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45–991 PDF 2009

S. Hrg. 110–823 

MISSION POSSIBLE: FEMA’S FUTURE 

PREPAREDNESS PLANNING 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE, LOCAL, 

AND PRIVATE SECTOR PREPAREDNESS 

AND INTEGRATION 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

SEPTEMBER 24, 2008 

Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

and Governmental Affairs 

( 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

BARACK OBAMA, Illinois 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico 

JOHN WARNER, Virginia 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire 

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Staff Director 

BRANDON L. MILHORN, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE, LOCAL, AND PRIVATE SECTOR 

PREPAREDNESS AND INTEGRATION 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas, Chairman 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

BARACK OBAMA, Illinois 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico 

JOHN WARNER, Virginia 

KRISTIN SHARP, Staff Director 

MICHAEL MCBRIDE, Minority Staff Director 

KELSEY STROUD, Chief Clerk 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statement: Page 

Senator Pryor .................................................................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2008 

Marko Bourne, Director of Policy and Program Analysis, Federal Emergency 

Management Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland Security ....................... 2 

Nancy J. Dragani, President, National Emergency Management Association, 

and Executive Director, Ohio Emergency Management Agency, Ohio Department of Public Safety .................................................................................... 5 

Larry Gispert, President, International Association of Emergency Managers, 

and Director of Emergency Management, Hillsborough County, Florida ....... 7 

Jane Bullock, Principal, Bullock and Haddow, LLC, and Former Chief of 

Staff, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Member of the Adjunct 

Faculty, Center of Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management, George Washington University ................................................................................................. 9 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Bourne, Marko: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 2 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 31 

Bullock, Jane: 

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

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 50 

Dragani, Nancy J.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 5 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 38 

Gispert, Larry: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 7 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 43 

APPENDIX 

Questions and responses submitted for the Record from: 

Mr. Bourne ........................................................................................................ 56 

Ms. Dragani ...................................................................................................... 70 

Mr. Gispert ........................................................................................................ 74 

Ms. Bullock ....................................................................................................... 75 

(1) 

MISSION POSSIBLE: FEMA’S FUTURE 

PREPAREDNESS PLANNING 

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2008 

U.S. SENATE, AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE, LOCAL, AND

PRIVATE SECTOR PREPAREDNESS AND INTEGRATION, OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:33 p.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Mark L. Pryor, 

Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senator Pryor. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR 

Senator PRYOR. I will go ahead and call us to order. Thank you, 

everyone, for being here, and certainly the staff and the Members 

who are coming. I appreciate the work that got us here today. 

I want to welcome our panelists and our other guests to the Subcommittee today to hear about FEMA’s future preparedness efforts. 

I appreciate you all taking time to be here today. 

The purpose of this hearing is to assess FEMA’s preparedness 

and continuity of operations over the next 12 to 18 months. As we 

all know, the next year-and-a-half will see changes in leadership in 

all the Federal agencies. Many of our State and local partners will 

also undergo changes in their leadership levels. My goal in holding 

this hearing is to assess our ability to respond to a catastrophic incident during this time of transition—not just for the Presidential 

race, but for the next year or year-and-a-half of transition as people 

get acclimated and get a new Administration up and running. We 

need to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks. 

I always feel like the period of transition is critical. For example, 

here in Washington, we are seeing the winding down of one Administration, and whether it is a Democrat or a Republican who wins 

in November, we will see a new Administration with a lot of new 

people, and a lot of times in that time of flux and transition, it can 

be a vulnerable time for our people. 

We are in the process of tying up loose ends. I know FEMA has 

a lot of loose ends that need to be tied up—staffing up agencies, 

defining roles and responsibilities, and evaluating our capacity. 

History indicates that terrorists try to capitalize on moments where 

there seem to be instability or uncertainty, and if this hurricane 

season is any indication, we cannot count on Mother Nature to cut 

us any slack, either. 

2 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Bourne appears in the Appendix on page 31. 

It is my hope that this hearing will shed some light on our Nation’s emergency management and response capabilities and also 

identify areas where we can strengthen that. Some of my concerns 

include ongoing policy initiatives, like the establishment of a target 

capabilities list and an inventory of Federal response capabilities. 

I am also interested in planning efforts to wrap up or hand off 

projects like the National Disaster Housing Strategy, National Response Framework, pandemic flu preparedness, and the continuing 

flooding and hurricane recovery efforts. It is critical that we focus 

on gaps in preparedness and response capabilities now rather than 

later. 

In my experience, homeland security and emergency management issues have crossed the partisan divide, which I think is a 

good thing and I hope that they continue to do that. This Administration and previous Administrations offer valuable emergency response and planning experience and our State, local, and private 

sector partners must also be brought to the table as we identify the 

best practices in remaining prepared over the next 12 to 18 

months. 

Again, I appreciate everyone’s time and attention to this issue 

and thanks again for being here. Now what I would like to do is 

introduce our panel. 

Mr. Bourne, I will let you go first. Marko Bourne is the Director 

of Policy and Program Analysis at FEMA. I appreciate you testifying before this Subcommittee again. I think he held the distinction of being on our Subcommittee’s first panel and now on our last 

panel before the end of this Congress. So Mr. Bourne, go ahead. 

TESTIMONY OF MARKO BOURNE,1 DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND 

PROGRAM ANALYSIS, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT 

AGENCY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Mr. BOURNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is once again a pleasure to be here before the Subcommittee. I have certainly enjoyed 

the times that we have been able to chat in the past. 

As you said, my name is Marko Bourne and I am the Director 

of Policy and Program Analysis at FEMA in the Department of 

Homeland Security and I am pleased to be here for a number of 

reasons. This Subcommittee has been a tremendous supporter of 

FEMA and its development and operational readiness over the last 

several years and it has been my task, among my responsibilities 

in managing the policy, strategic planning, and transformation 

process to also have overseen many of the specific developments 

following PKEMRA and the merger of the Preparedness Directorate into FEMA and many of the reorganization efforts that we 

have been undertaking along the way. 

The current operational tempo we are in right now certainly 

lends itself as a perfect backdrop to the discussion that we are here 

to have today and I would like to use that as a way of highlighting 

the progress that we have made to date and the challenges that remain. 

When, in 2006, Administrator Paulison actually announced his 

vision for what became known as New FEMA, the major goal was 

3 

to regain the trust and confidence of the American people by transforming FEMA back into the Nation’s preeminent emergency management and preparedness agency, and part of that challenge was 

to release this past spring FEMA’s strategic plan, which is not just 

for this year, it is not for next year, it is designed to be a strategic 

plan to build for the next 5 years, and it had significant goals in 

the plan. 

Those goals include strengthening our core capabilities and competencies and our capacity to build on the National Emergency 

Management System, not just on FEMA’s Emergency Management 

System. 

Our second goal was to build strong regions. The idea that the 

region is the essential field echelon of FEMA. It is the direct dayto-day connection with our State and local partners, and we are undertaking efforts which I will talk a little bit more in detail in a 

moment. Strengthening our partnership with the States, which involves more than just providing disaster assistance after the fact, 

but to plan, train, and exercise in advance. 

Professionalize the emergency management system by providing 

additional training opportunities, supporting EMI and the other 

training institutions that are now part of FEMA, and to build on 

an effective planning effort that is not only synchronized at the 

Federal level, but also synchronize through our regions with our 

State and local partners, and we have made a significant amount 

of progress in building not only that partnership, which is an ongoing development, as well as FEMA’s own internal capacity to deal 

with these events. 

We had to focus in many respects on expanding our internal capabilities and strengthening our organization. Part of the challenges that we faced in the post-Katrina environment included the 

ability to better coordinate with State and Federal agencies, and 

with Federal agencies, we developed over 200 Pre-Scripted Mission 

Assignments that help us in advance of disasters facilitate the actions of other Federal agencies. Prior to this year, there were less 

than 30 of those and we have now 223 with 31 different Federal 

agencies. 

On the ground, with the support of the Congress and this Subcommittee, we developed Incident Management Assistance Teams. 

There are two National Incident Management Assistance Teams 

and three regional ones and more will be coming on board in the 

next year. They are our ground troops. They are the folks that go 

out there that have extensive experience in emergency management and disaster response. They provide situational awareness. 

And they make that early linkage with our State partners and ultimately with our local partners in areas that are most affected. 

Our Logistics Management Directorate, which used to be buried 

about three tiers down in the Operations Directorate, is now a 

stand-alone and we have revamped the way FEMA looks at logistics and we learn lessons every day about how to better track resources, provide those resources to the State, and when called 

upon, deliver those resources to the American public. 

FEMA now has over 60 Mobile Disaster Registration Centers 

where we can actually roll into areas that do not have power, do 

not have life support. The ability for folks to apply not just by 

4 

phone but to apply online, and current activity with regards to applications for disaster assistance in the wake of Hurricane Ike, over 

71 percent of those disaster applications have come online now as 

opposed to calling the 1–800 number, which allows for a tremendous increase in our capacity to register victims for disaster help. 

We have looked at robust systems for evacuation planning. We 

learned from Hurricane Katrina that there are those that cannot 

evacuate themselves. State and local governments have taken great 

pains to begin to look at how they can support the evacuation of 

their local population. But what we have done on the Gulf Coast 

was to look and work with them to develop a comprehensive evacuation plan that involves also Federal support to that when called 

upon by the State. It is not something that is put together on the 

fly, but is determined in advance how many people need to be 

there, what kind of movement needs to happen, and what are the 

mechanisms to move people to. 

All of that is part of our preparedness culture and our planning 

culture, which is slowly growing. We are in the process now of vetting with State and local governments the new Integrated Planning 

System, and the idea behind IPS is to find a way to not only synchronize Federal planning, but how does that translate to State 

and local planning. And the IPS document along with the Comprehensive Preparedness Guide 101 has been vetted with the 

States and is in its final review period now before publishing. 

We have strengthened our regions. We are almost doubling the 

size of our regions both this year and next year, and all of that 

planning is in place to provide them not only with more training 

folks, but planning folks as well as emergency response. 

Hurricanes Gustav and Ike allowed us an opportunity to essentially dry run many of these activities. They have allowed us to determine where there are strengths and weaknesses in our current 

planning process and how we can improve coordination between all 

levels of the State, local, and Federal Government. I think it is fair 

to say that in any disaster, the plan is the first thing that needs 

to be changed because no disaster respects a plan on paper, and 

we have tried to be extremely versatile in addressing those challenges as they have come up. 

We do have a long way to go to continue the rest of the planning 

that we are doing this year, to finish hiring all of the staff that we 

have in the queue. There are over 500 that are going to be hired 

and on board within the next 30 days, which will get us to the 95 

percent goal that we set for this year. And we have asked in 2009 

for additional support and staff and we look forward to the budget 

and the appropriations bill so that we can begin to embark on hiring those folks, as well. 

I thank you and the Subcommittee for your continued support. 

I will end my remarks here by saying that we continue to build on 

the foundation. We are building an organization that has the opportunity to move forward aggressively with the support of our 

State and local partners and we will continue to support the American people in their ability to respond, recover, and mitigate 

against future disasters. I will be happy to take any questions you 

might have. 

5 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Dragani appears in the Appendix on page 38. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. I will save my questions until we 

have the whole panel testify, but thank you very much. 

Nancy Dragani is the President of the National Emergency Management Association. She is also Executive Director of the Ohio 

Emergency Management Agency. Please go ahead, Ms. Dragani. 

TESTIMONY OF NANCY DRAGANI,1 PRESIDENT, NATIONAL 

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION, AND EXECUTIVE 

DIRECTOR, OHIO EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, OHIO 

DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY 

Ms. DRAGANI. Thank you, Chairman Pryor, and thank you for 

the invitation to come here and say a few remarks about FEMA’s 

preparedness. FEMA’s readiness as we look at the transition in 

2009 is a critical issue that Congress and the next Administration 

must explore and explore carefully. 

As you well know, in the past 5 years, FEMA has weathered two 

significant reorganizations. First, FEMA was reorganized into the 

Department of Homeland Security in the years following September 11, 2001. FEMA was reorganized again through the PostKatrina Emergency Management Reform Act in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina, which brought back into FEMA some very critical 

functions and allowed it to provide a more robust and stronger support to its State and local partners. 

In March 2008, NEMA’s members drafted a white paper that 

outlined recommendations for an effective emergency management 

system. There were several top emergency management issues that 

were identified. The first was a focus on all-hazards emergency preparedness. We have seen the pendulum shift from a focus on natural hazards, then post-September 11, 2001, to almost exclusively 

terrorism, back to catastrophic natural hazards post-Katrina. We 

need to balance that focus and recognize that if we are prepared 

for all hazards, then we will be able to respond whether it is a pandemic or a hurricane or a tornado in the Midwest. 

Emergency management must be owned and supported by elected officials at all levels of government as a critical government 

service. This isn’t just FEMA’s job. It isn’t just the States’ job. It 

is local government, as well, and we must work together and be 

adequately resourced to perform our mission. 

The Nation requires an emergency management system which 

recognizes the integration of local, State, Tribal, regional, and Federal organizations so that when we need a single management 

structure following a catastrophic event, that structure is understood and in place. 

And finally, our citizens and businesses must understand and act 

on their personal responsibilities, and we have to develop a culture 

where everyone understands that, ultimately, response happens in 

the home. The first responder is mom and dad taking care of themselves and their families. 

I want to talk just a little bit about a revelation that I had a couple weeks ago when I was in Portland at our National Emergency 

Management Association conference. Several of our members were 

not there because they were focused on Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. 

6 

I realized then it was very apparent that we no longer have singleState disasters. We have disasters that involve multiple States and 

require a national response. 

One of the ways that we effectively do that is through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact. That compact has proved 

its value over and over again since Hurricane Katrina and it really 

requires at this point the establishment of a permanent funding 

authorization so that the compact can be maintained and the intent can be improved. 

FEMA regions, and I will echo something that Marko said, I certainly support the development of FEMA regions and FEMA regional coordination capabilities. They are more important now than 

ever before. The regions need to be fully staffed. They need to have 

stockpiles, resources pre-positioned, and continue the development 

of those regional assets. 

And finally, Emergency Management Performance Grants. We 

talk about EMPG often because it is the single Federal all-hazards 

emergency preparedness program that supports the building of capability at the State and local level. It must be maintained as a 

separate all-hazards program with adequate funding and flexibility 

to address the specific needs of States and local governments. 

While Ohio is not prone to hurricanes, thank goodness, and we 

are not very prone to earthquakes, we are prone to devastating 

floods, both flash and riverine, tornadoes, and winter storms. Over 

the past several years, we have been fortunate in having a longstanding and very productive and positive relationship with our 

Federal partners, particularly FEMA Region V and Ed Buikema 

and his staff. We have an equally strong and supportive relationship with our 88 county Emergency Management Directors that 

represent our local partners. This relationship both up and down 

is critical as we build effective national emergency management 

systems, and it requires trust and confidence in all your partners, 

whether they are Federal, State, or local partners. 

That partnership was again evident last summer when we had 

devastating floods in Central Ohio and just last week when we had 

nearly two million customers without power for days on end. 

We do have a few recommendations for FEMA, DHS, and the Administration. The first is that the FEMA Administrator must continue to serve as a primary advisor to the President on emergency 

management issues, and FEMA as an organization must be adequately staffed and given the authority to provide both the resources federally, but the resources to its State and local partners, 

as well. 

Second, State, local, and private stakeholders should be involved 

in the full lifecycle of any strategy, policy, or plan development related to national preparedness efforts because ultimately, if it is 

national, it brings in State and local partners. And I do want to 

applaud FEMA for the efforts they have done to date in the last 

several months to bring us in early as policies are being developed 

rather than waiting until after the fact. 

Finally, the Federal interagency preparedness activities must be 

coordinated at the Federal level prior to implementation. The effort 

that FEMA is undertaking through the Integrated Planning System to coordinate Federal planning activities is critical and preVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:20 May 28, 2009 Jkt 045991 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45991.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
7 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Gispert appears in the Appendix on page 43. 

vents both duplication and confusion at the Federal level that 

translates down to local relationships. 

With that, I want to thank you again for allowing me to come 

and share a few thoughts with you and I will be happy to answer 

any questions when we are done. Thank you. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. 

Larry Gispert is the President of the International Association of 

Emergency Managers. He is also Director of Emergency Management for Hillsborough County, Florida, which I understand that 

you have about 1.5 million people? 

Mr. GISPERT. One-point-two, but who is quibbling. 

Senator PRYOR. One-point-two, and growing? 

Mr. GISPERT. Yes, sir. 

Senator PRYOR. Go ahead. Thank you. 

TESTIMONY OF LARRY GISPERT,1 PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF EMERGENCY MANAGERS, AND 

DIRECTOR OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, HILLSBOROUGH 

COUNTY, FLORIDA 

Mr. GISPERT. Good afternoon, Chairman Pryor. Thank you for allowing me to present testimony on this critically important topic. 

I am Larry Gispert. I am the Director of Emergency Management 

for Hillsborough County, Florida. Hillsborough County, including 

the major city of Tampa, is on the West Coast of Florida. The county’s population is approximately 1.2 million. I currently serve as 

the President of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM), and am testifying on their behalf today. I have 28 

years’ experience in emergency management with the last 15 years 

as the Hillsborough County Director. I have also served as the 

President of the Florida Emergency Preparedness Association. 

IAEM has over 4,000 members, including emergency management professionals at the State and local government level, Tribal 

Nations, the military, colleges and universities, private and nonprofit sectors, and members in 58 other countries. Most of our 

members are U.S. city and county emergency managers. We believe 

that the high potential for disasters and crises in our country demand that we maintain an effective national system of emergency 

management. This national system needs to consist of strong partners at the Federal, State, and local levels. Yet it is our belief that 

this mission is most easily realized through making FEMA once 

again an independent agency reporting directly to the President. In 

the absence of this structural change, we believe success is not impossible, but will certainly require more effort coupled with a very 

vigilant Congress. 

After Hurricane Katrina, IAEM endorsed a number of critical 

elements for achieving a strong FEMA. They are: Maximum 

amount of access of the FEMA Director to the White House; FEMA 

clearly responsible for coordination of the Federal response to disasters; adequate funding, resources, and personnel for FEMA; experienced, qualified, and knowledgeable leadership in all key FEMA 

positions; the Principal Federal Official position abolished; FEMA 

regions strengthened; inclusion of local emergency managers in polVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:20 May 28, 2009 Jkt 045991 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45991.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
8 

icy development; insist on an all-hazards approach to emergency 

management; and the entire preparedness mission returned to 

FEMA. 

IAEM supports hiring qualified and experienced emergency managers in the senior leadership roles at FEMA. The next Administration should continue FEMA’s recent noteworthy efforts to involve State and local emergency managers in policy development. 

Not too long ago, I gently reminded our partners in FEMA that if 

they wanted us to be there at the crash landing, we should be in 

on the take-off. I am pleased to say that recently, there appear to 

be few crash landings. 

Our written testimony contains several examples of collaboration. We particularly appreciate the inclusion of State and local 

emergency managers on the National Advisory Council and several 

of the Regional Advisory Councils. We urge FEMA to recognize 

that one size does not fit all by giving more flexible guidance on 

their many grants. 

We urge the new Administration to keep the focus on all hazards, of which terrorism is only one. While terrorism is an incident 

to which we are all vulnerable, it is certainly not the most likely 

disaster to occur. All our communities are vulnerable on a daily 

basis to Mother Nature. 

We hope that the new Administration quickly chooses a highlyqualified Administrator with actual emergency management experience to run FEMA. Strong State and local emergency managers 

are a critical element to the future success of a National Emergency Management System. 

In order to enhance the capacity of this profession, there are a 

number of critical elements that the new Administration should 

embrace and promote. They are: Ensure emergency management 

policies are consistent with the principles of emergency management initiative; return the Emergency Management Institute to the 

forefront of preparing our profession’s future leaders; support individual certification, Certified Emergency Manage (CEM), and program accreditation, the Emergency Management Accreditation Program (EMAT). 

We need FEMA’s assistance in promoting community preparedness. We need to jointly work together in making our citizens survivors instead of victims. Some citizens are not able to help themselves, but the general population is more than capable of doing so. 

A survivor never asks, ‘‘Where is my assistance?’’ Instead, a survivor asks, ‘‘How can I help fix the problems?’’ Survivors act as 

force multipliers; victims become a liability. 

In conclusion, we hope that the new Administration will consider 

the critical elements IAEM has adopted. We believe a strong and 

independent FEMA with clear authority, direct access to the White 

House, and highly-qualified leadership is essential. We urge Congress to insist on full implementation of the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act. We urge continued involvement of 

State and local emergency management in policy discussions. We 

do not want any more crash landings. We stand ready to assist in 

any way we can. Thank you. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. 

9 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Bullock appears in the Appendix on page 50. 

Our fourth and last panelist is Jane Bullock. She was Chief of 

Staff of FEMA when it was led by the legendary James Lee Witt 

and she is now an adjunct professor at GW’s Center for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management. Thank you, and go ahead. 

TESTIMONY OF JANE BULLOCK,1 PRINCIPAL, BULLOCK AND 

HADDOW, LLC, AND FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF, FEDERAL 

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, AND MEMBER OF THE 

ADJUNCT FACULTY, CENTER OF CRISIS, DISASTER, AND 

RISK MANAGEMENT, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY 

Ms. BULLOCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity you have given me today to talk about something that is 

very important to me, to my peers on the panel, to the Congress, 

and most critically to the American people, and that is how we can 

better serve them during times of crisis. 

I believe I bring a unique perspective to this hearing. I had the 

privilege of working as a career civil servant in FEMA for 21 years, 

culminating in my position as Chief of Staff to FEMA Director 

James Lee Witt. In my career at FEMA, I worked in earthquake 

preparedness, radiological emergency preparedness, flood insurance. I was the Director of the Office of Regional Operations and 

the Director of Public Affairs. And as a career civil servant, I 

served on the internal FEMA transition teams for Administration 

transitions in 1988, 1992, and led the transition team in 2000. 

Throughout this time, I worked alongside the most dedicated and 

talented civil servants in the Federal Government, who from 1992 

to 2000 successfully responded to over 300 major disasters, including the 1993 floods, the Northridge Earthquake, Hurricanes Floyd 

and Fran, and the Oklahoma City bombing. 

FEMA is a unique agency in that its entire mission is focused on 

helping American people to prepare for and mitigate the impacts 

of disasters, and when a disaster strikes, to provide support to individuals, families, and communities to effectively respond and recover. However, we always recognize that FEMA cannot achieve its 

mission on its own. Our ability to succeed was always dependent 

upon a working partnership with State and local governments, 

other Federal agencies, NGOs, nonprofits, and the private sector. 

All disasters are local and FEMA has been most effective when 

it has had the authority and resources to coordinate and direct the 

Federal Government’s efforts to support State and local officials before, during, and after a disaster. Unfortunately, I believe the current Administration and the current political leadership at the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA do not understand this 

mission and do not know how best to achieve it. We saw this first 

in Hurricane Katrina and now, 3 years later, after the promise of 

reform and the talk of a FEMA renewal, we are seeing it again in 

the recovery to Hurricane Ike. 

As we look forward to the next 12 months, as you said, Mr. 

Chairman, change will be coming to Washington and to the Federal 

Government. During this period, we could experience any number 

of disasters—a major earthquake in California, which unfortuVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:20 May 28, 2009 Jkt 045991 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45991.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
10 

nately is long overdue, severe storms, a flu outbreak, or a domestic 

terrorism event. 

What can be done in the coming months to ensure that should 

a major event occur, FEMA and the Federal Government will be 

prepared? What should the vision for the future FEMA in a new 

Administration be? 

FEMA needs to be returned to its former status as the world’s 

best emergency management organization. In my written testimony, I lay out long-term goals. Now, I would like to briefly mention those, but focus on short-term activities that will support a 

heightened level of preparedness as we begin. 

To improve our preparedness long-term, we must: Make FEMA 

an independent agency and the Director a member of the President’s cabinet; rebuild FEMA’s partnership with State and local 

emergency management organizations; support risk-based all-hazards preparedness, mitigation, and response; invest in FEMA’s career civil servants and strengthen the role FEMA’s regional staff 

can play as the first line of defense; rebuild the Federal Response 

Plan; invest in hazard mitigation and support community disaster 

resiliency; and embrace the private sector, the NGOs, and the 

CBOs as full partners in our Nation’s emergency management system. 

Obviously, all of this cannot be accomplished in the next few 

months, but there are some practical actions that can be taken 

now. There are three areas I would like to focus on: Rebuilding the 

State and local partnership; improving coordination at the Federal 

level; and taking a thoughtful and careful approach to personnel 

actions during the transition. 

First, I would suggest that the career leadership of each of the 

FEMA regions meet together with their State directors and local 

emergency directors to talk about what can be expected from 

FEMA during this period and how they will work together specifically to respond to a large event. 

As you have heard from the earlier panelists, FEMA has reached 

out to State and local partners, but if these meetings were to occur 

in each region, there would be an ability to look at what capabilities do exist. There are varying capabilities at the State and local 

level. An open and honest dialogue of what States can expect from 

the Federal Government and what FEMA can count on from State 

and local governments will go a long way towards managing the response and managing expectations of our citizens that may be impacted by a large event. 

At the same time, I would strongly encourage our regions to 

make the same effort to reach out to CBOs and NGOs and the private sector. There are many organizations that are now very active 

in response and preparedness as a result of the government failure 

in Hurricane Katrina. We will need their support in a major disaster, but it is important, as with State and locals to understand 

what assets they have and how they can be utilized. 

Second, I would encourage the senior career leadership at FEMA 

to convene meetings with their counterparts in the Federal departments and agencies to make sure that not just the mission assignments are done, but that the relationships exist and that they can 

11 

provide a coordinated and effective Federal response. Relationships 

are what make disasters work. 

Under the new Federal Response Framework, the roles and responsibilities of the Federal partnership have been blurred and 

DHS and FEMA has tried to do it all by assuming more lead roles. 

I think this is a major mistake because DHS and FEMA simply do 

not have the expertise to do it all. The most effective Federal response mechanism evidenced in the 1990s was based on utilizing 

the expertise of the other Federal agencies, and this worked because FEMA provided the overall coordination and because we reimbursed them through the Disaster Relief Fund. 

I think an immediate step would be to meet with the Federal 

partners and establish simple short-term operating agreements as 

to the roles and responsibilities in the event of a large event. To 

be absolutely honest, I believe that in the event of a disaster, we 

will see a more effective Federal response because the senior career 

leadership in FEMA know what needs to be done and know how 

to do it. It will execute without being second guessed, without 

being restricted by indecision, cost, or political philosophy, as we 

have seen happen under the current Administration. 

Third, I would like to focus on personnel issues that are relevant 

to our ability to be prepared, and this is based on experience that 

I have had in going through transitions. I know there is concern 

over the numbers of positions at FEMA that remain unfilled. I 

would like to introduce a note of caution in rushing to fill these positions. In the rush to fill these positions, we are seeing individuals 

being selected who may be qualified on paper, but lack an understanding of what it takes to run a successful emergency management organization. We are seeing individuals hired who are exmilitary or ex-Coast Guard who have good credentials but their disciplines are Federal-centered. Their background and training is 

about calling the shots, being in charge, acting independently. Collaboration and coordination is often foreign to them. But those are 

the essentials for an effective preparedness and response structure. 

In addition, these disciplines often don’t have a lot of experience 

working with State and local governments, don’t recognize the importance of listening to our partners, listening to their ideas, their 

concerns, and their needs. As you know, the Constitution assigns 

public health and safety to the States. The Disaster Relief Act 

makes it clear that the Federal Government is called on when 

State and local capacities are overwhelmed. A strong effective system, national system of emergency management, must be built on 

this partnership. 

During a time of change, another major concern is to ensure that 

career positions are not filled by former political appointees from 

throughout the government who have very limited experience in 

FEMA. During the 2000 transition, all Federal agencies were required to inform Congress when a former political employee was 

chosen to fill a career position. I would urge Congress to request 

the same notification as we proceed through the next months. 

FEMA is a small agency with a very big mission and as such must 

be careful to hire only the best and most qualified. 

Finally, another issue has arisen relative to the FEMA Regional 

Directors. There has been significant discussion of converting the 

12 

Regional Director position to career civil service and DHS and 

FEMA have said that they intend to do so as these positions are 

vacated. I believe this is a major mistake. As a former Director of 

FEMA’s Office of Regional Operations, I have worked closely with 

FEMA’s regions and their staff. The FEMA regional structure has 

always been built around a strong career Deputy Regional Director, 

and a political Regional Director who can be that critical interface 

with the political community of governors, local elected officials, 

and Members of Congress. 

In the 1990s, we found that FEMA’s most effective Regional Directors were those political appointees who had the skills and experience to work in the political world dealing with the political 

issues while the career staff managed and carried out the necessary preparedness and response actions. These Regional Directors developed a level of trust with their career employees that allowed everyone to do their job. 

One final note on personnel in times of anxiety—in times of transition. Transitions are times of anxiety for career civil servants. 

The more the transition process can be open, transparent, and involve career employees, the unions, and the organizations that represent the civil service, the smoother the transition and the inevitable reorganizations will be. I would encourage and hope the Subcommittee, through its oversight responsibilities, could encourage 

the new Administration to endorse such an approach. 

In conclusion, I think it is time to take action to correct the mistakes we have made. During my 21-year career at FEMA, the 

agency was most successful when the President and the Congress 

made it clear that the Federal Government has a critical role in 

supporting State and local governments in disasters. FEMA was 

most successful when the FEMA Director had a strong relationship 

and direct access to the President and worked closely in concert 

with FEMA’s dedicated career employees. 

We have the opportunity to restore FEMA and our Nation’s 

emergency management system to the former status as the best in 

the world and to restore the confidence of the American people that 

their government will be there to help them when the next disaster 

strikes. Thank you very much. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you, and let me just start with you, Mr. 

Bourne, and put you on the hot seat first and ask you some questions. Some of these are follow-ups from some of the things that the 

other witnesses have said today, and obviously people have their 

different perspectives and all that, but I would like to get FEMA’s 

perspective on several items. 

FEMA has been through a series of leadership changes in the 

last 71⁄2 years and some structural changes, but this election and 

this new Administration will be the first time that there really is 

a full-scale change of Administrations for FEMA. I guess the first 

question is, do you feel that FEMA is preparing for that transition, 

and if they are, how are they? 

Mr. BOURNE. FEMA is preparing for it and we are very well prepared, and obviously that is an ongoing process that is going to 

happen for months to come. To give you an idea just in broad outline, with the exception of one position, which will be filled within 

the next 60 days, all the senior executive career positions in FEMA 

13 

are filled. The one that is not yet filled and will be filled in the next 

60 days is the Deputy U.S. Fire Administrator. 

All of the senior positions throughout the agency, GS–15 and 

above, predominately are filled. The vacancies that exist on the 

books right now are from our rapid expansion of converting the 4- 

year corps to career, which are happening now. Those are the cadre 

of on-call reserve, our temporary workers which the Congress has 

allowed us to do over the last fiscal year, this fiscal year, and our 

request for the next fiscal year. 

FEMA has roughly doubled in size. We went from 2,000 full-time 

equivalent personnel to well over 4,000 now. We are at, I believe 

it is 3,600 in our hiring at this point and we continue to have about 

500 in the queue that are going to be hired over the next several 

weeks. Now, that is not a rush. That has been an ongoing effort 

for, quite frankly, more than a year and a half, to build the competency level of the folks in FEMA. 

Our transition planning efforts are underway and have been actually underway since before the beginning of the calendar year 

this year, based on these basic areas: Knowledge transfer; the succession planning that we have done within each of our directorates 

and offices; communications outreach, not only which has begun 

with our employees, but they are actually in the process now of developing 60-, 90-day plans for the immediate days after the election 

takes place and the inauguration happens so that the critical path 

issues are identified, ready to be teed up and addressed; our readiness, which has increased over the last several years. 

We are leading the effort to develop the Federal Interagency Con 

Plan for the period of heightened alert, which is ongoing, being 

managed through our planners in the Disaster Operations Directorate, along with other Federal agencies. We are in the process of 

also making sure that our management and administrative practices are not only fully documented and up to date, but that we are 

providing a guidebook that—essentially how FEMA operates, so 

that whether—whoever comes in the door after January 20, and 

whoever is part of that transition post-election is going to have a 

very in-depth knowledge to draw from. 

Also, that transition binder, which is in the process of being developed now, is not going to be made just available to the new Administration when they are identified, but it is actually going to be 

provided to every single FEMA employee, and the purpose of that 

is it is the first comprehensive mission and function guidebook that 

the agency has had and it is rather what I will call a fairly extensive yet easy to read digest of every program, of what each directorate does, its relationship to the other directorates. 

So the planning process has been well underway and we are at 

this point updating parts to it as opposed to trying to develop it 

while we are in the middle of hurricane season. 

Senator PRYOR. So it sounds like from your response, which was 

a detailed response, you share my concern about the fact that gaps 

sometimes are created during a transition period and it sounds like 

you are doing, at least from your perspective, everything you can 

to make sure those gaps don’t exist, is that right? 

Mr. BOURNE. We are doing a lot. Exactly. We are trying to find 

as many of the gaps, fill as many of those as we can. Where there 

14 

are gaps that cannot be addressed in the time we have remaining, 

we have put together options for remediation that we will pass on 

certainly to the folks that follow us. 

The Administrator is very concerned to make sure that there is 

not a single dropped disaster or a crash landing, as my friend from 

Florida would say, but to try to make sure that it is a seamless 

transition for the agency. The career SES staff in FEMA are intimately involved with this process and it has been a collaborative 

process right from the beginning. 

Senator PRYOR. Great. Let me follow up on one thing you said 

a few minutes ago. You talked about how all but one of your senior 

career positions have been filled. Were those positions filled with 

career people or were they filled with political people that were 

moving into career positions? 

Mr. BOURNE. They have been filled with career folks. We have 

not moved political people into SES slots. There has only been, I 

believe, one political in the whole agency that successfully competed for a GS–14 slot in preparedness. He was a Schedule C, he 

was not a SES. That went through the OPM process for review, so 

it was vetted fully, and I believe that has also been made available 

as per Congressional requirement as part of the notification process. 

Now, we have talked many times about who are the political 

folks in FEMA and how were they hired and what experience they 

have. The Administrator has only hired political leadership in 

FEMA that has extensive emergency management and public safety experience. Our seven regional administrators that are political 

all have more than 20-plus years in this business, Ed Buikema 

being one in Region V, as well as many of the others. The three 

career regional administrators come also with extensive both political and what I will call career experience—Nancy Ward in Region 

IX, which is California, Phil May, who goes back many years in 

FEMA, both as a former Regional Director, also has extensive experience, and John Sarubbi, who came to us out of the Coast Guard 

has extensive emergency experience from his days, as well. 

So there is not just a hiring of a political person for political 

sake. It is actually people that come with experience and we hope 

that would continue regardless of what positions are political in the 

future in FEMA or not. 

Senator PRYOR. All right. I do want to talk a little bit more about 

some of those personnel matters in a minute, but first, let me ask 

about the National Response Framework, which is the document 

that sets out the lines of authority and decisionmaking in a disaster. The document itself is out, but the annexes that support 

State, local, and private sector entities, the so-called partner 

guides, as well as the catastrophic index, have not been completed. 

So my question to you is when will they be completed and is this 

something that you are going to leave to the next Administration 

to clean up? 

Mr. BOURNE. No. Actually, those are well on the way towards 

completion. They have been in the process of being vetted, not only 

by the organizations in the private sector or the State and local 

sector that are part of that, but they are in the process also of 

being finalized so that they can be published prior to the end of 

15 

this calendar year. Those partner guides were designed to provide 

additional support to State and local, private sector, and NGOs, 

and they are being written with those folks not only in mind, but 

also with those folks involved, and that process should be completing and being wrapped up over the next month or so. 

Senator PRYOR. OK, because honestly, in different contexts within FEMA, we have asked for things in the past. This has been a 

frustration on the Committee and the Subcommittee. We have 

asked for things in the past and receive excuses such as, ‘‘Oh, we 

are going to do that next week, next month,’’ whatever, and sometimes it takes entirely too long to get—— 

Mr. BOURNE. It does, and that is something that we have concern 

about, as well. Not to make an excuse for it, but FEMA had over 

275 specific taskings in the Post-Katrina Emergency Management 

Reform Act—— 

Senator PRYOR. Yes. 

Mr. BOURNE [continuing]. That we have had to address, work 

through while trying to also obtain additional staff in order to beef 

up our ability to respond as well as plan. And so it has kind of been 

a bit of a juggling act at times for us, but we have gotten a significant amount of help from our State and local partners and others 

to try to make it successful, and we don’t relish the idea of missing 

deadlines, but we are certainly pressing forward as expeditiously as 

we can. 

Senator PRYOR. All right. Let me change gears on you again here 

and talk about the National Strategy for Pandemic Flu Implementation Plan. It has not clearly addressed the roles of DHS, FEMA, 

versus HHS. It also does not address how FEMA and HHS will 

work together on sheltering a recovery over a long period of time. 

To me, it seems that it should address these two matters. Do you 

think that it should, and what kind of guidance would you like to 

see from FEMA over the long term? 

Mr. BOURNE. That is actually a very good question and an interesting one on several levels. We have been working closely with not 

only HHS, but the Office of Health Affairs in the Department and 

Admiral Crea, who is leading the departmental effort on the pandemic plan with HHS. Certainly, FEMA has got a role to play, not 

necessarily as a primary coordinator of activity, but to support the 

larger Federal response. 

Some of our regional administrators and our Federal Coordinating Officers have already been predesignated for various regional planning efforts and they are intimately involved with that. 

Our Disaster Operations Directorate is also involved with the more 

detailed planing, which is going on now to address the issues that 

you have brought up. 

Certainly in a pandemic, the sheltering issue and the recovering 

issue is one that this country has not faced in about 90 years or 

so, and there was not at that time the ability to move not only people, but also material and support like we have today. The vast 

majority of these issues that are going to be raised in pandemic 

may require sheltering in place and supporting that and we are 

working with HHS to determine what we can bring to the table to 

support State and local efforts to address those problems because 

that is going to be probably the trickiest part of the entire operVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:20 May 28, 2009 Jkt 045991 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45991.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
16 

ation, beyond the fact of getting the Strategic National Stockpile 

deployed and delivered, doing the additional prophylaxis that needs 

to be done to prevent additional folks from getting whatever it is 

the pandemic is being caused by. 

So our folks are actively engaged in that. I don’t have all the details of that planning at my fingertips, but I would be happy to 

share that planning with the Subcommittee. 

Senator PRYOR. Great. I am not going to ask all my questions to 

you, Mr. Bourne, but I do have a few more. I just want to cover 

some of these subjects since this will be the last hearing of the 

Subcommittee for the year and it will be the last one we have before the Presidential race and until we get back in January. 

I want to ask about the National Disaster Housing Strategy. I 

understand that the comment period for the draft strategy was just 

extended to, I think, September 29. How is the comment collection 

process going? In other words, when I hear you have an extension, 

that makes me wonder, are you getting a lot of comments or not 

enough comments? I would like to know how that is going and how 

FEMA plans to incorporate these final comments into the strategy? 

Mr. BOURNE. So far, I believe—and I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me—as of the other day, there were 16 specific 

commentors with over 80 specific comments so far. Many of those 

came from one or two commentors. We have extended it in order 

to provide additional opportunity for folks who have been certainly 

listening to the hearings of the last 2 days to get a better understanding of what their thoughts are. We continue to encourage 

them. We will continue to take comments really after the comment 

period is over anyway. If they are filed with FEMA through the 

docket, we will continue to incorporate those. 

All of the comments will be responded to. All of the comments 

will be addressed within the revised and final strategy. There will 

not be a comment left out of the process. Each commentor will 

learn what the adjudication of their comment was and what the rationale for either accepting it, modifying it, or not accepting it was. 

Senator PRYOR. And when do you think we will see the final 

strategy? 

Mr. BOURNE. Our goal is to get it done before the holidays. 

Senator PRYOR. Before the end of the year? 

Mr. BOURNE. Well before the end of the year. 

Senator PRYOR. And there has also been a National Disaster 

Housing Task Force. Basically, I think, a lot of these decisions have 

really been ceded to the task force. Has that been established yet? 

Is it up and running yet? 

Mr. BOURNE. Well, I do want to correct one misimpression that 

folks may have. The task force is not—the responsibility for the 

other piece is—the annexes which folks have been talking about 

has not been ceded to the task force. That is actually—those annexes are well underway and being drafted by FEMA staff and 

other folks within the Federal interagency, to include the Red 

Cross, HUD, and a number of others. Those annexes, six of which 

are nearing the point where they can begin a review process. The 

seventh of them, which is the final one, is really kind of a conglomeration of issues that we think need to be addressed by future ConVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:20 May 28, 2009 Jkt 045991 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45991.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
17 

gresses and that one won’t be completed until the rest of the annexes have fleshed out their requirements and their needs. 

Senator PRYOR. Is the task force up and running? 

Mr. BOURNE. The task force is up and running. It is being temporarily led by Susan Reinertson, who is our Region X Administrator. 

She has come in to help stand it up while we hire full-time staff 

to support that effort. The Red Cross, HUD—I want to say two or 

three other agencies that are escaping me right now have also not 

only lent support to it, but they have actually provided staff support to help that task force stand up. 

Senator PRYOR. Will the task force have continuity over the next 

year or so through the transition? 

Mr. BOURNE. Yes. As a matter of fact, it is all career people and 

that continuity will continue, and their mission and mandate is to 

not only continue to support the final effort to finish the strategy 

in general, but also to take the strategy and begin to develop ideas 

on better implementation of not only FEMA’s housing role, but to 

work with State and local folks to determine how housing can be 

handled in the future and what new ideas are available within the 

marketplace or what needs to be developed to address unique challenges. 

Senator PRYOR. All right. Let me change gears on you again. 

FEMA, by its nature, always has some matters that are still open. 

One of those would be right now, the Hurricane Katrina recovery 

effort is still ongoing. FEMA is still involved there. Obviously with 

Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, the same thing. I mean, you are still 

very much involved in those matters. They are still open. 

Do you have any specific plan on turning these open cases over 

to the next Administration, or is your hope that they will just continue along as they are doing, most of the career people? How does 

that work? 

Mr. BOURNE. They actually are—most of FEMA’s workforce, 

quite frankly, an overwhelming percentage, somewhere in the 90 to 

99 percent range, are the career folks. They manage the disasters. 

They are the ones populating the Joint Field Offices. They are the 

ones that manage the effort with regards to the temporary or the 

Transitional Regional Offices that are out there in the Gulf. 

Quite frankly, we still have an open office and open projects from 

the Northridge Earthquake in 1994. There are a number of disasters that span many years because some of these projects, quite 

frankly, going on for many years. So that is something that transfers from one Administration to the other routinely throughout the 

course of FEMA’s history and we don’t see any change in that 

transfer happening that would upset the progress being made. 

Senator PRYOR. Well, let me just ask for a little point of clarification. I have a note here that says FEMA has the highest percentage of political appointments among operational DHS components. 

Thirty-four percent of FEMA executives are non-career appointees. 

Are you saying the overall workforce is 90 percent—— 

Mr. BOURNE. I don’t know the exact percentage, but out of 4,000 

authorized FTE, there are only 16 non-career SES appointments. 

There are only four or five Schedule C appointments. And there are 

five Senate-confirmed positions. 

18 

Senator PRYOR. So you are saying you only have 25 or 30 political—— 

Mr. BOURNE. That is correct. 

Senator PRYOR [continuing]. Appointees and—— 

Mr. BOURNE. Yes, and as a matter of fact, there are fewer Senate-confirmed positions in FEMA now than there were back in the 

1990s or the 1980s. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. Let me again change gears here for a moment. FEMA has initiated a Catastrophic Disaster Response Planning Initiative, and could you give us a little more detail about the 

initiative and is it adequate and what lessons have you learned 

from it that you think are important to carry forward for the next 

year or two? 

Mr. BOURNE. Well, there are actually two parts to the catastrophic planning we are doing. One, we would support a Congressprovided catastrophic planning grants to, I believe, five major 

urban areas in the country to address catastrophic events in those 

major urban areas. But we have also been doing catastrophic planning on very specific disasters, South Florida specifically, Lake 

Okeechobee, and the planning in Miami-Dade and that region. In 

California, the Sacramento area with regards to the levees that 

surround the Sacramento Valley and what would happen if an 

earthquake undermined those levees and what would happen with 

salt water seepage into that region. We are also looking at the New 

Madrid Earthquake Seismic Zone. 

All of these efforts have been underway for a couple of years now 

and they are essentially bottom-up planning efforts. They are a 

combination of local officials, geological folks, depending on the 

type of hazard being faced, Army Corps of Engineers and ourself 

and our regions are very much involved in that planning process 

and we expect those to continue, not only into the next year, but 

into the next several years. 

Senator PRYOR. Yes. The New Madrid Fault issue is important 

to us in our State because it is just immediately to the north of us 

and really runs down through Arkansas, the Eastern part of the 

State—the extreme Northeast part of the State. It is one of those 

areas, when they talk about earthquakes, that is often overlooked. 

People think about the West Coast, but geologists tell us that a 

New Madrid earthquake could be much worse than what you see 

on the West Coast, given the nature of the soil and the various conditions. So I am glad to know that planning is moving forward. 

Is that something that has a target date where you are trying 

to get all the planning complete and you are going to have that 

wrapped up by a certain point, or is that just an open-ended—— 

Mr. BOURNE. It is somewhat open-ended because obviously as 

science provides us with more tools and understanding and as the 

built environment changes within those communities—New Madrid 

earthquake, for example, is a process that started a couple of years 

ago and I believe the planning process is built out through the next 

two fiscal years, at least, before there is what we will call—I don’t 

want to say a hard stop, but a soft stop at that point to determine 

that all the planning from bottom up has been completed. 

There are a number of exercises that are planned over the next 

couple of years to address various aspects of the plan. So it is kind 

19 

of an ongoing effort, but the bulk of the majority of the planning 

will be done over the next year or two. 

Senator PRYOR. I think that is great. Let me also ask about how 

FEMA is doing in finding ways to measure progress on preparedness. I know this has been a challenge, where you, I guess you can 

call them metrics. You are really looking for ways to measure what 

you are doing and how prepared you actually are. As I understand 

it, there is currently no inventory of Federal capabilities even 

though one is required in the Hurricane Katrina law that we 

passed. And so if there is not a good inventory of Federal capabilities, it is kind of hard for us to figure out how to distribute grant 

monies and which local entities should get what. Do you have any 

comments on that, or is there any progress on that? 

Mr. BOURNE. There is. Part of it is what is available within the 

Federal Government to support capabilities in the field, to support 

State and local. There actually is an ongoing development and an 

ongoing inventory of Federal assets that are available to FEMA. 

Our Disaster Operations Directorate has begun that process. It is 

being assisted by the National Preparedness Directorate. 

Senator PRYOR. When will that be completed, do you know? 

Mr. BOURNE. It is constantly evolving and being added to. There 

is already a base amount that is available to us and we do it 

through what is called the ESFLG, which is the Emergency Service 

Function Leadership Group, which is made up of all the Federal 

agencies that support FEMA in disasters. They have been working 

that project for a number of years. 

What we don’t have yet is what we will call the assessment of 

State and local capabilities which is under development in two 

ways. One, through the Federal preparedness reporting that the 

National Preparedness Directorate has been working with the 

States and locals to develop. The idea is what questions should we 

be asking State and locals about their capabilities? 

A Target Capabilities List, which already exists, is going through 

a bit of a transformation because one of the challenges of the original TCL project was it was very voluminous, very difficult for State 

and locals and first responders to understand what their capability 

should be, and the TCL Redevelopment Project that has been going 

on for the last 7 months or so is looking at each TCL. We have 

been going out within the regions, bringing together stakeholders 

of hazardous materials experts, State emergency managers, local 

emergency managers, experts in the field to change the way the 

TCLs are presented, understand what they really mean so State 

and locals can make decisions about what capability they wish to 

build. When that project is completed, there will be a better way 

to inventory what is required. 

Second, we are taking a look through what is called the Cost of 

Capabilities Project in our grant shop. Grants is taking a look at 

what have we spent money on going back as far as we possibly can, 

given the records of early grants up to the grants now, and trying 

to make a determination as to what has been accomplished so far 

using the eight preparedness elements in the National Preparedness Goal as kind of a benchmark. And the idea is to say, what 

have we spent money on? What capabilities have potentially been 

20 

built with that spending? And what capabilities remain to be realized because not all of the money may have been spent yet? 

And that effort is already underway. We expect some preliminary 

results in the next 6 months, and then it will become an ongoing 

part of the process. Grants feed a portion of preparedness. Training 

feeds a portion of preparedness, exercises, etc., and the National 

Preparedness Directorate is pulling together that umbrella that 

pulls all those things in so we will have a much better management picture. 

Senator PRYOR. Well, it turns out we have a couple of experts on 

State and local matters here, so let me ask them, Ms. Dragani and 

Mr. Gispert. On the State and local level, is it difficult to assess 

what your capabilities are and how is it working with FEMA? Is 

that being coordinated? 

Mr. GISPERT. Ladies first. 

Ms. DRAGANI. Thank you, Mr. Gispert. On a State level, it has 

proved challenging to assess our capabilities because we are not 

sure what capabilities yet we need to build. So I think as the Target Capabilities List becomes more fleshed out, easier to understand and easier to translate, with clearer guidance and clearer 

risk analysis, then it is easier for States to identify what capabilities they need. 

Senator PRYOR. And are you waiting on FEMA for that? 

Ms. DRAGANI. No, we are not waiting on FEMA for that. I think 

that there is a point where it is the responsibility of State and local 

government to move forward, because ultimately, we are responsible for our citizens. So I think most States and governments are 

moving forward. They are analyzing their risk. They are developing 

the capabilities that they think they need based on the risks they 

know they have. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. 

Mr. GISPERT. Mr. Chairman, it is not that we have not assessed 

ourselves. We have assessed ourselves to death. Since the implementation of the Homeland Security Grant Program, every year, 

the focus has changed and we have always shifted off counting different widgets for different budget years. 

Senator PRYOR. Give us an example of that. 

Mr. GISPERT. Originally, when the Homeland Security Grant Program came out, it was absolutely forbidden to buy anything that 

could be used for anything other than a response to a terrorism 

event. We kept hammering back, all hazards. Why can’t we buy a 

device that can be used in a hurricane as well as a terrorism 

event? Eventually, DHS and FEMA relented and we have been 

able to do that the last couple of years. 

We went under what was called the National Plan Review, sir, 

after almost an 8-year Administration, we were suffering being assessed by idiots. I have been in this business 28 years. These people had no clue what we did at the local level and they came down 

and said, ‘‘Thou shalt do it this way,’’ and we said, ‘‘No, we won’t. 

We have spent the last 30 years planning from here to here to 

here.’’ The response was, ‘‘No, you will do it.’’ 

I will have to tell you, mostly it was our friends in the Department of Defense who wanted to implement a defense planning 

strategy on the local levels. We are civilians. We at the local level 

21 

have command and control of nothing. We coordinate and cooperate. We ask people to do things. We don’t command them to do it. 

And you cannot plan a pure structured response to a scenario 

under the command and control structure if you don’t have that 

ability to command people. 

So what we do at the local level is if we need dump trucks, we 

ask who has them? Are you willing to give them? Yes? OK, you are 

in the plan. And we go around and we look for whatever needs to 

be done, and we have done that for years and years and years. 

I will say in defense of the current FEMA Administration, that 

reaching out to locals improved after they initially issued the National Response Framework (NRF). We raised hell about the NRF 

because it was totally different from what we have ever had. They 

withdrew it. They asked for our comments, and they came out with 

a document that we all could live with. They have been reaching 

out to us. But sir, that is 1 year in an 8-year Administration. 

What we are saying in our comments here is not that they are 

bad people now, but the question is what happens after January 

20th? Do we continue this collaboration or do we go back to the 

Federal ‘‘Thou shalt do this’’? We tell you that we are at the local 

level. We are where the rubber meets the road. We have to have 

a partner. We don’t need a commander, we need a partner. And 

when you have certain assets at the Federal level that we don’t 

have at the local level and we ask for them and we need them, we 

need them now. 

So once again, what we are hoping is that the outreach that the 

FEMA people have done over this last year will continue in the 

new Administration, and I think we will get there. And some of 

those loose-ended projects, Congress asked for will get completed. 

In their defense, they got pulled 30 different ways. You gave them, 

you will do a National Housing Strategy and do it in 30 days or 

whatever it is. The next thing you know, they are doing this, and 

they can only do one thing at a time. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. 

Mr. GISPERT. So those are my comments, sir. I am sorry. 

Senator PRYOR. No, that is good. You both have said it is sometimes difficult to assess your capacities to do certain things. I know 

that a lot of people who have looked at this say that in spite of us 

spending $4 billion with HHS that has gone to State and local hospitals for preparedness, many folks believe that our hospital system and emergency management community is just unable to handle a prolonged bioterrorism or flu-type epidemic, some sort of pandemic. In your experience in your local and State areas, do you feel 

like your hospitals are capable of handling a long-term challenge 

like that? 

Mr. GISPERT. Define long, please. How long are you talking 

about, 30 days? Sixty days? 

Senator PRYOR. Well, or longer, like a flu pandemic. 

Mr. GISPERT. The answer is, no, we cannot do it. 

Senator PRYOR. Yes. 

Mr. GISPERT. In Florida, our hospital capacities are at 95-plus 

percent all the time. That means they don’t have very many spare 

beds. So when we have a catastrophe, they start putting people in 

the hallways and those kind of things. 

22 

They couldn’t do it for a long period of time. 

Senator PRYOR. Do you know if your hospitals have collaboration 

agreements with other hospitals in the region—— 

Mr. GISPERT. Yes, sir. 

Senator PRYOR [continuing]. And in the State and have they 

worked on those contingency plans? 

Mr. GISPERT. Yes, they have. The hospitals are different because 

that is where the private for-profit scenario comes in and sometimes government has very little decree over a private for-profit 

hospital. But they have collectively planned with us at the community level. They know that they are going to be a part of the emergency response. I have 14 active hospitals in my community and 

we plan on a yearly basis and have what we call a mass casualty 

drill—— 

Senator PRYOR. Right. 

Mr. GISPERT [continuing]. Which is at least 200 patients and 

what have you. It has always been the agreement between local, 

State, and Federal Government that the locals hold the fort until 

the cavalry comes. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. 

Mr. GISPERT. Now, you can define that as 3 days, 4 days, but we 

can’t go extended periods of time. And then the State comes in with 

the resources from the other surrounding counties, and when they 

get exceeded, here comes the Federal Government. That is the theory behind all this. So the locals are only supposed to hold the fort 

for a short period of time while the cavalry is mustering and coming to our help. 

Senator PRYOR. Ms. Dragani, did you have any comments on 

that? 

Ms. DRAGANI. I do. I think that hospitals don’t have the capacity 

to handle mass casualties on any broad scale. However, building 

the system with public health, with acute care centers that can 

take those non-critical patients and provide them with the resources, the IVs and the fluids and those types of non-critical care 

support will free up hospitals to continue to provide the critical 

care. 

But I would also say, if I may, Senator, you commented early on 

about pandemic. There is no other organization, I would submit, in 

the Nation that is more capable or qualified to pull together a pandemic response than the emergency management community because we are collaborators. It is about sheltering or providing food, 

caring for people, pulling together information and intelligence. It 

may not be a typical disaster, but it absolutely will be a crippling 

disaster, and I think the emergency management community, 

whether it is State, local, or Federal, is the right organization to 

pull that response together. 

Senator PRYOR. OK, great. Ms. Bullock, you mentioned something in your statement about, as I understand it, you think it is 

important to have political appointees out in these regional offices. 

Could you elaborate on that? As I understand what you said, it is 

because the political appointees do well in dealing with local political people. Is that what you said? 

Ms. BULLOCK. We all know that disasters are political with a 

small ‘‘p’’ and it becomes an important issue for a governor, for a 

23 

local elected official, for Members of Congress when they are back 

in their districts to be able to talk about some of the political issues 

with an equivalent, to be able to talk about some of the political 

issues with someone who can get a connection back to the political 

head of FEMA. 

The career staff often get intimidated in terms of dealing—and 

this is what we saw throughout the 1980s and 1990s—often get intimidated in those circumstances and also often don’t think about 

the politics of disasters. And the structure—and we had a lot of 

that—back in the 1980s when I was running the Office of Regional 

Operations, there was a lot of discussion about making the Regional Directors career. In some regions, we had to depend on career deputies to fill in. But it is very clearly important that when 

we look at how FEMA delivers a response, we use the career people 

to do what they do best, but it is very important that there is a 

political entity in that regional office. 

Senator PRYOR. So you think it would be a mistake for FEMA to 

fill all those positions with career people? 

Ms. BULLOCK. I absolutely do, and I think it is a mistake that 

they have already filled three of them. 

Senator PRYOR. Well, let me ask Mr. Bourne from FEMA, because you mentioned this in some of the early questionings and 

maybe even your opening statement, about these positions, these 

regional offices, and I think you said there are now three career 

civil service people in those, what, out of nine—— 

Mr. BOURNE. Out of ten. 

Senator PRYOR. Out of ten positions? Let me hear your thoughts 

on why you think it is important that we put career people there. 

Mr. BOURNE. Well, one, kind of an overarching point, being a political person within FEMA should not necessarily equal to incompetence, which some people like to believe that is the case. It may 

have been in the past, but the idea is that folks with political acumen can exist both in a political job as well as a career job. We 

have a long history in FEMA that goes back throughout its entire 

history of the former regional directors, now regional administrators, the political slots being vacant for extended periods of time 

where the deputy regional directors, regional administrators, were 

essentially filling both roles for 18 months, a year, 2 years at a clip. 

One of the challenges that Administrator Paulison had to face 

when he first got the job was not only making sure that the positions were filled, whether they be political or otherwise, and at the 

time they were all political positions, but also to make sure that 

they were filled with people who understood the business of emergency management and emergency response, and that is why he 

was able to actually pick and hire these folks without any kind of 

interference or what I will call the political side of the equation 

overly influencing the selection of the candidate who ultimately 

was in the job. 

Now, there was a reason that we picked those three regions to 

be the ones that are career. One, they are regions that have had 

vacancies in the political leadership before for extended periods. 

Two, they are three of the busiest regions of all the FEMA regions, and quite frankly, we filled them with executives who not 

only understand how to do emergency management and collaboraVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:20 May 28, 2009 Jkt 045991 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\45991.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
24 

tion, but they also have a background that allows them to understand the politics of working with a State and local government. 

Their connection is to governors, to chiefs of staff, to the Emergency Management Directors in those States, and to all of those 

folks, and we have encouraged all of our regional administrators, 

whether they are career or political, to make those connections and 

to build those relationships regardless of who is sitting on the other 

side of the phone or the table. 

So when we talk about, should they all be career, we have never 

said they should all be career. We don’t know whether or not they 

should all be career. We have thought about how many should be 

or shouldn’t be and we have wrestled with this, as well. And that 

is why there has been no movement beyond the three that were 

chosen. Nancy Ward has an extensive background that I think anyone at this table would recognize, as does Phil May and others. So 

I think it is a question of if I could convert a political today, there 

are a number of current regional administrators who are political 

that are far more capable than many of staying on in those roles, 

but that is not what we are doing. We believe the new Administration has to have an opportunity to weigh in on that. 

Senator PRYOR. All right. If there are vacancies in these remaining seven positions between now and January 20, which is 4 

months from now, is FEMA’s plan to fill those with career people 

or just leave those vacant? 

Mr. BOURNE. No, they will remain vacant and they will be—the 

deputy administrators within those regions that may become vacant will take over, as they are trained to do and designed to do, 

to act as the interim until the new Administration determines how 

it wishes to fill those positions. 

Senator PRYOR. Ms. Bullock, did you have any comment? 

Ms. BULLOCK. Mr. Chairman, yes, if I could make a comment. 

One thing that I failed to mention was the FEMA regional directors are unique in that when we have large disasters and we have 

multiple disasters, they are basically the President’s representative 

at that disaster. When the Director of FEMA can’t be at 22 different States, the regional director represents the President and it 

is very important that the regional director and the FEMA Director 

have the confidence of the President. 

And as I said before, why we do this is so the deputy regional 

director, the career people, can count on running that disaster, 

doing the nuts and bolts that need to be done day to day on that 

disaster, and the political regional director can be looking out for 

the best interests of the citizens, be looking out to make sure that 

the President and the Director of FEMA’s desires are being taken 

care of. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. Let me ask this of our three non-FEMA witnesses because I know what FEMA is going to say on this. There 

has been a little bit of a controversy in the Subcommittee for the 

last, 4 or 5 years about whether FEMA should remain part of 

Homeland Security or be a separate entity like it was under the 

previous Administration. A couple of you have already voiced your 

concerns and I would like to hear just a little bit more on where 

each of the three of you are on how you think FEMA should be 

structured in the next Administration. 

25 

So Ms. Dragani, let me start with you. I don’t think you mentioned it in your statement. If you did, I missed it, but I know the 

other two did. Go ahead. 

Ms. DRAGANI. All right. I did not, Mr. Chairman, mention it in 

my statement. It is at this point more important to the National 

Emergency Management Association and our members that wherever FEMA is, in or out of DHS, the FEMA Administrator has direct access to the President and the organization is adequately 

resourced, trained, prepared, and ready to respond to our needs. So 

at this point, we don’t have a formal position, in or out. 

Senator PRYOR. Do you have a personal view? 

Ms. DRAGANI. I would like to go back and think about it a little 

longer. It is a position that—it is a decision that obviously will 

have extraordinary impacts on both my profession and the Nation 

as a whole. 

Senator PRYOR. Mr. Gispert, you mentioned in your testimony 

that your organization is for breaking FEMA away from Homeland 

Security. Could you elaborate on that a little bit more? 

Mr. GISPERT. Once again, I represent local emergency managers 

where the rubber meets the road. A large majority of our members 

would prefer a stand-alone FEMA. It comes from a long history 

that when we were originally taught emergency management, we 

were taught that emergency management performs best when the 

emergency manager reports directly to the CEO, whatever you may 

call that CEO. You may call him the president, you may call him 

the chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, you may call 

him the mayor. You do not need interloping people in between that 

person and the CEO. 

Regardless of the personalities involved, if somebody reported to 

me when the sun was shining, I would want to be involved when 

the proverbial hits the fan. It is kind of hard to back away and say, 

you report to me on a daily basis, but when all hell is breaking 

loose, you report to the President. 

So we think for a most efficient form—it has its problems, also, 

but for the most efficient mechanisms of delivering the programs 

of FEMA, FEMA needs to stand alone. It needs to report directly 

to the President, however that is couched, whether it is a cabinet 

level or however. It needs to be a stand-alone agency. FEMA does 

not need anybody standing between them and the President. 

Senator PRYOR. Ms. Bullock, when you were at FEMA, you were 

there for 21 years? 

Ms. BULLOCK. Twenty-one years, yes. 

Senator PRYOR. And so you saw a lot of different directors there 

and a lot of changes in that agency over time, both a lot of personalities involved but also administration philosophy impacting 

FEMA. Give us your thoughts on whether FEMA should be taken 

out of Homeland Security. 

Ms. BULLOCK. Well, there is no issue that I feel more passionate 

about. The mission of FEMA, to a degree, is inconsistent with the 

mission of the Department of Homeland Security. The Department 

of Homeland Security prevents accidents from the skies. It prevents immigration over the borders. The mission of FEMA is to 

protect our people and to work with them to prepare and respond 

and mitigate disasters. 

26 

The necessity for the Director of FEMA to represent the President during a disaster is unquestionable. When we had disasters 

during the Clinton Administration and James Lee was the Director, every single other Federal agency knew that if James Lee 

needed something, he could get on the phone and the Secretary of 

the Army would pick up the phone—excuse me, the Secretary of 

Defense, DOD, would pick up the phone and say, ‘‘James Lee, if 

you need it, we will get it there.’’ 

We saw none of that happening in Hurricane Katrina because 

the head of FEMA didn’t have the connections and relationships 

with their equivalents in the cabinet, and Secretary Chertoff was 

busy with other things. What would have happened if during Hurricane Ike we had a major terrorism event? Where would Secretary 

Chertoff have been? The Director of FEMA would have been handling Hurricane Ike, but then when the consequences of that terrorism event were realized, after it became not the crime scene, 

FEMA would be there. 

I cannot explain how strongly I feel that FEMA being moved into 

DHS saw a diminishing of its resources. It saw a diminishing of an 

incredible career staff. And it saw a diminishing of its ability to 

carry out what the President needs to have carried out during a 

disaster. 

Senator PRYOR. Before the Clinton Administration, was FEMA a 

separate stand-alone agency? 

Ms. BULLOCK. FEMA has always been a separate stand-alone 

agency. It was not until the Clinton Administration, however, that 

the Director of FEMA—— 

Senator PRYOR. Became cabinet—— 

Ms. BULLOCK [continuing]. Became a member of the cabinet. The 

agency is not cabinet level and I would not be recommending that. 

But it is very important for it to be stand-alone. 

Senator PRYOR. You do not recommend it be cabinet level? 

Ms. BULLOCK. Not at this point. I think that would have to be 

more carefully studied. But I do believe the Director of FEMA must 

be a member of the cabinet, similar to how the SBA is not cabinet 

level, but the SBA Director is a member of the cabinet. 

Senator PRYOR. And also, is it fair to say—I am not trying to put 

words in your mouth—is it fair to say that, given your 21 years at 

FEMA, the best model that you saw was the Clinton Administration model for FEMA? 

Ms. BULLOCK. Absolutely, and the reason it was the best model 

was, we had a director who knew the President and could count on 

his support. We had a President who understood that during time 

of need, the American public expected their government to be there 

and we were there. And we had people in the director’s office who 

listened to the career people, who understood what needed to be 

done. 

We were extremely lucky in the fact that James Lee Witt was 

one of the State Emergency Managers. Prior to James Lee, FEMA 

had a series of directors who had limited disaster experience and 

look what happened. We had Hurricane Hugo. We had the Loma 

Prieta Earthquake. We had Hurricane Iniki, and then finally Hurricane Andrew, where the agency was going to actually be abolished. There was a bill in Congress abolishing it. It wasn’t until we 

27 

had an Administration who really understood that disaster response is a fundamental chore for government and it has to be 

done in collaboration with State and local governments. 

My concern is DHS is taking a top-down approach. I am very 

happy to hear in the last year that they have been collaborating 

with State and locals, but if you look at what has happened in 

DHS, it is top-down. They are telling State and local governments 

what to do. They are telling the private sector what you can or 

can’t do as part of a response. That is not how disaster responses 

work well. And all you have to do is look at the successful track 

record we had in the 1990s. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. 

We have a successful model. 

Senator PRYOR. And Mr. Bourne, am I correct in assuming that 

your official position is that it stays where it is? 

Mr. BOURNE. That is the position of the agency and the Administration and certainly the Department, and it is the position of the 

administrator. I have been personally there when he has gotten 

calls directly from the President at 6:30 in the morning. He has absolute access to the President. That has not been an issue in the 

last 21⁄2 years. He is the one that travels with the President to disasters. He is the one that briefs the President, as well, and the Department has been very supportive during the time that Administrator Paulison has been in charge in being fully supportive. We 

have been able to get resources and assets from other departmental 

components that we might not have had access to immediately otherwise. And so there is a tremendous synergy that can be built 

there, other issues aside. 

So there is an ongoing effort, and you will notice in Hurricanes 

Gustav, Ike, and Hanna, the floods in the Midwest, that Secretary 

Chertoff was very supportive, was engaged, but the Administrator 

of FEMA was running those disasters. 

Senator PRYOR. I must say, I am pleased with this Administrator 

of FEMA. 

Mr. Gispert, let me follow up on something that I asked Mr. 

Bourne early on in his questioning and that is on the National Response Framework. This is the document I mentioned before that 

the annexes that have the State, local, and private sector information is not complete and the catastrophic annex is not complete, either. Are you familiar with that document and—— 

Mr. GISPERT. I am familiar with the National Response Framework, yes, sir. 

Senator PRYOR. And has it been helpful for you, or does it—— 

Mr. GISPERT. To be honest with you, no. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. And why not? 

Mr. GISPERT. Because we looked upon the NRF as the way the 

Federal people work with each other. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. 

Mr. GISPERT. We have had a long, comprehensive Community 

Planning Guide 101 which we have used as our method of planning 

and interacting, and so we looked at the NRF as the Federal way 

of getting their act together—who is going to provide what. So we 

didn’t look at it very critically from a local level and we have not 

started those local and State annexes yet, that I am aware of. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. 

28 

Mr. GISPERT. That is a couple of the annexes that haven’t started. So once again, the reason that we pitched a fit, because we 

thought—and this is what we were able to clarify—we thought that 

the Federal Government was going to dictate to the State and 

locals a drastic change in methodology of emergency planning and 

response at the local level. They have since then backed off and 

said, ‘‘No, you guys continue to plan the way you do; we just need 

to interact with one another.’’ That is perfectly reasonable. At one 

time, we truly did think they were going to mandate an entire 

change in the way we do emergency planning and that would be 

catastrophic in itself, sir. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. Ms. Dragani, did you have any comment 

on the National Response Framework? 

Ms. DRAGANI. I am very familiar with the framework. Until there 

is more meat on the framework via the annexes, I think that it is 

very theoretical and squishy in nature. That was probably the 

value in the Federal Response Plan. It was very specific. We knew 

at the State and local level what kind of Federal resources were 

coming from what agencies and that is the kind of detail that I 

think has yet to be finalized in the National Response Framework 

through those annexes. 

Senator PRYOR. All right. Ms. Dragani, you mentioned in your 

opening statement that all hazards is the way to go and that you 

have to find the balance between the natural disasters and the 

manmade disasters or the terrorism-type disasters. In your view, 

have we as a Nation, starting with FEMA, and at the local level, 

too, State and local level, have we found that balance? 

Ms. DRAGANI. No. I think that we are closer to that balance. 

Hurricane Katrina forced the Nation to recognize that Mother Nature can be the worst terrorist of all, so the pendulum has begun 

swinging back. I still see, as I review guidance for grants, as I review guidance for plans, an overwhelming focus on terrorism 

versus natural disasters, and I think that by separating terrorism 

out as a single specific event, it is not an all-hazards focus. An allhazards focus recognizes that terrorism, hurricanes, pandemic, satellites falling from the sky, massive power outages are all threats 

that we may face and we need to base those threats on our situation, our jurisdiction, our geology, and our risk. 

Senator PRYOR. Mr. Gispert, do you have any comments on have 

we found the balance yet? 

Mr. GISPERT. No, sir. Originally, DHS did not even know the 

word ‘‘all-hazards.’’ In the last year-and-a-half, they at least are 

speaking the word all-hazards. I have not seen a real substantial 

swing to the all-hazards. All-hazards is very simple. Eighty-five 

percent of the time, a cop is a cop, a fireman is a fireman, a public 

works is a public works. You don’t need to keep changing what 

they do. They do the same thing regardless of the incident. 

Now, terrorism does have some specific unique things, like hazardous gas and those kind of things. But basically speaking, 85 

percent of the response to a terrorism event is the same as the response to a tornado, or to a hurricane, and that is what we kept 

telling them. Eighty-five percent of it is the same. Why are you 

swinging over and worrying about the little 15 percent of the 100 

percent of the time? 

29 

They now at least understand that we are not going to give up 

on all-hazards at the local and State level, so if they don’t want to 

use it at the Federal level, they are going to at least understand 

what we are talking about, because I can never, ever go back and 

tell the 1.2 million people in Hillsborough County, Florida, that I 

am most worried about a terrorism event when every summer we 

have a good chance that Mother Nature will visit us with a catastrophic hurricane. My citizens want to know, why aren’t you planning for the hurricane, because that is going to happen. Terrorism 

may or may not, but hurricanes are. So we need to take that into 

consideration. 

Every one of our communities throughout the country has their 

own specific problems that occur to them. They need to focus on 

them. Now, once they are comfortable with that, maybe they can 

think of other things. But until that time, you need to focus in on 

what your hazards are—you do a vulnerability assessment of your 

community, you rack and stack your hazards, and you start at the 

top and you work down. 

Senator PRYOR. I want to thank all of you for being here today. 

I know some of my colleagues may have some questions, so we will 

leave the record open for 7 days or so. It is possible that the Subcommittee staff will follow up and try to get some answers to written questions because some of my colleagues may have those. 

But I really do want to thank you for being here and most especially thank you for doing what you do because it is very important 

for the homeland security of this country that we have folks like 

you out there doing everything that you do. 

So thanks again, and this hearing is adjourned. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 4:06 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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