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80–653 PDF 2003

S. HRG. 107–568

FEMA’S RESPONSE TO THE

SEPTEMBER 11TH ATTACKS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

ON

EFFECTIVENESS OF THE RESPONSE BY THE FEDERAL EMERGENCY

MANAGEMENT AGENCY TO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS ON THE WORLD

TRADE CENTER IN NEW YORK CITY AND THE PENTAGON

OCTOBER 16, 2001

Printed for the use of the Committee on Environment and Public Works

(
(II)

COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

JAMES M. JEFFORDS, Vermont, Chairman

MAX BAUCUS, Montana

HARRY REID, Nevada

BOB GRAHAM, Florida

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut

BARBARA BOXER, California

RON WYDEN, Oregon

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York

JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey

BOB SMITH, New Hampshire

JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia

JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma

CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

MICHAEL D. CRAPO, Idaho

LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico

KEN CONNOLLY, Majority Staff Director

DAVE CONOVER, Minority Staff Director
(III)

CONTENTS

OCTOBER 16, 2001

OPENING STATEMENTS

Page

Bond, Hon. Christopher S., U.S. Senator from the State of Missouri ................. 43

Carper, Hon. Thomas R., U.S. Senator from the State of Delaware ................... 19

Clinton, Hon. Hillary Rodham, U.S. Senator from the State of New York ........ 12

Corzine, Hon. Jon S., U.S. Senator from the State of New Jersey ...................... 17

Jeffords, Hon. James M., U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont .................... 1

Smith, Hon. Bob, U.S. Senator from the State of New Hampshire ..................... 2

Voinovich, Hon. George V., U.S. Senator from the State of Ohio ........................ 4

Warner, Hon. John W., U.S. Senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia ....... 21

WITNESSES

Allbaugh, Hon. Joseph, Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency ..... 7

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 44

Hessinger, Robert, Logistics section manager, Ohio Task Force One; accompanied by Squad Officer Michael Kenney .......................................................... 28

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 55

Metzinger, Jeffrey L., fire captain, Sacramento, CA Metropolitan Fire District;

member, FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Team ............................................. 25

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

Plaugher, Edward P., chief, Arlington County, VA Fire Department ................. 23

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 48

(1)

FEMA’S RESPONSE TO THE

SEPTEMBER 11TH ATTACKS

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2001

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS, Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m. in room 406,

Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. James M. Jeffords, (chairman

of the committee) presiding.

Present: Senators Jeffords, Clinton, Smith, Corzine, Voinovich,

Carper, and Warner.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES M. JEFFORDS,

U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF VERMONT

Senator JEFFORDS. Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone in attendance here today. I would especially like to welcome

Director Allbaugh and the other witnesses that we will be hearing

from.

We are here this morning to discuss the emergency response to

the horrible events of September 11, to learn from these experiences and to offer the help of the Committee on Environment and

Public Works in preparing future relief efforts.

I visited both the Pentagon and World Trade Center shortly after

the tragic events of September 11, another day that will sadly live

in infamy. The devastation I witnessed was incredible and difficult

to put into words. Thousands of people lost their lives due to the

cruel and cunning acts of an evil perpetrated by a few. The victims

of these attacks were men, women and children, people with well

laid-out plans for pleasant and prosperous futures.

At these two disaster sites, I also saw the incredible courage and

the dedication of firefighters, urban search and rescuers and other

emergency personnel responding to the disaster. People from

Vermont, Ohio, Virginia and California and many points in between came to the rescue. I witnessed the tireless efforts of men

and women of FEMA working hard to coordinate the relief effort.

Although I left both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center

with a heavy heart, I also left with a profound sense of gratitude

for the gallant efforts of countless rescuers and volunteers who tirelessly and mostly anonymously worked in places reserved only for

the Ground Zero heroes.

In the month following the attack, I have spoken to many people,

Vermonters and others, about the attack. They have all expressed

profound sadness of our Nation’s great loss. But they have also imbued me with a feeling that freedom will prevail, that good will tri-
2

umph over evil, and that these horrible attacks cannot break our

resolve to stand together as free Americans.

Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘‘Freedom is the last, best hope on

Earth.’’ Terrorists may have destroyed these buildings, but they

cannot destroy the hope that freedom provides. Today we assemble

to commend the efforts of the Federal Emergency Management

Agency in responding to this disaster. We assemble to commend

the work of emergency responders who gave so much of themselves

in serving others. We assemble to hear what remains to be done

in the aftermath of these sad events.

To this end, the committee is also considering several legislative

proposals to help FEMA better respond to this disaster and any future incidents. Additionally, in the last few weeks, this committee

has received security-related briefing from all the Federal agencies

we oversee, including the Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the

Department of Transportation and the General Services Administration and others. The most important message I have taken from

these meetings is that the Federal Government is working around

the clock to protect our Nation.

These briefings have also resulted in the request for additional

authority from Congress. I want to put my colleagues on notice

that in the coming weeks, the Environment and Public Works Committee will be putting together a legislative package to deal with

the security needs of the Nation. This package will include proposals put forth by the agencies we oversee, of this committee, and

the recommendations given to me by the members of the committee.

Finally, I’d like to address Mr. Allbaugh and the many of those

who responded directly to the Pentagon and World Trade Center

attacks. I cannot possibly understand how difficult it must have

been to have personally toiled in this devastation and trauma. As

a Nation, we need to heal. Our thoughts go first to the victims and

the families and those attacks.

But we must not forget that first responders are human. Firefighters, search and rescue personnel and other members of the

emergency response community faced extreme stress from these

traumatic events. Coping with the intense feelings and shock will

take time. I hope all the emergency response personnel will take

this time and look for support when needed and look to us.

I want you to know how proud all of us are for the work that

you have done. I look forward to the hearing and the testimony of

the witnesses.

I now turn to my good friend, Senator Smith.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BOB SMITH, U.S. SENATOR

FROM THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

Senator SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you

for holding the hearing. Thank you, Mr. Allbaugh, and all the witnesses, for being here today. Sitting here this morning, I’m reminded of the Thomas Paine quote: ‘‘These are the times that try

men’s souls.’’ The sunshine patriots will shrink from the service of

their country, but I see no sunshine patriots here.
3

Even as we speak, part of the Senate office building next door

is closed down as they check air vents and other office spaces for

anthrax. Staff cannot use their offices. I never dreamed that we

would ever face anything like this.

I want to say a very special welcome to all of you for being here.

Director Allbaugh, I don’t know if you recall, but before your confirmation you came in to my office and we talked about how we

need to focus on terrorism and preparedness, and disaster response. Little did you know how quickly you were going to be baptized in that.

I welcome you here today and look forward to discussing your

role in response to September 11. From this Senator’s perspective,

you have done a fantastic job, all of you. We want to heap the

praise on you that you deserve, but also hear from you about what

happened.

I want to thank all of your staff and the volunteers that fall

under the FEMA umbrella for the tireless work that they’ve done

in the past several weeks. I must say, as I just said to you privately, I’ve never been a Yankees fan, but last night, seeing

Giuliani sit in the stands and watching the Yankees win that game

and come back from three runs back, it was kind of a good feeling.

I’m still not a Yankees fan. Seeing Jeter dive into the stands to

catch a ball to save a ball game was very interesting.

I spoke with so many of you when I was in New York and also

at the Pentagon a few days after the attack. I talked with the firemen, the policemen, the rescue workers and search and rescue

teams. You’re the embodiment of professionalism and patriotism

and kindness and emotion. I could not help but be moved as we

were there, I think 6 days after September 11, I saw the firemen

and the rescue workers coming out of those ruins, with the emotion

showing on their faces, showing the disappointment of not finding

anybody alive. It was truly an experience that I’ll never forget.

Mr. Chairman, we have here today the chief of the Arlington

County Fire Department. He played a vital role in responding to

the attack at the Pentagon. Two members of the search and rescue

teams that were called upon by FEMA to respond to the World

Trade Center disaster are other witnesses. The three of you do not

just represent your individual units; but you represent every single

man and woman all over America and all emergency personnel for

the tremendous job you did at both the Pentagon and the World

Trade Center. You responded from all over the Nation.

Who and what you represent is the best tradition that this Nation has to offer. We often think of the military as the best of our

American spirit, but in both deeds and spirit, you have joined those

honored ranks. I know I embarrass you when I say it, but you’re

heroes, every one of you. That term is not used too often these

days, sometimes, maybe it’s not used often enough.

I remember as a kid in grade school I thought about being a fireman or a policeman. If I had chosen that route, I certainly could

never be prouder than I am of all of you today. You are the embodiment of the American belief, which is that gift which makes this

Nation so different from all the others. As President Bush said so

well the other day, ‘‘That spirit will never break.’’ We’re seeing the

change in people’s attitudes, we’re not represented by fallen build-
4

ings. The ‘‘can do’’ spirit is America, and you made us proud. Mr.

Allbaugh, you did as well.

So we’re here this morning not only to listen to how you responded to the attacks, but just as important, to publicly thank you

on behalf of the U.S. Senate, and on behalf of the people of this

Nation. We wish to extend our deepest sympathies for the loss of

your brothers and sisters who were on the scene first and who gave

their lives in an attempt to save others. Remarkable heroism.

I read your testimony, and will speak to you about it, Captain

Metzinger. I’m talking about your daily chronicle. It is such a tremendous story. Your words vividly brought back my own memories

of what I saw in New York. When I was there—‘‘surreal’’—you

used that term—the expanse of this disaster is difficult to comprehend. I was touched by the business card that you found, wondering whether that man had survived. I hope he did, but I don’t

know if you know or we’ll ever know.

Thank you all for being here. Thanks for the tremendous job that

you did, are doing, and continue to do in the future.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding the hearing.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you.

Senator Voinovich.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE V. VOINOVICH,

U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF OHIO

Senator VOINOVICH. Mr. Chairman, first of all, I’d like to thank

you for holding this hearing today. Also, thank you for the time

and effort that you have put in as chairman of this committee to

carry out our responsibilities in terms of FEMA. I know that you

have really given it everything that you have, and I want to thank

you publicly for that.

I’d like to welcome Joe Allbaugh today.

Mr. ALLBAUGH. Thank you, sir.

Senator VOINOVICH. I’ve already thanked you in writing, Joe, for

the outstanding job that you’ve done in your public appearances in

comforting and reassuring countless persons in this country. You

are working to keep things under control and respond to the emergency situations that you encounter. I know that you’d be the first

one to admit that one of the nice things that happened to you is

that you inherited a pretty good team from James Lee Witt. I know

one of my concerns when you came on board was that fires, tornadoes, disasters don’t wait for confirmation hearings. They occur. I

don’t think you ever had any idea that you’d be encountering what

you have during the last month or so.

I also know that the other agencies of government have been cooperative. I was impressed, for example, that some of the folks I

met up in New York were from the Department of Energy, and

that the Administration just really pulled together in a unique way

to respond to our crisis.

In addition to that, I’ve been impressed, and I know you’ve been

impressed with the outstanding emergency response teams that we

have in this country. I know as a former mayor and governor, I

wondered whether or not, if something like this happened, whether

they had the ability to respond. I think they showed us and the

country how good they really are.
5

I’m really pleased that one of the witnesses we have here today

is Robert Hessinger, from the Ohio Task Force that responded to

the attack in New York. One of the things that impressed me, Mr.

Chairman, when we went to the Pentagon and met with Chief

Plaugher, he talked about the emergency response teams from this

region that were there, right on the ball.

I suspected, Chief, that it would have been the Federal Government handling Pentagon protection, and found out it was Arlington

and Prince George’s County and Fairfax that were there, on the

ball. It was their teams, local government teams, that were responding. I found somebody from Nebraska, from an emergency response team, he was bragging about the Ohio team was up in New

York. I had no idea.

I just want to say that from my perspective, how proud I really

am of what FEMA did, but also the tremendous infrastructure

today that we have in this country to deal with crises like we’ve

had here in Washington and New York.

The real question that I’ve got this morning, and I think we want

to find out, is just what you had in terms of resources, were they

adequate, where are you today and how can we improve upon the

situation? What can we do to help you get the job done? I’m so

pleased that the chairman, in his remarks, said that we want to

respond to the Administration’s needs.

One of my real concerns, Mr. Chairman, is that all of us in our

zeal to be helpful are coming up with all kinds of administrative

models that we try to superimpose our ideas on the Administration.

The Administration is up to here in rattlesnakes and with the challenges that they have.

It seems to me that one of the most important things that the

Congress can do is to wait for the Administration to come back to

us with their recommendations on how they think they can best get

the job done and how we can help them to get that job done. The

last thing I would want, if I were the President of the United

States, is to have my legislative body tell me what structure to follow and how I was going to go about doing the job. I’m very interested in hearing your thoughts on that today, Joe. I’ll be interested

to see from the folks on the local level if they’re satisfied with the

organization and routines that we have in place, and to ask their

ideas about how we can help them to do a better job.

Last, but not least, I want to join the ranking member and the

chairman of this committee in thanking all of you for your service

to your country. All of us were so proud of the way you responded,

and all of us cannot help but grieve along with the families of your

brothers and sisters who gave their lives for their fellow man.

One of the things that I always did as mayor and governor is,

I was there to swear in our police and our firemen and our State

troopers. I did it because I wanted to remind the people of the

great service and sacrifice of our people in uniform. Sometimes, you

are taken for granted, and I think that today this Nation understands how really important you are. You were on the front lines

and in my opinion, to give witness to the second great commandment, that is, love of fellow man. Thank you for your service.

[The prepared statement of Hon. George V. Voinovich follows:]
6

STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE

OF OHIO

Good morning, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to thank you for holding this important hearing on FEMA’s response

to the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on September

11.

I would like to welcome Joe Allbaugh to today’s hearing. I’ve already thanked Joe

in writing for the outstanding job he’s doing. His public appearances were and are

comforting and reassuring to countless persons. Reassurance is something that the

American public needs right now, and Joe, you are just a calming influence. That’s something that this Nation is going to need in the months ahead.

I’m sure that Joe would agree that FEMA’s ability to respond to a crisis is because he inherited a great team from James Lee Witt. Director Witt is a wonderful

man, and in my view, one of the finest officials in the Clinton Administration. He

had a wonderful ability to pull together the right elements from all over to respond

to crises as they arose.

Joe, you’ve picked up some very good emergency response teams across the country that you are able to call upon in times of emergency.

Today, we have one of those teams represented here by Robert Hessinger, of Ohio

Task Force One. As my colleagues know, Ohio Task Force One responded to the attack in New York City.

Ohio Task Force One is a designated FEMA emergency response team. It is made

up of volunteers from fire departments across Ohio and is coordinated out of Wright

Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton.

Mr. Hessinger is the Logistics Chief for Ohio Task Force One and in his regular

job, is a firefighter/paramedic with the Kettering Ohio Fire Department. He is accompanied today by Mike Kenney, a Captain with the Dayton Ohio Fire Department

and also a member of Ohio Task Force One.

Seventy-two members of Ohio Task Force One were mobilized just hours after the

attack on the World Trade Center on September 11 and were among the first outof-State FEMA teams to respond to ‘‘Ground Zero.’’

On the Friday following the attack on our Nation, I visited the Pentagon, along

with Chairman Jeffords, to observe first-hand FEMA’s response to this attack.

I should not have been surprised that it was the local fire departments from Arlington, Fairfax and Prince George’s County that were on the scene first. As a

former Mayor and Governor, I know first-hand that these are the men and women

who are our Nation’s first line of defense in a crisis.

One of the first people I met on my tour with Chairman Jeffords was Chief Ed

Plaugher of the Arlington County Fire Department. Chief, I’m glad that you are

here today.

I must say that we were impressed with the Arlington Fire Department, which

was one of the first on the scene to fight the fire and help rescue wounded personnel.

In addition, we witnessed first-hand the work conducted by FEMA employees

those first few days following the attack. Director Allbaugh should be very proud

of their dedication.

The following week, I toured the World Trade Center site with 40 of my Senate

colleagues. The bravery, professionalism, and sacrifice of the men and women of the

New York Fire Department, New York Police Department and other emergency

workers is an inspiration to us all. These men and women are true heroes in every

sense of the word.

I am also proud of the men and women of Ohio Task Force One, who traveled

to New York without hesitation to offer their expertise and assistance to the New

York rescue workers.

From my observations, I think the men and women of FEMA have done an outstanding job in the immediate response to these attacks and they are continuing to

provide vital assistance in both New York City and Arlington.

The hearing today is to find out from Mr. Allbaugh and our other witnesses as

to how they think they did (and are doing), what resources that they didn’t have

that they should have had, and how they think they’ll be able to respond to crises

in the future.

I remember when Director Allbaugh came to see me prior to his confirmation, I

asked him about the ‘‘human capital crisis,’’ if he had the people to get the job done.

He said he felt comfortable with the people he had, but Joe, the one question that

I want to ask you is: what more do we need to do to help you do a better job? To

the others, what I’ll want to know is: what do we need to do to enhance our readiness to handle traditional emergencies and the unexpected crises?
7

I thank Director Allbaugh and our witnesses for taking the time to be here today,

this is an important topic and an important hearing. I also want to again commend

the emergency services personnel of New York, Pennsylvania, northern Virginia and

the District of Columbia and all those who came to assist from across the Nation.

They are true heros and our Nation owes them a debt of gratitude.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you, Senator.

I would point out, in case you’re wondering where the rest of the

committee is, we’re having a briefing on the events of yesterday,

let’s leave it at that.

Mr. Allbaugh, Director, please proceed.

STATEMENT OF JOE M. ALLBAUGH, DIRECTOR,

FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY

Mr. ALLBAUGH. Than you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Smith, Senator Voinovich. I appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning. I am always humbled and honored to come before this committee.

Actually, I’ll be brief in my remarks because I know you have

several questions. I’d just like to begin by telling you that these

folks sitting on the front row before you are the true heroes of everyday American life. They represent heroes, many men and

women who put their lives on the line, whom we often take for

granted, as Senator Voinovich said. They’re always first in line for

budget cuts and last in line for recognition. I think, as a result of

September 11, that maybe these brave men and women will be due

the admiration that they so richly deserve, putting their lives on

the line every minute of every day all across this country.

Five weeks ago this morning, our world was transformed. At that

time, President Bush told me to make sure that the Federal Government would provide whatever assistance was needed in New

York, Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon. That mission is still a

work in progress, but I can assure you and the American public

that FEMA’s response was swift and comprehensive and our commitment of continued support is unwavering.

Since September 11, I’ve spent many days at Ground Zero in

New York City. I visited the site in Pennsylvania, was inside the

Pentagon the Saturday after the event. Those places are where the

true heroes are—those who were in their offices at work, grabbing

a cup of coffee, on an airplane; and those who were first to respond

to the tragic events—the firefighters, the police officers, the emergency medical technicians.

All are gone now, but I can assure you they’re not forgotten. Our

prayers are still with those folks and their families. Working handin-hand with Governor Pataki, Mayor Giuliani, Fire Commissioner

Tommy VonEssen and Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and

many others, we’ve begun the painful process of recovery.

Beginning on September 11, FEMA deployed 26 of our 28 national urban search and rescue teams. Twenty-one went to New

York, ultimately, the last one checking out of New York a week ago

this last Sunday. Five went to northern Virginia at the Pentagon

site. The New York City Office of Emergency Management’s Task

Force was among the first responders at the World Trade Center.

Its leader, Chief Ray Downey, a person I was lucky to know, a

great partner of FEMA, was on the scene. Tragically, he and his

team never made it out.
8

I watched our rescue teams join New York City’s finest and Virginia’s finest, working shoulder to shoulder around the clock to find

their brothers and sisters and fellow citizens. These sites are truly

hallowed ground. Now our rescue teams have gone home and we

are fully engaged in the recovery process. We have millions of tons

of debris still to be moved out of New York City. It will take

months. As of this morning, we’ve only moved out 300 million tons.

It doesn’t sound like very much compared to what we have to

move.

Before and since the President signed the disaster declarations

for Pennsylvania, for New Jersey, for Virginia and New York,

FEMA activated the Federal response plan. To your point, Senator

Voinovich, I think what we planned to do in this event worked just

like it was supposed to, according to the Federal response plan.

We activated our emergency operations center here and in our 10

regions. We established disaster field offices in Virginia, New York

and New Jersey and declared these disasters with public assistance

at 100 percent for eligible cost. Our biggest concern currently is to

make sure that the right assistance is getting to the right people.

Many people need counseling; they will need counseling for a long

time to come. Many qualify for individual assistance. I want to

make sure that those people are helped.

In addition, we are there to help States and local governments

with their public assistance needs, such as their public buildings,

roads, streets, and emergency protective measures, making sure

that these men and women are reimbursed for their time, material,

their equipment in proper fashion.

In the past month, thousands of Federal employees have been

working day and night at our disaster field offices at these three

sites. Today we still have 1,300 FEMA employees deployed to New

York City. Our job is not finished, but we will see it through to the

end.

In the meantime, we’re currently looking at all aspects of our disaster response in those three States to determine the lessons

learned to be better prepared for the future. We’re also working

with President Bush and his Administration on any new legislative

needs. As we continue to move forward with the recovery, I will let

you know promptly if there is any new need for authorities.

Let me conclude on a personal note, if you don’t mind. I attended

about 10 days ago and spoke at the funeral of Captain Terry Haddon in New York City. Two weeks prior to that, on August 29, I

had the fortune to sit down with his coworkers at Rescue One on

43rd Street in New York City to have a lunch with those individuals. Chief Ray Downey was there, with 13 or 14 of us around the

table. We had a great time.

I try to stop in our country’s firehouses every opportunity that

I’m out on the road. It is amazing what I’m able to learn, what

their needs are, what their wishes, wants, hopes. They are a true

family in those firehouses all across the country. In that short 11⁄2- hour, I became, I thought, a small part of their family.

The night before Terry’s funeral, I attended a wake in New York

City. His wife Beth, who subsequently found out that she was pregnant with their first child after September 11—Terry never knew—

handed me a small card. On one side it was a short life history of
9

Terry. On the back part of the card was the Fireman’s Prayer. I’d

like to close just with the last sentence of that prayer, because I

think it says so much about men and women who wear the uniform

of our country’s military. It says so much about the firemen and

the firewomen and the police officers and the emergency responders and all those individuals who lost their lives on September 11.

It goes like this: ‘‘If, according to my fate, I am to lose my life,

please bless with Your protecting hand my family, friends and

wife.’’ For Terry Haddon, Ray Downey, Joey Angelini, Dennis

Mohica and thousands of other souls that were lost on that fateful

day, I hope that those of us still living and thriving can help provide that protecting hand to all the families and loved ones.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for this opportunity and I know you

have a lot of questions. But I do appreciate the opportunity to be

here this morning.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you very much for your very moving

story. All of us want to join you in doing what we can. One thing

I would like to try and find out is to learn what we can do to help

the families have closure on the events, and yet at the same time,

recognize that their loved ones died for a cause of freedom. We

should recognize that.

However, we have some business to get to. As you know, this

committee sent a letter to the White House shortly after the September 11th attacks, pledging our support for FEMA’s disaster relief efforts. Today I again say that we are willing to work with

FEMA to assist the disaster relief efforts. To date, have you identified any areas where additional legislation of authority is needed

to aid in these efforts?

Mr. ALLBAUGH. Mr. Chairman, I don’t think there are any immediate needs of additional authority for FEMA. Our principal response is to facilitate and coordinate those needs that local entities

and State entities need when a disaster arises. I would like to say

that at all three sites, I’m proud of the way FEMA responded to

these disasters, approaching it with the right attitude. In that, as

the Chief can tell you, in Virginia, he was in charge of that site.

In New York City, Commissioner Tommy VonEssen and Police

Commissioner Kerik were and still are in charge of those sites. We

brought all the Federal assets that we possibly could to assist

them.

In New York City alone, we had something like 18 Federal agencies at our disaster field office. At no time have I ever experienced

an unwillingness on the part of any individual that represented

any Federal agency to not be of assistance. I think you will hear

this morning from these gentleman ways in which we can possibly

improve parts of our urban search and rescue efforts.

I’m not necessarily sure that we need more teams, quite frankly,

but we need to expand their capabilities. Debris removal is an awesome effort in New York City. It will probably cost us, and these

are guesstimates, between $7 billion and $10 billion just to clean

up the site.

We have the capability, we have the authorities right now in

place for us to do our job. Our disaster field office is open around

the clock. We were given use of Pier 94, in cooperation with the

City of New York, which was set aside for family members. We
10

have a family assistance center downtown at 141 Wharf Street, the

intersection of Wharf and Center. We have a disaster field office in

northern Virginia, trying to make sure that all those individuals

and their families who have been affected by this incident are

taken care of.

I mentioned in my remarks about the need for counseling. I am

deeply concerned about our capability to provide proper counseling,

not only for the victims, but for the men and women who are working these incidents. They need a lot of attention. This isn’t something that’s just going to happen overnight; it will take years to get

over this.

I know, being from Oklahoma, I know individuals personally who

have yet to be over the incident of April 19, 1995, the Oklahoma

City bombing. This is probably the biggest task ahead of us—making sure that we have proper professionals trained to assist families and rescue workers along the way to recovery.

Senator JEFFORDS. What do they have available to them now?

Mr. ALLBAUGH. We contract with the city and State to bring in

the necessary professionals as they see fit. Rowe O’Keefe runs Pier

94. She is a city employee, works directly for Mayor Guiliani; she

has done a phenomenal job. I am so proud to even know her, handling the needs of thousands of individuals who come in and are

wanting to bring closure to this part of their life. We have individuals from the State health organizations in New York, State health

organizations in Virginia and Pennsylvania onsite, at our DFOs,

assisting those family members as they continue this grieving process.

Unfortunately, as human beings, we need a body to bring closure

to this. I’m afraid in many instances, there will be many families

who will go on forever with many more questions than we have answers to. Those are the ones that I’m most concerned about.

The crisis counseling, the supply of individuals from the Red

Cross, the Salvation Army, the professionals, are a ready reservoir

and we’re calling upon them. We just need to make sure that we

have the money to pay them for their time to assist these families

as they try to bring closure to this event.

Senator JEFFORDS. This has clearly been a most painful and unfortunate chapter in the country’s history. Thousands, as you say,

lost their lives in a disaster unlike any other that we’ve seen in the

past. Given the enormity of the relief effort, what are the greatest

lessons that FEMA has learned from this?

Mr. ALLBAUGH. I would say probably our greatest lesson is to

lean as far forward out of the foxhole as we possibly can. We can

never underestimate what our needs may be in the future. We oftentimes find ourselves on the receiving end of phone calls and responding appropriately.

I think there is a need for—not only us at FEMA, but the entire

Federal Government, to re-think how we approach everyday life

and the way we do our business. Oftentimes in these disasters,

particularly on September 11, we second-guess ourselves whether

we moved quickly enough. I know I immediately activated urban

search and rescue teams, and we moved three or four in that afternoon of September 11 into New York City.
11

I’m not sure how we could have moved any quicker, quite frankly. At that time, as you will remember, we were grounding all the

airplanes across the country and transportation became an issue.

But that’s the only issue we had, was the availability of those aircraft to get back up into the air. We had plenty of aircraft to move

our teams into position at the Pentagon and New York. But it was

a logistical problem that took a few hours to work out, and we did

work it out.

Senator JEFFORDS. Senator Smith.

Senator SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll start by saying,

Senator Inhofe had a funeral to attend in Oklahoma and he asked

me to personally extend his regards to you and all of the rescue

folks who are here.

There is oftentimes in government operations—from Senators or

President on down through the various bureaucracies—a lot of criticism about how government doesn’t work. We are all human

beings, and we all work together. It makes me proud to be an

American.

I want to thank you again. I can’t say it enough. I don’t have any

hard questions to throw at you, Joe. I would just make a couple

of comments. I think that as the Office of National Preparedness

is put together, and as Governor Ridge begins working with the

President to construct that office, that is going to have some impact

on FEMA. I’m not going to ask you about how that would work

now, because obviously, we don’t know yet.

I ask you to stay in touch with us on the committee, so if there

are any legislative initiatives that need to be taken, to help make

that office function in conjunction with FEMA, we’d like to know

that so we can get out ahead on it. We don’t know how long this

crisis is going to last here in this country. Also, if it takes administrative changes, then let us know what they are and we’ll be supportive.

There was such professionalism in the District of Columbia area

and the New York area. Do you have any idea, and we might ask

the same question of the other panel when they come up, if it had

not been as large a metropolitan area, would the results have been

any different? Not necessarily in terms of the patriotism and the

involvement, obviously, but just in terms of how smoothly it would

have worked with FEMA and the local officials? Would there have

been any difference, do you think?

Mr. ALLBAUGH. The chief can probably speak better to this than

I could. But from my perspective as the director, I cannot imagine

any better working relationship than what we had at the Pentagon

or in New York City and in Somerset County, PA. I do believe,

though, that had this happened in most cities in the United States,

the need, the demand, the requirement to respond probably would

have overwhelmed local capabilities.

So in that respect, I think that we had this event here at the

Pentagon, New York City, they were prepared. Fortunately, the

chief had Montgomery County and Fairfax County in his hip pocket

to rely upon. He has a great working relationship with those individuals, knew exactly their pluses and minuses, and knew what he

could call upon from those groups to perform at the Pentagon.
12

New York City was just a little bit different. You have 16,000

firefighters, 40,000 police officers in the city of New York. If you

will remember, the fire department lost its leadership. There was

a tremendous void. Without that command-and-control leadership

structure, things do become chaotic. It becomes problematic for the

incident commander to respond appropriately, knowing exactly

where all his members are at any one given moment or where he

needs to attack the fire, or where the individuals are.

Without that leadership, I think it became more difficult for New

York City to respond. Obviously there were a lot of brothers and

sisters lost in the rubble, and they were emotionally involved, to

try as hard as they possibly could to recover those individuals. We

were able, utilizing the U.S. Fire Administration, to bring in some

individuals to help the city of New York in their restructuring of

their leadership.

But I would say that was the only glitch that we had. It’s really

not a glitch, it was really just a by-product of the event, quite

frankly. I do worry about capabilities of local and State responders.

I want to make sure that we properly train. We have great resources at Emmittsburg, at the Fire Academy, courses that are

taught, not only there, but nationwide, to responders.

We can always do a better job, but in this particular instance,

I think everyone did exactly what they were supposed to do. The

Federal response plan was put in motion. Everyone worked shoulder to shoulder, pulling not only their weight, but oftentimes someone else’s weight. We made it work. There will always be minor

glitches along the way, but we handle them as they come up. We

have the ability as a country to, quite frankly, collectively whip any

problem that confronts us.

As to your remark earlier regarding Governor Ridge, he and I

have already met, Senator, several times on this issue. We have

pledged our cooperation. I can’t think of a better person for that

job. The President and I have spoken often about this. I will continue to develop the Office of National Preparedness at FEMA to

lend as much assistance to Governor Ridge as we possibly can.

But I see no problem in our working relationship whatsoever.

Fact is, I’m really looking forward to working with him and his

staff.

Senator SMITH. Thank you very much. Thanks again for the

great job you did.

Senator JEFFORDS. Senator Clinton.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON,

U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Senator CLINTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Hello, Mr. Director. Thank you so much for the extraordinary

work that you and your team are doing. We are very grateful for

your leadership and your personal concern, which I have witnessed

first-hand and am very grateful for.

There are many issues that we’re really breaking new ground on

here. All of the experience that FEMA has had, and you and I have

talked about this, our own personal experiences with natural disasters. Oklahoma City I think put us in a good position to respond.
13

But I think there’s a lot more for us to learn and to disseminate

those lessons, so that we all can be better prepared.

The questions that I have, and some of these are ones that are

really based on our particular experience in New York, both in the

aftermath of September 11 and in the difficulties that we are facing with the bioterrorism issue, is how we improve public education

and provide a good basis of information, to separate the fears from

the facts so that people can get what reassurance they need and

take what precautions they should.

For example, I believe that we should have a kind of public education town hall meeting. I’ve spoken to Secretary Thompson and

encouraged the television networks to cooperate, to have maybe a

2-hour time that the entire country can watch with you and Secretary Thompson and other Government leaders, as well as experts, so that everybody can get the same information at the same

time. I’m very worried that there’s a lot of information being disseminated that is either inaccurate or unnecessarily panicking to

people.

Second, I know that we’ve got to do a better job taking the special health needs of our children into account. The incident in New

York with the 7-month-old baby I think raises a lot of questions for

us. Children are more vulnerable than adults. They don’t need as

much exposure to certain elements in order to have a reaction. We

don’t know enough about what we should be doing to protect our

children.

Last week, I introduced legislation with Senator Dodd that would

try to begin addressing that, and to work with FEMA so that, once

again, FEMA can help us all be ready to deal with the challenges

facing our children.

I’m also continuing to be concerned about a lot of the health

needs. There was an article in The Washington Post today about

the health needs of our workers who are on the clean-up crews. I

hope that we will fund a study to follow those workers, so that we

can acquire good information, treat them where necessary. We’re

working to try to get that into, I think, the Labor-HHS appropriations.

I think it’s an appropriate issue for our committee to address,

also, Mr. Chairman, because we don’t know all of the long term

hazards and the effects that those who have been digging in the

rubble for 24 hours a day, literally, around the clock, might face.

We need to learn that, so that we can better protect our men in

uniform, and the women who are on the front lines, so that if there

are precautions they should take, we’ll be ready for that.

A few quick questions that really deal with the issues in New

York. I know that people have said, and I am proud that they do,

that no city would have been better prepared to deal with this terrible disaster than New York, because of the response that they

had in place and ready to go. Are there lessons, Director Allbaugh,

that we can learn from what New York did, and are there additional steps that FEMA can take to disseminate that broadly, so

that everybody in the country is as well prepared as possible?

Mr. ALLBAUGH. I’d make two particular observations regarding

your question. One, if there’s a single item that we could do, it is

to make sure that police, fire, emergency responders can commu-
14

nicate with one another. Oftentimes I go into a community and

there are all types of bands and frequencies used, and folks literally who are responding to an incident can’t talk to one another.

So that is one single item I can put my finger on that we need to

address immediately.

Second, what I’ve initiated, and I had a conversation with Governor Ridge 2 days ago and then again this morning about this, is

that we are going to institute a study that we’ve done in previous

years, a capability assessment for readiness of all States to make

sure that we know exactly what each State’s capabilities are, as

well as local entities, and where they need assistance. Well, let me

back up. Once we complete that, we will design a template, so everyone knows exactly what the bar is, what is going to be the

measurement, where do they need to be. Because I just don’t want

to be in a position of throwing a lot of money out there on the table

and the American public deserves to actually get something in exchange for their tax dollars.

We are looking at right now at improving that study. I’m going

to try and get it conducted here in the next month, of all 50 States

and the territories, so we can move expeditiously. I think that’s a

time when we would be in a position to come back to the committee

and make some hard recommendations.

But I’ll be honest with you, I’m not exactly sure that we have a

good handle on what our States’ capabilities are. I think it’s important that we know and we offer assistance where we can. As I mentioned a minute ago, we spend a great amount of money—properly

so—training first responders and emergency managers at

Emmittsburg, a fabulous facility. One of the things I need to look

at is how do we expand that so we can meet the demand. Our demand far outstrips our capability at Emmittsburg.

Coupled with this, I just don’t want to be the 300-pound gorilla,

forcing something upon States that they may or may not need. We

have to have an honest, active dialog with those individuals. And

we do. I can’t think of a better agency that has more dialog with

State individuals other than FEMA. I’m very proud of our relationship. It is a proper relationship, but we can improve upon what resources we can afford the States, so they can be better prepared.

As you know, I’m not the one receiving the 911 phone call, these

folks are the ones who are receiving the 911 phone call, and we

need to make sure that they’re best prepared with trucks, personal

equipment, safety devices, to do the best job that they possibly can.

I appreciate your question.

Senator CLINTON. Well, I appreciate your answer. I appreciate

the gentlemen sitting in the front row and all the other first responders who are on the other end of those calls. We do need your

guidance and advice as soon as it’s humanly possible to provide it

to us, because I think every one of us on this committee wants to

provide whatever additional resources and support, perhaps looking at maybe some regional training facilities like Emmittsburg, so

that you can deal with the need that is out there and people will

be able to come forth is something we should consider. Maybe in

conjunction with some of our military bases or even some of our no

longer active bases. I think there are some real opportunities here
15

if we get the kind of planning and recommendations that I know

that you’ll come forward with.

Another issue that is of particular concern in Lower Manhattan

is the small business community. I think we have discovered

there’s a potential area that needs some additional help. We have

a terrible dilemma confronting our small businesses in the immediate vicinity of Ground Zero. Certainly within the area itself

there’s obviously no basis or ability to go back into business. That’s

a problem for down the road.

But within blocks of it, we have people who are literally going

out of business because of the fact that this is not only a disaster

scene, it’s also a crime scene. So we have many streets blocked off

and the police are doing their collection. Somebody said to me, one

of our colleague Senators said, ‘‘Nobody’s going to be tried for this.’’ Well, that’s true, but there is information and things that are being

found blocks from the site. So we’re trying to be very careful about

that.

But the net result is that all these small businesses are basically

cut off from their customers. They’re not really receiving any help.

Many of them are not in a position right now to sign for small business loans, because until we get the traffic flowing again and the

barriers down, there is no way they can know whether they’ll be

in business. They desperately want to be in business. I talked to

a bar owner a week ago, and he said, ‘‘I’m stocked, I’m ready to

go, but nobody knows I’m here, and they can’t get to me even if

they want to come.’’ So one of my hopes is that we could look at a single office within

FEMA to address property, business and financial losses, that we

could look at having the Small Business Administration raise the

cap on its loan amounts, change its eligibility criteria, defer loan

payments for 2 years or more, and maybe even look at some grants

that were reasonably likely to keep a business open to get it on its

feet. I would love to work with you as well on that, Director, to see

what we can do more on the small business front, because it’s desperately needed.

Mr. ALLBAUGH. I appreciate that. I’m concerned about individuals, as you say, who don’t even know we know they exist. They

need to really call that 800 number, and let me give it out publicly,

please, 800–462–9029. I think the next disaster I’m going to get an

easier number that everyone can remember.

But we do try our best to track these individuals in making sure

they’re put together with the right Federal agencies so they get the

assistance that they probably need. I do think it’s going to take a

little bit of an extra effort in Lower Manhattan. We have the office

at Wharf and Center Street. It is small, so I’ve asked folks to find

another location so we can focus solely on the small businesses that

are affected. But it is a problem that we are going to deal with.

Senator CLINTON. I know my time is up, but I would like to also

raise the possibility of a more vigorous public education campaign.

I think a lot of people have been in such a state of shock until recently that they really haven’t paid attention to our PSAs, our 800

numbers, our invitations to seek help. They’re beginning to, so I

think we have to almost start from——

Mr. ALLBAUGH. Scratch.
16

Senator CLINTON. Yes, start from scratch and get out there and

really get the information out so that people know where to go to

get the help that is waiting for them.

Mr. ALLBAUGH. I agree. Thank you.

Senator CLINTON. Thank you.

Senator JEFFORDS. Senator Voinovich.

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

After the attack in New York and here in Washington, we said

one of the things we needed to do was understand the grieving that

was going on by the families that suffered loss. One of the ways

that we could help deal with that was to try and alleviate any concern that they would have for material needs. It’s bad enough to

be grieving and then start to wonder about how they are going to

take care of their families and so forth.

I was impressed when I talked with Tommy VonEssen in New

York. I asked him what about his firefighters, what about the police officers? He assured me, and I was pleased that our terrorism

bill—maybe a lot of people are aware of this, but we have, under the old law, $151,000 payment to families of lost firemen and police

officers. We increased that to $250,000 in the terrorism bill, making it retroactive.

But he basically said to me that he felt that with the pension

plans, with the Federal payments and so forth, that materially

those families would be all right. I am glad that you are also taking

into consideration the issue of the psychological problems that

those families would have. I know in my own case, when we lost

our daughter, my children are still suffering. We should have sent

them to counseling at that time. I think that’s something that I’m

glad you’re aware of, and something you’re going to need to concentrate on.

The other thing is that I’m really concerned about the expertise

that the city of New York lost. One of the things that Tommy

VonEssen talked about was they lost their whole hazmat operation.

I was wondering, have we responded at all to his request that we

get people in there that can train up his folks so that they can deal

with other events?

Mr. ALLBAUGH. We have indeed, sir. As of yesterday, I was

speaking with Chief Ken Burris, who runs the Fire Administration,

and we have designed a program to educate and train the new

leaders as quickly as we possibly can. I think I’ve spoken directly

with Tommy about that, and I think Commissioner VonEssen is

happy with our progress there.

We’ve also imported several hazmat teams from surrounding

communities to fill that void until those new teams get trained.

Senator VOINOVICH. I’m glad you’re following up with medical examinations of the people that are working there to make sure that

there’s nothing they’ve picked up while they were involved there.

Another question I’ve got is, did FEMA have the necessary authority and resources, do you think, prior to the attack to respond?

Mr. ALLBAUGH. I believe we did and we do. I can’t think of any

need or want that went unmet. If there was a problem, ultimately

I’d get on the phone and make it happen. I just am happy with the

way that every agency responded to our need, our desire, our responsibility to coordinate all the Federal assets. Our disaster field
17

office at Pier 90 in New York is an impressive location. Somewhere

between 18 and 22 Federal agencies are represented full time.

We’re demobilizing some of those tasks, as the missions are completed.

But I cannot think of anything, Senator and members, that we

need at this time that we don’t have. I think the Stafford Act, the

individuals that helped write that, and with the amendments just

passed last year, have given us enormous powers to succeed at the

charge that you’ve given us. I will be one of the first to come and

scream and holler where we need help if we find in this process we

need something else.

But I think we have what we need right now.

Senator VOINOVICH. Including being able to respond to another

major natural disaster we might have next week?

Mr. ALLBAUGH. Absolutely. We have the ability to do that. The

only question there becomes one of resources.

Senator VOINOVICH. The mechanics are in place, the infrastructure?

Mr. ALLBAUGH. The mechanics are in place, don’t sell us short

on the money side, that’s my only pitch.

[Laughter.]

Senator VOINOVICH. The other thing that I’m impressed with, I

recall when I became Governor of Ohio one of the first things we

did was to do an inventory of the preparedness of our counties. In

spite of all of our effort, I remember one flood where it was like

day and night between the ones that were prepared and the one

that wasn’t prepared. I think the idea of working with the States

is a good idea.

In fact, I suggested to Secretary Thompson, and maybe some of

the other folks that are involved in preparedness, that perhaps the

President could call a couple day meeting with the governors of the

States so all of you could come in and start talking about problems

that you see could be out there, and try and task them to do some

of the things that they ought to be doing on the State level to respond to some of the things that they’re going to have to deal with

in the future.

Mr. ALLBAUGH. I think this capability assessment for readiness

is the first step before we have a meeting such as that. But I think

that’s a pretty good idea, quite frankly.

Senator JEFFORDS. Senator Corzine.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JON S. CORZINE, U.S. SENATOR

FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

Senator CORZINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It is terrific you’re holding this hearing, and I must say, for all

the people of New Jersey, and we feel like we’re a part of the community of New York in New Jersey, we compliment you and the

people you work with for all your efforts at a human level and with

regard to detail. I can’t tell you how impressed people are.

I also want to make sure that my total statement is put in the

record, but that applies to all of the folks who are heroes of rescue

that will be on the second panel and who they represent.

I must say, the idea of don’t sell us short on the money side, so

that you can get the job done, I hope that my colleagues not only
18

here on the committee, but across the Senate understand the great

need. It’s actually each leaf that I see fall tells me it’s larger than

what we had ever anticipated and much more far-reaching. I am

truly impressed by the selfless response of a number of my communities in New Jersey, really the community at large, and I know

that’s the case across the region. I hope that we take into consideration all those details about straight time and overtime and all the

kinds of things that get involved in making sure that the communities are reimbursed so they can go on about the business that

they need to do to protect the public in the future.

I want to reiterate something that I think Senator Clinton was

talking about, taking a little different approach. I think that the

shock of this has left many of the victims—not only those who have

lost life, but have also been impacted in other ways—has left people standing back from receiving the information that we’re working so hard to get out. We’re going on a campaign to try and contact each individual that has been impacted personally by this.

I’m finding out that there’s just a void of information. I think

people turn off the receipt of this. I think we as a community need

to be reaching out. A lot of that, I think, can be organized through

FEMA resources, and I certainly encourage you along that line. I

don’t mean that as a criticism, it’s just one of those things that people who are either embarrassed or in shock and emotional distress,

don’t reach out in all the ways we’d like to see.

Finally, I’d love to hear your comments on a hearing that we had

last week in Health, Education and Labor Committee with regard

to disaster planning as it relates to bioterrorism and how much you

have had time to work on that. As we sit here, there is an evacuation of one of the Department of Environmental Protection buildings in Trenton, NJ which is going on. It feels like we’re doing this

by Braille as opposed to actually having plans in place and fully

formulate them.

So I’d like to hear your comments on that as well.

Mr. ALLBAUGH. In regard to your first question, the one point I

failed to make a while ago when Senator Clinton was bringing up

this issue of education is that we have currently about 22 community assistance teams that are going door to door. We bumped that

up over the last couple of weeks from, I think we started with 11

or 12, decided that that wasn’t really enough to cover Lower Manhattan. These teams are made up of Federal, State and local individuals who represent a variety of agencies. It’s not enough.

I take your admonition regarding education very seriously and

we’ll redouble our efforts. But I wanted you to know that those

teams are out in the community, literally going door to door, business to business as we speak.

Senator CORZINE. That personal contact, I can’t think of anything

more important than actually getting to a widower or widow and

explaining how we get these processes in play for the family and

the circumstances that they’re dealing with.

Mr. ALLBAUGH. I agree. With regard to bioterrorism, I think

that—as I alluded to earlier, before you both arrived—we have to

rethink the way the entire Federal Government approaches this

issue. Oftentimes we find ourselves doing things by rote and we

have all had a wake-up call.
19

I know I have challenged our own staff to think outside the box

as often and as diligently as they possibly can. One of the things

we have not done a very good job at is catastrophic planning, catastrophic disaster planning. We have to become better at that,

which requires every agency sitting at a table, wading through the

minutiae that would be in front of us. It’s going to take time.

I think a part of this education effort, if there is a time in our

country’s history where the American public needs straightforward

facts, now is it. This isn’t a time, in my opinion, for anybody to be ‘‘big dogging’’ it, as we’d say down home. Folks just need straightforward facts. I am concerned that we don’t have a joint information center that the Federal Government operates on a regular

basis where members of the Senate, members of the House, members of the news media, have one reservoir, one resource they can

go to to get the definitive facts that the American public deserves

so richly.

I never want to be in a position of misleading anyone. A great

compliment to the American public is how they’re handling this

right now. They’re taking all this information in, as much is being

thrown at them, and figuring it out. What we ought to be charged

with is how we shrink that amount of brain power that’s utilized

in the average individual trying to figure it out, we ought to try

and figure it out for them and educate them. I think if there’s one

thing we need to do immediately, it is to form up a joint information center that would have all Federal agencies in one place, total

resource for the battles that are ongoing and the days ahead of us.

I’m afraid that there is not a definitive answer yet, Senator, on

how we combat bioterrorism. You can get as many answers as professionals that you talk to. That’s just calling them as I see them.

I get a different answer every time I talk to someone different. It

drives me nuts.

Senator CORZINE. I appreciate your candor, because that’s the

way it feels, as you are one who is trying to reach out and be a

constructive element in bringing together responses that give the

public confidence.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you. That’s an excellent question.

Senator Carper.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. THOMAS R. CARPER,

U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF DELAWARE

Senator CARPER. Welcome back. Good to see you again. Thanks

for your service and the terrific work that your team continues to

do.

Mr. ALLBAUGH. Thank you, sir.

Senator CARPER. I apologize for being late. I was with some of

my colleagues at the briefing over at the Capitol.

I want to follow up on a question with respect to bioterrorism.

Senator Frist of Tennessee apparently has good information on bioterrorism on his web page, especially with anthrax, that he’s made

available to others of us in the Senate, so we can link our own web

pages with his, and anyone who contacts our office can find out,

just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.

A lot of people may be watching this hearing today across the

country, and if there are any facts that you’d like for them to know,
20

to share with the American people on anthrax or bioterrorism,

could you just take a minute or two and share what you think

would be helpful for our constituents across the country to know?

Mr. ALLBAUGH. Well, two particular things. I think it’s incumbent upon FEMA to produce a document, a booklet, as we did years

ago during the old civil defense days, or a booklet that we even produced as recently as the concern regarding Y2K that would present

basically just the facts and how to respond based upon what individuals are dealing with. So I’ve instructed our folks to pull together that type of document so we can get it published, put it on

our website, which is www.fema.gov, and get it into the libraries,

maybe do some type of a mailout. I see where the U.S. Postal Service is doing something similar today as we speak, trying to alert

everyone.

But what we need, more than anything else as the American

public, are straightforward facts. I do think that this joint information center will go a great distance to calm everyone’s fears, because they will know exactly what they’re dealing with and won’t

suffer from a multitude of confusing messages from a variety of

sources.

Senator CARPER. My own view, Mr. Chairman, as we learn more,

our office is right next door to Senator Daschle’s office. So there’s

been a fair amount of angst with the developments in the last 24

hours. But if this had happened, oh, 2 weeks ago, even 1 week ago,

I think there would be a whole lot more fear and concern. The

more that we learn, at least about anthrax, the more I’m convinced

that it’s a difficult weapon to use effectively against us. It’s proving

to be—not a bust, but to whoever is using this against us, it’s not

having, I think, the kind of success they had perhaps envisioned.

We learned today that even if people get infected, if they take the

antibiotics and the vaccines combined, there’s a pretty good chance

it will be entirely eradicated. For folks who have not been infected

but have been exposed, simply take the antibiotics, they’re quite effective. It’s not contagious, and apparently you have to ingest quite

a bit of it in order to be infected.

That doesn’t mean we should take this lightly, and we’re not. But

the American people and those of us who work here just need to

be mindful of, as you said earlier, the facts.

Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you. I’d like to make you aware, we

are concerned, the committee is, about the communications problem. We’re working on legislation to grab a part of the spectrum

so that we can work together to get the unified system throughout

the country on being able to communicate. We look forward to

working with you on that.

Mr. ALLBAUGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator CLINTON. Mr. Chairman, could I follow up on a point

that the Director just made with respect to Y2K?

Senator JEFFORDS. Yes.

Senator CLINTON. I believe that we had the kind of interagency

information operation that you have so rightly said we should put

into place for our current situation. I think it would be helpful to

take a look at how that was done. There was some legislative involvement and oversight. There was obviously interagency involve-
21

ment, but there was a center, and there was also an individual who

was tasked with being the spokesman, so that all information could

be double checked before somebody had to get out there and make

a statement.

So I think your suggestion is an excellent one. Looking to the

Y2K experience, which frankly, I think we averted a lot of problems because we got on it and people paid attention to it and they

were held accountable, and what we feared didn’t come to pass. If

there is any legislation or changes in the Stafford Act or anything

that you believe, Director, that would help you respond on that

basis, I would certainly like to know about it, and I know my colleagues would as well.

Mr. ALLBAUGH. We’ll make sure everyone knows about it.

Senator JEFFORDS. I have one final question for you. It’s kind of

a tough one, I know. Looking forward, with all the knowledge you

have now, when do you anticipate that you will be able to consider

the job done?

Mr. ALLBAUGH. I’m not sure that the job will ever be done. Our

lives have changed as a country forever as of September 11. We are

more vigilant now. We are aware of our surroundings. I know the

things that I used to take for granted I don’t take for granted. I

have to commend the American public with high praise at the way

that they’ve responded to this. It is absolutely remarkable. No one’s

really panicking. We have our incidents that you’re talking about,

and my heart goes out to those individuals who are directly affected.

But I’m not sure, Senator, that our job will ever be done.

Senator JEFFORDS. More specifically, relief efforts, people involved in relief efforts. When do you anticipate that might be complete?

Mr. ALLBAUGH. I fully expect to be having an office in New York

City for years to come. You think back to the Northridge earthquake in the early 1990’s, we still have an office dealing with the

multitude of problems in California. This is a situation where we’ll

be lucky to have the site maybe cleaned up in 7, 8, or 9 months,

maybe a year from now. We have lives that we have to help put

back together, years and years of counseling, small businesses that

need to be rebuilt. New York City is doing its best to guard against

the loss of jobs that would affect Lower Manhattan as well as the

rest of the city.

We’re willing partners. We’re going to be there until the bitter

end. I’m not the one to decide when the bitter end is. I think we’ll

all know it as a country.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you.

Senator Warner.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN W. WARNER,

U.S. SENATOR FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

Senator WARNER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Most local fire departments aren’t familiar with urban search

and rescue team capabilities until they are faced with a situation.

Our chief here who’s with us today suggests that the urban search

and rescue resources and procedures be included in the curriculum
22

at FEMA’s National Emergency Training Center and the National

Fire Academy. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

Mr. ALLBAUGH. I think that’s one of the first things that I have

passed along to the folks at the Fire Administration, that we need

to, when we bring in individuals from fire departments all across

the country, we explain to them what resources are available,

should they need to call upon them.

I’m not sure that there is a need, Senator, to expand the number

of urban search and rescue teams nationwide. I do believe we need

to expand their capabilities. But at a bare minimum, men and

women who put their lives on the line, whether they’re with the police department or the fire department or emergency managers,

ought to have the benefit of knowing exactly what resources are at

their disposal. We’re going to make sure that everyone is educated

from here on out.

Senator WARNER. As a follow-up, during the Pentagon response,

of course, our local fire and rescue and Red Cross and others performed brilliantly.

Mr. ALLBAUGH. They did, indeed.

Senator WARNER. I visited that scene only 4 hours after the

plane struck, with the Secretary of Defense. He had the highest

praise for those teams that reacted.

But during that response, it was learned that there is an equipment shortage for urban search and rescue teams that allows for

only one equipped team to be deployed at any given time from any

one of the 28 bases. If there are multiple instances in one area,

how would FEMA respond on a timely basis?

Mr. ALLBAUGH. I’m not aware of that, Senator. We activated 18

the first day to New York alone, 4 to the Pentagon and I’m not

aware of any particular shortage. I do know that we will be briefing and debriefing all the teams and will have after-action reports,

so that we make sure we don’t make any mistakes that may have

been committed during this travesty.

Senator WARNER. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you, Director. It’s been a pleasure having you with us. You’re an impressive man and I thank you for

what you’re doing. We reserve the right, as you know, to ask you

further questions that you can respond to in writing.

Mr. ALLBAUGH. Yes, sir. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you.

The next panel is made up of Edward Plaugher, Jeff Metzinger

and Robert Hessinger.

Chief Plaugher, welcome. It’s a pleasure to have you here. We

know of your efforts and want to praise what you have done. We’d

like to hear from you and your thoughts about what we can do to

improve the future.

Senator WARNER. Could I intervene? I want you to know that

this fine gentleman was the on-scene commander for, I think, 10

days. His unit was the first to respond. I’ve communicated now

with our chairman of the Appropriations Committee a list of items

which you feel your team needs to have either replaced or new

equipment. So this is, I recognize all present who have done this,

but this is one man who’s been there from the moment it started.
23

Thank you again.

STATEMENT OF EDWARD P. PLAUGHER, CHIEF, ARLINGTON

COUNTY, VA FIRE DEPARTMENT

Chief PLAUGHER. Thank you very much. It is indeed a pleasure

to be here this morning. It’s also a great deal of pleasure and an

honor to represent the men and women, not only of the Arlington

County Fire Department, but also of the Nation. Hopefully my remarks will assist the cause of improving our capability to respond

to any type of incident.

Again, I want to thank you for allowing me to be here today. I

understand that you as a committee are deeply concerned, as are

all of us, with the tragic events of September 11. These events have

a profound impact on the men and women of my fire department

and on the Nation’s fire service as a whole.

I have prepared remarks which I hope will be entered into the

record, and I’ll just highlight a couple of the key points in order to

be brief here this morning, to allow my colleagues ample time to

testify.

It is an opportunity for me, however, to talk about the incident

at the Pentagon. First of all, you need to know, I think, is that our

response to the Pentagon began when one of our engine companies

who was responding to another routine call noticed the plane and

its route to the Pentagon and was actually a witness to the incident. Immediately, the northern Virginia automatic mutual aid

program was activated. Units from Fort Myer, Alexandria, Fairfax

County and the National Airport Fire Department responded from

the initial alarm.

The second alarm units included units from the District of Columbia as well as from Montgomery County and Prince George’s

County, MD. These first responding fire units fought a fire that

was triggered by 6,000 gallons of jet fuel in the world’s largest office building.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, in their response

to the attack on the Pentagon and its aftermath, was superb.

FEMA and their front line urban search and rescue teams, which

I’m sure we’re going to hear more about here in a few moments,

were mobilized from Fairfax County, Virginia Beach, Montgomery

County, MD; Memphis, TN, and then later on, we received assistance from New Mexico to provide relief for the exhausted rescue

personnel.

I must tell you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,

that the FEMA urban search and rescue teams made an outstanding contribution to our effort. These teams are comprised of

dedicated professionals whose hard work and unyielding efforts

should not be overlooked.

Two resources that were brought to bear to the incident scene by

FEMA come to mind and stand out in my mind. First was the

search dog capability. It’s a unique and absolutely critical, necessary component of a structural collapse search that allows for

swift and thorough search for victims that could not otherwise have

been possible. Second, the urban search and rescue team brings in

specially trained urban search and rescue structural engineers that
24

allow us to then proceed into the building with safety being paramount to all the personnel on the scene.

However, there’s a couple of areas that I think we can do to improve our business, and that is the business of response to our community, particularly in these types of incidents. That is what the

director was just talking about, the ability to have a clear understanding of the local first responders, of what does the urban

search and rescue team bring to an incident, and particularly the

capability of this being taught at the National Fire Academy.

I also think that we need to have a clear understanding of the

capability that is being developed for these urban search and rescue teams. In other words, what I mean is there needs to be a

standardized list of equipment that is well understood and that we

can count on when this is deployed. It also occurs to me that this

complement of equipment and response capability should be developed with a panel of experts that seeks out local advice so that the

folks of us who have been there will allow them to be able to adjust

their response capability based upon our now new experiences.

We just heard again about the need for additional equipment.

Most urban search and rescue teams—which in my earlier career

in Fairfax County, I was fortunate enough to be one of the founding members of the team, and participated in its early structure— we realize that they are multiple deep in personnel, but not multiple deep in equipment. We think that now is the time that we

could fix that.

We are, in fact, very lucky and very privileged in the Washington

Metropolitan area to have two urban search and rescue teams in

our midst, both Montgomery County, MD and Fairfax County, VA.

This is a unique situation in our community.

However, one of the things that we also focused, and we realized

early on in this particular incident at the Pentagon, is that there

was a need for some command overhead teams. These command

overhead teams would be chief officers who would be experienced

in dealing with these incidents and bring to bear that extra chief

level officer capability. We think that maybe there’s an opportunity

for this to come out in the future.

The level of cooperation and mutual assistance between FEMA

and the Arlington County Fire Department was excellent. There

are many moving parts to an effective response to a terrorist incident. Each of us much have a good expectation of our own capabilities and a clear understanding of the roles and responsibilities of

the different agencies.

In the final analysis, what transpired at the Pentagon, under the

circumstances, was dealt with professionally and to the best of each

of our abilities. We at the Arlington County Fire Department

learned valuable lessons with regard to our own abilities and our

limits. It is our hope that we can use those lessons to further a

more effective preparedness approach.

In concluding my remarks, Mr. Chairman, in speaking with the

overall Federal preparedness effort, there are said to be over 40 different offices and bureaus involved in terrorism preparedness

across the Federal agencies. Though we have made great strides in

our interaction with Federal agencies, there is an urgent need for

better coordination of pre-incident support in training programs.
25

I personally testified last spring before the House Transportation

Committee on a piece of legislation designed to address this issue.

A Senate companion bill, Senate bill 1453, the Preparedness

Against Terrorism Act of 2001, was recently introduced by Senator

Bob Smith and referred to this committee. This bill codifies the Office of National Preparedness at FEMA that President Bush created earlier this year. It creates a President’s Council that will be

charged with the development of a single national strategy on terrorism preparedness, that will include measurable preparedness

goals.

We applaud President Bush’s designation of Governor Tom Ridge

of Pennsylvania as our new Homeland Security coordinator. However, it seems to us that Senate bill 1453 could and would bring

focus and legal authority to this new effort. It is my understanding

that the Bush Administration has significant input into this bill,

and I urge you to make whatever modifications are necessary to

address Governor Ridge’s role and to act favorably on the bill in

sending it to the full Senate for consideration as quickly as possible.

We owe it to our country to have the best coordinated comprehensive terrorism preparedness strategy that is possible. Again,

thank you for having me here today and I will be happy to answer

any questions later.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you, Chief.

I’m going to ask all the witnesses to testify and then we’ll have

questions. I assure you we’ve taken notice of your remarks with respect to what we should do, especially with the new role for Governor Ridge.

Captain Metzinger.

STATEMENT OF JEFFREY L. METZINGER, FIRE CAPTAIN, SACRAMENTO, CA METROPOLITAN FIRE DISTRICT; MEMBER,

FEMA URBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE TEAM

Captain METZINGER. Good morning Mr. Chairman and members

of the committee. I’m Captain Jeff Metzinger, I’m with the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District in northern California. I’m also

a member of California’s Urban Search and Rescue Team, California Task Force 7.

Like the others here, I am also honored and very humbled to be

talking to you this morning, representing the thousands of firefighters across this country who put their lives on the line every

day.

We were dispatched to the World Trade Center on the morning

of September 11, as so many other teams were. I keep a journal

with me wherever I go, and I brought it with me today and I’m

going to read some excerpts for you. It’s a habit I’ve had for a long

time, and I think there’s some value in there.

I’ll start out on Wednesday, September 12.

We’re finally leaving for New York City and everyone is anxious

to get to work. As we approach the Hudson River from New Jersey,

you can see a large column of smoke coming up from the site where

the World Trade Center used to stand.

This is my first trip to New York City, and I feel sad about what

I see. The traffic is incredible, even with a full police escort. The
26

corners are filled with people, and we’re just now a few blocks

away from the large smoke column I had seen earlier. We arrive

at the Javits Convention Center by 7 p.m. and set up our base of

operations. There’s other teams coming in as well, including teams

from Los Angeles, Missouri, Indianapolis, Riverside, California,

Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Ohio.

Our 62 person team is divided into two teams, where we alternate 12-hour shifts, working 24 hours around the clock. I’m assigned to the Blue team, working the night shift. The first night,

on September 13, we loaded into the bus and headed into our sector to go to work. We met up with the Gray team and did a passon of information, and began to take a brief tour of the collapse

zone along Church Street.

The scene was surreal. There were people everywhere. Smoke

continued to drift from the massive piles of rubble. The expanse of

the disaster is difficult to comprehend. Several searches are conducted by our search dogs in the vicinity of Tower Seven. The technical search cameras were also used, but we had no luck finding

any victims.

The following night, our team was working again, looking for an

assignment. The dogs alerted an area, but at a very dangerous location. It was too unstable to enter. That night there was thunder,

lightning, wind and heavy rains pounding upon us. Frequently, debris—large pieces of metal were blowing off the roofs of adjacent

buildings. Our task force leader determined it wasn’t safe for us to

go any farther, we didn’t want to lose any further lives.

The next afternoon we had a briefing from our task force leader

at our base and were told that President Bush would be visiting

our facility that day. I was privileged to meet and shake hands

with President Bush, with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and

the governor and the mayor were also present. It was quite an experience, and their visit was very much appreciated by all.

That night on the bus we were headed back to work, still hundreds of people lining the streets of New York City, cheering us as

we go by. Traffic was so congested that we finally stopped the bus,

got off and walked the last few blocks to the Church and Dey command post. Tonight our search team is finally getting to do some

work, putting up a rope system to lower one of our members down

into the debris crater near Church Street. The objective here is to

place a cellular phone antenna down lower that might assist with

victim locations.

The following night we were headed back to work and again people were lining the streets, cheering, waving flags, holding signs,

lighting candles. It was a sight that warmed us every night as we

went in. This particular night, our search and rescue teams were

assigned to search the buildings around the outer perimeter of the

plaza area. There are several 30-plus story buildings around the

World Trade Center plaza. We conducted searches from basement

to roof, every door was opened, every space was checked. We

climbed the stairwells, taking on one building at a time.

We didn’t find any victims. Every floor of every building we

searched was marked and completed. The assignment took a lot of

toll on our legs that night.
27

On Sunday, during our briefing, we were told that three top New

York fire chiefs were laid to rest that day. Firefighter Chaplain

Ward Cockerton said a prayer for the victims and for the safety of

the team members that are still working here.

Tonight we’re going to work between buildings five and six, possibly going underground. We hear that there’s up to six levels

below the street grade. So we reported to the Church and Dey command post that night and I personally got assigned my first job as

head rigger, which is my assignment with the team. Steve of Massachusetts Task Force One was there, and he and I worked with

four New York City iron workers through the night, using a 90–

10 crane, moving tons of debris all night long.

The following day we were back at work on the same crane, and

a new group of iron workers. We made a connection with some

guys by the name of Mike, Rich and Kevin. They’re all great people. I found that the New York iron workers and construction

workers are just incredibly great folks.

We cut and moved tons of steel again tonight. In the middle of

the night I found a child’s doll in the rubble, and I realized suddenly how much I missed my family. I heard our response team

found a victim this morning, a police officer. Our hopes for a live

rescue are starting to dim.

The next day we were back on the bus to the work site again.

I’m already tired. We’ve averaged about 3 hours of sleep per night.

Even when we get time to rest, you can’t sleep.

Heading back to the crane, we worked all night again, moving

steel, looking for bodies. I’ve noticed for several nights that there’s

very little debris that’s recognizable. There’s no desks, there’s no

chairs, carpet or sheet rock or anything else you’d associate with

an office building, just the steel structure. There are still no victims in the area we’re working in.

On September 18, we’re back in the pile again, moving steel and

searching for victims. Today the smell of death is more evident. I

found a business card of a man with an office on the 83rd floor of

one of the towers, and I wondered what his fate was at that moment. I said a prayer for him and hoped he is alive and well. I’m

still not sure what his fate is.

Around midnight that night, the crane operation was halted

while they were moving in a larger crane. When the crane shut

down, I joined forces with some of the New York firefighters. Two

of the battalion chiefs were out there with their sleeves rolled up,

working right alongside of us. We were moving debris by hand, and

that was a very solemn night. Went home tired that day.

The following day, Thursday, September 20, we started heading

home, packing our equipment. It’s been a long 10 days and everyone is exhausted. The team physician just diagnosed me with bronchitis. The dust we’ve been breathing all week finally caught up to

us. Many others in the team had the same complaint of headache,

sore throat, sinus congestion and sometimes fever. But most of all,

everybody’s troubled that we didn’t find any victims.

Finally, on Friday, we land back in northern California, Travis

Air Force Base, and we get a full police escort all the way back to

Sacramento. Every freeway overpass for 40 miles was covered with
28

fire engines, police cars and citizens cheering us home. It was a

warm reception.

We arrived in Sacramento to a similar greeting of family, friends,

co-workers and media. I realized then for the people of Sacramento

that we were their connection to this tragedy on the East Coast.

It felt good to be home, but I felt like a part of me was still in New

York. When I go to sleep, I still dream that I’m there. It doesn’t

leave us.

I just want to close and say that firefighters and law enforcement

and EMS people are going to continue to be the first responders arriving at these incidents, and the toll is tremendous. The toll is tremendous on what I saw on the New York City firefighters, and for

those of us who just came there and left, it took a toll as well,

physically and mentally. We owe it to ourselves to be prepared for

future incidents, to take care of our responders and make sure that

we are afforded everything that we can possibly do to be ready for

the next one.

I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts with you, and

I’m available for your questions. That’s all, thank you.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you.

Senator VOINOVICH. Mr. Chairman, do you mind if I introduce

Mr. Hessinger?

Senator JEFFORDS. You may do that, yes, certainly.

Senator VOINOVICH. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, Ohio Task Force One is a designated FEMA emergency response team. It’s made up of volunteers from fire departments

across Ohio, and it’s coordinated out of Wright-Patterson Air Force

Base. Mr. Hessinger is the logistics chief for the Ohio Task Force

One. I think I’d like to underscore that in his regular job, he’s a

firefighter-paramedic with the Kettering, OH, fire department. He’s

also accompanied today by Mike Kenney, who’s a captain in the

Dayton, OH fire department, and he’s also a member of Ohio Task

Force One. We’re very happy that you’re here with us today.

Seventy-two members of that Ohio Task Force were mobilized

just after the attack at the World Trade Center, and were among

the first out-of-State FEMA teams to respond to Ground Zero. Robert, we’re really happy to have you with us here today. Thank you

for your service.

Senator JEFFORDS. You have your friend with you, I guess.

Would you come up?

Mr. Hessinger, please proceed.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT HESSINGER, LOGISTICS SECTION

MANAGER, OHIO TASK FORCE ONE; ACCOMPANIED BY

SQUAD OFFICER MICHAEL KENNEY

Chief HESSINGER. Thank you, Senators, distinguished guests. As

Senator Voinovich pointed out, I’m Robert Hessinger, Logistics

chief. Mike Kenney here today with me is a rescue squad officer

with Ohio Task Force One. We were deployed to the New York City

terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center September 11, 2001.

I’d like to start by saying thank you for allowing us to share our

experiences with you. I hope you’ll take what we say and continue

support with FEMA.
29

Ohio Task Force One was established as a FEMA urban search

and rescue team in the spring of 1997, and is located on WrightPatterson Air Force Base in Dayton, OH. Ohio Task Force One was

officially activated as one of the first three FEMA task force

groups. It was our first national appointment, and we were activated at 1100 hours on September 11, 2001, to respond to New

York City by ground mobilization.

Ohio Task Force deployment was multi-faceted, due to our members’ activity within the FEMA system. Our task force leader,

James Gruenberg, was deployed as a part of FEMA’s Red Incident

Support Team, which is the overhead team the Chief spoke about.

Our task force leader, Robert McKee, was also deployed as part of

the Blue Incident Support Team.

Operationally, Ohio Task Force One arrived at Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan, NY, approximately 6 a.m. on September 12,

2001, making it the third FEMA urban search and rescue team behind Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Primary mission of Ohio

Task Force One upon arrival was to establish the rear base of operations, that we refer to as a BoO. The task force also created two

operational teams by splitting the members into daytime and

night-time operations, running a 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. shift, 12-hour

operational periods. At approximately noon on September 12, task

force leader Muhl became the daytime operation leader and proceeded to Ground Zero. The first operation was to set up the forward BoO, and after came a few missions confirming victims using

K-9 teams and searching void spaces found in the rubble pile.

The first full operational period for the task force came on the

day shift Thursday, September 13. None of the team members were

ready for the magnitude of the destruction and the size of the collapse. Ohio Task Force One was given many missions dealing with

technical search of void areas with search cameras and the team’s

K-9 handlers could not keep up with the multitude of requests from

division commanders and the workers on the pile alike.

Task Force Leader Muhl worked closely with the FDNY sector

commander to coordinate sub-level void searches, technical rigging

decisions and structural evaluations by Ohio’s structural specialists. One of the missions included rigging a rope lowering system

to penetrate a small opening in a collapsed stairwell to search a

mechanical room four levels below grade. Mike Kenney was on that

team to do that.

At this point, optimism within the team ran high, due to the size

and structural stability of those void spaces. The rescue team also

attempted to rig another rope system to lower searchers into a void

where previously Fire Department New York Ladder 6 personnel

had survived the collapse. The anchoring points were found to be

inadequate in order to appropriately rig a lowering system. This

was the first letdown the team had suffered and found it difficult

to convey to fellow FDNY firefighters.

Continued missions to search void spaces turned up parking levels with thigh deep, contaminated waters and more void spaces

without live finds. A mission to secure and remove impaled steel

of the World Financial Building was changed by the task force

structural special specialist to securing the piece of steel directly to

the main structure, due to increased risk to rescue workers. This
30

decision proved to be the correct one, and the piece of steel remained stable.

Day operations were also tasked with reconnaissance of the surrounding buildings. Teams climbed and searched multiple buildings, breached locked doors and systematically marked cleared

areas for a thorough search. A couple of searchers turned up citizens either not able to traverse the lengthy trip down the stairs or

unwilling to leave their personal possessions after being so violently violated.

As a FEMA USAR task force, we are given the task to support

local jurisdictions in the mitigation of an overwhelming situation.

The fire department in New York was placed in such a situation.

The FEMA urban search and rescue concept was alien to the workers we encountered due to the loss of the majority of the special

rescue personnel within their fire department.

As fellow firefighters, we offered special equipment, a fresh and

educated set of hands, and the confidence that rescue was being accomplished to the best of our abilities. On the last operational period, Ohio Task Force One stopped by Fire Department New York’s

Rescue 5 to pay their respects and donate equipment that would

aid in the rebuilding of this distinguished company. We hope that

this will somehow leave a lasting impression of the FEMA system

and the first class teams that adorn it.

Ohio Task Force One was given demobilization orders on Tuesday, September 18, with a departure date of Thursday, September

20. The citizens and leaders in Ohio made the return trip a memorable one with police escorts, fire department apparatus lining the

highways, citizens with banners on overpasses and our families at

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

The support Ohio Task Force One was given by the Incident Support Teams of FEMA and the expertise and guidance of those

placed in charge of this tragedy were professional, no matter what

the situation. Given this event we commend all men and women

in those positions for an exemplary job.

Ohio Task Force One would like to thank FEMA, the State of

Ohio, our families for all the support given to us over the years.

We would also like to thank the Environment and Public Works

Committee for your time today, and continued support in protecting our Nation. May God bless all of us.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you. We all know how difficult it is for

all of you to be here today to relive those very, very difficult days.

I want to commend you all.

I also want to know what we can learn from your experiences.

We have already had the discussion today about the communications systems and the need, perhaps, for more uniformity and the

ability to make sure that you can move from one area of the country to another, as all of you did, to be able to communicate. Do you

have suggestions or comments on any difficulties that you had or

will have in the communications systems?

Chief Plaugher.

Chief PLAUGHER. Yes, Senator. I had the privilege last week to

testify at another Senate committee on this very same issue, the

Commerce and Technology Subcommittee. It is absolutely critical
31

that this Nation set aside a set of frequencies, a set of spectrum

for public safety use.

It’s beyond me that it hasn’t been done. We’re told, anyway, from

the professional associations, that oftentimes there’s a debate between selling these frequencies on the open market to the private

industry or reserving them for public safety. For me, there is no

debate.

Senator JEFFORDS. Any other comments?

Captain METZINGER. I’d like to say, it’s been addressed earlier at

the Federal level with FEMA. The current 28 teams you now have

in this country, I think more and more now we’re finding that we’re

working together on incidents such as this tragedy in New York

City and the Pentagon, that we could use more national training

together. We frequently do our training locally, but we don’t have

the opportunity to train as a Nation, as teams coming together.

That would be really beneficial to us.

We’ve got equipment, we’ve got people. The one thing we need

most is the opportunity to train and prepare for these incidents.

That’s where the big expense comes from, is personnel cost. If you

can continue to support the USAR concept through FEMA and

training dollars and helping us be prepared, it’s probably as important as anything.

Along with that, there isn’t a city or community in this country

that probably couldn’t use additional support for their own fire departments at home. We constantly struggle each year with budget

cuts and competing with other entities in the cities, the libraries,

the parks, the school districts. All are very important. But this is

one where people can lose their lives. These people in the front

lines are important to every community. I think the more support

you can give to local resources the better off we’re all going to be.

Senator JEFFORDS. I used to be a volunteer fireman. I was

alarmed to travel around my State a couple of years ago and to

find out the cost to individuals to be able to volunteer, essentially,

with respect to necessary equipment. Is that a national problem,

and how do you, the small, local governments, provide the equipment for entering burning buildings and things like that?

Captain METZINGER. It is a national problem. It’s a problem that

everyone faces. It’s a matter of dollars. If the money’s there, there’s

no limit to what they can purchase or the training that they can

do. We’re often limited by how much we can afford to do. That’s

a sad thing.

I live in a large community, Sacramento is the capital of the

State of California. In Sacramento, we have two hazmat teams for

a million people. We’ve got a community with over 50 fire stations,

and we’re stretching our resources to the limit. I think we can improve on that.

Obviously, we’re doing things now that we never thought we

would do. When I entered the fire service 20 years ago, we fought

fires and we helped people. Now we’re doing technical rescue, we’re

doing water rescue, we’re doing hazardous materials, we’re doing

advanced life support. We’re dealing with natural disasters like

hurricanes and earthquakes, the run-of-the-mill wildland fires.

Now we’re asked to deal with domestic terrorism as well. It’s just
32

another thing on our plate, and we can only stretch what we’re

doing so far.

I think we’ll continue to do it, we’re happy to do it, that’s what

we want to do, is feel supportive. We’ll continue to do as good as

we can.

Senator JEFFORDS. Any other comments?

Chief Hessinger.

Chief HESSINGER. Mr. Chairman, I’d like to thank Senator Clinton and Director Allbaugh for their comments on the communications issue. We felt that a couple places that the deployment would

have gone smoother, although the Ohio Task Force, this was our

first deployment, and we had, operationally with FEMA, a very

good, positive outcome with the way things went through the

FEMA system, how immediately the dispatched the teams and responded.

The communication was definitely an area that needs to be addressed, with better communications and ground transportation

conveys. When you get into some of the areas of West Virginia,

Pennsylvania that we drove through, communications becomes difficult. It’s a safety issue at night in the middle of West Virginia if

you lose a truck behind you full of people who can’t keep up with

your convoy or breaks down.

The other issue that I was very glad to hear Senator Clinton

bring up was the health concerns of workers onsite and after the

activities. Ohio Task Force has been in contact with many of the

other task forces with concerns of respiratory problems being faced

by the workers returning home from New York City. We have personally had five members with pneumonia, one has been hospitalized. I know Sacramento Task Force was the other one hit hard

with upper respiratory infections and pneumonia. Hearing that

there is concern on this committee with acute and long term health

effects from this is very satisfying, and makes us feel comfortable

that this committee will see that the proper thing is being done for

the workers after the fact.

Senator JEFFORDS. Mr. Kenney, do you have anything you’d like

to say in that regard?

Mr. KENNEY. I’d like to reiterate what Mr. Hessinger said about

the communications issue. I was charged with driving one of the

vehicles, and it is an issue, the communications issue, between vehicles while you’re enroute.

Also, it was an issue being able to communicate back and forth

from Midtown Manhattan to Ground Zero. We were really unable

to communicate back and forth. So if we needed something from

our rear base of operations, we had to send somebody back, actually.

Senator JEFFORDS. Senator Smith.

Senator SMITH. Mr. Chairman, Senator Warner has to leave, and

I’m going to yield part of my time to him for a question.

Senator WARNER. I have the Chief of Naval Operations up on the

matters he’s faced with waiting in my office. I’m just going to go

quickly to Chief Plaugher. You were the first responder in Arlington County. My estimate is there are about 40 different Government agencies and cadres of employees scattered in 40 different locations.
33

We had here, most unfortunately yesterday, an anthrax situation. I’ll just call it a situation, it’s been fully publicized. You would

be the first to respond, in all probability, to some of these outlying

Federal Government offices. Fortunately, here we had in place expertise. I doubt if that expertise is 5, 10, 15, 20 miles beyond the

Capitol.

What sort of equipment do you have and expertise do you have

to do on-scene ascertainment of the presence or absence, say, of an

anthrax chemical or biological attack?

Chief PLAUGHER. Thank you, Senator, for the question. The Arlington County Fire Department does in fact have a large Federal

presence in our jurisdiction. We’ve been working on terrorism and

terrorism preparedness for many years. There are some equipment

shortfalls that we have recently requested through some channels

for support from Congress on.

But it is a complex issue, and as we are dealing with these anthrax issues, the situations, I think that’s an excellent way to describe it, Senator, it is the whole ability to maintain continuity, the

whole ability to not let our way of life be disrupted. That is all

about confidence. That is all about us first responders having the

necessary equipment to go out and deal with the package, the letter, the document, the box, the whatever, and exude confidence

that we have the ability to analyze it properly and to make the

right decision for the general well-being of the public.

So we do need that capability, we do need that specialization.

Senator WARNER. You have some capability now?

Chief PLAUGHER. Yes, sir, we do have some capability.

Senator WARNER. But it has to be enhanced by other equipment.

Chief PLAUGHER. Right. We do have some capability now, and we

have requested actually——

Senator WARNER. I have your request here, and I will, together

with other colleagues from Virginia, put that in to the appropriate

appropriations channel here.

I thank the chair, and I thank Mr. Smith.

Chief PLAUGHER. Before the Senator leaves, he was a major player in the Fire Act of last year. I know that goes without saying,

but Mr. Chairman, you asked the question about needs for volunteer fire departments or fire departments nationwide. That $100

million that was recently awarded to the fire service as a Nation

is a great start.

But it does not meet our needs. As we know, we only funded six

program areas this year. There were 19,000 grant requests for

those 6 program areas totaling $3 billion, and there was only $100

million. I know in my department, I submitted, because you were

allowed to submit for two, I submitted for two grants, one of which

was a cancer prevention grant for my department that would have

allowed me to equip my firefighters with a second set of turnout

clothing so that they would not have to wear contaminated clothing

in a situation like the Pentagon, because they would have a set to

be out to be decontaminated while they were working in the incident.

The second grant was for a community public education in our

wonderfully diverse community that we have in Arlington County.

Because we just simply don’t have the resources to be effective with
34

our diversity that we have. Neither one of them were funded. Why?

Because there is a huge need, because there are other volunteer

fire departments out there that don’t have one set of turnout clothing. We have simply got to fix our first responders’ need in this Nation.

Thank you, Senator. Thank you for your leadership last year.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you very much, Chief, for that information.

Senator Clinton.

Senator CLINTON. Thank you, and I want to thank each of you

for being here. I cannot tell you how much we appreciate your willingness to share your experiences and give us the benefit of your

experience and your insight.

There are many specific issues that we need your help on. We’ve

touched on some of those, the communications, the health followup, additional funding into the Fire Act, a lot of very good ideas.

But I want to just ask, in addition to your being on the front lines,

which you all have been, and I remember meeting the Sacramento

team and the Ohio team when I was there with the President. I

remember a number of you telling me you’d never been to New

York before, and we were so grateful to see you there.

In addition to your service, I know this is hard on your families.

I know that it is a very big sacrifice when you go off to do the mission you’re trained to do. How are they doing, and is there more

that we should do to try to support those who support you on the

front lines?

Chief Plaugher.

Chief PLAUGHER. I think the families are part of the behind-thescenes component that makes all of us successful. I know we’re

working real hard in our department to express our appreciation

to the families. We just had a simple gesture, a picnic, where we

invited all the firefighters and their families for a day, for an afternoon, to come and share stories and to talk to our health care professionals and talk to other members of the department so they

know they’re not in this by themselves, they know that there are

other family members going through the same thing, which is their

husband or wife that’s gone for a long period of time, staffing fire

stations. Because while we were engaged at the Pentagon, we still

had to provide services to the community of Arlington and its businesses.

So there was a great burden. For days, husbands and wives

didn’t see each other for simply a couple of weeks at a time. So we

wanted to thank them. I think that’s what this Nation needs to do.

It also needs to thank the families of the first responders.

Senator CLINTON. Captain Metzinger.

Captain METZINGER. One of the things that they set up for us at

the convention center was a phone bank. That was the first time

I’d seen something like that. I’d been on a lot of campaign fires

with wildland incidents in California where I used my cell phone

on a mountaintop someplace trying to reach my family. But we

were able to call from that site there any time of day or night. It

was a great thing for us to have. I could call home.
35

One of the first things my wife asked me when I got back was,

how much longer was I going to do this. I said, ‘‘Well, as long as

I’m a firefighter, probably.’’ I remember when I was working this particular scene on the picture here, that’s me there working with those New York firefighters. One day we were working, night, actually, and I looked

down and I could see 60 or 70 feet down through there. I said, ‘‘Oh,

my gosh, come here and look at this, you guys.’’ Two of them said, ‘‘No, I don’t want to look, don’t even talk to me about it.’’ And I

said, ‘‘Come here and look,’’ and they said ‘‘no.’’ The guy looked at me and said, ‘‘Why are you doing this? Why

are you here?’’ I said, ‘‘Well, I’m here to help.’’ I said, ‘‘I’m a firefighter.’’ He didn’t know I was a firefighter, actually. He thought

FEMA was some kind of a Federal unit that came out of someplace, I’m not sure where. But it was interesting, his perspective.

He wondered why we’re there, and it’s just to help.

Our families, they were worried for us at home. Our particular

department set up a hot line that they could call 24 hours a day

and get an update on what we are doing. If other teams aren’t

doing that, I’d really suggest it. It was very helpful. If they had a

need, they could call someone locally. I had one of our chiefs come

to my house and change the smoke detector, somebody else came

and mowed my lawn. Our neighbors brought over food. It was really a nice thing. Our community came together across this country.

The fire service usually takes care of itself. We’re a family unlike

any other, I think. It’s pretty nice to see that that happened at this

event as well.

Senator CLINTON. Chief Hessinger.

Chief HESSINGER. Mr. Chairman, Senator, I think I would echo

the thoughts of the Captain here that the critical incident stress

system that they’ve put in place for firefighters now has came leap

years ahead now in the last probably 5 or 10 years, especially since

Oklahoma City. Firefighters take care of their own while they’re in

situations like this. We also had hot lines set up.

But just continue to support the critical incident stress system

and the debriefings and continue debriefings for families who need

it, would be all I could see.

Senator CLINTON. Thank you.

Chief HESSINGER. I have a personal note. My wife and I—I have

a 2-way pager. Every morning on the bus ride to work, I paged her

and talked to her on the internet and every night when I came

home. So this bonded me with her, even being that far away.

Also, last night she attended a stress debriefing for the spouses

for Ohio Task Force One members. I called her, it was supposed

to start at 7 p.m. and I called at 8:30 and 9 o’clock, and she wasn’t

home until 10 o’clock. It was really kind of amazing to me that

there was only three of them there, but they spent that much time

with them. So it really meant a lot to her.

Senator CLINTON. I really thank you, I thank you for your service

and I thank you for your commitment. I think that we have to pay

more attention to the support systems that our firefighters and our

first response teams need, both for themselves and their families,

in order to be able to address all of the demands that they’re now

facing. Thank you.
36

Senator JEFFORDS. Senator Voinovich.

Senator VOINOVICH. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for allowing these gentlemen who are on the front lines to come in and

testify before us today. I was emotionally touched by their testimony and how they were impacted on their experience in New

York. We can only imagine the grief of the families who lost their

loved ones, in the fire and police service and the families who were

the victims of the act of terrorism.

I want you to know that your testimony today has made me more

committed than ever to do everything that I can to make sure that

we don’t experience the kind of thing that we experienced in New

York and in Washington, and to do everything in my power to

make sure that we eradicate terrorism in the world. It’s your kind

of testimony that really brings it right home to what this is all

about. I think so often, a lot of people who aren’t touched by what

you have been touched with don’t really understand how important

this effort is that we’re undertaking.

You talked about respiratory problems in Sacramento and respiratory problems in Ohio. Was there some kind of equipment that

your people could have worn that would have avoided their having

this aftermath from their work there in New York?

Chief HESSINGER. Senator, I think the equipment was there. The

respirators that were called for, what the task force carries was

adequate or supposed to be adequate in order to keep you busy for

72 hours. We’re supposed to be self-sufficient for 72 hours. 3-M,

that would be the corporation that manufactures the filters that we

were supposed to be using, came in probably within 4 days and

brought a lot more of those filters in to support us. FEMA did a

good job getting those filters to us.

So I think the equipment is there, and it is in place. Again, this

was just such an overwhelming and magnificent site, and the size

of it. The dust that was left when we first got to the forward BoO,

the firefighters and the rescuers were walking through dust that

was 5-, 6-inches deep in some areas. So just the amount of stuff

in the air and the particles in the air, we went through masks a

lot quicker than I think anyone ever could have suspected. I think

that was just, that was the deficiency that we found. It wasn’t a

deficiency that could ever have been foreseen.

Senator VOINOVICH. So in other words, you had the equipment,

but the challenge was so overwhelming that it was too much for

the equipment and then you didn’t have the filters to replace them

as soon as you would like to have them.

I’d be interested to know from both of you, Captain and Chief

Hessinger, how long have your units been in place, how do they

come into existence and obviously, do you think the training that

you had was adequate to get the job done or not, and do you feel

that the equipment that you had was adequate?

Captain METZINGER. I’ll speak for our team. I believe our equipment was adequate to get the job done, although this did present

some new issues for us. In California, we’re used to concrete buildings, and this was entirely out of steel. That presented its own

problems for us, with cutting and removing.

The amount of steel in this thing is so tremendous, I’m intimate

with that building now, for spending so many nights out there with
37

those iron workers, cutting that stuff into pieces. It’s incredible, the

weight and the thickness, the diameter of the steel in that building. It takes large torches and cutters to cut through that stuff that

we don’t really normally carry. We have small cutters and torches

for rebar and smaller pieces of metal.

That’s an area where we could probably expand our capabilities

and our expertise as well. We could have used a lot of people out

there doing what those New York City iron workers were doing.

That’s one area I know we could expand in.

I joined the team right after the Federal building disaster in

Oklahoma City. We lost a lot of team members after that incident

that just didn’t want to be a part of it any more, the traumas that

they went through there in Oklahoma City. I know our team has

responded to the Northridge earthquake, the Oklahoma disaster,

the Loma Prieta earthquake, we went to Atlanta for the preparation of the Olympics there in 1986, and other smaller incidents locally.

I know our team has been around, I’m not sure what the age is,

but it’s probably at least 10 years. It’s grown. I’ve seen every incident we’ve gone to, we’ve grown in expertise and equipment. We

keep adding to our cache of equipment, it’s grown every year, and

it needs to continue to grow.

Chief HESSINGER. Senator, I think the cache and the training we

carry was sufficient. I don’t think there’s any way that you could

have foreseen something like this happening. It would have taxed

any system, all 28 teams. One of the Senators that asked a question about, do we feel that if this happened in another city would

it have been as easy or as smooth an operation. The amount of resources New York City committed to this right off the bat was astounding. When we got there, there were thousands of iron workers, there were 16,000 firefighters to commit to this, there were

40,000 police officers to commit to this, on top of everything else

that New York City has resource-wise.

So just from that, seeing that system taxed to its max, and seeing the Federal system taxed to its max just shows the actual magnitude of this incident. I think FEMA has done a good job at

caching us out reasonably. To create an inventory of equipment to

handle a situation such as New York City would be astronomical

and what the teams would be carrying and the price to do that.

So there are probably things, as the Captain mentioned, that we

can improve on and maybe buy. But I think, before this incident,

I think the caches were fairly sufficient. The training has been

there.

Senator VOINOVICH. The training was great.

Chief PLAUGHER. Senator, just one quick point. One of the discussions that is going on right now within my industry, and that

is within the fire chiefs of the United States, and particularly the

fire chiefs terrorism committee, is the creation of a small layer of

urban search and rescue teams called USAR-lights, that would be

based in the metropolitan area.

Senator VOINOVICH. What are they called again?

Chief PLAUGHER. USAR-light, they would be a small slice of a

full-blown FEMA team that would be locally available in the first

hour of the incident for a collapsed building, collapsed structure.
38

They would not have nearly the capability or the robustness of a

full FEMA team, but it would be able to be into an incident scene

within the first hour to start rescue operations. It might have one

search dog, might have one engineer, that sort of thing. We’re still

working on the development of that, and it’s going to take some resources, obviously, to set it up in the metropolitan areas of the

United States.

The teams are fabulous, but it takes them many hours to get deployed, in some cases days to go to places like New York City from

Sacramento. We think there could be a small segment of that capability. This is all new to our industry. As the Captain was alluding

to earlier, we used to fight fires 20 years ago. Now we’re your first

responders for everything that might harm you. So we’re trying to

develop these programs as we’re learning.

So I was interested in their comment about steel cutting equipment and stuff like that. There’s a lot we can learn.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you, sir.

Senator Corzine.

Senator CORZINE. Thank you. I don’t really have words to say

how you all convey the message of commitment that you and the

folks that you work with have given to the country and to people

every day. I hope folks that watch C-SPAN get a chance to hear

the testimony. It’s truly remarkable.

I would love to hear comments on specific equipment needs, generic areas that underlie this $3 billion of requests that you talked

about and that we have been somewhat remiss in meeting the

needs. Are there particular categorizations of areas where we ought

to be giving specific focus to? Second of all, I’d love to know whether, and this gets back at the bioterrorism situation if you will,

whether training with regard to this and planning with regard to

this is built in to the urban search and rescue missions at FEMA,

and are there steps that we need to be taking to make sure that

we’re better prepared in carrying those efforts out. If there are efforts, were they in practice and effective with the situation that occurred on September 11?

Chief PLAUGHER. Senator, I can only answer part of those questions, because the FEMA response to bioterrorism, I’m not quite

sure what level the FEMA team deals with that issue.

As far as your first question about the equipment, we need to

make sure that our first responders, particularly our fire and emergency medical service responders, have the equipment necessary.

We have some fire departments that are operating 40-year-old second-hand, third-hand, fourth-hand fire apparatus that the reliability is second, it’s questionable. It’s sad.

I recently visited a small fire department in the mountains of

southwest Virginia. The first line piece of fire apparatus was a

1956 flatbed Ford truck that had a round 250 gallon water tank

bolted on the back of it, and a small little 5-gallon-a-minute pump.

Somehow, we’ve got to fix this in our Nation.

At the time I was the president of the State Chiefs Association

of Virginia. We were diligently working through the State to try to

fix this. So there is some relationship with the State, not just with

the Federal Government here, that has to come out as well.
39

But we need to make sure that we have capability assessments,

as was talked before earlier by the Director, and that these capability assessments are State by State and community by community, so that we can manage those hazards that we’re asked to

manage every day. Our communities feel good about their local

first responders and their capability.

I’ll also take this opportunity to talk about another one of my

deep concerns about our Nation and our ability to respond to the

bioterrorism question earlier. As a fire chief, and I’m deeply concerned about our medical system capability to respond, neither in

New York nor the Pentagon nor in Pennsylvania did we actually

test our ability to deal with thousands of casualties on our medical

system.

I truly think that we need to fix it. I think we need to roll up

our sleeves and we need to work diligently to make sure that adequate disaster response capability from our medical community exists everywhere, and that it’s worked on very, very hard, and that

we don’t assume that it’s there. We all know that we have a medical community that the hospital is profit-based in a lot of communities. Those that are not profit-based are non-profits that are

struggling to meet the demands of a community for indigent care

and other needs.

On top of that, we pile the disaster capability needs, and then

we wonder why it’s missing. Well, I think we need to take it out

of that arena and we need to say that there is an absolute requirement in our communities that disaster capability, the ability to

deal with hundreds, if not thousands, of casualties from a bioterrorism or a natural disaster is prepared and ready. We need to

make sure that it’s tested and it’s exercised and that it has the necessary components.

I think we need to have some real honest dialog about the ability

to do that, to make sure that there’s adequate funding for the State

capability. We do it in other areas. We do it for the highway interstate system, we do it for the FAA system to make sure that there’s

Federal dollars provided to manage those things. We need to do it

for here. I’ll defer to these other gentlemen about the FEMA’s

urban search and rescue capability for bioterrorism.

Senator CORZINE. Thank you, Chief.

Chief PLAUGHER. Thank you.

Mr. KENNEY. Just from a worker’s perspective, we went to work

every day down there, and we really didn’t know what was on

those planes. They could have been carrying anything. But at no

time were we checked for anything. So I think it would really better our capabilities if we brought in some type of medical——

Senator CORZINE. It isn’t part of the regular protocol of what you

were experiencing as you carried out your efforts?

Mr. KENNEY. Right. Exactly. So you know, if we could bring in

some type of medical team that would look after our needs as well

as the victims that are there, as we’re working, am I making myself clear? OK.

Senator CORZINE. Mr. Chairman, can I ask one follow-up question?

Senator JEFFORDS. Yes.
40

Senator CORZINE. EPA is responsible for checking air quality and

was actively involved in, I presume, doing the checking for bioterrorism. Was that coordinated with the search and rescue teams?

Do we feel like we’re working off the same strategy and game plan

as it relates to these kinds of issues? That’s worrisome a little bit,

that we’re not sensing that in the gentlemen’s response.

Chief PLAUGHER. I can only address, obviously, the Pentagon incident. We did have EPA partners there from the start who worked

diligently to monitor the air. The asbestos was of deep concern

within the Pentagon, as well as you alluded to earlier, anything

else that the plane might have had on it. So we had a Federal partnership with the EPA, who was right inside of the Pentagon, doing

air sampling that was then rushed out to a laboratory for analysis.

They were phenomenal. We got the reports back in a timely fashion, we knew exactly what we were dealing with air quality wise,

and then what we found interesting was, even after it was declared

that we did not have to have the level of protection that we started

with earlier, some of the folks simply just didn’t believe us. They

kept the protection on anyway, they kept the respirators on, anyway. So it’s a tough situation, because it’s not only physical in monitoring those conditions, but it’s also psychological, to make sure.

We also were fortunate in the District of Columbia as we also

have an NMRT, which is a National Medical Response Team component of the U.S. Public Health Service, of which I’m the executive director for the Washington metropolitan area. So we have

some detection capability that other communities don’t have, because it comes with a National Medical Response Team that is specifically designed for chemical and biological responses. So I don’t

think that you would find that in other places. There are only four

of them in the United States. There’s one for the Nation’s Capitol,

which is based in Arlington County at the fire department there.

There’s one in Winston-Salem, NC, there’s one in Denver, and

there’s one in Los Angeles as part of the Los Angeles County metro

area.

There are other metropolitan medical teams based around the

United States if a metropolitan area chooses to have one. That’s

also funded and supported by the Office of Emergency Preparedness of the U.S. Public Health Service. I know we used our NMRT

from day one of the incident for decontamination and working

through the evidence, and the evidence decontamination procedures for the FBI agents and law enforcement as well.

So that also needs to be brought out in our further reported analysis of what we can do to enhance our capability.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you all.

Senator Smith.

Senator SMITH. I had to yield to my colleague there, he ranks on

the Armed Services Committee.

I didn’t hear anybody mention this. How often do you train as

local responders? How often do you train with the Federal agencies,

if at all, on these kinds of disasters?

Chief HESSINGER. Senator Smith, each month, our team, as Ohio

Task Force One, each one of our sub-teams, rescue, search and the

other one, gets together on a monthly basis to train with their own

cache and equipment. On top of that, we have a yearly mobilization
41

drill where we basically mobilize to train on a specific incident. We

mobilize the whole team as we would in FEMA. We also have one

that we do as part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, testing

their knowledge out.

On top of that, FEMA offers classes yearly to the different teams

to go through specialist courses.

Senator SMITH. So you felt adequately trained, if that’s possible,

in a disaster like this?

Chief HESSINGER. Yes.

Senator SMITH. In the two visits that I made, the Pentagon and

New York, right after, within days, I was just absolutely amazed

at the amount of activity, and just wondered, especially you three,

all of you, where you came into this situation, in your case just flying in from out of State, you’re thrust into this activity and just,

as one who was observing, not participating, you had construction

workers, people trying to bring food and supplies, people removing

rubble, firemen, policemen, FEMA, all this activity.

When you’re thrown into that situation, how do you know who’s

giving the orders? Everybody’s running around with radios. Was it

all organized enough that you knew exactly who you were supposed

to take direction from and just make it all happen? Or are you

going to keep it to yourself?

[Laughter.]

Captain METZINGER. For the most part, it may look chaotic, but

it is quite organized. Each team that responds, we have two task

force leaders. We’re like a para-military organization, we have a

structure that we have accountability to where we have leaders

who make decisions.

Senator SMITH. Vertical integration was good?

Captain METZINGER. Exactly, yes. So we have accountability in

the same manner. So if something, a secondary device were to go

off or if something would have collapsed, we would be on top of

knowing exactly who was doing what at any given moment.

Senator SMITH. Just a couple of closing comments.

Senator JEFFORDS. Go right ahead.

Senator SMITH. Chief, first of all, thank you for your kind remarks about the legislation I had proposed. I might just say,

there’s no pride of authorship here, whatever it takes to put the

legislation together that helps you guys is what we’ll do. I know

there are some others that have some different ideas. We did have

a hearing on it, I testified. So we expect that we’ll be able to put

something together with a combination of some of the proposals

that were made.

Also, captain, it was very compelling, your diary. It’s so personal,

and all of you, in terms of the emotion you have, I hope you’re all

dealing with it well. I know it’s tough. I, on a much smaller scale,

witnessed the murders at the CIA by a terrorist a few years ago,

first-hand, right up front, up close and personal. I thought, ‘‘I’m

rough, tough, and I’ll get over it.’’ I’m not over it yet, to be honest

with you.

So I don’t know how you deal with it. It is incredible, what you

had to see. I cannot say enough about you, and all of your comrades.
42

I’ll just close, Chief, it wasn’t a fireman or a policeman, but it

was a Marine that, when I was at the Pentagon in all this activity

that was there at that time, they still were looking for the possibility of live people. I spoke to a Marine who was standing there

in uniform. He asked me if we were going to get after these perpetrators of this action, and I said, ‘‘The good news is, yes, the bad

news is, you may have to go in on the ground to mop it up.’’ And

he said, ‘‘Just call me first, sir.’’ That’s the kind of spirit that we

have in this country, the firemen, the policemen, the search and

rescue people, the military, we’re all one.

So thank you very much for all you did and all you’re doing.

Senator JEFFORDS. Thank you, Senator Smith, for those very excellent remarks.

Let me ask another question along the lines we were talking

about before, and that’s the availability of equipment. We have

seen now that it can happen anywhere. On the other hand, to have

equipment available everywhere is probably not a logical answer.

So should we think in terms of regional storehouses of equipment,

or how do we grapple with that one, so that it can be in a timely

manner?

Chief Plaugher.

Chief PLAUGHER. I heard the director’s comments earlier today

about the—28, I think, is what he said—FEMA urban search and

rescue teams as an adequate number of teams. He doesn’t feel like

he needs any more. I think if we were to add a metropolitan component, a small, light component, that would serve the metropolitan areas where our greatest population is, that we could adequately then bolster that capability.

I think a regional approach is sound. I also think a regional approach for our medical needs is also sound, where we could do some

things to cache equipment and capability regionally as well as

training. We for years have had dialog about the role of the National Guard in preparing for a response to terrorism. They chose

to go down a different path than what several of us recommended,

because we thought that they could have provided, could provide,

valuable service, because they do have arenas and Guard armories

and those sorts of things in most communities that could be a great

asset to us for terrorism preparedness.

So there is a need for, obviously, a great deal of dialog as we put

together a structure that is different than what we’ve had to deal

with before. The days of September 11 are going to change us forever. The threats are higher, the need for preparedness is higher,

the need for response capability is much higher. I know there is a

call-out nationally for an additional 75,000 career firefighters in

this Nation. From my perspective, that’s a bare minimum, to bolster our first response capability.

That, coupled with a regional cache of equipment, I think we

would be much better prepared.

Senator JEFFORDS. Captain, did you have a comment? Do you

agree with what he said?

Captain METZINGER. I echo everything he did say, along with the

Director of FEMA, that the 28 teams that you have in place now

probably adequately cover this country from Washington to Florida.

If you continue to support those, and I think it’s a good suggestion
43

to do smaller teams in metropolitan cities that perhaps don’t have

regional coverage now. Twenty-eight teams is, I guess, not that

many if you think about the size of this country and some of the

cities we have that may not have someone close by. You were fortunate in having two or three teams close by here at the Pentagon

incident. New York City had Massachusetts and New Jersey close

by.

But the other teams are a distance out to get in there. You’ve

got a lapse time of travel and getting the people together. So that

may be a good idea, to have smaller, lighter teams in some of those

cities that don’t currently have them.

Senator JEFFORDS. Chief Hessinger.

Chief HESSINGER. Mr. Chairman, I think again, the road they’re

on is correct. FEMA is working on and has actually incorporated

what they call, the Chief was calling a light task force, actually,

but a modular deployment, where they’re taking small components

of each team and deploying them to job specific events, i.e., they

have a hurricane module right now, where you deploy a smaller

number of your task force but they may deploy more of them to

have a more congregated group of people and equipment for that

specific need.

In New York City’s need, it would have been the need for more

of the search cams and the search team components, and components for searching void spaces, deploying more teams, but smaller

and with the equipment that they need. So I think the Chief is

right on line with saying that the smaller, regional teams would be

fine and that FEMA has 28 teams that cover the Nation well right

now.

Senator JEFFORDS. Mr. Kenney.

Mr. KENNEY. I don’t have anything to add to that, because

they’ve all said it very well.

Senator JEFFORDS. Well, thank you. Thank you all. Obviously we

have a lot of work to do. On the other hand, we do have restrictions

on the amount of money we’re going to have, too. We all like to see

everybody have everything that they need, and that may not be

possible. But I also will hold you in reserve to call upon you if we

have additional questions.

You’ve been extremely helpful and you’ve brought the reality of

the situation to this committee in a way that we haven’t had before. So I thank you very, very much for coming and look forward

to working with you.

[Whereupon, at 12:35 p.m., the hearing was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the chair.]

[Additional statements submitted for the record follow:]

STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, U.S. SENATOR

FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI

Director Allbaugh, thank you for coming today. You, your agency, and all the

amazing people FEMA works with have been true heroes helping the Nation respond to the tragic events of September 11.

The September 11th attacks showed us what kind of evil exists in our world. September 11 also showed what kind of selfless bravery protects us and rescues us from

that evil.

Emergency response teams rushed to the sites as fast as the highjackers’ planes.

Some will be staying forever, because of their own loss of life. Many continue to

place themselves in danger in the recovery effort.
44

While the last FEMA teams have left the disaster sites, we know that FEMA continues to work around the clock to help put lives back together.

We in Missouri bore witness to rescue efforts through our own recovery team.

Sixty-two members from our Boone County urban search and rescue team spent 9

days toiling through the rubble. Unfortunately, their efforts were recovery, not rescue. For over a week, Boone County rescuers never gave up hope of finding a survivor.

We now know that wasn’t to be. But we can now form a new hope, that we can

work tirelessly toward, that we can prevent this from ever happening to us again.

With our emergency response actions in place, and relief efforts continuing, we

can begin to look toward long term prevention and protection.

I am working with the Environmental Protection Agency, both to ensure that

there are no gaps in their protection responsibilities and to ensure that they have

the resources they need to protect critical infrastructures such as our drinking

water.

One specific example of a continuing responsibility under FEMA is dam safety.

Dams managed by the Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation receive

Federal attention. However, there are over 100,000 dams under State regulation,

and 10,000 dams posing a potentially high hazard to life if something were to happen.

Missouri is fifth in the Nation with 437 high-hazard dams.

FEMA has a role to play in getting information out to the operators of these

dams, many private, and all wanting guidance and leadership from the Federal Government. They want to know how to assess the vulnerability of their dams and devise emergency response plans.

EPA is sending water system protection checklists to the Nation’s drinking water

systems and I encourage you to do the same.

Thank you for coming today and I look forward to working with you in any way

you think we can better manage our Nation’s disasters.

STATEMENT OF JOE M. ALLBAUGH, DIRECTOR, FEDERAL EMERGENCY

MANAGEMENT AGENCY

INTRODUCTION

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and committee members. I am Joe Allbaugh, Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). I thank you for this opportunity to discuss FEMA’s operations in New York and at the Pentagon following

the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

I was attending the National Emergency Management Association Conference in

Montana with State Emergency Management Directors from across the country

when I first learned of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City

and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. I immediately returned to Washington, DC.

to lead our response.

As we now all sadly know, the twin towers at the World Trade Center complex

collapsed after being targeted by two hijacked commercial airliners, and four other

buildings partially collapsed. Several nearby buildings also suffered extensive collateral damage. After the World Trade Center attack, another hijacked plane was deliberately crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth hijacked plane crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Our Nation’s response to these terrorist attacks was

swift and is unprecedented in America’s history.

RESPONSE AND RECOVERY ACTIVITIES

Responding to the horrific events of September 11, the President immediately

signed a major disaster declaration for 5 counties in New York. The disaster declaration was amended on September 27 and again on October 2, making all counties

in the State of New York eligible for some form of Federal disaster assistance in

the wake of the terrorist attack.

The President also promptly declared a Federal emergency in Virginia under subsection 501(b) of the Stafford Act, and a short time later declared a major disaster

in Virginia to trigger a broader range of Stafford Act response authorities. In addition, the President declared an emergency for all 21 counties in New Jersey. These

declarations make available Federal programs that provide public assistance and assistance for families and individuals. Normally the Federal Government provides 75

percent of the disaster response costs with the remaining 25 percent the responsibility of non-Federal entities; however, in this disaster FEMA is reimbursing the

States and affected local governments for 100 percent of the eligible costs for debris
45

removal, emergency protective measures, and public infrastructure rebuilding costs

in response to the terrorist attacks.

Minutes after the first hijacked airplane hit the World Trade Center, I activated

a full Emergency Support Team at FEMA’s National Interagency Emergency Operations Center in Washington, DC. Federal officials immediately began arriving at

the Center to coordinate the nationwide response and recovery effort. Some 1,800

Federal workers are deployed to New York to support the disaster response, about

800 from FEMA and almost 1,000 from other Federal departments and agencies.

At the same time I activated FEMA’s 10 Regional Operations Centers and a

backup Emergency Support Team at our Mt. Weather facility in Berryville, Virginia.

Both Emergency Support Teams operated around the clock, working 12-hour shifts.

The FEMA Headquarters Emergency Support Team continues to operate so that we

are prepared to immediately respond to any additional events, should this become

necessary. Additional teams have been operating at FEMA Headquarters and in the

field since September 11 supporting the disaster response, using the Federal Response Plan to coordinate all Federal activities and to strengthen State and local

capabilities.

Shortly after the incident, the lead for disaster response and recovery was transferred to Disaster Field Offices (DFOS) in New York City and in Arlington, Virginia.

We deployed four Mobile Emergency Response Systems (MERS) to New York and

one to Virginia to provide communications and other support to the DFOs and other

facilities to enhance communications capabilities. One of these mobile units provided

essential communications capabilities for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Office in New York so that they could immediately begin the investigative

work essential for bringing the terrorists to justice and preventing similar acts in

the future. At the same time, we dispatched liaisons to the FBI’s Joint Operations

Centers in New York City and Arlington and to the FBI’s Strategic Information and

Operations Center in Washington, DC. A FEMA National Emergency Response

Team, our field response organization, was immediately alerted and remains on call

if needed to respond to any other events.

Our top priorities in helping New York and Virginia throughout this entire disaster response effort have been to: • Provide urban search and rescue support; • Assist in life saving operations; • Meet individual and public assistance needs; • Implement human services and victims assistance programs; and • Assist in debris removal.

To support response activities in New York, mobilization centers were established

at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey and Stewart Air National Guard Base

in New York. Additional operating centers were established in the two States. The

Anacostia Naval Air Station in Washington, DC, served as a mobilization center in

support of the Pentagon operation. These centers supported the staging and movement of personnel and needed supplies and equipment into the affected areas.

FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) Task Forces have played a critical role

in our response. In fact, the attacks thrust the Task Forces into the spotlight. The

world has been focused on their important life-saving work and they have received

a surge of gratitude and support from all over. The Task Forces are made up of between 62 and 72 emergency responders who conduct search and rescue operations,

provide emergency medical care for victims, handle search and rescue dogs, and

evaluate and stabilize damaged structures. Twenty-six of our 28 US&R Task Forces

have been employed in responding to the Pentagon and New York disasters—5 at

the Pentagon and 20 in New York, and one Task Force is assigned as a Rapid Intervention Team to respond to other events in New York City. At this time, 22 of the

28 Task Forces are available to respond to additional emergencies.

The New York City Office of Emergency Management’s US&R Task Force was

among the first responders at the World Trade Center. The New York Force is a

valued part of FEMA’s 28 Task Forces that make up the National US&R Response

System. Its Task Force leader, Chief Raymond Downey, was one of the first responders on the scene. Chief Downey was also the leader of the National US&R

Task Force Leaders and was a board member of FEMA’s US&R Advisory Committee. He and his Task Force members are among the missing and dead brothers

of FEMA’s US&R system.

Our Federal partners have played extremely important roles in the response efforts. The Department of Health and Human Services and Public Health Service

have played an important role in the health and medical response. 167 persons are

assigned to Disaster Medical Assistance Teams and a Medical Support Team to support the response in New York and remain in the City. Similarly, 160 persons are

assigned to Disaster Mortuary Teams and remain in the City. Thirty-three Centers
46

for Disease Control epidemiologists are assigned to track illness trends. A Veterinary Medical Assistance Team is deployed to treat the rescue dogs; a burn team

consisting of 9 nurses is operating at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital; and a pharmaceutical stockpile were deployed to New York City, and all except the stockpile

remain there.

Debris management is, of course, another major area of concern with building collapses of this magnitude. Approximately 1.4 million-plus tons of debris are involved

and some 300,000 tons of mixed debris have been removed to the sorting and disposal site at the Staten Island landfill. New York City has tremendous capability

in this area and is managing the debris removal effort with technical support from

the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Dredging of the Hudson River has been accomplished to facilitate removal of debris by barges.

A great deal of our recovery focus is on helping individuals impacted by the disaster and we have set up a Disaster Assistance Service Center to help in this regard. FEMA Community Relations teams are going door-to-door in Lower Manhattan to distribute information and answer questions on the type of support FEMA

is providing such as temporary housing assistance, and grants for emergency home

repair, cleanup, unemployment assistance, and crisis counseling. The New York

State Department of Labor estimates that 285,000 workers have been displaced or

have become unemployed by the disaster.

We are also closely coordinating with the Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime (OVC), the Department of Health and Human Service’s Center for

Mental Health Services, and the American Red Cross to provide a myriad of services. FEMA approved the State of New York Crisis Counseling Immediate Services

Program and it is providing crisis counseling. The National Voluntary Organizations

Active in Disasters is helping us with a long-term strategy for managing donations.

There are several unique aspects of our responses to the terrorist attacks that relate to the provision of assistance to individuals. First of all, most disasters do not

involve criminal acts, so FEMA does not routinely need to coordinate with OVC in

the course of providing disaster assistance; however, in the current disaster, we are

coordinating with OVC because they are providing assistance to victims of the terrorist attacks and their families and we want to make sure that there is no duplication of assistance. Second, the outpouring of donations that non-governmental organizations have received in the aftermath of the attacks is unprecedented. Finally,

because these catastrophes involved airplane crashes, we are coordinating with the

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) with respect to the provision of assistance from United and American Airlines to the families of the victims. In response to the unique aspects of this situation, we have aggressively coordinated

with OVC, the NTSB, and the non-governmental recipients of donated funds to put

in place as coordinated and efficient a response structure as possible. Since the Stafford Act prohibits FEMA from duplicating disaster assistance, we are being very

careful to coordinate with all appropriate organizations.

In another area, because the recovery of our infrastructure is so critical to restoring economic viability, we have established an Infrastructure Recovery Workgroup

in New York to coordinate the stabilization and ultimate reconstruction of infrastructure and to incorporate reasonable enhancements and mitigation measures into

the reconstruction process throughout the affected area.

I would like to acknowledge the tremendous support we have received from some

of our other partners I haven’t mentioned thus far:

• Transportation and movement support provided by the Department of Transportation;

• Telecommunications assistance from the National Communications System;

• Logistical and managerial support provided by incident management teams

from the U.S. Firefighting Service;

• Mass care, feeding, and mental health support from the American Red Cross

and other volunteer organizations;

• Resource support from the General Services Administration;

• Environmental monitoring and sampling support from the Environmental Protection Agency;

• Food stamp program support from the Department of Agriculture

• Assistance in resolving power restoration problems from the Department of Energy; and

• Invaluable support from the various branches of the Department of Defense.

There has also been an incredible outpouring of offers of assistance from the international community. Citizens of more than 80 nations were killed in the WTC attack, and 59 nations and the European Union have offered humanitarian assistance.

Canada, Brazil, France, Mexico, Norway, and Sweden provided assistance, primarily

in the form of small rescue teams and technical emergency management expertise.
47

There is no doubt that the disaster response and recovery will be a long-term

process, but the President has said that we will provide whatever assistance is

needed to get the job done. I can assure you that FEMA will be there as long as

needed. We will continue to work closely with New York City and the States of New

York, Virginia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to complete this mission. I am grateful that Congress appropriated $40 billion to the President’s Emergency Response

Fund for overall emergency assistance to fashion a creative plan to recover from

these events.

I am especially moved and deeply humbled by the heroic and unselfish efforts of

emergency responders from the local police and fire departments who placed themselves in harm’s way to help others in their time of need. I am forever grateful to

them for their ultimate sacrifice and bravery. Many of these policemen, firemen, and

emergency medical technicians tragically lost their own lives while doing what they

do best, putting everything aside to rush to the scene to save lives, rescue the

trapped and injured, and be the first responders. Our hearts are hurting along with

those individuals who have lost their loved ones. More than ever, we must reach

out and do whatever we can to console them and help them through this difficult

and sad period.

The level of cooperation and professionalism exhibited by all of the Federal, State

and local personnel and emergency responders has been outstanding, and the American people can be proud of the work they are doing to help the Nation recover. I

am pleased by the dedication, abilities, and sheer will of the FEMA employees, the

rescue workers, and officials from all levels of government, representatives of private businesses, volunteers, and others who are working together to help in the

aftermath of this tragedy. The support we have received from the public has been

tremendous. It won’t be easy, but I know that we will prevail in the recovery effort

because of the spirit and dedication of all of these people.

THE ROLE OF THE OFFICE OF NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS

I would also like to give you a brief status report on the Office of National Preparedness (ONP). The President asked me on May 8, 2001 to establish the Office

of National Preparedness, to lead the management of the consequences of the use

of the weapon of mass destruction in the United States, if such use should occur

despite the efforts of our Government to prevent it. A crucial part of any such consequence management effort, and a part for which FEMA is uniquely suited, is to

work closely with State, tribal and local governments to ensure their planning training, and equipment needs are met.

Under the Federal Response Plan, FEMA’s role in response, recovery, and incident management is also crucial in responding to the consequences of terrorist incidents. The principal goal of ONP is to develop a coordinated, local, tribal, State and

Federal effort to deal with the consequences of mass destruction in the U.S.

On June 5th, I announced the restructuring of FEMA, which included creating

ONP, to be headed by an Executive Director who reports directly to me. The ONP

will have FEMA employees, detailees from the relevant Federal departments and

agencies and, as appropriate, State, tribal and local representatives. On July 2, we

activated ONP at FEMA headquarters.

As you know, the President has announced the creation of an Office of Homeland

Security with Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania serving as its director. This Office

will coordinate the efforts of the Nation, seeking to reduce our vulnerability to terrorist attacks and mitigating their effects should they occur. I am pleased to report

that the Office of National Preparedness is ready to assist Governor Ridge as he

crafts and seeks to implement an overall strategy for the Nation.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, and its Office of National Preparedness, will play a key role in working with other Federal agencies, and State, tribal

and local personnel, to deal with the consequences of uses of weapons of mass destruction.

CONCLUSION

Mr. Chairman, you convened this hearing to discuss FEMA’s operations in response to these two terrorist attacks. I have visited both sites numerous times and

seen first-hand the shocking degree of destruction. I hope I have been successful in

imparting some of what I have seen. FEMA is responsible for ensuring that the national emergency management system is adequate to respond to the consequences

of disasters of all types, including acts of terrorism. The Federal family has focused

its efforts on providing assistance to those affected by these terrible events and has

done so swiftly and successfully, in part, because of the strong partnerships fostered

through years of preparedness planning, and responding to other types of disasters.
48

When I visit the disaster sites, I am amazed and gratified by the cooperation and

the coordination of all of the workers, whether Federal, State, local or volunteers

who, shoulder-to-shoulder, are working long and hard hours. Each time I visit, I

also remember that I am entering a crime scene, as well as a memorial sight. Workers there are working diligently, but also with a great deal of respect. These workers, these heroes, continue to put themselves at risk trying to help their brothers

and sisters. It is tough duty, and these are unique and special individuals who are

called to this work. I am concerned about the victims, the brave firefighters, and

emergency and police personnel who have worked so hard under extremely difficult

conditions. We owe all of them an immense amount of gratitude and thanks.

President Bush, Governor Pataki, and Mayor Guliani have provided New York

and the Nation with inspiring leadership at a time when it was so desperately needed. The strength and spirit of the City and of New Yorkers have allowed them to

bounce back in fine fashion. While recovery efforts continue at Ground Zero, life is

returning to a semblance of normalcy. Students whose schools were near the World

Trade Center have returned to class, but in different buildings blocks away. Major

League baseball and football have returned to New York. The New York Stock Exchange opened less than a week after the terrorist attack. Though our hearts are

broken, the process of healing has started. This Country is unique in its resilience

and incredible spirit and we have witnessed this during the past few weeks.

We appreciate your leadership during this difficult time. The cooperation and support provided by the Congress, as evidenced by the recently enacted supplemental

appropriation and by your committee’s willingness to review statutory authorities

to assist in our efforts, is welcome and necessary. I thank the committee members

for the opportunity to describe the activities of all the responders in New York City

and at the Pentagon.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would be happy to answer any questions that you

and the committee members have.

STATEMENT OF EDWARD P. PLAUGHER, CHIEF, ARLINGTON COUNTY, VA FIRE

DEPARTMENT

I am Chief Edward Plaugher of the Arlington County Fire Department. I would

like to begin by thanking the committee for having me today.

I understand that the committee is deeply concerned, as all of us are, with the

events of September the eleventh. The shocking and tragic events of that day have

had a profound impact on the men and women of my fire department and on this

Nation’s fire service as a whole.

I will speak today to some of the specifics of Arlington County’s response to the

attack on the Pentagon and to the role of the Federal Emergency Management

Agency on that day and subsequent weeks. I will also make several recommendations on how we might improve our response capability.

Our fire department’s response to the plane crash began with a call for help from

an Arlington County Fire Department engine company passing the Pentagon on its

way to a more routine fire call.

Our northern Virgina Automatic Aid program was immediately activated. Units

from Ft. Myer, Alexandria, Fairfax and National Airport responded on the initial

aid alarm. The second alarm included units from the District of Columbia Fire Department as well as from Montgomery County and Prince George’s County, Maryland. Those first responding fire units fought an inferno triggered by 6,000 gallons

of jet fuel in the world’s largest office building.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) overall response to the attack on the Pentagon and its aftermath was superb. FEMA personnel arrived quickly and were extremely cooperative. They provided and continue to provide support

to the Arlington County Fire Department and to our entire community. FEMA’s

field office director, Tom Davies, arrived with a positive, can-do attitude. He quickly

explained that FEMA’s core responsibility would be to work with the State of Virginia to ensure that all legally available aid was delivered as quickly and efficiently

as possible. It came as a surprise to us that FEMA’s operation was self-sufficient

and imposed no support burden from Arlington County.

FEMA’s front line operational contribution was made by its Urban Search and

Rescue (USAR) program. FEMA mobilized teams based in Fairfax County and Virginia Beach, Virginia; Montgomery County, Maryland and Memphis, Tennessee, to

assist in the search for survivors. FEMA’s USAR team based in New Mexico was

later mobilized to provide relief to exhausted rescue personnel.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I must tell you that FEMA’s USAR

teams made an outstanding contribution to our effort. These teams are comprised
49

of dedicated professionals whose hard work and unyielding efforts should not be

overlooked.

The capabilities of these teams are unique and generally are not available at the

local level. As with FEMA’s other operations, arriving teams are prepared for selfsufficient operations and thus did not burden Arlington County in any way with

support requirements. That is in and of itself a sign of a well-designed response program.

Two resources brought by FEMA’s USAR teams stand out in my mind. First,

search-dog capability, a need unique to search and rescue in structural collapse, allowed for a swift and thorough search for victims that would not have been possible

otherwise. Second, the inclusion of structural engineers in USAR team deployment

provided the expert supervision that we needed to conduct the safest possible operation. Where else, in a crisis, do you find people with expertise like that?

All of us have room to improve how we do business. Though we in Arlington were

impressed with FEMA’s USAR capability, we were largely educated on FEMA’s USAR capability at the Pentagon that day. It would be helpful if fire chiefs nationwide had a good understanding of USAR’s role, capabilities and limits in advance

of a catastrophe. My recommendation is that FEMA’s USAR capability, including resources and operating procedures, be included in course curriculum at FEMA’s National Emergency Training Center and particularly its National Fire Academy. A

solid understanding of FEMA’s USAR program, before a catastrophic incident occurs, would improve the overall operation of mitigating the event.

I would also recommend that performance capability objectives be developed for

the USAR program. By that I mean a standardized list of capabilities that a local

incident commander can count on when a USAR team is deployed. I mentioned, for

example, the exemplary canine search capability brought by USAR to the Pentagon.

We must ensure that every USAR team enjoys the same capability. How many dogs

should a team employ? For how long and over what area can a dog team search?

If those kinds of capabilities can be standardized, we as fire chiefs can make safe

assumptions with respect to our overall operational capabilities. It occurs to me that

the development of these capability objectives should be developed by a panel of experts that includes both local emergency response officials and USAR experts.

There is another issue with respect to USAR that I would like to address. It came

to my attention in the aftermath of the attack on the Pentagon that there is at least

one, and usually two, complete back-up teams that can be called upon to relieve deployed USAR team members. However, I also learned that there is an equipment

shortage that allows for only one appropriately equipped team to be deployed at a

given time from any one of USAR’s 28 bases. If the airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania the morning of September 11 had instead reached Washington, DC, how

would we have chosen where to send the existing cache of USAR equipment?

We know now that the passengers on that airplane took action to relieve us having to make such a choice. I believe we owe it to their memory to ensure sufficient

USAR equipment cache is provided so that those who are trained and organized to

use it effectively are not left helpless in any future multi-site incident.

We in the metropolitan Washington area are lucky to be home to both Montgomery County and Fairfax County’s USAR teams. This is a unique situation.

FEMA has commonly been faced with the challenge of transporting USAR teams

over great distances to render aid. This takes precious time. We in the fire service

have testified repeatedly before the Congress on the role of ‘‘first response’’ to any

disaster, terrorist or otherwise. The ‘‘first response’’ is key because in the minutes

and first 1 or 2 hours after an event has occurred is the timeframe in which the

vast majority of survivors are rescued.

It seems to me that we should look at creating a USAR ‘‘lite’’ capability that could

be mobilized locally to work in the search for survivors until a fully staffed and

equipped FEMA USAR team can be brought to the scene of an incident. This would

go a long way to bridging the specialized search and rescue gap that exists when

USAR teams must travel long distances.

Incident command in circumstances like those we faced at the Pentagon is put

to the test by fatigue. Our fire department’s command staff was exhausted by the

need for coverage for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for several weeks. I would propose what I will call a ‘‘Command Overhead Team’’ program be developed by FEMA

that would allow a small number of chief fire officers, with significant command experience, to be mobilized to support operations in a future incident. These teams

could work in shifts to provide command and planning support to a fire department

engaged in large scale operations in the wake of a terrorist attack or natural disaster. It might also serve in a situation similar to that we saw in New York, where

the fire chief and a large number of his command staff were killed in the collapse

of the World Trade Center.
50

The level of cooperation and mutual assistance between FEMA and the Arlington

County Fire Department was excellent. There are many moving parts to an effective

response to a terrorist incident. Each of us must have good expectations of our own

capabilities and a clear understanding of the roles and responsibilities of different

agencies. In the final analysis, what transpired at the Pentagon, under the circumstances, was dealt with professionally and to the best of each of our abilities.

We at the Arlington County Fire Department learned valuable lessons with regard

to our own abilities and limits. It is my hope that we can all use those lessons to

further a more effective preparedness effort.

I would like to conclude my remarks, Mr. Chairman, in speaking to the overall

Federal terrorism preparedness effort. There are said to be over 40 different offices

and bureaus involved in terrorism preparedness across numerous Federal agencies.

Though we have made great strides in our operational interaction with Federal

agencies, there is an urgent need for better coordination of pre-incident support and

training programs.

I testified last spring before the House Transportation Committee on a piece of

legislation designed to address this issue. A Senate companion bill, S. 1453, the Preparedness Against Terrorism Act, 2001, was recently introduced by Senator Bob

Smith and referred to this committee. This bill codifies the Office for National Preparedness at FEMA that President Bush created earlier this year. It creates a

‘‘President’s Council’’ that will be charged with the development of a single national

strategy on terrorism preparedness that will include measurable preparedness

goals.

We applaud President Bush’s designation of Governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania

as our new ‘‘Homeland Security’’ coordinator. However, it seems to us that S. 1453

could bring focus and legal authority to this new effort. It is my understanding that

the Bush Administration had significant input to this bill and I urge you to make

whatever modifications are necessary to address Governor Ridge’s role and to act

favorably on the bill in sending it to the full Senate for consideration as quickly as

is possible. We owe it to our country to have the best coordinated, comprehensive

terrorism preparedness strategy as is possible.

Thank you again for having me today. I am happy to answer any questions.

STATEMENT OF JEFFREY L. METZINGER, FIRE CAPTAIN, SACRAMENTO, CA

METROPOLITAN FIRE DISTRICT; MEMBER, FEMA URBAN SEARCH AND RESCUE TEAM

Mr. Chairman and members, my name is Captain Jeffrey Metzinger. I am employed with the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District and a member of the Federal

Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) Team.

Specifically, I am a member of California’s Task Force 7 (CA-TF7) team based in

Sacramento, California.

I was dispatched to New York City as a part of the search and rescue efforts in

response to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to share my hands-on experience as a heavy

rigger/rescue specialist during 11 arduous days beginning on September 11, 2001.

The fire service and other emergency services are critical to the mission of protecting our communities. The events of September 11, 2001 have demonstrated that

first responders offer the best possible chance of saving lives during catastrophic

events. First responders must be adequately equipped and trained to perform the

jobs under the most adverse conditions. Domestic terrorism is a relatively new

threat to citizens of the United States—and we will need Federal support to be adequately prepared. Terrorist attacks may occur in many different and unconventional

ways: chemical, biological, hazardous materials, weapons of mass destruction, to cite

a few.

US&R teams are designed to provide supervision and control of essential functions at incidents where technical rescue expertise and equipment are required for

safe and effective rescue operations. The Federal Government, through FEMA, has

established twenty-eight (28) National US&R Task Forces throughout the Nation.

US&R Task Forces are able to deploy within 6 hours of notification.

Each US&R Task Force is comprised of 62 persons specifically trained and

equipped for large complex urban search and rescue operations. The multi-disciplinary organization provides five functional elements which include command, search,

rescue, medical and technical. The US&R Task Force is totally self-sufficient for the

first 72 hours and has a full equipment cache to support its operation. Transportation and logistical support is provided by either State or Federal resources.

The US&R Task Force can provide round-the-clock operations (two 12-hour

shifts). The five functional elements in detail are:
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• Search—includes physical, canine and electronic (special cameras and listening

equipment)

• Rescue—conduct rescue operations in all types of structures

• Medical—primarily responsible for the care and treatment of task force members and entrapped victims during extrications

• Technical—provides personnel competent in structural integrity assessments,

hazardous materials, heavy equipment and rigging, communications and logistics.

• Command—the US&R Task Force is commanded by a Task Force Leader. The

Task Force Leader is assisted by a Safety Officer and Plans Officer.

Almost all members of an US&R Task Force are firefighter rescue specialists.

Many members have multiple abilities that allow them to work in a variety of positions. My specific role is defined as ‘‘heavy rigging specialist’’ on CA-TF7. The heavy

rigger has expertise in moving large objects (like steel and concrete). Typically, the

heavy rigger coordinates rescue operations between team members and heavy equipment such as cranes. At the World Trade Center incident, heavy riggers were an

integral part of the rescue operation. I kept a small notebook in my pocket and

chronicled our efforts to assist the firefighters, police officers, and citizens of New

York City. The following are excerpts from my personal journal on the devastating

events beginning on September 11, 2001.

Tuesday, September 11

(6:15 a.m.—Pacific Standard Time)

I was on my way to work like so many others when I heard on the news on the

radio that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I raced into the

office where I currently work as a Training Officer for the Sacramento Metropolitan

Fire District. Within minutes, I heard that a plane had crashed into the other

Tower as well—and that news changed everything. It was obvious that these actions

were no accident.

(7:30 a.m.)

Captain Steve Cantelme (a co-worker) and myself are both members of FEMA’s

California Task Force 7. We realized that our team would likely be deployed to New

York City. Our Team’s rescue cache is located across town and other team members

were already in route to prepare for a deployment. The forklift used to load our

large rescue pallets was not with the cache. It was being used in a Rescue Systems

class several miles from where it needed to be. We quickly hired a transport truck

and escorted our forklift across town in rush-hour traffic. (A second forklift would

have been highly useful.)

(9:00 a.m.)

CA-TF7 arrived at Fire Station 9 where our rescue cache is stored. There is a

great deal of activity as our team gets official word that we are responding to New

York City. There is a lot of tension in the air and everyone is hurrying to move 62

people and tons of rescue equipment onto 3 truck and trailers and 3 buses.

(2:30 p.m.)

CA-TF7 leaves Station 9 for Travis Air Force Base. There are lots of other CATF7 members who helped get us out of town. They all wanted to go with us—but

only 62 people are deployed. Interstate 80 is closed by the Highway Patrol as we

get a code 3 (red lights and sirens) escort to Travis. I finally have a minute to reflect

on what is going on. Tragedy awaits us and I already miss my wife and daughter.

We get word that both the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have been attacked by hijacked civilian airplanes.

(4:20 p.m.)

We’re waiting at Travis Air Force Base to load on the plane. Sitting in a chair,

I realize how hungry I am. I haven’t eaten since last night.

(4:35 p.m.)

We get a briefing from the Task Force Leader. We will be flying into a crime

scene. Everyone is advised to document their activities when we finally get to work.

Our Task Force is divided into two teams—Gray and Blue. I’m assigned to the Blue

team as ‘‘heavy rigger’’. Captain Jay Coon will be my counterpart on the Gray team.

I will report to Marc Bentevoja who is the Blue team Rescue Manager.

(5:30 p.m.)

We are loaded onto a USAF C-5 Galaxy and our destination is McGuire AFB in

New Jersey. Security has been intense all day.

(5:50 p.m.)

We are served a delicious box lunch on the plane. I ate everything except the box.
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(6:27 p.m.)

We are ‘‘wheels-up’’ from Travis ARB. I’m too anxious to sleep. An Air Force crewmember informs us that we have a 4 fighter jet escort to the East Coast. It sinks

in how treacherous this assignment really is.

Wednesday, September 12

(2:13 a.m. East Coast Time)

We land at McGuire AFB after a 41⁄2-hour flight. The plane is quiet. You can feel

the anxiety in the air.

(4:30 a.m.)

We are provided a bed for about 3 hours of sleep.

(7:30 a.m.)

Breakfast is served in the dining hall.

(9:00 a.m.)

There is a morning briefing from the Task Force Leaders. The word is that we

will be waiting a while. Everyone is reminded that security is at its highest level.

We are not to wander or go anywhere alone.

(2:00 p.m.)

Buses arrive for our transport to New York City. Our bus is searched by military

dogs after we board. Everyone’s identification is checked again.

(2:55 p.m.)

We are finally leaving for New York City. Everyone is anxious to get to work.

(5:00 p.m.)

As we approach the Hudson River from New Jersey, you can see a large column

of smoke coming up from the site where the World Trade Center used to stand. This

is my first trip to New York City, and I feel sad by what I see.

(6:00 p.m.)

We have arrived in New York City. Traffic is incredible, even with a full police

escort. The corners are filled with people. We are just a few blocks away from the

large smoke column I had seen earlier.

(7:00 p.m.)

We arrive at the Javits Convention Center where we will set up our base of operations. There are several other teams coming in as well. They include teams from:

Los Angeles City, Missouri, Indianapolis, Riverside (Ca.), and Pennsylvania. It takes

most of the evening to get our cache unloaded and our area organized for an extended stay.

Thursday, September 13

(12:30 a.m.)

There are two physicians that are a part of our team. One of their jobs is to keep

other team members healthy. Averaging about 3 hours of sleep per day, I took a

sleeping pill to get some rest.

(6:00 a.m.)

Up for breakfast. Looks like we’re gearing up to work at the ‘‘site’’ this morning.

(12:00 Noon)

Gray team will be working the day shift. They are deployed out to the site. Members of the Blue team will relieve the Gray team this evening.

(7:15 p.m.)

Blue team is loaded onto the bus and we head into our ‘‘sector’’ to go to work.

We meet up with the Gray team and exchange information. We take a brief tour

of the collapse zone along Church Street. The scene is surreal. There are people everywhere. Smoke continues to drift from massive piles of rubble. The expanse of this

disaster is difficult to comprehend. Our forward base of operations is located in a

garage on the bottom floor of an office building at West Broadway and Park. Several

searches are conducted by our search dogs in the vicinity of Tower 7. The technical

search camera is also used. We had no luck in finding any victims.

Friday, September 14

(12:00 Midnight)

Our team is working the area for an assignment. The dogs have alerted—but at

a very dangerous location. It is too unstable to enter. There is heavy thunder, lightning, wind, and heavy rains tonight.

(8:30 a.m.)
53

We’re back at the Javits Center for breakfast and then 31⁄2 hours of sleep.

(4:00 p.m.)

Briefing form the Task Force Leader. We are told that President Bush will be visiting. Secret Service is everywhere and dogs are searching through our stuff.

(5:30 p.m.)

Met and shook hands with President Bush and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Governor and Mayor were also in attendance. This was quite an experience!

Their visit was very much appreciated.

(8:15 p.m.)

Briefing for night operations. We will be moving to the Church and Dey Street

Command Post where we will be working with the Massachusetts Task Force.

(8:40 p.m.)

On the bus headed to work. Hundreds of people line the streets and cheer us as

we go by. Traffic is so congested, we get off bus and walk the last few blocks to

Church and Dey.

(11:00 p.m.)

Tonight, I’m assigned to our technical search team. Our rescue team is setting up

a rope system to lower one of the rescue team members into the debris crater near

the Church St. command post. The objective is to place a cellular phone antennae

to assist with victim locations.

Saturday, September 15

(3:35 a.m.)

We are released for the sector for the evening. Everyone on the team is anxious

to do something to help.

(3:30 p.m.)

We had a visit from the New York Yankees. They thanked us and we thanked

them. Seems that everyone wants to help.

(7:30 p.m.)

Headed back to work. People are still lining the streets—cheering, waving flags,

holding signs, lighting candles.

(8:15 p.m.)

The search and rescue teams are out to complete searches of all the building in

our sector. There are several 30-plus story buildings around the World Trade Center

plaza. The searches are conducted from basement to roof. Every door is opened, and

every space is checked. Climbing the stairwells, we take on one building at a time.

Many walls facing the plaza have sustained serious damage. We do not find any victims. Every floor of every building we search is marked as being completed. This

assignment took a toll on the legs.

(9:00 a.m.)

Relieved by the day crew. We return to base for some rest.

(6:45 p.m.)

We get a briefing for the next work period. Three top FDNY Chiefs are laid to

rest today. We are to be moving into more dangerous ground today between buildings 5 and 6 (possibly underground). Drawings show up to 6 levels below street

grade. Chaplain Ward Cockerton says a prayer for the victims of this disaster and

for the safety of our team.

(8:45 p.m.)

Reported to the Church and Dey Command Post and began work as a heavy rigger. Steve of the Massachusetts TF1 and I worked with 4 New York iron-workers.

Using a 90-ton crane, we worked all night non-stop moving steel.

Sunday, September 16

(8:00 p.m.)

Back to work with the crane and a new group of iron workers. Made a connection

with Mike, Rich, and Kevin. They are good people. We cut and moved tons of steel

again tonight.

Monday, September 17

(Early morning)

I found a child’s doll in the rubble. I miss my family a bunch. I heard our rescue

team found a victim this morning—a police officer. Hopes for a live rescue seem to

be dimming.

(9:00 a.m.)
54

Back to Javits Center for some rest.

(8:00 p.m.)

We’re on the bus back to the work site. I’m tired already. Headed back to the

crane. We work all night moving steel. I have noticed after several nights that there

is very little debris that is recognizable. There are no desks, chairs, carpet, sheetrock, or anything else you would associate with an office building—just the steel

structure. There are still no victims discovered in the immediate area.

Tuesday, September 18

(9:30 a.m.)

We’re back to the Javits center for a sleeping pill. It worked.

(8:00 p.m.)

On the pile again moving steel and searching for victims. Today, the smell of

death is more evident. I found a business card of man whose office was on the 83rd

floor of one of the towers. I wondered what his fate was. I said a prayer for him,

hoping he’s alive and well.

Wednesday, September 19

The crane operation is halted at midnight in order to make preparations for a

larger crane to move in. It looks like a 300-ton crane will be ready to go within 24

hours. The reach and capability will improve our efforts. While the crane is shut

down, I joined forces with some FDNY people. There were two battalion chiefs with

their sleeves rolled up working alongside us. We were moving debris by hand. It’s

a very solemn night.

(6:00 a.m.)

Waiting for relief team . . . tired, tired, tired.

Thursday, September 20

(5:45 a.m.)

We’re heading home today. It takes all day to pack our equipment and load onto

transport trucks.

(3:45 p.m.)

We’re sitting on the bus waiting to return to McGuire AFB in New Jersey. It’s

been a long 10 days. I’m exhausted, and the team physician has diagnosed me with

bronchitis.

The dust we have been breathing all week finally caught up with me. Many others on the team have the same complaints of headache, sore throat, sinus congestion, and sometimes fever. Everybody is troubled that we didn’t find any live victims.

(8:45 p.m.)

We have arrived at McGuire AFB. Security is still very high. Everyone is carrying

automatic weapons.

(11:00 p.m.)

Getting sicker by the minute. The team physician has me on antibiotics, Sudafed,

sleeping pill and albuterol inhaler.

Friday, September 21

(1:00 p.m.)

On board a 757, North American Airlines with the Task Force teams from Riverside and Los Angeles, California.

(3:45 PST)

We drop off the Riverside and Los Angeles Team in southern California.

(7:20 p.m.)

We land at Travis AFB in northern California. We have a full police and fire escort for the drive back to Sacramento. Every freeway overpass along the way is full

of fire engines, police cars, and citizens cheering us home. It was a very warm reception.

(9:15 p.m.)

We arrive in Sacramento to a huge gathering of family, friends, co-workers, dignitaries, and the media. For the people of Sacramento, we were their connection to

the tragedy in New York City. It felt very good to be home, but I felt like a part

of me was still in New York City.

When I go to sleep, I still dream about being there.

Additional support of the Federal Government is necessary to save lives during

future catastrophic events. Our citizens and first responder’s lives will depend upon
55

our efforts to be proactive and prepare. The following list identifies some of the

areas that need to be addressed: • Expand local resources (fire, emergency medical services, law enforcement); • Increase support for the Urban Search and Rescue Program; • Improve radio communications among Task Forces and local resources; • Provide additional chemical/biological protective equipment and related training

for fire and EMS first responders;

• Support and integrate the actions of local fire and EMS resources and FEMA

teams in response to domestic terrorism and other disasters.

Firefighters, law enforcement, and emergency medical services will continue to be

the first responders at future incidents. The toll on our emergency personnel is tremendous, both physically and mentally. We owe it to ourselves to be prepared for

the mission to protect our communities.

I appreciate the opportunity to provide comment and share my experience as a

firefighter search and rescue specialist during this infamous event. I am available

to answer any questions that members of this committee may have.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT HESSINGER, LOGISTICS CHIEF, OHIO TASK FORCE ONE

Chairman, committee Senators, distinguished guests, my name is Robert

Hessinger, I am the Logistics Chief for Ohio Task Force One and was deployed with

the Task Force to New York City September 11, 2001. I would like to start by saying thank you on behalf of Ohio Task Force One for allowing us to share our experiences with you. Ohio Task Force One is the 27th of 28 FEMA US&R teams, established in spring of 1997 and based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB)

in Dayton, Ohio. Since the establishment of our task force as a FEMA US&R team,

our members have been active in the FEMA system sharing our unique relationship

and knowledge of the Air Force with several teams across the Nation, including

working closely with the West Coast teams to affirm their relationships with Air

Force bases from which they mobilize. Ohio Task Force One has continued to work

hard at our relationship with FEMA and the 27 other teams by offering our services

with instructors for FEMA courses, members on the national working groups and

the national instructors list, and, along with Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,

hosting Logistics Specialist Courses.

Ohio Task Force One’s hard work was tested and proven successful on September

11, 2001 when Ohio was one of the first three task force groups dispatched to the

New York City bombings. Ohio Task Force One was officially activated for our first

national deployment at 1100 hours on September 11, 2001 to mobilize our team to

New York City traveling by ground mobilization. The task force deployment was

multifaceted due to our member’s activity within the FEMA system. Initially, Task

Force Leader (TFL)-1 Capt. James Gruenberg was activated as a member of the Red

Incident Support Team (IST) where he holds the position of US&R Specialist as his

primary role. Due to TFL-1 Gruenberg’s past service with the New York City Fire

Department, he was given the role of Daytime Operations and Liaison to the Fire

Department New York (FDNY) which he held and operated with distinction. As a

past member of FDNY, TFL-1 Gruenberg had a unique perspective and understanding of the scope of this incident on members and the leadership of FDNY. A

second Task Force Leader, TFL-3 Robert McKee, was also activated as part of the

Blue IST where TFL-3 McKee served as a mobilization specialist based out of

McGuire Air Force Based and was the primary liaison to the Wing Commander

Staff coordinating all incoming teams. TFL-3 McKee noted that McGuire AFB Command Staff and crews made a commendable difference in the mobilization and

movement of the Federal teams and staff. To complicate this matter, TFL-3 McKee

and myself, as Logistics Chief, were attending a meeting for the California Governors Office of Emergency Services (CALOES) Logistics Working Group in San

Diego, California. Although this pressured Ohio Task Force One with three of the

leadership staff unavailable for initial task force movement, it proved to strengthen

our task force as a team. Since TFL-3 McKee and myself have a strong understanding and relationship with the United States Air Force, we drove from San

Diego to March Air Force Base immediately after Ohio’s deployment to aid in the

coordination of Los Angeles City CA-TF-1, Riverside CA-TF-6 and California IST

members air mobility to McGuire AFB. TFL-3 McKee and myself would personally

like to thank the FEMA staff, particularly Dave Webb, for their professionalism and

trust during configuration of an air movement during the unique restrictions placed

on aircraft mobility and traffic. We would also like to thank Wright-Patterson Air

Force Base for the groundwork their commanders laid for a strong national relationship. Ohio Task Force One is proud to have aided in such a strong relationship.
56

With two of the three Task Force Leaders activated on the IST, Ohio Task Force

One showed the depth in our organization by moving up the Rescue Team Manager,

Steve Shupert, to the Position of Task Force Leader-2 to deploy with our remaining

Task Force Leader, Mike Muhl. During the onset of activation at Wright-Patterson

Air Force Base, base command staff did a commendable job ensuring over 90 members of Ohio Task Force One gained access to a military post under Force Protection

Condition Delta.

Operationally, Ohio Task Force One arrived at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan, New York at approximately 0600 a.m. on September 12, 2001 making it the

third FEMA US&R team behind Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. The primary

mission of the task force, upon arrival, was to establish the rear Base of Operation

referred to as a BoO. The task force also created two operational teams by splitting

the members into daytime operations and nighttime operations, running a seven to

seven 12-hour operational period. At approximately noon on the 12th, Task Force

Leader Muhl became the day operation leader and proceeded to Ground Zero. The

first operation was to set up the forward BoO, which was inside a Chase Manhattan

Bank at Liberty and Southend Street in the Liberty Street Division of the Incident

Command System. After the forward BoO was set a few missions consisting of mainly reconnaissance and K-9 confirmation of victims.

The first full operational period for the task force came on day shift Thursday

September 13th. None of the team members were ready for the magnitude of the

destruction and size of the collapse. Three thousand workers looked insignificant to

the mass of rubble. Ohio Task Force One was given many missions dealing with

technical search of void areas with search cameras and the team’s K-9 handlers

could not keep up with the multitude of requests from command and workers alike.

TFL Muhl worked closely with the FDNY sector commander to coordinate sub-level

void searchers, technical rigging decisions and structural evaluations by the team’s

structural specialists. As the operational periods continued, Ohio Task Force One

was tasked with many different missions, unfortunately they all met with the same

conclusion.

One of the missions included rigging a rope lowering system to penetrate a small

opening in a collapsed stairwell to search a mechanical room four levels below

grade. At this point, optimism within the team ran high due to the size and structural stability of the void spaces. The recon team also rigged another rope system

to lower searchers into a void where previously FDNY Ladder 6 personnel had survived the collapse. Further voids around the area were found to have inadequate

anchor points to appropriately rig a lowering system. This was the first letdown the

team had suffered and found it difficult to convey this to fellow FDNY firefighters.

Continued missions to search void spaces turned up parking levels with thigh deep,

contaminated waters and more void spaces without live finds. A mission to secure

and remove impaled steel of the World Financial Building was changed by the task

force structural specialist to securing the piece of steel directly to the main structure

due to increased risk to rescuers. This decision proved to be the correct one and the

piece remained stable. Day operations were also tasked with reconnaissance of the

surrounding buildings. Teams climbed and searched multiple buildings, breaching

locked doors and systematically marking cleared areas for a thorough search. A couple of searches turned up citizens either not able to traverse the lengthy trip down

the stairs or unwilling to leave their personal possessions after being so violently

violated. Local Emergency Medical Services or National Guard was called and successful removal of the citizens was accomplished with care and compassion. Speaking for the task force, I can truly say our primary mission was accomplished. As

a FEMA US&R Task Force we are given the task to support the local jurisdiction

in mitigation of an overwhelming situation. The FDNY was placed in such a situation. The FEMA US&R concept was alien to the workers we encountered due to the

loss of the majority of the special rescue personnel within their department. As fellow firefighters we offered special equipment, a fresh and educated set of hands, and

confidence the rescue was being accomplished to the best of our abilities. I felt one

of the most important things we offered the FDNY firefighters on the rubble pile

was our hand in battle, letting them hoist us up to their position giving them a feeling of participation. Most of all, letting them know we were there for them whenever and wherever they needed us. A few members of Ohio Task Force One had

friends on FDNY, due to training courses offered by FEMA that died in the line of

duty September 11, so the operational teams would stop at local firehouses and pay

their tribute at the end of their operational periods. This helped members cope with

the large loss of life and further bonded the respect for our brothers and sisters.

On the last operational period, Ohio Task Force One stopped by Rescue 5 FDNY

and donated equipment that would aid in the rebuilding of this distinguished com-
57

pany. We hope this will somehow leave a lasting impression of the FEMA system

and the first class teams that adorn it.

Ohio Task Force One was given demobilization orders on Tuesday, September 18

with a departure date of Thursday, September 20. The mixed feelings of members

who felt we had not finished the job and others that felt it was time to see family

and friends seemed to echo the operational feelings of we were not doing enough

and exhaustion setting in. The citizens and leaders in Ohio made the return trip

a memorable one with police escorts, fire department apparatus lining the highways, citizens with banners on overpasses and our families at Wright-Patterson Air

Force Base.

The magnitude of this incident was one that is unimaginable, no matter how

much you have trained and felt you were prepared. The support Ohio Task Force

One was given by the Incident Support Teams of FEMA and the expertise and guidance of those placed in charge of this tragedy were professional no matter what the

situation, but given this event we commend all the men and woman in those positions for an exemplary job. Ohio Task Force One will take the valuable experience

we gained from this tragedy and prepare to respond to future deployments and continue to provide this country with the best-trained personnel in the world. Ohio

Task Force One would like to thank FEMA, the State of Ohio and our families for

all the support given to us over the years. We would also like to thank the Environment and Public Works Committee for your time today and continued support protecting our Nation. May God bless all of us.

Æ