to effectively prepare for, respond to, and recover from events that 

could affect our region. Our unique region has formed organizational structures that, though still 

developing, have enabled a district, a state, a commonwealth and three branches of federal 

government to plan, train, and respond together in an effective manner. 

From an emergency management perspective, the NCR is one of the most challenging regions in 

the country. The region will continue to have challenges going forward, and as the director of 

the District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, I feel 

confident in the relationships and professionalism of my partners from all levels of government 

in responding to and meeting those challenges. 

Thank you for the opportunity to present my testimony, and I look forward to any questions. 

8 
36 

Kenneth J. Mallette 

Executive Director, Maryland Emergency Management Agency 

Maryland Department of the Military 

July 31, 2013 

Testimony before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Emergency Management, 

Intergovernmental Relations, and the District of Columbia: "How Prepared is the National 

Capital Region for the Next Disaster?" 

Chairman Begich, Ranking Member Paul, and members of the Subcommittee on Emergency 

Management, Intergovernmental Relations, and the District of Columbia: 

My name is Ken Mallette and I serve as the Executive Director of the Maryland Emergency 

Management Agency. On behalf of Govemor Martin O'Malley, I thank you for the opportunity 

to share my thoughts regarding preparedness and response capabilities in the National Capital 

Region (NCR) and the challenges of fostering an environment that supports emergency response 

coordination and information sharing. 

There are few - if any - other regions in our nation that understand the challenges of building, 

maintaining, and coordinating response capabilities across state, local, and federal lines as well 

as the NCR. In our region, we have two states, the District of Columbia, dozens of local 

jurisdictions and municipalities, as well as hundreds offederal agencies, facilities, and offices 

that share a dense network of roadways, transit systems, and utility infrastructure. Our 

interconnection means that when an emergency occurs in one jurisdiction, it does not take long 

for the effects to be felt throughout the entire region. 

Maryland works every day with our local and regional response partners to strengthen the NCR's 

ability to respond to an emergency. I serve on the region's Senior Policy Group along with the 

Homeland Security Advisors and the heads of emergency management in Maryland, Virginia, 

and the District of Columbia, as well as the Director ofFEMA's Office of the National Capital 

Region Coordinator. This group meets regularly to identifY gaps in the region's response 

capabilities, set targets and goals, review progress made on response capabi I ities and 

preparedness initiatives, evaluate their effectiveness, and participate in preparedness exercises. 

Additionally, the Senior Policy Group makes funding decisions on homeland security grant 

programs for the NCR along with the region's Chief Administrative Officer's Homeland 

Security Executive Committee. To help us make these decisions, we rely on the NCR Homeland 

Security Strategic Plan, which identifies preparedness goals for the region and the target 
37 

capabilities that will allow us to achieve these goals. Members from both of these groups 

participate in the region's Emergency Preparedness Council, which brings public safety leaders 

together with locally elected officials to share information on preparedness and align response 

priorities. At the responder level, the region is served by multiple cross-jurisdictional work 

groups that represent the region's law enforcement, fire, public health, transportation, sheltering, 

information technology, and other emergency response disciplines. These groups meet regularly 

to identifY the region's preparedness needs, implement projects or initiatives to fill those gaps, 

report progress to the Senior Policy Group and Chief Administrative Officers, and participate in 

training and preparedness exercises. 

The value of meeting regularly with peers and colleagues to share information on emergency 

response preparedness and capabilities cannot be overstated. The inclusive planning structure 

that we have in the NCR means that our public safety leaders know each other by name, are 

comfortable working together, and know how to contact each other. When an emergency is 

pending or is in progress, we are able share and obtain situational awareness, make informed 

decisions to secure their jurisdictions, execute mutual aid agreements, and perform other critical 

tasks. 

As emergency managers, situational awareness is among our most important responsibilities. In 

a large geographic area that spans multiple jurisdictions such as the NCR, knowing what is 

happening, where it is happening, and what is coming next can be especially challenging. 

Thanks to strategic investments of homeland security grant funds, the region's response agencies 

are able to access and share real-time emergency response information. In Maryland and in the 

NCR, we rely on an internet-based, emergency management system to share information and 

updates on real-time emergency response activities with our local, regional, and federal response 

partners. We monitor the region's roadway conditions using the Regional Integrated 

Transportation Information System. Our public health responders use a bio-surveillance tool 

called ESSENCE to detect the presence of biological agents or other infectious public health 

threats. And every jurisdiction in the NCR has systems in place to push emergency information 

to the public through text alerts, social media, and traditional public communication means. 

NCR jurisdictions also recognize the importance of preparedness training and exercises to ensure 

first responders and executive leaders are ready to respond when disasters occur. Last year the 

Maryland Emergency Management Agency helped lead a series of workshops throughout the 

NCR to identifY the specific emergency response training and preparedness needs of the region's 

first responders, including fire and emergency medical services, law enforcement, public health, 

emergency managers, mass care, and many other disciplines. The resulting Training and 

Exercise Plan will serve as a roadmap for the NCR to accomplish its training and exercise goals 

for the next two years, help responders develop specialized skills, and bring them in contact with 

partners in neighboring jurisdictions or other response disciplines. 

2 
38 

Maryland also aggressively pursues emergency response training and exercises for all of its first 

responders. As in the NCR, Maryland Emergency Management leads annual workshops in 

Maryland's other regions to identitY the training and exercise needs that help local first 

responders address local hazards and risks. We conduct similar workshops for state response 

agencies and holds quarterly Cabinet-level tabletop exercises for the State's executive leadership. 

After each real-world emergency or large exercise, we conduct an After Action Review to 

identitY corrective actions and develop an implementation plan to ensure response plans and 

emergency Standard Operating Procedures reflect these valuable lessons-learned. 

Most Urban Areas face similar challenges in sharing information and coordinating emergency 

response across mUltiple jurisdictions with separate police, fire, and emergency medical services. 

In the NCR, these challenges are magnified by the high number of state and local response 

agencies, multiple sets of response plans, policies, and statutes that serve individual jurisdictions, 

and the presence of more than 200 federal agencies and hundreds of thousands of federal 

employees who live and work in the region. The traffic congestion that affected the region on 

January 26, 20 II - after federal agencies released workers during a snow and ice weather event 

- demonstrates the importance of coordinating emergency response plans among federal and 

state agencies and local emergency response agencies, consulting with local partners on response 

decisions, and sharing real-time information. 

Establishing close working relationships between jurisdictions and response agencies before a 

disaster occurs and conducting regular preparedness training and exercises are the best defense 

against the forces and habits that often lead cities and states to respond to emergencies and make 

decisions in silos and without coordination. By regularly meeting to discuss regional goals and 

evaluate response capabilities, responders and executive decision-makers in NCR jurisdictions 

are able to identify gaps in response plans or problems ahead of time and implement corrective 

actions. During emergencies we know the specific individuals in neighboring jurisdictions who 

are able to provide information, mutual aid, or other resources. 

Active engagement with federal agencies is critical to the region's ability to effectively respond 

to emergency incidents in the NCR. As with all states, Maryland works with FEMA's regional 

administrative office on issuing presidential emergency declarations prior to pending 

emergencies, deploying federal resources to affected areas, and gathering damage assessment 

data for public and individual assistance funds. Outside of emergency events, FEMA's 

administrative regional office provides technical assistance and guidance on managing homeland 

security and preparedness grant programs and on complying with FEMA requirements. We 

participate in FEMA-sponsored regional emergency response planning initiatives and training 

exercises with our state partners to identitY shared planning goals, exchange information on 

changes and updates to statewide response plans, and sharpen our emergency response skills. 

3 
39 

FEMA's Office of the National Capital Region Coordinator (ONCRC), on the other hand, 

performs a unique policy and preparedness-oriented role. This office was created to help 

coordinate emergency response plans developed by federal agencies with local jurisdictions in 

the NCR. It serves as a single federal point-of-contact for the NCR's local emergency managers 

to help them coordinate response plans with the federal agencies that operate in their 

jurisdictions and convene planning meetings and initiatives between federal agencies and local 

jurisdictions. 

For more than 10 years, ONCRC has provided a key capacity to state and local partners in the 

NCR. Although it does not make homeland security spending decisions, ONCRC formally 

participates in the NCR's Senior Policy Group as well as many of the regional response working 

groups and provides these groups with the federal perspective on setting homeland security goals 

for the region and a federal perspective on the emergency planning conducted in the region. 

As home to the Nation's Capitol and many ofthe federal assets that are critical to maintaining 

continuity of government, the NCR should continue to have access to FEMA resources that are 

dedicated to meeting the region's preparedness needs. Although I am pleased that ONCRC will 

continue to have a presence in the region, I believe that ONCRC would be better able to serve 

the NCR's jurisdictions by being able to report to and draw resources from the highest levels 

within FEMA Headquarters. 

It is not difficult to imagine the attacks on this year's Boston Marathon happening at FedEx Field 

in Prince George's County, a Presidential Inauguration, or anyone of the many other public 

events that draw thousands of participants to the National Mall each year. Despite the severity of 

injuries inflicted on hundreds of Boston Marathon runners, family members, and friends, the fact 

that the bombings resulted injust three fatalities speaks to the high level of preparedness that 

Boston's first responders, executive leaders, and residents have developed. 

The tools and capabilities that Boston deployed in response to the bombings on April 15,2013-

interoperable voice radio systems, specialized bomb and CBRNE detection equipment, 

communication and information-sharing platforms, and constructive working relationships 

between public safety and public officials - are similar to the response capabilities that the NCR 

has invested its resources and efforts in building for the past decade. Although we can never 

predict with complete certainty how emergency events will unfold, the NCR is well positioned 

for responding effectively to terrorist attacks. 

Going forward, our job as a region will be to maintain these capabilities while we receive 

decreasing support from homeland security grant programs. My colleagues in the Senior Policy 

Group and the region'S Chief Administrative Officers understand that relying on federal funds to 

4 
40 

maintain our response capabilities is not a sustainable, long-term solution. Each year, as we 

evaluate the effectiveness of our homeland security investments, we look for ways to maintain 

the specialized equipment, tools, personnel and other capabilities with local and state resources. 

While these efforts are on-going, there is no doubt that as a region we continue to rely on federal 

support to help us maintain our preparedness for the next disaster. 

Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, thank you for allowing me to testify today. 

5 
41 

THE NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION 

A LEADER IN EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS 

STATEMENT BY: 

BARBARA DONNELLAN, COUNTY MANAGER 

ARLINGTON COUNTY, VA 

CHAIR, HOMELAND SECURITY EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 

CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICERS COMMITTEE 

METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENTS 

BEFORE THE 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, 

INTERGOVERNMENT AL RELATIONS, AND THE DISTRICT OF 

COLUMBIA 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENT 

AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

JULY 31, 2013 

1 
42 

Chairman Begich, Ranking Member Paul, and members of the Committee. I am 

Barbara Donnellan, County Manager of Arlington County, VA and the current 

Chair of the Homeland Security Executive Committee ofthe Chief Administrative 

Officers Committee (CAOs) at the Metropolitan Washington Council of 

Governments. 

Because the Council had maintained public safety, mutual aid, and planning 

programs for most of its history, it was recognized as the best-equipped 

organization to coordinate the region's preparedness activities for terrorist threats 

after they surfaced more than a decade ago. Our Board of Directors immediately 

assumed a major role by assembling a Regional Emergency Coordination Plan in 

2002. We followed that achievement by developing one of the most robust regional 

homeland security initiatives in the nation. Our program involves local elected 

officials, first responders, and business and community groups, as well as federal 

and state officials. 

I am very pleased to be here with my colleagues from the region. Because our 

homeland security coordination work is very detailed and continues throughout the 

year, all of the officials in the region have become not only colleagues but good 

friends. We know these relationships enhance the safety of the region. 

I also want to thank this Congress and those Members of Congress who have 

preceded you since 2001 for supporting the significant investment in regional 

emergency management programs that have been vital to our work. As you may 

know, the CAO Committee is made up of City and County Managers and the 

Senior Policy Group (SPG) is made up of senior state officials from emergency 

2 
43 

management/homeland security. They bring together many regional stakeholders 

to help them prepare for, mitigate, and recover from all hazards, including terrorist 

activities, weather-related events or other natural or man-made disasters. Because 

of the federal funding you have provided, local officials who work with me on the 

CAOs committee, along with the SPG, have been able to guide and assist our first 

responders, coordinate the efforts of elected officials and emergency managers, 

and provide systems to alert and protect the pUblic. 

The cities and counties in the National Capital Region have long maintained 

substantial public safety and security programs to protect their residents. We 

continue to do so and have expanded our efforts in recent years. However, funding 

through the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) has been especially important to 

the National Capital Region because, as you know, we are a metropolitan area that 

must coordinate its response across two states and the District of Columbia. Since 

the horrific attack on the Pentagon on 9111, this region and other parts of the 

country have continued to experience instances of domestic terrorism, several 

hurricanes, tornadoes and severe storms, and countless high profile 

demonstrations. 

I would now like to share some of our experienc.es. We have learned lessons from 

every incident that has occurred and, based on those lessons, continuously 

improved our capabilities to protect the region: 

• After 9111, our regional partners used lessons learned from our response to 

the Pentagon incident to inform the investment decisions we made for the 

use of both local tax funds and funds received through federal grants. We 

3 
44 

used VASI and State Homeland Security Grant Funds to train and equip 

first responders and to purchase alert and warning systems for the 

community. 

• Vsing real-world experiences like Hurricane Isabel to inform our investment 

decisions, we have used VASI funds to increase regional planning and 

coordination, including the development of the NCR Regional Emergency 

Coordination Plan and the NCR Mutual Aid Operations Plan. 

• Our experiences with the Anthrax attack that involved letters sent to 

Members of Congress and media in D.C., New York, and Florida in 2001 

led to VASI investments in bomb squads, secure and interoperable 

communications, information sharing, and situational awareness in the 

region. 

• These investments produced NCR Net, a secure fiber optic network 

connecting the National Capital Region (NCR) jurisdictions; Essence, a 

public health surveillance system; and the installation of chemical/biological 

sensors and cameras at Metro System entrances. 

• Terrorism incidents throughout the country led to VASI investments in 

automatedfingerprint identification systems (AFIS), which have improved 

our law enforcement capabilities. 

• Lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina and other emergency situations led 

our region to use UASI funding for investments in the Regional Integrated 

Transportation Information System (RITIS) that informs evacuation 

decisions. 

• After the snow and ice storm on January 26,2011, we used VASI funds to 

further enhance the RITIS system. Now, through the Metropolitan Area 

4 
45 

Transportation Operations Center (MATOC) infonnation is shared with 

emergency managers, other regional offices, and residents throughout the 

region on a 24-7 basis. 

• In the wake of the samc stann, the region also established a Virtual Joint 

Information Center (V-JIC) to provide up-to-the minute infonnation about 

disasters to local officials and the public. The region's public infonnation 

officers use, maintain, and update the V-JIC regularly. 

• In addition, the region's local officials will soon have access to a new 

dashboard project-a tool that quickly summarizes the most important 

infonnation for officials-that is housed at thc District of Columbia's 

Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA). 

• One of the most useful tools in the National Capital Region is our First Hour 

Chccklist, which guides local officials and emergency managers through the 

important steps to take immediately after an emergency. This was a tool 

developed by the SPG and the CAOs. Personally, I used it during the 

earthquake that struck this region in August 23,2011. We coordinated two 

regional conference calls that day--one very shortly after the incident and 

another at 9 p.m. that night that included representatives from the Office of 

Personnel Management (OPM) and the General Services Administration 

(GSA). 

• The region's early warning water security monitoring system is one of our 

most innovative programs. We have monitoring sites located throughout the 

region that alert appropriate officials ifthere is a problem with the water so 

that they can take action to address the situation and prevent a possible 

tragedy. 

5 
46 

• This year, the region will begin work on an equally important project: the 

need to ensure cyber security, or the safety of digital data and computer 

systems that have become such an integral part of our everyday lives. We 

will be conducting a cyber-security exercise later this year. 

• The June 29th Derecho Storm that impacted the region on June 29, 2012 

caused similar issues to what a cyber-security event may cause. This 

required governments to work with the private sector to restore 9-1-1 service 

to the region. Close coordination with the private owners of critical 

infrastructure, such as power, communications, and other sectors has 

continued to improve as a result of the lessons learned from the Derecho 

storm. 

• We have used UASI and other grant funding to assess 31 acute care 

hospitals in the National Capital Region and neighboring Virginia counties 

and to improve the back-up power and water capability at a majority of those 

facilities. 

In summary, the support which Congress has provided has enabled local officials 

in our area to significantly advance the preparedness of the entire region. Our 

Regional Emergency Coordination Plan (RECP) and our Strategic Plan for NCR 

are key products for our success. Our investment in traffic and weather information 

sharing systems, text alert messaging system to inform the public of emergencies, 

installation of chemical and biological sensors and cameras in the Metro system, 

and expansion of a secure fiber-optic data network for local use are all critical 

improvements we have made because of the support we receive through UASI. 

The entire National Capital Region continues to pursue increased capabilities so it 

can meet the full spectrum of homeland security and emergency management 

6 
47 

needs. Your continued direct support to this region is essential for maintaining and 

continuously improving readiness in the NCR, in recognition that local 

governments are the major emergency services provider to the 240 federal 

departments and agencies in the NCR. 

I assure you that we will do everything possible to protect our citizens at the local 

level. We are currently updating our NCR Homeland Security Strategic Plan to 

insure that we continue to address the most urgent needs of the region in the 

coming years. 

With that said, an issue of considerable concern to local jurisdictions in the region 

is the future ofthe Office of National Capital Region Coordination (NCRC), 

currently housed within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 

Recently, FEMA announced plans to reorganize the office's program delivery and 

communications functions. As the Subcommittee is aware, NCRC was established 

in Section 882 of the 2003 law that created the Department of Homeland 

Security. Sec. 882 details the duties of this important office, for which the 

Council of Governments was a very strong advocate over a decade ago. Of critical 

importance to us is a very high level presence here in the NCR that can insure 

emergency preparedness, communication and coordination among the 240 federal 

agencies in the NCR, and with local, state and other regional partners. 

We understand that FEMA has agreed to put its recently proposed reorganization 

plan on hold in order to receive input from regional partners. We look forward to 

this opportunity to work together to develop the best design for NCRC to meet the 

needs of the NCR, consistent with the purpose and intent of Section 882. 

7 
48 

In closing, I would like to emphasize again that because of the planning, 

coordination, and exercises we have sponsored, as well as our cooperation with 

federal, state, and community partners, the National Capital Region is significantly 

better prepared for the next emergency and all other threats and hazards that might 

come our way. Weare constantly learning, revising, and updating our plans, 

processes and procedures based on actual emergency situations. 

I will be pleased to answer any questions you might have. 

### 

8 
Acronym 

ARC 

CAO CAOHSEC CBRNE COG 

crp 

CIIKR 

DC DC 

HSEMA 

DHS DC 

HSEMA 

EPC 

ESF 

ACRONYM LIST APPENDIX TO: 

STATEMENT BY BARBARA DONNELLAN 

JULY 31, 2013 

Term 

American Red Cross 

Chief Administrative Officer Chief Administrative Officer Homeland 

Security Executive Committee 

Chemical, Biological, Nuclear and 

Explosive 

Council of Govemments (see also ! 

MWCOG) 

Critical Infrastructure Protection I 

Critical Infrastructure / Key Resources 

District of Columbia 

District of Columbia Homeland Security 

and Emergency Management 

Administration I 

United States Department of Homeland 

Security 

District of Columbia Homeland Security 

and Emergency Management 

I Administration 

Emergency Preparedness Council 

Emergency Support Function (see also 

R-ESF) 

Page 1 ofJ 
Acronym Term 

ETOP Exercise and Training Operations 

Program 

FEMA Federal Emergency Management 

Agency 

GSA United States General Services 

Administration 

HSGP Homeland Security Grant Program 

ICS Incident Command System 

IMT Incident Management Team I 

MATOC Metropolitan Area Transportation 

Operations Center 

JFC Joint Federal Committee 

MD State of Maryland 

MWCOG Metropolitan Washington Council of I 

Governments 

NCR National Capital Region 

NCRC Office for National Capital Region 

Coordination 

NIMA National Incident Management System 

OPM United States Office of Personnel 

Management 

NIPP National Infrastructure Protection 

Program 

NRF National Response Framework 

NSSE National Security Special Event 

R-ESF Regional Emergency Support Function 

Page 2 0[3 
Acronym Term 

RICCS Regional Incident Communications and 

Coordination System 

RPWG Regional Program Working Group 

RECP Regional Emergency Coordination Plan RITIS Regional Integrated Transportation 

Information System 

SPG Senior Policy Group 

SAA State Administrative Agent 

TCL Target Capabilities List 

UASI Urban Area Security Initiative 

VA Commonwealth of Virginia 

V-JIC Virtual Joint Information Center 

Page 3 of3 
52 

STATEMENT BY: 

James H. Schwartz, Chief 

Arlington County Fire Department 

ARLINGTON COUNTY, VA 

BEFORE THE 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, 

INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS, AND THE DISTRICT OF 

COLUMBIA 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENT 

AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

JULY 31,2013 

1 
53 

Chairman Begich, ranking member Paul, members ofthe Subcommittee, I am James 

Schwartz and I currently serve as the Chief of Arlington County fire and EMS. I 

would like to thank the Subcommittee for this opportunity to share with you some 

ofthe preparedness efforts here in the National Capital Region. I would like to note 

that the region has a special set of working relationships that are used every day of 

the week and it is those relationships that have been and will be leveraged for the 

next event we might experience whether it be a Boston like attack or a coastal 

storm. The National Capital Region is well versed in managing large scale events 

from those that occur without warning to those that involve the coordination of 

dozens or even hundreds of agencies in support of a National Special Security Event. 

On September 11, 2001 the Arlington County Fire Department was the lead agency 

for response to the attack on the Pentagon. I served as the incident commander in a 

unified command effort recognized nationally and internationally as a model of 

intergovernmental, interdisciplinary and inter-jurisdictional collaboration. The 

success of that response was the result of many lessons learned from previous 

tragedies in the region including the importance of mutual aid, the need for joint 

planning and the use of the Incident Command System which after 9/11 became a 

national doctrine for incident management across all professional disciplines, 

jurisdictions and levels of government. 

My work in regionalism goes back to my early career as a member of the Northern 

Virginia Fire and EMS automatic aid system whereby the jurisdictions of Arlington, 

Alexandria, Fairfax County and Fairfax City have been sharing response resources 

since 1975. Almost 40 years ago we essentially eliminated the jurisdictional 

boundaries for the purposes of better response to our communities and better 

safety for our responders. Today that automatic aid system includes the original 

jurisdictions and has added Prince William and Loudoun Counties as well as the 

cities of Manassas and Manassas Park. Each ofthese jurisdictions also participates 

in the NCR Mutual Aid Plan that includes the District of Columbia and the suburban 

Maryland jurisdictions of Prince Georges and Montgomery Counties. Under the 

auspices of the Council of Governments (COG) various professional committees such 

as fire and police chiefs, emergency managers and health directors meet monthly to 

discuss regional coordination and preparedness and, as importantly to forge the 

relationships that prove so valuable during a crisis. 

In a further example of regional preparedness it should be noted that the National 

Capital Region was the first in the nation to develop a regional CBRN response 

capability when the public safety professions and jurisdictions of the metropolitan 

area established the nation's first civilian CBRN response team known then as the 

Metropolitan Medical Strike Team (MMST). In the wake of the 1995 sarin attack on 

the Tokyo subway, the NCR jurisdictions brought together a team of 120 responders 

from hazmat, EMS, and law enforcement as well as medical profeSSionals to deliver 

specialized response capabilities not available in any agency or jurisdiction at the 

time. The team had specialized equipment for hazardous material detection, mass 

casualty decontamination and medical care to better prepare the NCR for a possible 

2 
54 

attack on our subway. That effort, developed in 1995. was a catalyst to one of the 

most successful federally sponsored preparedness programs in recent memory, the 

Metropolitan Medical Response System which. until approximately one year ago. 

served 124 metropolitan jurisdictions across the nation. The MMST was for many 

years forward deployed during the State of the Union Address and for Presidential 

Inaugurations. 

Following the September 11 attacks, the region amplified its efforts at regional 

collaboration. There continues to be a significant effort to evaluate risks to the 

region and learn from incidents here and elsewhere in order to make the best 

possible investments in preparedness. Allow me to provide several examples of 

ways the NCR has improved its preparedness for a host of hazards. These examples 

would also playa significant role in a response to a Boston like incident. 

• On September 11. 2001 virtually the only mass casualty supplies in the 

region were located at the Reagan National and Dulles Airports. To assist 

with patient care at the Pentagon those units were deployed but proved 

insufficient due to the limited amount of supplies and the unfamiliarity that 

most of the regions responders had with the equipment. Based on that 

lesson the region undertook a project to improve our mass casualty response 

capabilities. Through a combination of local funds and federal grants the 

region now has 23 mass casualty response units and ten medical ambulance 

buses to support the response to a mass casualty incident. Each mass 

casualty unit carries enough supplies to care for between 50 and 200 victims. 

The medical ambulance buses each are capable oftransporting 20 nonambulatory patients or up to 25 ambulatory patients. 

These vehicles and the equipment carried are standardized to ensure 

interoperability and ease of maintenance. The units are deployed throughout 

the National Capital Region and available to any jurisdiction in the region for 

a crisis or as a pre-staged asset for a special event. The operation of these 

assets is governed by standard operating procedures that were developed in 

a collaborative fashion with representatives from around the region. Finally, 

each of the jurisdictions that house these units is responsible for vehicle 

maintenance and its readiness for response. 

• In terms of patient care the region has embarked on the institution of 

Tactical Emergency Casualty Care (TECC) which seizes on the lessons of 

combat medicine for trauma care learned in Afghanistan and Iraq and adapts 

them for use on a civilian populace. TECC has already been taught to several 

fire and EMS departments in the region and as we speak, thousands of law 

enforcement officers are being taught the techniques and are being equipped 

with individual kits to be used if they or a fellow officer are shot. In a further 

effort to prepare for the unthinkable, we have studied the 2008 Mumbai 

attack and some departments have developed a capability for EMS personnel 

3 
55 

to enter an area where casualties from an active shooter may lay before the 

gunman is subdued. This capability includes the use ofTECC and extraction 

of victims to a casualty collection point where more advanced medical 

procedures can be provided. 

• Again taking from the lessons of September 11 the region has initiated an 

important project on Patient Tracking. In the aftermath of 9/11 it took 

several days to locate all the victims that had been transported from the 

Pentagon to area hospitals. This has serious implications for patient identity, 

family reunification and the ability for law enforcement to locate witnesses. 

Today, throughout the region we have deployed handheld devices that 

enable EMT's and paramedics at an incident scene to scan the triage tag of a 

victim and to enter basic information on the pre-hospital care and identity of 

the victim. This information is transmitted to a regional hospital 

coordinating center where the distribution of patients to the region's 

hospitals is coordinated so that no facility becomes ov~rloaded. Note that in 

this context the three sub-regions operate their own version of a hospital 

coordinating center but the three centers all coordinate with each other. 

• The NCR is home to seven local and two state bomb teams. The teams are 

highly integrated and interoperable through standardized equipment and 

procedures. Each team operates with the same equipment, tools, robots and 

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and provides mutual support to each 

other through our mutual aid system. Three ofthe regions teams are 

designated as the highest level capability (FEMA Type I) and can function as 

stand-alone teams; the other four achieve that designation when paired with 

a hazardous materials team. 

Under the joint leadership of the regions fire and police chiefs the bomb 

teams coordinate through a regional 'organization called Metrotech. This 

organization has developed a strategic plan that guides operational 

capabilities to include electronic countermeasures, underwater disposal, and 

the coordination of bomb disposal with SWAT operations. 

While these and many other response capabilities represent significant capacity it is 

important to observe that these discreet capabilities are useful only when deployed 

under an effective incident management system. On 9/11 the NCR established the 

model for regional incident management utilizing a unified command structure that 

included assets and organizations from local, state and federal government, some 

coming from as far away as the west coast. The success of that effort was largely 

due to two factors; the Incident Command System was well understood and 

practiced daily throughout the region for smaller incidents, and, key leaders, 

especially at the operational levels, had grown to know and trust each other. This 

continues today. 

4 
56 

Throughout the region local agencies handle a variety of incidents large and small. 

Incident command is established for virtually all of them with local authorities using 

capabilities inherent to their organizations and calling for mutual aid as necessary. 

Because many incidents are both complex and may extend over many days the NCR 

created a multi-disciplinary Incident Management Team (IMT). The team is 

designated as FEMA Type III and consists of members from the fire, police, public 

health and emergency management agencies throughout the NCR. The NCR IMT is 

used to staff special events and to augment a jurisdictions command capacity in the 

event of a large incident. The IMT has also been deployed during region wide events 

to support operational planning. IT has also been utilized to provide situational 

awareness during long term threats such as the outbreak of pandemic flu in 2011. 

Also, in 2010, FEMA used the NCR IMT at the National Response Coordination 

Center during the Haiti Earthquake. 

In closing I would like to emphasize that the NCR has made significant 

improvements to it preparedness efforts especially over the last 12 years. It is 

worth acknowledging that there is more to be done and each investment we make 

must be regularly evaluated for its currency and we must continue to ensure that 

the capabilities that we have developed are well maintained and can be properly 

executed when necessary. The strength ofthe NCR continues to be the strong 

relationships that have existed and continue to be fostered in recognition of the 

special nature of our region. 

Thank you for this opportunity and I look forward to your questions. 

5 
57 

STATEMENT OF PETER CRANE 

Counsel for Special Projects, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (ret.) 

before the 

Subcommittee on Emergency Management, Intergovernmental Relations, 

and the District of Columbia 

of the 

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee 

July 31, 2012 

1 appreciate the opportunity to submit this statement to the record of this 

Subcommittee's hearing on the critically important question of "How Prepared is the 

National Capital Region for the Next Disaster?" The Subcommittee is scheduled to 

hear from several state and local officials, including the chief of the Arlington County 

Fire Department. 

State and local emergency responders unquestionably have a cnIcial role to play in 

emergencies of all kinds, including matters normally under federal jurisdiction, such as 

radiological events, my area of professional experience. We saw an example of this in 

March 1975, during the Browns Ferry fire, at that time the most serious accident ever at 

an American nuclear power plant. (1 joined the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a 

lawyer just a few days later.) The hero of that near-disaster was the local fire chief of 

Athens, Alabama. Rejecting the advice of those who for hours had done nothing to put 

out the blaze, as they believed that water should never be used on an electrical fire, the 

chief said that he was prepared to take a hose and go in alone. His bravery and 

initiative saved the day. 

Likewise, the Three Mile Island accident in March 1979 illustrated the cnIcial 

importance of close coordination between State, local, and federal authorities in 

managing radiological disasters. The Governor of Pennsylvania, Richard Thornburg, 

and the NRC Chairman, Joseph Hendrie, were having to make decisions ad hoc over the 

phone, in particular, on whether an evacuation should be ordered. 
58 

It is therefore somewhat puzzling that in addition to the state and local officials here 

today, there are not also representatives of the Federal Government on the witness list 

for today's hearing. FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, at the very 

least, would seem to be obvious candidates. I assume that their absence means only 

that the Subcommittee intends to take testimony from them at a future hearing. 

I would like today to draw the Subcommittee's attention to one specific aspect of 

planning for radiological emergencies. That is potassium iodide, commonly referred to 

in scientific shorthand as KI. This chemical, the same one used to iodize salt, can if 

taken in time saturate the thyroid gland with a harmless form of iodine and block the 

absorption of harmful radioactive iodine, which might be released in a nuclear power 

plant accident or an act of terrorism. Radioactive iodine, if absorbed by inhalation or 

ingestion, can cause thyroid cancer, especially in children. Some 7000 cases of thyroid 

cancer in the former Soviet Union have occurred to date, a consequence of the 

Chernobyl disaster of 1986, and the numbers are likely to go on rising. 

Potassium iodide first came to widespread public notice in the United States during the 

Three Mile Island accident in 1979. The drug had been approved by the Food and 

Drug Administration just the year before as "safe and effective" for use in radiological 

emergencies. The problem, however, was that with the actual emergency at hand, 

there were no supplies of the drug to be had. Around midnight, an executive of a St. 

Louis drug company was awakened by a call from an FDA official, asking him to start 

up the production line as quickly as possible. At three in the morning, production of 

the drug began, and 24 hours later, the KI was delivered to the Harrisburg area. 

As it turned out, no significant release of radioactive iodine occurred, and the drug was 

not needed, on that occasion. Nevertheless the event served as a wakeup call. The 

Kemeny Commission, investigating the TMI accident, recommended that KI be 

stockpiled around every nuclear plant, and the NRC readily agreed, promising that it 

would require KI to be stockpiled in the vicinity of every nuclear plant. 

Then, however, the NRC did nothing for several years to fulfill this promise. In 1983, 

with public attention having long since turned elsewhere, the agency announced that it 

2 
59 

had decided that because serious nuclear accidents were so unlikely, stockpiling KI 

was not cost-effective. It therefore withdrew the commitment in had made in 1979. 

The promise that KI would be in place around every nuclear power plant remains 

unfilled to this day, 34 years later. 

The major lessons learned from Chernobyl included not only the susceptibility of 

children to radiation-caused thyroid cancer, as noted above, but also the safety of KI 

when administered on a mass scale. In Poland, 18 million doses of KI were given out, 

10 million of them to children. The Poles believe that the drug was critical to their 

success in avoiding an upsurge of childhood thyroid cancer of the sort that occurred in 

the former Soviet Union. 

My own particular interest in this area derives from the fact that I have been a thyroid 

cancer patient for 40 years. The disease is among the most treatable of cancers, but it 

can have major impacts on the quality of life, especially for pediatric patients. Since KI 

is safe, effective, and cheap, it makes sense in my view to make sure that it is available 

in the event of a radiological emergency, whether caused by an accident or an act of 

terrorism. 

Early in 2001, the NRC granted a rulemaking petition, filed by me in my private 

capacity, and agreed to offer KI to the states, at no cost, and to require states to at least 

consider its use as part of radiological emergency planning. The NRC was offering KI 

for the population within a ten-mile radius of nuclear plants. 

In 2002, in response to the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed, and President Bush signed, 

legislation to expand the availability of KI to a 20-mile radius around nuclear plants. 

The interagency group that maintains the Strategic National Stockpile added potassium 

iodide to the list of medications kept in reserve for emergencies. 

In 2004, a Congressionally commissioned report on KI by the National Academies of 

Science confirmed that in an actual radiological emergency, the need for KI might exist 

beyond the 10-mile radius in which NRC then offered it. Nevertheless, the NRC, 

which had opposed the 2002 legislation, fought bitterly to keep it from being 

3 
60 

implemented. The upshot was that President Bush's Science Advisor issued a decision 

holding that stockpiling of KI was unnecessary beyond the lO-mile radius, and 

declining to implement the law. 

As a result, the officials charged with maintaining the Strategic National Stockpile felt 

that they had no choice but to remove potassium iodide from the SNS in 2009. This is, 

to my knowledge, the only aspect of this country's readiness for dealing with acts of 

terrorism where our preparedness today has actually been reduced from where it was 

five years ago. Everywhere else, the Government has worked to improve our 

preparedness for disasters; here it has worked to lessen it. 

The question that persons new to this subject may be asking is this: what objection 

could there possibly be is the basis for the opposition to KI? What is so wrong with 

having it available, just in case, for use in emergencies? 

Perhaps the clearest and most forthright answer came from the NRC's senior adviser for 

preparedness, quoted in an October 22, 2007 article in USA Today ("White House may 

stop plan for anti-radiation pills"). This person was quoted as saying that the NRC 

"opposes broad distribution of the pills because the best way to eliminate risk is to 

make sure people don't eat contaminated food." The article continued: 

She also says the NRC is concerned about undermining the reputation of the 

nuclear industry. "It's always a concern that if you expand the distribution (of 

the pills), you don't have confidence in the plants," she says. "We have studies 

that show the safety of our plants." 

It thus appears that the public relations needs of the nuclear industry must take 

precedence over the public health needs of American children. What is hardest to 

understand about this attitude is that it means sacrificing protection against radiological 

terrorism simply out of fear that to have this drug available might incidentally cause 

some people to doubt the safety of nuclear power plants a completely different issue. 

We all hope that this country never experiences a major radiological disaster, either 

from an act of terrorism or a nuclear power plant accident. But it is a certainty that if 

4 
61 

one does occur, and KI is needed but unavailable, the American public will demand to 

know why their children were left inadequately protected, when around the world, 

governments have routinely stockpiled the drug ever since Chernobyl. The failure will 

no doubt be laid principally at NRC's door, given its record of having for so long 

"fought relentlessly" against KI, in the words of Professor Frank von Hippel of 

Princeton University, quoted in the New York Times on March 21, 2011. 

But the blame will hardly stop there. The question will surely be asked why President 

Bush's Science Advisor did not heed the advice of the National Academies of Science, 

and why President Obama's Science Advisor has so far failed to reconsider his 

predecessor's decision. Not least, it will be asked whether Congressional oversight 

committees were paying attention as potassium iodide was removed from the Strategic 

National Stockpile. It is not clear to me that they even noticed. 

The first step, I believe, is to see that potassium iodide is restored to the Strategic 

National Stockpile at the earliest possible moment. The next step is for the President's 

Science Advisor to revisit the issue of expanded stockpiling of the drug. If he fails to 

do so, I suggest that Congress consider reenacting the 2002 statute on KI, this time with 

no escape clause of the sort that permitted implementation of the 2002 law to be first 

delayed and then torpedoed. I urge this Subcommittee to consider holding hearings to 

explore the potassium iodide issue. If I can provide any assistance to the members and 

staff of the Subcommittee, I am ready to do so at any time. Thank you. 

Contact: 

Peter Crane 

6545 27th Ave. NW, Seattle WA 98117 

kinderhook46@yahoo.com 

206-783-8485 (home); 206-819-2661 (cell) 

5 
62 

Post-Hearing Questions for the Record 

Submitted to Christopher Geldart 

From Senator Mark Begich 

"How Prepared is the National Capital Region for the Next Disaster?" 

July 31,2013 

1. In the Subcommittee's last hearing we evaluated the measurements of how effective 

grant funding has been. Do you have any suggestions on how we can more 

effectively measure our strides in preparedness? Are there avenues through the 

grant reporting that can be improved? 

Strides in preparedness can be more effectively measured, and grant-reporting avenues 

improved, through continued analysis ofthe core capabilities outlined in Federal 

Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) guidelines, such as the 2013 National 

Preparedness Report (NPR). The NPR summarizes national progress in building, 

sustaining, and delivering the 31 core capabilities outlined in the National Preparedness 

Goal. The NPR highlights FEMA's Threat Hazard Identification and Risk Assessments 

(THlRA) reporting process as a crucial element ofthe National Preparedness System. 

The THIRA provides a framework for regional, state, and local jurisdictions to identifY 

threats and hazards that most stress capabilities, and establishes capability estimations 

and target levels of performance for each of the 3 I core capabilities. The District of 

Columbia and the National Capital Region (NCR) Urban Area Security Initiative is 

currently completing its second THIRA and embarking on completion of the capability 

estimations. These processes are helping to provide the District and the NCR with 

capabilities estimations and gap identification. Going forward, this process will provide 

an effective means of both measuring progress in preparedness and identifYing capability 

gaps ripe for grant funding. The THlRA and capability estimation process should 

continue to be a requirement by FEMA without too many changes year to year. The 

District and the NCR are investing time and grant dollars to develop THIRAs and 

capability estimations that truly reflect our capabilities and gaps in the Region. 

2. Could you provide threc things that the FEMA National Capital Region 

Coordination office could do to improve its efforts to coordinate with local and State 

communities and strengthen the regions preparedness? 

The FEMA Office of National Capital Region Coordination (NCRC) could improve state, 

local and regional efforts by assisting in better integrating the local federal agencies, 

which are all headquartered in the National Capital Region. The approximate 300,000 

federal employees that work in the District are part of the larger federal workforce that 

lives and works in the NCR. A critical element of regional coordination is 

communicating with these hundreds of thousands of employees. The NCRC could 

improve regional coordination among these employees by focusing on increasing 

situational awareness through: 1) active and joint efforts to educate and prepare the 

federal workforce; 2) participation in regional information sharing through the 
63 

coordination of the NCR Watch Desk and the Regional Infonnation Coordinator; and 3) 

ensuring that when events occur senior leadership at the Department of Homeland 

Security is connected with the senior regional leadership. 

3. Given the current fiscal environment, the National Capital Region has seen a decline 

in regional preparedness grant funds. Is the decline in grant finding impacting your 

ability to be prepared? 

Yes, the decline in regional preparedness grant funding is affecting the National Capital 

Region's ability to be prepared. The District has a unique character both as the Nation's 

Capital for hundreds ofthousands of federal employees, a hub for mass events like 

marathons, demonstrations, ceremonies and presidential inaugurations, and as a major 

target for man-made and natural hazards. The lack of adequate funding for capacity and 

capability development, given the level of both our identified and unidentified threats, is 

a hindrance to our ability to be prepared and our ability to lead regional coordination 

efforts. 

4. On a broader level, are there things that the federal government could do to 

improve our coordiuation with local and State governments in the National Capital 

Region? 

The "local" federal government could improve coordination with local and state 

governments by pursuing the same benchmarks for preparedness that are required by the 

Department of Homeland Security for state and local governments. For example, as a 

condition of homeland security grant funding all state and local employees receiving 

funding must be compliant with the National Incident Management System. Reporting 

and verification are required for state and local employees before further grants are 

awarded while federal employees are not required to do the training and/or report it. 

Reconciling these types of disparities would vastly improve coordination between federal 

agencies, their employees, and their state and local counterparts in the National Capital 

Region. 
64 

Post-Hearing Questions for the Record 

Submitted to Kenneth Mallette 

From Senator Mark Begich 

"How Prepared is the National Capital Region for the Next Disaster?" 

July 31, 2013 

1. In the Subcommittee's last hearing we evaluated the measurements of how effective grant 

funding has been. Do you have any suggestions on how we can more effectively measure 

our strides in preparedness? Are there avenues through the grant reporting that can be 

improved? 

Response 

As you know, FEMA requires states and urban areas to complete an annual Threat 

Hazard Identification Risk Analysis (THRIA) by the end of the calendar year. This year 

will be the second year of this requirement, and last month FEMA announced that it will 

also require states and urban areas to complete capability estimations for approximately 

one-third of the 31 National Core Capabilities. This additional requirement will 

challenge most states and urban areas to complete by December 31, 2013 and I hope that 

FEMA continues to provide ample technical assistance to assist states and urban areas in 

completing this process. 

Nevertheless, I believe that estimating capabilities will be a valuable exercise for all 

states and urban areas and is the best tool we have at a national level for measuring local, 

state, and national preparedness. Determining the equipment, plans, training, and other 

components required to execute FEMA's Core Capabilities will provide local 

jurisdictions and states with a quantifiable way of measuring levels of preparedness, 

identifying gaps, and applying preparedness grant funds to fiIJ specific gaps. This 

process - if successful- will enable local jurisdictions and states to explain in clear, plain 

language how federal preparedness grant funds are making their communities safer and 

more prepared for emergencies and disasters. 

Successful implementation of the THlRA and capability estimations relies in-part on: 1.) 

FEMA providing consistent guidance and requirements from year to year so that local 

jurisdictions and state are able to develop a process for addressing capability estimations 

and make continuous improvements; 2.) FEMA continuing to provide robust technical 

assistance to local jurisdictions and states in developing a THIRA and capabilities 

estimation process; and 3.) FEMA being flexible as states and urban areas determine the 

best approach to completing these reporting requirements and - if need be - allowing for 

more time to complete the CY2013 THIRA and the capability estimations. 
65 

2. Could you provide three things that the FEMA National Capital Region Coordination 

office could do to improve its efforts to coordinate with local and State communities and 

strengthen the regions preparedness? 

Response 

The concentration of federal agencies in the District of Columbia and the NCR creates 

unique challenges in ensuring preparedness across three levels of govermnent and the 

private sector that no other city or region faces. These preparedness challenges, coupled 

with the high risks the region faces from terrorist attacks, warrant a dedicated federal 

office with responsibility for working directly with local and state NCR partners. The 

following recommendations may assist the Office of the National Capital Region 

Coordination in its mission to support local and state NCR partners in its mission to build 

and maintain preparedness capabilities: 

• Codify the institutional home of ONCRe. In the years since the office was created, 

ONCRC has been housed in multiple offices and appeared in multiple organization 

charts. The most recent proposal is to "realign" the ONCRC with the FEMA Region 3 

Administrative Office in Philadelphia, which includes a partial relocation of ONCRC 

outside of the NCR. Local jurisdictions and state response agencies in the NCR see this 

frequent movement of the ONCRC and naturally wonder what it means for the office in 

terms ofresources, mission, and institutional support. An ONCRC housed within the 

Office of the Secretary of the U. S. Department of Homeland Security - as it originally 

was when the office was first created - reflects the importance of the ONCRC and best 

supports its mission of building preparedness across federal agencies in the NCR and 

ensuring their preparedness policies are aligned with local and state partners. But even 

more important than specific organizational placement of ONCRC is consistency; the 

ONCRC should continue to be located within the NCR in a permanent location inside 

DHS, provide consistent services to the region, and be transparent about the resources 

that it has to offer. 

• Continual outreach from ONCRC with local and state NCR partners on the 

resources the office has access to and is able to provide would further assist the 

region in ensuring that it is leveraging the ONCRC to the fullest extent. The 

ONCRC's core mission is to serve as a single point-of-contact for the local and state 

NCR partners that need to coordinate preparedness policies and plans with federal 

agencies located within their jurisdictions. This does not happen automatically and the 

ONCRC should continuously identify and meet with local stakeholders so they are aware 

of the ONCRC's mission and the services it provides. In addition, the ONCRC should 

continue to help local and state NCR partners cut through the federal bureaucracy and 

ensure that they are able to coordinate their preparedness policies and initiatives 

seamlessly with their federal partners. 

• Supplement ONCRC Watch Desk with analytical function. The ONCRC operates an 

NCR Watch Desk that provides situational awareness for local and state NCR partners on 

emergency events. Although this desk does not operate 24/7, it is supplemented by a 
66 

national FEMA Watch Desk to provide round-the-clock coverage. However, the NCR 

Watch Desk is one of multiple watch desks that serve the region; there is no lack of 

sources for information on road closures, weather events, or other emergencies. Earlier 

this month, I met with Kim Kadesch, Acting Director of ONCRC, and he acknowledged 

these duplicative efforts. Mr. Kadesch suggested that FEMA develop an analytical 

function to supplement its Watch Desk services and help local and state NRC partners 

understand not just which events are happening, but why they matter. I support this 

proposal and believe it could provide an important service for local and state emergency 

managers in the NCR. I look forward to working with the ONCRC on creating this 

service and ensuring that it provides valuable information for NCR partners and results in 

better emergency management decision making. 

3. Given the current fiscal environment, the National Capital Region has seen a decline in 

regional preparedness grant funds. Is the decline in grant finding impacting your ability to 

be prepared? 

Response 

Over the past few years, the NCR has been fortunate to receive relatively consistent 

preparedness grant funding from FEMA compared to many other urban areas. However, 

like all states and urban areas, the NCR has responded to the decline in preparedness 

grant funds by allocating a greater share of its grant funds to maintaining existing 

capabilities rather than building new ones. 

The threat landscape is not static and response agencies must continuously adapt to new 

threats and challenges as they appear. Today, local jurisdictions and states are just 

beginning to grapple with emerging threats like attacks on local and state information 

networks from cyber threats. In many areas of the country, they are also re-examining 

how they plan long-term recovery operations given the increased severity of recent 

hurricanes, tornados, and other extreme weather events. The region's response to the 

very recent mass shooting at the Navy Yard in the District of Columbia show that it is 

able to successfully coordinate a rapid response across mUltiple agencies at federal, state, 

and local levels. At the same time, there are no doubt additional steps and capabilities 

that the region's responder agencies should build to help further prevent or mitigate the 

damages from similar mass shootings or terrorist attacks. 

To successfully identify the capabilities needed to respond to the realistic threats that 

cyber attacks pose to states and local jurisdictions, the NCR will continue to rely on our 

federal partners for financial support as well as subject matter expertise in developing 

effective cyber preparedness programs. If the NCR is to enhance its ability to respond to 

a mass shooting, rather than just maintain our current capabilities, we will again rely on 

continued federal support from grant programs. Declining preparedness grant programs 

make it more difficult for local jurisdictions and states to adapt to new threats and ensure 

first responders, governments, businesses, and citizens are prepared. 
67 

4. On a broader level, are there things that the federal government could do to improve our 

coordination with local and State governments in the National Capital Region? 

Response 

Cyber security represents a threat area for which state and local NCR partners could 

benefit from greater engagement and information sharing with federal agencies. DOD, 

DHS, FBI, NSA, and other federal partners have far more experience, expertise, and 

resources in addressing cyber threats than their local and state partners. They understand 

the different types of threats, their effects on information networks and practical effects 

on critical services, and strategies that can protect against attacks, reduce risks, and 

mitigate damages. 

While these federal agencies already frequently meet with the NCR's fusion centers and 

local law enforcement partners to share cyber threat information and prevention 

resources, greater coordination and information sharing with the region's emergency 

managers and Chief Information Officers could help improve the region's protection and 

security of its information networks. In particular, ONCRC could playa role in helping 

the region's emergency managers and information officers better leverage the federal 

government's expertise in this area to identify key at-risk sectors and assets based on 

cyber threat information, develop preparedness priorities, and execute a strategic 

approach to securing the information networks behind critical life safety services. 
68 

Post-Hearing Questions for the Record 

Submitted to Barbara Donnellan 

From Senator Mark Begich 

"How Prepared is the National Capital Region for the Next Disaster?" 

July 31, 2013 

1. In the Subcommittee's last hearing we evaluated the measurements of how effective grant 

funding has been. Do you have any suggestions on how we can more effectively measure 

our strides in preparedness? 

Response: As the NCR updates the Homeland Security Strategic Plan, it is important to 

provide a framework to allow each jurisdiction to supply its own metrics to established 

goals and objectives in order to demonstrate real improvements in preparedness. To date, 

the metrics have usually fallen short in demonstrating preparedness because jurisdictions 

were asked to measure items that were not specific to their efforts. By calling for 

jurisdiction-specific measures to NCR specific goals, we will begin to see how each 

locality is improving its performance as well as that of the National Capital Region. 

Are there avenues through the grant reporting that can be improved? 

Response: The current format for reporting financial updates and narratives on the project 

works well, but is lacking in the area of performance metric reporting. When developing 

a project management plan (PMP), each jurisdiction should submit the metrics that would 

be used for the duration of the grant. Each project manager should work with the SAA to 

communicate why these measures are critical to the program, and should report any 

updates on Quarterly Reports. If a new or changed metric arises during the life of the 

project, an updated PMP should be submitted to the SAA for consideration. 

2. Could you provide three things that the FEMA National Capital Region Coordination 

office could do to improve its efforts to coordinate with local and State communities and 

strengthen the regions preparedness? 

Response: Three things that the FEMA National Capital Region Coordination office 

could do to improve its efforts to coordinate with local and State communities and 

strengthen the regions preparedness are as follow: 1.) Provide administrative, fiscal and 

operational support to regional emergencylhomeland security planning, training and 

exercises. 2.) Partner with the localities to provide real time situational awareness. 3.) 

Facilitate the execution of the First Hour Checklist as defined in the Regional Emergency 

Coordination Plan by participating in, and/or potentially hosting regional conference 

calls. 

3. Given the current fiscal environment, the National Capital Region has seen a decline in 

regional preparedness grant funds. Is the decline in grant finding impacting your ability to 

be prepared? 

Response: Over the last few years, we have seen our preparedness efforts in our 

established programs improve due to the sustainment of those programs with grant 

funding. Grant funds have allowed us to innovate in how we reach out to the community, 
69 

how we coordinate with regional partners, and how we train and evaluate our first 

responders. Where we have been impacted is in the limited availability of new resources 

for newer technologies. As emergency events evolve, we need to have access to funds 

that are not part of our important sustainment programs, and that can be used to innovate 

with our partners. 

4. On a broader level, are there things that the federal government could do to improve our 

coordination with local and State governments in the National Capital Region? 

Response: Yes. Strengthen the performance ofthe ONCRC in carrying out its 

responsibilities as defined in Public Law 107-296 -Nov. 25, 2002. Those duties pertain to 

assessing and advocating for resources; information sharing, coordinating plans and 

training among the government, private and non-profit sectors; and liaising with federal 

departments and agencies to coordinate planning, training, exercising and response 

efforts. 
70 

Post-Hearing Questions for the Record 

Submitted to James Schwartz 

From Senator Mark Begich 

"How Prepared is the National Capital Region for the Next Disaster?" 

July 31, 2013 

1. In the Subcommittee's last hearing we evaluated the measurements of how effective grant 

funding has been. Do you have any suggestions on how we can more effectively measure 

our strides in preparedness? Are there avenues through the grant reporting that can be 

improved? 

Response: The largest problem with evaluating the effectiveness of grant funding and the extent 

to which it affects our strides in preparedness is that the measurements are taken from 30,000 

feet even though the capabilities are developed and delivered at the ground level. The current 

approach is to rely on the states for assessing preparedness and for making adjustments too often 

without input from localities. The mere size of states often obscures the discreet threats that subregions within a state are subject to and the reporting methodology does little to highlight the 

value associated with many investments despite the occasional lapse in administrative processes 

or updating of a strategic plan. 

One suggestion to better evaluate our preparedness is to require states to organize by intrastate 

regions. These regions could then assess the threats most likely to affect that region and develop 

capabilities to address those distinct threats. Such a system could also result in better spending 

of grant funds by evaluating need on an area larger than one locality and by acknowledging that 

even within states, threats are diverse (e.g. the threats facing the northern portion of a state may 

not be the same as the southern portion of a state). This organizing approach could also facilitate 

more frequent mutual aid between localities, thus bolstering preparedness. 

If states were required to establish regions within their boundaries, stakeholder groups could be 

formed to assess threats, share information and develop capabilities inherent to that region. 

These regional bodies could also develop plans for providing aid outside the region when 

necessary. Each region could develop plans that could be aggregated as the state plan for 

submission to grant officials. Subsequent finding would then follow back to the regions for 

implementation. 

An excellent example of this approach is the Northern Virginia Emergency Response System 

(NVERS). NVERS is an organization that brings together FirelEMS, Law Enforcement, 

Emergency Management, Public Health, Technology and Hospitals representing the jurisdictions 

of Arlington, Fairfax, Prince William and Loudoun Counties and the cities of Alexandria, 

Fairfax, Falls Church, Manassas and Manassas Park for the purposes of regional planning and 

the development of operational capabilities. NVERS recognizes that preparedness is not 

bounded by jurisdiction or professional discipline and those preparedness efforts are more 

successful when these interdependencies are acknowledged up front. It also recognizes that the 

threats we face in Northern Virginia are different from those most likely to occur elsewhere in 
71 

the state. There is little reason that a construct such as this could not be replicated across the 

country. 

2. Could you provide three things that the FEMA National Capital Region Coordination 

office could do to improve its efforts to coordinate with local and State communities and 

strengthen the regions preparedness? 

Response: The office of National Capital Region Coordination does little to coordinate with the 

local jurisdictions of the NCR. The office is represented at the Senior Policy Group (which 

represents the states and the District of Columbia) but shares little information regarding the 

planning, information sharing and coordination activities of federal agencies with local 

governments who bear the majority of responsibility for preparedness activities. The office 

should consult regularly with representatives of local governments (where most of the 

capabilities reside) in order to develop a better understanding of the operating conditions oflocal 

governments and to determine how the NCRC can facilitate the closing of gaps that compromise 

the regions preparedness. NCRC should not engage in the development of tools or processes 

(e.g. risk knowledge base) without consultation with local practitioners. 

3. Given the current fiscal environment, the National Capital Region has seen a decline in 

regional preparedness grant funds. Is the decline in grant finding impacting your ability to 

be prepared? 

Response: Yes; the decline in grant funding is impacting local and regional preparedness. At 

the local level this has required that grant funds be used to maintain capabilities that local 

jurisdictions might have otherwise absorbed into their respective budgets. Additionally, there 

has never been a year when the aggregated assessment of regional needs did not exceed the level 

of grants. Even with local revenues invested in preparedness efforts, gaps remain. 

4. On a broader level, are there things that the federal government could do to improve our 

coordination with local and State governments in the National Capital Region? 

Response: Mandate that the Administration return the Office of National Capital Region 

Coordination to the office of the Secretary of Homeland Security and require that the ONCRC 

fulfill its original requirement to "integrate the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia into 

the planning, coordination and execution of activities of the federal government for the 

enhancement of domestic preparedness ... " Furthermore, Congress should, as part of its 

oversight responsibilities, encourage an appointee that has an understanding of the region and 

can effectively navigate the myriad of relationships and complexities inherent within. Lastly, the 

Office of National Capital Region Coordination should be required to report to Congress 

annually on the state of preparedness of the NCR; such a report should include an assessment of 

federal agency cooperation in the development of a prepared region. 

With regard to grant funding, FEMA should be required to develop a resource that would enable 

grant recipients to take advantage of successful projects already completed elsewhere in the 

nation. This resource (database?) would capture detailed descriptions of successful capabilities 

developed elsewhere to meet a specific need (e.g. patient tracking, supply chain management, 
72 

Æ 

tactical emergency casualty care, etc.) thus providing valuable guidance to other jurisdictions or 

organizations that require the same capability. Efficiencies could be gained by not "reinventing 

the wheel" and a measure of standardization and interoperability might also be achieved. This 

could lead to grants being better managed and contribute to a national architecture of 

preparedness.