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25–914 PDF 2006

RECOVERING AFTER HURRICANE

KATRINA: ENSURING THAT THE

FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY IS UP TO THE TASK

(109–34)

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

TRANSPORTATION AND

INFRASTRUCTURE

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 6, 2005

Printed for the use of the

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

(
COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin, Vice-Chair

SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

SUE W. KELLY, New York

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana

ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey

JERRY MORAN, Kansas

GARY G. MILLER, California

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina

ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

SAM GRAVES, Missouri

MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

TED POE, Texas

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington

CONNIE MACK, Florida

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York

LUIS G. FORTUN ̃ O, Puerto Rico

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JERROLD NADLER, New York

CORRINE BROWN, Florida

BOB FILNER, California

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD,

California

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California

BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington

SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada

JIM MATHESON, Utah

MICHAEL M. HONDA, California

RICK LARSEN, Washington

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York

JULIA CARSON, Indiana

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine

LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri

ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado

JOHN BARROW, Georgia

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

MANAGEMENT

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania, Chairman

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas, Vice-Chair

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York

DON YOUNG, Alaska

(Ex Officio)

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine

LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee

JULIA CARSON, Indiana

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota

(Ex Officio)

(III)

(V)

CONTENTS

TESTIMONY

Page

Ashwood, Albert, Vice President, National Emergency Management Association and Director, Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management .......... 52

Baker, Hon. Richard, a Representative in Congress from the State of Louisiana ......................................................................................................................... 45

Buckley, Kent W., Director, Bolivar County Emergency Management Agency,

Bolivar County, Mississippi ................................................................................. 52

Burris, Kenneth, Acting Chief of Operations, Federal Emergency Management Agency ......................................................................................................... 11

Kilgore, Janice R., CEM, Director, Department of Public Safety, Escambia

County, Florida .................................................................................................... 52

Rodriguez, Henry ‘‘Junior’’, President, St. Bernard Parish .................................. 52

Skinner, Richard L., Inspector General, United States Department of Homeland Security ........................................................................................................ 11

Wise, Hon. Bob, President, Alliance for Excellent Education .............................. 52

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Blumenauer, Hon. Earl, of Oregon ......................................................................... 79

Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, of the District of Columbia ................................. 111

Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota ................................................................. 114

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES

Ashwood, Albert ....................................................................................................... 73

Buckley, Kent W ...................................................................................................... 82

Burris, Kenneth ....................................................................................................... 93

Kilgore, Janice R. ..................................................................................................... 104

Skinner, Richard L. ................................................................................................. 118

Wise, Hon. Bob ......................................................................................................... 124

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

Bachus, Hon. Spencer, a Representative in Congress from Alabama, letter

to Kenneth Burris, Acting Chief of Operations, Federal Emergency Management Agency, October 21, 2005 ........................................................................... 135

Buckley, Kent W., Director, Bolivar County Emergency Management Agency,

Bolivar County, Mississippi, responses to questions ......................................... 88

Kilgore, Janice R., CEM, Director, Department of Public Safety, Escambia

County, Florida, responses to questions ............................................................. 106

Wise, Hon. Bob, President, Alliance for Excellent Education, responses to

questions ............................................................................................................... 130

(1)

RECOVERING AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA:

ENSURING THAT FEMA IS UP TO THE TASK

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON TRANSPOR- TATION AND, INFRASTRUCTURE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 11:00 a.m. in room 2167,

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Bill Shuster [chairman of the

committee] presiding.

Mr. SHUSTER. The Subcommittee will come to order.

Before we begin, I would like to ask unanimous consent that

members of the full Committee not assigned to the Subcommittee

be allowed to sit with the Subcommittee today, make statements

and ask questions. Without objection, so ordered.

We are meeting this morning to begin a series of hearings on the

recovery effort in New Orleans and the Gulf region. I just returned

from touring Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama with ten other

members of the Committee. I would like to make two observations.

First, I would like to say something about the hard-working

FEMA State and local employees I saw on this trip. I was very impressed with their professionalism, dedication and determination to

get the job done under very difficult conditions. People are literally

working around the clock for weeks on end. I hope you will let your

colleagues know that we are extremely proud and appreciative of

your efforts. Thank you.

My second observation is that never before has this agency,

FEMA, in any form been faced with a challenge as extensive as the

one created by Hurricane Katrina. With over 90,000 square miles

of disaster area, hundreds of thousands of people displaced, tens of

thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed and a potential

health crisis that has been left behind, FEMA is being tested like

it has never been before.

The hearing today will focus on ensuring the recovery happens

in a timely and effective manner. Billions of dollars are going to be

spent on the recovery and there are many questions to be answered, such as, do FEMA and its State and local partners have

the capacity to manage these dollars? How will we ensure that

waste, fraud and abuse are limited? How can we streamline red

tape, build projects and reimburse local governments quickly? And

what are the major obstacles to a successful recovery?

In the wake of the hurricanes of 2004, there was a significant

amount of criticism leveled against FEMA for a process that was

at times very efficient but also at times slow and in some instances, stalled. That effort will seem like a walk in the park compared with what lies ahead of us. We are here today to ensure that
2

FEMA will be up to the mammoth task that lies ahead. I am confident that FEMA has the expertise to manage the recovery, but I

am concerned you may not have the capacity to do the job well.

This one is simply bigger than anything FEMA has faced.

As I mentioned in the memo, sent to all members last Friday,

and which is in the folder before you, there are a range of issues

we will be discussing today, including the adequacy of FEMA’s recovery staff, the efficiency of the process, the types of assistance

that may be provided and to whom, and several specific issues, including debris removal, housing and delivery of money to cashstarved governments.

It is this last issue, the question of cash flow at the local level,

that I am particularly concerned about. It presents a difficult policy

question and has the greatest likelihood of hampering the recovery

effort. If local governments are unable to pay their bills, both disaster and non-disaster related, their recovery will come to a grinding

halt.

During the recovery from the 2004 hurricane season in Florida,

which we are still in, many counties in Florida complained about

delayed approval and payments from FEMA on project worksheets.

I am told that some of these approvals and payments are still outstanding. I am not going to dictate from here what is an appropriate amount of time, but we are going to closely examine this

process to ensure that it does not continue to take a year, which

I know is too long.

One of the things I would like to examine at today’s hearing that

I believe contributes to this problem, and I hope the witnesses will

be able to address, is the issue of staffing within FEMA. It is my

understanding that the recovery division within FEMA started the

fiscal year with just 72 full-time staffers on board. Is this enough

permanent staff? Will the temporary staff that is brought in have

the expertise and training sufficient to meet this huge task ahead

of us?

I hope that we will be able to address these as well as many

other staffing issues that arose in Florida to prevent such problems

in the future as we deal with Katrina.

While we are not the first subcommittee to hold hearings to discuss the aftermath of Katrina, I want to ensure my colleagues that

this will not be the last hearing this Committee holds. We have already scheduled a joint hearing with our Water Resources Subcommittee and we are discussing the possibility of holding a hearing over two dozen Katrina-related bills that have been introduced

thus far.

As the Subcommittee with primary jurisdiction, and I would add,

the broadest jurisdiction, over emergency management, I expect

that we will play a central role in any legislative package that goes

forward. During this process, I expect the members of this Subcommittee and our full Committee will play an active role and I

look forward to working closely with all of you, Republican and

Democrat.

With that, I would now like to yield to Mr. Blumenauer for an

opening statement, if he has one.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
3

I do appreciate your focusing the key role that this Subcommittee

can play. I am pleased that you have indicated that you are looking

at a variety of initiatives. I am looking forward to the joint hearing

with the Water Resources Subcommittee. Being able to both have

the appropriate response to the disaster in the Katrina-ravaged region and to make sure that we have Federal policies in place that

are going to do the job for the future is going to take all our efforts.

I appreciate your leadership and your commitment.

We have to learn, not only is there a problem now, and we are

going to be hearing about that, but there is going to be a next time.

Rita was the 18th storm of this season. I have seen some estimates

that indicate that we have already seen more death and destruction this hurricane season than in the last 35 seasons combined.

We are also facing a problem where, at least until recently, more

and more Americans have been flocking to coastal areas that have

been termed hurricane alleys. We have, though there are some who

remain skeptical, the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community that global warming is a reality and that we are witnessing

rising sea levels that are going to make hurricanes and other storm

incidents more frequent and more severe.

Of course, as our friends from Louisiana know all too painfully,

rising sea levels combined with the fact that the land area here is

subsiding could create a two to five foot difference by the end of

this century.

I too am looking forward to hearing from FEMA. It has been an

agency that I have been working with for the last eight years, most

recently on flood insurance reform. I think this Subcommittee can

play a critical role in evaluating what changes need to be made

with the agency structurally and in terms of resources and our own

policies.

I hope, Mr. Chairman, that in the course of your working to determine an outline for the Committee, that we can focus quickly on

the notion of temporary housing. I know people on both sides of the

aisle are appalled at the notion of spending billions on temporary

trailer parks that I hear from my colleagues in North Carolina and

in Florida have an appalling habit of becoming permanent, especially when there are hundreds of thousands of vacant rental units

in the region at reasonable rental rates. We have a very effective

Section 8 policy that can be embraced by conservatives and liberals

alike.

I would hope that as we move forward, we think about long-term

efforts. I will not take the time now, Mr. Chairman, to go into

them, but I will enter into the record seven principles that I hope

will guide our efforts in terms of recovery to make sure we are not

putting people back into harm’s way; that we are assuring that citizens are directly engaged in the work of disaster recovery and mitigation; that we clarify with a hearing like this today the Federal

Government’s disaster prevention, mitigation and relief efforts;

that we make the recovery process a model of transparency and accountability. I hope that you will consider a hearing where we can

talk about how we put into these contracts post-contract analysis

and accountability provisions, so they get more value for the dollar.

I hope that we are looking at more responsibility at the local

level to prevent disaster, for mitigation and recovery, that we look
4

at prevention and mitigation as a long-term element to any federally-funded restoration and that we employ natural solutions,

wherever possible, to blunt the destructive force of nature. I deeply

appreciate the Subcommittee’s work and your willingness to let

some of us outsiders to hang around with you, because we are

going to be working together. I look forward to a productive hearing.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Blumenauer. I look forward to

working with you. Many of the topics you discussed we have plans

to hold hearings on those, and then today with the IG, talk about

some accountability. It is good to have somebody with your background. I know you have some municipal background, so with your

expertise I am sure we can lean on you for some of that expertise

as we go forward.

Thank you for being here today.

We are going to go in order of the way people showed up to the

hearing this morning. I am also going to strictly enforce the five

minute rule, so be prepared to hear the gavel come down at five

minutes.

I would now like to recognize my colleague from Louisiana, Mr.

Boustany.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to commend you for holding this hearing and starting this

process. Much has been said about FEMA over the past several

weeks, particularly about its position in the Department of Homeland Security. But I think we have many more issues to discuss,

such as FEMA’s role in working with local communities and local

officials, looking at accountability issues, how money is spent.

And coming from Louisiana, I look forward to the testimony and

hope to be able to question the witnesses about a number of issues

with regard to how FEMA interacts with the local communities,

how can we make it a better organization, regardless of whether

it is in within Homeland Security or as an independent agency accountable directly to the President. How can we get it to be the effective organization that it really needs to be to deal with these

types of disasters?

We face unprecedented challenges in this recovery, many of

which we don’t have adequate answers yet. So as we move forward,

I hope that we can address some of those challenges as well as

work with how will we make this organization, how will we make

FEMA a more effective organization to deal with the problems that

we will have in the future.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Boustany.

I would now like to recognize Ms. Johnson.

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for

holding the hearing. I appreciated the opportunity to visit on Tuesday.

Let me quickly compliment FEMA for what they have done.

There are still a lot of questions, but in my area of Dallas, where

we have thousands of people that have come for either temporary

or permanent housing, once FEMA arrived, we have no complaints.

Long time coming, but once they got there, we worked very well

with them.
5

I will have questions later concerning 90 percent of the contracts

being let to people outside the area. That is a real concern for people in the area, so I want to do that when the time comes. Thank

you very much.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.

Next I would like to recognize the gentleman from Pennsylvania,

Mr. Dent.

Mr. DENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too want to commend you

for holding this hearing.

I really don’t have anything prepared this morning to say. I will

save most of my questions and comments for the question and answer period. But I believe it is critical that we get to the bottom

of the issue of FEMA, how prepared it was for this devastating

event. I just believe it is important that we move forward and I

look forward to hearing the witnesses. Thank you.

Mr. SHUSTER. I would now like to recognize the Chairman of the

House Administration Committee, Mr. Ney.

Mr. NEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for allowing me to participate in this important hearing today. I will be

brief.

In addition to being a member of the Transportation Committee,

I also chair the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity for Financial Services. Both committees have different oversight responsibilities for various aspects of FEMA. Of course, we

have been working with FEMA and HUD on the current situation

down in the Gulf.

As we examine some of the past problems and problems currently facing FEMA, I think we need to ensure that we treat all

natural disasters in a consistent manner. It is a terrible thing that

has happened in the Gulf. In my district, we have suffered severe

damages and worked with FEMA quite a lot. In fact, we had an

evacuation of 7,000 people last year, 7,000 out of a county of

70,000.

As we talk about reforms, I think the one important thing, and

I am convening a summit in the district of a lot of different people

involved in this, is that we have to ensure that some of the past

things that have worked not be changed, and some of the problems

that we have that need to be expedited or changed, should be considered. I know Washington can’t solve all the problems. We have

to work together with local and State authorities to ensure any future changes made to FEMA and other related Federal programs

don’t adversely affect the plans that they have in place already in

the State and local levels and other jurisdictions.

Again, I know it has been a tough job, but I think having this

hearing will bring a lot of things to light and as there are reformation bills, we want to look at the process. I want to also close by

recognizing someone that is no stranger to floods. I see former Congressman Bob Wise across the river in Wheeling, West Virginia,

from where I live. He knows the flooding situation and has been

very active to help people down there.

Thank you.

Mr. SHUSTER. I will take this opportunity to recognize the Ranking Member, Ms. Norton, for an opening statement.
6

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I apologize,

I was the lead witness in the Senate on a matter affecting the District of Columbia before its own D.C. Subcommittee. I appreciate

your indulgence.

I particularly thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this first in

a series of hearings. You are being very careful, because you have

studied what should be studied and you have indicated that there

are a whole series of matters affecting FEMA that you intend to

look into.

I fully agree with your purpose today to move from assigning

blame, acknowledging that there were failures, at every level of

government, but instead to concentrate on our responsibility, to

focus on FEMA, which reports to this Subcommittee, with the goal

of ensuring that the ongoing response of FEMA is efficient, effective and responsive to the needs of the Gulf region and other regions of our Country.

Under your predecessors as Chair, this Subcommittee had five

FEMA hearings or markups on the Homeland Security Act of 2002

that transferred all of the statutory functions of the Stafford Act

from the Director of FEMA to the Secretary of the Department of

Homeland Security, further delegated to the Undersecretary for

Emergency Preparedness and Response. Although I am a member

of the Homeland Security Committee who was a strong advocate of

the creation of the Department, I have reluctantly become an original co-sponsor of a bill to move FEMA from DHS to help enable

it to once again become the professional quick recovery agency it

became in the 1990s.

At our September 24th, 2003 markup, I cautioned about challenges to hazard mitigation activities. Those are the activities that

State and local governments engage in before the hazard occurs.

Because those challenges were already quite clear then. State and

local officials were complaining that the increased emphasis on terrorism that kept them so busy trying to keep up with the security

alerts, overtime costs and the myriad of terrorism-related grant

programs that hazard mitigation, that we now know might have

led to a better response to Katrina, was in steep decline.

Yet the Administration in its fiscal year 2003 budget request had

proposed the elimination of the hazard mitigation program, and the

fiscal year 2003 Omnibus Appropriation Bill, over the objections of

our Committee and various stakeholders, reduced the mandated

percentage of hazard mitigation funds from 15 percent to 7.5 percent, cutting it in half. The reduction so inhibited the ability of the

State and local governments to effectively carry out preparation for

hazards and so dramatically increases the cost of natural disasters

that we, this Subcommittee, restored funding levels back to 15 percent at that markup.

In May of 2004, we were very concerned that the President’s

2005 budget proposal reduced funding for the Emergency Management Performance Grant program, even though the Congress had

indicated its strong support of State and local personnel in planning when it included specific language in the fiscal year 2004

DHS appropriations bill, stating, ‘‘Emergency planning is the backbone of the Nation’s emergency management system ... now more

than ever, the planning activities carried out in this program are
7

of the utmost importance.’’ The result of this short-sighted shift of

funding from FEMA is clear in the aftermath of Katrina.

Presently, almost one million people in the Gulf region have registered with FEMA for individual assistance, but only 72 full-time

employees are in the Recovery Division. This division is responsible

for reviewing the paperwork which is the basis for reimbursement

by FEMA for eligible activities, including debris removal, housing

assistance and reconstructing public buildings and infrastructure.

Although FEMA has a vast network of disaster assistance employees and other reserve employees that it can call upon, the Agency

internally obviously lacks the management talent to adequately respond completely to Katrina’s victims.

The District of Columbia was among the first local jurisdictions

to reach out to Katrina victims and 300 were cared for here and

given the full bevy of services. Like the District, many State and

local governments have laid out millions of dollars up front without

payment as yet from FEMA.

However, my concern is for the more than 75,000 people still in

shelters and thousands of others away from family and friends. Is

today’s FEMA capable of assisting victims of disaster through the

direct provisions of housing or through temporary housing solutions? Is FEMA capable of addressing the needs of over 300,000

people who have requested rental housing assistance? Is FEMA

prepared for the long haul that Katrina recovery necessitates?

This much is clear: FEMA has suffered rather than benefitted

from its absorption into DHS. Although the exact numbers are disputed, the Agency’s core budget for disaster preparedness has been

cut every year since it went into DHS. Its staff has been reduced

by 500 positions. Hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and other natural

disasters come on cue every year, but three out of ever four local

preparedness and first responder grants have gone for terrorism-related activities.

The GAO reports that 75 percent of next year’s grants are similarly targeted to terrorism, despite local officials’ complaints that

the most urgent need now is for natural disasters and accidents.

FEMA has suffered rather than benefitted from its submersion into

DHS.

Some considerable direction or redirection of funding to terrorist

activities was fully justified after 9/11, but we now know that billions of dollars were not distributed on a risk basis. The recent

Homeland Security reauthorization requires risk-based funding

and strategies. We also know, not only from Katrina but also from

the way FEMA was overwhelmed by four hurricanes in Florida in

2004 that all hazards has become a bureaucratic slogan, and that

the evidence that FEMA was in complete disarray was already unmistakably clear from the Florida experience last year.

FEMA has apparently regressed to the state James Lee Witt, the

first career disaster specialist to head FEMA, found it in 1993

when he reorganized and energized the Agency and was praised for

FEMA’s recovery response to the earthquake in Northridge, California, and to the Mississippi River flooding. This Subcommittee

cannot alone return FEMA to those halcyon days of praiseworthiness. But with the series of oversight hearings you begin today, Mr.

Chairman, we can pledge the oversight the Agency will need to as-
8

sure the improvement that the public expects after the lessons

taught by Katrina.

Thank you very much again for this hearing, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Ms. Norton.

I would like to remind my colleagues, I think we have the clock

back up and running, so we are going to adhere strictly to the five

minute rule.

I would like to recognize Mr. Poe for an opening statement.

Mr. POE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate this hearing this morning. I have a very strong interest in FEMA. My Congressional district is located across the

Sabine River from Louisiana, Mr. Boustany’s district. We have a

couple of issues that we are having to deal with, two ladies of the

Gulf. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and Louisiana, a

lot of those folks from Louisiana came across into Texas. We still

had 15,000 of them in Jefferson County, Texas before Rita hit. Several other hundreds of thousands came into Texas and are dispersed all over the Country.

We felt those repercussions, and the folks in Jefferson County

started working and trying to help those dispersed individuals. But

not long after that, Rita hit my Congressional district. In fact, I

just got off the phone with the mayors of my Congressional district.

Half my Congressional district is still without power and water,

and Katrina evacuees had to leave with Rita evacuees to parts all

over the Country again.

So we are very concerned about the aftermath of both of these

hurricanes, and I will be very blunt: the number one question I get

from regular folks citizens, mayors and other elected officials is

issues regarding FEMA. They ask me, where’s FEMA, what are

they doing. I think that this hearing is important to address those

specific issues.

The number one concern I would mention and have to deal with

is communication. I think FEMA, based on these two hurricanes

that impacted directly in my Congressional district, does a poor job

of communicating. At least that is the way it comes across to the

average person that is sitting out there in the swamp without a

roof on their barn or their home. So I think that is a work that

needs to be done.

And I asked three questions that FEMA probably ought to be

able to answer to people that are concerned about Federal response: what can FEMA do in a particular situation; what will they

do, and what are they specifically doing at the time. Those are really the three questions that I get, and it all has to do with communication.

So I look forward to the testimony this morning, because I get

to talk to all those mayors again tomorrow morning. Thank you.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Poe.

I would now like to recognize Mr. Taylor, if he has an opening

statement.

Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank you and my colleagues for coming down to Mississippi earlier this week. I know

the presentations in Mississippi were brief, because your eyes told

you everything you needed to see, one bridge two miles long completely destroyed, another bridge a mile and a half long completely
9

destroyed. Highway 90 along the beach running to Harrison County gone, for all practical purposes. Tens of thousands of homes just

leveled.

And we have obviously got some challenges. Prior to the storm,

our local communities had requested about $250 million of infrastructure for people who don’t have a central water system, who

don’t have a central sewer system. It has obviously been complicated by those larger cities that have now been to a certain extent destroyed and the need to rebuild that infrastructure.

So we are certainly glad to have the FEMA folks here today, and

again, I am personally grateful that you and so many other of my

colleagues took the time to visit south Mississippi earlier this week.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. We certainly appreciate

your efforts. I have been down there twice now and I keep hearing

the stories about how Congressman Taylor has been literally in the

mud pulling people out and helping people. He is one of these people that were affected, lost his house. So our thoughts and prayers

are certainly with you and your family, Gene.

I would now like to recognize Mr. Bachus for an opening statement.

Mr. BACHUS. I thank the Chairman.

Gentlemen, I have actually been in Louisiana and Mississippi

with Gene Taylor and others the day before yesterday. I would like

to thank you for the recovery efforts that are going on there and

some of the mitigation that is going on.

I do have a question, just as a thought or question about the

overall. What Americans saw on their TV screens as that category

5 hurricane approached New Orleans, I think that we all made assumptions that turned out not to be true. The assumption I think

most Americans had made is that somebody was in charge and responsible for preparing for those hurricanes. I think as it turned

out we weren’t very prepared as a Nation.

Now, I don’t know whose responsibility that is, and still, there

are a lot of questions whether it is local, State or Federal. Now,

FEMA was created to consolidate and coordinate the Federal effort

to prepare for and respond to disasters. Part of that definition is

to prepare for disasters. Anybody that saw what went on in New

Orleans knows we weren’t prepared.

Now, my question is, who was supposed to do what? More importantly, not because of a blame game, but if it happens again, are

all those things that went wrong in New Orleans, are they going

to go wrong again?

One thing that, after this storm, that I became more aware of,

now, before this storm there were all these predictions what a real

catastrophe it could be that if New Orleans had a direct hit from

a hurricane. We heard that a year before, six months before. In

2001, in 2001, four years before this hurricane hit, FEMA did a

study. That study said that a major hurricane, category 3 plus, directly hitting New Orleans, is one of the three likeliest most catastrophic disasters in our future.

In other words, FEMA itself said of the three major catastrophes

most likely to happen in the future, one of them is a direct hit on

New Orleans. So it was likely to happen.
10

With that in mind, why, for instance, I mean, who came up with

taking people into the Superdome and telling them to provide five

days worth of water and food for themselves as opposed to getting

them out of the city? Who was responsible when Amtrak offered a

train for 1,000 people to get out of New Orleans, what was the Federal role there? Was there any role?

And the city had a preparedness plan, and part of it said that

people would bring their own food into the Superdome. It was predictable that the sanitation and the lights would go out there.

Was there anybody at the Federal level that said, you know, this

won’t work? Because those are my questions. In preparing, what

are your authorities? What do you do when you look over these

plans which turned out to be not very much of a plan at all in New

Orleans? Did you bless, for instance, the mayor when he said, everybody that can get out, get out, but provided no transportation

for those who didn’t have transportation?

Four years before, you predicted that this event—and I am not

talking about you personally, but the Agency predicted this event

may happen. If it happens again, what is your role? Those are basically my questions. And I know you are here to testify today about

your recovery efforts and what you are doing with things like debris removal.

But as far as psychological, the debris removal that I think

American citizens are still dealing with is those images in our mind

of people trapped for five days without water and food. That is really my remark.

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman.

And I just want to remind my colleagues that I think Mr. Bachus

just said it, this hearing is focusing on recovery efforts. I know we

have the chief operating officer of FEMA here, and obviously if

members ask questions, we certainly want you to respond to them.

But again, the focus of this is recovery efforts. That is why the

Speaker set up the Katrina Committee. We are dealing with those

questions of the five days before and the five days after.

Mr. BACHUS. I would say, just as a subcommittee chairman, this

Subcommittee has jurisdiction over FEMA. Part of the charge is

preparing recovery. Part of the recovery effort depends on how well

we were prepared.

Mr. SHUSTER. Absolutely.

Mr. BACHUS. Part of what went on with recovery was because we

weren’t prepared and there were things we had to do after the hurricane which we are looking at today because someone didn’t so

something before the hurricane.

Mr. SHUSTER. Yes, the gentleman is absolutely correct in that

analysis. We are going to look into those aspects of it. But as I said

today, we really want to focus on those recovery efforts, as you

mentioned, as we move forward.

I know members have, there are 535 members of Congress that

have those exact same types of questions, and we are going to sift

through it all and figure that out and get to those answers.

We have three panels of witnesses appearing before us today.

The first will be comprised of two witnesses from the Department

of Homeland Security, Mr. Ken Burris, who is the Deputy Undersecretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response, and Mr.
11

Richard Skinner, the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector

General.

These witnesses are being called to discuss what the Department

is doing to manage this massive recovery effort; what additional resources are required to ensure it works efficiently; and what systems or processes are required to make sure it is not abused. I

want to welcome you both here today.

Our second panel is going to consist of our colleague from Louisiana and a member of this Committee, Richard Baker. While he

normally would testify first, he was not able to join us now, and

he will be here around noon and we will have him testify after the

first panel.

And the third panel will be witnesses representing State and

local officials who have worked or are working with FEMA on the

recovery effort. We hope to hear from them how the system works

or doesn’t work for the end users.

I would like to now ask unanimous consent that all our witnesses’ full statements be included in the record. Without objection,

so ordered.

For each panel, we will hear all the witnesses’ statements and

then ask questions of the entire panel. Since your written testimony has been made part of the record, the Subcommittee will request that you limit your testimony to five minutes. With that, the

first panel, Mr. Burris, you may proceed.

TESTIMONY OF KENNETH BURRIS, ACTING CHIEF OF OPERATIONS, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY;

AND RICHARD L. SKINNER, INSPECTOR GENERAL, UNITED

STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

Mr. BURRIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Representative Norton

and members of the Subcommittee. I am Ken Burris, I am the Acting Director of Operations at the Federal Emergency Management

Agency within the Department of Homeland Security. I serve in

the role as the Chief Operating Officer.

As the response efforts for immediate lifesaving and life-sustaining efforts end a long and immensely challenging recovery effort is

already well underway. To date, FEMA has registered over 2 million victims for assistance to provide housing assistance or direct

assistance, and has provided direct assistance to 390,000 displaced

individuals and families.

At this point, there were more than 300,000 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina sheltered in congregate care spread out around 48

different States in our Country. Today, that shelter population in

congregate shelter care is down to 57,000. We have a little more

work to do to get that to zero.

Our first and foremost priority is to address the housing needs

of those that are displaced. This will be a partnership with State

and local leaders that play a central role in determining the nature

and the shape of this type of planning and rebuilding process. We

will support and supplement State and local efforts through our

processes, while continuing to assist the individual disaster victim.

Our goal is to move all Katrina evacuees out of congregate care

by the middle of October. In Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Alabama as well, there were hundreds of thousands of homes that
12

were destroyed in one of America’s largest natural disasters. The

housing stock in the most impacted areas in the southern parishes

of Louisiana and the counties of Mississippi, there is an estimated

short and mid term housing requirement for 600,000 households.

Some of these households are still in congregate care, while

many of those are displaced in hotels or motels, or are living with

family and friends. These individuals too will require that type of

long term housing assistance. The Federal Government is committed to helping the citizens of the Gulf Coast overcome the disaster

and rebuild these devastated communities.

Our strategy is based on the single premise that assistance of

victims of Hurricane Katrina is to reestablish a normal living environment as quickly as possible in the towns and communities

where they want to live, so as long as the local infrastructure can

support that type of long term living. In reaching these goals, we

apply three basic methodologies.

The first methodology is to provide direct to families and individuals assistance that allows them to choose for themselves the best

housing options where they can best find a job, fit into the community and decide for themselves how they can best move forward.

The Federal Government’s disaster assistance is not and does not

take the place of insurance. None of our programs are that comprehensive or provide that comprehensive coverage. But we can

help and we will help where eligible families are available to have

housing assistance for temporary housing up to 18 months.

Last month, we announced a comprehensive housing assistance

program to meet the immediate needs of individuals and families

displaced by Katrina. DHS and the Department of Housing and

Urban Development announced measures that provided transitional housing assistance to evacuees, to cut through red tape and

to provide the flexibility, the choice and the portability needed to

remove themselves from congregate care and temporary shelters to

more stable housing.

We also expedited aid to evacuees with immediate housing needs.

Because of Katrina’s unprecedented scope and widespread dispersion of the evacuee population, FEMA accelerated the assistance to

individuals and households program to provide housing assistance

to homeowners and renters. To reduce the up front paperwork and

provide immediate need, households will receive an initial lump

sum payment of $2,358 to cover three months of household needs.

This payment represents a national average of the fair market rent

for a two bedroom unit. Those who qualify for further benefits may

be extended assistance up to 18 months, for a total of $26,200.

HUD is also providing specialized housing assistance through a

program that is called the HUD’s Katrina Disaster Housing Assistance Program. While many and most of these evacuees will receive

FEMA assistance, others will be eligible for the HUD assistance.

We have instituted the Disaster Unemployment Assistance Program and at this point, we have distributed $48 million to the Department of Labor for unemployment benefits for those who qualify.

The second method in assisting the States that have been encumbered by the increased demands on their limited resources, it is apparent that many of these States welcomed the evacuee population
13

into their States. Through that, there has been impact on their

local services. We have agreed to commit to reimbursing the States

for the increased shelter costs of this, as well as the increased cost

to the educational system where States have experienced an insurgence of students within their school systems.

As always, we stand ready to help in rebuilding communities in

a safer, less vulnerable situation for future loss of life and property.

We do this through our public assistance program. I know we want

to talk about some of our other contracting methods, but our public

assistance program, let me say that the States will be paid a portion of this through the grants process. We enter into a lot of

awarding through public works process, through the grants process. Through that process, we will try to assist as well as we can

in the rebuilding efforts in these areas to make these communities

safer and stronger.

That concludes my oral statement. I will be glad to answer any

questions you may have.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Burris.

We will now hear from Mr. Skinner. You may proceed.

Mr. SKINNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Norton, members of the Subcommittee and others.

Today I would just like to summarize a couple of points from my

prepared statement which I have submitted for the record. First,

concerning OIG community oversight. Through the PCIE, that is

the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, their homeland

security roundtable, which I chair, the Inspector General community has been working together to coordinate our respective oversight efforts from the beginning. Collectively, we have prepared

plans to provide oversight for 99 percent of the $63 billion already

appropriated to date for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

As with all presidentially-declared disasters, FEMA establishes

or coordinates the Federal Government’s relief efforts. To do this,

they administer some of the funds directly. But the bulk of the

funds are distributed to other Federal departments through mission assignments, or State agencies through grants. As of October

4th, FEMA has made grants to Katrina-affected States totaling

about $1 billion and mission assignments totaling about $7 billion,

of which about $6 billion went to the Department of Defense.

The overriding objectives of the OIG plans are to ensure accountability, promote efficiencies and to detect and prevent, and I emphasize prevent, fraud, waste and abuse. Insofar as a large portion

of the funds obligated to date have been or will be spent for contractor support, the OIG’s current plans will naturally focus on contract management. This includes performing internal control assessments or risk assessments of procurement systems, monitoring

contract operations and reviewing the award and management of

all major contracts, particularly no-bid or limited competition contracts.

In this regard, the OIGs are looking at the evidence to support

the no-bid selection or decision, the criteria used to select one contractor over another, the reasonableness of the costs associated

with the service or product to be delivered, the qualifications of the

contractor selected, and the support for the payments made to the

contractor.
14

Notwithstanding our best efforts, however, to prevent problems

through an aggressive oversight program, history has shown that

there are some who will try to beat the system through fraudulent

means. Accordingly, the OIGs will be working closely with the

newly established hurricane fraud task force, which is chaired by

the assistant attorney general of the Criminal Division in the Department of Justice.

The task force is designed to investigate and prosecute disasterrelated crimes. It will track referrals of potential cases, coordinate

with law enforcement agencies such as the IGs to initiative investigations, match referrals with the appropriate U.S. attorney offices

in the affected States, and ensure timely prosecution of cases. In

this regard, an OIG hurricane relief fraud hot line has been established and has been widely publicized throughout the Gulf Coast.

As a result of these efforts, we have already made eight arrests

and expect to make many more in the days and weeks to come. To

date, the OIGs have committed a total of over 350 auditors, investigators and inspectors in this combined effort.

Now with respect to our office, the DHS OIG oversight responsibilities. Based on my experiences as a deputy inspector general

at FEMA, I recognize that a disaster of this magnitude will require

long term commitment. Accordingly, to ensure that we remain focused, not just on short term response operations, but also on long

term recovery initiatives, which require our involvement for the

next three, five, seven, maybe even ten years, I have created an office to focus solely on Hurricane Katrina relief activities.

I just recently hired an assistant inspector general to manage

this effort on a full-time basis. Sixty employees have already been

assigned to this effort, and over 30 more will be added within the

next 3 months. We are prepared to add even more resources, provided funding is made available as the need arises.

We have had personnel monitoring FEMA operations since the

hurricane struck September 1st, and currently have auditors and

investigators assigned to the joint field offices in Baton Rouge,

Montgomery, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi and Austin, Texas.

Our auditors will provide oversight of the entire spectrum of FEMA

programs: individual assistance, temporary housing, public assistance and mitigation when it comes online.

Finally, we have initiated a review that will focus on FEMA’s

preparedness for an response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. This review will be done in close coordination with

GAO.

In conclusion, I would like to say that collectively, the OIG community is uniquely qualified and in position to provide the most

timely and effective oversight of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane

Rita activities. You can be sure that the OIG community stands

united in its efforts to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely today and in the years to come as the communities and victims

of the Gulf Coast region get back to normal.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement. I will be pleased to

answer any questions.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Skinner.

We are going to go into the question rounds, and again, I want

to remind my colleagues we are going to stay to five minutes. I am
15

sure everybody has many questions. But we will keep it to five

minutes, and I am going to enforce that strictly.

As I mentioned in my opening statement, I have a great concern

about some of these not only in New Orleans, but the smaller communities that we traveled to. I know Hancock County, a small,

rural county, we talked to the city manager of Biloxi and in New

Orleans, they are running out of cash. The mayor of New Orleans

just laid off, 20 minutes after he left a briefing with us, he laid off

3,000 workers out of the 7,000 workers in New Orleans. They just

don’t have cash.

The Stafford Act, it does not make, well, let me back up. The interpretation of the Stafford Act says that the FEMA can only pay

for overtime, but in reviewing the Stafford Act, nowhere does it say

overtime or straight time in there. I wanted to know what your

view is. Can the President order cash to flow to those affected

areas to pay for straight time? You can both comment on it, if you

wish.

Mr. BURRIS. I guess Rick is going to let me go first, since I am

the policy guy and he is the legal guy. On a policy basis, we have

had a longstanding policy that the straight appropriated funds,

that jurisdiction would be applied to their services, are the responsibility of that jurisdiction. We pick up the overage over the normal

appropriated funds.

Mr. SHUSTER. But on the legal side, it doesn’t say specifically in

the Stafford Act, your policy and interpretation has been that in

the past, I understand that. But we are facing a situation right

now where people just don’t have the cash to pay the straight time.

So is it your view, I guess what I am looking for is, do we need

to correct it legislatively, or can you go back and the President can

reevaluate and say, we have to get them some cash, let’s just move

forward?

Mr. BURRIS. I am aware of efforts, we also administer the disaster loan program that currently has a cap on it of $5 million. That

is currently being revisited to raise that cap to allow loans from

that to happen.

Mr. SHUSTER. Also I understand that you want to make it really

a loan program, because in the past it has turned into just a grant

program, which I think is wise.

Mr. BURRIS. That is correct. In the past, it was, most of those lower than $5 million were just forgiven.

Mr. SHUSTER. Right. I think we may even be trying to correct

that legislatively this week with the CDL program.

Mr. BURRIS. I read that this morning.

Mr. SHUSTER. But back to, is that something you are willing to

go back and take it up to the highest levels?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHUSTER. We talked to Biloxi yesterday, and their city manager said 80 percent of their revenue is gone. They just don’t have

the cash, everybody is cash-starved. So the CDL is one way, but

looking at the Stafford Act paying for emergency personnel is what

we are looking at, the police, the firemen, getting them paid so

they are on the job.

The second question I have is, does FEMA have the manpower

to manage this recovery, which I believe Mr. Skinner said, this is
16

a long term project. We are talking three years probably, or maybe

longer. As I look at some of the statistics, the IG’s office has 90 inspectors and FEMA has 70 program managers. We have 20 more

inspectors than we do managers. It seems to me, especially at this

point, we are going to need a lot more managers. What is your view

on that, Mr. Burris?

Mr. BURRIS. The Stafford Act allows us the availability to search

and have employees come on board in FEMA that are direct charge

to the disaster. We have done that. We are in the process of hiring

additional employees to staff up our recovery efforts.

But we also rely heavily upon our technical assistance contractors, in which we have, private industry goes out, provides engineering assistance, provides technical types of assistance to local

jurisdictions to help them through the process. Currently there are

around 3,000 of those in the affected areas.

So we have the ability to hire term employees that are charged

specifically to the disaster. We do that regularly. We still have employees on our rolls that are term employees from the Northridge

earthquake. We had Andrew employees on our employees for 10

years. So it is a long term effort that goes on in a recovery. The

Stafford Act provides us the flexibility to staff up and do that.

Mr. SHUSTER. Are these people going to be high level, they are

going to be able to make decisions? What it sounds to me like is,

you sort of have the workers out there, and it would seem that

with 70 programs you need more people that can make decisions.

The concern is, where do they come from and how long do they

take to train?

Mr. BURRIS. On the policy decision front, especially in our recovery division, they have put together a task force to address policies

as they come along. I can say I have to deal with a policy decision

several times a day to adjust things. The debris removal policy was

one of them that we streamlined to make it work specifically for

this event.

So the intent and purpose is to provide workers in theater, and

then we also provide senior level managers through that method in

the field that have the ability to make limited policy. But policy

that affects disaster response on a nationwide basis has to come up

to Washington to be reviewed.

Mr. SHUSTER. That is a great concern of mine, and your answer

is concerning me, that we seem to be doing business as usual. This

is enormous. We need decision makers. I know the process, I saw

the process in Florida. It goes up the line, it comes to Washington

and the next thing you know, the facts aren’t the same as they

were when it started out.

I would encourage you, let’s do some things differently. Let’s

push those decisions out into the field. We are going to make mistakes, there is no doubt, no matter how we do it. But getting the

relief to these people, and this is, as I said, and you know it, it is

huge, it is different than anything we have faced. I think we ought

to be looking at it differently.

I see the clock has expired, so I am going to live by the five

minute rule and die by the five minute rule. Next I would like to

recognize Ms. Norton.
17

Ms. NORTON. Well, if the Chairman lives and dies by it, you see

the message he is sending to the rest of us.

[Laughter.]

Ms. NORTON. I would like to ask Mr. Skinner a question about

this sole source notion, because it is very easy to criticize Government for sole source, of course, if there is no other way to do it.

You say, get us somebody here that does what needs to be done.

This Committee has jurisdiction over GSA. What I am familiar

with is the GSA schedule. That doesn’t have to do with emergencies. What it means is that people have pre-competed so that

you don’t have to think about sole source, because in fact you know

who is qualified, you go to a set of qualified people, you get a low

bid just like that, because they are all qualified. It has been a competition.

Is there anything of the kind like the GSA schedule that FEMA

uses or should use?

Mr. SKINNER. They in fact do use the GSA schedule where they

can. In this particular disaster, however, I think the scope of the

work that was required required FEMA to think outside the box,

go beyond what was on that GSA schedule.

Ms. NORTON. What items, for example, were unanticipated, were

not on the schedule?

Mr. SKINNER. The need for, in going with the Corps of Engineers,

for example, in the debris removal.

Ms. NORTON. I’m sorry?

Mr. SKINNER. The Corps of Engineers, who FEMA tasked to lead

our debris removal efforts.

Ms. NORTON. And the Corps of Engineers alone does the debris

removal after these hurricanes and earthquakes? They are contractors who are on your schedule who do that?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes. They are the primary agency tasked to lead

our debris removal efforts, I believe. The States also, I think, have

the option to do their own debris removal.

Ms. NORTON. Well, there was no State option here, obviously.

What I am trying to find out is, are you solely dependent upon the

Corps of Engineers, or were there contractors on the GSA schedule

or on some other schedule that could have or should have been

called to that task, for example, since it is perfectly foreseeable?

Mr. BURRIS. When you are talking about solely dependent on the

Army Corps of Engineers, in the debris removal, in this particular

disaster there is direct Federal assistance for the first 60 days.

That means that the Federal Government is going to pick up the

cost for that direct Federal assistance.

We turn to the Corps for debris removal. Now, the Corps, in and

of itself, does not themselves do all this debris removal. They go

through a contracting process where they contract to local contractors or national contractors to assist them in the debris removal

process.

Ms. NORTON. So why weren’t there contractors—and since I was

cited by Mr. Skinner now, I asked for an example, he said debris

removal, he said that was something that was unforeseen. I am

trying to find out why that was unforeseen since that obviously is

necessitated whenever there is a natural disaster.
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Even if there was a scope of it, the Country is crawling with debris removal people. Do we need to have the GSA schedule expanded, there just weren’t enough people on it, the Corps doesn’t

have enough companies on it? Why was it necessary to do sole

sourcing debris removal?

Mr. SKINNER. Congresswoman, we are looking at that as we

speak, at all the contracting activities that took place immediately

following this disaster, from day one. One of the issues that is high

on our priority list is the debris removal issue. What we have

learned today is that the Corps of Engineers does in fact have preexisting contracts for contractors to come in and remove debris.

However, the extent of the devastation here was so great that

they had to—we absorbed all the available resources that were

available under those pre-existing contracts. They had to go outside

of the pre-existing contracts, outside the GSA schedule and look for

other contractors. That is what we are observing right now.

A lot of that was done on a sole source basis. We are looking at

that to ensure that although it was sole source, you still have to

act in a very reasonable manner when you negotiate these contracts.

At the same time, you have your States and you have your local

governments, many of whom chose to take charge of their own debris. In Alabama, for example, I believe 90 percent of the debris removal operations is not being handled by the Corps, but being handled by the State in itself. In the State of Mississippi, 50 percent

of the debris removal operations, based on our assessments right

now, are being handled by the Corps, whereas the State and the

local counties have chosen to handle their own.

All of these people, most of these people, we are not complete in

our assessment, but it looks like about 90 percent of those contracts that were entered into were on a sole source basis. I am not

suggesting there is anything improper about that. We were in the

middle of a battle, the debris had to be removed off the major arteries, the ambulances, police, law enforcement and also to allow people to come in to clean up. But we are in fact looking at that, and

that is generally what we are seeing.

In Louisiana, I believe the Corps is the predominant lead for the

debris removal operations in that State.

Ms. NORTON. So we have one reform that you think is underway

already, and that is to expand the list of contractors, so that sole

source would not be necessary, given what we have learned from

Katrina?

Mr. SKINNER. I am not aware of anything underway to expand

that ability, but at this point—

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Burris, is there anything under—that is what

you are being criticized for as much as anything. I am just trying

to get an answer, if we have learned anything and if we have,

whether or not we are contemplating dealing with those things. We

didn’t do it after Florida, I am trying to find out if lessons can be

learned and attended to.

Mr. BURRIS. Let me clarify this Corps of Engineers thing. Corps

of Engineers was mission assigned. They were not a sole source

contract.
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Ms. NORTON. I know the Corps of Engineers was not—look, I

didn’t get—I will leave that there. That was given to me by Mr.

Skinner as an example. I didn’t accuse anybody. And let me just

go on to—

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentlelady’s time has expired. We know everybody has a lot of questions here, we want to be fair to everybody.

Maybe that is something we can offer in writing to you, a question,

and you can give us back detail. I think it is a detailed answer to

it, and we want to make sure we get the answers. But I now want

to move on to Mr. Dent for five minutes.

Mr. DENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question will be for

Mr. Skinner.

I read recently in a series of articles by the Tribune Services, you

might have seen those articles about clear cases of fraud, waste

and abuse with respect to the FEMA recovery effort for previous

disasters. It identified specifically situations in Florida and also in

Detroit, Michigan. Some of the things they pointed out in those stories really were quite alarming.

For example, States declared counties disaster areas where the

counties themselves had not asked to be added to that State disaster list. It was submitted to the Federal Government. There were

cases of many people, far too many people, who were not impacted

by the disasters in Florida and Detroit, people in alarming numbers, they had received checks from FEMA.

I am just deeply concerned that your Agency is going to be up

to the task in the Gulf Coast, where we have so many real victims

of these disasters. We want to make sure we get them all the support that they need. But given the abuse that occurred in previous

hurricanes, what specifically can you do to make sure that we don’t

see that same kind of recurrence of events that we saw in these

previous situations?

Mr. SKINNER. Thank you, Congressman. First, let me assure you,

we are up to the task. We also are working very, very closely with

the other IGs in the community to provide oversight of their respective programs.

For example, SBA IG is looking at the SBA loan programs. The

Department of Labor IG is looking at the unemployment programs,

or the grants that were made to the States for unemployment. The

Department of Agriculture is looking at the food stamp distribution

program for the disaster victims.

With regards to providing oversight in making references to what

we found in Florida and Detroit, one of the lessons learned, I think,

from the Florida hurricanes, is the fact that—in other words, we

are not experiencing the same problems in Florida that we observed last year. That is, FEMA was very careful to go to the individual counties and do preliminary damage assessments for those

outlying counties to ensure that the damage was sufficient to justify a declaration. That was not always done after the Florida disasters, and as a result, some marginal counties may have been declared unnecessarily.

In this case here, it is pretty obvious, those counties that have

both PA and IA declarations are most certainly in need. Those outlying counties, FEMA has done preliminary damage assessments.

I just returned from there last night myself, in visiting Alabama,
20

Mississippi and Louisiana, and looked at those counties that are on

the marginal line. Many have not been declared, not every county

in the State has been declared a disaster in Mississippi and Alabama, for example. So that in itself will help solve some of the

problems.

Now we just need to focus on those that were declared, those

counties that are in need of assistance. Unfortunately, there are

going to be people in those counties and people outside those counties that are going to come in and try to take advantage of the situation. We are working very closely with the Department of Justice

and their task force.

Mr. DENT. How quickly can you recognize this type of fraud

when it occurs, and how quickly can FEMA de-obligate those funds

if you do witness this fraud?

Mr. SKINNER. Our attempt here is preventive. We are trying to

get to them before the check is actually delivered. That is what we

have done to date. As a matter of fact, we have met many of these

culprits, we have made several arrests already. We just met them

at the post office when they come to collect their check.

So we try to do it up front. We have a lot of partners that are

helping us do that. One of the biggest partners is the post office.

For example, in Louisiana, someone applied for, a couple applied

as Mr. and Mrs. John and Jane Doe. The postal employee that delivers the mail recognized that John Doe did not live there, nor was

there any damage to their home, nor did they need disaster assistance. They immediately contacted the task force, we investigated

and made an arrest.

So we are trying to catch them right up front. We have many

partners that are helping us with this. We are doing it through hot

line complaints as well. We are advertising our hot line number

down there through public service announcements, on TV, radio

and the local governments there.

Mr. DENT. Thank you. I would like to ask Mr. Burris a quick

question, just keeping in mind those difficulties from Florida last

year, and even in Pennsylvania, we had Hurricane Ivan. I still

have a lot of problems up there with people getting reimbursed,

and of course our situation was much more limited than what we

have seen here in the Gulf Coast.

Do you feel that FEMA recovery division has the current capacity

to handle the recovery of such a large scale disaster? How much

additional staffing are you going to require and resources to ensure

timely action to help those people who have been the victims of this

terrible disaster in the Gulf Coast?

Mr. BURRIS. We definitely require additional resources to handle

the magnitude of what has happened in the Gulf Coast. We are

doing that through the Stafford Act hiring authorities that allow us

to bring on, into the Federal Government or through contracting,

employees that are charged directly to a disaster. They are on a

term limited basis.

Mr. DENT. Okay, no further questions.

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentleman’s time has expired.

I yield five minutes to Mr. Taylor for questions.

Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Skinner, I found your talks about trying to cut

down on the fraud interesting in light of a case that I know to be
21

true, and that is that my daughter and son-in-law, because of bad

communications, both filed for a FEMA claim. They happen to have

been residing in New Orleans.

Both checks come in, my son-in-law calls FEMA and says, look,

you all screwed up, we screwed up, we ordered two checks, we are

only due one, what do we do with it? He said the folks at FEMA

started laughing on the phone and said, this is the first person to

ever call in and do that. So I am hearing that you are going after

fraud, but they basically said, do what you feel like with it. I am

quoting my son-in-law, there is no reason for him, he knows what

my job is, there is no reason for him to try to pull a fast one.

But that is certainly contrary to the tone of what you are saying

today. So I would hope that you would instruct your folks that

when people realize they have made an honest mistake and try to

do the honest thing to reward them for that and say yes, this is

the process that you do. I found it interesting, in one of the publications I read just yesterday that now you are going after Floridians

about a year after the fact who got too much money. I think it is

much more important to catch it up front, right?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes.

Mr. TAYLOR. Than a year later.

Second thing, again, I am hearing a lot of hearsay about the

abuse of the system. So I would like a clarification. In Mississippi

we have an excellent State law preventing conflicts of interest. It

is just airtight. You can’t even be a member of a board that does

business with yourself, you can’t exclude yourself from the vote,

you just can’t be on a board that does business.

What are the rules as far as FEMA? Because I am hearing some

disturbing accusations. Could a county or a State elected official in

one of the three affected States turn around and start a business

to do business with FEMA, either in disaster cleanup, a site for

waste disposal, since that seems to be a hot ticket, or any of these

other things? What are your rules, and does that need to be approached, since to a certain extent, particularly if you are dealing

directly with a county, that person is in a position that they might

or may not have been steering business his own way?

Mr. SKINNER. First of all, I will just make a comment on the remark on the telephone call. Those people do not work for the OIG.

We are embedding people up at the NPSI, the place that receives

those calls, so that we can monitor their activities as well.

Mr. TAYLOR. Well, you need to monitor them a bit more closely.

Mr. SKINNER. Yes. I really encourage you, that remark was definitely inappropriate, and had we been made aware of it, we would

have taken action.

Mr. TAYLOR. It is even worse, she actually called for her supervisor, and the supervisor started laughing.

Mr. SKINNER. That is very, very inappropriate. We are going to

embed people up there in that operation this week, as well as at

the payment center in Mount Weather to track that whole process

and learn more.

In response to your second question, I think Ken might be more

equipped to answer this, but from a prosecution standpoint, we rely

on the laws of the State. I know Mississippi has very tight conflict

of interest laws. Louisiana has laws that allow you to invest up to,
22

I think it is 4.999 percent without disclosure. So if someone does

have a vested interest in a company that is doing business, that

is totally legal, it is not prosecutable.

However, if that individual provides any information that may

mislead or have an influence, adverse influence on the decision to

approve a contract or a financial relationship, then we can factor

that in for prosecution. So there is no Federal law, per se, that will

override any of the State laws.

Mr. TAYLOR. So you are using your authority to enforce State

laws?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes. In essence. We do have to, there is no Federal

law that would override the State laws in that regard.

Mr. TAYLOR. Since the majority of the work is going to take place

in the three coastal counties and that average is anywhere from

about 150 miles from the State capital of Jackson, I am curious

why you are putting your Inspector General 150 miles away from

90 percent of the work.

Mr. SKINNER. No, we are not.

Mr. TAYLOR. I heard you say Jackson.

Mr. SKINNER. Yes. We have an operation there, because that is

where the joint field office is. That is where all of the applications

are screened, that is where the accounting is done, that is where

the contracting is done and the awards are made.

We have a sub-office as we speak in Biloxi, and we are working

out of Biloxi as well. Our biggest problem right now is housing, not

only a place to sleep, but a place to secure our work papers and

our documents as we go through our investigations and audits. But

we are in fact in Biloxi itself.

Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Burris, some of the best work that I saw done

in the aftermath of the storm was performed by the Army National

Guard and the Navy Seabees. One of the things they just took

upon themselves is, we are going to make thing right, we are going

to open up these streets and we will ask for permission later.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, that really was the

right attitude to take, it was the only attitude to take. I was there

at ground zero.

One of the things we are running into now is we still have desperate need for housing. At this point, people would welcome a tent

to live in as opposed to a little dome shelter that may or may not

have been looted from the local Wal-Mart or K-Mart. I am being

told that the Navy construction battalion has been stopped on at

least one occasion from erecting large tents to provide temporary

housing because a local contractor objected.

It would seem to me that it would be in the best interests of our

Nation to have some sort of a 60 to 90 day window where the military can just step in and do what needs to be done without a contractor being able to object. These are desperate times. I am of the

opinion this is not the last horrible hurricane or natural disaster

this Nation is ever going to see and there is certainly the threat

of terrorism out there.

If the military has the capability, I understand that at some

point, when life gets back to normal, the contractors ought to be

able to say, hey, I can do that job. But for the foreseeable future,

30 days after the storm, 60 days after the storm, even 90 days after
23

a storm, when you have people who are living in their cars, living

in a pup tent in what used to be their front yard, and the military

has the availability of building tents, I would sure hope FEMA

would rethink that whole law that allows just one contractor to

stop this from happening. I would like to hear your thoughts on

that.

And apparently, this apparently is happening as we speak near

Pass Christian, Mississippi.

Mr. BURRIS. Where again, sir?

Mr. TAYLOR. Pass Christian. I guess you guys would say Christian.

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, sir. I am not aware of that incident. I am aware

that military commander have the ability to implement whatever

program they deem necessary to implement for the health, safety

and well-being of the civilian population around their post. I will

have to check into this particular one. I don’t see that a contractor

would have the authority to tell a military commander no, he could

not do something like that.

Mr. TAYLOR. Since we are blessed to have the Seabees down

there, and they do a lot of good works, as they are training to deploy. The rule traditionally has been that they could come in and

help a county clear a field for a soccer field, even do some sewage

treatment work, build a pier for recreational purposes for a city or

for a county, as long as a local contractor did not object. That has

worked pretty well during peace time.

What we are finding now is that in this time of true emergency

that still, a veto by a local contractor is still on the books. It is really preventing a great asset from being used to its fullest extent.

The county supervisor who brought it to my attention happens

to be in town today. Is there any chance I can get him with you

to walk you through that?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, sir.

Mr. TAYLOR. Would you get with me?

Mr. BURRIS. Right after this.

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

Mr. BURRIS. Could I answer a question regarding the integrity of

our contracting?

Mr. SHUSTER. Sure.

Mr. BURRIS. We do applicant contract, applicant briefings with

local government and State government to have everyone that gets

Federal dollars to understand what the requirements are to use

those Federal dollars in contracting. This, because we have been

delayed in our public works projects, we worked with the IG’s office

to put together a program to be more proactive in that. Instead of

doing it during the applicant briefings, we worked with our JFOs

in each State to get that on the ground up front, so that the local

officials, who are managing Federal funds, know exactly what the

requirements for the use of Federal funds are and the penalties for

violating the Procurement Integrity Act.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Burris. I certainly would like to

hear back as to if we were able to resolve that problem. I appreciate that.

Next I would like to recognize Mrs. Kelly.

Mrs. KELLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
24

I have to say that, being from New York, we experienced a manmade disaster on 9/11/01. FEMA had a great response. They were

there for us and they worked hard. I really do thank FEMA. There

are still some loose ends. We had a couple of hurricanes that hit

my district, forest fires and storms, and FEMA has been in and

helped my district a great deal and I do thank you.

But five years later, Mr. Burris, I represent a district that holds

Indian Point Nuclear Facilities, power plants that are just north of

New York City. The soundness of the emergency preparedness

plans for the area surrounding the plant has always been a top

level concern in my district. I am sorry to say that the confidence

in the plans is not nearly as strong as it should be, and with good

reason.

Governor Pataki commissioned a report that found a lot of problems with the emergency preparedness in 2003 and now in the

aftermath of Katrina, there are some very serious concerns in my

district. In some towns, officials have gone so far as to begin mapping escape routes, because we all saw the traffic jams coming out

of Louisiana. And sir, we have a lot of people living in that area

within very close proximity, a ten mile proximity to that plant.

Due to those inadequacies that were exposed by Katrina, I want

to know if we can expect FEMA to conduct another review of the

evacuation plan for the area surrounding Indian Point.

Mr. BURRIS. I will take your concerns back to our REP program,

our radiological emergency preparedness program, and to the director to bring that to their attention.

Mrs. KELLY. I wish you would, sir.

Mr. BURRIS. I will do that.

Mrs. KELLY. Because earlier this month, the DHS, the Nuclear

Regulatory Commission, FEMA and the FBI conducted what they

considered a comprehensive review of Indian Point. They went out

publicly and told our local officials and other people there about the

conditions of the plant. They painted a very rosy picture of safety

and security.

The following week we found out that these same people had neglected to mention a leak in the spent fuel pool. It was a radioactive leak. And it was a fact that they just neglected to share,

after going out and painting this rosy picture.

Mr. Burris, I don’t think that we can expect people to have confidence in the Federal Government’s ability to evacuate them in the

event of any kind of an emergency, let alone a radiologic emergency

which is what we are worried about here. If you can’t be counted

on to share some basic information on safety levels at this plant,

it has been five years and we still don’t have an adequate plan.

After what happened in Louisiana and Mississippi, we know we

need your help. But we need honest help, sir. We need something

that tells us the real facts.

I am also concerned that Indian Point currently does not maintain a backup electricity source for their independent, that is independent, for their energy grid and its emergency sirens. FEMA met

with the county officials on July 6th, and in that meeting they

agreed with county officials that there was cause for concern after

they evaluated the siren notification system.
25

FEMA officials at that meeting agreed to issue a formal written

report to the NRC on the findings of their evaluation. But in fact,

they have said that report would be to us by the end of September.

It is now October. No county, none of the five counties that I represent, has received anything. I would like to know what the status

of that report is.

Now, I know you did not come here to talk about Indian Point,

sir, and I understand you are not able, maybe, to answer my questions. That doesn’t change the fact that I have a lot of constituents

who are demanding answers. We are worried. We live there. The

nuclear plant is within 50 miles of New York City. What I want

to do by my questions to you right now is make my colleagues

aware of some of the FEMA problems that we, who have experienced a man-made disaster, have found.

There is a delay. The record needs to be better for Louisiana and

Mississippi and definitely and definitely needs to be cleaned up in

New York with regard to your responding to these emergencies.

And sir, I would caution you, please do not stand again and give

us a rosy picture of evacuation plans and how this plant is running

unless it is absolutely true.

Thank you.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. I would like to now yield five minutes

to Ms. Johnson.

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Skinner, are you satisfied that there is true accountability

for the money and transparency in dealing with the contracts and

the money?

Mr. SKINNER. No, I think there most certainly is room for improvement. There is no question. This is a very large disaster.

There is a lot of activity spread across four to five States. Actually

even 48 States, when you look at the dispersion of the evacuees.

We are working on that, that is what our job is, to review how well

we are accounting for the funds, how well we are contracting and

how well we are providing oversight in ensuring that we receive

the products and goods that we buy.

I am very cautions or concerned about the amount of monitoring

we are doing right now, after we award these grants to the States

for debris removal, as an example, and for that matter, how well

we are monitoring the contracts that we have awarded to ensure

that we are getting our money’s worth. As time goes on, I am sure

that will improve. But at this point in time, I think that there is

room for improvement.

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. I am from Dallas, Texas, and we have

up in the thousands of people from the more flood-prone area of

Louisiana, primarily. No money has flowed in our direction. But it

is needed. There are so many evacuees that need to placed in housing. There are so many organizations that need to find out how to

be reimbursed for some of the things that they have done. Because

it has basically been furnished by public service of non-profit organizations and money that the local officials have raised. So I would

appreciate some attention to that.

Mr. Burris, when I was in Louisiana the other day, I asked a

gentleman who has a contract for removing debris if he had hired

any local people. He is from Georgia. He said, a few. What kind of
26

outreach effort is in place to attempt to hire people that are from

New Orleans, somewhere in those areas where they could get the

benefit of making some kind of wage? There is no income there for

the city or the State or anything. Unless some of these people get

jobs and some of the local people get contracts, there won’t be any.

It is going to take a long time to get through where they are.

But I want to know what kind of outreach efforts are going on

to try to get some of those people back into those jobs.

Mr. BURRIS. We have outreach efforts to do local hiring when we

hire, first of all, let me talk about the Federal Government, when

we hire we make it a practice to hire locally there, to ensure that

the impacted area has the opportunity to have those jobs. Secondly,

in our contracting process, the Stafford Act says to the extent possible that the contractors will use local contracting and local hires

to do that.

Our contracts also carry the clauses that 40 percent of the contracts have to go to small and disadvantaged businesses, and we

monitor that very closely. I feel comfortable that we are meeting

our obligation to utilize local contracting when and wherever possible.

Ms. JOHNSON. Well, according to the newspaper and what people

are saying, 90 percent of the contracts have gone to large firms outside the State. The biggest complaints that I have are small businesses and some of the local people can’t even get in touch with

anyone to see whether they can do some subcontracting or something. What I would like to do is have you give me a name that

I could contact directly to assist.

Mr. BURRIS. I will do that. We are actually having a—

Ms. JOHNSON. Where I can get through. Lines are busy all the

time. But I really would like a number where there will be an answer.

Mr. BURRIS. I will do that. We are actually hosting tomorrow a

small contracting seminar in New Orleans, in the area, in Louisiana, to assist small contractors. So we are going to be replicating

that around the different States where our senior procurement officials are on the ground with the Small Business Administration,

hosting these seminars so people understand that. That kicks off

tomorrow.

Ms. JOHNSON. How have you posted it?

Mr. BURRIS. It has been, to my knowledge, distributed through

our joint field offices in Louisiana to where the seminar is being

hosted.

Ms. JOHNSON. Most of those people have been displaced. So some

of them, a whole lot of them are in Texas. I have not seen any opportunity listed for any small business to try to get any business.

They are all calling my office. It is jamming our phones and we

need some help and relief.

Mr. BURRIS. I will make sure you get the information.

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Ms. Johnson.

I now want to yield five minutes to Mr. Bachus for questions.

Mr. BACHUS. Thank you.

Mr. Skinner, you have 90 inspectors inspecting for fraud and

abuse, is that correct?
27

Mr. SKINNER. We had about, when we transferred FEMA’s IG office to the DHS IG, we transferred approximately 200 positions

from FEMA, approximately, I would believe, between 90 and 110

that had extensive disaster response and recovery audit investigative capability.

Mr. BACHUS. Yes. That is what I have been supplied with, a figure of about 90 some odd inspectors.

Mr. SKINNER. Yes, that is about correct.

Mr. BACHUS. What type of fraud and abuse are they finding?

Mr. SKINNER. Right now, we are focusing on two things. One is

contractor fraud. The big contracts right now that we are looking

at deal with debris removal. I am not at liberty to talk about where

we are on those investigations, but we do have ongoing investigations of debris removal contractors.

The second area that we are focusing on right now deals with the

individual assistance and temporary housing program. The way

this program is evolving, it started with the response, and that was

a big contracting frenzy, so to speak, for debris removal. We then

shifted into, within a week or so, into the individual assistance

temporary housing program. So we are investigating that as well.

We have not started anything on the reconstruction, of course,

because that has not started. But we are doing a lot of pre-applicant briefings, alerting them to what they do not want to do to get

themselves into trouble. We are finding the individual assistance

fraud, the fraudulent applications, we have already made eight arrests within the past week. We have at least 21 additional cases

ongoing in Louisiana. We have several ongoing in Mississippi.

There will be many, many arrests coming in the very next few days

and weeks.

Mr. BACHUS. Is there a 1-800 number where people can report

fraud and abuse, or what they consider mismanagement?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes, and I did not bring it with me. But we publish

what we have done. Since there are 26 IGs involved here and they

all have some oversight responsibility, SBA for loans, Labor for unemployment, what we have done is collectively come together and

we have created one hurricane fraud hot line number.

Mr. BACHUS. Are you making an attempt with the local media

to put that number out?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes, we have. I have done public service announcements for the radio, which have been satellited up, I believe this

week. Tomorrow, we have done television public service announcements. Those will be distributed tomorrow to the local media in not

just the four or five States that were affected, but the surrounding

States as well, because many of the culprits reside in these outlying areas.

Mr. BACHUS. I know sometimes you contract, but more often

than not it is the local government that contracts for debris removal and you reimburse those. Do you review those contracts

also?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes, we are.

Mr. BACHUS. Your inspector, when he recognizes what he believes is waste or fraud in a contract, once you recognize that, how

quickly can you respond to that?
28

Mr. SKINNER. Within hours. Once we open a case, what we want

to do is develop certain facts so that we know that there is in fact

a crime being committed. Within hours of opening that case, we immediately start coordinating with the local U.S. attorney to get

that on their docket, so we can get prosecution.

Mr. BACHUS. And those have happened?

Mr. SKINNER. Oh, yes. All the cases I just referred to, the 8 arrests we have already made, the 21 investigations that are ongoing.

Mr. BACHUS. With contractors?

Mr. SKINNER. No, these are mostly individual assistance right

now.

Mr. BACHUS. Let me deal with the contract. Debris removal is

predictable, I think I have read in the press where a hurricane generates as much as seven years of municipal waste within a few

hours. So you know you are always going to have debris removal.

Now, those contracts, do you have a standard where you say, we

are going to pay $10 a cubic yard or $15 a cubic yard?

Mr. SKINNER. That is done competitively. Yes, in those cases as

well, before we even open a case, we go to the U.S. Attorney to ensure that it can be prosecuted. As far as the rates, they vary by

region. They are let competitively, they can be anywhere from $6

per cubic yard in remote areas of Alabama to as much as $25 a

cubic yard down in New Orleans.

Mr. BACHUS. It is my understanding that a lot of them weren’t

let competitively right after the storm, is that correct?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes, there were many sole source let. That is one

of the things we are looking at, as to why was it let sole source.

I think there is an explanation for that. Then the second question

is, why did you choose this contractor over contractor B. The third

question, and a very important question is, is the pricing fair.

Mr. BACHUS. Is there a guideline for local governments in letting,

say, you always know there is going to be debris removal. Is there

may be a one or two page guideline saying, this is what we want

you to do?

Mr. SKINNER. I believe there is.

Mr. BACHUS. Could I get a copy of that?

Mr. SKINNER. Absolutely.

Mr. BACHUS. You are looking at these contracts to see whether

that was done?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes, we are.

Mr. BACHUS. Do you de-obligate funds when you find it was not

done?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes, we do. If the contract is active, we will immediately go to the contracting officer and make a recommendation,

there his something amiss here, freeze the contract, freeze payment, stop work. If it is determined that that contract should not

proceed, yes, FEMA will de-obligate. But in addition to that, if they

in fact did so something irregular or improper or illegal, we either

go after those monies through the courts or we will make an administrative recommendation to FEMA that they go out administratively.

Mr. BACHUS. I have one more question. The special needs shelter

that the City of New Orleans emergency plan set up at the Super-
29

dome, it said it was for elderly and sick patients. It instructed

them to bring five days of water and food.

Mr. Burris, number one, was that practical for the sick and elderly to bring five days of water and food? Were you aware of that

plan? What provisions did you make anticipating that, to bring

water and food in?

Mr. BURRIS. To my knowledge, the Superdome had been designated, like you say, as a special needs shelter for critical patients

that needed special needs. We had an MDMS team deployed to the

site to take care of that.

New Orleans’ decision to ask their citizens to bring five days—

Mr. BACHUS. Could you pull the mic a little closer?

Mr. BURRIS. I said, the decision to have the citizens bring five

days worth of food and water, that is a local decision.

Mr. BACHUS. Is it reviewable?

Mr. BURRIS. Is it reviewable? I am sure every decision that has

been made in this incident will be reviewed.

Mr. BACHUS. No, I mean is it reviewable prior to the case?

Mr. BURRIS. By the Federal Government?

Mr. BACHUS. Yes.

Mr. BURRIS. No.

Mr. BACHUS. Okay. Do you have the statutory authority to review that and say, that is not practical?

Mr. BURRIS. No.

Mr. BACHUS. Okay, if you review it and you see that they are

supposed to bring that, did you all anticipate that they would not

bring five days of food and water?

Mr. BURRIS. No, I can’t say we anticipated what an individual’s

actions would be. I can say that the State of Louisiana requested

that we provide food and water to that facility for 10,000 people for

3 days, of which we did on Sunday.

Mr. BACHUS. Oh, you did just—so the water and food were—

Mr. BURRIS. On Sunday at 5:00 o’clock.

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentleman’s time is expired, contrary to the

green light there. We have a malfunctioning lighting system. It is

making clock management even more difficult.

I know those questions that you are asking, Mr. Bachus, are

things that we are on the Select Committee on Katrina, we are

going through a series of those types of questions. We have not got

to that point yet, but I know we are going to be asking many of

those same kinds of questions.

Mr. BACHUS. That is part of the recovery and rescue efforts,

which I thought were part of this hearing.

Mr. SHUSTER. There will be more focus on those things as we

move down the road.

At this time, I would like to recognize the Ranking Member, Mr.

Oberstar.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would say to the gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Bachus, in reviewing my notes from our Tuesday trip, I found that at Gulfport,

Mississippi, the Corps testified or told us that their cost of removal

includes costs within a 15 mile transportation radius of the site.

That included all costs. But beyond that, it was not clear just what

would be covered in costs.
30

As to the magnitude of the problem, I recall, I wrote to one of

the cleanup teams, said, ‘‘We did the cleanup in New York City

after 9/11. I can tell you, this is worse. The water damage makes

it worse.’’ Further, there were 40 million cubic yards of debris in

Mississippi after Hurricane Andrew, I mean 20 million after Hurricane Andrew, 40 million cubic yards estimated of debris after

Katrina.

Clearly, the scope, the depth of the Katrina-Rita disasters, to be

fully appreciated, have to be observed in person. Mr. Chairman,

you did that a couple of weeks ago, and I commend you for taking

the time to observe first-hand. Then on Tuesday, with Chairman

Duncan and you, Mr. Chairman, and other members of our committee, we toured Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama in that order, had

on the ground briefings, we saw from close-up helicopter oversight

the scope, the depth, the magnitude, the pain of this disaster.

But even before the disaster struck, and as Congress was creating the Department of Homeland Security, I cautioned, as did

Chairman Young, against including both the Coast Guard and

FEMA in this new Department. I argued against it in committee,

together Mr. Young and I went to the Select Committee on creating

the Department and argued against including FEMA. When the

bill that came to the House floor did nonetheless include FEMA, I

offered an amendment to strike it and restore FEMA.

After seeing my worst fears realized on the screens of television

coverage of the disaster, I have drafted a bill which I will, one I

have introduced already, but it is an enhanced version, which I will

soon introduce, to restore FEMA as a cabinet level independent

agency with a director who reports directly to the President, to establish qualifications for that director, requiring experience in

emergency management and response, recovery, preparedness,

mitigation, acts of terrorism, to set a five year term for the director

as we do for the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, the legislation that I sponsored back in the 1980s.

To establish a deputy director who will be a liaison to the Department of Homeland Security to deal with terrorism issues, to reauthorize the pre-disaster hazard mitigation program for another

five years. Our Committee last year reported out that legislation,

brought it to the House floor. It passed the House, nothing happened in the other body.

To allow FEMA to provide additional household repair assistance

greater than the $5,000 cap. We heard time and again testimony

in our review on Tuesday about this limitation and the problems

it creates for people. To authorize FEMA to provide grants to State

and local governments to buy emergency interoperable communications equipment. That was the great lesson of September 11th,

2001. Police couldn’t communicate with each other, fire units

couldn’t communicate with each other, police and fire couldn’t communicate with each other. The great lesson learned of September

11th was to have interoperable equipment and mobile emergency

power equipment. FEMA didn’t do that in the aftermath of September 11th and wasn’t prepared in Katrina.

To assure that State and local governments will take into account the needs of families with household pets and service animals, time and again we heard the stories of people who wouldn’t
31

leave their home because they didn’t know what would happen to

their pet, they weren’t assured it would be taken care of. We

should deal with that. People should not be forced to stay behind

to take care of a pet.

And restore the Davis-Bacon requirements for work being done

in the recovery effort. We shouldn’t punish people, making them

work for less than the going wage in the area in order to save

money. And if you are going to do that, then at least for heaven’s

sakes put a cap on the amount of profit that corporations can earn

in servicing disasters and extend disaster unemployment assistance to a maximum of 52 weeks.

Those are elements of the bill that I will be circulating and I ask

members to take a look at it to join in sponsoring this legislation.

I am very hopeful that our Committee will respond and move the

legislation in an expeditious manner.

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the Ranking Member.

Now I would like to give five minutes for questions to Mr.

Boustany.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, thank you for being here with us. We appreciate your

testimony and appreciate the hard work you are doing. I represent

Louisiana’s Seventh Congressional District. It was devastated by

Rita, significant challenges posed by Katrina with evacuees. So we

have been living through all of this, along with my colleague from

Mississippi and others.

A couple of questions. One, I have been contacted by the Louisiana Procurement Technical Assistance Center. They are part of a

Federal-State partnership partnering with our local State university. It is a program to help businesses do contracting work with

the Federal Government. They basically help businesses through

the process. In my district, they are well underway in completing

a profile of all the businesses that are hoping to provide work in

this effort.

So they are very concerned right now that FEMA is simply not

utilizing this resource. Instead, other Federal employees and agencies have been brought into the process. It seems to be getting

things started from scratch, as opposed to utilizing this resource.

Do you know this to be the case, or do you know of contact with

this entity?

Mr. BURRIS. No, sir, I don’t know that entity specifically. But we

do try to leverage all local resources that we are aware of. We

worked with the State of Louisiana to secure their minority business list. We distributed that minority business list to all of the

people that were doing contracting in our field offices to ensure

that they had access to that type of information. If you will give

me the name one more time, I will take it back and make sure that

we have that one as well.

Mr. BOUSTANY. It is the Louisiana Procurement Technical Assistance Center. My office can probably get you contact numbers, if you

like.

Mr. BURRIS. Thank you.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Does the recovery division selection and training

of temporary hires with each disaster hinder the efficiency of

project approval and reimbursement process? Do we reinvent the
32

wheel each time with a disaster. I want to dig into this issue of

temporary hires a little bit with you.

Mr. BURRIS. I don’t know that we reinvent the wheel each time.

We keep on our rolls around 5,000 disaster assistance employees

that we can call to provide assistance. Within that, they are divided up into cadres that have public works technical knowledge or

they have individual assistance knowledge. They go through training at the emergency management institute. We provide internet

training as well.

So we try to keep this cadre up to speed. It serves us well during

our normal disaster activities. In this particular disaster, we are

having to move forward in hiring many more temporary employees

than we had before, so we are having a challenge in bringing those

employees up to speed. That is the reason we have our technical

assistance contracts as well. We rely on the private sector to provide that type of assistance.

Mr. BOUSTANY. As I have traveled around my district, I have

seen a large degree of variation in the capability of those working

with FEMA, either temporary hires or permanent hires. Some have

the ability to make decisions that communicate well, and in other

areas we are finding deficiencies. It is creating problems.

It is amazing, in some communities, everybody says, FEMA is

doing a great job, we are very happy. I go to another community

20 miles down the road and hear just the opposite. So I am just

looking for ways, how can we improve this process? Do you feel

comfortable with the training program? I understand the challenge

you have now of trying to really ramp up with temporaries under

difficult circumstances.

Mr. BURRIS. I feel comfortable with our training programs, but

what happens a lot in the field is that you will have an individual

that has a particular knowledge set, whether it is a community relations knowledge set that is out there trying to assist, that gets

pulled into a public works debate, in which they do not have that

particular knowledge.

Unfortunately sometimes instead of extracting themselves from

those debates, they go ahead and interject what they believe their

thoughts to be, which automatically becomes FEMA’s position in a

public works arena, made by somebody in the field that wasn’t

down there for that. So we have those challenges as we try to get

people moved forward. Every FEMA employee does not have the

skill sets, knowledge, skills and abilities over the broad range of

our programs.

Mr. BOUSTANY. That is exactly the case I have seen. I talked to

one FEMA employee who was part of a communication response

team who was then put in a position of having to deal with some

of the other issues. That was his complaint, he said, please pass

it on to the top that we need to correct his problem.

In general, I know we have talked about FEMA as being under

DHS versus being an independent agency and so forth. Let’s just

focus on FEMA for a minute, regardless of where it sits in the

chain. What does it need to be ready to deal with the challenges

that we are now faced with, and future challenges of a similar

magnitude? Because obviously we do have some deficiencies.
33

What is it going to take? I understand money, personnel. But

what do you see for the future with FEMA as an organization?

Mr. BURRIS. First, I think it is going to take our collective wisdom to make a decision as to what type of response this Country

wants and in what time frame do they want it. Once that decision

has been made, then you can move forward to create an organization that can meet that expectation.

Our organization was created to provide Federal assistance within a 72 hour time frame after an event has happened and to provide limited assistance in a lot of different areas. We are being

asked to do way beyond what we were created to do in some forms

or fashions. That in itself is the first decision, what is that we believe in our Country is a measure for success, and then we can

build toward that.

I have to say that I believe that our Agency has done incredible

work in trying to coordinate the rescue of hundreds of thousands

of people, the distribution of a population of around 2.4 million

across 48 different States, provided 28 million meals and all of that

done in a 5 day time period. We were not created, we didn’t have

the assets to be what people want to believe is successful. I believe

that to be successful, given how we are structured.

If all of that effort should have taken place in a 48 hour time

frame, instead of our 2 day time frame, then fine, then we have to

redesign what we are doing.

Mr. BOUSTANY. I agree. The public expectation of what FEMA

can and can’t do was certainly out of tune with what you have been

able to do and so forth. Do you envision a closer collaborative effort

between FEMA and Coast Guard in the first response in dealing

with these disasters? Coast Guard did an outstanding job. I think

FEMA certainly, I thought, fit within its role. But Coast Guard has

a logistical support and capabilities. Do you see a larger role in

Coast Guard working in collaboration with FEMA?

Mr. BURRIS. I am sure those will be discussions that we will get

into as we evaluate all the decisions and actions that were taken

during our response.

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentleman’s time has expired, but we are

going to do an abbreviated second round here if you have further

questions, Mr. Boustany.

I would now like to recognize Ms. Carson.

Ms. CARSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

To Mr. Burris and Mr. Skinner, thank you very much for being

here.

I have a question that you might have answered even before I

came. I had a disruption in terms of coming.

Can either of you explain how the $236 million Carnival Cruise

housing contract was awarded, and what guidelines were in place

to ensure that this and other contracts are responsible, fair and in

the best interests of those who were affected, who needed housing

and the taxpayers? While we had three cruise ships, none were at

capacity by any means. Whose authorization was it to secure those

contracts, and whether or not they were bid and whether or not

you bid contracts of that magnitude ordinarily?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, ma’am, I can speak to that. I was involved in

that one personally. The cruise ships are part of an all-encompass-
34

ing housing situation when you have a mass displaced populace.

That particular contract was not sole sourced. It was competed. We

did not have what I considered the technical ability to procure

ships, that is something that we had not done before. We turned

to the Navy to ask for their assistance in doing such. They provided

the procurement assistance in securing the contract.

Carnival was a bidder in the contract. Originally that contract

started out to be one that was more sole source and limited competition. After we put it into the Navy’s hands and they executed

a competition, the cost of those cruise ships came down somewhat

significantly.

The cost of keeping an individual on that cruise ship is $168 a

day. They provide meals, they provide security. We closed, all the

things that people think go on on a cruise ship are not going on

on those cruise ships. There are no bars on those cruise ships,

there is no gambling on those cruise ships. It is specifically for

housing and feeding only.

And they have turned out to be an effective method in which to

do that. And they were competed, that contract was competed.

Ms. CARSON. You had other bidders for the contract, you say?

Mr. BURRIS. Ma’am?

Ms. CARSON. You had other bidders?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, ma’am.

Ms. CARSON. For the contract?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, ma’am.

Ms. CARSON. So why did you award it to that group?

Mr. BURRIS. Because they were the lowest bid for what we were

asking for.

Ms. CARSON. No negotiation to try to get the costs down?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, ma’am. There was quite a bit of negotiation on

that, to the extent that those contracts originally carried some

clauses in them that wanted different things to happen that we

would not agree to. So there was negotiation back and forth on

those contracts.

Ms. CARSON. You canceled the contracts?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, ma’am, we can cancel the contracts at the convenience of the Government. All of our contracts carry that clause.

Ms. CARSON. Didn’t Greece offer us cruise ships for free?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, ma’am, the country of Greece did offer cruise

ships. Unfortunately, those ships could not pass the inspection certifications to operate within the U.S. territorial waters, nor could

they, it was my understanding, they could not arrive in a timely

manner had they been able to do so.

Ms. CARSON. Could you explain for me, I don’t want to belabor

the point, could you explain for me the difference between a competitive contract and a non-competitive? Is there a cost involved in

terms of making that decision?

Mr. BURRIS. Well, the non-competitive contract would be a sole

source contract where you went to a particular company because

they either could provide the services that you needed and were

unique in providing those services.

Most of them are contracts that are expedited or limited competition contracts, in which we get contractors from the GSA schedule
35

and we do a limited contract in order to expedite the services. We

do very few sole source contracts.

Ms. CARSON. So what happens now that you have canceled out

the contracts? Where do the people go?

Mr. BURRIS. Ma’am, we have not canceled the contract on the

cruise ship. I thought you asked me could we. We can.

Ms. CARSON. I heard that you had done it. You did not cancel

Carnival’s contract?

Mr. BURRIS. No, ma’am, I am not aware of canceling the contract.

Ms. CARSON. Do you intend to?

Mr. BURRIS. Not at this particular point. Where they are being

utilized, they are being utilized to house workers that are in areas

where there is just not any housing to house them in. They have

some evacuees on them. But right now, I believe while people want

to characterize them as expensive and maybe not the appropriate

thing to do, they are providing their purpose, which is providing a

facility right there where a lot of this work has to happen and a

methodology to house a lot of the people that are doing just that,

as well as evacuees.

Ms. CARSON. Okay, I am going to stop here, but there is no rationale between if I went up and wanted a cruise, $600, if the Government, FEMA goes up, it is $2,000 or $4,000 per, is there any

reason why that discrepancy occurs in terms of its costs?

Mr. BURRIS. I am not aware of those numbers. I am aware that

what happens is, when those cruise ships are fully occupied that

it costs $168 per person. Now, until they reach a level of being fully

occupied, which my understanding is it should have been at that

level this week, then you could extrapolate up and down that the

cost of the cruise ship would be $600 or $800 per person as opposed

to being fully occupied at $168. I could see where those numbers

could happen.

Ms. CARSON. So you measure the cost on the occupancy numbers?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, ma’am.

Ms. CARSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Ms. Carson. Mr. Blumenauer, five

minutes for questions.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you very much.

I am interested in how we can incentivize under these contracts,

so people will be paid for performance, not necessarily for volume

of activity. I am curious if any of these contracts have provisions

where we are reimbursing for costs, and if they have incentives for

performance that are built in, how will they make their money?

Most of their profit is by having superior performance. And the better they perform, the more money they get, as opposed to just units

of work.

Are these provisions incorporated into contracts currently? Are

there performance indicators that are wired in?

Mr. BURRIS. We have performance measures in some of our contracts. I can’t characterize that all of our contracts have them in

there, but we do have them in many of our contracts.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. But I am saying, in terms of how people are

paid, under how many of the contracts do people get more money

based on performance and are penalized if they don’t perform?
36

Mr. BURRIS. I don’t have an exact number of that. I could get

that.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, this is something that I am

personally keenly interested in, because we are going to be in this

business for a significant period of time and everybody wants this

to be done right. Having contracts that are written so that people

get their costs back but then performance drives how much they

make—

Mr. SHUSTER. If the gentleman will yield for one second, that has

been very successful the highway portion of it, both punitive and

reward. We learned down there there is a highway contractor who

got his project done 10 days earlier and gets a million dollar bonus

for getting it done, so I agree with you.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. I am curious about the extent to which these

can be utilized on a widespread basis.

My second question deals with end of project reports. Oftentimes

it seems that we really don’t have good information about how well

particular contractors performed specifically. I am hopeful, Mr.

Chairman, our Committee might encourage or in fact advance legislation so that part of what we are paying for is an actual report,

so it is not something that is shortchanged or is an after-thought,

but that there is an end of project report that is given to FEMA,

that is given to Congress, that is given to the actors and actresses

on the ground.

I wondered, Mr. Skinner, if you could comment on an end of

project report mechanisms I think you know where I am going on

this: the way that they are being applied now or changes that we

need to make so that we have good information about who is doing

what, so that we can be informed for the next round of activities.

Mr. SKINNER. To my knowledge, I am not aware of us doing

after-action reports on the performance of our contractors. But that

is most certainly a very good idea, especially those contractors that

we know that we are going to have a continuing relationship with.

Not only would it help FEMA, it would help others that may want

to use these particular contractors for similar work outside the disaster response area. That is something that I would probably have

to give a lot of thought to as to how you would go about doing that

so it is fair, and also so it is recorded for the record, not just for

FEMA use but for Government use.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Skinner, if it would be possible, I appreciate you don’t have everything on top of your head and you are

dealing with a wide range of concerns here from the Committee,

but if it would be possible to do a little examination to find out if

there are after-action or end of project reports. I am interested if

there are any that have been incorporated. I would hope that they

would and if not, that is good to know.

Mr. SKINNER. I will certainly look into that.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. And Mr. Chairman, if it is possible to work to

find a way that the Committee can start offering up advice to our

friends, both in the Administration and other appropriate committees, if we think it is a good idea and we know what is going on

with performance from various contractors, we see what works and

what does not, and people have a track record.
37

One of the concerns I will say is not with FEMA and Katrina,

but a problem with the Federal Government having a short memory in terms of who performs and who does not. Periodically we get

people back in the mix who did not do a stellar job. Institutionalizing this sort of information and feedback seems to me something

that would be valuable for us to advance.

Mr. SHUSTER. I agree in your assessment. In the business world,

as the saying goes, that which gets measured gets done. That is

what you are talking about, what is the performance, let’s measure

it and invite those people back to do business again with the Government.

That is what is happening down in New Orleans. There was a

firm from Tennessee that did such a great job and came in under

budget on the contract bid that they have been asked to come back

again. Those are the kinds of things, those are the kinds of companies we need to be engaging in these types of projects. So I agree

with you and look forward to working with you on that.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you.

Mr. SHUSTER. There are several members that want to go for another round of questions. We are going to do two minutes of questions. I am going to have a swift gavel. We have other folks here

that have traveled up from the Gulf Coast to testify here today, so

we are going to go with another round of questions.

I want to start first with a question to Mr. Burris. On the Corps

and the cadre of on-call reserve employees and the disaster assistance employees, are we utilizing those folks? I met with the former

FEMA, in the last Administration, who led me to believe he didn’t

think they were being utilized to their full capacity. I wonder if you

could comment on that.

Mr. BURRIS. Eighty percent of our cadre is deployed into the

field.

Mr. SHUSTER. They are? Eighty percent of Corps or both?

Mr. BURRIS. All of them. They are all Stafford Act employees.

Within the Stafford Act, you have Corps employees, DAEs, disaster

term hires, there are many different classifications under the Stafford Act. We have employed many of our employees down there

from all categories. I am sure that the Representative’s problem

with that REP report not being back is that our REP employees are

in the field as well.

Mr. SHUSTER. What employees?

Mr. BURRIS. REP, radiological emergency preparedness employees. This is an all hands on deck disaster for us.

Mr. SHUSTER. What are those numbers of the Corps and the Rep

and the DAE—

Mr. BURRIS. We have approximately 800 Corps employees and

around 4,000 or so DAEs on our rolls. That has been greatly expanded at this point that we have around 10,000 currently that

have been hired, all total, combination against this disaster.

Mr. SHUSTER. For Katrina?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes.

Mr. SHUSTER. How does that compare with pre-9/11/01? Do we

have less people overall? Do we have more?

Mr. BURRIS. There is a cap on the number of cadres, employees

you can have. We have not exceeded that cap in years.
38

Mr. SHUSTER. Is that something you think we ought to increase,

that cap? These are part-time folks, right?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, but it costs money to have them on the rolls.

You have to pay the National Finance Center to keep their employee records, whether they are deployed or not. There is a certain

amount of dollars that goes to per employee, whether they ever deployed. That is the reason for the cap.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. I now yield to Ms. Norton two minutes.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that all

members of this Committee have an opportunity to submit additional questions for the record.

Mr. SHUSTER. Without objection, so ordered.

Ms. NORTON. And I hope that will not be included in my time.

Mr. Burris, you know that the main problem facing the Mississippi towns and Louisiana is to get a tax base back. I learned

that the usual low interest loans that many small businesses can’t

afford to take because they don’t want and can’t absorb more debt

was not all that was available after 9/11 in New York, that there

were some small business grants to small business.

Will small business grants be available to small businesses in

the Gulf region?

Mr. BURRIS. Through FEMA or through the Small Business Administration? I don’t know the Small Business Administration’s

programs.

Ms. NORTON. You don’t know whether they—a member from New

York informed me that the grants were available. I don’t know

through whom. You do not know if grants were made in New York

after 9/11 as opposed to the usual FEMA low-interest loans? That

is why I asked the question.

Mr. BURRIS. I am not aware.

Ms. NORTON. Okay, let me go on. If you are not aware, this is

very important, it seems to me, for the Committee to bear in mind.

Two, I believe it was you, Mr. Burris, that mentioned something

called specialized housing assistance. Specialized housing assistance for evacuees. I would like to know what that entails. We have

seen very troubling reports of these trailer parks. In good faith, you

put trailer parks up. And you are doing it again. I need to know

who polices these trailer parks. Why is it that some communities

don’t even want them because of the experience in Florida and

elsewhere?

Mr. BURRIS. The policing and services are the responsibility of

the local government, for which we reimburse. There is—

Ms. NORTON. Would that include hiring extra police, if necessary,

to make sure that the problems that you have had in trailer parks

in Florida and elsewhere do not arise again?

Mr. BURRIS. That would be correct, yes, ma’am.

Ms. NORTON. Let me ask you about a very interesting proposal

of the President for homestead, the old homestead notion, where in

order to draw back residents and to promote ownership and entrepreneurship. As I heard him, he said, Federal land would be available. So I have to ask, what land? Are we talking about land in

New Orleans or Mississippi or Alabama? Are we talking only about

Federal land? Are we talking about the Federal Government buy-
39

ing land and then homesteading it out to residents of Alabama,

Mississippi and Louisiana?

Mr. BURRIS. I am not aware of that program.

Ms. NORTON. Would you respond to the questions I have just

asked by written response, then? We need to know what may be

possible here.

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, ma’am.

Ms. NORTON. One final—yes, I’m sorry?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, ma’am.

Ms. NORTON. One final question. It seems unlikely that anybody

is going to rebuild without insurance, near or not so near to where

the flooding and hurricane took place. I am not sure whether most

of these people were included in the National Flood Insurance Program, and what FEMA is doing to facilitate the insurance contact

with victims. Could you tell us something about that?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes. We are working to expedite the insurance

claims process and the flood insurance program. Our flood insurance administrator has met with all of our underwriting companies

that do that to ensure that these, that we move forward.

Ms. NORTON. Is anybody paying claims, Mr. Burris?

Mr. BURRIS. Are we paying them?

Ms. NORTON. Is anybody paying claims?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes. We are paying claims on a daily basis. To my

knowledge, we have already paid, let’s see, 178,000 claims have

been paid for a total of $172 million.

Ms. NORTON. In what jurisdictions?

Mr. BURRIS. That is in all, for Hurricane Katrina.

Ms. NORTON. Would you please get that information to the

Chairman so we can know in what jurisdictions insurance claims

have been paid.

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentlelady’s time has expired, and I know that

is a big problem. I know we talked about that in Mississippi. There

are some hold-ups down there with insurance. That is going to be

a huge question as we move down the road, how we address that

problem.

With that, I yield, Mr. Bachus is up, two minutes, Mr. Bachus.

Mr. BACHUS. Thank you. The President has proposed a 5,000 individual recovery account for child care and job training. When are

we going to receive the legislative proposal on this?

Mr. BURRIS. We haven’t received the language on the bill yet.

But we will take that back and I will make sure we forward that

as soon as we can.

Mr. BACHUS. Because it will require legislation, I guess, under

the Stafford Act.

Mr. BURRIS. That is correct.

Mr. BACHUS. And also the new housing plan for disaster victims,

it is my understanding that may require legislation. I am also on

Financial Services. I guess my question there, will you be requesting legislative changes for that?

Mr. BURRIS. We are evaluating legislative changes currently.

Mr. BACHUS. Okay. There is a cruise ship, the Holiday, in Mobile. It was part of our cruise ship industry that brought in probably 2,000 tourists a week. It was an important source of revenue.
40

As you know, Mobile was flooded during the hurricane and incurred a great deal of cost.

Before you all contracted to pull that ship out of Mobile, which

did create tremendous hardships, it is actually still in Mobile, but

it is not doing cruise business because it is waiting on the docks

to be repaired in Gulfport. But it is tied up for the next six months

out of service to the cruise industry.

Did you all create with the local folks back in Mobile about the

impact that would have on their local economy?

Mr. BURRIS. No, sir.

Mr. BACHUS. Do you think that in the future it would be wise

to consult with the local authorities before you pull that type of

cruise ship out? Was that factored into your equation?

Mr. BURRIS. That wasn’t factored into our decision, no, sir.

Mr. BACHUS. Are you aware, have you heard complaints that it

is causing a financial hardship?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, sir, I have heard complaints to that effect.

Mr. BACHUS. Is there any consideration, since that ship is not

being used, and may not be used, is there any consideration for releasing it back?

Mr. BURRIS. To my knowledge, that ship is being used and—

Mr. BACHUS. Presently, there are less than 300 people on it. It

is a ship for 1,500.

Mr. BURRIS. I will check into it. But again, the information I

have is it is being used.

Mr. BACHUS. If the city could come up with better housing for

those 300 people that may be in it, would you at least review that

and consider it?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, sir.

Mr. BACHUS. Thank you.

The cell phones went out right after this hurricane. Of course,

the internet did, and radio communications. In the future, have you

all made any changes in your recovery program or your relief program to account for the communications system going down?

Mr. BURRIS. In our recovery program, we provide disaster recovery centers. We try to put them out into areas that utilize our communications system, which is satellite based and powered under its

own power. Part of the communications problem at the local level

is that that type of technology is not down at the local level, the

kind of Federal technology that we utilize.

So we try to make it easily available to access communications

through the DRCs.

Mr. BACHUS. I understand. I guess what I am saying, the whole

communications system went down, cell phones and everything.

Are you all factoring that into future events of this nature?

Mr. BURRIS. We are factoring it into future planning for the purposes of emergency communications, yes, sir.

Mr. BACHUS. You are aware of all the reports of the fundamental

breakdown of communication.

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHUSTER. The gentleman’s time has expired. Mr. Burris, the

question on those cruise ships, what I have been reading us, it is

a pretty good deal if you have full capacity.

Mr. BURRIS. If it is full capacity, yes, sir.
41

Mr. BACHUS. But people decided they didn’t want to stay on a

cruise ship for that long.

Mr. BURRIS. There have been several different—you can’t just—

in the Texas incident originally, early on, people didn’t want to get

on it, rightfully so. They had been evacuated and they were afraid

they were going to lose their spot in the shelter if they had gotten

on. Since that time, we have completely reevaluated how we use

those. We let those ships, a couple of those ships, we said, okay,

this city, you can use it and you direct all that.

It is now being directed at the Federal level as to who gets to

use those cruise ships, not at the local level. I feel comfortable we

will be at capacity if we are not there already this week.

Mr. BACHUS. As of last week, there were, actually I was down

there on Tuesday. As of Tuesday, it was less than a fifth occupied.

Mr. BURRIS. The problem with that particular cruise ship is that

ship is supposed to be over in the Mississippi area—

Mr. BACHUS. Gulfport.

Mr. BURRIS. Right. They are trying to dredge the canals to get

it into the port. We have been trying to get Mississippi residents

to come over and get on the ship. We have done a little bit of that

and—

Mr. BACHUS. No, no, no. I guess you are missing my point. I understand all that, and really it is going to be months before it can

be moved because of the dredging and the port facilities getting

ready, or weeks anyway. But what I guess I am saying, before it

was taken out of line, was there any consideration for letting it

continue to operate at Mobile? In fact, that is the main source of

their airport, because of that. Their main traffic in and out of that

airport is destination traffic.

This is actually the county in Alabama which took the biggest

hit. And you took away its biggest source of revenue. And it is not

being utilized. That is what I am saying. And I am just saying, if

you could talk to these people and see if other arrangements could

be made. What they are telling me is, we will go out and get a

hotel, we will go out and get a motel, we will find better accommodations for these people, better accommodations at far less the

price if you can get that ship released.

Mr. BURRIS. I will have it evaluated.

Mr. SHUSTER. Maybe we can get back in writing as to his question.

Mr. Oberstar, two minutes for questions.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just one question. Are you familiar with the Jones Act waivers

issued in the course of the aftermath of Katrina?

Mr. BURRIS. No, sir.

Mr. OBERSTAR. There were waivers from the Jones Act issued by

the Department and approved by the White House on claim of requirement for capacity to move goods among U.S. ports. But since

those waivers were issued, we have learned that there is substantial U.S. flag capacity to accommodate whatever goods and people

movement may have been necessary or may still be necessary. I

would like to have a report from FEMA on the causation of the

Jones Act waivers and action to engage foreign ownership vessels

in the aftermath of those waivers.
42

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Oberstar.

Two minutes to Mr. Blumenauer.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you. And I apologize that I had a meeting that I could not reschedule if I am plowing ground that has already been covered by the Committee. I am curious if there is an

overall plan under which the spending and the recovery is taking

place.

Mr. BURRIS. Let me characterize what I think an overall plan

would be, I guess. We have an ESF-14, which is a long term recovery planning effort, that is mostly State-centric to the States,

where we have our partners from the Commerce Department and

other departments assist in the evaluation of when we make decisions on projects that will affect the economic development of an

impacted area and how do those projects interact with that.

FEMA is not in the business of economic development and providing grants for economic development. Our grant program is for

the restoration of the public infrastructure. However, in doing that,

we certainly recognize that that does have an impact on the future

economic development of an area. And because of that, we have

this planning group.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, part of what was interesting

to me as I interviewed some of our senior members on the Appropriations Committee, to whom the $62.5 billion request went and

flowed out, was that they made the same inquiry. They indicated

to the best of their knowledge they were not aware of an overall

plan under which we could see where the money was going, what

it was actually for.

I am interested in getting a sense from somebody if, and I appreciate you don’t do particular economic development planning, that

is not FEMA’s job, when we are spending $10 million an hour or

more, do we have an overall plan about prioritization, how the

money flows, what we expect to receive for what. I don’t want to

put you on the spot now, but if you can help us understand as soon

as possible what would be the closest approximation to a plan that

would tell us how the $62.5 billion has been allocated, obligated

and spent, would be of great interest.

Mr. SHUSTER. I thank the gentleman. Some of that answer I

think came from Admiral Allen on Tuesday when he talked about

his three priorities are housing, debris removal and assistance to

folks. That is where the bulk of it I think is going right now. There

are some estimates out there that debris removal alone could be

$50 billion, $40 billion to $50 billion.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Which is why having a couple of objectives,

important objectives that we can all agree on, does not translate

into a plan.

Mr. SHUSTER. Right.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. I have had a group of people from my community who have gone down with a proposal to recycle building materials, something that I saw happen in the tsunami region. Two

weeks after the tsunami, 20,000 people were at work. We have historic things in New Orleans, for example, that have great value

that shouldn’t be lost. Preserving them would be very labor intensive and would be part of a plan for recovery. If we are just going
43

in and doing massive demolition and removal, for instance, there

is no way to get hold of things like that.

Mr. SHUSTER. Right. Thank you.

Mr. Taylor.

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, gentlemen, for sticking around. Three

quick ones, and I am sure you are going to have to get back to me.

At what point can you and will FEMA recompete the debris removal contracts? I do understand the need to act immediately after

the storm to get the roads cleared. I am not busting your chops

about that. But we are getting a bit more normal and some people

still think that $16 a yard is too much to be paying one month

after the fact.

Second thing, what is the target date for fulfilling the requirement for trailers for peoples’ housing? Again, I am told that we

have requested 20,000 just for south Mississippi, that about 2,000

of that has been fulfilled. That leaves 18,000. So what is your target date for fulfilling that 20,000 requirement?

The third thing is, when you went out for the request for proposals for the cruise ships, did that include American flag vessels, like

the Delta Queen, the Mississippi Queen? Did you bother to speak

with the Maritime Administration and see if they had anything?

For example, a couple coastal cruisers were repossessed in the

wake of 9/11 that became part of the Federal Maritime Administration’s fleet. Did you look there?

Interestingly enough, the 3rd August edition of Boats and Harbors, which is a trade publication, advertised a 900 person floating

barracks barge in the last weeks of August. Did anyone bother to

look and to see its availability and its cost compared to the cruise

ship contract?

Mr. BURRIS. Let me answer number one, which is, all of our contracts that were ‘‘non-competed’’ or were expedited are going to be

re-bid.

Mr. TAYLOR. When, sir?

Mr. BURRIS. That process is currently underway with some of our

larger technical assistance contracts. I will have to get with my

senior procurement official to see what the schedule of that is.

Mr. TAYLOR. But you will get back to me on that?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, sir.

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you.

Mr. BURRIS. But all of those will be re-bid.

As far as the target date for the trailers, I will have to get hold

of our field offices in Mississippi and determine what they believe

that target date is and get back with you on that.

Before I answer the last question, I would like to characterize a

little bit what our agency is up against. It has been characterized

here and alluded to that somehow we don’t watch after the Federal

dollars like we should. Let me say that while expedited assistance

and providing funds in an expedited manner is not not compatible

with keeping our fiduciary responsibilities with the Federal tax dollars, there is a lot of tension in there over following what everybody

believes to be—

Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Burris, I am sorry to interrupt. I am not busting your chops.

Mr. BURRIS. I understand that.
44

Mr. TAYLOR. I was down there, I saw the immediate need to do

something. I am just asking that, in your capacity, did you ever call

the Maritime Administration and ask them what they had available already within the Government for fulfilling this need?

Mr. BURRIS. I can say that I didn’t feel like we had the expertise

to execute a ship contract. We asked the Navy to do that for us.

The Navy contracted—

Mr. TAYLOR. Did you contact the Maritime Administration?

Mr. BURRIS. I don’t know whether the Navy contacted them or

not, but I didn’t. We asked the Navy to do that procurement for

us.

Mr. TAYLOR. All right.

Mr. BURRIS. Let me finish my statement here on that. The men

and women that work in my procurement divisions and our financial divisions take their responsibility seriously.

They also understand that we have to get in there, get it done

and do it quickly. We have not had a standoffish relationship with

our IG’s office. We have invited them in as a partner on this thing,

when we saw we were dealing with billions of dollars up front. We

have created strike teams to go out and address these things. We

are being as proactive as we can to stop waste, fraud and abuse

in any of these programs.

But there is this tension of, I have to act on somebody’s request

by 6:00 o’clock in the evening and so—

Mr. TAYLOR. Cutting to a quick end. If members of this Committee, members of the general public can show you in any of these

instances a better way to do something, can you reassure me that

you are not locked into contracts?

Mr. BURRIS. I can assure you that we are not locked into the contracts that we currently have.

Mr. TAYLOR. In each instance, be it trailers, be it the ships?

Mr. BURRIS. Yes, sir.

Mr. TAYLOR. Be it debris removal?

Mr. BURRIS. That is correct.

Mr. TAYLOR. Okay, thank you.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. One final question, and

you don’t have to answer it now. But I hear there was a report that

firemen from Phoenix tried to get into New Orleans, and they were

accompanied by Federal marshals, and they were rejected from

coming in because they had, the Federal marshals had sidearms,

and the Phoenix fire department was bringing them in with them.

Is that a fact?

Mr. BURRIS. That is not exactly accurate.

Mr. SHUSTER. It was reported on the national television. So I understand that it may be not be accurate.

If you could give to me some time later, if you can get somebody

to call us.

Mr. BURRIS. I can give you all the details on that, yes, sir.

Mr. SHUSTER. Okay. We can do that at a later point. I want to

move on. I want to again thank you very much for coming in today.

You have been here for two and a half hours or so. I appreciate

your taking the time. I would encourage you, as Mr. Taylor has

said, there are other ideas out there, there are other ways of getting things done that may be more effective, more efficient.
45

I would encourage you to streamline things, push those decisions

down to the people in the field to let them make those decision. I

think we can do as good or better a job of getting some of these

problems handled earlier, instead of going through the gyrations

that we sometimes have to.

So again, thank you very much. You are excused.

Next up we will hear from our esteemed colleague from Louisiana, Congressman Richard Baker. We appreciate his accompanying

us yesterday in New Orleans.

I just want to make a quick comment. I talked to the media after

that, and my comments were carried quite widely that I think I

stated the obvious, we certainly want to go about the rebuilding of

New Orleans using common sense. If there are places below sea

level, I think it is only right to question whether we should be

spending Federal dollars to rebuild.

One thing they did not carry is I also said if someone gives me

any compelling argument, that I would rethink a lot of that. I

think you were one of those people that yesterday, or two days ago,

they carried this comment, that there are parts of New Orleans

that are absolutely essential to our national economy, shipping

grain out of the port, the energy sector, those types of things.

So I just wanted to say publicly that I am looking for that compelling argument. But I certainly know that my constituents and

constituents in 430 or so other Congressional districts want to

make sure we go about this in the right way and don’t do things

that don’t follow a line of common sense, or try to just disrupt the

laws of physics or nature.

So with that, I would recognize my colleague from Louisiana for

a statement.

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE RICHARD BAKER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA

Mr. BAKER. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for this courtesy that you

have extended. I also thank you and the members of the Subcommittee who ventured to Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama

this past week to view with your own eyes the consequences of

these terrible storms.

I also want to respond to your kind comment and say that we

of the Louisiana delegation have visited frequently and talked a

great deal about the need for accountability. On all occasions, when

expressing our appreciation to this Congress and to the great people of this Country for their extraordinary generosity, that we owe

it and we understand we owe it to be fully accountable and transparent in whatever steps that are taken going forward, and that

we also have to balance that accountability to you and the taxpayer

with our appropriate responsibilities to those victims of Katrina

and Rita to ensure to the best of our abilities this circumstance

does not occur again.

There are some things that I have observed in the course of the

aftermath that I thought would be helpful for the Committee to

hear in addition to those points made at the Committee’s last meeting in Baton Rouge. FEMA is by its nature an emergency response

organization. It is not a permanent rebuilding organization, as Mr.
46

Blumenauer’s questions were pointed as to the overall costs, for example, of just debris removal. I am hopeful that we get to a point

where we have an overall plan for the entire recovery that makes

sense over time, not merely moving to the question of getting the

trees off the power lines or getting the roads cleared to travel, but

getting communities in a position with their own resources and

hard work to begin the important business of functioning.

Secondly, it is important to recognize that for the criticisms I

may make of FEMA, FEMA’s mission is ultimately defined by this

Congress. We have the obligation to examine the manner by which

they function, to look at the statutory constraints under which they

operate and make clear we certainly want quick and responsible

assistance for people in need, but we also need to look at it from

the bottom line perspective as well.

I will give just an example of some of the concerns that have

come about in the aftermath. Much pressure has been applied to

get emergency housing as quickly as is possible to anyone who is

found to be a qualified victim of the disaster. Certainly that is a

laudable goal.

In the case of Baker, Louisiana, and I have no familial relation

with the city of Baker, that is another story. But in the case of

Baker, Louisiana, there is now on the ground a very nice, professionally accomplished project of about 250 trailers which people

will begin to occupy probably this week. The project life is anticipated to be about two years for the stay of the evacuees at that location.

The typical price per unit for trailers is running from $22,000 to

$25,000 per unit in very large acquisitions. There is a cost to locate

those trailers on the site, either by long term lease or by purchase

of the land outright. In some cases, necessary adjustments to infrastructure, whether water, sewer or other utilities, may need to be

implemented to facilitate the location of the trailers. Operationally,

there is cost associated with security on-site, as well as other services which may be deemed appropriate.

In the case of the Baker site, it is located away from the city by

some distance. It is not walking distance to local services. There

will be the need to deploy buses in order to move personnel from

the site to get essential services and return. There is not job training located on the site for those wanting to go back and help rebuild their communities.

If you were to take the total cost per trailer and divide it by the

24 months to get a per-month operating cost, it would certainly exceed $1,000 a month. In some cases, $1,500, $1,600 per month.

It would seem logical to me, as an alternative strategy, knowing

that the rental market in the community is full, that with the

emergency FEMA assistance of $2,000, and by the way, FEMA also

has the authority to pay relocation costs, they could fly a family of

four to Wyoming, for example, if they had family there. But with

the $2,000 emergency money, the FEMA relocation money, which

has already been deployed, you could find rental opportunities for

families somewhere in this Country that would be close to services

or perhaps close to job training or perhaps even the miracle of a

job for $1,000 a month or less.
47

So in examining the deployment of resources to date, it starts,

Mr. Chairman, with a contract, I believe, for $237 million with one

vendor for trailers, all the way down the line to Uncle Bob’s, where

we might be just buying five, because that’s all he has. But we are

buying every trailer that will roll anywhere in America and deploying them into regions where we do not yet know where we will

have sites that are adequate to meet FEMA’s needs.

FEMA’s needs, however, are not the needs I reflect: job training,

job opportunity. They are site-specific needs, and will the site accommodate the number of trailers being acquired and do they have

the resources there to meet local codes in providing customary

sewer, water and utilities.

It may not be possible in all cases to match every evacuee with

a temporary home in close proximity to work. But it has to be possible for some. The Port of Orleans is critical. We are now into the

Nation’s grain harvest in the midwest. One of the limiting factors

in an efficient working port is that we don’t have the employees.

I know they have to be out there somewhere. But perhaps we could

train people in the interim, move them into trailers in proximity

to their employment, and let that family earn some money.

I have determined that money really helps families be mobile,

not mobile homes. So if our goal is to get people on their feet and

get them back into the working economy, we need to train them

and employ them.

Among the folks I speak to at the evacuation centers, they are

desperate to go back home, and they are desperate to get their jobs

back, or any job. No one enjoys living in an evacuation center. I

suspect after folks are in these trailers for a few months, they are

going to be just as anxious to get out of there, with nowhere to go.

We really need to think carefully through the deployment of taxpayer money in creating trailer cities which don’t have the

logistical ability to get people back working and on their feet.

There is another example of concern that I was personally involved with, relating to the activities of a local sheriff’s department.

The morning after the event occurred, many local officials were deploying resources out for search and rescue which was maintained

for about a four day period. The morning after, the sheriff of the

Ascension Parish sheriff’s office operated a facility known as Lamar

Dixon, which became an unofficial staging area for about 70 different law enforcement entities to come together, where they were

fed, geared up and deployed with boats down into the flooded

areas. This happened on a daily basis.

The second morning the sheriff came to me and said, we need to

do this work, but I want to make sure I do not get in any legal

difficulty with my constituents by spending money today in this

emergency search and rescue for which I am not going to be reimbursed. I said, I will find out. There appeared to be some confusion,

but I was ultimately told, yes, this could be a reimbursable event.

I should have known better. I am a Louisiana politician, and you

parse your words carefully. The sheriff then called and said, okay,

where do I send my bill to, speaking to FEMA, and was told, that

is not a reimbursable item. The sheriff called me back and said, I

thought you told me that this was reimbursable. Sheriff, I was told
48

it could be reimbursable. And then we hit on it, the word could. It

didn’t mean it would be, just meant it could be.

Then we found out that for the sheriff to get recovery, he

shouldn’t bill FEMA, he had to bill each jurisdiction into which his

personnel went when they did the search and rescue. As for example, if they were searching and rescuing in the Parish of Orleans,

they had to send the bill to the city of parish of Orleans to be reimbursed.

Well, the problem with that in this case is the Mayor just laid

off 3,000 non-essential personnel last week. That is all the accountants and the mail openers. I am told if we don’t get them some

help, the Mayor is likely to announce the dismissal of the other

3,000 essential employees next week and the city will be without

municipal government.

Now, I have to ask the question. How likely is it the sheriff of

Ascension is going to get reimbursed from the Parish of Orleans or

the city when we are in such financial duress? The sheriff acted in

good faith. He raised the issue in a timely manner. He was told by

FEMA at a personal meeting with me and a FEMA official that he

would be reimbursed. To date, to my knowledge, the sheriff is still

looking for reimbursement.

This can be replicated in many, many governmental locality relationships with this disaster, people acting in good faith to do what

they thought was their appropriate duty and finding at the end of

the day there are liabilities which will appear to go unpaid.

As to the steps that this Committee might take in analyzing and

redirecting FEMA’s emergency role, I will simply say, there must

be a responder of a nature like FEMA. And I cannot sing too highly

the praises of the men and women of the National Guard, some

46,000 strong at one point in Louisiana, did remarkable work. That

military command and control at the outset would have made it a

great deal easier for our first responders to have engaged in work

in a safe and responsible manner.

But there still must be an entity, FEMA-like. I don’t care what

you call it. But it needs to be given clear authority and responsibility to act in times of national disaster and bring critical needed assistance to people in the most reasonable manner possible.

However, moving beyond FEMA, I believe there is going to be a

long term need for a permanent reconstruction, which is not the

role of the FEMA organization. I and the members of the Louisiana

delegation will introduce this week the likelihood of a bill that

reaches out beyond the current need of FEMA and looks at a more

appropriate, longer term structure to help and assist with the long

term rebuilding.

It will start, Mr. Chairman, with the reconstruction of a stable

and secure levee system built to a category 5 storm. It will deal

with the environmental remediation now necessary to get large

tracts of property available for commercial use. It will require at

some point, once made available, the sale of large assets to the private sector for redevelopment, so the taxpayers can see some

money being returned to them at the end of the day.

I will discuss in more detail the recommended plan, but would

urge the Committee members to take a careful look and would certainly ask for your support.
49

Finally, I have been working with Mr. Ney, Chairman of House

Administration, to establish a House intranet, the purpose of which

is to allow members who have resources or capabilities that they

would like to see deployed into the disaster area be able to post

those on that web page, and for those of us in the affected areas,

to match up those volunteer efforts with local officials who may

need assistance. Mr. Radanovich, for example, wrote me and said

he had a number of mayors in his communities that wanted to donate surplus equipment, fire trucks, police cards, anything that

would be functional and of some use to these small towns which

have literally nothing left.

Under the House Ethics Rules, there is a concern that utilization

of official resources for charitable solicitations would be in violation. I have been requested in moving this resolution forward to

ask members on both sides of the aisle, in and out of the affected

area, to sign on to a letter that I will present to the leadership asking for immediate consideration of this resolution.

I have had any number of members, and again let me say thank

you to each of you, it has really been quite something to have as

many people come up to you and say, I have this and I would like

to help, how can I do it. The B part of that has been, we have offered it through the formal process, either FEMA or some other

mechanism and we have been unable to get closure on how to make

this donation.

I think we as policy leaders ought to be able to get this worked

out where we can just communicate directly with each other. I will

be happy to give the names, phone numbers and addresses of the

mayors, the police jurors, the sheriffs and let the professionals

work out a transaction that will be ultimately very helpful to people at very little cost.

So my last ask, Mr. Chairman, is that the Committee consider

going on to this letter of request that would enable us to waive the

House ethics provisions that would constrain these charitable activities from being engaged on an official site of the House. With

that, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the courtesy of the time extended.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. And as always, you have some great

observations and ideas. The trailer cities, I think we know that it

is best, communities are best served if their folks can get close to

home and start to get back to some normalcy in their life, not that

they are going to be normal, but starting to. The situation with

your sheriff, I have witnessed that first hand over in Escambia

County in Pensacola, the Ivan hurricane, where people were told

things and then two days later, two weeks later, the story changed.

I think that comes down to a lack of trained personnel with FEMA.

We have to do something to make sure we have people that know

what the rules are, so we are giving sheriffs and local emergency

folks the right answers.

On your final point there, with an intranet system, I know we

have tried to go through FEMA to figure out what folks in my district could do. We ended up talking to Mr. Boustany and he and

I coordinated and we were able to get a truckload or so of items

down there. But it was through that contact that we were able to

do that. So that makes a lot of sense.
50

You bring the Country all together right here in Washington, we

ought to be able to do those things. It doesn’t make any sense in

a situation like this, the ethics process isn’t clear anyway to many

of us. So that is something I would look forward to working with

you on.

I don’t have any questions, I don’t know if Mr. Blumenauer has

any questions.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate your bringing it home in a very

practical way. It is very useful and I share our Chair’s indication

that it would be great to sign up on your letter internally, and then

all roll up our sleeves and look at the big picture.

Mr. BAKER. Terrific. Thank you, sir.

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Bachus.

Mr. BACHUS. Congressman, you have gone into some detailed example, the sheriff in getting reimbursement. As you know, New Orleans, Gulfport, Biloxi, Waveland, all along the Mississippi coast,

these communities, they have lost much of their tax base. A lot of

it will not be coming back this year or even next. Their revenue

streams, various revenue streams are gone.

Do you see the need for any legislation or changes in FEMA procedures on reimbursing cities and towns that really just cannot employ their police and their fire? I know under the Stafford Act they

can get reimbursed for overtime. But that is not going to begin to

do it. Do you have any suggestions?

Mr. BAKER. Thanks for the question, and thanks for being there

in the district on Tuesday as well.

Yes, I don’t know how to streamline it. I am sure there are people on the Committee that could come up with a methodology that

would make some sense. But the processes which you must go

through today, and frankly whether it is HUD, FEMA, just generally the bureaucratic process of making application, tends to be

a 30 day cycle at best, 45, logically, 60 days is not uncustomary.

I understand it in the normal course of business where you are

really not sure what the person may be asking for, you are not

really sure what they are going to do with the money. We have a

responsibility to do our due diligence to protect the taxpayers’

money.

In this case, you could answer those questions with a short helicopter trip. Send down a team of all the agencies, let them fly over,

do a damage assessment, do it by mapping, maybe with GPS, draw

up a map and if you are located in area code XYZ, and you are the

mayor of that community and you write in and say, here is my operating budget from last year, we raised and we spent, we need 30

days of that at least to get by, that ought to be out the door. That

ought not be necessary if it is a public official using publicly reported income to ask for one-twelfth of that year’s income to hold

his government together.

During that 30, maybe make it 60 days, teams could come down

and do a further assessment. I am running into that problem now

with various bills we are trying to move through the process. I

have actually had folks ask, well, why do you need this money and

where is it going. I understand that is the normal way we do

things, is to ask those questions. But when your mayor is on the

evening news laying off half his employees this week and announc-
51

ing he is laying off all his employees next week, and the city has

no revenue stream period, it would seem that would be sufficient

justification for extraordinary assistance.

So I think the current constraints of the statutory provisions and

the concerns that any person in the bureaucracy would have of

automatically sending money out without doing what is required,

they have legal liabilities attached to that. But there ought to be

something, whether it is a FEMA-administered program or some

other mechanism where a local government official, maybe as a result of a presidential disaster declaration, with a mappable confirmation and you know the community has lost 50 percent of its

housing and maybe all of its jobs, something out to go out the door.

I regret to tell the Committee that we have any number of communities, I mean a large number of communities, that will be some

years before they get to where they used to be. That is saying a

lot. I think it may have been your discussion, Mr. Bachus, I overheard someone talking about the cost of debris removal and how

it varied from $6 to $26. The last count in tonnage, which has been

updated as of the end of last week, was 77 million cubic yards of

debris. That is enough to fill 250 football fields 50 feet deep. Now,

we don’t know where we are going to put it quite yet.

The second part of the observation is that people haven’t started

tearing out the insides of the flooded homes and putting the refrigerators—there are thousands of automobiles. All that has to be disposed of.

Now, all that has to be taken care of before you can really restore

normal public function. So we are talking about a long time. So we

are going to be around here for a long time asking for a whole lot

of help. I hope we don’t wear out our welcome. Thank you.

Mr. BACHUS. As you say, if you lay off the accounting department

in a city or county, at the very time when the demands on them

are actually—

Mr. BAKER. Yes, my sheriff can mail the letter, but I am not sure

exactly who is going to write the check.

Mr. BACHUS. I believe in the case of some of these cities, Camden, Louisiana and others, we have to act immediately. Even a

loan has to be paid back with interest. I think, Congressman

Baker, you mentioned that New Orleans and Louisiana may have

been placed on credit watch.

Mr. BAKER. Yes. Standard and Poors, Moody’s and Fitch have all

put Louisiana, the State, Orleans Parish, on a negative credit

watch. It would make our ability to raise funds much more difficult. At least we would have to go into the debt markets at a

much higher price than customary. The debt load of the State already was significant.

So these are not developments that are helping us to help ourselves. Let me add that point, and emphasize it, we want to do this

as best we can on our own. We are not trying to avert our own obligations. We are not asking folks to give us money and walk away.

We need to get our jobs back so we can pay those taxes and support our government. We know the long term future of Louisiana

will come only when we have rebuilt properly, with a secure levee

system and evacuation routes that get us out of harm’s way when

these storms eventually do come.
52

But we are accustomed to and expect accountability. Any oversight this Committee or the Congress chooses to place on any assistance granted is absolutely understood.

Mr. BACHUS. I appreciate it. I want to commend you for your

package of financial service legislation that you have authored in

respect to this to try to keep our financial institutions viable, to

allow customers who have lost their homes some consideration.

Mr. BAKER. And thank you for your courtesies in helping on Financial Services and moving this critical legislation through the

process. Thank you, sir.

Mr. SHUSTER. We need to wrap up. We have some locals here

that are worrying about flights.

I just want to say two updates to you about the Stafford Act.

This Committee believes that the President, actually FEMA stated

here today that the straight time versus the overtime situation,

that is not written into the Stafford Act. That is a policy that they

have adopted over the years.

So that can be changed. The President, FEMA can change that,

and we are urging them to do that to help with those bills, with

the emergency pay for straight time instead of just overtime.

Second, we are trying to work out a deal with the appropriators

as we speak on the community disaster loan program, lift the cap

and get that money out to them. So we are working on that.

Mr. BAKER. Yes, sir, I was just in the anteroom talking to the

Appropriations Committee staff about it. We are not there yet, but

we hope to get it across the line. Thank you very much, sir.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. We appreciate your being here today.

With that, we will get our third panel up. Governor Wise, why

don’t you get in the first chair. Governor Wise, Mr. Rodriguez, Mr.

Buckley, Ms. Kilgore and Mr. Ashwood. We appreciate all of your

being here today.

We will start with Governor Wise. I first want to welcome Governor Wise here. He is no stranger to this room. He served in the

House of Representatives for 18 years, he served on this Committee

and he was the Chairman of this Subcommittee at one point. So

it is great to welcome you back and we look forward to hearing

your testimony. We will get started with you, Governor Wise, and

you can excuse yourself whenever you see fit.

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE BOB WISE, PRESIDENT, ALLIANCE FOR EXCELLENT EDUCATION; HENRY ‘‘JUNIOR’’

RODRIGUEZ, PRESIDENT, ST. BERNARD PARISH; KENT W.

BUCKLEY, DIRECTOR, BOLIVAR COUNTY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, BOLIVAR COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI; JANICE

R. KILGORE, CEM, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC

SAFETY, ESCAMBIA COUNTY, FLORIDA; ALBERT ASHWOOD,

VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

ASSOCIATION AND DIRECTOR, OKLAHOMA DEPARTMENT OF

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

Mr. WISE. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and it is a very important

hearing.

I also want to thank you for this panel, because I feel it is a

privilege to be here with each of these people. Because they are the

ones who make it happen. Whatever the structure of FEMA is,
53

whatever the Federal emergency response structure is, it is the

men and women that this table represents to my left that make it

happen. That is why it is so important.

They are the ones who will be in the four-wheel drive vehicle

filled with coffee cups, they are the ones who are going to have the

bleary eyes, they are the ones who are going to coordinate the volunteer fire departments and the firefighters and the State police

and all those who come in. I learned that through 10 federally-declared disasters in my State while I was Governor and 31 State

state of emergencies that were declared.

Mr. Chairman, I will submit my testimony for the record. I have

just a few notes to make, not about the specifics necessarily of

what is taking place on the Gulf Coast, but I think it relates to

that. Rather than talk about FEMA as it currently is and some of

its limitations, I would like to make some recommendations about

the way it should be.

In responding to natural disasters, FEMA does best in the most

independent capacity it can. I worked, Mr. Chairman, with two

FEMA administrators, the first when I was in the House of Representatives on this Committee with James Lee Witt. I think during those times, FEMA gained a reputation as an organization

probably one of the most effective in the Federal Government.

I worked with another excellent administrator after I became

Governor and President Bush became the President, and that was

Joe Albaugh. Both those people, while they had different personalities, had similar traits. The traits were that they one, knew what

they were doing because they had been at the State and local level

for many years, they knew emergency services, they knew what everyone from the local emergency administrator needed to what the

Governor needed, and they had direct contact to the President of

the United States and the White House. They were in effect, both

James Lee Witt and in my observation, Joe Albaugh, they were

both in effect unofficial Cabinet officers and they carried the same

weight.

That direct relationship to the White House is crucial. I think it

also has been borne out in the Katrina experience. Because if

FEMA is truly to coordinate planning and response to natural disasters, all the other Federal agencies must know that the FEMA

director and the President communicate directly, that there isn’t

anyone between them.

Numerous Federal, in West Virginia, when we had to activate

our emergency services network, there were a number of Federal

agencies that would be routinely involved. You have talked about

many of them today: Small Business, HUD, VA, EPA, Department

of Agriculture, Department of Labor, Army Corps of Engineers.

That just starts the list. Then most times you have to bring in

somebody that you didn’t expect to. It is very important that that

FEMA director can go and cut through all the levels of bureaucracy

to get to the person that it needs to be, and that the other Cabinet

officials treat the FEMA director with the respect that is so important.

I attached to my statement a copy of the—and let me just say

that had I sat where you sit now, Mr. Chairman, and any member

of this Committee, I would have voted for the DHS structure fol-
54

lowing 9/11. But having said that, I now recognize that what

looked good on paper doesn’t necessarily work out in practice in

terms of FEMA. Because if you look at the Department of Homeland Security organizational chart, and it took me two tries to find

where FEMA is. If it takes me that long, then it is going to take

the FEMA director that long to get through when he or she absolutely needs to.

I knew that when I had a problem, I could go to Joe Albaugh,

and he, if he felt it was worthwhile, would immediately cut through

and get to the White House. I did not have to spend long days trying to figure out my end run to the White House, through a Congressional delegation, through people I knew, whatever it would be.

The FEMA director could do it if they thought it was worthwhile.

And admittedly, even after FEMA moved under DHS in March

of 2003, I still felt I had a direct connection to the highest decision

makers. I think I know why now, even though FEMA was farther

removed. It is because the first DHS Secretary was Tom Ridge. You

know Governor Ridge, Secretary Ridge, formerly Governor Ridge,

was well-respected by Governors and he had certainly been

through this drill, the natural disaster drill, many times.

He met with Governors regularly. He knew and understood our

needs in dealing with natural disasters, and at the same time, we

were all learning to deal with terrorism. Once again, through Tom

Ridge, we knew that we had a direct line to someone who understood our problems at the local level and also who had a direct line

to the White House.

With respect to the present Secretary of DHS, I do not question

his credentials in any way to coordinate anti-terrorist activities. Indeed, the fact that there has not been a major terrorist incident

since 9/11 indicates to me that people are doing the job that they

need to do. Understandably, his top priority is preventing terrorist

attacks.

But I look at his resume, at least on the web, and I don’t see any

indication of past work in natural disasters. I don’t see any work

at the local level. So now the major, the main natural disaster response agency is removed from direct communication to the White

House, and the top of the organizational chart has no real experience or sensitivity to dealing with disasters.

Another reason to look at some way of giving FEMA back its

independent status is the need to be able to present and argue for

its budget and programmatic needs, based on disaster prevention

and recovery in the States and not have to fight within the existing

DHS bureaucracy for that. FEMA used to apply directly to OMB,

of course, but the White House, for its budget. Now it has to do

it in conjunction with DHS and it has to square off against the

other legitimate needs that are there.

Some of the recent cuts, I would suggest, indicate either a shift

of priorities, and I can’t argue with the shift in preparing for terrorist attacks, I can’t argue about the result. Or in ignorance of

what is needed to respond, or the lack of awareness of the importance of preventive activities. I think it is interesting that former

FEMA Director Brown indicated in recent Congressional testimony

that budget cuts had restricted his Agency’s response capability.
55

We made good use in our State of the hazard prevention funds

under both the previous Administration and the Administration of

President Bush. That actually saved millions of dollars for the Federal Government, because when we had the same areas flood again,

they weren’t affected in the same way.

Likewise, FEMA must be free to consider, propose and consider

innovative interagency recovery programs. The hazard mitigation

program we have talked about. I know that in Congressman Rahall’s district, my first presidentially declared disaster wiped out

an entire rural mountain town, a couple of thousand people. We realized that existing recovery programs would not be sufficient.

So at the State level, they couldn’t take any more SBA, even with

the SBA, they couldn’t take low interest loans. They were out of

reach.

So we at the State came up with a $20,000 forgivable loan that

said, if you stay in business for five years, then that loan is forgiven at 20 percent a year. We also offered at the State level a

$15,000 very low interest loan, and then we worked with SBA so

that when they did their counseling, they put our loan in front, so

that these people could get started.

I am happy to tell you today that we have a lot more taxpayers

in that community when originally it looked like we would have tax

consumers for a long time, and a lot of small businesses are back

in operation.

It is going to take innovative approaches on the Gulf Coast, and

FEMA needs to be free to present those and to have them considered.

A couple of quick points. The differences between FEMA in responding to natural disasters and terrorist or enemy attack. I have

come to believe that they are not necessarily the same all the time.

For natural disasters, there are often several days of warning. You

know it is coming, in the case of hurricanes and floods and major

rain storms, massive weather surges, such as snow. Even brief

warnings precede fires and tornadoes.

But for terrorist attacks, there usually is no warning and no

preparation time for the community. The immediate response is

performed under different conditions as well. With natural disasters, the event typically occurs and then is gone, the flood moves

through, permitting the immediate search and rescue to take place

with no other considerations.

But with a terrorist attack, however, you must conduct it with

an eye to watching out for subsequent attacks and also apprehending the perpetrators. There may be other items of priority as well,

such as protecting vital assets. With natural disasters, the immediate response is usually straightforward, with no need for specialized activities. Responding to a terrorist attack may require highly

trained personnel in specialized areas.

With our DHS money, we put together regional response teams,

moon suits, whether it is an anthrax attack, biomedical, whatever

it is.

So that is another reason I think FEMA needs to get the recognition that in natural disasters, it has a unique role. And also planning for natural disasters differs significantly from attacks on the

homeland. Since natural disasters usually can’t be prevented, the
56

planning is about mitigation or responding to the aftermath. In the

case of floods, we knew we couldn’t stop the rain, but we could do

something with it once it got there. It is not often the case in terrorist attacks.

In conclusion, let me also note that FEMA needs the ability to

think, particularly in the Gulf Coast, outside the box. Simply restoring things to the way they were won’t always work. I am in

education now. Simply restoring Orleans Parish schools to the condition they were isn’t fair to the kids of Orleans, just like you don’t

want to restore the levees to the condition they were. They have

to be strengthened.

It is not a FEMA responsibility to do that. But it is, I hope, a

FEMA responsibility to be a partner to the State and locals. When

that happens, we build back stronger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me just say that I have the

greatest respect for FEMA. I am one of FEMA’s biggest fans. We

need to let FEMA do the job that FEMA is quite capable of doing.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Governor. I know you have to leave

shortly, so I want to ask you a question before you do, because you

have very interesting perspective, I think, being here for 18 years

and then having to go out and be chief executive of a State and

deal with FEMA at both levels.

If you had a magic wand and you could wave it, what would

FEMA look like to you?

Mr. WISE. Well, I would put Joe Albaugh back, first of all.

[Laughter.]

Mr. WISE. Or I would put somebody like him, assuming that

Congress will not be able to change the structure of FEMA for a

while. If it could, though, working with the President, recognize the

need for the FEMA director to establish a unique relationship, particularly once it is already in an existing agency, with the White

House. That is number one.

If I could wave the magic wand, I would also restore some of the

hazard mitigation funds, the money that went into prevention. And

of course, so that FEMA can get back up and running and in the

way that it was.

Those are the two main things I can think of. I guess I would

urge, though, and I understand there is some move to even break

FEMA up as it already is further. I would just urge against that,

because former Director Brown made an interesting point in his

testimony recently. He pointed out that while he had been the Director, there had been 150 federally-declared disasters, some of

them were on my watch, in West Virginia. Because of the effective

work of DHS, there had been no terrorist incidents.

But while that was going on, we still had 150 natural disasters.

That tells me that there is still such a great need for FEMA to do

the job that it has over several administrations built itself up to

do.

Mr. SHUSTER. Do you think that FEMA can operate like you say

within the DHS structure, or do you feel as though it should be

taken out and operate as it did with your experience prior to 2001?

Mr. WISE. In 2001, I knew how to get to the White House. And

I knew I didn’t need to go to the White House, because when I

talked to Joe Albaugh, I was at the White House.
57

Mr. SHUSTER. But we can’t always be assured that we have

James Lee Witt or Joe Albaugh in that position. So would it be

your position that, as a former Governor and a former member of

this Committee that FEMA is better outside that DHS box?

Mr. WISE. Yes, sir, it definitely is. Because my guess is that whoever is in there is going to be someone that the President directly

knows and directly appoints, because of the importance of that position. The second thing is that if FEMA needs to respond to a terrorist incident, I don’t see why you couldn’t use the old model of

the Coast Guard, which, when necessary to activate it, the President put it under the control of the Navy. There are ways we can

work that.

But FEMA, I would urge you over time to look at making independent again.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Governor, and I know, you can excuse

yourself whenever you need to.

Mr. WISE. Thank you, and thank you for the Committee’s indulgence.

Mr. SHUSTER. We appreciate your being here. Thank you.

We will move on in the panel to Mr. Henry Rodriguez, who is the

President of St. Bernard Parish, which is, I believe it was the hardest hit parish in the New Orleans area. I know also from my experience two weeks ago that Mr. Rodriguez is a plain-spoken gentleman that says what he means and means what he says.

So with that, Mr. Rodriguez, you can proceed.

Mr. RODRIGUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today.

I also appreciate the fact that you came down to St. Bernard and

not only St. Bernard, but the entire area, and you saw what it was

all about. It is hard to explain and describe what it is like. My parish has been, I think it is the hardest hit area there is.

If you were to come in my parish today, you would not find one

business place open. You could not stay overnight in but one house

that I know of. There is not a light bulb that is lit in my parish.

We are beginning to get our water together, because that is a local

concern. The gas, we have no gas. We have none of the utilities.

Our parish is totally destroyed. If you would come look at it, you

would think a bomb hit St. Bernard Parish from one end to the

other. I have never seen anything like it, not in my life, not anything.

Our tax base is totally depleted. We depend on ad valorem taxes,

we depend on sales taxes. We have none of that.

Our sheriff’s office depends on the fact that we have this revenue

source, because he gets a certain percentage for collecting the

taxes. So when St. Bernard goes down, so does our enforcement division, Sheriff Stevens, who runs our sheriff’s department.

When I left yesterday, he was laying another 100 people off.

They simply can’t get the money to us. We need it. But somehow

or another, the money is not getting where i should get in a timely

fashion.

The problem that I saw with FEMA is, it finally got to us after

about five days. Five seems to be the magic number in every community. I don’t know what happened. But for five days, St. Bernard
58

Parish existed without any outside help whatsoever, no communications.

But you know what I will tell you? And you can figure this out

for yourself, we had Canadian police that came down on the third

day, walked into my office and said, what can we do? A self-contained unit, 50 people from Vancouver, Canada.

Now, how did those 50 guys get from Vancouver, Canada, and

they were there on the third day? You tell me. Because we were

surrounded by water, we had no ingress or egress, and they got

there. My own State government and Federal Government couldn’t

get to St. Bernard Parish.

The issue that was brought before you and that you have been

talking about concerning the trailer issue, St. Bernard Parish is in

favor of the trailers. But what I found out the other day after a

meeting at the Governor’s office is all the temporary housing that

they have been telling people and assuring people that they will

have is in fact not there. There is not enough trailers in the United

States to supply what is needed for this catastrophe that we have

today.

Our thoughts on trailers were a little bit different. We liked the

idea of a trailer city, but what we were going to do, is as a person

comes into a subdivision and he wants to rebuild his home or he

wants to build a new one, that that trailer would be placed on his

property until he was through building his home. That way we figured we wouldn’t use as many trailers, and it wouldn’t be no big

issue at the end of 18 months to close these trailer cities down.

Also, I think one of the things that people have to look at these

trailer things is, there are existing trailer parks, and there are existing trailer parks in my area that will house at least 800 or 900

trailers, and we intend to look at that.

One of the problems that I have found with this situation was

communications. It just didn’t seem that the left hand knew what

the right hand was doing. You asked a question, and if you asked

one person, and I think the gentleman before me kind of stated

that, if you asked for an opinion on whether you could get reimbursed on something, one would tell you yes, and the next one

would tell you no. It was kind of a nightmare when you get to that

situation. So I think communications and education is something

that needs to be taken care of.

The other issue, and I kind of feel that number one, I don’t think

they have the proper staff. I don’t think FEMA has the proper

staff. To be totally honest with you, I think everybody was overwhelmed at the vastness of this situation. I know at local government we were. And I know State government was. And I am assuming from what I saw, Federal Government was. They weren’t

prepared for this. They simply weren’t.

The problems also arose with us is that people that represent

FEMA, you will get a representative, like we had a representative

that served us for almost three weeks, a little over two weeks, almost three weeks. That gentleman was replaced. The guy was really, he knew his business, so obviously I feel that he was, I know

he was a full-time FEMA representative.

The next person that came in obviously came out of a pool that

could be used. I think he was a representative from NASA or some-
59

where. Nice gentleman, but he just couldn’t give us any answers

to any of our questions. So basically, we are back down to zero. We

are climbing the ladder, but we keep going up and then we go back.

Whenever you get in that point, in a situation we’re in right now,

you have to keep going or you are going to drown in this thing.

St. Bernard is, we are going to come back and we are going to

come back better. We are determined.

But one of the FEMA problems that has us at the present time

is the inability for FEMA, and that is with regard to the Stafford

Act, to take care of the base pay. We simply don’t have the funds.

We don’t have any funds coming in at the present time. Normally

this is the time of year when it is always tough on local governments, because you get your ad valorem monies in the beginning

of the year, and you stretch them. When you get to the end of the

year, then that stretching gets pretty thin. And you are depending

on your sales tax from your holidays, and there is not going to be

any sales tax at St. Bernard for holidays.

Gentleman, that is basically, I think that is all I can help you

on. We need some help. I will be totally honest with you, the next

time I come to Washington, I am probably going to the Chinese embassy and apply for foreign aid.

[Laughter.]

Mr. SHUSTER. Well, there are some things we are doing that we

will address. But we are going to go through the Committee, then

I will have some questions I would like to ask you and everybody.

But we will proceed.

Next is Mr. Kent Buckley, who is the Director of Emergency

Management from Bolivar County, Mississippi. Where is Bolivar?

I was in Mississippi, I was in Hancock County.

Mr. BUCKLEY. Bolivar County is in the Mississippi Delta. It is

about 330 miles north of the coast, but I was deployed to Hancock

County.

Mr. SHUSTER. All right. Please proceed.

Mr. BUCKLEY. Chairman Shuster and distinguished members of

the Subcommittee, I would like to thank you for inviting me here

to provide this testimony on our Nation’s worst natural disaster

and the recovery operations that are going to be part of our lives

in Mississippi for many years to come.

I am Kent Buckley, Director of Bolivar County Emergency Management Agency in Cleveland, Mississippi. It is an office of two

people, charged with maintaining our county emergency plan and

coordinating response of all emergency departments, bringing to

the table Delta State University, the hospital, nursing homes, 15

municipalities, industry, private sector and so forth. We conduct

preparedness programs with the public just like we have done in

the old civil defense days.

I am President of the Mississippi Civil Defense Emergency Management Association, MCDEMA, made up mostly of local emergency management directors and staff. Our membership is about

280. I am also a member of the International Association of Emergency Managers, with a membership of about 2,800.

We just experienced a new disaster standard with Katrina in

Mississippi. The old standard was Hurricane Camille, that came in

about 40 years ago, August, 1969. Katrina has left tens of thou-
60

sands homeless with losses of jobs and critical infrastructure. It is

going to take months to deal with the debris and years to close this

disaster out.

My county was not affect nearly as bad as much of the coast. I

was deployed to Hancock County under our statewide mutual aid

compact, and plus the EMA director in Hancock County asked for

me. Hancock County was ground zero for Mississippi.

Chairman Shuster, we very much appreciate the fact that you

and some others of the Committee got a first-hand look at the massive damage last weekend. Hancock County was thrown into third

world conditions. Officials in emergency management fought the

water coming into the building at one point in Hancock County,

and they passed out life jackets among themselves and wrote numbers on their arms with permanent magic markers. Then they

placed vital personal information and so forth in the ceiling area,

so in case the water got up and they didn’t make it somebody

might be able to find that information and get to them. They didn’t

know if they were going to make it or not.

Much infrastructure was totally destroyed. This is going to be a

huge burden on the towns and counties when the funds there have

been drained while they are trying to meet payroll and they are

continuing the recovery efforts.

We need redundant communications like a nationwide satellite

radio system. We only had one of those in Hancock County for

days. FEMA is assisting with housing, which is a huge logistics

matter. It is going to be a huge logistics matter later on also, when

the trailers have to be removed. We still need those trailers, since

many are still living in their front yards. We need a better handle

on logistics and tracking resources in the emergency management

field.

FEMA representatives in our counties did a good job, according

to our county emergency management directors. I called a number

of them before I flew to Washington, D.C. However, we need to

work on getting a means of registering the affected people. It is

kind of hard to do when you don’t have phone lines, cell phones,

you don’t have internet and you don’t have computers. And when

you don’t even have a building to use, well, then, maybe FEMA

needs to bring a building with it.

Response and capability has to be built from the ground up. That

means local programs need better support from the Emergency

Management Performance Grant, that’s EMPG. This is a 50/50

matching grant program that is the backbone of emergency management in the United States. We have a $264 million shortfall in

that program.

Congress will have to decide what level of preparedness it is willing to pay for that translates into emergency management response

capabilities dependent upon EMPG funding. Emergency managers

in Mississippi believe that FEMA should be restored to an independent agency and its director restored to Cabinet level status.

You can’t dismantle an agency and expect it to respond like it used

to, and preparedness needs to be restored in FEMA.

Homeland Security can have a preparedness program, National

Weather Service has one, Red Cross has one, others have them.

But all hazards preparedness needs to stay in FEMA. Preparedness
61

response, recovery and mitigation is the emergency management

program across this Nation.

I would like to thank you for this opportunity to visit our Nation’s Congress and to provide you with this testimony. I will be

happy to answer any questions that you may have.

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

Now I would like to recognize Janice Kilgore, who is the Emergency Management Manager for Escambia County. Welcome. I was

in Escambia County over a year ago, and your wonderful Congressman Jeff Miller, I know he works hard and works well with you

folks down there.

So please proceed.

Ms. KILGORE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. It is an honor to be here today.

I have served Escambia County in public safety and emergency

management for the past 32 years. I offer some of the comments

today based on those experiences.

We have heard a lot in different testimony about issues associated with how you communicate, coordinate, consistency or lack

thereof, and also being able to timely deploy these resources. Those

are things we feel like that we have to look at in an adequate

emergency management program.

Emergency management does begin at the local level, but we

must have help from State and local governments to make that

happen. A year ago, September 16th, 2004, Hurricane Ivan made

landfall at the Alabama-Florida line as a category 3 hurricane. Nowhere does it compare to what our neighbors in Mississippi and

Louisiana saw with Hurricane Katrina.

But we still had a lot of devastation, a lot of damage in our county, in Escambia County and Pensacola. We had better than half of

our homes with some type of damage there. As a result of that, we

had people that needed supplies. I will say that in less than 48

hours, we had ice, water, and MREs being distributed to the citizens in our county. So it can be done in a timely manner.

Many agencies came to help us after Hurricane Ivan. So when

Katrina went into the Mississippi Gulf Coast, it was our turn to

go over and offer assistance. On August 30th, the afternoon after

Katrina went in, we sent a multidisciplined team to Harrison

County, Mississippi. They came home for the last time on September 29th, so there were there just about a month.

Early reports from our team told of all the devastation that they

saw and all the basic needs that they had, the supplies, just tetanus information, being able to put band-aids on people that had

scrapes and cuts. The food and water that they took with them

they actually passed out to people in the community because they

couldn’t find anything else. They were using their own supplies for

that. Day after day, they would call back in, telling us of different

communities that really needed assistance.

Katrina caused catastrophic damage and any community would

have a hard time dealing with something of that magnitude. They

can’t do it by themselves. They have got to have assistance. And

the greater the population you have, the more assistance you are

going to need.
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I have already talked about communications and coordination

being extremely important as it relates to any disaster. The old

saying that you hear, you play like you practice, local governments

have got to have adequate plans and make sure that those things

come together. Thankfully, we have groups like our churches and

businesses and individuals that step up during times of disaster

and don’t necessarily wait for the Government to ask them to come

in and help. Because they were a big help to us after Ivan, and we

saw those same things in the couple of times that I visited the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the last month.

We talked about the consistency or inconsistency. Like the other

people said, you would get one story on how to fill a form out, only

to get told two or three different times by other FEMA representatives, no, you have to do it this way. So you spend a lot of time

and effort spinning your wheels. So I really hope that something

will come out of this on consistency for being able to get the word

all the way down to the people that are on the streets giving that

information. There has to be proper training for all the people that

are employed during these events.

The other thing that I will mention is the status of the emergency Preparedness funds, the emergency management funding

that comes down from the Federal Government to the local levels.

Last year, the fiscal year that just ended, Escambia County received $47,222 for this pass-through money for our emergency

management program. That was actually $43 less than the prior

year and $82 less than the year before that.

I really think that the funding levels should be increasing, not

decreasing, if we are going to have adequate response to emergency

management and disasters in this county.

FEMA has been a vital part of response and recovery activities

in the past. I think if they would have a renewed emphasis on having qualified, trained people respond to the disaster locations, consistent instruction and information provided, as well as improved

coordination before disasters, then FEMA should be able to effectively carry out the mission that it has been given to perform.

Again, thank you very much for allowing me to participate in

this hearing.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Ms. Kilgore.

Next, Mr. Albert Ashwood, who is the Vice President of the National Emergency Management Association. Thank you for being

here and please proceed.

Mr. ASHWOOD. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, members

of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to provide testimony

on FEMA’s ability to lead the recovery mission after Hurricane

Katrina. I am representing the National Emergency Management

Association, whose members are the State directors of emergency

management. I am also the State Director of Emergency Management in Oklahoma.

Today, you have asked me to speak to the question of FEMA’s

capacity and capability to direct the long term recovery mission

along the Gulf Coast. I appreciate the opportunity to address this

issue. However, I must first ask which FEMA we are discussing.

Are we talking about the FEMA who responded to and led recovery

efforts in the Oklahoma City bombing, Hurricane Floyd, the
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Northridge earthquake and the tragedies of September 11th? Or

are we talking about the current FEMA, with depleted manpower

and funding, who is strained to respond to everyday disasters,

much less the catastrophic damages caused by Hurricane Katrina.

The post-9/11 FEMA is a shell of its former self. Over the past

weeks, we have talked at great length about leadership qualifications, organizational structure and statutory responsibilities. Yet if

all we do is talk, we should not be surprised when history repeats

itself in future disasters.

When I entered this profession 17 years ago, FEMA and emergency management in general were little more than a quasi-military entity, spending all of its time figuring out where a nuclear

attack was going to take place and how to relocate the Nation’s

citizens from one population target to a host community down the

road. We worked extremely hard to stay in our cubicles and make

sure as little attention as possible was directed toward our profession.

In 1989, a disaster called Hurricane Hugo hit the Carolinas.

Then-Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina made a statement

to the media which I remember today. As he was standing in line

at a disaster assistance center with his constituents, he simply said

that FEMA was the biggest bunch of bureaucratic jackasses he had

ever met in Federal Government.

The reason I remember this quote is because it was accurate. He

was correct, but things were about to change. In 1992, Hurricane

Andrew hit southern Florida. It was the most catastrophic disaster

FEMA had responded to since its inception. Mistakes were made.

Many of the same issues that we have talked about with Katrina

were issues in Andrew.

With Andrew on everyone’s mind, the new Administration felt

the need to elevate the importance of FEMA and the emergency

management profession in the Federal Government. Changes came

rapidly and FEMA adopted a motto of people helping people and

lived up to that mantra through their partnerships with State and

local government.

Large disasters continued to occur: the Northridge earthquake,

the Midwest floods, and yes, even the Oklahoma City bombing, a

disaster which I was deeply involved in. I can promise you that the

FEMA that responded to these disasters is the FEMA you want

and every American citizen deserves.

Unfortunately, we live in a reactionary country, and following

the tragedies of September 11th, we all agreed that something had

to be done to prevent future terrorist incidents. What was originally discussed as a coordinated effort of intelligence gathering between the FBI and CIA eventually evolved into the Department of

Homeland Security, comprised of 22 Federal agencies, including

FEMA. An agency of this size must utilize and distribute its resources to best meet its needs: preventing and preparing to respond

to acts of terrorism.

Unfortunately, during the organization of DHS and future reorganizations, FEMA has gotten lost in the shuffle. Not only do they

lack the manpower and financial resources they possessed in the

mid to late 1990s, but they lack the authority and the position in

the overall chain of command.
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I don’t want anyone on the Committee to think I disagree with

the mission of the Department of Homeland Security. In today’s environment, it is essential that we expend all resources necessary to

prevent and prepare for the next act of terrorism in this Country.

However, we need not do it through the degradation of an existing

success story. If you ask me if FEMA is the right Government

agency to lead the long term recovery efforts concerning Katrina

and Rita, I say they are the only agency with the knowledge and

statutory authority capable of doing so.

But we must give them the resources necessary to not only do

their job, but to do their job the right way. It will take years for

the Gulf Coast to return to the level of prosperity it had prior to

Katrina. It is essential that the Gulf Coast is rebuilt with mitigation efforts in mind. If not, we are simply spending money to apply

a band-aid to a region as it awaits the next Katrina.

A fully staffed and funded FEMA must be there to not only accomplish that mission, but to prepare for and respond to future disasters. Personally, I have a few recommendations to succeed in this

long term recovery mission. First, remove FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security and make it a standalone agency answering to the President of the United States.

The emergency management mission, simply put, is one of coordination and support. It is a basic Wal-Mart at all levels of Government, where one stop shopping for resources and disaster assistance can be obtained. You cannot expect this and then establish

a coordinator of the coordinator.

Second, FEMA’s funding and manpower must be returned to preDHS levels. It is asinine to think an agency can effectively respond

and recover from disasters without a preparedness effort to accomplish this task.

Third, the Federal Government is only as strong as its base, and

regardless of what anyone tells you, disasters are local. If you want

a strong FEMA, we need to have a strong State emergency management and a strong local emergency management. Funding for

the emergency management performance grants has remained virtually stagnant for the last 15 years. The grant is currently funded

at $180 million and is the only grant that funds emergency management on the local and State level.

And it is a 50/50 matching grant. It requires local investment.

This is quite different than the $2.3 billion of Homeland Security

grants funded 100 percent federally and given to locals and States.

In conclusion, FEMA is the right agency to meet the long term

needs of the citizens of the Gulf Coast. I have many friends who

work for FEMA who have been working 12 hour shifts, 7 days a

week for the last month only to wake up each morning and read

about how inept their agency is and their leadership has become.

Many of these people have been doing the same job for the past 20

plus years, and quite frankly, they do a good job. But we have to

give them the support they need to do their job and to meet the

expectations of the American citizens.

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

I think you have all made yourself pretty clear on the macro

question of FEMA and where you believe i should be. But I still
65

want to go into sort of the micro question first, and then perhaps

some other questions, since Mr. Taylor is here and Mr. Dent.

First, I wish Mr. Rodriguez, I wish he could have stayed with us.

One of the things that he said, and I guess really Mr. Buckley, to

get your view of this and Ms. Kilgore’s on the proper staff that

came in, and again, Mr. Rodriguez isn’t here to answer that. But

in your experience on Katrina, in the aftermath here in the last

couple of weeks, do you feel that the staff that came in from FEMA

was knowledgeable, that they knew what they were doing? Can you

give me generally what your sense of that was?

Mr. BUCKLEY. Well, in what I was doing in Hancock County, I

didn’t see anybody from FEMA the first several days. There may

have been somebody there, but I never did see them. And we were

having a hard time trying to find some place to work out of. The

emergency operations center had been flooded, and after several

days, mold and so forth, we were having to try to find some other

place to move to. We moved to trailers in the alley and eventually

to Stennis Airport, which was about some 12 miles inland.

Mr. SHUSTER. Ms. Kilgore, in Ivan, what would your comment be

on the staff that came in from FEMA? Do you know if it was the

permanent or the temporary staff that you were dealing with?

Ms. KILGORE. It varied, as we heard earlier, where some of the

ones that came in were very knowledgeable, and then others, you

would get used to dealing with one and then they would be rotated

out. So I guess they are part of their temporary pool that they had.

Mr. SHUSTER. Did you know who you were dealing with, if you

were dealing with a permanent or a temporary?

Ms. KILGORE. Sometimes we did. Sometimes they just had the

FEMA credentialing, so you weren’t sure if they were 100 percent

a FEMA employee or if they were one of their disaster employees.

Mr. SHUSTER. Right.

Ms. KILGORE. But even some of the disaster employees they have

are very, very knowledgeable in what they do, because they go and

deal with the disasters a lot. It just depends on the individual and

the instruction that they are getting and the consistency.

Mr. SHUSTER. Experience.

Ms. KILGORE. Exactly.

Mr. SHUSTER. Even a temporary person can have tremendous experience. Yes, Mr. Buckley.

Mr. BUCKLEY. There was a FEMA representative in the EOC

early on. His name was Eric, I don’t remember his last name. But

I thought you might have been talking about FEMA people that

were coming in to help people to register and so forth like that. I

thought that is what you were talking about.

But early on, there was one person, his name was Eric.

Mr. SHUSTER. I believe I met Eric, I was at Stennis Airport two

weeks ago. Eric Gentry.

Ms. KILGORE. He was in Pensacola.

Mr. SHUSTER. Okay. One of the things we are looking at doing,

and I just want to get all three of you to comment on it, is to lift

the cap on the community disaster loan program from $5 million

to unlimited. What are your thoughts? How important is that to a

community, to be able to get those low income disaster loans?
66

Mr. ASHWOOD. I think I can answer part of that. Having worked

numerous disasters, there are very few items in the FEMA bag of

tricks that are going to get a community back to the way economically it was prior to the disaster. We can rebuild the infrastructure,

we can help out the individual victims. But as happened in Oklahoma in 1999, we had a community that was wiped out by a tornado and its three top employers all left town. There was nothing

I could do to make sure that there was any prosperity for that community after that.

The community loan program that you allude to is the one item

that can be used to help that community through more of a long

term process. Now, they will also work with the Department of

Commerce to do everything that they can to make sure that the

economic impact is lessened as greatly as possible. But that is the

real issue. That is the one thing you can utilize.

Mr. SHUSTER. Do you know that the community you are talking

about, did it actually pay back that disaster loan? Because there

are some communities that, based on their financial picture, those

things are forgiven.

Mr. ASHWOOD. Actually, in their case, they decided not to apply

for that loan, because they had no idea whether they could pay it

back or not. We did stress that most of those loans were forgiven,

but at the same time, it was their city council’s decision not to go

that route.

Mr. SHUSTER. Ms. Kilgore?

Ms. KILGORE. Well, as you know, with Hurricane Ivan, we lost

a good bit of our tax base. Quite frankly, we are still recovering

from Hurricane Ivan over a year later. We estimate it will be at

least another year before we even start getting up close to the area.

Most people have not even started rebuilding.

And now with Mississippi and Louisiana in that same area, contractors are really going to be at a premium. So I think local governments should have the ability to go after something that can

keep them, to sustain them, to pay the bills and do the things that

they need to do for their citizens, especially when you know it is

going to be a three or four year process.

Mr. SHUSTER. Do you know if Escambia County applied for that

community disaster loan?

Ms. KILGORE. Personally, I do not, but we can certainly find out

for you.

Mr. SHUSTER. Mr. Buckley, would you care to comment on that

community disaster loan?

Mr. BUCKLEY. On infrastructure, with these municipalities and

so forth trying to build back, the rule has generally been, well, you

build it back to the way it was. But if the way it was is not what

is going to get you through the recovery or if the way it was is not

adequate, it may fall short of standards, or maybe it was borderline, well, then, maybe you should think about improving it a little

bit.

For instance, the levees in New Orleans, they are going to, my

understanding from the news this morning was they are going to

rebuild those sections back to the way they were. Well, this would

be a prime opportunity to build them better than they were, at
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least in those sections. Then later on, they will have something to

build onto.

The infrastructure in these towns with sewage treatment and

water systems and communications and things like that, if what

you had before was not adequate, then don’t penalize them for trying to put some increased capacity in there. Because this recovery

process is going to be a long thing.

Mr. SHUSTER. Right. And a final question on the macro question

of FEMA, where do you see it, where does it belong. But before I

let you answer that question, I just want to make sure of the experience I am dealing with here. Ms. Kilgore, did you say for 30

years—

Ms. KILGORE. Thirty-two.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thirty-two years. And Mr. Ashwood, how long

have you been in emergency management?

Mr. ASHWOOD. Seventeen years.

Mr. SHUSTER. And Mr. Buckley?

Mr. BUCKLEY. Sixteen.

Mr. SHUSTER. Sixteen years. So I have a pretty experienced crew

here I’m talking to.

The same question I posed to Governor Wise, if you had a magic

wand and you could wave it, what would FEMA look like to each

of you? Inside DHS? Outside DHS?

Mr. BUCKLEY. Outside DHS and back to the way it was before

it was pretty much thrown in the gutter and then kicked when it

couldn’t respond.

Mr. SHUSTER. And in the 16 years you have been in emergency

management, now versus 4 or 5 years ago?

Mr. BUCKLEY. After Hurricane Andrew, it was fixed pretty good.

It was a very responsive and user-friendly agency.

Mr. SHUSTER. Not perfect, though?

Mr. BUCKLEY. No, not perfect. We all have things we need to

work on.

Mr. SHUSTER. I want to make sure we are painting the right picture here.

Mr. BUCKLEY. Sure.

Mr. SHUSTER. Ms. Kilgore, your thoughts on FEMA, inside, outside?

Ms. KILGORE. I think being separate again like it was would

make a difference to those of us that deal with emergency management. I do think that preparedness and mitigation still need to

play a very major role, as well as response and recovery, and that

we need to make sure that that coordination is there through all

levels of government.

Mr. SHUSTER. And in your experience, did you see a marked difference in FEMA last year versus before?

Ms. KILGORE. Yes, I have.

Mr. SHUSTER. I just want to make sure I clarify. I thought I was

in Escambia County a year ago. It was only eight months ago.

Time flies.

Mr. Ashwood, your views?

Mr. ASHWOOD. I think I made it clear. I think that FEMA needs

to be outside DHS, similar to the way it was in the mid to late

1990s. One of the things we keep talking about, we talk about a
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lack of funding and a lack of manpower. But one of the things that

FEMA lost over this entire transformation is a great deal of institutional knowledge. There were a lot of people at FEMA who had

worked there a very long time.

When we started working through the terrorism, DHS standpoint, there was a lot of money that went out to private industries

and is still going out to private industries, that needed that expertise base. So a lot of people who worked for FEMA back in the mid

to late 1990s are now working in private industry as consultants

and we have lost a great deal of institutional knowledge that was

in FEMA previously.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. I yield to Mr. Taylor, if you have any

questions.

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me begin by thanking Mr. Buckley for coming to south Mississippi and my home

county in particular. And Ms. Kilgore, I also want to thank the Floridians. The help that was provided from outside, from Bolivar

County, from Florida was really well received, there was a lot of

expertise.

What Ms. Kilgore failed to mention, and I think that Mr. Brown

completely missed last week in his testimony, obviously the first responders, the local first responders are extremely important. But

FEMA ought to have a plan for when the first responders literally

have their legs cut out from underneath them, as happened in

Hancock County, when the vehicles were parked in a place that

had never flooded before, and you had every police car, every fire

engine, most of the emergency management equipment, went underwater in a flood that just simply was unimaginable.

So we are very, very grateful for the outside help that we received.

Mr. Buckley, I would like you to comment, because I think it is

worth hearing, if you would tell the Committee what kinds of communications you saw for the first four days in Hancock County,

how many radios were available to you?

Mr. BUCKLEY. It was completely third world. The only thing that

we were able to use, we brought a communications bus. We have

an agreement with Delta State University, we have an agreement

for the bus with them. We installed communications equipment in

that bus, and we hurried up to finish it so that we could go to Hancock County. When we arrived, we pretty much had the only communications with us that was in Hancock County.

Mr. TAYLOR. What day was that?

Mr. BUCKLEY. That was the Tuesday after the storm. That Tuesday night, we had to wait for the roads to get cleared so that we

could make it down there. So that was Tuesday night.

Mr. TAYLOR. So that was over 24 hours since the storm. Prior to

that, again, all I can do is ask you to confirm this, that there was

one satellite phone.

Mr. BUCKLEY. And it was on my bus.

Mr. TAYLOR. And it was owned by the National Guard. That was

the total communications.

Mr. BUCKLEY. Oh, I am sorry, if the Guard had one, that would

have been another one. But I had one in my bus. That doubled it.
69

Mr. TAYLOR. What kind of sanitation did you see when you got

there?

Mr. BUCKLEY. For several days there were no Port-A-Lets. I

think they were brought in, I can’t remember, I can’t remember

now what day it was. It had to be at least Thursday or Friday before Port-A-Lets arrived. It was probably on Friday. We were able

to respond, my group, we were able to respond and be self-sustaining. But that was a problem.

Mr. TAYLOR. What did you see in the way of food?

Mr. BUCKLEY. We brought food with us. But as far as what was

available for the first responders, again, they had lost their vehicles, many of them had lost their houses. But they were on the job,

trying to do their job as best they could.

Mr. TAYLOR. What were the first responders eating?

Mr. BUCKLEY. Most of the food that I saw around there was food

that first responders, people responding like my group brought in

with us. I didn’t see any outside food. If it was there, I didn’t see

it.

Mr. TAYLOR. Okay. What you missed then was that the first responders had looted the Wal-Mart and the Sav-A-Center in order

to feed themselves. If you remember the guy they referred to as

Boss Hogg, the stuff Boss Hogg was cooking had been looted from

the Wal-Mart.

Mr. BUCKLEY. I remember Boss. Right. I seem to remember

something about that now. I also brought him a pickup truck load

of food myself, a week later, because he was running out of food.

He came real close to running out of food several times.

Mr. TAYLOR. One of the things that I found really frustrating in

dealing with FEMA, and again, I want to hear your observation on

this, that as, when the questions would be asked, when is the

water coming, when are the MREs coming, the answer I kept getting is, it’s in the pipeline. Then when you try to narrow it down,

okay, is that pipeline in Alaska, is it in Arkansas, is it in North

Mississippi, is it 100 miles from here, the answer is, we don’t know.

Was that your observation as well, that there was really poor coordination from FEMA as to what was coming, when it was going

to arrive, and what the follow-on was going to be? Because I always

found it was impossible to ration what you don’t know you have,

and even harder to ration what you don’t know what you’re getting.

Mr. BUCKLEY. That is right. We need a better tracking system.

GPS I think would be great. Satellite communications in all those

trucks, maybe we can work toward something like that. But the

tracking system needs to be greatly improved.

We ran into the same thing with fuel. Law enforcement was running out of fuel. At one time, I sent a message over to law enforcement that if a fuel tanker came into the county, you escort it in.

Mr. TAYLOR. Again, Mr. Chairman, as you know, there is another

hearing going on upstairs. I want to thank all of you for being here

today and in particular, Kent, I want to thank you for coming down

and helping out in south Mississippi.

Mr. BUCKLEY. I would describe it as a heartbreaking pleasure.

Mr. TAYLOR. I really do want to thank all the Floridians. I promise never to say a bad thing about Florida again.

[Laughter.]
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Mr. SHUSTER. I have heard you say good things about Florida.

Escambia County, too, Pensacola.

With that, Mr. Dent, five minutes for questions.

Mr. DENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Ashwood, I have a

question for you. In your testimony, you have made some remarks

about federalizing a disaster could be extremely difficult with so

many agencies lending support to disaster.

We have heard a lot of discussion since Katrina about what the

role of the Federal Government should be, specifically the military,

in the event of these types of catastrophic events that you have experienced down in the Gulf Coast. I would just like to hear you expand on that a little bit more. As you know, we have this layered

system of response, local, State and Federal, FEMA.

Mr. ASHWOOD. Yes, sir. And here again, I have to provide a caveat that I was not in the Gulf Coast responding to these disasters.

So we all have to realize that this is something we have not experienced before in emergency management or in response, just by the

enormity of it all.

In disasters that I have worked, and I have worked numerous

disasters, Oklahoma is no stranger to disaster, all disasters are

local. I still stand by that statement. Because the first line of defense are your first responders. You have emergency medical, fire

and law enforcement who are all there, the first ones in. Of course,

the State is right there to help them out if they need additional resources, and the Federal Government is right behind that to make

sure that the quickest response and the most efficient response is

made as possible.

With the Federal Government comes a defense coordinating officer. Any time there is an emergency declared or a major disaster

declared under the Stafford Act, the Federal coordinating officer

can ask the Defense coordinating officer to stand right next to him.

If there is anything the Department of Defense has that can be applied to that response, it is immediately available.

I have concerns just hearing, as you have, the reports on television and everything saying that the Federal Government was

waiting for the State to ask for this, or the State was asking for

the local government to ask for this. I know it was chaotic. But the

fact of the matter is, in disasters I have worked, those people were

all basically talking to each other in the same room.

So it is not like somebody was sitting behind a desk waiting for

somebody to ask me for help before I am going to do anything. I

don’t understand that statement. How it is supposed to work is basically as Mr. Brown pointed out in his testimony that it works

from the bottom up, from local to State to Federal and the needs

are met. But they are not done in a such a way that is disjointed,

they are done working in cooperation and partnership together.

So I don’t know what happened in this disaster, but that is the

way it has always worked in the past.

Mr. DENT. Another question I had, all of you have indicated you

would like to see FEMA as a standalone agency, direct report to

the President. Other than having that direct ear of the President,

what are the other principal reasons why you would like to see

FEMA as a standalone?
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Mr. ASHWOOD. I will start that off. I guess I think it goes back

to the all hazards approach. We have been preaching and planning

all hazards for years now, that we don’t need to have a hurricane

plan and a tornado plan and a flood plan, because if you plan for

all hazards you can take in the different aspects of all of those

types of disasters.

When the Department of Homeland Security started, we basically started saying, we need to plan for terrorism, and oh, by the

way, the underwritten philosophy is that if we can plan for a terrorist event, then we are prepared for any event that the Country

might face. I don’t agree with that perspective. There are different

incidents there.

We used to have, prior to DHS, authorities were divided up between crisis management and consequence management. That

made perfect sense to me. You have crisis management, which

takes it on the front end. If we can catch the bad guy and keep

the event from happening, by all means, let’s do that. We all agree

with that.

But we have to be prepared for consequence management if we

don’t catch the bad guy. And that is where FEMA came in, because

they were the experts in consequence management. They could

come in and respond to the event that already happened, to make

sure the resources were there, to make sure that the most effective

response could be made.

I never quite understood why that was a bad idea, this crisis

management and consequence management. But it seemed like

when DHS was initiated, we had to get rid of those two terms and

make sure that it was all together in one department. So I think

there are a lot of growing pains as to how that actually works out.

Because a lot of things that DHS talks about are not really of interest to me as the State emergency manager for Oklahoma when

it comes to terrorist intelligence and where we might get hit next.

While it is very interesting to listen to, there is not a whole lot

I can do to effectively respond until the event actually happens.

Some will tell you that you need to pre-position resources. Well, we

do pre-position resources. FEMA pre-positions resources across the

Nation for different types of disasters that could occur.

But at the same time, you are not going to give me 72 hours to

pre-position resources within my State because this is where the

terrorist event might occur. We have to be prepared long before

that.

So I will pass that on and you can answer to that.

Ms. KILGORE. Most of the things that I was going to mention he

talked about, when he talked about the resources and the other

things that were available to local governments. Having them in

different areas is certainly important. I think what’s happened

with the Department of Homeland Security, in my opinion, is there

has been a lot of money, a great deal of money that has gone out

through State and local, and in some cases local government, more

importantly probably in the State and regional areas.

But it has more been on equipment and types of things to put

in these stockpile areas, and as a result, there has not been a lot

of emphasis on people but yet there has been a lot of direction coming down to the local area as to what each local emergency man-
72

agement agency has to accomplish as it relates to this plan or that

plan or the other plan. But again, there are no dollars associated

with that for us to keep up with everything that keeps coming

down the tubes.

Mr. BUCKLEY. I agree with all of that. Homeland Security really

does not understand the emergency management discipline as far

as the all hazards approach and then the types of plans that we

have had in the past. They are law enforcement focused, most of

them, and they deal with intel and investigations and that sort of

thing. Even in the State of Mississippi I had one of our highest

homeland security persons in the homeland security office talk

about, well, they need a separate plan, they need their own plan.

Well, you need to plan for all hazards and that needs to be part

of it. You don’t need to start having 15 different plans for everything that could happen. We learned that lesson time and again.

So FEMA needs to be a separate agency, and emergency management is a little different from some of these other disciplines, in

that emergency management is a coordinating agency and a resource agency and is not focused just on fire service and law enforcement and emergency medical, but we coordinate with all those

people. And it is a little different.

Mr. DENT. Thank you.

Mr. SHUSTER. I think that is one of the big lessons of Katrina,

is a lack of coordination. I think you are absolutely right, I had

somebody, it was actually former FEMA Director Brown, I think it

was him, that said we need to have less engineers at FEMA and

more coordinating type people, contract administrators, because

that is what you folks do in your business and your world.

I want to thank you very much for coming here today. I can’t tell

you how important it is that folks like you come and testify before

the Committee. Because the only way that we can gain the knowledge from folks like you that are in the field, first-hand knowledge,

I have emergency responders in my district I talk to, but to be able

to get a perspective from around the Country and those different

experiences is essential to those of us on this Committee and in

Congress to be able to hopefully make wise decisions.

Sometimes we make knee-jerk decisions, but we want to try to

protect against that with the information that you folks provide.

You do that, so I thank you all very, very much for being here. I

appreciate it.

And I would ask unanimous consent that the record of today’s

hearing remain open until all witnesses have provided answers to

questions submitted to them in writing, and unanimous consent

that during such time as the record remains open, additional comments offered by individuals or groups may be included in the

record of today’s hearing. Without objection, so ordered.

And again, thank you very much. The Committee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 3:10 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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