U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

61–297 CC WASHINGTON : 1999

YEAR 2000 EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,

INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MARCH 22, 1999

Serial No. 106–59

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California

HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

DAVID A. KASS, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian

CARLA J. MARTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY

STEPHEN HORN, California, Chairman

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

JIM TURNER, Texas

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. RUSSELL GEORGE, Staff Director and Chief Counsel

BONNIE HEALD, Communications Director/Professional Staff Member

HARRISON FOX, Professional Staff Member

MASON ALINGER, Clerk

FAITH WEISS, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on March 22, 1999 ............................................................................ 1

Statement of:

Heckler, Margaret, attorney at law, former Secretary, Department of

Health and Human Services; Michael Humphrey, business director for

telecommunications and information, Public Technology, Inc.; James

Morentz, president, Essential Technologies, Inc.; Phyllis Mann, president-elect, International Association of Emergency Managers; and Lawrence Gerschel, Lawrence and Alberta Gershcel Foundation ................... 77

Walker, Michael, Deputy Director, Federal Emergency Management

Agency, accompanied by Lacy Suiter, Associate Director, Response and

Recovery Directorate, Federal Emergency Management Agency ............. 5

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Heckler, Margaret, attorney at law, former Secretary, Department of

Health and Human Services, prepared statement of ................................. 81

Humphrey, Michael, business director for telecommunications and information, Public Technology, Inc.:

Guide to Y2K and You .............................................................................. 157

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 90

Mann, Phyllis, president-elect, International Association of Emergency

Managers, prepared statement of ................................................................ 115

Morentz, James, president, Essential Technologies, Inc., prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 101

Walker, Michael, Deputy Director, Federal Emergency Management

Agency:

Guide for State and local emergency managers ..................................... 22

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 7

(1)

YEAR 2000 EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

MONDAY, MARCH 22, 1999

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,

INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Stephen Horn (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Horn, Biggert, and Turner.

Staff present: J. Russell George, staff director and chief counsel;

Bonnie Heald, director of communications, professional staff member; Harrison Fox, professional staff member; Mason Alinger, clerk;

Kacey Baker and Richard Lukas, interns; Faith Weiss, minority

counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority staff assistant.

Mr. HORN. The Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology will come to order.

From hurricanes and earthquakes to nuclear accidents and Y2K

computer meltdowns, disaster scenarios continue to provide a lucrative business for Hollywood movie makers. Most of us enjoy

those disasters on the silver screen, but we don’t expect them to

occur in our backyard. When they do occur, the human tendency

is to assume that they happen to someone else.

History is replete with examples of ill-equipped regimes, cities,

and business and governments experiencing natural and man-made

disasters. Such lessons should promote preparedness; but, distressingly, fear of unknown consequences places citizens at the risk of

either overreacting or not reacting at all.

Fortunately, as we prepare to enter the new millennium, there

is heightened awareness within the world, and specifically within

Congress, of new man-made risks that must be considered in emergency planning. The possibility of widespread computer problems

associated with the year 2000 is a concern. But it is only one concern among many.

As a Nation, we must prepare for disasters of all types, manmade and natural. Unlike hurricanes and earthquakes, we know

when the year 2000 problem will occur. Since 1996, there has been

diligent work to prevent widespread disruption in our national infrastructure; however, the Social Security Administration began its

work in 1989. It is unfortunate that neither the legislative branch

nor the executive branch understood the complexity of the management issues involved.

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Since April 1996 when this Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology has held various investigations and been in the forefront of how those investigating citizens,

private sector, and governments can best prepare for these emergencies, we have continued to prod Federal agencies to ready their

computer systems for the year 2000.

As the most recent report card reflects, the Federal Government

is working extremely hard to meet the unstoppable January 1st

deadline. Some agencies have been highly successful. A few others

lag behind. The year 2000 computer challenge, often called the millennium bug or Y2K, dates back to the 1960’s and 1970’s when

computers were bulky in size but small in memory, and a few programmers had the bright idea, Why are we wasting all of this

space by putting in ‘‘1967,’’ why don’t we just put in ‘‘67’’; the first

two digits are assumed to be 19.

Unless corrected, these date-sensitive computer systems and

microchips embedded in countless mechanical devices may misinterpret the 00 in 2000 as 1900. The fear is that this confusion

may cause the systems to generate erroneous information, corrupt

other systems or possibly shut down.

While the Federal Government is moving ahead with its Y2K

readiness, we remain concerned about State, local and international agencies, as well as businesses that exchange information

with systems. Nearly all of us who have been closely monitoring

this agree that the year 2000 won’t cause a massive shutdown of

the Nation’s infrastructure, but there may be inconveniences, some

of which could require an emergency response. Every citizen and

resident of this Nation needs to know that if they need help, help

will be available.

Today we will hear from both public and private sector emergency management experts. We have asked them to report on the

preparations that are underway for managing emergencies, concentrating on the response to the year 2000 computer problem and

other recent concerns, such as biological and chemical threats.

In addition to our distinguished panel of witnesses, immediately

after today’s hearing, four report groups will convene in workshops

this afternoon and tomorrow morning.

The first group will explore the role of technology in emergency

management.

A second group will identify the Y2K needs of citizens and emergency management response, specifically evaluating what needs to

be in a year 2000 tool kit.

A third group will sketch out a strategic emergency management

plan focusing on key emergency management policy issues involving both public and private sectors.

The fourth group will review the latest disaster information systems that could be used domestically and internationally.

The workshop groups will report their conclusions at 11:30 a.m.

tomorrow morning in room 2203 of the Rayburn House Office

building.

Before we introduce the panel of witnesses, I yield time to the

ranking minority member, Mr. Turner of Texas. And we appreciate

you coming.

3

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity today to review the emergency management procedures with

an emphasis, of course, on the Y2K problem. The hearing and the

workshop format by which we are addressing these matters is unusual for the Congress, and I am interested in seeing how useful

this approach will be for the participants as well as for the public. The focus of the workshop will include the review of two areas:

emergency management in general—ranking from man-made occurrences to national disasters such as flooding and hurricanes— and the specific emergency management preparation for Y2K. Y2K

presents some serious and unique challenges for this country, because we are technologically dependent. While there are those who will panic in reaction to potential Y2K

problems, Americans generally are not prone to overreaction. And

it is my hope that the mainstream media will maintain responsible

journalism to avoid unnecessarily inciting panic or anxiety on the

part of the American people. It should be comforting to learn that the Federal Emergency

Management Agency [FEMA], has been actively engaged in preparing for the date change. FEMA has reached out actively to,

among others, the State and local emergency managers. FEMA is

also holding Y2K workshops in each of its 10 regional offices, and

these workshops bring Federal representatives, State and local

emergency managers, State fire marshals, and State Y2K coordinators to the table to discuss the unique challenges presented by

Y2K.

Governments are working hard to assure that they are prepared

and there will be steps that individuals should take as well. People

should check with the manufacturers of any essential computercontrolled equipment they use, prepare basic emergency supply kits

and have a battery-operated radio and television available. This

basic advice is not offered to scare people, but simply to ensure

that they are prepared for any temporary problems which may

occur. Some advice, though well-intended, may actually create significant problems that otherwise would not exist. Unnecessary overreaction may well be our greatest potential obstacle on January 1, 2000. For example, advising people to fill their

gas tanks on December 31st will cause a gas shortage on that day.

Advising those who use prescription drugs to purchase a 3-month

supply might also create artificial shortages, one which could most

seriously harm those who are in need of prescription medications

but are financially unable to purchase them in advance. We must strive to assure that legitimate concerns are addressed

without causing undue fear and anxiety when commenting on Y2K

readiness. This hearing should be helpful for Americans to learn

what the Federal, State and local governments are doing to minimize any inconveniences due to Y2K. In closing, I would like to thank the witnesses and participants

who have come here today. I look forward to hearing your opinions

on emergency management, and I look forward to meeting the challenge of Y2K. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. I thank the gentleman for his excellent statement,

and now yield to the vice chairman of the subcommittee, Mrs.

Biggert of Illinois.

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Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too am pleased to

participate in today’s hearing on the emergency management challenge of the year 2000. As our witnesses I am sure know, today’s

hearing is one of a series of hearings on the Y2K issue. And the

subcommittee has heard testimony from a variety of governmental

departments and agencies as to their various level of preparedness

for continued computer capacity in the new millennium.

As prepared as the United States may be, situations are likely

to arise during the year 2000 date change that we have not anticipated. Emergency management may be an essential component of

our ability to deal well with these unexpected aspects of the new

millennium. I am interested to hear today’s testimony on the emergency management and our readiness for the challenges that we

face.

I will also be interested to review the results of the accompanying workshops related to today’s hearings. Working groups

will focus on the development of a Y2K tool kit for individuals and

families, preparation for local governments and policy issues for

both the public and private sector. I am pleased to see this emphasis on education and preparation for all sectors of our society. And

I look forward to the testimony and accompanying materials to address each of these areas.

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for your work in preparing this

hearing.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. I appreciate your thoughtful statement.

Let me just note the procedure this morning. We have two panels.

And we, by tradition of the full committee and the subcommittee,

swear in all witnesses. And No. 3, the minute you are introduced,

your statement is automatically made a part of the record, the full

statement.

We would appreciate it if you could summarize in your own

words the statements so we would have more time for dialog and

questioning.

So with the first panel, we have Mr. Michael Walker, the Deputy

Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency, otherwise

known as FEMA, accompanied by Mr. Lacy Suiter, the Associate

Director, Response and Recovery Directorate, Federal Emergency

Management Agency.

If you gentlemen, plus any assistants that are behind you that

might comment, please have them all stand. We will have a massive baptism and swearing in at the time.

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, also Kay Goss, who is our Associate

Director for Preparedness; Clay Hollister, our Associate Director for

Information Technology, and Carrie Brown, our Fire Administrator.

Mr. HORN. Thank you very much.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. HORN. All five possible witnesses and actual ones have affirmed the oath.

And we know you have a time schedule, Mr. Walker, and we are

going to try to accommodate you. So you have got a lot of traveling

today.

Mr. WALKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. HORN. So please go ahead.

5

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL WALKER, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, ACCOMPANIED

BY LACY SUITER, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, RESPONSE AND

RECOVERY DIRECTORATE, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And on behalf of FEMA’s Director, James Lee Witt, I want to thank you for

inviting us to participate in these hearings.

Mr. Chairman, a great deal of progress has been made on Y2K

and progress is being made every day. As Mr. Turner points out,

we are holding 10 regional workshops around the country, in fact,

we will be leaving here to fly to the West Coast for the last 3.

In those workshops, Mr. Chairman, we’re finding that awareness

is growing, and that more is being done to prepare for Y2K than

frankly we had expected to find when the workshops began. So it

is important to say the sky is not falling because of Y2K. We are

in agreement with the assessment that Y2K should not result in

major disruptions in America’s basic infrastructure.

Of course, there is so much hype and misleading information on

Y2K these days, it is very difficult for the American people to sort

fact from fiction. There are those who seek to scare people or profiteer from Y2K; others who bury their heads and risk a ‘‘wait and

see’’ attitude; and still others who fear panic and downplay the

whole thing. All of those approaches are wrong. They mislead the

American people.

To those who are afraid, let us assure them, there’s no need for

horror. There is no need to take money out of banks. There is no

need to head for the hills. In fact, those kind of extreme reactions

could actually cause a disaster that otherwise would not happen.

To those who would wait and see or those who are downplaying

Y2K, let us say, Y2K does not fix itself. Let us remind them that

fixing Y2K is about leadership. It is about taking responsibility.

And it is not too late. The biggest challenges are in the small business sector and in smaller towns and counties.

I am from a small town, myself, in Tennessee, and I understand

how difficult it is to scrape up the money to make infrastructure

investments on the local level. But I also know that failure to fix

Y2K will cost communities and businesses much more later on and,

at the same time, endanger the well-being of American families. Of

course, no one believes that every computer will be reprogrammed

or every date-sensitive embedded computer chip found and replaced

by the end of the year.

So while we do not now expect major dislocations, the emergency

management community is preparing to deal with the potential

consequences of localized disruptions. And I would emphasize that

where those disruptions occur will depend entirely on where the

Y2K problem has been fixed and where it has not. So local leaders

must wait no longer to assess their communities’ Y2K compliance

and fix their critical systems.

The truth is, Mr. Chairman, the Y2K challenge pales besides the

great challenges Americans have faced and conquered throughout

our history. So I commend this committee for helping to get the

word out that, while progress is being made, the job is not complete

and that we must fix Y2K where it has not yet been fixed, and that

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all of us share in the responsibility not to wring our hands, but to

fix the problem and rise to the occasion as Americans have

throughout our history.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, we look forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Walker follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you. I will yield my time to Mrs. Biggert, the

vice chairman of the subcommittee. Mrs. Biggert, the gentlewoman

from Illinois.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Walker, you said that there was a wide disparity of readiness in general. What about the emergency service systems at the

county and municipality level; is this just indicative of the Y2K

problem, or is this something that’s indicative of just emergency

readiness in general?

Mr. WALKER. Well, Congresswoman, the emergency management

system at every level of the country has improved substantially in

the past several years. Director Witt has made a great effort to

work with the States, and the States working with local communities to improve emergency management.

I remember when I was first growing up in Tennessee, emergency management in the fifties during all the floods was essentially neighbor to neighbor.

Well now we have, thanks to this fellow next to me, Lacy

Suiter—who was the emergency manager for many years in Tennessee before he came to Washington—a very professional emergency management system at every level. We’re finding that every

level of government is greatly improved from where it used to be,

but, of course, just like any other institution, it differs from place

to place.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Are there special—is there special attention to

911 or any of those emergency systems of what will happen?

Mr. WALKER. Well, with regard to 911 specifically, there are

4,300 911 systems in the country. Through the Fire Administration, we have conducted a survey of 911 systems participating with

the National Emergency Number Association. What we’re finding

is we’re beginning to get responses back from those requests, and

we’re finding that work still needs to be done in some of the areas.

So we’re going back out and resurveying the 911 systems, quite

frankly, as an effort to remind them that they must get on with

the job.

Mrs. BIGGERT. What then about the fire departments? Is this

something—is there a way to communicate media crisis information to and from these fire departments?

Mr. WALKER. Oh, yes. We have already been in touch with

32,000 fire departments around the country, and they’re hard at

work at making their systems compliant. And we feel very confident that the vast majority of fire departments will be Y2K compliant.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Are there some that are holding out on this?

Mr. WALKER. It is like I said in my opening statement, it is a

bigger challenge in smaller towns and communities, in large part

because it costs money. And I found out over the weekend, for instance, that the neighboring town to mine in Tennessee just found

out they’re going to have to spend $200,000. That is a lot money

for a small town.

Mrs. BIGGERT. All right. Then do you think that the established

channels of the communication between the Federal Government,

the State and the local government are sufficient?

Mr. WALKER. I do. And Lacy might want to comment on that.

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Mr. SUITER. Certainly between the Federal Government and the

State government, there are a number of independent systems

which are not dependent upon the normal telephone switch networks to communicate with them. With the National Warning System, we can talk to every State all at the same time on one of the

world’s largest party lines, if you will, and get information back the

other way. And that goes to about 2,000 different communities all

across the country, also in the larger communities, as well as other

warning points around the country.

And then there are the side band HF radios that are in place— there’s any number of redundant communications to the States.

Many States have far superior communications with their local

governments than even the Federal Government does. Those are

currently all going through an evaluation process, which we will

have some information by the end of April, by April 26th actually.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Who really—who is responsible really for developing these communications, the Federal Government or the States

or the locals?

Mr. SUITER. Between the Federal Government and the State government, obviously FEMA and the different Federal agencies that

are involved have different communication systems. FEMA itself

has the national emergency systems which connect the President

with the Governors and the different State agencies that have

emergency responsibilities in it. Between the State government and

the local government, it is obviously up to the States to set up

whatever type of system they have, and it is different all across the

country.

If you go to the State of Arkansas, there’s a rather major 800

megahertz system that connects all of the major services together.

Different States have different systems. Some of them are satellite

driven, such as in California and in Florida.

Mrs. BIGGERT. What would be FEMA’s top priorities for ensuring

maximum community and individual citizen awareness and readiness to cope with potential problems posed by the Y2K phenomenon?

Mr. WALKER. As we sit here today, our top priority is to get the

word out in those communities and businesses that have not yet

fixed the problem, to fix the problem. That is the No. 1 thing. We

still have 9 months left in the year. Nothing about Y2K is preordained except the date. We know what the problem is, we know

how to fix it. It is a matter of leadership and taking the action to

do so.

Mrs. BIGGERT. And how are we going to ensure that within 9

months—some of these people are going to have problems, aren’t

they?

Mr. WALKER. Well, as I said in my opening statement, we—everyone knows that every computer won’t be reprogrammed and

every embedded chip is not going to be found by the end of the

year. So that’s why we are preparing for what could be localized

disruptions in various communities that frankly just don’t make

the investments in time.

Mrs. BIGGERT. As I was coming over here today, there was—just

caught a snippet on the news—one of the schools had a fifth grader

in their school that they wanted to hire to fix their Y2K problem,

17

because he was the genius of the school that was going to be able

to do this. And it was a big thing with the school board about

whether they should pay him those big bucks that some of these

other people are getting.

Mr. WALKER. I have a nephew like that, I understand.

Mrs. BIGGERT. So I think sometimes people are waiting for that

one person that’s going to come up to be able to solve this whole

problem. And I think we have found that probably isn’t true.

Mr. WALKER. It just takes hard work. It is tedious work, but it

is work that can be done.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. You’re welcome.

I now yield 6 minutes to the ranking member, Mr. Turner of

Texas, for the purpose of questioning.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Walker, what do we know about the status of

our electrical power companies? I mean, it seems to me that could

be the greatest problem if we have power failures. In my own

State, I know Texas Utilities has been quite diligent to be sure

they are ready for 2000. What’s your impression of the state of

readiness?

Mr. WALKER. In fact, with regard to Texas, I just read on the

way over here a statement from the Texas Utility Board, I think

they released over the weekend, saying they were confident that

electric power and telecommunications, et cetera, would be in good

shape in Texas. With regard to the electric power grids, we agree

with the assessment that a great deal of work has been done, and

that there is not an expectation at this point that there will be any

kind of widespread electrical power problem.

As you know, the President’s Council on Y2K is divided up into

25 major sectors. FEMA chairs the emergency services sector, the

Department of Energy chairs the energy sector, and they’ve been

doing a great deal of work through the North American Electrical

Liability Council. And all of their findings, by the way, are posted

on the web of the Council. So we believe that the national structures are in good shape.

I would note that the Senate committee pointed out that there

could be problems in rural areas like rural electric cooperatives. I

know in my home when there’s an ice storm, they often go down,

a little bit longer than others. NAERC has released a statement

since that report came out saying that they are—they’re staying in

touch with their members, there are a thousand of them, and

they’re working hard to get compliance and they believe they’re on

track.

Mr. TURNER. Would you describe for me what the general—or

generally describe the kind of problem that power companies are

having to prepare for? Where is the weak link in the power grid

that causes them to have a Y2K problem?

Mr. WALKER. Well, according to what the assessment is from

NAERC, there appears to be no weak link in the national power

grid at the present time. But I am not an expert on that. I would

have to refer you to the Council for specifics.

Mr. TURNER. I have a great deal of concern. I would be interested

in your assessment of what you have sensed the public reaction is

to Y2K, because I fear—my greatest fear is that we will overreact.

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Mr. WALKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. TURNER. I was at home this weekend. Visiting with my dad,

and he just happened to mention that he checked into the price of

generators and that the one with the electric starter was $2,600,

but you can get one for $900 if you are willing to crank it. But at

his age, he said, ‘‘I don’t know if I can pull the cord on it to start

it.’’ And I was a little bit surprised, and I said, ‘‘Dad, I don’t really

think you need to be worrying about buying an electric generator.

And, you know, from my perspective, I really feel that way,’’ and

yet my own dad was out there pricing generators.

So give me—you know, you have been traveling around, you have

been to these workshops—do you sense a growing panic out there?

Are we doing pretty good?

Mr. WALKER. The problem is there’s so much misinformation and

hype about Y2K. There are people who are really scaring people or

trying to profiteer from it. There are people, on the other hand,

who just wish it would go away, because they’re afraid of panic.

And then there are others who are saying, Well, you know, I don’t

know if it is going to affect me, so I am going to wait to see. All

of those approaches miss the mark.

So I think it is very important that we continue the effort that

we’re engaged in and that this committee is engaged in, in getting

the word out to the lowest level of government in the country and

to every community that, No. 1, there’s no need to head for the

hills, that the national structures are in good shape, that most

communities are doing what they need to do. But in those that are

not, we would encourage citizens to begin asking the question of

their local leaders, What are you doing, and are you going to be

Y2K compliant? That will help immensely.

Mr. TURNER. I understand the problem you described, talk about

embedded chips, and the problem that we may not find all of those

problems, and they may be out there. But it just seems to me that

the bigger problems, the problem of loss of electric power, that

those seem to be becoming fairly remote as possibilities based upon

what the power companies are doing.

Mr. WALKER. That’s correct.

Mr. TURNER. I really have never had a discussion with anybody

in that industry to know. But it would seem to me if there was

even a disruption that it would be able to be remedied fairly quickly. In my hometown, I am from a rural area, as you are, we’re accustomed to having occasional power disruptions, and you might

lose the meat frozen in your freezer, but that’s about the extent of

it. It seems to me that most of those problems could be very well

overstated.

Mr. WALKER. Yes, sir. I agree, Mr. Turner. I mean we have that

happen every year. We just had an ice storm in Tennessee. We had

ice storms all over the country and power has gone off for a few

hours or a few days, and the companies have responded just like

they would in any crisis, and got the power back on.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. I thank you. I also grew up in a rural area, and I

agree on some of these things that we’re talking about.

I think, Mr. Walker, when you and I chatted a week or so ago,

I mentioned the problem of frequencies in Los Angeles County. We

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have 81 cities there, a county of 10 million people, the largest city

being the city of Los Angeles, 3 of the 10 million. I happen to live

in the second largest city there, which is about 450,000, half a million. And when I was at the university, California State University

at Long Beach, we had our own police force, all the rest. And when

we engaged in these exercises, all the channels were jammed; when

you have got 81 cities, the sheriff, all sorts of National Guard, Reserves, so forth.

What does FEMA know about our vast urban areas and the ability to communicate? Are they going to be jammed up again, be it

riot, earthquake, in our case; fire, flood also in our case, and so

forth; what can you tell us about that?

Mr. SUITER. Yes. First of all, Ellis Stanley, who is the director

for the city of Los Angeles is with us today and could probably explain more to you about the details of how the city of Los Angeles

operates, if anybody can.

Mr. HORN. OK. We will swear him in.

Mr. SUITER. And I would strongly suggest you seek his advice.

Basically, since last July, we have been working with the different

Federal agencies to make sure that the information that we were

passing on to the Governors in this country was reasonably accurate. Information about such things as the power grids, the national communications structure, the fact that the Federal Government itself, in terms of its emergency systems, would be working

and the problems we have would be corrected.

We have been spending a great deal of time getting that done.

We have been convening all the Federal agencies in the Catastrophic Disaster Response Group, which is part the Federal Response Plan. And defines how the President will manage a potential disaster declaration. We’re in the process right now of preparing an operations supplement to that response plan that will

say what the Federal Government will do in response to specific requests from the Governors.

We’re just about to the end of the 10 regional meetings. As Mr.

Walker has indicated, he will be attending the last of these meetings this week. When we get to the end of that, our regions will

be giving us a specific assessment, State by State, which is due in

to the director by the end of about the 26th, I believe it is, of April.

And from that, more information will be compiled and put together

so that we will have better information, as an example, of what Mr.

Stanley is doing in Los Angeles and the specifics of how all of this

is working together.

We hope that as a result of all of this, we are planning for a nonevent in the process that would come out, and if it is a non-event,

at least it is an event that will have an appropriate reaction and

not an overreaction on the part of the public to those things that

are concerned.

In New England, last year where we had the major ice storms

and we lost major transmission lines and people went without

power for 2 or 3 days and it—most communities, I mean there’s

been a great deal of change in the United States since the turn of

the century. Since the turn of the century, a hurricane came to

shore in Galveston, TX and killed 6,000 people. It doesn’t happen

anymore.

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That isn’t necessarily because the Federal Government or the

State government did anything; it happened because the local government communities and their acceptance of the responsibility of

what they have to do to prepare their people. That’s where all of

this occurs first. And that’s who owns the disaster.

I would suggest to you, sir, that local community acceptance and

responsibility is going on in the country right now. I may not be

as easily reportable at this stage as we would like, but in another

30 days we will have a better feel for that level of preparedness.

And I think we’re going to see a great deal of improvement over

the next 30 to 45 days or at least in terms of identifying more specifically for us at the Federal Government what the requirements

might be.

Mr. HORN. Does FEMA have a satellite at all that’s dedicated to

its ability to send messages throughout the United States?

Mr. SUITER. The answer is yes.

Mr. HORN. Is it strictly for the use of FEMA or is it shared? Just

identify yourself. Sit down and make yourself at home. There’s an

extra chair. This is just family folks.

Mr. HOLLISTER. Yes, sir. Clay Hollister, FEMA Chief Information

Officer. Yes, we do. We have what we call the FEMA switch network, which is a voice and a data network, which we manage, full

period lease circuits, including one satellite transponder. And we

manage all of our own switches, and that’s our primary source of

communications. And we do have that available. For disasters, we

use it all the time.

Mr. HORN. Could that satellite be blocked by either a foreign

power or somebody in the United States so the communications

wouldn’t reach the ground?

Mr. HOLLISTER. Congressman, I don’t know whether that could

be jammed. I really don’t know the answer to that.

Mr. HORN. Could we get the answer and put it at this point in

the record?

Mr. HOLLISTER. Yes, sir, I will get it for you.

Mr. HORN. Without objection, it will be put at this point in the

record.

I think you ought to have a satellite. I think we ought to have

a number of alternative means so the Federal Government can

communicate, as well as some of the State governments, like California with 33 million people or so, would pay if they could communicate with the cities in California particularly, since we’re so

earthquake prone and not just not fire prone. We have got enough

of those every year, and not just flood prone.

I’ve got the largest flood control problem in the country in the

Los Angeles River alone, with 500,000 people affected in the floodplain, as FEMA knows. And FEMA has been very helpful to get us

through this thing, slowly but surely. Two more years, we think

the levies will be up, and you will release the insurance that we’re

going through right now and then that will make my constituents

very happy. And five other members’ constituents, I might add.

So what about other means of communication?

Mr. HOLLISTER. We also have the FTS system, Federal Telecommunications System. And we have the public switch network.

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Mr. HORN. But that FTS system, does it have its own systems

throughout the country?

Mr. HOLLISTER. Yes, they’re managed by dedicated vendors who

manage the switches, as well as the dedicated lines. So that’s another fallback. And the third, at least in terms of voice, is the public switch network itself, which we can go out commercially and

communicate. We also have HF radio, which communicates. We

have a FEMA–HF system, which is there as well. And we have satellite phones which we use in disasters, which we are going to certainly place at each of other regional offices.

Beyond that, we had made—we are looking at the possibility of

putting satellite phones in each State emergency operation center

as another alternative. We proposed that, and we’re waiting to see

whether the requirement is still valid for that in the fall based on

what we know.

And, finally, Mr. Suiter referred to it, we also have the National

Warning System or NWS, which is a two-way 1,500 drop communication system between FEMA, the regions in each State, ERC, so

we have a quite robust voice connectivity, sir.

Mr. HORN. Well, getting back to that satellite, and any satellite,

what does the Defense Department tell you about the ability of

other types of satellites to put a beam into that satellite and just

mar it from ever transmitting messages?

Mr. HOLLISTER. Well, I would have to answer that for the record,

sir.

I would have to go back to DOD on that. It is a commercial

transponder. We lease it from a commercial vendor. It is one of the

standard voice transponders up there.

Mr. HORN. Do you have full use of it?

Mr. HOLLISTER. Yes, sir, we do.

Mr. HORN. OK. That’s good news.

Mr. HOLLISTER. Yes, sir.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Turner, do you have any other questions?

Mr. TURNER. No other questions, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. Mrs. Biggert, do you have any other questions?

Mrs. BIGGERT. First of all, just a comment. You might have

floods and earthquakes, but in Illinois we have sometimes belowzero weather. And if we don’t have the electricity and the heat, it

will cause quite a problem, even without any of those national— or natural disasters. So I think in all parts of the country, it is certainly a problem.

Just one other. You have copies of a planning guide—— Mr. WALKER. Yes, we do.

Mrs. BIGGERT [continuing]. Entitled what, Contingency and Consequence Management Planning?

Mr. WALKER. Right. A Guide for State and Local Emergency

Managers. We brought extra copies today for the committee.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mrs. BIGGERT. Right. And this is for State and local emergency

managers so that they can see how—kind of judge how far along

they are in their planning?

Mr. WALKER. Yes, ma’am.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Here we have issued report cards to the Federal

agencies. Is there anything that you might plan to do that with the

State and local governments?

Mr. WALKER. Congresswoman, there are 87,000 units of local

government in this country. On top of that, there are another

200,000 water districts. That might be a little more difficult than

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Mrs. BIGGERT. Probably so. But I think, though, that knowing

that somebody is kind of looking to see the progress helps to move

people along.

Mr. WALKER. Yes. And the State emergency management officials are doing just that. They’re working hard to stay in touch

with their local communities.

Mrs. BIGGERT. OK. Thank you very much.

Mr. WALKER. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Let me add to that. The problem of small cities that

you and I grew up in, small towns—and we’re trying to get at this,

and if the other body will help us with it, it will be done—and that

is provide some incentive from the Federal Government in either

loans or grants, or a combination thereof, to get their water facilities up to speed both environmentally and simply for the basic case

of emergencies.

Does FEMA have any input when the administration is circulating legislation like that around the executive branch?

Mr. WALKER. EPA is a member of the Federal response plan and

they’re responsible, of course, for the sector under the Y2K Council.

It will be more appropriate for EPA. They would be doing it for the

Federal response plan.

Mr. HORN. Well, what I am thinking of—terrorism. I am thinking of what can be put in the water supply. It seems to me FEMA

has a major role that they’re not going to look at the environment.

That’s fine.

Mr. WALKER. Yes, sir. FEMA coordinates 27 Federal departments and agencies under the Federal response plan, including

EPA, but EPA is the lead agency for all of that, that you just referred.

Mr. HORN. Including environmental terrorism?

Mr. WALKER. Yes. Yes, sir.

Mr. HORN. OK. Well, we will deal with them in my other hat too,

which is being on the Subcommittee on Environment and Water

Resources.

Mr. WALKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. HORN. OK. Let’s see here. On current research and development efforts related to emergency management, are there any programs you have with universities or other State emergency groups

that might well have done some things maybe the Federal Government hasn’t done, and it is a good idea and maybe we ought to do

it? How is that working?

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Mr. WALKER. I would like to refer you to Kay Goss, our Associate

Director for Preparedness. Her office has responsibility for just that

work you described.

Ms. GOSS. We have a higher education project in which we’re

making an effort to get a degree program or at least a certification

program in emergency management offered in every State. And I

am very happy to report that we have all but 18 States involved

in that right now. Also Director Witt has a fairly elaborate program

through our Project Impact, working with institutions of higher ed

and their research centers in making them disaster resistant, to

protect the resources that they have such as libraries or their research centers.

Mr. HORN. Are there curricula developed, and perhaps FEMA

has help for this, in emergency management where you have pulled

together the best examples nationwide; or are there books that professors and, say, public administration have written on their own?

What can you tell us about that?

Mr. GOSS. Higher ed institutions have done that, as well as our

Emergency Management Institute in Emmitsburg, MD. And I am

really glad you asked about best practices, because the Preparedness Directorate now for the 4th year has published a volume of

exemplary practices in emergency management. Mostly they are

low-cost or no-cost programs at the local level that can be replicated nationwide.

Mr. HORN. Is that printed through the Government Printing Office?

Mr. WALKER. Yes, it is.

Mr. HORN. So it is available to the public?

Mr. GOSS. Yes, it is.

Mr. HORN. Can it be downloaded from any computer system?

Mr. GOSS. Yes, it is on our website as well. Yes, sir.

Mr. HORN. So if they punch the right button, they can find all

of your wisdom on emergency management?

Mr. GOSS. Yes, right.

Mr. HORN. Good, I think that’s great.

Mr. GOSS. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Well, that’s all the questions I have. And we thank

you and your team for coming up here. And we wish you well in

these regional meetings.

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. If I might

add something to Congresswoman Biggert, you point out very well

that you know you can have a flood or a hurricane or an ice storm

any day of the week. What we hope is that the American people

take to heart that they need to be prepared for everything. They

need to be prepared for that ice storm or whatever and to take care

of their families on a daily basis. So thank you for mentioning that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. All right. With that, we wish you well and we will call

the next panel. Thank you for coming.

Mr. WALKER. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Panel two has the Honorable Margaret Heckler, now

attorney at law, former Secretary of the Department of Health and

Human Services; Mr. Michael Humphrey, the business director for

Telecommunications and Information of Public Technology, Inc.;

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Dr. James Morentz, the president of Essential Technologies, Inc.;

and Ms. Phyllis Mann, the president-elect, International Association of Emergency Managers.

Are there any assistants or anything that you might be calling

on, because we will get them all. It is like the Pentagon. When they

show up, there’s usually a battalion. So I just want to get them all

sworn in at once. So you’re it, right? Lawrence Gerschel, and you’re

with the Lawerence and Alberta Gerschel Foundation. Why don’t

you just join Ms. Heckler there? If you will stand and raise your

right hands.

[Witneses sworn.]

Mr. HORN. The clerk will note that all five witnesses have affirmed that oath and we will begin with Ms. Heckler. We thank

you for coming and sharing your ideas with us.

STATEMENTS OF MARGARET HECKLER, ATTORNEY AT LAW,

FORMER SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND

HUMAN SERVICES; MICHAEL HUMPHREY, BUSINESS DIRECTOR FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION, PUBLIC TECHNOLOGY, INC.; JAMES MORENTZ, PRESIDENT, ESSENTIAL TECHNOLOGIES, INC.; PHYLLIS MANN, PRESIDENTELECT, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF EMERGENCY

MANAGERS; AND LAWRENCE GERSCHEL, LAWRENCE AND

ALBERTA GERSHCEL FOUNDATION

Ms. HECKLER. Thank you so very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I have a sense of deja vu sitting here, because as a new member of the House of Representatives in 1967,

under Chairman Jack Brooks, this was my first committee assignment. Many years have passed; hopefully some knowledge has been

gained.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you so much for sponsoring this

hearing, for holding this the hearing. I want to express my own appreciation to FEMA for the leadership that they are providing to

the problems that we are dealing with today. And I am here today

particularly because of my former service as Secretary of Health

and Human Services, because I think that the millennium bug Y2K

and its ramifications deserve special attention as this problem pertains to the question of health care in America.

The state of the medical institutions in terms of preparedness

really, I think, mirrors the state of the public and private sector.

Some institutions have completed their evaluations, and remediations and are in the final stages of testing. Others have elected

to do nothing. The larger private institutions have, to a great extent, been able to drive their health care systems into some semblance of readiness, although the majority are behind schedule and

overbudget.

In general, the level of readiness of the outlying facilities, especially the municipal and county hospitals, lags behind the larger

private hospital groups and health care systems. The unique environment of medical facilities, coupled with the extraordinary variety of procedures, operations, administration hardware, all of this

makes the problem in health care more complex than in other industries.

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The problem is compounded by the fact that failure of these systems does not just involve an economic risk, but really a risk to

life, to the welfare of the patients involved.

The repercussions of these problems will undoubtedly be litigated

over the course of many years in the future. Yet the effect of the

loss of a single loved one will be felt a lifetime. We are dealing with

human life. And in a limited examination of human health care

systems I have been involved with, some patterns have emerged

which could assist other health care institutions in their efforts to

resolve these problems.

It is quite clear that many of the larger, hospital-based health

care systems have recognized the enormity of the challenge and

have sought the very best available assistance and shared information among themselves. These institutions have established their

own websites, have posted the results of their internal testing of

the hardware of the various departments, and this sharing of information has gone on on an informal basis.

However, it should be recognized that searching the Internet for

sites with information on any subject is not an easy task. It is very

time-consuming, very arduous. The current search engine architecture is really based on data bases which report out on printed material, rather than on webpages. We feel very strongly and recommend to the committee that the committee ask the Congress to

establish a super health care website.

The point of this is to create a repository of the results of the 500

best medical centers across the country, which could then serve as

a resource, not only for medical centers of their size, but for all

health care facilities. The administration of this site should be supervised by, for example, an NIH, FDA, another organization chosen by the secretary of Health and Human Services, but what we

really need is the accurate and faithful transfer of information.

We recognize that this site must not assume any liabilities or

make any guarantee, but it would serve as a focal point, one single

focal point on the Internet easily accessible to all health care providers and patients. The maintenance of this, which might be the

Y2K Medical Internet Library, should be undertaken by a world

class Internet systems integrator and maintained on a constant

and continuous basis.

This would allow all health care professionals the benefit of reviewing, with a high level of confidence, the work and the results

carried out at many other institutions, and will avoid their having

to painstakingly review each website looking for answers on even

a specific piece of technology. It is clear that the formal collecting

and posting of these results is designed to accelerate the process

of driving the health care system into compliance, making it easier

for the smaller providers and rural hospitals, community hospitals,

those that have more difficulties.

And it will mitigate and reduce the costs of the whole system and

of the process for everyone involved. It will have the advantage of

making the rural, county, innercity, public-private health care providers share in all of the latest breakthroughs and information.

It is important to realize that while we are planning for success,

that there will be some failures in the health care industry. And

I think, just statistically, we can expect that. Some of these may

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be foreseeable, but because of the enormity and complexity of the

problem, it is imperative that an emergency planning process in

health care be started immediately. Planning for future failures

must occur, or we will have failed to plan because there will be inadequacies; which is not to suggest that we have become filled with

anxiety and panic, but let us calmly look at the best practices and

take action now.

The likelihood of system failures is increased because of the

interconnectivity of the data flow. One health care facility did unknowingly cause another to fail by transmitting corrupted data.

This data may cause the system and an institution to crash. Despite the fact that the data base and software is compliant. Such

a situation could occur, for example, if a nursing home with limited

resources would transmit corrupted data to a primary care institution, to the hospital taking care of the patient.

This data could cause the hospital system to freeze, or worse yet,

lead to misinterpretation which could lead to an inappropriate

treatment plan and with potentially fatal results.

Because we live in a complex, multifaceted environment, it is important that we consider the possibility that the current resources

for health care may be additionally stressed by a number of natural

disasters such as have been discussed this morning, or by failures

in other industries such as the power industry; and if they fail to

remediate their systems, it is important to realize that a substantial amount of health care services are rendered by county and municipal hospitals, for whom the problem of compliance not only is

complicated by the lack of funds but, at this point, lack of time.

It is therefore very important that we develop a national plan for

response to possible regional failures of the health care system.

This plan should rely upon the expertise and capabilities of government’s own systems and have available the military hospitals as

well as the assistance of major medical centers, possibly the Veterans Administration Hospitals.

In terms of impact economically, there are two levels of concern.

The first is the price of bringing health care into compliance in a

given timeframe. And in the face of ever-increasing health care

costs, there’s no doubt that the costs of improving and correcting

the year 2000 Y2K problem for health care will run into billions

of dollars. It is estimated that the majority of health care product

suppliers alone, not service suppliers, will spend on an average

more than $11⁄2 million each to simply deal with the issues of compliance in their own companies.

This is money which in the aggregate represents $2 billion and

which will not be spent on a new products, on new services. These

costs do not take into consideration the costs of litigation, which is

predictable and which has been estimated to add an additional $4

billion for health care product suppliers alone.

Major health care systems in urban areas are finding that not

only the problem has become complex as they try to become Y2K

compliant, but that their initial budgets are woefully inadequate.

One institution which had initially budgeted $40 million has already spent $46 million, and they have not finished testing half of

their systems. The overall costs are probably going to be well beyond $60 million for that one institution, and on and on it goes.

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However, we must not only think of the direct costs, but we have

to think of the indirect costs of health care, and the consequences.

These costs represent the loss of income tax revenues as the effort

of many individuals and companies are focused not on improving

efficiency or developing better services, but merely the effort to

maintain the services at the level they existed prior to January

2000.

It is with this in mind that we invite the committee to consider

forming a special separate task force of technology experts with expertise in health care to evaluate and recommend potential actions

which would lead to a more efficient process in that sector of the

economy for the evaluation and the proposition of policies which

could lead to an improvement in the way—in the compliance of the

health care system under emergency conditions.

The problems before us are really of very serious scope. No administration has ever had to deal with this before, and it is really

a virtual plague which has really been thrust upon us inadvertently. Nonetheless, it does threaten our society. Never has a society

been so betrayed by its own efforts to create a better quality of life

for all its citizens. Failure in the health care field will be measured

in terms of human suffering and the suffering of friends, family,

neighbors, your constituents across America.

We personally recognize the very extraordinary effort of this committee to address these issues and to address them in a timely

manner. We understand that. We congratulate you, Mr. Chairman,

and members of the committee. We are prepared to assist you and

your best efforts with our best efforts and our thoughts in any way

to resolve and avoid the difficulties inherent in not dealing with

this problem.

We will all be standing tall when these questions have been

faced and resolved, God willing. But I would like to say that we

thank you for the opportunity of bringing us here today to speak

to these issues and to address the concerns which you obviously

have for the people of America.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Heckler follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Well, we thank you very much for that thoughtful

statement. We will write Mr. Koskinen this afternoon to suggest

that idea. It is more appropriately done by the executive branch,

and he has about 30, 35 working groups in a lot of these industrial

areas.

When we were in Cleveland, we had a witness from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation who noted that we do, and I think you referred to it, have a website nationwide where all of the emergency

equipment in hospitals throughout the Nation can plug into that,

with the manufacturer of the piece of equipment, the actual design

number, so that not everybody has to reinvent the wheel, once the

manufacturer tells you what type of substitute microchip you can

have and so forth.

So some of that, as you suggested in your own statements, is underway. But I think you’re absolutely correct in terms of the great

difficulty and the tremendous number of health care institutions

and hospitals, and under different managements all over America,

it is very difficult, especially in the smaller communities that you

can see three members here come from originally, now that we live

in urban America.

We will now proceed with the next witness. We will save the

questioning for later once you are all done. And the next witness

is Mr. Michael Humphrey, the business director for telecommunications and information, Public Technology, Inc.

Mr. HUMPHREY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to make a few brief comments, let you ask questions as you see appropriate.

Just for the record, PTI was created in 1971 as the technology

arm of the National Association of Counties, the National League

of Cities and the International City/County Management Association. So we represent really local governments and their technological needs across the country.

Mr. HORN. Was one of your offices at California State University

Long Beach? There was a public technology group there.

Mr. HUMPHREY. No. We have competition out there.

One of the things that we discovered in last December was that

a large number of local governments were not prepared for the year

2000 effort. We did a survey. We found something like 57 percent

of all city managers in towns and cities over the size of 2,500 did

not think the Y2K problem was an issue.

Because of that, our board of directors, which is composed of our

sponsors I just mentioned, asked us to create a tool kit I am going

to make available to you. It is a tool kit for really an awareness.

This is a real serious problem, and it is a bit dated now, but I think

you will find it useful. Also, most of that information is on our

website, which is available.

I want to talk just briefly about what local governments do, and

I don’t need to tell you this, but I think it is important to understand that almost all emergency services are delivered through

local governments. The public safety answering points in this country are run by local governments; not FEMA, not the States, but

local governments. And if electricity or dial tones fail, those organizations, they will not know where to dispatch citizen help. They

will not know where to send ambulances, police or fire. And so it

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is extremely important to local governments to understand that the

impact—potential impacts of Y2K are enormous and have grave,

serious conflicts.

Also local governments don’t do a lot of glamorous things. They

collect the garbage and treat wastewater, but these are all vital,

important pieces of the infrastructure that we know of. We believe

we can turn on the tap and get a drink of water out of the hydrant

without fear generally of any sort of bacteria. However, most of

these services are highly interdependent with local private industry.

For instance, I mentioned electricity. Electricity is provided in

about two-thirds of local governments by investor-owned utilities;

privately owned, investor-owned utilities. Much of the water systems are initially treated and gathered and presented to the local

entity. Insurance companies rely upon police reports to be available

and most of these reports are done through the use of computers.

So, there is a terrific interdependence upon local government.

The other point I wanted to make about that is local governments have the first obligation to respond to emergency situations.

A friend of mine, Manny Garcia, in Miami-Dade was talking about

the emergency management plan for the county and how they used

it successfully with Andrew. When Andrew went through the south

part of the county, they worked hard simply by pulling off the plan

and executing the plan. They found things they had to redo and

things that wouldn’t work. But this is an important function of

local government is to be prepared in case of problems either of

their causing or of the organizations’ in their communities causing.

So what is the likelihood? Everybody wants to know the same

thing. I hear the speakers this morning talk about what is the likelihood. I don’t know, and I do not care, and it doesn’t really make

any difference, and neither does it make any difference for local

governments. They have to be prepared to respond to the situations

that are presented to them. And if they do not, we fail. Not just

them; we fail. And our society’s most vulnerable citizens are at

risk.

If it happens, ‘‘it’’ being some sort of Y2K event, I would argue

that it is not going to be a localized event, it is going to be a widespread event. Take the issue of electricity. If we lose electricity in

this country the way it is defined and created, the grid protects

itself from shorts. It protects itself. It shuts itself down in case of

disaster. The blackout in the Northeast many years ago was created by a $3 switch, which we have replaced by an embedded chip.

But the point being that this huge infrastructure has not done this.

We have not gone through this. We have not had this kind of an

issue. And the recent ice storms in Montgomery County and elsewhere illustrate an interesting point. We sent men with bucket

trucks, heavy-duty guys that split high-voltage wire. We are going

to need people who understand what an embedded chip is. That is

not those guys in those bucket trucks.

Mr. HORN. I missed that last word. What was it?

Mr. HUMPHREY. Bucket trucks, cherrypickers. Sorry. That is the

Oklahoma vernacular.

Mr. HORN. We have a lot of your citizens in California.

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Mr. HUMPHREY. I want to read one thing here. If an average person bought a modest amount of food and bottled water and withdrew cash and obtained flashlights, it is probably a good thing. But

what happens if everyone does those in the final days of 1999?

What would happen if I told you a really serious thing was going

to happen, and then I told you it was likely to start happening January 1, 2000? Finally, what if I told you I was not confident that

our government and our private institutions were prepared to handle it? What do you think would happen? I think I know what

would happen. I see predictions of snow in the Washington area,

and I realize suddenly that the ability to get bread, milk and videos

is gone at that point.

There are three things I would like to ask the committee. One

was the chief administrative officer, Bruce Romer, for Montgomery

County testified in front of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on

the Year 2000 Technology Problem. I think you and Senator Bennett are the only two people doing things—I am only joking, but

sometimes it seems that way. They proposed that the Federal Government help local entities develop regional capabilities.

They did a test, as you know, on December 21st of last year.

They proposed doing one regionally for this year, and then replicate

that in the remaining 9 months across the country. They project

that costs will be $7.3 million for the city or the regional areas and

$1.5 billion across the country, and these are pretty bare minimum

numbers, but they take care of overtimes and that sort of thing.

The second thing I think important for the Federal Government,

and I appreciate the position that Mr. Witt and FEMA are in in

trying to deal with emergency problems, but the second real important issue is the Federal has assets that local governments could

use, can help use. They are probably not going to be useful in a

nationalized, mobilized way. They are probably going to be most

useful locally. And in my prepared testimony I talk about the city

of Albuquerque needing to get a commitment with the Army National Guard in case of no electricity so they can continue to provide electricity for their treatment plant, which is a very serious

problem in Albuquerque.

The third thing is there is kind of a feeling, a rosy, feel-good feeling about this problem from the Federal Government. It is an ‘‘it

can’t happen here’’ kind of syndrome, in my opinion. We don’t want

to panic people; therefore, we are not going to tell them bad news.

The people in industry call it ‘‘happy talk.’’ The Y2K people, some

of which are here in this room, will talk about that as happy talk.

I think the American people are very smart and savvy people. I

think if you tell them the truth—we don’t know, we don’t know

how big a problem it is, we don’t know how big the risk is, we don’t

know what the situation is for them—I think they will respond to

that. They have historically, and I think that would be the third

thing is to project a position that I don’t know, we don’t know what

the problem is, but we are working hard to fix our own systems.

We are working hard to develop emergency management responses

in case there are problems, but we need your help and your community to help resolve these issues. We need the American Red

Cross, the volunteers, we need people in each community to come

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together to make that community a better place in case there are

problems. That is the message. Thank you very much.

Mr. HORN. Well, we thank you for that helpful statement, and

in the question period we will get into some of the underlying

things that does it happen at who’s leadership level.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Humphrey follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Dr. Morentz is next. Dr. James Morentz is president

and chief executive officer of Essential Technologies, Inc. Welcome.

Mr. MORENTZ. Thank you very much. I am going to start out a

little bit differently than the prepared comments because I bring 25

years of experience in applying technologies to emergency management. As a result I would like to take a minute or two to offer a

historical perspective on technology and emergencies and then

draw on the confluence that exists today between traditional emergency management and the Y2K issues. Finally I’ll point out both

a gap and an opportunity in government preparedness.

In 1975, when I finished my doctoral dissertation on managing

a disaster in Africa and how communications technology affected

that management, there was no emergency management field, and

there certainly was nothing that would pass as a body of knowledge in technology applications to emergency management.

In the past 25 years a lot has changed. IBM created a computer

hardware standard that really energized an entire industry. Microsoft created new universal software standards for operating systems that allowed software companies for the first time to write

commercial software because there were sufficient people that we

knew we would not go out of business.

FEMA was created and then recreated by James Lee Witt to provide professionalism and organization among emergency managers

across the country. College programs grew, from George Washington University here in town, to the University of Wisconsin, to

North Texas State University, all of which are now providing degree programs in emergency management.

On the technology side, Jack Dangermond of Environmental Systems Research Institute really created the entire field of geographic

information systems, an incredibly important component of crisis

decision support.

Satellite multispectral imagery arrived to help us understand the

natural world around us far better than ever before, and the progression of communications has improved in ways that we only

dreamed about. In the early days when amateur ham radio was the

only form of wireless data transmission that existed, and even then

with land line communications, modems limped along at 30 characters per second and really made the exchange of meaningful crisis management information impossible.

Today, the Iridium satellite system that is about to be launched

replaces with 3-pound devices entire suitcases of electronics, making response to a crisis faster, better, and more informed.

And I would like to say out of my basement emerged the company that created the field of crisis management software that has

now provided more than 10,000 systems to government and industry around the world that helped save lives, protect property, and

preserve the environment.

All of this is by way of reflection on the improvements and the

people who make up emergency management and the technology

that supports them. This is especially important today as we move

toward the year 2000 when the Y2K problem poses a risk that all

crisis planning and response organizations in government and the

private sector should be attending to with commitment.

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To me, the most important thing that should be remembered

about the Y2K risk is that it is really just the latest potential crisis. The consequences of Y2K failures are the same consequences

we in the profession face every day. A utility outage can result

from an ice storm as well as Y2K. Sewage treatment failures can

result from floods as well as Y2K. Food shortages can result from

hurricanes as well as Y2K. Disruption in the source of raw materials for manufacturing plants can result from earthquakes as well

as Y2K. Failures in telephone systems can result from tornados as

well as Y2K. And the shutdown of hospitals across an entire city

can result from a terrorist releasing biological agents. Clearly the

list could go on. But the emergency management profession has

progressed significantly in our ability to handle crises just like the

ones that may occur in Y2K in large part because of the broader

uses of technology, the same root cause of Y2K, to improve the crisis management processes.

At the same time these improvements in emergency management

have been incremental and achieved only with struggle. As a result

I would like to suggest that the Y2K problem is an event of distinction because it presents both the problem and an opportunity. Y2K

is a marvelous confluence of a real-world problem that is predictable in its timing, probabilistic in its effects, and manageable by an

in-place infrastructure much in need of focus that Y2K provides.

The emergency management profession can bring much to bear

on the management and the consequences of Y2K failures. The

Congress and the administration need to provide that focus, first

in government and then in the private sector, in order to maximize

the ability of existing emergency management organizations to

handle this problem.

Now this is not a difficult task. It is a matter of continuing the

policy the government started to be prepared for Y2K by extending

it to include a reinforcement of the information infrastructure for

Y2K and, therefore, for all of emergency management.

Stated most directly, an in-place information system for managing crises has been evolving across the Federal, State and local

governments in recent years. Y2K offers an opportunity to A, use,

B, build on, and C, expand this system to provide a permanent resource for managing all hazards throughout the United States.

The initiative that should be undertaken is to use both existing

and new crisis management centers, linked by software that has already become the de facto standard for Federal Government emergency planning and response. The combination of operations centers with an information management system will provide government with an exceptional quickly implemented Y2K contingency

management capability that can easily support the Federal response plan that you heard discussed by folks from FEMA earlier.

At the present time there are a couple of Federal agencies, notably FEMA and the Coast Guard, that are beginning to look at the

potential of what I am saying, the potential for creating rapidly

stood-up crisis response centers focusing on Y2K, automating the

emergency planning process, carrying out contingency plan tests in

the coming months, deploying to every desktop across the Federal

Government, and State and local governments an intelligence gathering tool that will help monitor the Y2K events as they unfold,

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and then to successfully managing the Y2K contingency response

to any incident across the country.

By providing a Y2K focus on crisis management, the effort expended in this particular problem will provide substantial benefits

for overall crisis management to the Federal, State, and local governments for years to come in all types of natural, technological

and terrorist weapons of mass destruction.

To conclude, I think it would be helpful if we could just take 1

additional minute to give you a glimpse of the technology that can

help manage the Y2K consequence management that is currently

in use in quite a few Federal agencies, and if this actually works—

yes, there we go. What you are seeing up on the screen [slide 2]

is the software that is in use in about 5,000 licensees across the

Federal Government. About half of the approximately 30 major

contingency management centers for Y2K that need to be set up

are using this software.

Any contingency plan begins with the assessment of the potentially vulnerable infrastructure that is available in the system.

Here [slide 3] you can see geographically shown the hospitals in

the State of Washington vulnerable to Y2K failures. The product’s

next set of pages [slide 4] that focus on Y2K help to organize the

contingency plan and operating procedures in a series of response

scenarios, so in a sense we are, through the software, set to respond to a Y2K incident.

What you see now on the screen [slide 5] is an Internet browserbased Y2K alert that every morning we are going to recommend,

beginning in July, the companies and agencies that have this software have each of their individuals who have a computer log in to

the Y2K alert. Every day there will be a changing message about

Y2K informing them about an organization’s response or about government’s response or about the larger issues of Y2K. This provides

good, positive, constructive information to this network of people

who are beginning to think about Y2K and how we can all get prepared to deal with it starting in July.

Then if something actually happens, there is a Y2K alert management system on the desktop of everybody in an organization,

from the supply chain for making automobiles or to the Department of Energy here in the United States. And I maintain the first

indication of Y2K failure will come from an administrative assistant’s desk where they see the first indication of something odd happening, or at the plant floor, where the difficulty occurs. That gets

entered, [slide 6] and that information then gets immediately

transmitted back to a command center that focuses on Y2K in two

respects: identification to see whether this, in fact, is a problem,

and then what do we do about the consequences associated with

that problem [slide 7].

In the software that exists now, that gets translated into an operations log [slide 8] that then instantly gets translated into a contingency plan by the software [slide 9] that allows people to begin

to respond to the emergency [slide 10].

Thus we are drawing together using the very technologies that

present us the Y2K problem, forcing them to be our solution to

Y2K. All of this is available and ready to go with a tremendous

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number of licensees in the Federal, State, and local governments

needing now simply a focus.

I thank you for your attention.

Mr. HORN. We thank you for that very helpful statement. I am

sure we will have a lot of questions about it when we get to the

Q&A.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Morentz follows:]

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Mr. HORN. We now have our last panel witness Mrs. Phyllis

Mann, the president-elect of the International Association of Emergency Managers. You might wish to tell us a little bit about the organization and then go on to your very helpful ideas.

Ms. MANN. Thank you. The International Association of Emergency Managers represents 1,700 emergency managers both with

local, State, Federal, military systems and across the world, not

just in the United States. We are aggressively seeking emergency

managers both through Italy, Australia, England and many other

countries. Everyone cleaves to our organization because we are the

one organization that will accept any and all emergency managers

for their face value what they do at the local level.

In emergency management—and, Chairman Horn, I will take

you at your word today, we are going to have a family discussion

here today. I am sorry Mr. Turner walked out because Mr. Turner

is absolutely wrong. He should have been preparing his daddy with

that generator, especially if his daddy lives in Texas. In Texas you

never know what is going to happen, be it the boll weevil that is

coming your way, or the storms that they have experienced, or the

floods. So the very least I would do if my dad lived in Texas is not

only buy him the generator, which I am sure Mr. Turner could afford to do, but I would teach my dad how to turn it on.

And that is what is going on in the United States today. Same

with you, Mrs. Biggert, is that here we—you are in Illinois. I would

assume today in the back of your vehicle that transported you here

to this meeting that you have an emergency kit in your car, and

at the very least in your office you have comfortable shoes to wear

just in case when we walk outside that door day that the wonderful

weather that we are having turned to rain and then snow, and we

had to slide along the city sidewalks.

This is what we are seeing in our level of government. We are— and I am sorry I don’t consider myself the lowest form of government. I always considered myself the highest form of government.

You all are here to serve me.

Mr. HORN. Let me hasten to say it was none of the Members of

Congress that made that statement.

Ms. MANN. I understand that. I truly understand that. But I did.

I always looked at Federal Government as the agency that serves

me as the local government. Here we go. This is our problem at the

local level, and I made sure that in coming here today I articulated

this to your staff because I can mince no words with this. I don’t

need another tool kit. I am tired of tool kits. I am tired of contingency plans. It is the local level in government that has all hazard

planning. I am ready for any hazard that is hitting my community.

We have plans. And, in fact, I was kind of chuckling to myself assuming that you all have found all these chips. Well, I have some

doubt. I really have some doubt that you found them all. And so

this is what we are doing at most local levels.

I can tell you exactly where most emergency managers that are

professionals will be on New Years Eve. We will be in our emergency operations centers just in case. We will have stood up our

emergency operations centers somewhere between December 27th

and 29th. At that point, some of them are very sophisticated, like

I am sure Ellis Stanley has in Los Angeles. It is a designated room

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with computers and generators and satellite radios. And obviously

I am a ‘‘wanna be,’’ I would like all of that, but I live in Kitsap

County, WA. I am a 1-hour ferry ride away from Seattle. We are

a peninsula. I know exactly what is going to happen during the

Y2K transition in my community because it happens all the time

when we have power outages. Whenever there is bad weather in

the Northwest, peninsulas like mine do without. We do without

power. We have experienced this frequently, and there is not one

area of the United States who hasn’t done without power.

A good example of power disruption just because somebody

punched into the line was in San Francisco just, what, a couple of

months ago. Do you know that the only operating facility in downtown San Francisco was Nordstrom’s? Now, for those of who you

don’t know what Nordstrom’s is, it is a very sophisticated upscale

shopping store. They were also not only able to check you out using

manual systems, but their generator came on, and they could still

make you a latte. There were very few—— Mr. HORN. I sorry; I couldn’t hear that.

Ms. MANN. A latte, cappuccino. But that is what we are talking

about when we are talking about any hazard that affects the public.

Somebody here keeps talking about panic. I am sorry, we do anecdotal research. I have yet to see the scientific data on this, but

here it goes. I have been an emergency manager since 1991 paid

by local government. I have, prior to that, been a volunteer with

the American Red Cross, which I still am as a disaster volunteer

and instructor. Would somebody please tell me where in the United

States we panic when we have an emergency? I have yet to see

panic. I have seen hungry people, I have seen people standing in

line for their water, but I have yet to see people panic after a natural disaster. Y2K is the preparedness for the winter storm. If you

are ready for the storm, you will be ready for Y2K. Why are we

so afraid to tell the public let’s get ready?

One of the things that consistently is happening throughout the

United States is this inconsistent message, and we heard it today.

And our friends at FEMA are our partners in preparedness, but

they had an opportunity today to say let’s get ready just in case,

but in between that sentence were 10 other sentences that discounted the fact that we just don’t know if we are going to be

ready.

So here it goes. If we told the American public today, let’s get

ready just in case, and let’s just swag it, let’s just use a good old

standard 7 days in a natural disaster. We ask you to get ready

independently for 3 days on your own, and that is because the 3

days is not for the citizen, it is for me. It is for me, the local government, to reconstitute myself. So if Y2K is going to be widespread, it is going to be intermittent disruptions throughout the

communities, then the very least we should do is tell our citizens

let’s get ready for 7 days, and if you start buying your groceries

today, and bought 1 extra day of food, that is all I am asking for

your family. If you did this once a month, you will have 7 days of

food by October. So then you would not have to worry if the video

shop and the little ‘‘Handy Andy’’ was not open. You would have

it there in your house.

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By all means you should have flashlights, for goodness sakes. We

have power outages throughout the United States. You have should

medicine. I am sorry for Mr. Turner. I do not recommend a 90-day

supply either, but I think that every American who is on critical

medication should always have 30 days of medication on hand at

any given time. So what is the difference? This is what I ask my

citizens and especially my seniors: ‘‘Why don’t you have 30 days’ worth of medicine on hand?’’ And the answer is the insurance carriers will not allow it. They will not fund it. So we have a golden

opportunity this year to say, all right, insurance carriers, let’s get

them ready. Let’s get this 30 days’ worth of medicine. What is

wrong with 7 days’ worth of food?

And last but not least, I will tell you this: This is what I am

doing about my financial records. In October, I am taking all of my

401(k)’s—they are not numerous—I am taking my 401(k), my IRA,

I am make taking my mortgage, although they could drop that one

at any given time, I am taking any critical record I have from October November, and I am moving them to my safety deposit box in

the bank because it happens to be a fireproof area. If I get deleted

during the transition to Y2K—and you and I both know you can

get deleted any time, it is only a computer—then I am going to be

able to reconstitute my life.

In Kitsap County, WA, we are going to do the same service for

our senior citizens. If they get deleted, if anything happens, we

have trained caseworkers that will help our seniors reconstitute

their life. We don’t want them to panic, but they will if we do not

give them straight information.

So I will tell you this, Chairman Horn, if Washington, DC, cannot tell the American people how to prepare, then the International

Association of Emergency Managers is about to. We are about to

tell you how to get ready for 7 days. We are go to join our partners

in preparedness with the Red Cross and lead you down the path,

and what we think you should do here in Washington, DC, is join

us.

I will not—I repeat, I will not get on an airplane December 31st.

I am paid to have common sense. I might just wait a couple of

extra days just in case, and I think that that is what we all should

be paying attention to: Just in case, let’s get ready. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Mann follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Well, we thank you for your ideas. Now let’s discuss

them. Vice Chairman Biggert.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will start from the

beginning.

Ambassador Heckler, I think that you have, you know, developed

a plan with the super website. Would that include or is there now

someone who would be capable of really dealing in the human services and the hospitals that would have the technical ability to be

able to take what came in from other hospitals, synthesize it, and

come up with something that could be readily found? I think that

would be the most important thing. That it is not just a website

where everybody pours in, but to be able to put it into some means

that would be synthesizing what had taken place.

Ms. HECKLER. This is why the administration would have to be

conducted by someone with the medical expertise. But the chairman referred to the Cleveland Clinic, which is an outstanding institution. Many of the outstanding institutions are doing everything

possible and doing a great deal, but is your county hospital in your

own congressional district aware? There are so many different

websites now that one could spend an age looking for the right information on a specific piece of equipment, for example.

The need for the super health care website is simply pulling that

together, and it would have to be administered. That is why I suggested it could be under the aegis of NHS or some designee of the

Secretary of HHS, but the medical expertise would have to be

there. The amount of testing that is going on now in the major institutions is revealing the weaknesses of the system, and there are

weaknesses. Even with the certification, the embedded chips in so

many medical devices can mean life or death if the wrong record

is provided because the computer has crashed, the wrong person is

treated, et cetera.

The medical expertise is essential, and the delivery of the information through a sophisticated technological world-class group that

can provide it immediately on the site, because the information has

changed, and there is so many thousands of particular products,

particular situations that need to be reported. So you are absolutely right, we have to have this.

And I happen to sit on another—wearing another hat on a bank

board, and I see in the bank on the audit committee, we are spending half the time of the committee on Y2K, on specific programs,

and the financial institutions will be ready. But what we learned

because there are regional collaborative arrangements from all the

banks, and when a software package arrives with a flaw, and they

do even though the manufacturer believes or the producer believes

that it is perfect, they learn that it does not work at all, and then

one bank will alert the producer, and the patches are put in, and

every single software package has all of these patches so that you

need both the medical expertise and the technological expertise to

put this whole thing together in the right way.

But there is not a lot of time. Dealing with your medical problems is simply not something you can prepare in the way that you

can put your flashlights in the back seat of your car or have your

stash of 30 days of food or 7 days of food. Your medical emergencies

arise, and the technological credibility, the integrity of the system

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is under a most unusual threat. And that is why, frankly, dealing

with this problem now is essential. We are late already, and there

is no way the smaller hospitals will be able to cope so that it is

necessary not merely to study the problem. We are past that. There

are steps that can be placed, and it is combining those two.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Mr. Humphrey, you pointed out about the services

of local government, and you said that in your assessment of the

interruption risks, that it was going to be a larger-scale problem

probably than we would expect. And I think most of all of us are

used to emergencies. I know in my State or in my hometown we

had the local phone company and the wire—we had an installation

there, it burned to the ground, and in our town we were without

any phone service for over a month, so people got pretty used to

going down to the little phone booth that was the emergency phone

booth that was set up. And fortunately it was about the time that

cell phones really came into their own and certainly were increased

a lot there. And that was a lot longer than we would expect an

interruption of service.

And what I think is the problem, or what I see is the perception

is that something can fail in this, and we have no idea that will

come back on. When you have a phone company and the wires

burn down, you know that they are going to fix the wires, and they

are going to be able to come in and actually reattach, connect the

fiber optics and they will be able to solve that. But with Y2K, since

we are not going to know what is going to happen until that actual

date, that how long there will be some interruption in service, and

I think that is the fear that people have, rather than just that it

is another emergency, it is one step further.

So, I guess that we need to know that the testing is so important,

that things will work. But there still is that final hour when that

turns over of what is actually going to happen. And I think that

you are absolutely right to be prepared in every way we can, but

I think that is why we have these hearings, to let people know

that.

Mr. HUMPHREY. I think that is the key point that the lady at the

end makes, and that is that not knowing what is going to happen

means that we have to be prepared. And emergency management

people have to make sure that their emergency management plan

has Y2K problems in it that they know what they are going to do.

I was recently in Denver. Denver has dealt very well, I think,

with the Y2K problem. But the one thing that they don’t feel like

they can do is provide warming shelters in the case of problems.

They think that is a Red Cross problem. But the question I asked

them, which they didn’t necessarily want to hear, but I said, what

happens if your nursing homes people begin to perish in your nursing homes? What are you going to do? And the point is they need

to understand that. They need to understand what they are going

to do, if anything. It may not be an appropriate role, but it is something that they have to consider, and it is hard, hard decisions to

make.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you.

Then going with that with Ms. Mann, I can understand that you

don’t want us to panic people, you don’t want us—I think actually

what we are doing is just the opposite, that we have held these

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hearings to let the American people know and to know that there

are concrete things that can be done, and that is why we have had

these hearings.

You are absolutely right. I keep my boots most of the time, or

I send one of my staff home to get my boots because I can’t get out

of the door. But there are emergency matters that you deal with

and alternatives the way that you deal with the problem. But I

think that what we don’t want to have happen is that 3 days before

this clock turns over, or 2 days or 1 day or at that time and say,

well we have got a problem, let’s just use our emergency measures,

because that is not going to work, that we do have to be ahead.

We have had airlines that have come in and said that their executives are going to be in the air on January 1st because they are

confident that their systems are going to work. I don’t think that

I want to be in the air on January 1st either, but that is up to everybody. But I think that with the articles that we have seen in

the paper, the more exposure that there is to this, that people will

get ready and not panic and go out and try and buy the supplies,

the flashlights, the last couple of days.

So it concerns me that I think that this is what we have been

trying to do, or that there have been articles about bank statements, making a copy of your bank statements ahead of time so

that you have all of that because you may not be able to do that

on that day. I think that you are right to be prepared, but I think

that is what we are purporting to do here in these workshops and

everything.

Ms. MANN. At the same time though, and this is what we see at

the local level, is that we take one step forward and two steps back.

So, for instance—and I wasn’t going to use this analogy, but I will

today, it is in my bag, and I will show it to you at the break. I was

at the beauty shop getting ready to come to Washington, DC, coloring my hair so that you couldn’t see all the gray, and I was sitting

there reading a travel magazine, which I never read. I enjoyed it

because it was about millennium traveling and how you can go on

a cruise ship and go here and go there and how the FAA says that

everything is just A–OK. Then I go back to my office and then I

open up my mail, and there is my Emergency Preparedness News,

a very reliable piece of information that I receive on a monthly

basis, and it is citing Chairman Horn, and he is talking about the

FAA report card. And this is what is happening at the local level,

the FAA report card was not an A. In the travel magazine it led

us to believe that it was an A. And this is what the American people away from the Beltway are experiencing is this inconsistent

messaging.

So what I am saying is that there is nobody at the national level

who is leading the preparedness charge. Mr. Koskinen and his

team are doing a great job getting everybody ready with the infrastructure. At the same time we have not heard the President or the

Vice President of the United States sitting down with the American

public and saying, let’s get ready just in case. We are a self-reliant

system. We know that we have sustainable communities. That is

the model of NACO is sustainable communities, but you at least

have to tell them at a consistent messaging.

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And you are absolutely right, we don’t want to panic people, and

we certainly don’t want them filling up their gas tanks on December 31st; but what is wrong with saying to the Nation, let’s keep

our gas tanks full from October on? I mean, those are the types of

messages that we are talking about. There is nothing wrong with

saying that just in case.

But if you don’t say it here—and all the hearings and all the task

forces that you have going is for your infrastructure. This does not

get out to the American public. I will tell you what gets out to the

American public, and I consider this a national phenomenon that

I think we should be studying. We couldn’t get you ready for a hurricane because we see you shopping at the grocery stores as soon

as the hurricane warning comes. And we couldn’t get ready for a

tornado. There they are stranded with nothing on their backs because they didn’t do anything with their tornado kit. But for some

reason Y2K is turning people on, and we are not seizing this opportunity. We are not making the direct connection between doing

without—a potential doing without services and getting yourself

prepared.

The government—and I mean here in Washington, DC, I can’t

wait to see this, but I am going to tell you at the local level I am

not there to give you a glass of water. I will make sure that water

is available to you that you can go get, but if there is no water,

then you will have to go get it yourself through a government system. But that is not what you want to do. Most Americans don’t

want to do this.

So this is why I am saying, at your level here in Washington,

DC, who is the national leader on Y2K? Who is telling the citizen— not the infrastructure, not the hospital, and not the utility, and

certainly not me at local government—to get ready? Who is out

there telling them to get ready? And that is what I think we are

missing is the national leadership and advocacy for the issue.

Mr. HORN. If I might, if you would yield to me a minute or so,

you are absolutely right. We have written the President. We have

personally talked to him repeatedly, and said, you need to do a

chat just like Franklin Roosevelt would have done, a fireside chat,

and communicate with the American people about this, because

otherwise you are going to have a real run on banks, and you will

have nutty things done by nutty people that are trying to set the

example of what they think is protection.

I looked at every single journal that came into my office the last

2 months, and slowly we are getting awareness that there is a

problem in just the last 2 months. Finally, tomato growers and everybody else, their magazines are starting to talk about Y2K.

Senator Moynihan wrote the President many years ago and

didn’t get an answer. It took him about a year to answer me, and

they finally appointed Mr. Koskinen in February 1998. We started

our hearings in April 1996, and if we had been in the executive

branch, we would have done it in 1989 when the Social Security

Administration did it on their own. And I have cited the case many

times, the Federal Highway Administration within the Department

of Transportation, a very able woman programmer laid it all out

for them in either 1987—in 1989, and they just laughed it off. And

to show you how screwed up the Department of Transportation was

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and maybe still is, that idea and that problem never went up the

hierarchy so that the Secretary could deal with it. And obviously

in any room of the top administrators within Transportation, one

of them is the Federal Aviation Agency, and that is what should

have been done. It hasn’t been.

There has been very little leadership in the executive branch.

Mr. Koskinen is doing the best he can, but the President of the

United States any time he wants can get airtime, TV time, radio

time, you call it. When he finally held his first meeting, he asked

me to send him a few words and paragraphs, which I did. It was

before the National Academy of Sciences. Well, they are the last

people in the country you need to reach to because they know all

about it, and they are scientists, and they are experts on computing

and all the rest.

It was a good speech. Then when was the next one? The next one

he got, oh, just 2 months ago maybe he declared that Social Security was OK. Well, we declared that from the beginning. We were

giving them As, A-pluses, so forth. And our report cards did show

that Social Security was the first to clear the decks, if you will, in

their computers so that they would function, and there would be— of the 43 million customers and perhaps 50 million checks that

pour out, there would be no problem with Social Security.

Then we found the Financial Management Service of the Department of the Treasury, they were not conforming, so we worked with

people, goading them on. The legislative branch is simply an oversight branch. Our Majority Leader will be preparing kits for every

Member of Congress so that when they go home, they will be able

to understand these issues, and, of course, if 435 Members can at

least hold one town meeting somewhere in their district, some of

that word will be out.

But you are absolutely right. This is an executive branch problem. They have never run with it. They sort of—I call them the

Perils of Pauline. You know, Pauline—you would have to be my age

to understand that.

Ms. MANN. I may not be your age, but I like television.

Mr. HORN. She is strapped on the tracks with ropes, and the

train is coming and all of that at the Saturday flicks in Hollister,

CA. The next thing somehow she would escape from the ropes, and

she is OK. But that is what it was, tremendous procrastination in

the executive branch. They should have taken this from day one

and educated people.

Without question, the FEMA operation, which is basically very

well run, and your local emergency manager counterparts, that is

where the information is going to have to come. And there is no

magic bullet out of money from the Federal Treasury. We cannot

even fund anything around here because of the caps that have been

placed on it. And with the demagoguery going on by the administration and the Democratic leader in the Senate on what you have

to do with the surplus, there is no money for anything else. It will

all go into Social Security. And we will do just what they want,

only we are going to do it better. If they want 62 percent in Social

Security, we are going to put 100 percent in, et cetera. So there is

not any loose change around here. But the communication can be

done by your counterparts.

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Ms. MANN. And I think that was one of the things that decided— made the decision for me to be here today is that at the end of

these 2 days, at the very least what we should do is decide on a

national consistent message that we keep pushing out and we don’t

deter from that message. This is why people and the Red Cross,

when they teamed up many years ago and came out with one citizen message, how to prepare a citizen for any emergency or disaster, the 3-day kits, et cetera, that is what we are going to do.

I would like to comment on the Social Security because I work

very closely with our local Social Security. When he said he got an

A on his report card, and I naively asked him what did the Post

Office get? Despite everything else, I think that—you think that everybody is going to wire transfer? But a few people still get their

Social Security checks—that are delivered by the Post Office. What

kind of grade did they get?

Mr. HORN. They didn’t get a very good one. If it wasn’t so sad,

it would be laughable. But when we were grading all the 24 Cabinets and independent agencies, one of the questions we asked from

the beginning was what is your contingency plan? With many of

them it was the Post Office, because if you couldn’t get the checks

cut and sent by electronic mail, which is our legislation, and we

think it ought to be done that way, but you are right, there are a

few people who say, I want to feel that check, well, it is too bad

because people rob them of their checks, and if they went directly

into their bank deposit, one, it would be there, and, two, several

days you could use that money ahead—between getting the check

in the Post Office, walking down to deposit the check and all of

that.

But you can’t change some people. And I understand that. I grew

up in the Depression. I know what my mother would have wanted.

She wanted to see that check, too, because we almost lost our

house in the Depression, and we lost everything else, but our house

was firm. So people that have gone through that experience don’t

trust banks, don’t trust government, and you can understand why.

Ms. MANN. Absolutely.

Mr. HORN. So we have got to educate them. Everybody we have

been in our six field hearings in August in Indianapolis and Cleveland and Chicago and New Orleans and Dallas and so forth, we

made the point, look, it would be prudent to have a month or 2

months of supplies of food that are edible, and if you don’t have the

gas, you don’t have the electricity, or whatever it is, you are going

to have to get some way to cook, which there are ways as you

know, sterno and others, and try to get the food warm. You will

not have your refrigerator working and so forth.

So we have tried to be prudent, not getting headlines. We had

one once in a while a few years ago where they talked about planes

dropping from skies. That is nonsense. The fact is the administrator, who is a very able person, has had to play catch-up because,

again, her staff let her down once she was confirmed, so they are

playing catch-up. I think they will be OK. The administrator of

FAA has the authority under the law to ground planes any time

of night or day for safety. As you know, most of us do not take off

in the East and land in the West unless they are very sure we have

got a spot to come right in and not go circling around the cities,

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which we have done around Chicago for years, and you shoot right

into Los Angeles. If you leave Dulles, you know you will be there

X hours and minutes and seconds away.

So it is an executive job, and we are going to bring in a proposal

for an Office of Management, which is what the President needs.

This is a management problem, not a technical problem. I mean,

techies can work on it, but somebody has got to lay it out and say,

‘‘hey, this is what we have to do in this time period.’’ And what we

finally did, just by a series of hearings, is shock them into a little

action. But, again, the President has to communicate it, and he

hasn’t done a very good job at it.

Ms. MANN. Well, then I think we are here in Washington, DC,

this week to help him. Because one of the things that we can do,

which would be so simple nationwide since you already do a report

card, we can do a monthly preparedness checklist that every citizen

gets, nationwide. It is printed in the paper, just like you do your

report card, and it becomes part of the press release packet.

Mr. HORN. Right. And we have urged—when we went to these

various cities, we urged city managers and others, if you have a

public utility—in the case of Long Beach, they have their own

water company and gas company and so forth within the city government, on the bill, just—but a whole list of things you ought to

be prepared to do. That communicates with a lot of people. Ballots

that go out, the registrars could put these things in at the county

level, in our case, in California.

So there is a lot of ways to reach people. And, of course, you are

going to get tired of reaching them and think they know, but when

you are tired is when you start over again.

Ms. MANN. Exactly.

Mr. HORN. And you are just getting there, and I think your counterparts can do a lot of good here to make up for the vacuum on

the executive side of the Federal Government, and we will be glad

to give you all the help we can.

Mr. Humphrey, I do want to put that ‘‘Y2K and You’’ in this

hearing record, if it is not a problem for your people, and we ought

to have cross-references on the websites of where people can

download it and all the rest of it, which would be worthwhile.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. HORN. I am sorry to take more than a minute, so go ahead.

Mrs. BIGGERT. You are yielding back to me now?

Mr. HORN. Yes, yes. Go to it.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, Ms. Mann. I think that your enthusiasm and what you have to say will really carry this forward, too,

so we appreciate you being here. With the enthusiasm and the

dedication that you have for this problem, I think that it will move

forward.

Just, Dr. Morentz, is the emergency management community

taking advantage of the products and services that you have talked

about, the technological products that will move us forward in this?

Mr. MORENTZ. Yes, I would say, by and large, there has been

good movement over the last decade in emergency management organization embracing technology. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been good—although they were prodded by about

30 of the States that had adopted automated systems before FEMA

actually made the embrace of technology as broadly as they have.

But since then, a couple of years ago, they have done a very good

job as has the Army National Guard; and the Air National Guard

and the Air Force at the Federal level have done very good jobs in

starting to establish an infrastructure.

The point of this confluence between that incremental movement

that has been taking place to improve emergency management and

the Y2K opportunity is one that really deserves attention to be able

to get everyone to focus on the Y2K, thus moving Y2K from a potential disaster into a routine emergency. Whatever happens, at

the same time, we will have created an infrastructure that will survive January 1, 2000, and for many years.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Do you see that there is really a difference in the

type of emergency that could be created by the Y2K and other

emergencies?

Mr. MORENTZ. You know, I really don’t see it as distinctive. I

think, as you have heard from local government representatives

and others, we have done—particularly in the United States, we

are an infrastructure-rich country, and when a hospital experiences

a problem, there are other hospitals generally within an area to

take critical patients. But the idea is that if the organization

doesn’t know the plan and have procedures in order to get accident

victims to an alternate hospital, then it becomes a disaster. So,

truly, it is the application of the technology to drive the contingency planning and put in place a command and control system for

alternatives that is really the potential missing link here.

Mrs. BIGGERT. So you would say that the existing information

systems and data bases can be used to better prepare the citizens

and the public sectors for emergencies, or do we need something

beyond that?

Mr. MORENTZ. No. Really, the standard things that are being

done to plan for any type of a disaster are exactly what you need

for contingency planning for emergency management for Y2K. It is

a matter of applying them, focusing on them and making certain

that they are, in fact, widely available, rather than more narrowly

available, as is the case today.

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Mrs. BIGGERT. OK. What would be, do you think, the most difficult technological challenge for emergency management in the

21st century?

Mr. MORENTZ. Well, clearly, the advantages that we are seeing

in technology with small telecommunicating devices provide such

an abundance of opportunity for the emergency management community. I think the biggest thing that is going to take place is the

implementation of that inside a consistent—both policy, program

and infrastructure, to drive the technologies out to the places

where they are needed. You have heard about Kitsap County over

here.

The key is to be able to make those technologies available. The

private sector is doing its part by creating the technologies, driving

the prices down to where they become incredibly affordable, but

what still is missing is an ability within the State, Federal and

local governments to actually make these part and parcel of what

every emergency program does.

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HUMPHREY. Mr. Chairman, just one quick point I wanted to

make, and that was the need for resources and assets at the local

level. I will give you some quick examples of that.

Aircraft carriers that normally dock in the Norfolk area generate

enormous amounts of electricity. They have great capacity. Now is

the time to see if, in fact, they can support those seven communities of that area in some way or another. Maybe there is some

ways in which they could provide warming facilities should it be

needed; maybe they could provide food stores.

I mean, there are lots of different ideas. I certainly don’t have a

lock on them. But I think we have to think out of the box, and we

have to come up with ideas that, in the case of disaster, we have

a plan to deal with them. This, in deference a little bit to my colleague, this is really different in the sense that it is going to look

normal. Everything is going to look fine. It just may not work or

it may not work correctly. And so it is going to be a different psychological response. It is going to be a different kind of need. We

have to prepare; but the question is, how should we prepare and

what kinds of contingencies and can they make commitments to do

that? That is why I say, I bring up the Navy, that example, the

National Guard in Albuquerque. There are resources and assets

which can help citizens of this country in specific ways.

My colleague was pointing out traffic lights. We don’t think

about traffic lights, but being many traffic lights are controlled by

the timing mechanisms of embedded chips and all of them, some

of them, have mechanical wheels that turn but others are controlled by embedded chips, and local governments have to figure

out which is which and what to do with them. I mean, there are

little things like that, that this is going to be a, really, a different

issue.

Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Well, you are absolutely correct. We have stressed

that every hearing we have had in the field when we have had city

managers and mayors with us on fire equipment, traffic lights, all

the rest.

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Ms. HECKLER. Mr. Chairman, I wondered if you would be willing

to allow my colleague, Dr. Gerschel, to say something.

Mr. HORN. I was going to ask him, yes.

Ms. HECKLER. Because this medical problem is unique.

Mr. GERSCHEL. Mr. Chairman, my level of expertise is perhaps

not as great and as long as the others, but I come from a somewhat

different perspective. We spoke just now of issues of traffic lights.

In conversation, candid conversations, with some city managers in

the area in which I live, they have basically come to the conclusion

there is not enough time. There is time to take care perhaps, and

I say perhaps of waste management because we are not going to

know until the end, perhaps of water supply. Certainly they are

concerned about the electrical supply and the electrical grid, but

they have come to the conclusion there is not enough time and not

enough money to take care of traffic lights in the time that remains.

Now, in terms of medical situations, well, traffic lights aren’t

part of the hospital, but the accidents that take place thereafter

probably will be or, hopefully, won’t be. But in terms of specific

medical issues, and perhaps in addressing Congressman Biggert’s

question, what we have found in major institutions in the testing

that we have seen and done and reported and what we have put

on these websites is that we will get a notification that a piece of

equipment or a piece of hardware is, in fact, compliant. Well, that

is only partly true. It is compliant, if it has been built, let’s say,

past 1997, but something, bearing the same model number but a

different set of chips, will not be compliant, and we are testing a

lot of materials that way, and we are posting that on these sites.

The suggestion that Ambassador Heckler has made is to take

that data of specific testing where it is not only just a model number but a serial number as well in a production run of material so

that county hospitals, municipal hospitals that don’t have really

the wherewithall and the time to test it, collecting that data into

this super site, medical health care super site.

We know that is a problem, we know it is an issue, we know that

it takes a little time and effort, but that could save a lot of time,

effort and energy on the local level, make expertise available to

them that they might not be able to get initially or easily.

Mr. HORN. That is well said, Dr. Gerschel, and I want to thank

you for all you are doing in helping this matter.

I thank all of the panelists. I would like to ask now for those that

are in the audience on the emergency management workshop participants, why don’t you just stand so we can see how many of you

are out there, just stand, who is going to participate this afternoon

and tomorrow.

Good. Thank you for coming. We are honored to have you here

as experts on emergency management, and I am gratified that you

would give your time and your resources to be in Washington

today. I know that among you are emergency management experts

from my own home State of California, as well as Florida, Massachusetts, Georgia, Colorado, New York, Montgomery County, MD,

Virginia, and the State of Washington, of course. And those from

the National Defense University, they are also interested in this

subject. We thank all of you.

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With so much attention that is being given to the year 2000 computer problem, it is a remarkable coincidence that altogether you

have about 2,000 years of experience in hundreds of natural and

man-caused disasters among all of you. This includes floods and

hurricanes and wildfires and earthquakes and toxic spills, snow, ice

storms, all the rest, cyber attacks—thank heaven, we haven’t had

too many of those—and chemical and biological terrorism. We have

had some fake ones now, and let’s hope that we don’t have the real

ones. We are looking forward to meeting all of you in the workshop

group as you discuss and formulate these things.

I also want to recognize a longtime friend of mine, if he is in the

room, Dr. Robert Chartrand. Do you want to stand up? Oh, there

you are, OK.

Bob and I have worked together for 31⁄2 decades. When I brought

together the senior staff in the Senate in the mid-1960’s to computerize the Senate with the major offices, as I was assistant to the

Republican whip, Mr. Kuchel in California, and then we had the

New York senators and we had the Illinois senators, where Senator

Dirksen was from, and we believed in the concept of, I think the

Washington Post called it Dial-A-Bill, because we were just tired

of our staff having to pick up the phone every day, find the status

on this, who has testified. It was obvious it was something we

could computerize.

When I went to Brookings I had a dinner of about 100 from the

Hill and staff and Members and one rather crusty chairman, which

will go unnamed, but many of you might know, sat listening and

said, ‘‘well,’’ and chomped on his cigar, ‘‘all I can say is you are

going to do that over my dead body.’’ And it took a long time to

get computing anywhere around here that would help. But Bob

Chartrand has certainly been in the forefront of that; and we thank

you, Bob, and all of your associates here.

As I understand it, you are divided into four groups, each one of

us has chosen a group to work with, and the full particulars are

found in the material you were given as you entered the hearing

room. My charge to you is very simple. Within the scope of your

workshop group, evaluate current emergency management efforts,

propose solutions, products and systems that will meet the challenges of the 21st century. You are all visionaries just by being in

this business, but you are also practical people, and that is where

it is very important to bring both of those values together. I look

forward to receiving your recommendations tomorrow when we reconvene, and we plan to feature these in the upcoming committee

print. Your group leaders will meet with you at their designated

places in the hearing room. I hear there are signs with workshop

group names being posted at four locations in this hearing room.

So thank you all for coming.

I would like to thank the following people for the record: J. Russell George, staff director and chief counsel for the subcommittee;

Bonnie Heald, director of communications of the subcommittee;

Harrison Fox, professional staff member for the subcommittee;

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Mason Alinger, our clerk; and interns Kacey Baker and Richard

Lukas. Also, Faith Weiss, minority counsel; Jean Gosa, minority

clerk; and our court reporters today, Cindy Sebo, Joe Strickland,

and Julie Bryan.

With that, the subcommittee is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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