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37–917 PDF 2007

READINESS IN THE POST-KATRINA 

AND POST-9/11 WORLD: AN EXAMINATION OF THE NEW NATIONAL 

RESPONSE FRAMEWORK 

(110–68) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS, AND 

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

SEPTEMBER 11, 2007 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

( 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, Vice 

Chair 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

JULIA CARSON, Indiana 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

NICK LAMPSON, Texas 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

VACANCY 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS, AND EMERGENCY

MANAGEMENT

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of Columbia, Chairwoman 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania, 

Vice Chair 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota 

(Ex Officio) 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

(Ex Officio) 

(III) 

(V) 

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... vi 

TESTIMONY 

Bohlmann, Robert C., Chairman, U.S. Government Affairs Committee, International Association of Emergency Managers and Director, York County, 

Maine Emergency Management Agency ............................................................ 26 

Manning, Tim, Chairman, Response and Recovery Committee, National 

Emergency Management Association and Director, New Mexico Department 

of Homeland Security and Emergency Management ........................................ 26 

Paulison, R. David, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency, 

Department of Homeland Security ..................................................................... 7 

Rufe, Jr., Roger T., Director, Office of Operations Coordination, Department 

of Homeland Security .......................................................................................... 7 

Stockton, Dr. Paul, Senior Research Scholar, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University ........................................................ 31 

Waugh, Jr., Dr. William, Professor, Department of Public Administration 

& Urban Studies, Georgia State University ...................................................... 31 

PREPARED STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY A MEMBER OF CONGRESS 

Altmire, Hon. Jason, of Pennsylvania .................................................................... 48 

Cohen, Hon. Steve, of Tennessee ............................................................................ 49 

Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota ................................................................. 50 

Shuster, Hon. Bill, of Pennsylvania ....................................................................... 53 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Bohlmann, Robert C. ............................................................................................... 58 

Manning, Tim ........................................................................................................... 63 

Paulison, R. David ................................................................................................... 69 

Rufe, Roger ............................................................................................................... 104 

Stockton, Paul N. ..................................................................................................... 109 

Waugh Jr., William L. ............................................................................................. 117 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Paulison, R. David, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency, 

Department of Homeland Security, responses to questions from the Subcommittee .............................................................................................................. 75 

ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD 

James Lee Witt Associates, James Lee Witt, CEO, written statement .............. 125 

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37917.002
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37917.003
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37917.004
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37917.005
(1) 

READINESS IN THE POST-KATRINA AND 

POST-9/11 WORLD: AN EVALUATION OF THE 

NEW NATIONAL RESPONSE FRAMEWORK 

Tuesday, September 11, 2007 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC

BUILDINGS, AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:10 a.m., in Room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee] Presiding. 

Ms. NORTON. Good morning, and welcome to today’s hearing. We 

are pleased to welcome our Federal guests and the panel of experts, and I look forward to their testimony on the National Response Framework, the NRF. We are holding the first hearing on 

the NRF on the anniversary of 9/11 because our Committee holds 

primary jurisdiction over the Federal Emergency Management 

Agency, or FEMA, the primary agency implemented in the most serious terrorist and natural disaster events in U.S. history, 2 years 

after Hurricane Katrina and 6 years after the 9/11 attack on the 

United States. 

After months of delay, we gave FEMA and the Department of 

Homeland Security, or DHS, a deadline of September 5th to supply 

the National Response Framework. We thank the officials for meeting this deadline and for giving the Subcommittee the time to analyze the NRF. They have agreed that, on this 9/11 anniversary, the 

American people must be assured in the midst of, yet, another hurricane season and the administration’s own warning about a reorganized and a strengthened al Qaeda that the country is ready for 

a catastrophic attack of any kind. 

To address issues of accountability that were on stark display 

during the administration’s response to Katrina, the last Congress 

passed the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 

2006, which prescribed several directives that Congress felt were 

essential to prepare the Nation for any new disasters, whether a 

natural event or a terrorist attack. The Post-Katrina Act requires 

the Administrator of FEMA to ensure that the National Response 

Plan provides for a clear chain of command that is consistent with 

the role of the Administrator as the principal emergency management advisor to the President of the United States. Perhaps most 

important, the new Act requires FEMA to coordinate with State 

2 

and local officials when developing the National Response Framework. 

To ensure that these mandates were met and that the Subcommittee could objectively evaluate the administration’s submission, the Subcommittee sent prehearing questions to our expert 

witnesses to get their assessment of the draft plan. They were 

asked, one, ′′Do you believe the draft National Response Framework reflects the role and responsibility of the FEMA administrator 

as required by law?′′ two, ′′Do you believe the President will receive 

the professional advice he needs during a catastrophic disaster?′′ 

three, ′′The law requires that FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security coordinate and confer with State and local emergency 

managers in developing the National Response Framework. In your 

opinion, did FEMA and DHS comply with the law in this regard?′′ 

The answers we received were candid and, I must say, troubling. 

One of today’s witnesses will testify, ′′The draft framework overlooks the concerns that help shape the legislation Congress enacted 

and would put the Nation at risk to some of the same systemic failures that hobbled the Federal response to Katrina.′′ 

According to the testimony of another of today’s experts, the National Response Framework, ′′ignores the role of the counties and 

parishes in disaster response and early recovery, which, in many 

States, is very significant.′′ 

Such criticism of missing-on-the-ground involvement from first 

responders, who alone are familiar with local conditions and who 

must implement any plan go to the heart of a response to disasters 

and would amount to noncompliance with requirements of cooperation and coordinations set forth in the Post Katrina Act. Remembering the plain and painful confusions between the roles of FEMA 

and the Department of Homeland Security during Katrina, we are 

left concerned that, as another witness notes, and I am quoting 

him, ′′it is not clear in the NRF who will be in charge of coordinating the Federal response. In fact, it contradicts the Post Katrina 

Act.′′ 

This year, this Subcommittee has already had occasion to examine the chain of command issue as it relates to the Federal Coordinating Officer, that is a FEMA official, and the Principal Federal 

Officer. That is the PFO or a person who works for the Department 

of Homeland Security. 

Now, explain this dichotomy for those of you who are not familiar 

with bureaucracies because what you have are two officers—one 

who works for FEMA, which is in the Department of Homeland Security, and the other, the PFO, who works for the Department of 

Homeland Security. Now, remember what this hearing is, in part, 

about. It is about avoiding some of the confusion on the ground 

that accounted for the Katrina disaster response. 

We concluded in this Subcommittee that the PFO position in 

DHS was duplicative, here we go again, and caused confusion in 

the field. That is this year. Just a few months ago we concluded 

that. This Subcommittee was so concerned that we subsequently 

asked the Appropriations Committee to prevent funds from being 

used for the PFO positions, and the House did so. The Senate DHS 

appropriation is, as yet, unfinished. 

3 

When Congress enacted the Post Katrina Act, it wrote in by statute, by law, my friends, one coordinating Federal officer—that is in 

plain language in the statute—who must, we wrote, this Post 

Katrina, understand, must have emergency management experience and must be the disaster response official. That is how we 

tried to clear out the confusion that existed in Katrina. This provision was written with a clear intent to provide the President of the 

United States through the FEMA administrator with direct emergency management consultation directly to him, not through anybody else but through him, to avoid delay in responding to a disaster, cutting out the bureaucracy that the whole world saw was 

responsible, in no small part, for the response to Katrina. 

If the PFO, the person who works for the Department of Homeland Security, is not required to have emergency management 

background—and he is not—and is the representative of the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and if this person 

is to be the advisor to the Secretary in a disaster as the draft National Response Plan now states, then the plan in this respect 

clearly contravenes the plain language of the Act. 

We are mindful of the difficulty of putting together a document 

so ambitious in its mandate that it is named a ′′national response 

framework.′′ We must expect that any such document would incur 

some criticism. However, we are deeply troubled that the critiques 

of the plan we are receiving go to the Congressional mandate of the 

Post Katrina Act, itself, suggesting that the Department, as some 

would say, just does not get it or, worse, that it does not want to 

get it. 

We will listen carefully and objectively to testimony from the administration and particularly to their defense against the caustic 

criticism of the experts. However, we are a democratic Nation of 

laws, and no executive branch agency, including the Department of 

Homeland Security, gets to pick and choose which laws to follow. 

We do not intend to forget that the reason Hurricane Katrina’s response was such a disaster was, in no small part, because of a lack 

of a coherent plan for martialing the resources available locally, at 

the State and at the Federal levels. Katrina was a dress rehearsal 

for the next disaster that this country may face, whether manmade 

or natural. 

This Subcommittee in its role of oversight intends to work closely 

with FEMA and with the Department of Homeland Security to do 

whatever proves necessary to ensure that the Congressional mandates of the Post-Katrina Management Act of 2006 are implemented as written into law. Under no circumstances will this Subcommittee abrogate its responsibility to ensure that, in the event 

of another disaster response, there is insufficient accountability. 

Again, we appreciate the time and the effort that went into the 

National Response Framework and look forward to the testimony 

of the government and of the expert panel. I am pleased to hear 

the comments, such that he may have, from our ranking Member, 

Mr. Graves. 

Mr. GRAVES. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for holding today’s hearing on the Federal Government’s disaster readiness 

and the revised National Response Plan. 

4 

Madam Chair, today’s hearing is important for a couple of reasons. First, we need to know if the experts believe the Department 

has produced a good plan. Will it work? If not, how should it be 

improved? We saw during Hurricane Katrina a confusing response 

plan or a plan that was poorly implemented that can have tragic 

consequences for those struck by the disaster. The House of Representatives Katrina Committee, on which Chairman Bill Shuster 

served, identified a few serious problems with the National Response Plan. 

Most significantly, the plan did not enable the President to get 

the professional disaster advice he needed during the disaster. It 

created new positions which confused the chain of command, and 

it did not result in a proactive Federal response when one was 

clearly needed. 

The second important reason for today’s hearing is the National 

Response Framework is the most major document produced by the 

Department since Congress passed the FEMA Reform Bill last 

year. It is our first opportunity to see how well the Department is 

implementing the near unanimous reforms recommended by the 

major stakeholders. 

The FEMA Reform Bill required several changes to the National 

Response Plan that were based on the Katrina Committee’s findings and the professional recommendations of almost every first responder association. Most importantly, the reform bill placed the 

responsibility and authority for managing all aspects of an incident 

under FEMA and required the administrator to have professional 

emergency management and homeland security qualifications. This 

means the administrator has primary responsibility for, one, preparedness, including planning, training and exercises; two, for response, including managing and coordinating the Federal response; 

three, recovery, including individual assistance and infrastructure 

reconstruction; and four, mitigation, including reducing the consequences of future disasters. 

The FEMA Reform Bill also made the administrator the principal 

emergency management advisor to the President and the primary 

Federal official responsible for managing and coordinating the Federal response to disasters. As far as the National Response Framework allocates roles and responsibilities within the government, it 

provides an insight into the actual role DHS has assigned to FEMA 

after enactment of the FEMA Reform Bill. 

With respect to the National Response Plan, the FEMA Reform 

Bill specifically required the plan to be changed to reflect the operational role of the administrator, to account for the unique requirements of a catastrophic disaster and to clarify that the Federal Coordinating Officer, FCO, and not the Principal Federal Official, 

PFO, is responsible for coordinating the Federal response in the 

field. 

Given the specific changes to the National Response Plan mandated by law, I find it particularly surprising the new plan does not 

mention the FEMA Reform Bill at all. Perhaps that helps explain 

why FEMA and the FEMA administrator are barely mentioned, 

and the administrator is given no operational role in the plan. I am 

not raising this issue because the FEMA Reform Bill came from 

this Committee or that it has to be done our way. I say this beVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:41 Apr 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\37917 JASON
5 

cause these aspects of the bill were key recommendations of the 

major first responder and stakeholder groups. We have letters from 

the emergency management, fire services, law enforcement, city, 

county, State, and other professional associations calling for the 

specific reforms. These are the reforms the professionals thought 

necessary to fix a broken system at DHS. 

A properly constructed response plan should define the roles and 

responsibilities of the agencies involved, explain how decisions will 

be made and clarify who is in charge. Given the critical testimony 

of our expert witnesses and our Committee’s own review, it appears 

the Department has a lot more work to develop an effective National Response Plan. 

Thank you again, Madam Chairman, for holding today’s hearing. 

I look forward to the testimony and, obviously, the testimony from 

our distinguished visitors. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Graves. 

Does any other Member have comments he decides to make? Mr. 

Cohen? 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate your having 

this hearing as well for I live in Memphis, Tennessee, which is a 

sister city to New Orleans, which suffered greatly 2 years ago and 

which is on the grid fall, the New Madras Fall, which gives it certain possibilities of earthquakes in the future. We have had other 

problems with what we call ′′Hurricane Elvis,′′ but that was a wind 

shear that came through 2 years ago and caused one of the greatest urban disasters that went unnoticed by the national media. 

Utilities were out for over a week. 

I went down to New Orleans on my own time for the second anniversary of Katrina. This Committee was going to meet there, and 

for reasons, it cancelled the meeting, but I went on my own and 

visited. There is still much to be done in New Orleans, and of 

course, your plan today is to show what you have done since then 

to prepare. I saw a television show, I think it was Sunday. It might 

have been 60 Minutes but one of those type shows, and they said 

that less than 10 percent of the cities are prepared presently to respond to a disaster and to have an adequate disaster response plan 

and evacuation. There might have been an evacuation route. That 

is shocking, only 10 percent of the cities, and they mentioned D.C. 

had some type of little, red and white insignia on the street signs. 

Most people do not know what they are. When I went to dinner 

last night on Pennsylvania Avenue, I thought I know what they are 

now. I do not know how good the ratings were for that show, 

though. So FEMA and other folks need to make people aware of 

what is already out there, but also the 90-plus percent of the cities 

that do not have a plan. 

I think I will wait a bit on my questioning, Madam Chairman, 

but there was some time ago that I had an issue with FEMA concerning ice. 

After writing you on July 18 and 19 and, among other things, 

being concerned about your lack of response to my inquiries, I received a response to my concern about your lack of response to my 

inquiries concerning the $70 million waste of ice that went on 

around this country. The response was on September 10. So, in responding to my inquiry about your lack of responsiveness, it took 

6 

you 2 months and Chairman Norton’s Committee hearing on the 

anniversary of 9/11 to thank me for my being patient. 

Well, I do not know that I was patient, but when you cannot re- spond to a Member of Congress about a $70 million boondoggle for 

2 months, it makes me very concerned about every American cities’ 

future when they are subject to some disaster whether caused by 

wind, rain, an act of God, or a misfeasance or a malfeasance by 

some Federal agency. 

What happened with that ice—and I still will wait for my questions—but as to the idea that you could not drink that ice, I drank 

that ice. I am fine. I want to hear the scientific evidence about the 

ice. It will be news to people in Alaska. I drank glacier ice. It was 

over 2,000 years old. I am fine. Now, maybe it was not wrapped 

in that bag, and I know that your response to say why it was not 

good is because the International Packaged Ice Association said it 

is not good after a year. Do you think the International Packaged 

Ice Association wants to sell you some more ice? 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Cohen. 

Mr. Walz of Minnesota. 

Mr. WALZ. Well, thank you Chairwoman Norton for holding this 

hearing. I would also like to thank Ranking Member Graves and 

a special ′′thank you′′ to him for the attention he paid to the care 

on the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota. I thank you for that. 

I thank you, Administrator, for being with us today. 

We are here today to evaluate the National Response Framework, and many of us know a lot of this came out of the response 

to 9/11 on the 6th anniversary, which we are observing today. The 

earlier version had some glitches in it. It was looked at. We are 

back here today in the post-Katrina, I guess, era to take a look at 

this and, I think, in the right spirit, and that is why I thank the 

Chairwoman for being here, and I thank the director for being here 

to work this thing out for what is best for America to find where 

the weaknesses are and where the strengths are in doing so, and 

I want to say I am particularly looking forward to the administrator’s testimony, and I say that not out—this is not an academic exercise for me. 

Three weeks ago, my district in southeast Minnesota was devastated by flash floods. We saw over 17 inches of rainfall in a 24- 

hour period in the community of Hokah, Minnesota. Damages to 

public businesses, private businesses and homes have already run 

into the tens of millions of dollars. I toured these areas, and I know 

that the administrator was there—Administrator Paulison was 

there—and I know you were in Rushford, Minnesota, a town of 

about 2,400, that was literally almost wiped off the map in a matter of a few minutes. 

When we went into that town and saw it, there was a little island a church, part of a school and a city building where the emergency management was gathering and where the headquarters and 

the response team were gathering, and both were shuttling in and 

out of that city right on downtown. There were people climbing out 

of the second floor windows of those homes to get into those boats. 

I say this because I want to thank the administrator for being 

there. I said you took this job—if I am not mistaken, it is about 

7 

your 2-year anniversary that you took this job, and quite honestly, 

it is not a very enviable one, but it is one that someone needed to 

step up and do, being fully aware that there were severe glitches 

and knowing that what happened in Katrina simply could not be 

replicated again. 

At this point, I am cautiously optimistic that what I witnessed 

in southeast Minnesota is what we would hope. I am noticing that, 

as to the framework here and things like engaged partnership, the 

unity of effort through a unified command, those types of things 

seemed to happen, and the people in Minnesota were—quite honestly, there were a couple of things that they were afraid of. They 

were afraid FEMA would not show up, and when FEMA did show 

up in a timely manner, led by the administrator and fulfilled the 

obligation that the people thought they were going to, there was a 

sense of real relief. There was a sense of, wow, this is fantastic. We 

need to get this to the point that no matter where it is at that people come to expect that, not hope that they got the lucky end of 

a straw or something. So I truly appreciate that. 

At this point, I am proud to say that I think Federal, State and 

local officials handled this incredibly well. We have got a lot of 

work to do yet. It is yet to be seen. The judgment on southeast 

Minnesota will come as we kick in many of the other agencies, but 

as to this initial response in understanding how it works and putting these things into play—obviously, the Southeast Minnesota 

floods were devastating. There were seven individuals who lost 

their lives, thousands of homes, tens of millions of dollars in damage. It was not on the scale of Katrina, but the principals of leadership and the framework that underlie that can be the same, so I 

look forward to that. 

I thank you, Administrator, for being here. I thank you for your 

personal attention to my district and to what has happened so far. 

With that, I yield back, Madam Chair. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Walz. 

TESTIMONIES OF R. DAVID PAULISON, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, DEPARTMENT 

OF HOMELAND SECURITY; AND ROGER T. RUFE, JR., DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF OPERATIONS COORDINATION, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Ms. NORTON. Now we are pleased to hear from our Federal Government witnesses. 

Mr. Paulison. 

Mr. PAULISON. Thank you, Chairwoman Norton, Ranking Member Graves, Congressman Walz, and Congressman Cohen. I appreciate the opportunity to come in front of the Committee. 

I am pleased to be here to discuss the draft National Response 

Framework, known as the NRF, which was recently released, just 

yesterday, for additional public comment. The NRF is the next generation document that FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security and our Federal, State and local partners will use when responding both to natural and manmade disasters. When adopted, 

it will replace the existing National Response Plan that has been 

in place and active since 2004. 

8 

I think, Chairwoman Norton, it is altogether fitting that you call 

this hearing on September 11th as we honor those, as we did this 

morning, who lost their lives on that terrible day. It reminds those 

of us in emergency management and in the first responder communities why we come to work every day. Despite the risks, despite 

the long hours, men and women involved in every level of response 

across this country are dedicated to saving lives and to protecting 

our Nation. On that fateful September day, many of our colleagues 

and, quite frankly, several of my good friends lost their lives rushing into danger, not away from it. 

As the Bible teaches, ′′greater love hath no man than this that 

a man lay down his life for his friends.′′ Truly, truly, these men 

and women showed their love for their fellow Americans on that 

day. 

It is important to note that, even as we work to streamline and 

update this document, we have robust and effective plans in place, 

and they have worked. While we are always working to improve 

our ability to serve the wider community and to address hazards 

of all shapes and sizes, our existing system was sufficient for the 

events that we faced this past year. In our response to the first 

storms of the hurricane season, most notably Hurricane Dean, and 

our response to the flooding in the Heartland, storms in the Northeast, tornadoes around the country, and other events, our existing 

plans and the implementation of changes based on lessons learned 

from Hurricane Katrina resulted in a very strong response, as you 

noted, Congressman Walz. 

This is not the FEMA of just a year ago. We are leaning forward. 

We are working hand in hand with our partners at every level of 

government as well as in the nonprofit and private sectors, and are 

providing improved services for the American people. This new 

framework will help us institutionalize those reforms and improvements. The draft NRF incorporates numerous comments we received through the process, and is based on real world experience 

of thousands of Americans involved in emergency management. 

Many comments addressed these same key issues and are addressed in this document. 

The result is an NRF that is user-friendly. It is focused on the 

basic facts that you need available at your fingertips while providing additional materials needed as companions. Still available 

but not overwhelming to the average user, it is a framework that 

is accessible to everyone involved in a crisis and easily referenced 

when time is of the essence. The ease of use is critical as the NRF 

is designed to guide all hazard response across America. It is built 

on the flexible, scalable and adaptable coordinating structure of the 

National Incident Management System, or NIMS. The NRF aligns 

key roles and responsibilities across jurisdictions. It links all levels 

of government, private sector business and nongovernmental organization. It is intended to capture specific authorities and best 

practices for managing incidents that range from serious but purely 

local to large-scale terrorist attacks or catastrophic natural disasters as we saw in Hurricane Katrina. 

But keep in mind that the National Response Framework is written for two distinct, vital audiences—senior leaders and day-to-day 

practitioners. Its clear, simple style makes serious work for the inVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:41 Apr 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\37917 JASON
9 

cident management, understandable to those who provide executive 

directions, including Federal department or agency heads, governors, mayors, tribal leaders, and city managers, who are not the 

day-to-day operators. Meanwhile, its annexes and related documents, including the new online or national resource center, provide added resources to emergency management practitioners, such 

as first responders and health officials, explaining the structures 

and tools routinely used at all levels of government. 

The NRF also identifies and clarifies the National Incident Response Doctrine and not just at the Federal level. It retains the 

same core principles in the National Incident Management System 

of which first responders from different jurisdictions and disciplines 

can work together to better respond to natural disasters and emergencies, including acts of terrorism. The National Response Framework presents core principles more clearly and includes them in a 

newly-described response doctrine that lays out how we respond. 

There are several core principles laid out here. One is engaged 

partnerships; a tiered response; scalable, flexible and adaptable 

operational capabilities; a unity of effort through unified command; 

and a readiness to act. 

Additionally, the NRF draws focus on preparedness. Effective 

preparedness is crucial, a crucial precondition for a successful response. The NRF draws a sharper focus on the value of preparedness, activities that improve response across all jurisdictions. 

In conclusion, let me simply state that a draft of the NRF is at 

a stage where additional review and comment is needed by the 

stakeholders at all levels of government and in the public and private sectors. These comments will be taken to heart so that, when 

the final NRF is released, it will truly assist in guiding and conducting all of those involved in all hazards/incident management. 

Thank you very much. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Paulison, for your testimony. 

We go now to Admiral Rufe. 

Admiral RUFE. Good morning, Madam Chairman, Ranking Member Graves, Mr. Walz, and Mr. Cohen. 

I am Roger Rufe, Director of Operations Coordination at the Department of Homeland Security, and I am pleased to appear today 

alongside Administrator Paulison and the other witnesses later on. 

Thank you for inviting me to provide to you and your Subcommittee my evaluation of the development of the National Response Framework as it relates to the Office of Operations Coordination. 

The NRF, I believe, is an important step forward for DHS and 

for interagency coordination in that it captures and formalizes critical structures and processes we are now using to provide situational awareness and to manage a broad spectrum of events. Since 

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, DHS has undertaken a systematic effort to ensure that there are more robust and coordinated preparedness and response structures in place to deal with all manners of incidents. We have taken the post-Katrina recommendations provided by the White House, the Congress, the GAO, and 

others very seriously, and are making enhancements to DHS operVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:41 Apr 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\37917 JASON
10 

ations. Let me highlight for you this morning just three of these 

post-Katrina enhancements that are a part of the NRF. 

One of the recommendations from the Katrina Lessons Learned 

Report was that a National Operations Center be established and 

that it act as a single information reporting system for all departments and agencies. In May of last year, the NOC was established. 

It is comprised of five elements. One is the watch section from the 

old multiagency Homeland Security Operations Center. Our second 

is the intelligence and analysis watch and warning branch. A third 

is FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center. A fourth is the 

Infrastructure Protections National Infrastructure Coordination 

Center. The fifth is the NOC planning element. 

Taken together, these five elements of the NOC compromise the 

principal operations center for DHS and provide situational awareness and a common operating picture and operations coordination 

for the Secretary as he carries out his responsibilities as the Principal Federal Official for domestic incident management. 

The second recommendation that was made in the Katrina After 

Action Report was the need for a Federal planning system—a planning process—and recognizing that within the Federal Government 

while there were business and budget planning processes in place 

outside of the Department of Defense, there was no standardized 

contingency or crisis action planning system for the Federal Government. We have taken that on in my office, and we have developed a national planning and execution system, NPES, which is a 

five-phase, national-level planning process that has been very 

broadly adopted by the interagency. In fact, we have trained over 

500 people in the interagency in this process, and they are using 

that to develop their crisis action plans. 

The third element that I want to touch on is that the Katrina 

after action recommendations included the creation of a permanent 

planning body within the National Operations Center. The mission 

of the NOC planning element is to provide contingency and crisis 

action incident management planning in support of the Secretary’s 

national level domestic incident management responsibilities articulated in the Homeland Security Act and in HSPD-5. This planning element is compromised of some 53 members of the interagency—15 are full-time; 38 are part time, but all of them come 

from the key elements within DHS as well, as from virtually every 

agency within the Federal Government, to put together national 

level Federal interagency strategic plans to address the 15 national 

planning scenarios. These strategic level plans will identify the 

roles and responsibilities of individual departments and agencies in 

the event a given scenario were to occur. 

So those are the three items I wanted to bring to your attention 

this morning, Madam Chairman, and I look forward to your questions. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much for that testimony, Admiral 

Rufe. 

Now I would like to give both of you the opportunity to respond 

to the testimony we are going to receive from witnesses. Obviously, 

you as Federal officials are testifying first. Before I indicate the 

predicate to this question, I am going to ask you to forward to the 

Committee a copy of the draft National Response Framework plan 

11 

that was submitted to the Department of Homeland Security by 

the Drafting Steering Committee in the spring of 2007. 

Do you understand what the Committee wants? 

Mr. PAULISON. No, ma’am, I did not. Could you repeat that 

again? 

Ms. NORTON. I am asking you to forward to this Subcommittee 

a draft of the National Response Framework plan that was submitted to the Department of Homeland Security by the Drafting 

Steering Committee in the spring of 2007. Now do you understand? 

There was a draft submitted to the Department of Homeland Security, apparently a drafting committee from FEMA. We would like 

that submitted within 30 days to this Subcommittee. 

Mr. PAULISON. There were literally dozens of drafts back and 

forth, but I will give you—— 

Ms. NORTON. The final draft is all we are interested in that you 

submitted to the Department of Homeland Security. 

Mr. PAULISON. Again, there were literally—I understand what 

you are saying, and there were literally dozens of drafts back and 

forth. We worked on this thing all summer. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, I can understand that. Let me be clear. I do 

not want anyone to say, ′′We did not understand what the Chair 

was asking for.′′ 

I want the first submission of the final draft—and I am giving 

you the date, spring 2007—that you submitted, and they may have 

come back with questions, and there may have been a back-andforth, but I am being very specific in what I am requesting, and 

I am requesting it within 30 days. I am not requesting at this time 

all the back-and-forths. I want to know what was originally submitted. I know what finally came out because the Subcommittee 

has the document. 

Mr. PAULISON. I understand your question. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you. The date is March 13th, 2007. It is that 

submission we are asking for. 

Now I would like—in order to be fair to the administrators, I 

warned you that there was caustic criticism coming. The only way 

for us to judge it is to give you an opportunity to respond to it, so 

I am going to ask you, I will give you a sample of the kinds of 

things that are coming forward in the testimony that will follow. 

Here is one comment. ′′the draft framework overlooks the concerns that helped shape 

the legislation Congress enacted and would put the Nation at risk 

to some of the same systemic failures that hobbled the Federal response to Katrina.′′ 

So it is alleging that—this comment, which we take as fairly typical of the comments we received, alleges that you did not abide by 

the legislation and that, therefore, some of the same failures that 

FEMA encountered would be repeated. 

Now, secondly, ′′Unless revised, the framework′′—well, let me 

just start with that. 

Mr. PAULISON. I guess part of my concern is that this report just 

came out yesterday. So to have comments on it without thorough 

review, I find—— 

Ms. NORTON. Well, you know that they are reviewing the draft 

report. The draft report was submitted to all of the State and local 

12 

agencies, and those who are commenting are commenting on the 

draft report. 

Are you saying to me that the draft report has nothing in common with—— 

Mr. PAULISON. It has lot in common. The problem is this is only 

one piece of it. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, respond to the concern then. 

If you are saying, first of all, that that is not true because we, 

in fact, used the legislation, then tell us how you did, and you will 

tell us what failures that hobbled the Federal response to Katrina 

will be overcome by this document. That is the way to respond to 

it, not to say, well, they have not seen it. 

Mr. PAULISON. Well, there is a lot they have not seen. At the resource center where we set up all the annexes that lay all of this 

out does follow the Pre-Katrina Reform Act. 

What this document does do is it does very clearly define the 

roles of local, State and Federal Governments. It also brings in the 

private sector and the nongovernmental organizations, the volunteer agencies. It also has a separate planning section that the other 

National Response Plan did not have. 

This document is going up for review again. If there are specific 

comments that the users have, we want to see those. This is going 

to be a collaborative effort. This is a draft document. However, I 

do feel very strongly that it does answer a lot of those questions 

that happened in Katrina. I went through the same issues during 

Hurricane Andrew. 

Ms. NORTON. All right, Mr. Paulison. We understand. 

Let me let Admiral Rufe take a try at this. These are very specific, very caustic criticisms, and I would like a specific answer as 

possible. The public is going to hear a lot of caustic testimony. If 

I were in your position and somebody said to me that I did not follow the law, I would then cite ways in which they did follow the 

law, Admiral Rufe, and if somebody criticized my draft and said it 

is going to subject us to the same failures we had with Katrina, my 

answer would not be, ′′Hey, look. We are not going to comment. 

Maybe we will do better.′′ My answer would be, ′′No, we do not. 

This is the way in which we will not have the same systemic failures we had in Katrina.′′ It is that kind of specificity, it seems to 

me, that can overcome the criticism that will be forthcoming from 

the testimony that we will be receiving, and I am trying to give you 

a fair chance to rebut it. 

Admiral RUFE. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

The only thing I would say is I support the administrator. One, 

this was just released yesterday, but more importantly, attacks like 

that which are of a such general nature do not allow you to get at 

the issue that these attacks are being directed towards. If there are 

specific shortcomings in the draft that people are concerned about, 

we can address those, I hope, during the comment period rather 

than having these general, what I consider to be, pretty broad attacks that are not based on any kind of specifics and that are not 

helpful, and if we can get to the specifics, we will be able to address those during the comment period. 

As the administrator said, this is a draft. We are looking for 

those kinds of comments. We want to improve it. We would like all 

13 

of the stakeholders to be involved in the process of improving it 

and in making it a better document. 

Ms. NORTON. I do want to say for the record that the draft that 

the expert witnesses saw is almost the same as the document we 

have before us, so I do not think the government can hide behind 

some notion that they are responding to a different draft. We 

looked very closely at that before accepting those comments. 

Yes, go ahead. 

Mr. PAULISON. I was just going to say that we are not hiding behind anything. This is a draft document. We feel like it is a very 

good draft document. However, if we were putting it back out on 

the street again after receiving over thousands of comments on the 

original one and if there are specifics in here where people do not 

think we have addressed all of issues, we want to know what those 

are, but we feel that we have. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, let me also be fair to those who are going to 

come. I have, obviously, tried to summarize what they said. Although I quoted them, I could not give you all of the particulars. 

They are going to come forward with them. I just wanted to make 

sure that you had the opportunity to respond to it. 

Understand that the reason I picked this one out is because this 

particular comment, among many others, I must say—and we tried 

to pick out comments that we thought were fairly typical—said 

that DHS and FEMA overlooked the concerns that helped shape 

the legislation, suggesting that the act, itself, is being violated. 

Now let me go to another comment that was typical. ′′unless revised, the framework will create new confusion over roles at the 

very top of the system.′′ Now let me explicate what they had in 

mind. 

Every single expert says that the so-called ′′PFO′′—I hate these 

titles, and I will say to the general public please forgive me. This 

is so typically bureaucratic, but you have to name them something. 

The role of the PFO, who is the appointee of the Secretary—that 

is not in our statute. That is somebody, I mean, the Secretary could 

appoint me. He could appoint anybody in the audience. This person 

does not have to have any expertise. That person’s role and the role 

of the Federal Coordinating Officer, we call him the ′′FCO.′′ Now, 

he is appointed by us. That appointment is in the statute, and that 

is a legal officer. Now, say the experts, there is total confusion over 

those roles, and let me explain why that is important to us. 

Why that is important to us, to be very particular about it, is 

that, in the confusion over Katrina—when we sent Admiral Allen 

down, this confusion was the first thing that arose. There was a 

person who reported to the Secretary. There was this person who 

said, ′′Well, I am in the statute.′′ Everybody on the ground said, 

′′Well, who is in charge here?′′ Congress took note of that as part 

and parcel of the confusion. 

So what the President did there, seeing the confusion was real, 

was to make Admiral Allen both the PFO and the FCO, in other 

words, to give him both positions. Well, what Congress did in saying let us clean this up once and for all, Congress said, ‘‘Okay; 

since we are trying to empower FEMA within the Agency to do its 

job and not be a hang-on bureaucrat of DHS,’’ I will tell you what, 

says Congress in the Post-Katrina Act. The PFO, our guy in the 

14 

statute, sorry, the PFO is prohibited from having directive authority, to make directives, replacing the incident command structure 

in the field. It was real clear and came out of the evidence. 

Now come the experts, and they say, ′′Well, wait a minute. These 

two officers are still in the document. If, in fact, you are a Federal 

official, will you look at this chart.′′ See how confusing that is? You 

go in, and you say, ′′Well, here I am in the middle of a hurricane. 

Here I am in the middle of an earthquake. Who do I ask for something?′′ say everybody, everybody who responded—the State and 

local officials, the experts who were unconnected from any of them. 

There is still rank confusion between these two officers. 

I ask you to say to me why that confusion is in the document, 

at this late state, given the fact that the Post-Katrina Act went to 

great lengths to dislodge one officer from his responsibility and to 

give the other the existing responsibility. That is the very specific 

question I am putting to both of you. 

Mr. PAULISON. The very specific answer is there is a very clear 

definition and separation of the FCO and the PFO. 

Ms. NORTON. Describe that separation. 

Mr. PAULISON. The separation is the PFO will not oversee what 

the FCO does. The PFO will not be the FCO. 

Ms. NORTON. But what is his role and mission? 

Mr. PAULISON. The role of the FCO is to run the work out of the 

JFO, run the day-to-day operations. 

Ms. NORTON. What is the role of the PFO? He is the representative of the Secretary. Is he going to be on the ground? 

Mr. PAULISON. The PFO may or may not be on the ground, depending on the type of—— 

Ms. NORTON. If he is on the ground, what does he do, and what 

do you say to the people in Missouri or to the people in Tennessee 

about who is in charge on the ground and who he reports to? 

Mr. PAULISON. If the people in Missouri want to know who to go 

to for that disaster, they go to the FCO. The PFO is out there as 

the Secretary’s representative to help with overall incident, Federal 

coordination among agencies. The FCO is going to run that day-today operation. Now, the—— 

Ms. NORTON. What day-to-day operation is he running? 

Mr. PAULISON. Of all of the Federal assets that are on the 

ground. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, what in the world is the FEMA guy, the FCO, 

doing then? If he is not running all of the assets on the ground, 

but the Secretary’s representative is, I am still confused about who 

is in charge. 

Mr. PAULISON. The FCO is in charge of anything that has to do 

with the operational component of that disaster. If an emergency 

manager needs anything from FEMA or from the Federal Government, they go through the FCO. The PFO, again, is the Secretary’s 

representative on the ground. If it is a catastrophic event—in Hurricane Dean, where we had a category 5 storm predicted to come 

into Texas, we did not have a PFO, but we had an FCO. The Secretary did not deem it necessary to have one. 

Ms. NORTON. The staff has given me the language to show you 

why we are concerned, gentlemen. The staff has given us the language from your report, and it says the national—your report. The 

15 

National Response Framework says that the PFO—that is the Secretary’s representative—will coordinate and is the lead Federal official. 

Now, Admiral Rufe, I have to ask you because I expect that 

somebody who has been in the military understands, as many of 

us out here in civilian life do, and particularly in bureaucracies 

which overlap all the time—I mean, we pass laws which make 

them overlap. If you have worked up to the rank of admiral and 

you have heard what I have just said, first, I would have to ask 

you whether you have ever worked under a command structure like 

that. 

Mr. PAULISON. Are you asking me or the Admiral? 

Ms. NORTON. The Admiral. 

Admiral RUFE. Yes, ma’am. This is actually a command structure 

that is very familiar to people in the Coast Guard because it is 

what is used in responding to oil spills. We have a unified command. There is not a person in charge. It is a coordinated effort 

at the top. 

Typically for a major oil spill, for an example, the unified command structure, which is a structure under NIMS, calls for the 

Coast Guard’s principal—I forget what they call it now—the onscene coordinator, the Coast Guard’s on-scene coordinator; the responsible party’s lead, who is the spiller; the State official, and others just as you see in this diagram, which seems confusing, but actually, it works quite well. They practice that way. They train for 

that. 

Ms. NORTON. Admiral Rufe, I understand that they practice that 

way. It did not work well in Katrina, and we fear that this person 

on the ground brings confusion, but most of all, we fear that you 

did not follow what Congress said to. Let us assume that it works 

wonderfully well for the Coast Guard. The Congress, in its wisdom 

or lack thereof, chose another course, and it put it in plain English 

in the statute. Now, we are always prepared to hear, for example, 

evidence from the Agency that, in the last emergency, we found 

that the PFO needed to play a role; therefore, we asked for the 

statute to be amended. The fact is that the Post-Katrina Act is an 

amendment of the statute, and we cannot discern that the Act was 

followed in this regard. 

Before I ask further questions, I am going to go to Mr. Cohen. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

First of all, I want to thank the Director, and he has a background as a firefighter, and I have always had an appreciation for 

their work, and being from Miami, you know about emergency preparedness, and you know how important it is to a community. So 

I am pleased that you are in the position you are in, and I have 

heard many good things about you. Having said that, and not 

wanting to appear frozen in place, I want to go back to ice. 

Explain why it took 2 months to respond to my letter. 

Mr. PAULISON. Sir, I cannot do that. That is unacceptable. You 

should not have waited that long for a response, and I, first of all, 

apologize for that, and we have put a system in place to make sure 

that does not happen again. We are putting a tracking system in 

place. We have hired an executive secretary. When I took over 

FEMA, we were 800 correspondences behind, and we are pretty 

16 

much caught up with those, but there is no excuse for that whatsoever. It should not have been that long. It should have been a matter of weeks, not months. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, sir. Thank you. 

In your letter to me, you expressed that you tried to find some 

folks to use this ice, and you could not find any. Then later, once 

you decided to make it available to the public and some people 

came forward, the initial efforts to find recipients where there were 

none found were through the General Services Administration, 

which is the Federal Government, the seafood industry, the United 

States Forest Service, and nonprofits. 

Did you look to local and State agencies and governments and 

ask them if they had any need or if they could help in giving notice 

to 501(c)(3)’s or to other charitable groups in their communities? 

Mr. PAULISON. No, sir. A lot of the ice we could not get certified 

as ′′potable.′′ I know you said you drank it and tasted it, and you 

are fine, obviously. We could not take that chance with the whole 

system that FEMA had been using for years with the ice. As we 

go into our new type of logistics, we are not going to store ice anymore. We are using third-party logistics where you are using a 

just-in-time delivery system. So I know I am making this a long 

answer, I do not mean to do that, but the answer is we tried to 

find somebody to take the ice, and we gave away 600,000 pounds 

of it just recently to a concrete company in Memphis that needed 

to cool the concrete down, and it was used for things like that. 

Mr. COHEN. I appreciate that, and I understand that. Let me ask 

you this: I would just think, and maybe I am wrong, that when you 

gave out your notice and did not get any responses, you only gave 

it to certain Federal agencies and to the seafood industry. If you 

had given it to local and State governments and said, ′′hey, put out 

a bulletin,′′ maybe some people would come have forth. When you 

finally did make it available, this group did come forward, and the 

600,000 pounds of ice were use for nonpotable purposes. 

If there had been a better distribution system for other commodities in giving notice that we were not going to have ice in the future and so it could be used before its shelf life expired, it could 

have been done, and it just seems like that was not well thought 

out. 

Do you just accept the bag industry’s 1-year shelf life or has 

there ever been any scientific study on this or Eskimos who have 

passed away or something? 

Mr. PAULISON. No, sir, not that I am aware of. I do not think 

there has been a study on the Eskimos’ eating ice. 

There has been the standard of a year for that. I know as to all 

the stuff that we put out when I store ice at my house, which I do 

for the hurricane season, I always throw it out, generally, after 6 

months. I do not keep it much longer than that. A year is an industry standard. I do not know if there is any scientific basis behind 

that. 

Mr. COHEN. Being that you accepted the fact that it was nonpotable, which I still kind of find difficulty with—and I will be honest with you. When I was in New Orleans, there was a fellow down 

there. Well, I should not really give his testimony away, but he 

17 

said that he had never heard of any such thing as an ice expiration 

date. 

If it were the expiration date that you honored, why was it not 

disposed of in Memphis where people could go at first and pick it 

up, not be fenced in and take it home and drink it? 

Mr. PAULISON. Perhaps we could have done that. We stored it for 

hurricane season. We did not have any hurricanes that year. I cannot help that part of it. If we had had a hurricane season like was 

predicted, we probably would have used almost all of that ice just 

like we did the year before, but we did have a corps come in and 

test that ice, and the corps would not certify it as potable, usable 

ice. So that was part of the decision-making also. It was not just 

the industry 1 year. 

Mr. COHEN. I think, if you would try to give more notice to folks 

so they could use it, it might work. 

Let me ask you about the formaldehyde in those trailers. 

Ms. NORTON. Could we ask that you wind up this line of questioning shortly so we can get back to our other witnesses who are 

waiting? 

Mr. COHEN. Oh, we are under the 5-minute rule. I did not see 

the clock ticking. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, actually, we took more than 5 minutes because we are trying to devote as much of the hearing as possible 

to the plan, but we are pleased to have the gentleman ask his questions on formaldehyde. 

Mr. COHEN. As to the formaldehyde in the trailers, is it true that 

you all, for fear of some type of action against you, did not want 

to give notice to the public about the danger? 

Mr. PAULISON. No, sir. After that e-mail that came out from our 

general counsel, there was literally an 8-hour delay before we took 

action and started notifying people. There was nothing purposeful 

in keeping people from being told that there was formaldehyde in 

trailers. We had already put flyers out. We continue to do that. 

What we are doing right now is actually moving people out of those 

trailers as quickly as possible. CDC is moving in to do some testing 

to really give us a ′′no kidding,′′ scientific basis of what do we really 

have. FEMA has used these trailers for 20 years. They are the 

same ones you buy off the lot. We bought thousands right off the 

lot. So, if there is a problem with the trailers, then it is truly an 

industry problem. So we have stopped sales of the trailers. We are 

making a very concerted, high-intensity effort to move people out, 

particularly in the group sites, to get them into hotels, motels and 

apartments. We are going to make sure that we do everything we 

can do to move people out of harm’s way. 

You know, secondly, we are not going to use travel trailers anymore. If we are going to use any type of manufactured unit, it 

strictly will be mobile homes. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you. 

Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Cohen. The next question is a very important one because it goes to the issue of implementation of the plan. 

Now, you received, you and FEMA, Mr. Paulison, received a draft 

from your own steering commission. It does seem to me that is regVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:41 Apr 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\37917 JASON
18 

ular order because that steering commission consisted of, among 

others, particularly State and local officials. No plan gets implemented from Washington. It is either done in the field or it is not 

done. We can go in to assist, we can send in the resources, we can 

send in FEMA. But it is on the ground that these plans must be 

submitted. 

Some of the most costly criticism has come from State and local 

officials. Typical of the statements is this one: The collaborative 

and cooperative process in rewriting the document failed. The State 

and local responders allege that after submitting the draft to you 

in FEMA, Mr. Paulison, that there was no response back even 

though you yourself say that the plan was submitted to the Department of Homeland Security with many drafts going back and forth. 

The people on the ground say they were excluded from this process 

and that you went into a mode of secrecy from them. Please respond to that criticism, you and Mr. Rufe. 

Mr. PAULISON. I categorically reject that. We had over 700 people 

provide comments on the old NRF into developing the new one. We 

took those comments and then right after that we brought the 

steering committee together to condense those down into 17 areas. 

At that point we took 120 days to put a writing team together. And 

the writing team did have emergency management experts on it, 

although there were FEMA employees from Emergency Management Institute and others, to take those comments from those 700 

people. 

Ms. NORTON. The 700 people from where? 

Mr. PAULISON. The 700 people were from the emergency management community, the fire community, the police community. 

Ms. NORTON. Were these the steering committee people? 

Mr. PAULISON. I have a list of the steering committee. It should 

have been in your packet. 

Ms. NORTON. Were these 700 people—you talk about 700 people. 

I am talking about the steering committee. Are we talking about 

the same group of people? 

Mr. PAULISON. It is part of that. The steering people wasn’t 700 

people, but it was a large group. 

Ms. NORTON. Who are the 700 people? 

Mr. PAULISON. From all across the emergency management community. 

Ms. NORTON. So there were a steering committee and then there 

were other State and local officials. 

Mr. PAULISON. We received comments in on the National Response Plan, and the steering committee took those comments and 

went through those and broke those down into 17 buckets, so to 

speak, of 17 different areas. We then took those that the steering 

committee put together. And I put a writing team together to put 

this document together to make sure that all—— 

Ms. NORTON. Was anybody from the steering committee on the 

writing team? 

Mr. PAULISON. No, there was not. 

Ms. NORTON. Why not? 

Mr. PAULISON. The steering committee did their job. Our job was 

to put the writing team together. 

19 

Ms. NORTON. I asked was there anybody from the steering committee, not was the whole steering committee there. 

Mr. PAULISON. No, there was not. We had emergency management experts on there. 

Ms. NORTON. Were there State and local officials on the writing 

committee? 

Mr. PAULISON. No, but I had the past Director of the Emergency 

Management Institute on there. I had the key person that teaches 

the emergency managers, that teaches the course work on that 

writing committee. We had a lot of experts on there putting the 

comments together, writing this draft plan, making sure back and 

forth, back and forth that we had everything in there from the 

comments that we had as we could possibly get in there. Now that 

it is done it is going to get back out to not only the steering committee, but also to a larger steering group for getting comments 

back in. This is going to be a collaborative effort. 

Ms. NORTON. That explanation is important. Let us make sure 

we are talking about the same period. Once the draft was sent to 

Homeland Security, apparently many changes were made. These 

State and local officials allege they were not included in consultation. 

Mr. PAULISON. Chairwoman, we took all the comments we could 

possibly get. 

Ms. NORTON. But were they included or not once the plan was 

submitted to the Department of Homeland Security. 

Mr. PAULISON. The plan was not done to go back out yet. This 

is a plan to go back out for review. 

Ms. NORTON. These are the people who thought they were entitled to more than review, I guess we should tell them that, that 

although parts of the steering committee, they are only entitled to 

review like everybody else even though they wrote the initial plan. 

Is that what you want us to tell them? 

Mr. PAULISON. No, ma’am, they did not write the initial plan. We 

were putting the plan together with a writing team making sure 

we incorporate all of their ideas and all of the comments, and we 

think we have. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, again, we could have a situation here 

where—a hubris. That is to say we weren’t part of it. And that is 

why we wanted to give you an opportunity to respond. The reason 

we took these comments so seriously is that we could find nobody 

in the State and local emergency management community that differed from these comments. And because these comments were so 

caustic that the final document as far as they are concerned does 

not bear resemblance to the document they submitted. And for us 

that is the ball game. There is not a thing you can do out in California or in Illinois. So if these folks who got to do it says this is 

not what we submitted and we wouldn’t mind except when they 

went back and forth we weren’t included, you must understand 

that the Congress has to take that very seriously since the whole 

intent here was to get an extremely collaborative process going. So 

that if you disagreed, in the end they could say, look, at the end 

we disagreed, but we were kept informed until the very end, and 

that is not what they say or will say when they testify. 

20 

Mr. PAULISON. I would hope, and I understand what you are saying, I really do, I would hope since we put the document out along 

with all of the annexes, along with the resource center, which is 

on the Web site, I would hope that once they review that and comment back, that they would see that it does incorporate everything 

that they have asked us to do. 

Ms. NORTON. Wait a minute. I am not going to let you go back 

to what we have already established for the record. And for the 

record we have established that the draft plan that they have seen 

and commented on does not differ materially from your final National Response Plan. 

Mr. PAULISON. But it does, it does differ, because this was just 

a piece of it. The rest of it is in our annexes that they did not see, 

the Web site that they did not see with our resource center. 

Ms. NORTON. So you are convinced that once they see the whole 

thing, they will see that this is what they had in mind. 

Mr. PAULISON. And if it is not, there is 30 days to review this 

78-page document and 60 days to review all of our annexes and the 

Web site. And it will be a collaborative effort. 

Ms. NORTON. Could you again, your testimony it seems to me 

would be more credible to us if you could indicate some ways in 

which the plan from the steering committee needed changing and 

that you changed. Give us some examples, then perhaps you can 

understand. Because after all, they were dealing at the State and 

local level and you are dealing in another level. 

Mr. PAULISON. I have to go back to what I said earlier, is that 

this plan went back and forth inside our organization, back and 

forth with Homeland Security making sure we dealt with the two 

most important pieces. One is obviously the users that are out 

there, the State emergency managers, local emergency managers, 

the fire and police chiefs, those that have to use it. But the second 

piece that we have missed, and one of the reasons that we had 

issues with Katrina, part of it, was the fact that our local officials 

at the local level, at the State level or appointed officials at those 

levels, come and go quite often. And they were not part of the initial mass response plan. So we wanted to make sure that there was 

a piece in here that they could quickly pick up and learn and understand what their role was. And we think we captured that. 

Now, the big in-depth piece of it is in the annexes that is not 

part of this, it is separate. Our on-line resource center is part of 

it that the State emergency managers are going to be using. I wish 

that I had had this when I went through Hurricane Andrew. I wish 

that my Governor had it, Governor Lawton Chiles had it, because 

we had a major disconnect in what role each was supposed to play. 

And this I think clarifies this. If it does not clarify it in the minds 

of our State and local emergency managers, then they need to tell 

us very specifically what we need to clarify to do that. 

We have a consortium meeting this Thursday with all of these 

people being involved to go over this again in Chicago. I think most 

of the people behind me will be at that meeting. And then we have 

the 30-day process also. It is going to be collaborative. If it needs 

to be tweaked, if it needs to be changed, we want to hear what they 

think has to be done. 

21 

Ms. NORTON. I have only one more question. Admiral Rufe, I ask 

you to respond to what has just been said. But I would like you 

both to understand that a part of this is built in. Once upon a time 

there was a FEMA and none of these questions would have been 

relevant, not a single question I asked today would have been relevant. Because that FEMA reported to the President of the United 

States, was like a special force that just went underground and got 

it done. You knew who was responsible. There wasn’t any back and 

forth between some super agency. Well, we created a super agency 

and there was a disagreement between committees as to whether 

or not we should return to what seemed to work, which was a direct line to the President of the United States, or should struggle 

within this bureaucracy. And I must say that today’s testimony 

seems to me to put you in a struggle. The steering committee gives 

you a document. There is a reason why we go to the Department 

of Homeland Security, although we are talking about all hazards. 

And that is one of the concerns of the committee. We are talking 

about all hazards. What FEMA says goes for any hazard. Goes for 

a terrorist attack, which is clearly where the Department of Homeland Security has been focused all along, even though the only 

thing that is predictable are natural events. But all hazards from 

the beginning meant everything. What we are asking you to do is 

to mediate between what you are told from people on the ground 

and some people in Washington above you, an agency we have set 

up, tell you to do or not do. There is no Federal emergency management experience in the Department of Homeland Security. It is all 

in FEMA. So we are at a loss to figure out what in the world they 

are telling you, so that there is so many back and forth drafts. 

From who? Who knows anything what he is talking about? Who is 

a Federal bureaucrat sitting in an agency over top of you, of which 

you are a part to be sure, who has no Federal emergency management experience, whether it is Admiral Rufe or anybody else? Now, 

Admiral Rufe, do you consider yourself a Federal emergency management official? 

Mr. RUFE. Yes ma’am, I do. I have had 34 years experience managing emergencies in the Coast Guard; search and rescue, response 

to oil spills, response to natural disasters. 

Ms. NORTON. So you would have been, it seems to me, very helpful in advising FEMA, but you are in the Department of Homeland 

Security, sir. 

Mr. RUFE. If I may, just to indicate to you what some of the roles 

are respectfully of the Secretary that are in statute and that are 

important and that are complimentary to what FEMA is doing, let 

me give you a couple of examples. The Secretary is the—— 

Ms. NORTON. Is it the Post-Katrina Act that we have focused on? 

Mr. RUFE. Yes, ma’am. The Post-Katrina Act made some important changes to the way we manage emergencies. It did not, and 

I emphasize, it did not undo the Secretary’s responsibility for being 

the principal Federal official for domestic incident management. 

Ms. NORTON. And we are not suggesting it does. We are suggesting that the Post-Katrina Act looked to focus and locate emergency management experience in the agency we created and not in 

the Department itself. 

22 

Mr. RUFE. Let me give you one experience that is just very recent 

that might give you a sense of when the Secretary is engaged 

where FEMA does not really have a role. Just a month or so ago 

we had what we thought was an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the Midwest. We were concerned about it. We didn’t know 

whether it was a real incident or not. We didn’t know whether it 

had a terrorist nexus. As it turned out, it didn’t turn out to be a 

foot and mouth experience, but the cows were experiencing what 

appeared to be foot and mouth symptoms. We were engaged for 11 

days. We had—that is the Secretary and I in my role as his principal adviser for this sort of an event. We were working with the 

economic advisers to the President because this principally would 

be an economic impact to us. We were involved with the Department of Agriculture, HHS, Custom and Border Protection, HSC 

and a whole host of others, intelligence, managing that incident. 

And it was not an emergency, it was an incident. 

Ms. NORTON. That it seems to me is appropriate. 

Mr. RUFE. Pardon me. 

Ms. NORTON. FEMA has jurisdiction when there is an emergency 

management declaration, and that is what we are concerned about 

here. We are not concerned about a foot and mouth disease rumor 

that you go out from the Federal agency to confirm or not. Of 

course if the President then decides that what we have is a national emergency, then of course you go to FEMA and say handle 

it. 

Mr. RUFE. Let me give you another emergency which doesn’t 

have a FEMA role. A mass migration from Cuba. That is a role 

where the Secretary, as his role to lead the U.S. Coast Guard; It 

involves Customs and Border Protection—— 

Ms. NORTON. You have just given me a very appropriate role for 

the Department of Homeland Security that does not involve FEMA. 

So we do not allege, particularly given the role, the Department of 

Homeland Security has no role in matters that may be serious affecting our country. We do allege that the Post-Katrina Act said 

that if we are talking about a Federal emergency, thatFEMA and 

FEMA alone has the jurisdiction and alone has the expertise. 

I have only one more question, and it is just a straight up and 

down question. If I were given your horrific task, and I don’t want 

you to believe that the questions we have asked do not, or underestimate what a charge this is; hey, go and do a whole National 

Response Framework for the whole country, and by the way make 

sure that the private sector is included. That is pretty awesome. 

You have to sit back and fan yourself. So how do you even begin 

there? It seems to me that the first thing you do would be to line 

the act up and almost do a side by side. 

What does the act say, what does that mean I should do? We 

found it noteworthy, curious, that in light of the time that Congress put into writing the Post-Katrina Management Reform Act, 

in light of the tragic experience out of which that act was born, 

that the act itself was hardly mentioned in any meaningful way. 

It is as if the act was not a part of your thinking and that you just 

sat down to write a plan. In what way, if that was not the case, 

in what way did you measure what you wrote against the PostKatrina Management Reform Act? 

23 

Mr. PAULISON. Actually we did use the document to make sure 

that everything we put in the National Response Framework—— 

Ms. NORTON. In what way I ask? In what way? I am looking for 

examples. Of course everybody will say of course we followed it. I 

am trying to allow you to respond to the notion of the expert that 

you did not in fact follow the act by saying, well, if you had the 

act on a side by side in what way do you say you followed the act. 

Chapter and verse, any example. I don’t expect you to have all of 

them, but any example that follows the act. 

Mr. PAULISON. I don’t know if I can—— 

Ms. NORTON. Since it is not even cited in a footnote we have to 

ask you yourselves. 

Mr. PAULISON. I don’t know that I can give you exact examples. 

I do know that we made sure as we walked through putting the 

National Response Framework together, that everything was in 

compliance with the—— 

Ms. NORTON. Why? Did you submit it to your lawyers to see if 

it was in compliance, did you submit it to the Justice Department? 

Mr. PAULISON. No, we did not submit it to those. We are capable 

of reading it, I think, and understanding it and making sure that 

what is in here is in conjunction with the Post-Katrina Reform Act. 

Ms. NORTON. In the future it might help the Committee and it 

might help your own testimony if a document referred to the act 

that in fact was responsible for its being drafted. When it is not 

referred to at all, when we have extraordinary criticism that it 

wasn’t followed, you force me to ask in what way it was followed 

since the act itself is not cited in the act. And none of what you 

write do you say is in conformance with specific sections of the act. 

Thank you very much. We go to Mr. Cohen. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I will just be brief. 

This being the anniversary of 9/11, one of the issues that came up 

in a previous Committee I was on was the firefighters, first responders there, who didn’t have proper equipment at first when 

they were on the pile and folks who have had respiratory, serious 

respiratory problems, some I think have died. That seems like 

something that we should have had some planning for. At this 

point, particularly as a former firefighter, do we have a stockpile 

of equipment that we could supply if there is a tragedy that doesn’t 

have a shelf life that we could provide to folk and have plenty of 

those available? 

Mr. PAULISON. Yes, sir, we do. We have those scattered around 

the country where we can go and equip either a police or fire department should they in fact lose their equipment or should we 

have to staff another agency with those type of things. And we 

have those scattered around the country. Prepositions of what are 

called pods or something like that. I can give you a description of 

those, what is in them, and also give you a description of where 

they are. I can get that to your office, and it won’t be 3 months. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, sir. It was just the testimony we received from the firefighters. And I read something about some folks 

this morning because I was reading about 9/11. And they should 

have had those regulators, I think they were, and they didn’t. 

Mr. PAULISON. They should have been wearing respirators the 

whole time. They were on that pile. And a lot of them were not. 

24 

Another one of those sadly lessons learned from those types of 

things. 

Mr. COHEN. When I went there myself about a month after 9/11, 

again just as a private citizen wanting to see it, but Mayor Giuliani 

was nice enough to have me get access. I guess he was nice enough, 

because I used the mask that somebody told me did me no good, 

so I breathed that air. Those masks they gave apparently don’t do 

any good at all. 

Mr. PAULISON. I am not sure what kind of mask you had. 

Mr. COHEN. Blue and white and they had a number on them. 

Mr. PAULISON. Some of those work very well actually for keeping 

particulate out, if there is something in the air, like asbestos. If it 

is a chemical they don’t help, but if it is for a particulate anything 

you wear helps some. But there are some better ones out there 

than what you are talking about. 

Mr. COHEN. I know it is the Corps of Engineers’ responsibility, 

but if a Hurricane 4 or 5 hit New Orleans this year how are the 

levees, the system? 

Mr. PAULISON. The Corps’ description of the levees is they are as 

good as or better than they were during Katrina. However, they 

failed during Katrina. The ones that they rebuilt are much better. 

The levees did not fail. There has to be some concern since they 

probably were not challenged. There is a—I know the Corps is looking very seriously, I think there is a plan in place, on what the 

long-term rebuilding of the levees should be and what the cost 

should be. And I am pretty sure that is going to be coming to Congress. 

Mr. COHEN. And the wetlands are real important as a barrier. 

I flew over those, too, and they have been decimated. Are you involved at all with the efforts to replenish the wetlands or is that 

another department? 

Mr. PAULISON. Yes, that doesn’t, not that I am aware of, that it 

falls under FEMA, but it would be another department. 

Mr. COHEN. Madam Chair, I got here a couple minutes late, you 

may have said something, I don’t know. But being the anniversary 

of 9/11, I think it is appropriate this Committee be working and 

shows the government is working. And FEMA has a high responsibility. They gave government, and it wasn’t you, sir, you get good 

marks, but FEMA gave the government a black eye for not being 

able to respond. You have got a high responsibility and your people 

have a high responsibility, and you are our team. I just have to 

have confidence, will have confidence in you, and know that you 

have such an important mission to protect us if there is another 

terrorist attack, if there is another Hurricane 5 level in New Orleans or anywhere else. And so just we are going to have to count 

on you, and I appreciate you. 

I think back upon 6 years ago and seeing the TV of the second 

airplane hitting the towers. I think I read this morning that President Bush somehow imagined that he saw the first plane hit the 

tower, which is impossible because nobody saw that for some time 

later. Kind of like President Reagan I guess being at D-Day. Sometimes people get confused. But it was an awful event and a tragedy 

that we honor and remember today. And you as a firefighter, I am 

particularly pleased you are the head of that agency. And being a 

25 

Floridian, I am a Memphian by birth, and that is my hometown. 

I have lived almost all my whole life there, but I have spent about 

4-1/2 years in Florida in Coral Gables. I am 58. I think you are 59. 

Mr. PAULISON. Sixty. I will be 61 in February. 

Mr. COHEN. Well, you got a few. I guess Gables played North 

Miami at some time or another. I know that you got experience 

with hurricanes, which I have been through too, so you will do your 

job. And I thank you for your service and Godspeed. 

Mr. PAULISON. Thank you, sir. It is very humbling to have to tell 

you it is an awesome responsibility. And we are putting good people inside the organization. And I do appreciate—I know we get 

testy sometimes, but I do appreciate this Committee and its oversight. I really do. 

Ms. NORTON. The responsibility is not any that anybody would 

relish and certainly a responsibility of writing this document is of 

the same order. I agree with the gentleman that the point is to inspire the confidence in the American people that if something happens we are ready. And that is why this oversight is so important. 

And why we are so concerned at differences here about whether we 

are ready and therefore whether we should have confidence. We 

don’t intend to take any chances, not in this oversight. We do not 

intend for it to be said that, well, this Committee went pretty easy 

on them. And the first responder said that the document wasn’t up 

to par, but there was testimony. And we said, well, may the good 

Lord protect us. We think God helps those who help themselves. 

And we have to straighten out what appear to be grave differences 

between the experts who have looked at this report and the witnesses whose testimony we have heard today. 

I will take your point that there will be 30 days when people can 

comment. I’m sure, let me just ask you, given the nature of the 

comments, if more time is needed than 30 days, would FEMA be 

prepared to allow more time for comments? 

Mr. PAULISON. Yes. If we are still getting a lot of comments during that 30 days we will obviously extend that period. 

Ms. NORTON. I appreciate that. 

Mr. PAULISON. And don’t forget they have 60 days to comment 

on the annexes and on the resource center. 

Ms. NORTON. 60 days to comment on the annexes. 

Mr. PAULISON. And the resource center. The 30 days is just for 

the base document. But again, if we are still getting more comments on the base document in the 30 days, we are very flexible 

on that. I have had a conversation with both the international 

emergency managers and also the national emergency managers 

behind me and have committed to them that we will make sure 

that during this 30 to 60-day period that we will be very collaborative and we will work together to make sure we have all their 

comments. 

Ms. NORTON. Let me inform you of another action we are going 

to take to be fair to FEMA, DHS and to the first responders who 

have commented given what is clearly a disconnect between their 

view of the document. We are going to look for what is always regarded by the Congress as the most objective source. I am going 

to ask our ranking Member Mr. Graves to join with me in seeking 

in an expedited request to the GAO to conduct a review, a thorough 

26 

review of how the Post-Katrina Act is being implemented through 

the National Response Plan you have submitted. And that way we 

will be relying upon a source that has had no role in the document. 

We very much appreciate the very awesomely difficult task we 

have put you to. As you know, Mr. Paulison, I have always been 

willing to work closely with you. If we offer comments, we offer 

those comments not to say go and do better, we offer those comments to say go and work with us and together we will do better. 

Thank you Mr. Paulison, you, Mr. Rufe, for your important testimony today. 

Mr. PAULISON. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Ms. NORTON. And let me call the second panel. We are calling 

Dr. William Waugh, Jr., who is Professor of the Department, or 

maybe I will say who they are as they begin to speak. Panel 2 and 

3 we are joining together to save time. You are all offering your 

own critique of the report. And the way I am going to do this, I 

think probably as a matter of protocol we ought to start with those 

who are public officials first. 

So we will first hear from Tim Manning, who is the Chair of the 

Response and Recovery Committee of the National Emergency 

Management Association and who is Director of the New Mexico 

Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. 

Mr. Manning. 

TESTIMONY OF TIM MANNING, CHAIRMAN, RESPONSE AND 

RECOVERY COMMITTEE, NATIONAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION AND DIRECTOR, NEW MEXICO DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT; AND ROBERT C. BOHLMANN, CHAIRMAN, U.S. GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS COMMITTEE, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF EMERGENCY MANAGERS AND DIRECTOR, YORK 

COUNTY, MAINE EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY 

Mr. MANNING. Madam Chair, good morning. Over the past calendar year I have served as the NEMA representative to the Department of Homeland Security/FEMA National Response Plan 

Senior Interagency Steering Committee, which has overseen the 

updates to the NRP. As I come before you today, NEMA has two 

significant issues related to the National Response Framework, the 

NRF. 

First, the current draft of the NRF must be reworked to reflect 

the true operational plan or an additional document must be drafted immediately to replace the NRP. 

Second, the collaborative and cooperative process in rewriting 

that document has failed. On September 11, 2001, the Federal Government responded to the attacks using the Federal Response Plan 

and the Terrorism CONPLAN. One of the recommendations of the 

9/11 commission and mandates included in the Homeland Security 

Act called for a consistent and coordinated national plan. Title V 

of Public Law 107-296 called for DHS through the Under Secretary 

for Emergency Preparedness and Response to be responsible for, 

quote, consolidating existing Federal Government emergency response plans into a single coordinated National Response Plan. The 

NRP was not perfect but it was necessary. It included the creation 

of the Principal Federal Official, the PFO, which NEMA opposed, 

27 

and the new term, Incident of National Significance. The current 

rewriting effort was given to FEMA in last year’s Post-Katrina 

Emergency Management Reform Act. 

FEMA is responsible for administering and ensuring the implementation of the National Response Plan, including coordinating 

and ensuring the readiness of each of the emergency support functions under the National Response Plan. 

Initially NEMA was heavily consulted and actively engaged. 

NEMA was included on the DHS/FEMA Interagency Steering Committee, along with representatives of Federal agencies, a representative from the Major City Police Chiefs Association and the International Association of Fire Chiefs. In addition to the steering committee, NEMA provided over 20 representatives to various NRP 

working groups that spent weeks and months working as subject 

matter experts to provide input. These highly experienced State 

emergency management professionals participated in lengthy conference calls and flew across the country to D.C. Often with very 

short notice. The input provided was based on lessons learned from 

past disasters and a vision for the future. 

Since the informal release of the plan in early August, NEMA 

has identified a number of critical issues that must be addressed 

before it can be recognized and accepted by State emergency managers as a viable replacement for the NRP or the FRP. We raise 

these issues as partners to ensure appropriate readiness. 

For the purposes of this hearing our comments reflect the draft 

that was obtained in early August. DHS has released a final draft 

for public comment yesterday. In our review it is not substantively 

different than the first draft, although some minor improvements 

have been made. NEMA is concerned that the majority of the collaboration, the input provided through the interagency steering 

committee and the writing teams was not included in this draft. 

Overall, the most critical issue for NEMA is the current framework is not a plan. The document reads more like a primer for 

State and local officials, which is a valuable resource; however, it 

is not the national plan for responding to disasters. This can be 

compared to showing up for a football game with an encyclopedia 

entry on who is involved and how the game is played, but without 

the actual playbook for offense or defense. 

Essentially only a small segment of the plan or the national team 

is being considered. The current framework is not sufficient for 

emergency responders and does not replace the previous NRP, the 

FRP. If the framework is intended to serve as simply a description 

of the system of response and an introduction to the players involved, an additional document, an actual operational plan must be 

produced as well. 

The current framework has been clearly drafted from a Federal 

perspective and does not appropriately address the planning needs 

of the State and local governments, nor does it follow commonly accepted management planning principles, specifically unity of command. The current document maintains the Principal Federal Official as operational. NEMA supported the deletion of this position 

as duplicative and confusing. If it is to persist in doctrine it must 

be explicitly clarified as having no operational role or authority as 

28 

was stated in the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform 

Act. 

Finally, references to mitigation of a document are virtually nonexistent and recovery is only sparingly mentioned. The current 

draft does not specifically say what the Federal Government brings 

to the table in a disaster. And the framework essentially writes 

FEMA out of a job by downplaying the role of the organization and 

the National Response Coordination Center and the regional response coordination centers. The roles of the national operation 

center, the NOC, and the NRCC should be clarified and cemented. 

Operations and coordination centers should serve as the central 

collection and coordination points. A goal should be the reduction 

in the number of disparate operation centers, not the proliferation 

of them. National doctrine for response should eliminate uncertainty. One should not be left to wonder whom to call or talk to 

in a time of crisis. 

The current framework references a number of other planning 

guides, hazard specific annexes and other resources that will have 

to be continually developed and adapted to support the framework. 

It has stated that these will be posted to Web sites and the emergency response community will be expected to know which plan is 

in play at any given moment. Disaster preparedness is about preparing before a disaster occurs and not downloading the playbook 

in the middle of an event. If the first time somebody reads a disaster plan is when the event is unfolding, they have already lost. 

This concept must be reconsidered, not only to allow partner governments to participate in annex development, but to allow for the 

adequate timing to train, practice, refine the plans and develop institutional knowledge. 

Finally, the collaborative and cooperative process in rewriting 

this document completely broke down when all of the input and advice from partners was put aside for an internal DHS rewrite. In 

April 2007, a month before the deadline, NEMA was informed that 

DHS needed additional time to consider all of the input. In the following weeks NEMA learned that DHS was undertaking a complete rewrite of the newly completed NRP in a closed door process 

with no stakeholder input, working group involvement or visibility 

by the steering committee. In early July NEMA was informed that 

the nearly complete NRP was in fact being completely and substantively rewritten and would be renamed the National Response 

Framework. It would include significantly more detail and direction 

on the responsibilities and expectations of State and local governments, but written without the collaboration of those State and 

local government representation. 

The interim final draft was released yesterday to a limited 30- 

day comment period. Today attempts have been made to open communication with DHS on the draft and that process. If the collaborative and cooperative process remains strained, we fear that the 

State and local governments and emergency responders will be 

hard-pressed embracing a plan that has not seriously taken their 

input into account. 

Again, NEMA appreciates the opportunity to testify and provide 

Congress with the comments on the National Response Framework. We hope that by outlining our current concerns we can help 

29 

DHS make an effort to engage stakeholders to address the shortfalls of the current framework and work together to strengthen the 

final product. 

Thank you. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Manning. 

Mr. Bohlmann. 

Mr. BOHLMANN. Madam Chair, ranking Member, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, I am Robert C. Bohlmann. 

I am a Certified Emergency Manager and the Emergency Manager 

and Homeland Security Director for York County, Maine. I currently serve as a Government Affairs Chair of the International Association of Emergency Managers and I am providing this testimony on their behalf. Our association represents more than 3,800 

members, including emergency management professionals at all 

levels of government, tribal nations, colleges, universities, private 

enterprise and the nonprofit sector. Most of our members are U.S. 

city and county emergency managers who have the statutory responsibility to implement emergency plans in a disaster. We appreciate the tireless work of this Subcommittee to strengthen FEMA 

and your continued effort to see that the Post-Katrina Reform Act 

is implemented, and we appreciate the opportunity to provide testimony on the process and the substance of the National Response 

Framework. We were extremely gratified to be identified as one of 

the key stakeholders and partners in the revision of the National 

Response Plan. 

Especially in light of our above-mentioned statutory responsibilities, we eagerly anticipated participating in a collaborative revision process carving out a clear definition of the roles and responsibilities of those involved in all hazards emergency management 

at the Federal level. And we look forward to a clear and straightforward description of how those Federal roles and responsibilities 

would interrelate with State and local emergency management 

practitioners who have the acknowledged lead role in responding to 

disasters and emergencies. 

The process under the direction of FEMA from December 2006 

to March of this year was exemplary. Stakeholders were intensively involved in the collaborative group and worked to address 

dozens of different aspects. The NRP revision co chairs worked tirelessly to champion a transparent, inclusive process, making sure 

that both stakeholders and key stakeholders were represented. 

That is why I along with other key stakeholders and partners were 

surprised when reviewing an unofficial draft document of the National Response Framework dated July 27th, which is the one we 

are commenting on today. The document bore little resemblance to 

what we discussed so extensively from March 2006 to the 2007 

timeline. 

The last communication we received was on March 13th, that the 

first draft was being delayed. No further stakeholder interaction on 

the revised NRP occurred after that date. IAEM believes that this 

process reversal in conjunction with other fundamental misunderstandings of the emergency management process by DHS has produced a document with flaws which must be corrected for its adoption. IAEM stands ready and willing to assist in this process and 

30 

is hopeful that key stakeholders will again be welcomed into the 

process before the NRF is released. 

And we did receive comment this morning from the Administrator that that would be happening. A truly effective National Response Plan is vitally important and will serve as a clear purpose, 

standing as the overarching planning document identifying the role 

and responsibility of the players and the way in which resources 

are accessed in order to save lives and property. It is not rocket 

science and it does not require 800 pages. 

The July 27th draft NRF that we have reviewed appears to be 

more like a public relations document rather than response plan or 

framework. IAEM believes one of the fundamental DHS misunderstandings is what ‘‘all hazards’’ means. It is really quite simple. All 

hazards signifies all hazards resulting in any cause, whether natural, manmade, national security or homeland security. Therefore, 

we should identify our disaster roles and responsibilities in such a 

fashion that they relate to any disaster. This is commonly referred 

to as a functional all hazards approach to planning. 

We do not agree with DHS’s assessment that the audience for 

the draft NRF should be local elected officials. Instead, we believe 

that those charged with the statutory authority to implement and 

coordinate emergency plans at the State, local and tribal level of 

government are the primary audience for this document as the subject matter experts. 

The draft NRF seems to undercut reforms of the Post-Katrina 

Reform Act which provides structural realignment and protection 

of FEMA inside the Department of Homeland Security and clarifies 

the role of the Administrator. The act restored the national 

partnering of preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery as 

responsibilities of the reenergized FEMA, yet the draft has the responsibilities for the strategic planning outside of FEMA. 

The Post-Katrina Reform Act also amended the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and clarified the role of the Administrator as the 

principal adviser to the President, the Homeland Security Council 

and the Secretary for all matters relating to emergency management in the United States. It further stated that in Section 504 the 

Administrator shall provide Federal leadership necessary to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from or mitigate 

against natural disaster acts of terrorism, other man-made disasters. Yet in this draft the role of the Administrator is severely limited and frequently ignored. The NRF diminishes the role of the 

Federal Coordinating Officer and gives the Principal Federal Official more authority than the Post-Katrina Act allows. The continued existence of the Principal Federal Official is another way that 

DHS is increasing our opportunity to fail in a disaster response. 

We strongly urge that the FCO remain the single point of contact 

in the field between the Federal Government, State and local governments, and that the FEMA Administrator act as the President’s 

direct representative. 

Charles Kmet, the emergency management Administrator for a 

large tribe in Arizona and a member of the FEMA National Advisory Council, has asked me to emphasize that the tribes continue 

to see conflicting ways in which they are handled—sometimes a 

sovereign nation and other times as local units of government—as 

31 

a major problem not only with the draft NRF, but also in many 

other emergency management and homeland security issues. Consequently many tribes are not prepared or equipped to the 

capabiliy level that their local and regional counterparts are. 

The principle for emergency management is planning, and that 

is important in the process rather than the particular products. 

General Dwight D. Eisenhower is often paraphrased as saying 

plans are nothing, planning is everything. We are greatly encouraged with the collaborative nature that would be the beginning of 

the NRP revision process, and we look forward to the ones that 

were being offered today. We urge FEMA to reengage the key 

stakeholder input and give adequate time to correct the flaws of 

this vitally important plan and encourage Congress to insist on the 

implementation of the Post-Katrina Reform Act. The NRF should 

not be a vehicle for reducing FEMA’s responsibility and authority. 

Thank you. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Bohlmann. We will now 

go to our two additional expert witnesses from outside the government; Dr. William Waugh, Professor of Department of Public Administration and Urban Studies, Andrew Young School of Policy 

Studies at the Georgia State University, Professor Waugh. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. WILLIAM WAUGH, JR., PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & URBAN STUDIES, GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY; AND DR. PAUL STOCKTON, SENIOR RESEARCH SCHOLAR, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND COOPERATION, STANFORD UNIVERSITY 

Mr. WAUGH. Thank you for the opportunity to address the Committee, Madam Chair. I am a specialist on local government capacity building as well as emergency management, and have broader 

interests. That is, I hope to offer an academic perspective but also 

something of a practitioner perspective. I am a current member of 

the Emergency Management Accreditation Program Commission 

that sets standards for and accredits State and local emergency 

management agencies and a former member of the Certified Emergency Manager Commission, which is the top national credential 

for professional emergency managers. 

With the academic hat I look at the NRF draft in terms of a variety of things. One is an academic sense of a framework that facilitates collaboration and also doesn’t interfere with the potential for 

improvisation, particularly on the ground in large scale disasters. 

We do live in a networked world with shared authority and dispersed resources, a great deal of interdependence, both in terms of 

intergovernmentally and organizationally and individually, and we 

also live in a world where there is considerable stress and conflict 

between emergency managers and Homeland Security officials. So 

some part of the context here is I think in part a reflection of that. 

I am also interested in sort of the weaknesses of the NRP and 

how those are addressed; that is, things like excessively centralized 

decision processes that slowed things down, the notion of a cavalry 

approach to disaster management, the presumption of a Federal 

lead, even in relatively small kinds of disasters which were sort of 

an assumption that shows up in the other document, a single-mindVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:41 Apr 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00041 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\37917 JASON
32 

ed focus on terrorism, and as the Committee has talked about, 

there are too many people without emergency management experience in the structure dealing with things. 

I will say that in the field generally there are some very positive 

developments in terms of EMAC, the Emergency Management Assistance Compact; that is, letting States share resources, statewide 

mutual assistance, which is facilitating intrastate sharing of resources, and now the National Emergency Management Network, 

which is facilitating community resource sharing. So there are 

some very positive things that should have some impact on this 

document. 

The draft has some positive aspects in terms of dropping reference to the incident of national significance, the emphasis on unified command, although I would caution for cultural reasons some 

people don’t understand unified command and sharing authority 

and I would be more than happy to deal with that if someone 

wants to pursue it. 

And the negative aspect is that the NRF is a scenario based document that is not all hazards. There are 15 scenarios, planning scenarios that are frequently referred to, only three of which we might 

consider natural. There are no large flood scenarios, no tornado 

outbreak scenarios, no tsunami and any number of other things 

that are potentially devastating kinds of events. 

There is a lack of attention to connecting response to mitigation, 

response to a variety of other things that is sort of necessary to 

prepare the Nation for dealing with large scale events. The obvious 

things that you have been focusing on have been the potential conflict between the principal Federal officer and the Federal Coordinating Officer, which I think my comments referred to as the 800- 

pound gorilla in the room if you have the representative of the Secretary sort of in the chain of command. This also is a question of 

having more people involved in the process who may or may not 

have any expertise with emergency management. And I think the 

predesignated principal Federal officers don’t seem to reveal people 

that actually do have that kind of expertise. 

And the lack of direct contact between the FEMA Administrator 

and the President in events that don’t involve a national disaster, 

Federal disaster declaration, that it is not certain that the President will be receiving advice from someone who actually knows 

anything about emergency management. 

My conclusions are notions that the document actually does need 

to assure that there are experienced emergency managers in 

charge. And I will say that in some of the discussion here that frequently people confuse emergency responders and emergency managers and they are not the same thing. And developing mechanisms that will facilitate collaboration, either governmentally, 

interorganizationally and so on, that while the incident command 

actually drives academics nuts, it is a bureaucratic system and we 

have had 50 years of criticisms of that in circumstances that require flexibility and improvisation. And the notion of having a document that provides at least a general framework but also affords 

opportunity for flexibility when you have to respond to changing 

circumstances. 

And with that I will stop. 

33 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Dr. Waugh. Now we move to our last 

witness, Dr. Paul Stockton, Senior Research Scholar, Center for 

International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University. 

Mr. STOCKTON. Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to 

testify. It is clear that you have read our prepared testimony with 

great care, so I am going to summarize my remarks very briefly 

and maximize the opportunity that you have to ask questions. I believe that the draft framework as currently written ignores and is 

likely to subvert the important changes that Congress enacted into 

law in the Post-Katrina Reform Act. I am going to suggest this 

morning that Congress had compelling reasons to adopt those 

changes and also suggest that departing from the law, departing 

from the law enacted by Congress puts the Nation at risk of some 

of the same systemic failures that hobbled the Federal response to 

Hurricane Katrina. 

I couldn’t help but smile, Madam Chair, when you made reference earlier to the possibility of doing a side-by-side between the 

law and the draft National Response Framework. Because as an 

old Hill staffer that is exactly what I did when I got my hands on 

a copy of the draft. I lined it up against the statutory provisions 

that you enacted into law, and here is what I came up with. 

The act specifies that the FEMA Administrator is, quote, the 

principal adviser to the President for all matters related to emergency management in the United States. The act also specifies that 

the Administrator of FEMA shall, and again I quote, lead the Nation’s efforts to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover 

from, mitigate against the risks of natural disasters, acts of terrorism and other manmade disasters. Very clear. And my written 

testimony provides the cites. 

The draft framework ignores these legislative grants of authority 

and assigns them to the Secretary of Homeland Security. The 

framework states that the Secretary, not the FEMA Administrator, 

would be the principal adviser to the President for emergency management. The framework also specifies that, and here I quote, the 

Secretary of Homeland Security is the principal Federal official for 

domestic incident management. By presidential and statutory authority the Secretary is responsible for coordination of Federal resources utilized in the prevention of, preparation for, response to 

or near-term recovery from terrorist attacks, major disasters and 

other emergencies. 

Madam Chair, the framework’s departure from the division of 

authority that Congress specified in the Post-Katrina Reform Act 

creates a couple of problems. First of all, the framework will foster 

confusion over who is responsible for leading and coordinating Federal assistance in a disaster operation. And confusion can have 

deadly consequences. 

Even more important is the second problem. The framework 

takes the emergency management system in the wrong direction 

and ignores lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina. Let me turn 

very briefly to why I believe that is the case. 

Studies of the response to Hurricane Katrina, including the 

House Select Committee’s report, A Failure of Initiative, identified 

a number of underlying causes for the failed Federal response to 

Hurricane Katrina. The House report noted that it does not appear 

34 

that the President received adequate advice and counsel from a 

senior disaster professional. And the key reason for that, again the 

report specifies, that under the Homeland Security Act of 2002 the 

Secretary of Homeland Security is the Department’s top official for 

emergency management. The report noted that emergency management, and I quote, is just one of the Secretary’s many responsibilities. According to the Secretary’s testimony before the Select Committee he is not a hurricane expert, nor does he have much emergency management experience. 

Madam Chair, I believe that it is likely that this situation will 

continue to exist in the future. The Secretary is going to be responsible of a vast array of responsibilities, including terrorism prevention that extend beyond traditional emergency management. The 

Secretary needs to be good at that. Occasionally maybe we will 

have an emergency manager as a Secretary but not always. 

So in response to that thinking, that analysis by Members of 

Congress, the Katrina Reform Act adopted two structural changes 

to strengthen the quality advice to the President. It shifted the 

leadership of emergency management from the Secretary to the Administrator of FEMA. And second, as you noted earlier, Madam 

Chair, the act mandates that the FEMA Administrator will be an 

emergency management professional with, quote, a demonstrated 

ability in and knowledge of emergency management at Homeland 

Security. 

Mr. STOCKTON. I think. Madame Chair, I believe that Congress 

made a sound decision in enacting these changes. The Nation 

needs a professional emergency manager to be in charge of the 

Emergency Management System, and that professional must have 

the authority needed to lead the assistance to States and localities 

when they require it. Any reversion to the previous DHS Secretaryled system would be a step backwards and reflect an unlearning of 

the lessons learned at such enormous cost in Hurricane Katrina. 

My written testimony provides supporting analysis for the arguments I have just presented and highlights additional problems 

with the Framework, particularly in the realm of the catastrophic 

response. I would welcome the opportunity to answer questions 

that you might have and want to thank you again for the opportunity to testify. 

Ms. NORTON. I want to thank all four of you. I have some questions for the four of you. You have been important witnesses for us. 

We obviously have our own expert, but it was important for us to 

hear from the academic community, the community that is not involved and doesn’t have a dime in this dollar, and to hear, of 

course, from those who we are going to look to to get it done. 

And in that regard, Mr. Manning, I just say you got my attention 

because you unearthed a gnawing concern I have had ever since 

looking at this report. And when you said when the—effectively 

you said that when the response community feels that it has not 

had sufficient input into a plan, it may not embrace that plan. 

There is a difference between you at a State and local level and 

FEMA, and that is to say that when we write a law, we can’t compel FEMA to do what we say to do. And we intend to do that. But 

nobody can compel. Nobody up here—that is why we have a Federalist system—can compel State and local managers to embrace a 

35 

plan that they think is not sufficiently relevant to their own experience. That is a red flag for this Subcommittee. 

Now, I want to get to particulars. I am going to ask Mr. Manning 

and Mr. Bohlmann some questions. 

Mr. Manning, first of all, let us establish you are bona fide—you 

are on a steering committee. 

Mr. MANNING. Madame Chair, that is correct. I am on the steering committee. 

Ms. NORTON. Now, I asked the Director about his consultation 

with the steering committee and had to finally call him in to dates, 

the date of March the 5th, because he said that there were many 

back-and-forths after that. So I had to say I am talking about the 

original submission. Now, what would have occurred—he also said 

that State and locals were involved, but—that is to say after the 

initial submission. 

All right. If there was another formal network of State and 

locals—I mean, if they are trying to create a whole network of 

States and locals, perhaps that was the objective. Do you know of 

any State and locals, beside the steering committee where there 

were many State and locals, who were involved or who disagree 

with you? Is there other opinion from the organizations that you 

represent, the National Emergency Management Association or, for 

that matter, the International Association of Emergency Managers, 

at odds? Are you having some minority views from those who were 

consulted even though those of you on the steering committee were 

not consulted after you handed in your report? 

Mr. MANNING. Madame Chair, I am not aware of any of my colleagues that hold a dissenting opinion on our official association position, and I am not aware of any local people as well. 

Ms. NORTON. I wish you would let this Committee know if there 

is a minority view, in your view, that there were State and locals 

who were consulted who had some input into this matter. We consulted you because you represent the association of all of them, so 

we thought if they don’t tell you, we are not sure who they are telling. 

Dr. Waugh, this whole notion of consultation and this whole notion of the chain of command—and I want to question all of you 

on this chain of command problem, the Federal officer, the principal officer. Dr. Waugh, it is very interesting—you said—and I 

think the metaphor is well taken that—but who is the 800-pound 

gorilla in the room? That was DHS. We were literally trying to create an 800-pound gorilla in FEMA because it was a baby gorilla. 

Let us fatten him up, give him some muscles, and I will take care 

of it. And we come back with the same puny gorilla that we put 

in there. He didn’t lift his weight. Something happened when he 

was in the room. 

That is what I want to get to, and that is where I would most 

appreciate—because I am now—I am going to hypothesize one of 

the reasons. Notice what we did in the Congress. There was disagreement among the Committees. My Committee, Democrat and 

Republican, Full Committee Chairman, the Chairman of the—the 

ranking Member, the Chairman of this Committee—I was not that 

Chairman. I was the ranking Member—all believed that there was 

something that didn’t need fixing, and we fixed it when we took 

36 

FEMA and put it in the Department of Homeland Security. It is 

an interesting mistake, one that you can understand after 9/11. 

You are trying to consolidate everything. So we said—unfix it is 

what we said, put it back to where it was. But by that time, there 

was a whole Committee—and this is part of the Committee on 

Transportation. There was another whole Committee, the Committee on Homeland Security. 

I might say as an aside, you can imagine the position this puts 

me in since I’m one of the so-called big four that says let us go back 

to what worked. I am also a Member of the Homeland Security 

Committee. So from the inside of that Committee, I saw that Committee claim ownership. What do you expect? You give somebody 

FEMA, and then you want to take it away. So Congress, in effect, 

kind of creates a structural problem here. And I am wondering 

whether or not when this document was submitted by Mr. Manning 

and his colleagues to FEMA, whether or not structurally FEMA 

was put between a rock and a hard place, because there is somebody over them that Congress has left over them, and they do not 

report directly to the President; or yes, they do, according to the 

act, except they are still in the Department of Homeland Security. 

You know, in our naivete, we thought writing in law that they 

were to report—we thought writing in law that they were the principal officer would do it. But I am asking all four of you, those of 

you who have experience from the academic community, those of 

you who understand bureaucracy because you have been in State 

or local government, to say whether or not FEMA is put in a position that would make it very difficult to do what we have asked 

them to do because there is somebody that looks like he is more 

powerful, looks like he is in charge of them, who can then instruct 

him with respect to any document he turns in what to do. And if 

so, what do you think we ought to do about it, given the fact that 

we wrote a law that seems to us in plain English did say what was 

to happen and it did not happen? 

I am trying to put before you a dilemma so that we don’t look 

as if these people just said, ‘‘we don’t care what Congress said.’’ I 

am trying to look beneath the surface to see what was the dynamic 

that would make anybody in the Federal Government ignore so 

patently what, as Dr. Stockton said, the side by side would show 

you they were mandated to do. Is there a structural problem here; 

and if so, how does FEMA get around it and still be a part of the 

Department of Homeland Security, assuming as I do that with all 

we have on our plate, Congress is not going to go through what it 

would take to snatch FEMA out at this point, at least not at the 

moment? Dr. Stockton, do you have a view? Let us start with you. 

Mr. STOCKTON. Yes, ma’am. I believe that regardless of the structural changes that Congress ended up enacting after Hurricane 

Katrina, that continued congressional oversight, especially by this 

Committee, was going to be essential to further progress. I note in 

my written testimony that the Post-Katrina Act included a very important provision that essentially turned FEMA into a fortress 

within the Department of Homeland Security. That was no accident, Madame Chair. That came after careful consideration by 

Members of what had become of FEMA within the Department of 

37 

Homeland Security. In the act you specify that the mission and capabilities of FEMA cannot be diminished by the Secretary—— 

Ms. NORTON. Think of it. Think, all four of you, those of you in 

government, do you know of any precedent in the Federal sector for 

that? Hey, you are part of them, he is over you, but you really report to the President of the United States? 

Mr. STOCKTON. My point, Madame Chair, is to make it work, 

sustained, vigorous oversight of the sort you are conducting right 

now is absolutely successful to strengthening the Emergency Management System and making this law work as intended. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Bohlman, did you have something you wanted 

to say? 

Mr. BOHLMANN. Well, I have seen great changes on FEMA in the 

last year or so and certainly since—— 

Ms. NORTON. I wish you would detail those. That would be important. 

Mr. BOHLMANN. Well, we underwent a fairly large disaster in the 

State of Maine this summer, spring and flooding, and the response 

from FEMA was markedly different than it was in May of 2006. 

We had the opportunity to do one in 2006 and one in 2007. I hope 

we miss 2008. And it was markedly different. The boots-on-theground response, the capabilities that FEMA brought, the openness 

to work within the community was certainly there. It wasn’t large 

enough to have a PFO, so we didn’t have to go through that, but 

the Federal Coordinating Officer and the regional office and all of 

the staff that was on the ground, there was a marked difference 

in moving forward. 

Ms. NORTON. There was a marked difference in the resources 

they brought, how quick they responded? 

Mr. BOHLMANN. How quickly they responded, their willingness to 

be there almost as the rain stopped and start their process, their 

disaster—their initial ground taking the damage assessment. 

Ms. NORTON. Did you see anything of DHS? 

Mr. BOHLMANN. No, no. 

Ms. NORTON. Of course, as you said, there—— 

Mr. BOHLMANN. There was no PFO—— 

Ms. NORTON. There was no national emergency. 

Mr. BOHLMANN. That could be questioned because when you get 

it declared, it is almost—the way it reads now, it could be. 

Ms. NORTON. But it wasn’t declared—— 

Mr. BOHLMANN. It wasn’t declared national significance, no, 

ma’am. But it was a good response, different, as I say, from 2006. 

Ms. NORTON. Different from 2006 in Maine? 

Mr. BOHLMANN. 2006 in Maine, yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. And even though you had not had a Federal—I 

mean, a principal officer, the DHS man, there was a difference between the 2006 and the 2007 response and what—— 

Mr. BOHLMANN. Very definitely, yes. 

Ms. NORTON. Just in the quickness of the response? 

Mr. BOHLMANN. The rapidness, the willingness to work with 

State and local, the fact that FEMA was on scene and actually, 

during the event, were on conference calls back and forth with 

them. FEMA was much more visible and approachable in 2007 

than they were the year before. 

38 

Ms. NORTON. It looks like they have demonstrated that, left to 

their own devices, they can come in and do the job if they don’t 

have somebody who may confuse the people on the ground. 

Mr. BOHLMANN. Very well. 

Ms. NORTON. Very important to hear that. When we hear about 

this confusion about the plain language—by the way, that interests 

me because if you want to know my real profession, I am a professor of law. I taught full time as a tenured professor of law at 

Georgetown University, and I teach one course there every year. 

And it comes out of my experience as a Federal official, Chair of 

the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and now as a 

Member of Congress. It is called Lawmaking and Statutory Interpretation, and it is all about how what we do up here lends itself 

to confusion and with those implementing the law, and that the 

courts are right when they try to discern what in the world we are 

talking about, shall it be the text, shall it be the context, and what 

we are going to do about that. In a world where all of the governments have a parliamentary government, you don’t have to go to 

court to find out what happens. And so we use all kinds of examples of unclear language from the Congress. 

Therefore, you see when I looked at the Post-Katrina Act, I 

looked at it with the other hat I have, which is my professorial hat, 

and I will be darned that I don’t think anybody would have to sue 

under this act to find out what we meant. Now, when you see how 

it gets implemented, and indeed that in black and white, contrary 

to what the act says, we have this other guy popping up full of 

muscles, the principal officer, you are left to say, well, what more 

can we say? Dr. Stockton, you can depend on us, on oversight. That 

is why we were able—we nailed ourselves as the first of the Committees—and there are going to be a number of Committees that 

examine this—because we have the primary jurisdiction over 

FEMA. 

But I am wondering, and I would like to hear from all of you who 

would have an opinion on this, whether in light of this confusion— 

I heard what Mr. Bohlmann said and was impressed with it—that 

you leave these guys to themselves, they heard what the PostKatrina Act said, they were there as rain fell, they got it done, it 

sounds like the old FEMA to me therefore, since they had trouble, 

thereby reducing, frankly, our confidence that when they get the 

comments back, they will simply do what we say do as opposed to 

perhaps what their overseers in the Department of Homeland Security say, do you believe that the notion that there shall be a single point of contact in a national emergency or any other emergency should be now further defined in law and written into law? 

We thought we had done it. I am always willing to take responsibility when the Congress has been unclear because that is typical 

of the Congress. Do you think that would help in this case? 

Mr. MANNING. Madame Chair, I believe that there does need to 

be some direction to clarify that. We cannot go into the—we cannot 

go forward with unclear rules and responsibilities at the top of the 

pyramid as shown on the diagram. The principle of unity of command is that every one person works with or reports to one other 

person, and unified command—I have worked in a unified command many times in my professional career, and it does not mean 

39 

an abrogation of single point of contact, leadership over whoever 

you are responsible for. It means different people of different jurisdictions coming together and coming to consensus in the direction 

of an incident. That is very different than having two people with 

equal and conflicting responsibility. As long as that—those roles remain in confusion in a National Response Plan, in a Framework, 

whatever the document is called, there will be opportunity for failure, and that must be clarified going forward. 

Ms. NORTON. We are trying first with the appropriation change, 

which I indicated in my opening remarks. We have asked, and the 

House has already made—defunded this person, at least for these 

purposes. The Department does claim that it needs him for other 

purposes, like foot-and-mouth disease. 

We don’t have any problem with the Secretary having an advisor. 

We have problems with countermanding what we said about what 

to do in a Federal emergency management. 

Mr. Manning, you spoke, I think, forebodingly of how this was 

not an operational plan. I wasn’t sure how much detail you thought 

needed to be in the plan, whether you were talking about amount 

of detail. When you say it is not an operational plan, if that is your 

criticism, what do you mean by that? 

Mr. MANNING. Madame Chair, that really stems from the fact 

that this document does not contain a single frame of reference for 

who is in charge, at what point—at what point does who talk to 

whom. It gives very—it gives many variations on different types of 

emergencies. In some cases it could be this person; in some cases 

it could be these people. 

Ms. NORTON. I don’t understand that. I thought this was an all 

hazards document; there are different people you report to. 

Mr. MANNING. Madame Chair, that is correct, and that is a very 

good point. The Framework reads like an introductory text to disaster response with all its many variations, and that is useful, as 

we have stated. This could be a useful document, but not in place 

of an operational plan. 

We need a single document that states that in all cases, this is 

the chain of command, these are the players involved, this is the 

framework under which we will respond. Those elements exist in 

some part in this document. They exist in the NIMS document. 

They exist throughout the ESFs. What is lacking now is a single 

unifying operational plan. 

What is also lacking is a replacement for the old FRP, the Federal Response Plan. There is no single one document that says how 

the Federal Government will respond in support of a request for assistance from State governments. That is what the FRP was. That 

no longer exists. It is buried within the Framework and supporting 

documents. 

Ms. NORTON. If this is not the plan, and this is the question that 

the ranking Member would have wanted to ask—the ranking Members had to—one of our Members has died, and he has had to go 

to the funeral, so you will have to excuse him that he had to leave 

to go to a funeral of a Member that is taking place in Ohio. Do you 

believe—if this is not the plan, we are trying to find out what is 

the plan? Does FEMA intend, do you think, to replace the National 

Response Plan with 30 scenario-based plans? Mr. Manning talked 

40 

about different plans for—different strokes, I guess, for different 

folks. Is that what you think they are talking about, Mr. Manning. 

Mr. MANNING. Madame Chair, my understanding is in some 

cases that may be correct. It appears in the current draft, the public draft that was released yesterday does call for playbooks and incident-specific annexes and numerous plans based on the 15 scenarios. I can’t more vociferously oppose that idea. It is one thing 

and very recommended for an agency or a level of government to 

have an operational hazard-specific contingency plan for an area. 

If you are the government of New Orleans, to have a plan for a 

hurricane coming ashore is a great idea. When you scale up to the 

level we are talking about, to have 30 different duplicatives with 

variation operational plans, it is a recipe for disaster. One will be 

left to say, well, is this a flood, or is it a tornado, because there 

was a tornado, or is it a wind event? That cannot be allowed to be 

the environment we operate in, Madame Chair. 

Ms. NORTON. Because in a real sense, the preparation is the 

same. For example, in Hurricane Katrina, the big argument among 

the insurance carriers is, you know, we pay for flood, we pay for 

hurricanes; in fact, they were both. When you prepare for—when 

you litigate, there is, at the level where we are dealing, something 

everybody should being doing. And then below that are things that 

in your own jurisdiction you know best. 

Dr. Waugh spoke of something that was very disconcerting about 

there being only three natural disaster scenarios in the plan, no 

flood, no tornado. That is the things I most remember from this 

season, by the way. Could this be because the Department of 

Homeland Security thinks, well, we know how to handle those 

things, and what we need the scenarios to be about is about terrorism since that is what is new. I am now trying to imagine what 

their response might be for this obvious, rather huge discrepancy. 

Three natural disasters and how many terrorist disasters, Dr. 

Waugh? 

Mr. WAUGH. The remaining 12 would be terrorism. 

Ms. NORTON. How do you account for that? How do you think 

they would account for that, and what is the danger. 

Mr. WAUGH. The essential focus was on terrorism. It would be, 

frankly, fairly easy to develop scenarios that are not terrorist-related that would actually have applicability for a chemical attack 

or a variety of other things. But part of the problem—if you are focusing on that as sort of the planning scenarios in all of those 

cases—if it is a terrorist event, the Federal Government is the lead, 

and it really defines the structure that—— 

Ms. NORTON. The Federal Government. Does that mean FEMA, 

or who does that mean? 

Mr. WAUGH. It means DHS. It doesn’t necessarily mean FEMA. 

Ms. NORTON. In fact, that is, of course, if there was to be a fatal 

flaw in the document, it is not having the same answer from them 

as from you. That is where the original sin, it seems to me, would 

lie, and then you go forward from there to the bureaucracy and the 

rest of it. 

Mr. Bohlman, and Mr. Manning for that matter, because Mr. 

Manning was on the Committee, why do you believe that the steering committee and other responders were shut out after this first 

41 

document was submitted? And why does it bear so little resemblance to what you submitted? Why would such changes be made, 

and what—how would you characterize the major differences between what was submitted by the steering committee on the 

ground and what has come up in this final response Framework? 

Mr. MANNING. Madame Chair, I have no knowledge of why the 

draft that was done in consensus between the working groups, the 

writing teams, the steering committee and all of the stakeholder 

input, the 700 plus people that—— 

Ms. NORTON. What were the major changes? 

Mr. MANNING. The NRP, the National Response Plan revision 

that was completed sometime in the spring of 2007 was an operational plan. It was a revision to the National Response Plan. It 

included checklists and oversight and overview documents for elected officials, as was mentioned, that is now the core of the new document, plus a new doctrine. The National Response Plan revision 

that was the product of 6 or 8 months of work was an operational 

plan. I don’t know why. All I know—— 

Ms. NORTON. It is basically—the operational nature of it is not 

so much the content of the plan? 

Mr. MANNING. That is correct, Madame Chair. The draft that 

went away in the spring was an operational plan. It contained consensus. An example is the PFO, the principal Federal official. The 

writing team that was—the working group that was trying to define the roles and responsibilities of all of the officials worked on 

that particular position and how it would be defined in the NRP, 

the new NRP. It was explained and made very clear there was no 

negotiation, that position would not go away. It was not up for discussion. That would remain in the plan. 

So they worked very diligently to come up with an explanation, 

a definition, a description of the role and responsibility of that position, And what they came up with, what was in the draft that was 

completed in the spring, was that position was for informational 

purposes only for the Secretary. It was a representative of the Secretary on the ground for visibility—for the Secretary’s visibility 

into a disaster operation in an affected State; had no line or operational or any authority whatsoever on the ground, simply a representative of the Secretary, like him coming to visit. 

What came out in the plan—in the Framework is a very decidedly operational position that, depending on the situation, may 

have authority; while not having a line authority over the FCO, 

certainly has the inherent authority over the FCO, and certainly 

looks so on the ORG chart. 

Ms. NORTON. The point you make is just a very important one 

in understanding what to do. 

Finally, let me say, one last question, because we are honored to 

have the Chairman of the Full Committee here who is an expert, 

the ultraexpert on all of these issues, and I would like to ask him 

to say a few words, perhaps have some questions. But I do want 

to make sure I know how to proceed from here. 

We are going to get questions and answers. You heard me ask 

FEMA if they need more time to respond. We are going to give it 

to them. They said yes. I am not trying to make work for anybody, 

but it occurred to me that they didn’t say anything about going 

42 

back to the steering committee to assure them that they had taken 

into account or to hear further from them. 

Do you think in addition to the 30-day or more response period 

that the steering committee should be reconvened, the steering 

committee consisting of any State and local officials, so that they 

can, in fact, have some concerted input into the final document? 

Mr. MANNING. Madame Chair, the steering committee is still in 

effect as far as I am aware. We do have weekly conference calls. 

There was one this morning while this hearing was being conducted. The steering committee is primarily the Federal interagency. There are only three State and local government representatives out of the membership, And my understanding is that 

through this last 30 to almost 60 days, the draft that went out on 

the street was being circulated through the Federal interagency, 

through the Federal members of the steering committee. 

Ms. NORTON. Wait a minute. Let me understand this. How many 

members were on the steering committee? 

Mr. MANNING. Madame Chair, I actually do not know the total 

membership of the steering committee. It is primarily the Federal 

interagency. 

Ms. NORTON. It is primarily Federal officials. Approximately how 

many? 

Mr. MANNING. I would say approximately 15 to 20. 

Ms. NORTON. Approximately 15, about three State and local officials, and you are saying that the Federal members of the steering 

committee continue to be involved, but not the State and local 

members of the steering committee? 

Mr. MANNING. Madame Chair, I am sorry, let me give a little 

more explanation on that. The members of the steering committee 

were not involved in the period between the end of May and July 

when the new draft came out on the streets. The Federal—— 

Ms. NORTON. Federal and local members? 

Mr. MANNING. That is correct, Madame Chair. 

For the last 30 days, since it was released in July through the 

month of August, it was undergoing—the Framework draft was undergoing a review-and-comment period through the Federal interagency, the agencies being led by their member representatives to 

the steering committee. It was not provided to State and local governments on the steering committee—well, it was provided to the— 

I received a copy in July, Madame Chair, but not for dissemination 

to the membership of the National Emergency Management Association or to the Governors or to anybody else. It was simply for 

my personal review. 

Ms. NORTON. And not also as a member of the steering committee, for the steering committee to collectively look at this document you then received? 

Mr. MANNING. Madame Chair, I personally was given a copy and 

asked for my personal comments inside of that period. The Federal 

agencies were given agency copies, for the agencies to give formal 

comment, I believe, a large number of those comments. It was not 

provided to the International Association of Emergency Managers, 

to the National Emergency Management Association for all of the 

members and mayors and representatives to comment inside that 

period. 

43 

Ms. NORTON. They would say that is for the comment period. 

The reason I ask about the steering committee is because these 

were the original drafters of the plan, and so if you are going to 

go back to anybody, it does seem to me that you—it might be appropriate to go back to the steering committee—after all, they gave 

you something—if only as a matter of respect, to say, We are giving 

you back something different, and maybe you want to have something to say about it. 

Mr. MANNING. Madame Chair, at this point it appears those decisions are made internally at DHS headquarters, and the steering 

committee is on occasion being briefed. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, this has been really very forthright 

and important testimony. We heard first from the Department, and 

we made every attempt to be fair to the Department by letting the 

Department know in advance. The crux of the comments that were 

submitted by these witnesses, they were very seriously at odds 

with the Framework, and we now heard from the members, the experts, too, from State government who represent those from State 

and local government, and two outside experts. You, Mr. Chairman, are the ultimate inside expert, and I would like to ask you 

to make such comments that you have or ask such questions as you 

may bring. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Madame Chair, for those compliments. But you have been conducting a rigorous and thorough 

hearing and inquiry into the development of the National Response 

Framework Plan, and I followed a good bit of it upstairs when I 

was in my office with one after another group of constituents and 

other—including a visiting delegation from France, a mayor—two 

mayors of French cities who are here to understand how our system of government works compared to the parliamentary system of 

government. And I turned on the television to say, Here is how our 

system of government works. We have a well-informed Committee, 

Subcommittee Chair who knows the subject matter and is proceeding like an inquest, cross examination that has been withering, 

and they listened, and I translated with some great interest on 

their part. 

But what you have been pursuing here is the origin, evolution, 

development of this National Response Plan, and what appears to 

me is that there is a plan developed by the group, the Commission, 

that then was commandeered by Homeland Security and fashioned 

into a response Framework draft that apparently you did not see 

after it left your hands; is that correct? Or had little input once it 

left—— 

Mr. MANNING. Mr. Chairman, that is essentially correct. The 

working groups, the writing teams and the steering committee 

came to a consensus document that went through public comment 

within the community, and that document then was reframed, redrafted by the Department of Homeland Security in a separate 

process without the visibility of any of those stakeholders into this 

new document. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. It doesn’t appear to have the structure of a plan, 

laying out very—in very specific ways how response to disasters 

will occur. And one thing that caught my eye as I read through this 

previously was that these gratuitous commentaries, resilient comVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:41 Apr 28, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\37917 JASON
44 

munities begin with prepared individuals and families, that could 

have been written in the sixth grade. I just don’t understand where 

this sort of thing comes from. 

In the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, simply because that is the most recent event, the response was very well 

structured because the mayor took advantage 4 years ago of the 

Advance Preparation for Disaster Initiative that James Lee Witt 

had established while he was at FEMA. The community engaged 

in planning exercises and then in a mock disaster response, bringing together not only the first responders of Minneapolis, but those 

of St. Paul and the surrounding local jurisdictions, mobilizing so 

that each one knew what its role was to be. And then they did a 

warm-up a year ago just to revisit the response plan. They were 

prepared. They were ready to move because they had—they had 

engaged in this exercise. 

How many communities under this plan are going to be counseled, advised and supported in undertaking this kind of response? 

Is there a structure within this Framework to do that? 

Mr. BOHLMANN. I would like to try to comment on that. I believe 

from what I have seen in the basic draft document that we saw on 

July 27th, and even the one that came out yesterday, which I 

quickly looked at last evening, that does not have that in it. But 

the playbooks and the reference materials on the other Web site 

that they talk about may provide more of that. 

However, that type of response and planning at the local level is 

what the local emergency managers do on a daily basis, and we 

would use this Federal plan as the overarching, guiding plan to do 

that local planning and exercising and training that you refer to 

which is so critical. And the response you saw in the Minneapolis 

area is the response that we all work daily to encourage in our 

local communities and is so critical to do that. 

This is a document that we need to look at for the larger picture 

and currently, what we saw on the 27th of July, does not provide 

that. And I cannot really go into great detail on the playbooks and 

other that are going to be on the Web site. Maybe my counterpart 

Mr. Manning would care to comment more. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Other Members wish to comment. 

That is very disturbing. The success of any response mechanism 

begins at the community level and should. And the experience of 

Katrina and of other incidents and on this particular day, recalling 

September 11, there were so many lessons that we were to have 

learned and to have applied, and this document just does not seem 

to apply those lessons learned, and that to me is troubling. 

Mr. BOHLMANN. Well, I would like to add there are other avenues that FEMA does provide, and they are excellent avenues, and 

one of the key ones is the Emergency Management Institute in Emmitsburg where that high level of training is provided by FEMA on 

a regular basis, and another is from universities such as Dr. 

Waugh, Dr. Stockton here today that are offering courses at all levels today to get professional emergency managers and public officials trained. But, again, I will go back to we still need that overarching document to bring that all together. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. It appears to me also there is a very heavy reliance in this document on response to what we might call in other 

45 

terms a terrorist attack. I have said that—and former Chairman 

Don Young and I, when we were laboring over the proposal to create a Department of Homeland Security, would remove FEMA from 

its position, the Coast Guard, throw these and many others into 

this new amalgam— that our terrorism in the heartland is fire, 

flood and blizzards, whiteouts. On the northern border, the prospect of Canadians trying to sling their way across the border is remote. It is Americans who are invading Canada for their 

healthcare system. 

What we need is a plan that really prepares local governments 

to cope with an event that is beyond their local capacity to manage. 

And I just have a feeling that this national response architecture 

is a subtitle, a response to terrorism, and not in preparation for 

and response to those tragedies that strike us day to day and 

which will occur with greater frequency in this year of global climate change. 

You are all nodding yes. 

Mr. MANNING. Mr. Chairman, I think you bring up a very important point in that in the past, when FEMA was independent, but 

that notwithstanding, we had disparate plans for disparate events. 

We had the Federal Response Plan for general, large emergencies. 

There was the CONPLAN that dealt with how the agencies would 

come together if it was terrorism to do the investigatory piece. The 

directive that the Department of Homeland Security combine these 

plans into a National Response Plan was really one to—a directive 

to unify—to take to the final step the all-hazard planning concepts; 

that it doesn’t really matter what caused it, the response is going 

to be the same. There may be investigatory pieces, there may be 

mitigation pieces later, there may be other aspects to it, but the response will be primarily the same. 

What we have seen out of the NRP, the first version, the second 

version that was in effect during Katrina, and then the third draft 

even, and certainly in the Framework, is that that differentiation 

has not been eliminated; it has almost been cemented, it has almost been institutionalized to say that the idea, for example, that 

you need a PFO and an FCO because sometimes there won’t a Stafford Act declaration, so you won’t need an FCO, so we are always 

going to have a PFO. I think what is an important tenet that needs 

to be taken into account when we are drafting our national response plans is that we need to find a way to do it and do it that 

way and not—without regard for the cause, or the effect, or any of 

the other pieces. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. I think that is exactly what I hear 

from local fire chiefs, from volunteer fire departments, from local 

police, sheriffs’ departments. They are looking for, as you described 

it, a cohesive, coordinated response and for support, volunteer fire 

departments, for example. We had a tragedy, and I had this discussion with Mr. Paulson shortly afterward, in April of this year. 

Campers in the wilderness area, the Bounty Waters Canoe Area, 

the wilderness, had a campfire going, and they were burning trash, 

which they shouldn’t have been doing, and it was in a time of year 

where fires were discouraged by the Forest Service, very dry. They 

left the campsite and the campfire burning. Wind came up, blew 

46 

it into the nearby brush and then the woods, and a fire was underway, a huge forest fire. 

So the volunteer fire department arrived with their pumper 

truck, and it didn’t work. They had applied to FEMA 2 years consecutively for a grant to buy a new pumper truck. It could have 

snuffed that fire right out at the start. They were turned down because they didn’t show a connection between their pumper truck 

request and Homeland Security. 

That is an outrage, and that is where a document like this falls 

apart. If it doesn’t recognize that these day-to-day occurrences— 

and that fire eventually swept 75,000 acres—then it is not doing 

its job, and it is going to be our responsibility to make sure that 

we turn this document around. 

Thank you very much for your contributions. It has been—your 

insights have been very beneficial. 

And thank you, Madame Chair, for your grinding inquisition 

here. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. We did believe 

that we had to be very clear to FEMA and to the Department of 

Homeland Security that this was an oversight hearing in the nature of a critique, and that is why we had expert witnesses in the 

first place. The whole purpose of a critique is to get improvement, 

and that is what, given what is at stake, we are going to demand— 

we are going to demand with more hearings. 

I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, your remarks focusing on the cohesive nature of the response. The Framework must contemplate cohesive nature to all hazards, as the witnesses have also reinforced, 

and that FEMA is who Congress said and who the public believes 

has that responsibility, and if it doesn’t, then everybody is in confusion. 

And Dr. Waugh, Mr. Chairman, made a point that we did not in 

this hearing have need to question about, but it is very important 

in light of the all-hazards response. He talked about allowing for 

innovations and flexibility at the local levels. That is what they are 

there for, to see whether or not to apply all hazards to a hurricane, 

to a tornado. There is a general notion of what everybody should 

be able to do. Beyond that, the Federal Government wouldn’t dare 

to tell you what to do, because only you know what to do on the 

ground. You have done it in Maine on the ground for generations. 

But we are here to provide guidance in case it is a flood or in case 

it is a terrorist attack. These are the fundamentals. These are the 

operational fundamentals as Mr. Manning would have it. 

So, Mr. Chairman, the heart of what we have heard today is that 

there are still two people on the ground, and that those two people 

continue to render confusion in the field. That is all we needed to 

hear. None of us has—none of the witnesses has said that the Secretary should not have his own man; however, the statute made 

clear who our man is, Mr. Chairman, when it comes to a Federal 

emergency, and that was supposed to be FEMA, and we have heard 

no testimony that documented the notion that FEMA is the primary person. 

In fact, what we are left with are three flaws, all of which individually and together, it seems to me, could be called fatal. One is 

the redundancy of these officers, the Secretary’s man, our man— 

47 

each of those may be women at any point in time—and who is in 

charge on the ground; secondly, the bureaucracy that breeds—and 

FEMA—and DHS’s reach-down continually into FEMA’s expertise, 

although DHS has no specific Federal management expertise. It 

has across-the-board oversight, none of the specific management 

expertise that is very hard to come by—I asked Mr. Bohlmann who 

is a certified Federal management officer. 

And the third was—and this, of course, is ominous to hear—the 

cutoff to quick advice to the President of the United States because 

of the waving line—we are not sure where it goes between FEMA 

and the President—indicated whether this was—asked whether 

this was structural; given what we have done leaving FEMA in 

there, what we thought we should do about it, whether to strengthen the legislation; whether to do what we have done with the Federal officer and the principal officer and the appropriation. 

But I tell you one thing, gentlemen, we are not going to sit here 

and do nothing. That is why we had this hearing on September the 

11th. That is why we asked you for your candid critique. That is 

why, on the basis of your critique, I have announced today that we 

will be asking the GAO for its critique of this report and of what 

you have had to say about this report. 

The Subcommittee cannot thank you enough for the time, the effort, the great thought on this you put into your own critique of 

this extraordinarily important document to the security of the 

United States of America. Thank you, and this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:00 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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