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51–326 PDF 2009

POST-KATRINA: WHAT IT TAKES TO 

CUT THE BUREAUCRACY 

AND ASSURE A MORE RAPID 

RESPONSE AFTER A 

CATASTROPHIC DISASTER 

(111–53) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS, AND 

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

July 27, 2009 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

( 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, Vice 

Chair 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

LAURA A. RICHARDSON, California 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas 

PHIL HARE, Illinois 

JOHN A. BOCCIERI, Ohio 

MARK H. SCHAUER, Michigan 

BETSY MARKEY, Colorado 

PARKER GRIFFITH, Alabama 

MICHAEL E. MCMAHON, New York 

THOMAS S. P. PERRIELLO, Virginia 

DINA TITUS, Nevada 

HARRY TEAGUE, New Mexico 

VACANCY 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio 

BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky 

ANH ‘‘JOSEPH’’ CAO, Louisiana 

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois 

PETE OLSON, Texas 

(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS, AND EMERGENCY

MANAGEMENT

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of Columbia, Chair 

BETSY MARKEY, Colorado 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

PARKER GRIFFITH, Alabama 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania, 

Vice Chair 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

THOMAS S. P. PERRIELLO, Virginia 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota 

(Ex Officio) 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky 

ANH ‘‘JOSEPH’’ CAO, Louisiana 

PETE OLSON, Texas 

(III) 

(V) 

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... 00 

TESTIMONY 

Becker, Joe, Senior Vice President, Disaster Services, American Red Cross ..... 00 

Bullock, Jane, Principal, Bullock & Haddow, LLC, Former FEMA Chief of 

Staff ....................................................................................................................... 00

Decker, Russ, President, International Association of Emergency Managers .... 00 

Dunbar, Donald P., Adjutant General, State of Wisconsin, on behalf of the 

National Governors Association .......................................................................... 00 

Fugate, Craig, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency .......... 00 

Loebsack, Hon. David, a Representative in Congress from the State of Iowa ... 00 

Maxwell, David, Vice President, National Emergency Management Association ........................................................................................................................ 00

McCarthy, Francis X., Analyst, Congressional Research Service ........................ 00 

Moss, Mitchell, Henry Hart Rice Professor of Urban Policy and Planning, 

New York University ........................................................................................... 00 

PREPARED STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY A MEMBER OF CONGRESS 

Carnahan, Hon. Russ, of Missouri ......................................................................... 00 

Loebsack, Hon. David, of Iowa ............................................................................... 00 

Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, of the District of Columbia ................................. 00 

Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota ................................................................. 00 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Becker, Joe ............................................................................................................... 00 

Bullock, Jane ............................................................................................................ 00 

Decker, Russ ............................................................................................................ 00 

Dunbar, Donald P. ................................................................................................... 00 

Fugate, Craig ........................................................................................................... 00 

Maxwell, David ........................................................................................................ 00 

McCarthy, Francis X. .............................................................................................. 00 

Moss, Mitchell .......................................................................................................... 00 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Becker, Joe, Senior Vice President, Disaster Services, American Red Cross, 

responses to questions from the Subcommittee ................................................. 00 

Bullock, Jane, Principal, Bullock & Haddow, LLC, Former FEMA Chief of 

Staff, responses to questions from the Subcommittee ...................................... 00 

Decker, Russ, President, International Association of Emergency Managers, 

responses to questions from the Subcommittee ................................................. 00 

Fugate, Craig, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency, responses to questions from Rep. Norton, a Representative in Congress from 

the District of Columbia ...................................................................................... 00 

Maxwell, David, Vice President, National Emergency Management Association, responses to questions from the Subcommittee ........................................ 00 

McCarthy, Francis X., Analyst, Congressional Research Service, responses 

to questions from Rep. Norton, a Representative in Congress from the 

District of Columbia ............................................................................................. 00 

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(1) 

POST-KATRINA: WHAT IT TAKES TO CUT THE 

BUREAUCRACY AND ASSURE A MORE 

RAPID RESPONSE AFTER A CATASTROPHIC 

DISASTER 

Monday, July 27, 2009 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, 

PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, 

WASHINGTON, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:20 p.m., in Room 

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

[Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding. 

Ms. NORTON. I apologize that I was detained, because this is a 

hearing of some considerable importance to the Subcommittee. It is 

not about any disaster that we have seen except 9/11 and Katrina. 

So it looks to the future in a way that perhaps we should have 

done for Katrina, except that Katrina was such an unimaginable 

event that it did not occur to anyone, I believe, to think of such a 

gargantuan matter. 

For today’s hearing, we will address the very important new and 

unresolved questions that Hurricane Katrina raised for our country 

for the first time: What is a catastrophic disaster? Note that word: 

′′catastrophic disaster.′′ Think of it as a new invention. We haven’t 

used that word before. What is the role of the Federal Government 

before, during and after these events? Is additional authority needed to address response and recovery from these events? 

We cannot sit by and really hope that outsized disasters such as 

Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 will never occur again. Our obligation 

to the public requires investigation by this Subcommittee to prepare us for the possibility of these contingencies. 

Hurricane Katrina made landfall August 29, 2005, and proved to 

be the most costly natural disaster in American history. Congress, 

and particularly this Subcommittee, have spent the nearly 4 years 

since Katrina looking at the action of the Federal Government, as 

well as State and local governments, voluntary agencies and citizens themselves, from response to recovery, which continues to this 

day, on the Gulf Coast. 

Today’s hearing focuses on the next steps. What did we learn 

from Hurricane Katrina, as well as from other disasters in the 

United States and around the world, concerning what should be 

done to respond to catastrophic disasters and to facilitate recovery? 

Most important, what steps should all concerned be taking now to 

2 

prepare for and mitigate the risks to lives and property from these 

events? 

The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance 

Act, or Stafford Act, was signed into law November 23, 1988, but 

it is not clear that Congress contemplated gargantuan disasters 

with recovery proceeding for years. The act authorized by our Committee is the Federal Government’s primary authority for addressing major disasters, from all hazards and events. For the most 

part, this authority has proven sufficient to address all types of disasters and emergencies, but it is an open question whether the 

Stafford Act is sufficient when measured against the background 

Hurricane Katrina now provides. 

The Stafford Act and our Nation’s emergency management system are grounded in our Federal system of government that recognizes that the primary responsibility to address disasters and 

emergencies resides with States and communities, not the Federal 

Government. As a result, the assistance provided after a disaster 

is as the Stafford Act provides to, and I’m quoting here, ‘‘supplement, supplement the efforts and available resources of States, 

local governments, and disaster relief organizations.′′ However, it is 

already clear that one characteristic that distinguishes catastrophic 

disasters from other disasters is that the magnitude of a huge disaster often has national impact, national impact, impact beyond 

the seat of the disaster, rather than effects limited largely to a particular State or community. We must therefore reevaluate the role 

of the Federal Government as well as FEMA’s authorities, policies, 

and regulations that presume Federal assistance is always supplemental, regardless of the disaster. 

The Stafford Act existing authority and systems for the emergencies and disasters that the country faces are so detailed and 

time-proven that this landmark statute provides the necessary base 

for additions or revision if needed. However defined, Katrina teaches that catastrophic disasters are complex, unusually large in effects, hard to predict and expensive. Moreover, they are distinguishable. Distinguishable because they require months, rather 

than days or weeks, months indeed, and probably years rather 

than days or weeks, to move from response to recovery. Inevitably, 

therefore, the Subcommittee cannot avoid the question whether 

new extraordinary authority should be given to the President of the 

United States in advance, and whether Congress should provide for 

the recovery from catastrophic disasters that is specific and targeted to the size of these unusually large and pervasive events. 

The Subcommittee looks forward to hearing the testimony of today’s witnesses to help us address how we can prepare for these 

catastrophic events. We particularly welcome Administrator 

Fugate, who has recently taken office and is testifying before this 

Committee for the first time. 

Ms. NORTON. I am pleased to ask our Ranking Member Mr. DiazBalart if he has any opening remarks. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman, 

and actually I want to thank you for holding this important hearing; and obviously for the witnesses, as always, for their contributions and their expert testimony. It is good to see you, sir. 

3 

I also want to welcome, Madam Chairwoman, Administrator 

Fugate in his first hearing before this Committee in his new position. Now, he has been doing this kind of thing before, at a different level, and I am actually very excited that now he is doing 

it here at the Federal level. 

After Hurricane Katrina, Congress made it very clear that we 

needed a FEMA Administrator who knows what he is doing and 

has the authority to get the job done. And the President, I think, 

found the best person in the country, a person who knows what he 

is doing, who has, I guess unfortunately, a lot of experience dealing 

with large and small emergencies. And again, I have tremendous 

confidence in Mr. Fugate. I am really looking forward to continuing 

working with him, and hopefully he will not be too busy. That is 

something we are obviously all hoping for. 

I also need to acknowledge the tremendous work that Congressman Cao has done to speed the recovery funding in Louisiana. We 

still have issues after that storm. He has held several roundtables 

with FEMA, with State and local officials, and with Members of 

Congress. I have been involved in some of them. Frankly, he has 

helped free up hundreds of millions of dollars for those stricken by 

Katrina. He has also been working, Madam Chairwoman, closely 

with the experts such as the witness today, Mr. McCarthy of the 

Congressional Research Service, on possible changes and recommendations to the Stafford Act. I believe many of the options 

that Mr. McCarthy will be presenting to the Committee for reforming the Stafford Act are, frankly, a direct result of Congress Cao’s 

efforts, and again I thank him for his aggressive involvement with 

this Committee and these important issues. Thank you, sir. 

Now, obviously, as the Chairwoman said, Katrina was a horrible, 

huge, devastating hurricane. Unfortunately, as we know, it is very 

unlikely that this will be the largest one that hits us or the most— 

the largest catastrophe, the most damaging one that hits our country. A Category 5 hurricane in south Florida could come at any moment, or an 8.0 earthquake in California, or a pandemic flu. We 

keep hearing about pandemic flus right now. All those are possibilities that could hit us at any time. 

So while disasters obviously that large would stress the entire 

emergency management system, I want to focus on a few important 

areas that I think are of the most concern. There needs to be obviously a clear, Federal chain of command, and that is essential during a catastrophic disaster. And it can be a critical point of failure, 

as we saw during Katrina. I have mentioned this before, as I mentioned it earlier as well. 

You know, Congress changed the law to ensure that the Nation 

has a qualified FEMA Administrator who really knows what he is 

doing, who would coordinate the Federal response on behalf of the 

President. Now, unfortunately, the President has yet to update the 

Presidential Directive on Incident Management, which is HSPD 5, 

to reflect this change. And DHS has built a duplicate incident management organization outside of FEMA. And Congress continuously 

tries to defund—I will get into that later. 

So as I recall, the entire reason FEMA had to be within DHS, 

that is what we were told, was so that we could use FEMA to manage the response. DHS and the government could use FEMA to 

4 

manage the response to a terrorist attack. And yet for the last few 

years, DHS has built a parallel incident command structure that 

bypasses FEMA. Again, makes no sense. 

Now, as a result, it is, frankly, not clear to me or to some of the 

witnesses—of our witnesses who will be in charge, those who will 

be in charge to coordinate the Federal response until the Secretary 

decides to appoint a Principal Federal Officer known as a PFO during a disaster. Who would be in charge, FEMA or this outside 

PFO? This confusion, frankly, is a recipe for failure. 

And also another thing, Madam Chairwoman. The Department 

needs to follow the law. And I know you have been writing letters 

to the President on this. 

Another critical issue I hope that we can address is the role of 

Department of Defense. Now, during a megadisaster, Department 

of Defense forces will be needed quickly. And I understand that 

there is an effort—well first, obviously, what is the effort of DOD? 

They need to be there, available quickly, and we saw how well they 

responded during Katrina. And they have to be well coordinated 

with FEMA, and they also have to be in a supporting role to the 

States. States, when they run out of resources, that is when you 

need DOD to come in, and, if it is a big disaster, to come in big. 

I understand the Department of Defense is recommending a 

change in the way we respond to disaster, and I have also heard 

that that change, that potential change, has caused, frankly, considerable concern among a number of Governors, and I have to 

admit that I share many of the Governors’ concerns. And so I hope 

that we can talk about that. 

Another critical failure, and this is something that the Chairwoman has brought up many times—matter of fact, we had a hearing in south Florida, and you brought that up, Madam Chairwoman—to deal with the housing issue, what to do with the 

500,000 or over 1 million families forced out of their homes by one 

of these horrible catastrophic disasters. Despite the release of a 

natural disaster housing strategy, there is still no clear solution to 

addressing the housing issue at that scale. 

Now, I do need to commend FEMA for—I read that they are 

looking at other options, thinking outside the box, even looking at 

the possibility of in some cases using homes that may be under 

foreclosure. So I commend FEMA for thinking outside the box. But, 

again, we need to make sure that we have a strategy for the big 

storm or the big event if it comes or when it comes. 

Mitigation and preparation are other issues that must be examined and clearly improved. Earlier this year I introduced the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System Modernization Act, along 

with Chairwoman Norton and Representatives Cao, Guthrie and 

Graves of this Subcommittee. I also introduced a Safe Building 

Code Incentive Act. Both of these bills are intended to help prepare 

for a big storm and to mitigate against disasters. Providing incentives for States to enact building codes is, frankly, a very effective, 

commonsense way to minimize damage and the loss of life that a 

catastrophic disaster could entail, and we have seen that it does 

work. And developing a truly integrated public alert warning system is obviously critical to saving lives. 

5 

Now, with countless methods of communication available today, 

Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, et cetera, et cetera, we are still using a 

1950s model, which is the little beep that we hear on our TVs and 

our radios, and that is frankly it. Well, that is not enough, because 

there are more ways to communicate, and we need to do that. 

So the issue that I have raised impacts disasters of all sizes, but 

the big one, the catastrophic disasters, magnify obviously their significance and their importance. So it is important for us today to 

determine if the current framework for energy management is adequate for, again, catastrophic disasters, or should there be some 

more capabilities and flexibility built into the system. So again I 

hope that we will hear from our witnesses today on these and other 

issues. 

I want to thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for convening this 

meeting. Again, it is one of the issues that means a lot to all of 

us, but particularly those of us who live in States that are prone 

to disasters. Thank you. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Diaz-Balart. You raise 

some other salient questions that have been before us. 

Mr. Cao, do you have any opening statements? 

Mr. CAO. Madam Chair, first of all, on behalf of my constituents, 

I would like to thank the Chairwoman and Ranking Member for 

holding this important hearing today and for their sustained attention to the recovery of Orleans and Jefferson Parishes. I also appreciate their recognizing the significant challenges to recovery presented by certain aspects of the Stafford Act. 

And when we are talking about the Stafford Act, one of the questions that we are exploring today is whether we should create 

under the act a separate incident level for catastrophic events. And 

to help us clarify what these terms may imply, I would like to tell 

you what Katrina did to my district. 

Many of the critical institutions like charity hospitals and basically the entire health care infrastructures in hardest hit New Orleans East have never reopened. Other basic services like police, 

fire and rescue, libraries and schools were wiped away by the floodwaters and are simply today padlocked shells of buildings. In the 

immediate area around New Orleans, 80 percent of the buildings 

and 40 percent of the housing stock were damaged in some way. 

In my mind and in the mind of my constituents, what Katrina did 

to the Gulf Coast and to Orleans and Jefferson Parishes was, without a doubt, a catastrophe. 

After Katrina, I spent a significant amount of time talking to my 

constituents and also to Federal officials, with Administrator 

Fugate and with Mr. McCarthy, about what changes need to be 

made on the Stafford Act. We are taking a comprehensive relook 

at the Stafford Act and the regulations that support it. And I would 

seek your support, Madam Chairwoman and Mr. Ranking Member, 

in these efforts. 

The Stafford Act is currently set up to provide recovery dollars 

on a project-by-project basis. For Gulf Coast States that were hit 

by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, this is not optimal due to the extent of destruction. The fact that we are nearly 4 years from these 

events, and the States and FEMA are still arguing over doorknobs 

6 

and whether a building that was flooded, gutted and falling down 

was more or less than 50 percent damaged demonstrates this. 

In catastrophic or megadisasters, the States and localities need 

to have the flexibility to rethink and replan their recovery and hazard-mitigation plans. They need to have the flexibility to decide 

whether rebuilding in the predisaster footprint is the best solution 

for the communities long term. 

What are some of the fixes that I hope to look at in regards to 

the Stafford Act? Legislatively, creating an incident level for catastrophes or megadisasters for which a wholistic look at the community’s needs would be taken; the feasibility of lump-sum settlements in megadisasters like that which was legislated to respond 

to the disaster of September 11; shifting more responsibility to and 

thereby incentivizing States and localities to prepare better for disasters, for example, tying building codes to the amount of recovery 

dollars ultimately provided by the Federal Government. This is 

something that the Ranking Member has been working on through 

legislation. And I am proud to support this, revising the management structure of FEMA and other agencies to shift decisionmaking from the upper level of management, where bottlenecks occurred, to the staffs on the ground and meeting with local government representatives on a daily basis. 

In the course of my conversations with the different parties, it 

has became abundantly clear to me that FEMA employees have 

been almost indoctrinated to believe that they are handcuffed by 

the Stafford Act and therefore can’t come up with out-of-the-box solutions. When you have major disasters like Hurricane Katrina, we 

need creative thinking, but FEMA employees are allowing themselves to be mired in red tape, causing them to retreat from difficult questions and creative solutions by hiding behind the Stafford Act and what it does and does not allow. 

My reading of the Stafford Act is that it is an incredibly flexible 

piece of legislation that was always envisaged to provide a framework. The real problem is for decades FEMA has been layering regulations one on top of another, which is actually what is hampering 

FEMA employees. FEMA has restricted itself with inconsistent regulations so much so that they can’t be a partner in communities’ 

recovery, which is what they ought to be. 

I am hopeful that Secretary Napolitano and Administrator 

Fugate will the same sort of self-awakening about restrictions to 

FEMA, and that they will fundamentally rework the regulations 

hampering performance. However, I want to make it clear that if 

we don’t see real progress in freeing up the creativity and proactive 

thinking of FEMA employees, we will draft legislations that require 

you to do so. 

With that, I am looking forward to your testimonies, and I hope 

to work with you further in the future to look at the Stafford Act 

and how we can improve the cooperations of FEMA with the State 

and local employees. 

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Cao. 

We are very pleased now to welcome our colleague, Mr. Loebsack 

of Iowa, who has remarks and testimony of his own. I am pleased 

to receive them at this time, Mr. Loebsack. 

7 

TESTIMONY OF THE HON. DAVID LOEBSACK, A 

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF IOWA 

Mr. LOEBSACK. I want to thank Chairwoman Norton, Ranking 

Member Diaz-Balart, Members of the Subcommittee for giving me 

the opportunity to testify today. I am not the expert. I am just a 

Congressman from the Second District of Iowa, an area where we 

had essentially our own Katrina in June of 2008. And it is really— 

this has just been wonderful for me at the outset here to listen to 

my colleagues. 

And, Mr. Cao, I really appreciate what you had to say, because 

while New Orleans is at the—you know, sort of at the end of the 

line, if you will, as far as the Mississippi River is concerned, and 

we are way up north, there are a lot of things that I think we have 

in common in terms of our thoughts about how to do this differently. 

And I do want to say at the outset that I think FEMA did a pretty darn good job in Iowa and has done a good job, but there are 

a lot of things that obviously can be changed. So I am looking forward to working with you folks in the future as to how we can 

change things. 

And I also want to say at the outset, too, that I said throughout 

when this first happened to Iowa in June of 2008, there is nothing 

partisan about catastrophes. It doesn’t matter whether you are Republican or Democrat, you are going to get hit by a catastrophe. 

And working together, I think, in a bipartisan way is really absolutely critical. So that is what I am looking forward to doing as 

well. 

Our flood in Iowa was truly a 500-year flood; 85 of the 99 counties were Presidentially declared disaster areas and represented 

about 85 percent of the entire State. Some of the hardest hit areas 

were in my district: Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, the small town of 

Oakville, Coralville and Columbus Junction. It is estimated that 

Cedar Rapids alone has nearly $5.6 billion in recovery needs. That 

is right. One city of 120,000 or so in Iowa, $5.6 billion in recovery 

needs. 

With this in mind, then, consider that about $3 billion has been 

allocated to the entire State of Iowa for disaster recovery, which includes a large amount of State funds, even though damage statewide early on was estimated at about $10 billion. 

When considering what constitutes a catastrophic disaster, one 

indicator which may be useful to consider would be the damages 

relative to community or State budgets and resources. The State of 

Iowa had receipts for fiscal year 2009 of around $6.9 billion compared to the estimated $10 billion in statewide damage. And the 

City of Cedar Rapids had a budget for fiscal year 2009 of nearly 

$380 million. And keep that in mind when you think about the $5.6 

billion in needs. 

And then to further bring the magnitude of this disaster in perspective, when calculating estimated damage through FEMA’s Public Assistance Program, the Iowa floods alone rank as the fifth largest disaster in U.S. history. And if you take away nothing from my 

testimony besides the largesse, the significance of the widespread 

magnitude of this disaster, then I will have accomplished someVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:36 Mar 15, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\51326 JASON
8 

thing. It is my job to keep this in the forefront of your minds and 

the minds of the American people. 

FEMA was not, of course, our only source of assistance. Many 

Federal programs, departments or agencies were mobilized and utilized during and after our disaster. FEMA, for example, agreed to 

lower the cost share to 10 percent for all of our public assistance 

categories and waive the cost share completely for others because 

we had to get waivers and extensions and changes to the current 

law that we had to work to put in place, and this was one example. 

In addition, the application periods for FEMA’s individual assistance, disaster unemployment assistance and public assistance were 

extended. And numerous other waivers were granted through Federal—various Federal departments or agencies. I also worked with 

my colleagues in the last Congress to pass two supplemental disaster relief appropriations bills. The largest of these funds allocated 

to Iowa, $800 million, comes from the Community Development 

Block Grant Program through HUD. 

It is my understanding that effective use of CDBG funds after 

Hurricane Katrina continues to be an issue as well, and some mention was made of housing. CDBG funds are not traditionally used, 

as you all know, for disaster relief, and therefore, they are not 

ideally suited to be flexible enough, nimble enough. This is something that I heard from you folks, the need for nimbleness, if you 

will, to meet the immediate postdisaster recovery needs of States 

and communities. 

HUD Secretary Donovan stated during a visit to my district that 

the State of Iowa and the City of Cedar Rapids are models for efficiently utilizing CDBG funds for disaster recovery. I am proud of 

that distinction, but I do have to wonder why, at this point, the 

Federal Government is still looking for models of efficiency. 

I know it has not been an easy journey for my district, and the 

journey is far from over, but if Cedar Rapids in Iowa can provide 

examples of best practices for the future, then I look forward to 

working with Secretary Donovan, to all of you on this Committee, 

to those who are about to testify, to Mr. Fugate, and so we can deal 

more effectively and more efficiently with these issues when they 

arise with these catastrophic disasters. 

And perhaps I think maybe we should begin with a simple assumption, that we are going to be faced with catastrophes in the 

future. We have to just simply accept that fact. I know that in the 

past we have said that we knew that, but I think all of us who 

have been through these catastrophes wonder if, in fact, we really 

believe that they are going to happen again, because we need to be 

better prepared. There is no doubt about it. 

So thank you very much for allowing me to testify today. I real 

appreciate this opportunity. I am going to turn it over now to the 

experts, and I am looking forward to hearing what they have to say 

and reading their testimony and, as Mr. Cao said, continuing to 

work with our relevant administrators at the Federal levels. So 

thank you very much for the opportunity to testify today. Thank 

you. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Loebsack. 

You have introduced a new element, one I am not sure is unique, 

but certainly very much worth looking at, at the cost of the event 

9 

versus the budget, although that is the annual budget of the State. 

So that is a matter we should look into as another element and see 

it if had been considered before. 

Are there any questions for Mr. Loebsack? 

Mr. Diaz-Balart. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Just a brief comment. 

It is interesting that you state that. Those of us who have gone 

through it become aware of it, of those catastrophes, and you are 

so right about making sure that we continue to remind people that 

this is going to happen. And it is not going to happen only in one 

part of the country, it is going to happen anywhere, any time. And 

your observation about the fact that the incidents are nonpartisan 

is so true. 

As well as I am very proud of, in particular this Committee, the 

response of Congress, and particularly this Committee has also 

been nonpartisan. But it is very important to always remember 

even in places like Florida where it has been a few years since we 

got hit by the big one, Andrew, which actually was not as big as 

we thought. It was huge, but a worse one could come. So you get 

complacent. So it is important to keep reminding us to not do that. 

So I thank you for bringing that up again. Thank you, sir. 

Ms. NORTON. If that was the standard, it would be the budget 

of the State of Louisiana for decades, I am afraid. And that may 

be what we, in fact, end up paying because of the nature of the disaster. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Loebsack. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Thank you for holding it. 

Ms. NORTON. We are pleased now to welcome our first witness, 

Administrator Craig Fugate, who, of course, is the new Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency itself, for his 

first appearance before our Subcommittee. Welcome, Mr. Fugate. 

TESTIMONY OF CRAIG FUGATE, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL 

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY 

Mr. FUGATE. Thank you, Chairwoman Norton, and Ranking 

Member Diaz-Balart and other Members of the Committee. It is an 

honor to be here before your Committee, ma’am, and talking about 

catastrophic disasters. 

So what is a ′′catastrophic disaster?′′ What definition do we use? 

Well, in the National Response Plan Framework, we define it as 

any natural manmade incident, including terrorism, that results in 

extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage or disruption, severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale or government functions. 

Of course, if I am in a town of 100,000, and I have a catastrophic 

event, it may not be catastrophic to the overall system. So I oftentimes think when we talk ′′catastrophic,′′ particularly at our level 

of FEMA, we are looking at those events that have national impacts versus those that may be very localized, that we can still respond with our normal process and resources to get in there quickly. So when we talk about catastrophe at FEMA, we are really talking about those events that are of such magnitude they take on a 

significance impacting our national ability to respond, recover and 

move on from those. 

10 

In particular, I was interested in the conversation about Stafford 

Act and hearing both opening statements and questions as to the 

Stafford Act. One, it is an extremely flexible document, and it is 

quite capable of doing many things, yet what else do we need to 

do to make it more responsive? 

Madam Chair, I would first like to lay out how I am approaching 

this both in my confirmation process and in the 2 months I have 

been there. I believe I am taking a three-tier approach, because obviously, until I have guidance from Congress on which way you 

want to proceed, the most immediate thing we can do is look at our 

policy internally and address that first. That is our first step. 

I have directed Beth Zimmerman, who has come on board to 

head our Disaster Assistance Directorate, which deals with those 

matters of individual assistance and public assistance, to look at 

our current policy and guidance to address those issues that are 

being brought up on ′′are we,′′ ′′do that,′′ limiting what we are able 

to do in a disaster. 

The second piece within looking at the rules, the Code of Federal 

Registry, CFR 44, which governs the rulemaking of the rules that 

we administer the Stafford Act under, and then look at the Stafford 

Act as a whole. But I think in our first steps is to really look at 

what we have in FEMA done as far as our policy guidance and 

make sure that it is not proscribing or preventing us from using 

the tools that the Stafford Act actually gave us to. 

When we talk about ′′catastrophic,′′ I think, again, we oftentimes 

look in the past. I am looking towards the future and looking at 

some of the scenarios that we still face as a Nation, not only those 

that have occurred, but what are some of the other types of events 

that we could face, New Madrid, a California earthquake, a major 

hurricane again in the Gulf Coast of Florida, a hurricane that 

strikes Hawaii, and looking at developing plans based around what 

the impacts are. 

I think one of the challenges we have had in the emergency management is oftentimes we will plan to our capability and hope that 

the disaster is not any bigger. And what I have found over my history is that if you don’t plan for the potential impacts and look at 

how your system is applied, you run with the false sense or the illusion that you are able to manage these events, but at the point 

of failure, you have catastrophic failure, not just a system that you 

need to expand. 

And I believe in partnerships. One of the things that I want to 

make clear is—and we talk about disaster response, particularly 

catastrophic disaster response—FEMA is not the team; FEMA is 

part of the team. Under the Federal system, we have to leverage 

and work as partners with our local, State, our Federal agencies, 

our private sector, volunteer faith-based, community-based organizations and the public to build a team that can respond to these 

very large-scale events, some of which may reach the point on a national scale of being catastrophic. 

So to summarize, Stafford Act has a lot of tools in it, but we 

must first take a look at our and policy guidance which we are 

doing to determine what we can do within the scope of Stafford to 

address many of the concerns that have been raised both in previous disasters and the ones we are facing; two, building a team 

11 

based upon what the consequences we are facing in some of these 

events are, and building that capability by leveraging all of the resources of the country, not just looking at FEMA; and third, finally, 

the understanding that in catastrophic disasters, we must not continue to look at the public as a liability, but look at them as a resource that we incorporate into our planning. 

Too often times I have run into challenges where we have, in 

many cases, written plans for what I call the easy-to-help part of 

the population, the able-bodied adults who understand and read 

English and have enough means to take care of themselves in the 

immediate impact of a disaster. That is not the communities we 

live in. Our communities are made up of children. They are made 

up of frail elderly. They are made up of people with disabilities. 

And our tendency is to look at those folks after we wrote the basic 

plan to address those challenges. I think if you are going to be successful in any scale disaster, including catastrophic, you have to design plans that address the needs of a community, not just those 

folks that are easy to help. 

With that, Madam Chairman, I will conclude my remarks and 

welcome questions. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, very much. 

Mr. Fugate, now, would you describe for us your own background 

in emergency management, when it began, how it began, and how 

you rose to your present position? 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes, ma’am. I started out in 1987 as a lieutenant 

with the Alachua County Fire Rescue Department. I was a paramedic firefighter. I was asked to come in and work on the county’s 

disaster plans. 

Ms. NORTON. Where was this located? 

Mr. FUGATE. In Gainesville, Florida, Alachua County. I began 

working in 1987, that February, a career that took me for the next 

10 years working at the county level as the emergency manager. 

I had several large-scale chemical incidents that we dealt with as 

well as numerous other storms and flooding events. But fortunately, when Hurricane Andrew hit, Alachua County was not directly impacted, even though we hosted evacuees from south Florida. 

In 1997, I was offered the opportunity go to the State and to 

serve as the bureau chief for preparedness response. I joined the 

team of the late Governor Chiles. And, again, looking at the lessons 

of Hurricane Andrew and what had happened to address the concerns the State had, I joined a team that was working hard with 

the Florida Legislature to continue to build and improve upon that. 

We found out in 1998 how much we were able to move forward in 

that we had over 200 days we were activated through wildfires, 

floods and Hurricane George. The situation was such that it was 

the first time on the east coast we actually evaluated an entire 

county because of wildfires because of the threat. 

2001, I was asked by Governor Bush to serve as the director of 

emergency management. And that October, serving in that capacity 

through the 2004 hurricane season, we had four land-falling hurricanes. Between 2004 and 2005, we had a total of eight hurricanes 

hit the State of Florida, five of which were major hurricanes. In addition to that, in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, at 

12 

the bequest of the State of Mississippi, we provided the Emergency 

Management Assistance Compact and ended up deploying over 

7,000 responders, and expending over $80 million in State funds, 

and providing everything from search and rescue teams; interoperable communications; food, water and ice; and just about anything 

else we could provide to those local governments at the request of 

the Governor. 

We also as a State had sent resources to the State of Louisiana. 

But we ended up, because of the proximity of the road systems and 

the fact that we had lost the I-10 bridge across Pontchartrain, focused in Mississippi to provide them assistance. 

Governor Bush stepped down, and Governor Crist was elected, 

reappointed me. One month into his administration, we had a tornado outbreak what 21 fatalities. This summer, or actually this 

spring, I was asked by the President to serve in his administration 

and was confirmed in May and have been serving as FEMA Administrator for the last 2 months. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Fugate, I had you lay out that history because 

it is very important to this Subcommittee. It has been the view of 

this Subcommittee that, particularly for unforeseen disasters, but 

even for the run-of-the-mill disaster, at the Federal level, the way 

to respect—what your testimony indicates with my own opening 

statement about responsibility lying at the State is to have somebody who has been there, done that, and who has very deep and 

wide experience in emergency management. 

We are pleased to lay that on the record because the President 

has appointed somebody who has what appears to be experience in 

Democratic and Republican administrations, got appointed to his 

present position and to others he had in the State on the basis of 

merit. That is important for us and for the record to show, because 

I am going to ask you a question about this Agency, which has 

been a thorn in this Subcommittee’s side, frankly, and in the side 

of Congress itself. It seemed to fall apart after Hurricane Katrina. 

Now, nobody expected somehow FEMA to rush in there like a 

knight in shining armor and rescue Louisiana, but it didn’t seem 

to know which side was up; was saved by the Coast Guard, by people from various States such as your own; and the result was the 

post-Katrina act, and even now, pending legislation that would 

even take FEMA out of the Department of Homeland Security so 

compromised was its independence. 

The first thing I would like you to tell this Committee is about 

the independence of the Agency within the Department of Homeland Security. The perhaps major criticism was that while FEMA 

was a nimble Agency before that got on the ground quickly, somehow it became mired in the superstructure of the Department of 

Homeland Security, and that all decisions had to go from the Administrator through some newfangled bureaucracy that we ourselves had created in setting up the Department to the detriment 

of FEMA. Well, we left FEMA in Homeland Security, but we 

passed legislation making it clear that Homeland Security was not 

to compromise the ability of this Agency to move forward. 

I want some indication from you whether or not FEMA is as 

independent as anybody would expect, given the fact that it is still 

in the Department of Homeland Security? It goes to how the reVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:36 Mar 15, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\51326 JASON
13 

porting goes; whether you are equipped and authorized to make decisions, or do you have to ask somebody several sheets up the bureaucracy before a decision can be made; whether it is in made in 

Washington or made in Louisiana. I need to know what the chain 

of command is in your own Agency before we get down to the 

States having to then ask you something. How independent is this 

Agency within the bureaucracy today? 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chair, I report to the Secretary. The Secretary reports to the President. I serve as their principal—— 

Ms. NORTON. There are no officials between you and the Secretary? 

Mr. FUGATE. No, ma’am. As a component I report directly to the 

Secretary. 

Ms. NORTON. Is that a change? 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes, ma’am. That was a direct result of the PostKatrina Emergency Management Reform Act, which says the Administrator of FEMA reports directly to the Secretary. 

Ms. NORTON. That is very important for us to know. 

Do you find in practice that that is the way, since you have been 

in the Agency, matters have been handled? 

Mr. FUGATE. Pretty much so. I have direct access to the Secretary. We meet weekly. Of course, she has, working with her Deputy, branched out in some of the things we are looking at in the 

quarterly or the quadrennial review, but those are more functions 

of the Secretary assigning work tasks—— 

Ms. NORTON. Do you have to go to the Secretary for everything? 

You know, FEMA is given authority, pure and simple. We didn’t 

change the authority of FEMA when we put FEMA in the Department of Homeland Security. So can you make most of the decisions 

you have to make on your own, or do you have to say to the Secretary, this is what I want to do, Madam Secretary; do I have your 

sign-off? 

Mr. FUGATE. There are some things that, because of procurement 

or other issues, that are assigned to Secretaries that will go 

through that level, but by and large—— 

Ms. NORTON. Well, this being a disaster, then, procurement matters in a disaster, would you have sign-off, procurement sign-off, for 

matters in a disaster within your budgetary authority? 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chairman, yes. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, sir. 

We have understood that the bureaucracy has to clear some of 

your actions. That is not the case? 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chair, Secretary Napolitano, having served 

as a Governor, obviously understands the roles and responsibilities 

we have in supporting Governors. There are many moving pieces 

within Homeland Security, but within a disaster itself we are able 

to move forward and take the actions we need to take. 

Ms. NORTON. Virtually as if you were an independent Agency or 

not? I don’t want to put words in your mouth. 

Mr. FUGATE. Under my reporting relationship through the Secretary, we are able to perform our function. 

Ms. NORTON. Report is one thing, permission is another. If we 

get into permission matters, the supersized disaster we are talking 

about will be supersized repeated. 

14 

What is the role of the Office of Operations Coordination? You 

know, I hate these names. The average person really loses confidence in us once we get into the OOC. What is the Office of Operations Coordination? When was it created, by whom, and what is 

its function? 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chair, I defer back to Homeland Security. 

That was created and has been a standing element prior to me 

joining DHS and FEMA. Within our center we have the National 

Response Coordination Center that we coordinate with the National Operations Center. Other components within DHS coordinate with the National Operations Center, which gives the Secretary visibility on a variety of issues, including things such as border matters, coastal issues, other activities that occur within the 

Department under her purview as the other components. 

Ms. NORTON. Now, yes, the DHS has created this Office of Coordination at DHS. Now, as we look at statutory role of FEMA, we 

see conflicts with the role and many of the statutorily mandated 

functions of FEMA itself. And the Agency appears to be relying 

on—and this really does get the Committee upset, because it appears to be relying on these outdated administrative documents. 

Here are some more initials for everybody: HSPD 5. Now, this 

is exactly what we had in mind when we passed the Katrina Act 

and overruled these administrative documents. Can you explain, 

therefore, in light of the Post-Katrina Act, why HSPD 5 is still an 

outstanding administrative document? And the role of the so-called 

Office of Operations Coordination in preparing for and responding 

to disasters, does it have a role and function? And why in the world 

are you relying or does the Agency appear to be relying on administrative documents that have been overruled, overruled by statute? 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chair, as part of the executive branch, the 

President’s prerogative in Executive Orders, obviously, in looking 

at those that have been issued in previous administrations carried 

forward in this administration, many of these are still under review. As to what the post-Katrina emergency management format 

directly speaks to, and what may be potentially in conflict with 

HSPD Number 5, or Homeland Security Presidential Decision Directive Number 5, I am aware of these issues, but I have been more 

focused on our role and responsibilities and administering our part 

of that program. 

Ms. NORTON. I am pleased to learn that at least these matters 

are under review, because you don’t want Congress twice revisiting. Then you get us really mad, and you lose authority, because 

we have the same problem with Principal Federal Officer. In fact, 

we have real problems with that one, because we did revisit that 

one. Apart from the Post-Katrina Act, we revisited it more than 

once because of what we had witnessed on the ground, red tape 

after Katrina. 

Now, the so-called Principal Federal Officer—everybody who 

thinks that substance matters will have to pardon me while I get 

through these bureaucratic names that they paste onto functions, 

where sometimes a function disappears or is in conflict with the 

statutory mandate. But here goes. It is called by DHS the Principal 

Federal Officer, PFO, conflicts directly with the statutorily created 

Federal Coordinating Officer so that something happens on the 

15 

ground, no matter who comes, whoever is in charge stands up. This 

is a war when there is a natural disaster, just like there is a war 

when there is, in fact, a war. You got to know who is in charge. 

That was one thing Katrina taught us to clear up. These duplicative functions were cited as a primary cause of the failed response 

of Hurricane Katrina. That is why we have some exasperation concerning this officer. 

Now, I need to ask you whether DHS, in fact, seeks the repeal 

of the statutory mandate put in place to avoid duplication, and 

whether the Agency is continuing to rely on administrative documents that have been overruled by statute. And you have said that 

that is under review and, for that matter, the National Response 

Framework, to attempt to disregard these statutory provisions. We 

need to know now, because we need further clarification. When an 

agency simply is in contempt, well, we revisit it again, and we need 

to know what about these PFO and FCO—by the way, we are 

joined in this inquiry by the other Committee on which I serve. The 

Committee on Homeland Security, which has the same problem, 

cosigns with us on letters and cosponsored with us the statutory 

repeal. So could I have your answer? 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chairman, I will have to defer some of that 

back to the Department, but as far as the FCO goes, it is clear to 

me the way the statute is written that the FCO, under a Stafford 

Act either emergency or major Presidential, is the person—— 

Ms. NORTON. Say that again, please. 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chairman, it is my interpretation of the 

Stafford Act and post-Katrina emergency management format 

clearly states that when the President declares an emergency or a 

major Presidential disaster declaration, the Federal Coordinating 

Officer has the authority to execute the Stafford Act. 

Ms. NORTON. Who has the authority, the Federal Coordinating 

Officer? 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. So what is the Principal Federal Officer, highly 

paid official, doing on the ground, and how am I to know if I come 

from out of State who is in charge ? 

Mr. FUGATE. Under a Stafford Act declaration, it will be the Federal Coordinating Officer who is authorized by the President to 

support the Federal response on behalf of the request of that Governor. 

Ms. NORTON. Say that again. I am sorry. 

Mr. FUGATE. The Federal Coordinating Officer, on behalf of the 

President, is authorized under the Stafford Act to coordinate—— 

Ms. NORTON. How do you make this distinction to State officials, 

to ordinary citizens on the ground, and why does the—if, in fact, 

the President of the United States has confidence in the Federal 

Coordinating Officer, why would it be necessary to pay somebody 

else to be on the ground, to report to the Department of Homeland 

Security? 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chairwoman, I will defer back to the Agency. My focus is, again, under my authorities with the Federal Coordinating Officers as appointed by the President, when there is a 

declaration that is clear, that they have the authority on behalf of 

16 

the President to coordinate the Federal response as well as administer the Stafford Stafford Act. 

Ms. NORTON. After the Congress passes a statute, sir? 

Mr. FUGATE. I am not disputing that. I am stating that under my 

purview, I appoint or make the recommendations of who the President will appoint as a Federal Coordinating Officer under the Stafford Act. The Principal Federal Official program is not something 

that FEMA—is not something that we administrate. 

Ms. NORTON. Let me indicate that the Appropriations Committee 

supports our view, it would support it many times over now, that 

we don’t have money to spend on another top layer beside the top 

layer that is already there. We have never had a satisfactory answer to why there should be two people on the ground, particularly 

after Hurricane Katrina, which gave us a disaster that way, and 

we don’t intend to tolerate it any longer. And if we find that such 

an officer is funded, we will ask the Appropriations Committee to 

defund it. And we will expect this administration to abide by the 

mandate of Congress. 

I am going to go to Mr. Cao and ask if he has any questions before I proceed further. 

Mr. CAO. Mr. Fugate, I appreciate in your testimony that you 

mentioned teamwork, that FEMA is not actually a part of a team. 

I have noticed that after Katrina there was a lack of teamwork 

among the different Federal agencies. I am not sure what kind of 

steps you have initiated in order to better coordinate between your 

office and the other Federal offices and agencies. 

Mr. FUGATE. Right now, Congressman, obviously my greatest 

challenge is the next disaster, working closely with our Federal 

partners such as our Department of Defense, NORTHCOM, working with National Guard Bureau, working with other elements. 

But I think some of the other part of that teamwork, hopefully 

we are starting to see some daylight in the State of Louisiana. We 

have worked with the State. Secretary Napolitano obviously has 

been there. My predecessor, the Acting Administrator, Nancy 

Ward, made some significant personnel changes there to begin 

moving forward, to begin that process that oftentimes was seen as 

a State, and the Federal Government and the local governments 

not being able to move forward. 

We have been working on our part to resolve those issues, to 

move forward, get projects committed, to move the money and 

begin that rebuilding on those projects that had been in dispute. 

We have been working aggressively to address those challenges. 

But I think the—part of the discussion I have heard, that is the 

state I was very much aware of, was that oftentimes in a largescale disaster, catastrophic disaster, there are other programs besides the Stafford Act that could be brought to bear. It works best 

when it is done looking at what Stafford Act can do and other programs such as Community Block Development Grant dollars working together to address community issues. And I think when you 

go back and you say what are some of the lessons of Hurricane 

Katrina was the fact that in many cases we did not do a good job 

in looking at all of our Federal programs, matching those up with 

the needs of the community, and oftentimes looking at only one or 

two programs, and not really having the ability to reach out across 

17 

the Federal family of programs that could meet those challenges or 

support the needs of those communities. 

I will give an example with children. When we look at our 

plans—and we oftentimes write plans, and we forget that children 

can be more than 20 percent of the population—but if you look at 

children issues, there is not much in the Stafford Act other than 

talking about facilities and some things that really get to that. And 

I am not sure that we are the experts on that. 

There are other Federal programs that every day have funds that 

go to local communities, support day care and other issues. We 

should be looking at how we partner with these Federal funding 

sources and build that team so that in the disaster FEMA is not 

having to recreate a system that already exists. We are part of a 

team that can leverage that and provide assistance and work with 

those Federal agencies that do this every day in the communities 

so we can meet the needs. 

And that is really what I think as far as building a team is not 

going back and creating a new program if we already have one, but 

making sure that we are leveraging those programs with—those 

programs that FEMA has with programs that exist every day, and, 

when disaster strikes, making sure we on the Federal side are 

working as a team to address those challenges. 

Mr. CAO. One of the biggest problems that I saw after Katrina 

is a lack of a timeline and the lack of coordination between the different agencies. Let us take the issue of health care, for example. 

It is one issue just to simply rebuild the hospitals and the clinics, 

but it is another issue to basically provide an area with housing, 

with economic development. All those issues all come into play. 

How do you see FEMA, for instance, as a partnership in that recovery process? And is there a better—should there be, for example, a point agency that possibly would have the power in order to 

coordinate and provide a timeline for the different Federal agencies 

to see who is responsible for what, when do they have to do it, in 

order to provide at least the area with a very clear path towards 

recovery? 

Mr. FUGATE. Congressman, I believe so. I have often asked this 

question: What does long-term recovery look like if we are successful? And people can describe pieces of that. But it oftentimes seems 

to be hinged upon so many different aspects that I think you are 

right, there is no one single Federal agency that has all the answers. 

Knowing from the perspective of FEMA and the tools that we 

have, we obviously need to be a better partner with the rest of the 

Federal family. Whether that long-term recovery mission resides 

within FEMA or resides with another Federal agency, I think we 

all have to look at—as you pointed out, some of the things that 

have to occur to say we are moving forward is addressing housing. 

If you look at FEMA’s housing programs, they are really shelter 

programs. If we don’t have a long-term affordable housing solution 

at the end of 18 to 24 months, we end up keeping people in what 

should have been a much shorter time frame in sheltering operations that we end now 3, 4, 5 years later. 

We still have about 2,400 folks that are in temporary housing 

units. These were really shelter programs that should have had an 

18 

outcome that said at the end of that time frame we had enough affordable housing on board to make that transition out of that sheltering program, and when it didn’t occur, we were still keeping 

people in what should have been a much shorter time frame. But 

we didn’t have that follow-on. 

That, I think, is where we have to do a better job both at the 

local, State and Federal family is describing the outcome and then 

going back on the Federal side and identifying who has already got 

existing authorities, resources and capabilities. And then oftentimes when we look at funding mechanisms, it is not necessarily 

just funding the Stafford Act, but looking at the other Federal programs that would make more sense to provide that capability to 

them and that disaster response, that they have the programs that 

can actually deal with longer-term solutions versus many of 

FEMA’s programs, which are based upon a shorter-term 

responselike activity or rebuilding activities based upon damages 

that occurred as a direct result of the storm. 

Mr. CAO. I have one last question to ask you, Mr. Fugate. 

After speaking to different people, more or less, and we come to 

an agreement that the Stafford Act does not prevent FEMA from 

reaching a lump sum settlement in order to speed up the recovery 

process, I know that recent law allows for FEMA to initiate an arbitration process. But then the arbitration process, in and of itself, 

is a project-by-project arbitration which, at the same time, does 

not, at least in my view, speed up and allow the State and local 

municipalities the flexibility to coordinate the recovery process. 

Are you in the process of looking at ways that we could try to 

settle—allow a State or city agency to settle with FEMA on a lump 

sum amount and then, from there, allow the State and local governments the flexibility to have them initiate a recovery plan as 

they would see fit for their own communities? 

Mr. FUGATE. Well, there are two options here. One is to design 

a program which looks a lot like Community Block Development 

Grants. We do an estimate, we write them a check, and we are 

done. The problem with that is, often disasters are so complex, we 

don’t know enough initially and we oftentimes keep going back. 

I think a better option—let’s take a school system; let us take the 

Jefferson Parish school system or the Orleans Parish school system, and instead of writing each building as a project, what if we 

wrote the district as a project or the campus as a project and gave 

them more flexibility within those structures? 

I think the tendency to look at every item, every building as a 

separate project work sheet is not something that necessarily lends 

itself to the flexibility that you are asking for. 

I have asked staff to go back and look at: Do we have the tools, 

can we with the Stafford Act and the CFR do things that allow us 

to write projects based upon a function, not necessarily each piece 

of that function? 

An example you raised was police stations and fire stations. We 

treated each of those as an individual component. What if we 

stepped back and said, let us look at Orleans Parish and look at 

the fire department for the city of New Orleans as a project. Do we 

have the ability to step back and not try to recreate it station-bystation because that may not be the need, given the change of popVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:36 Mar 15, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\51326 JASON
19 

ulation and the rebuilding schedules? It may be more important to 

do other things within the overall framework of what is impacted, 

what is eligible, and how do we move forward. 

So we are asking the questions, what is the best way to approach 

that, and then look at if we cannot get there with our authorities 

that we have under Stafford, under CFR, then that would warrant 

discussions back to look at whether Congress would like to provide 

any additional guidance to us under Stafford. 

Mr. CAO. Thank you very much. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Cao. 

With a new administration, I think it is a fair to ask, are you, 

Mr. Fugate, in light of the broad bipartisan criticisms of FEMA 

since Hurricane Katrina and even recognizing statutory changes 

and some improvements of the Agency since, would not a wholesale 

overhaul of the Agency be in order at this time to ensure that it 

is a nimble, functioning agency? 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chairman, that is definitely the prerogative 

of Congress. 

Ms. NORTON. I am talking about administrative overhaul. I am 

not talking about anything that the statute would say, do. I am 

talking about the kinds of things that Congress expected to happen 

afterwards, based on the administrative arm it had in place. Or do 

you think that administrative arm is now functioning to the level 

that is required and does not need to have a look at its functions 

in every department, every aspect by a new administration, so 

change we can believe in? 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chair, that is what I am doing. I have been 

here 2 months. I have been able to bring a lot of folks back in that 

bring in State and local experience. I will be looking forward to my 

deputy coming on board, if the Senate will confirm, with recommendation of the President, so we have a person with city experience. We have people that have worked in State government, and 

we are building our leadership ranks based upon people who have 

actually done this, been in the field, and have been customers of 

FEMA. 

The other thing is, if you have ever seen our org chart, our org 

chart is far past any reasonable span of control and does not resemble what we do. 

Ms. NORTON. What does it resemble? 

Mr. FUGATE. It looks like a spider. Everybody reports to the boss 

and nobody seems to be able to figure out what we do. If you looked 

at the org chart, I doubt anybody could understand what FEMA 

does. 

I am a firm believer that form should follow function. We should 

be organized by what we do. These are the steps that we are currently going through as we build that team, is to look at how we 

have been doing things and putting emphasis on outcomes, not 

process. 

The other thing we have instituted is, there is this tendency to 

think we are going to know when the next disaster is going to be, 

which we know is not true. I believe the best way to prove my point 

and to demonstrate our competencies is through no-notice exercises 

that take us to the point of failure and to assure ourselves that we 

are learning the lessons from previous disasters and applying them 

20 

to both those threats we are familiar with and threats many people 

have never thought about. 

I just recently left the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado, which deals with geomagnetic storms and looking at 

the potential impacts of a major geomagnetic storm across our infrastructure. These are natural hazards that nobody has really addressed, that are far more trouble than people realize. 

Ms. NORTON. What could cause us more trouble again? What are 

you calling them, please? 

Mr. FUGATE. We have within the National Weather Service an 

office that is in Boulder, Colorado, that does nothing but monitor 

the sun for solar flares and geomagnetic radiation. In certain 

events, those storms can be so powerful as to impact, whichever 

part of the globe is facing the sun, power outages across most of 

the United States simultaneously. 

Ms. NORTON. Can you point to examples of what you mean? 

Mr. FUGATE. There have been solar storms so powerful that 

across northern tiers of our country, including Canada, there have 

been power outages with damages to infrastructure. 

There is an historical record event of 1859 that if it occurred 

today would result in about a 90 percent blackout of the power system of whatever part of the globe is facing the sun when it strikes. 

Ms. NORTON. How about the ice storms in the Midwest this past 

winter? Is that tantamount to a smaller version of what you are 

talking about? 

Mr. FUGATE. No, ma’am. Ice storms are a feature of the atmosphere, that is better understood. 

The weather that occurs or what they refer to as the sun’s activities, we currently are entering into what is called the next solar 

maximus of activity for solar flare, sun spots, and the potential for 

geomagnetic storms. 

These events, based upon our vulnerability and our dependency 

upon satellite technology for communication, navigation, as well as 

our dependency upon the power grid, are the type of hazards that 

we have to expose to team, too, through exercises and training because, again, we know a lot about hurricanes, we don’t know a lot 

about when the next disaster is going to strike and when it is going 

to strike. We will get there by doing exercises to learn about hazards, but also to make sure that the team we are building within 

DHS, within the Federal family and our State and local governments, are faced with challenges that push us to the point where 

we are not just building a disaster response team for the things we 

are capable of, we are building it for the types of things that can 

impact this country. 

Ms. NORTON. I am going to turn the questioning over to Mr. 

Diaz-Balart, but what you just described, is it as a result of climate 

change? 

Mr. FUGATE. No, ma’am, this is just our sun. 

Ms. NORTON. Our sun has been here all long. Why haven’t we 

had this? 

Mr. FUGATE. Because our technology becomes increasing more 

vulnerable as we are more dependent on satellites and infrastructure that is vulnerable to geomagnetic storms. 

Ms. NORTON. Who is studying that, sir? 

21 

Mr. FUGATE. The National Weather Service and NOAA, as part 

of the Space Weather Prediction Center, has been doing this. It is 

one of those programs that has been up, it is not well known, but 

the impacts, definitely within the industry, are well known, particularly in the satellite industry. 

It is something that when we send up our satellites, we plan for. 

In fact, the space station is one of the prime customers because 

during certain radiation storms, astronauts have to move into a 

safe location on the satellite to be protected during the storms. 

Ms. NORTON. And, of course, we have had outages that have 

taken out great parts of the United States. 

Mr. Diaz-Balart. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. I thank you. I had to step out for a phone call 

I had to take. 

You already touched on this in general terms, but I want to 

make sure that I understand it. If Florida were to get hit by the 

great Miami hurricane again, would DHS send a PFO team to Florida? And would that PFO or the FCO be in charge of coordinating 

the Federal response? And would the PFO report to you or the Secretary of the DHS? 

Mr. FUGATE. As I understand it, there would be a Federal coordinating officer appointed, and we would coordinate that response 

through the Stafford Act. 

As to that Federal coordinating officer, if you remember back to 

Hurricane Andrew, the President made the decision to appoint a 

Cabinet official in that capacity to be the Federal coordinating officer. 

So oftentimes it depends on the scale and expertise of that disaster as to whether or not it would be a staff member that is routinely designated to go out on disasters. It could be a regional administrator; I could find myself in that position. But it is the President’s call as to who he appoints as Federal coordinating officer. 

But those authorities, under the Stafford Act and the PostKatrina Emergency Management Reform Act, would be vested in 

that Federal coordinating officer to manage that response and to 

serve as the point of contact with that governor in supporting the 

governor’s request for assistance from the Federal Government. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. I understand there are different circumstances 

that will take place. But again, let’s assume that it is a storm, a 

regular storm, not quite as big, like maybe the 37 that you had to 

deal with in the last couple of years in Florida. 

If a PFO were sent, would the PFO report to you or the Secretary? And that is assuming that the PFO would be sent. And 

would there be a PFO sent? Congress has had an issue with that. 

Mr. FUGATE. Congressman, under the Stafford Act and under the 

Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, it has been very 

clear that there would be a Federal coordinating officer who would 

coordinate on behalf of the Federal Government. 

The principal Federal official program does not reside within 

FEMA, so I cannot speak to that. My understanding is that the 

Federal coordinating officer would be the point of contact and 

would be the principal implementation for Stafford Act and would 

serve on behalf of the President to coordinate Federal assistance 

requests from the governor. 

22 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Our concern is precisely that, that there is a 

sense that it is outside of FEMA; and who is in charge? I understand that you think, obviously, and we believe that you are right 

about that, but I want to make sure—I guess it is not a decision 

that you will make, but I want to make sure, if there is a storm, 

and all of a sudden a PFO is sent out there, who is in charge? 

That is one of our concerns. I guess that is not a decision you 

would make. I want to make sure that you would be in charge and 

not somebody else from this outside group that, frankly, we are not 

even too sure what they do. 

Mr. FUGATE. I report to the Secretary and I serve as the principal adviser to the Secretary and the President on emergency 

management. 

Congressman, you know what I did in Florida, the team we built; 

and I think that is the thing that I really want to focus on. And 

that is that the individual is less important than building the 

team. If we build a good team, I think a lot of these issues become 

secondary to our response. But if we don’t have a good team and 

we are operating separate entities, trying to assist a State, these 

issues then become things that we will have to deal with. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Absolutely. And hopefully we can deal with 

them before that happens. 

Kind of in the same vein, I am trying to understand how it really 

would work. We know there are a lot of steps being taken to prepare for the possible resurgence of swine flu, that pandemic. 

So HHS is the lead for managing the medical crisis; we understand that. DHS is responsible for managing the consequences. 

Now, would DHS use FEMA’s response team and regional offices 

to manage the consequences, or would DHS send a PFO team or 

various PFO teams to bypass FEMA, and would they again report 

to you as the Secretary? 

I go back to the same issue. Specifically, if that were to happen, 

how would that work? 

Mr. FUGATE. If we are outside of the Stafford Act, the Secretary 

is under HSPD-5 on behalf of the President, is coordinating the 

rest of the Federal family in support of HHS and dealing with 

issues that, again, were not under Stafford Act declaration. 

That is a real potential here with this H1N1. If it does not reach 

the severity that would warrant a Stafford Act declaration, you 

want to have the ability—which is not vested in FEMA; it is vested 

in the Secretary—to coordinate on behalf of the President in those 

types of non-Stafford Act events. 

This goes back to other questions when you are dealing with 

things like the national party conventions or you are dealing with 

G8 summits where you don’t have a disaster or a declaration, having that ability to provide the coordination across the Federal family is one of the mechanisms and one of the tools that exist under 

HSPD-5. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Is there anything preventing the Secretary 

from using FEMA outside of the Stafford Act? Can they use FEMA 

outside of a Stafford Act declaration? 

Mr. FUGATE. Absolutely. As part of one of her components, we do 

work actively on those issues. We bring a lot of resources to the 

table. In fact, there are capabilities, when it is a Federal response 

23 

not requiring a Stafford Act on behalf of a governor, where FEMA 

serves as a coordination role supporting a lead Federal agency, 

such as NASA, such as HHS, when warranted. 

But again, you look at what resources we bring to bear, how we 

apply that. And again, our primary capabilities are coordinating on 

behalf of a governor’s request of the resources of the Federal Government, administering the Stafford Act. 

When you look at FEMA itself, our response capability, other 

than the coordination mechanisms, is limited because we use other 

Federal agencies, private sector and nonimpacted State and local 

governments, as the responders in a disaster. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Because of precisely that, why not use FEMA 

if FEMA is available, number one. 

Number two, I am trying to—and I am asking the questions, and 

you are obviously giving very direct answers, as you always do. But 

my concern is, we have basically two separate structures for managing disaster; we have FEMA and then we have this DHS separate structure. 

Are you going to be looking at those structures as you are looking 

at the rules and regs dealing with FEMA? Are you going to have 

the opportunity to look at those two structures and come up with 

recommendations to see, again, if there is a problem, how we can 

streamline it and make sure there is no confusion for State and 

local officials? And we know there already is, because we have 

heard that from them; I am sure you have heard it as well. 

Maybe on the State level, you were one of the ones giving some 

of these complaints. Are you going to have the opportunity to look 

at that, or is that something that is not something that you are 

going to be able to look at and that we need to continue to push 

the Secretary on? 

Mr. FUGATE. Well, to be fair, FEMA is part of one of the Agencies 

planning for H1N1. We have been engaged. We are not sitting outside. We are part of that team. 

I think the second thing you need to understand is, this hit at 

the transition of the new administration coming in. The decision 

was made to go forward with a lot of the existing structures because, when the first wave hit, many of the team had yet to come 

on board. We were using the existing plans to deal with the crisis. 

I think, as we have come through that and we are looking at a 

second wave, we are continuing to examine how we are doing 

things within DHS; and I think that is a process by which the Secretary is very much aware of the challenges we face to better integrate all of our resources together. 

So to be fair, we are part of the H1N1 planning. 

Two, H1N1 struck at the very beginning of the new administration where they did not have many of their staff on board. And so 

they went and made a wise decision, I think, to utilize the existing 

planning documents and the concepts of operation. They have since 

been looking at how to improve those as we go forward. 

Planning is a process, not an outcome that you necessarily get 

done. I think we are very much working on that process of how to 

best coordinate across a variety of threats where there may be different agencies that have leadership roles that won’t always fall 

into the purview of a Stafford Act declaration. 

24 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. I understand that. And this may seem like a 

great logical topic for the quadrennial review of the Department. 

Again, as you have heard, this is something that is nonpartisan. 

Madam Chairwoman has actually gone to the point of writing the 

President. We just want to make sure that there is no confusion, 

that—there obviously is right now, because some State and local officials have told us there is. 

So again, if it is not something that is going to be looked at, and 

if it is something that is going to be looked at, then we feel—it 

would make me feel more at ease, but it is obviously something 

that has to be looked at to make sure that there is no confusion 

in the chain of command. 

Mr. FUGATE. I understand. 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Thank you, sir. 

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Diaz-Balart. 

This is one we have hammered so much. It needs to have a nail 

put right in it so it doesn’t have to be brought up again. I appreciate your response. 

Let me be clear. We are not objecting to anything that the Secretary would do in a non-Stafford Act event so long as there is not 

a Federal coordinating officer appointed. We are objecting—and remember who appoints the Federal coordinating officer; the Secretary, as far as I know. So it is in her power to appoint somebody 

who knows the difference and knows how to deal with being on the 

ground. 

It is not unusual, just not unusual in the Federal system, for 

agencies like HHS, which has very many assistant secretaries. 

These people have learned how to relate to the Secretary at the 

same time that they fulfill their statutory obligation. 

And the Committee is objecting to being ignored and having to 

go to the Appropriations Committee. And they say, we asked for it 

be defunded this year and our information is the Secretary wanted 

it funded, and we don’t care what she gets funded as long as that 

is not a Stafford Act notion. And as long as she makes that caveat, 

we are on the same page. 

If not—a needless fight started in the last administration and 

continues in this administration. That is a lot of wasted time; we 

have too many things that we have to do. 

Among them, talking about leftovers from the last administration, would you give this Committee a report on one that sent both 

sides up the wall when we learned as we were dealing with the 

stimulus that there was $3.4 billion in outstanding disputes between the State of Louisiana and FEMA, led to an outsized response from the Senator from Louisiana to have the President appoint arbitrators. That is how bad it had become. 

We were very embarrassed by it, frankly, when most jurisdictions were begging for the kind of money that—FEMA had not 

even gotten to the appeal. The problem was at the point of decision, 

and nobody had sat down to look at the various ways that the Federal Government and others have solved such disputes. 

So we would like to know, what is the status of the $3.4 billion 

dispute? Has any of it been disbursed and how much is left of that 

amount at this time? 

25 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chair, I can give you some of those numbers; and some of those numbers I would like the staff to update, 

because it is an evolving process. 

I asked the same question when I was originally briefed on the $3.4 billion outstanding by the State of Louisiana. I asked, what 

exactly are these projects? 

They said, this probably is more based upon their concern that 

current projects being written will end up being appealed. 

I asked, how much is being appealed right now? 

That number is roughly half a billion that is actually in the appeal process. 

Many of those are working through the system through a group 

that we set up with the State of Louisiana, that were very senior 

policy, very experienced at looking at the Stafford Act; and many 

of those are now being sent back down to the staff with guidance 

to move forward on. 

But the $3.4 billion in asking for—show me which projects are 

in that process, what I have heard was that this was based upon 

outstanding project work sheets yet to be completed, that the concern was there may be appeals there. 

But what we have currently in house that the State of Louisiana, 

through their local subgrantees that are appealing, is right at half 

a billion. The others may yet be to come. 

Ms. NORTON. Half a billion is on appeal, at least $3 billion is in 

dispute, and the notion that we would even discuss with FEMA 

things like ALJs, people who, upon agreement of parties for the 

procedures used, would then break through this so the State of 

Louisiana—and there was a similar amount, not as high, outstanding in Mississippi—could get on with it. This is one deadlock 

that we need to see broken right away at a time when the economy 

is on its knees everywhere, including in the States of Louisiana 

and Mississippi. 

What is being done to break the deadlock between FEMA and the State of Louisiana on the $3 billion still in dispute? 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chairman, as we go through the outstanding projects that are being written, we have set up a team 

with the State in Baton Rouge at a very high level. 

Ms. NORTON. So that team consists of the parties—— 

Mr. FUGATE. Of our staff and their staff who are working 

through the issues. 

Ms. NORTON. As I explained to you when you paid your courtesy 

visit, each of these parties has a structural problem. I am going to 

lay this on the record so everybody knows what our concern is. 

This is a structural problem. Your mandate is to keep Louisiana, 

to keep Mississippi, from getting too much money. The mandate of 

the State of Louisiana and the State of Mississippi is to get as 

much money from the Federal Government as they can. Therein 

lies the deadlock. So as long as you have got people with a structural problem still at one another, I am not convinced that you will 

break the deadlock. 

What is your objection to having all parties agree upon a procedure—like, for example, several States have agreed to solve similar 

Medicaid issues involving much more money. What is your objection after both parties have a say, final say, as to what the proceVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:36 Mar 15, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\51326 JASON
26 

dure will be for getting others to break this deadlock, considering 

that you are keeping $3 billion from the citizens of Louisiana, and 

there is very little progress made in the 6 months since we discovered this outstanding amount, most of it before you came in? But guess what, Mr. Fugate, it is going to be your $3 billion un- less you can give us timetables for getting this $3 billion moving 

through the system. And then, if we see hang-ups in the appeals 

system, then we are going to wonder why in the world can’t the appeals be settled. 

The problem is to get money to people on the ground, to get it 

on the ground now when the State needs it more than ever you because of a combination of Katrina and the worst economy since the 

Great Depression. I need to know what you are doing with the $3 

billion to break the structural impasse. 

Mr. FUGATE. As I said, Madam Chair, we are working with the 

tools I have, and I am looking forward to the ability to bring in a 

panel to give final adjudication of those disputes for the State. 

Ms. NORTON. Will that be an independent panel that both parties 

had agreed upon, sir 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much for trying to do that. 

I think you see the structural problem. There is no way to argue 

that we can ease up on Louisiana and Mississippi a little bit; because we have been at this for a long time, there is no way for you 

to do that with any integrity. 

And there is no integrity for the Governors of Louisiana and Mississippi, to the greatest extent possible, to press you for every dime 

they can get, especially now. They want even more dimes than they 

could have gotten if they had solved that 2 years ago when the 

economy was not as bad as it is today. 

We are frustrated with the Agency not seeing the structural defeat. We are saying, we would like in 30 days to know what procedure you will be using with some kind of third party with procedures both parties have agreed to use. If any party can’t use it, 

then it is not on the table. 

With what set of actors? It is not as if we are asking FEMA to 

invent something the Federal Government has never done before. 

We are impatient because other agencies with far more money 

have found ways to break impasses rather than leave people without the money Congress has appropriated them, if I may say so, 

sir, years ago. Years ago. It is unconscionable. 

Within 30 days, we would like to see, what is the procedure? 

What is the name of the group or panel? When will it be operative? 

What are its benchmarks? And similarly, what are the appeals procedures? What are the benchmarks for the appeal procedure, as 

well? 

My impatience reflects the amount still outstanding. 

You have indeed moved us somewhat forward, because at least 

you acknowledge there is a structural problem. We could not even 

get the prior administration to acknowledge the structural problem. 

That is what sent the Senator from Louisiana to the President 

with, okay, you will set up an arbitration panel. Watch out for her, 

because the next move, she is going to give him a certain number 

of days to set up an arbitration panel. 

27 

So we have to work this out. We can with a new administration 

and everybody intelligently understanding what the problem is. 

First of all, I appreciate what you said; it is just the kind of 

breaking through of a bureaucracy when you talked about what we 

are putting your staff through. People have to understand what the 

staff has to do in order to break this impasse. It has got to say, 

as we look at this structure—which, by the way, the State may 

have not looked at in decades—we must ascertain how much of this 

is due to lack of repair and how much of this is due to storm. 

I submit to you, Administrator Fugate, that is an impossible 

task. Yes, ultimately, it is a judgment. You can put everything you 

want to on the table, but to come up with a figure is to come up 

with a proxy, an imaginary figure, a figure that everybody can 

agree upon, not a figure with a basis in fact. One would have to 

go back and do the kind of nitpicking, small kinds of calculations 

that ultimately nobody would have any confidence in. 

So when you say that you are bringing to the table a kind of different vision, that is what we are looking for the Agency to do, as 

difficult as it is, where you say, look at the project. 

If you could just—and you mentioned that in passing in one of 

your answers. If you could just say something further about that. 

It was very refreshing to hear, because it means when you see a 

problem, you see it may be structural. You said, wait a minute, 

let’s put fresh eyes on it. Try it with a pilot project, but don’t just 

keep going at it as if, if you keep doing the same thing the same 

way, you are going to get a different response. 

Would you just lay that out a bit, the project notion versus the 

present notion, the one that you are considering at least? 

Mr. FUGATE. Absolutely, Madam Chair. 

I think one of the challenges that I have is, I am not interested 

in getting money down to the State, I am interested in what the 

project is. 

If you have a fire station that is destroyed by a disaster, the uninsured elements which are eligible under Stafford Act for replacement, what you are actually doing is you are rebuilding a fire station. The maintenance records, which may have been destroyed in 

the original disaster, and the fact that there is no fire station are 

what is going to drive the project. We are going to replace the fire 

station if that indeed is what the community wants. 

Ms. NORTON. What do you do about the fact that the State may 

have some responsibility? 

Mr. FUGATE. If that project is eligible, the State has their responsibility as the grantee supporting that local government, the subgrantee, through that grants process. But we should not be adding 

to that burden on issues that do not get us back to the original 

project which was, if the station was a government function and it 

is eligible for assistance and there are uninsured losses, then in 

this type of an event we should be looking at what it will take to 

rebuild the fire station versus looking for things like maintenance 

records which didn’t exist because they were destroyed as part of 

the disaster. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you. Enough said. If you are moving in that 

direction, we would be very pleased. 

28 

Let me ask the Ranking Member, before I go further, if he has 

any further questions? 

Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Actually, thank you, Madam Chairman. I really don’t. 

But I just do want to reemphasize, I think the President found 

the best person in the entire country for this job. And that is why 

I am so insistent on making sure that we have a clear line of command, and the person who knows what he is doing, is the right 

man at the right time, who is the best in the country, if we have, 

when we get hit by another catastrophe, we don’t learn then that 

he doesn’t have either the resources or the right chain of command 

and there is confusion. 

Because we do have the right person right now in that important 

Agency, as I think it is very evident just in the time the American 

people have had the opportunity to meet him. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Diaz-Balart. Certainly 

he has gotten his spurs in a part of the country that has seen disaster after disaster. We are seeing evidence of that experience in 

responses we are getting today. 

Let me ask you about the last war, the complex that all of us 

have to a certain extent. That is, some complaints that FEMA has 

overcompensated with fighting the last war when it sees another 

disaster before it, and that it is doing what you would expect it to 

do—kind of lean forward, try not to have happen what happened 

last time. 

But we had testimony before this Subcommittee on, for example—the place, I think it was Louisiana—that was drowning in ice. 

We had indeed some word that Florida had to ask the Secretary 

of Homeland Security to stop sending aid that the State had not 

asked for. 

Would you speak to us about overcompensation by FEMA? Has 

it occurred, and what would you intend to do about it while preparing, while leaning forward in the event of a new disaster? 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chair, having been probably one of the 

folks who was very concerned about how we were approaching the 

aftermath of Hurricane Katrina—and in some cases, I think, supplanting the role of local and State government—there is a danger. 

Yes, the Federal Government can do more. Yes, the Federal Government can do a lot of it. The problem is, if locals and State governments are not full partners in doing everything they can before 

requesting Federal assistance, in a large-scale, multi-State disaster, there may not be enough if the only player in town is the 

Federal Government. 

Behind me is a lot of that team, both local and State government. 

I think to avoid this overcompensation nature, you have to build 

a team that relies and trusts upon each other to work effectively 

as a team and not second-guess or question. If David Maxwell, the 

director in Arkansas says, this is what my governor needs, that is 

what I should focus on. 

Yes, I am going to anticipate. Yes, I am going to plan ahead. I 

don’t want to leave Dave Maxwell hanging if he has a request that 

I haven’t though about. But I should not be second-guessing him 

and responding outside of working with him as a team. Team members don’t do that; team members work together. 

29 

We are talking. We are working as a team, so that you are not 

supplanting each other. We may be anticipating, if we see something coming, so when that request comes, we are not delayed in 

getting that help. 

But a real team does not second-guess and go in blindly. 

Ms. NORTON. And you felt free to ask the Department not to 

send, until requested, certain resources to the State? 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes, ma’am. That was, in some quarters, taken that 

I was anti-Federal. The reaction was, I think, probably—— 

Ms. NORTON. The taxpayers of the United States thank you. 

Mr. FUGATE. But I was looking at it more pragmatically. States 

are going through very tough fiscal times. If the Federal Government is stepping up to the plate at every disaster, States are less 

and less inclined to fund those programs they should be funding. 

We will further dilute our capabilities of this Nation to deal with 

complex disasters. 

People forget that most of the resources that actually responded 

to Hurricane Katrina were not Federal resources, they were National Guard and local and State law enforcement, fire departments, paramedics and other first responders across this Nation. 

If we continue not to leverage the capabilities of State and local 

governments, we won’t have the resources the next time there is 

a disaster, because we have built everything upon the Federal Government doing everything at such low levels that when States face 

those hard budget choices, it is easy to go, somebody else will take 

care of us, instead of taking the steps that many States do, even 

in the face of very adverse budgets, to build and maintain their capability to respond to their citizens, with our role supporting that, 

but not supplanting that primary responsibility the governors have 

in their States during disaster. 

We don’t believe in the domino theory where each level of government has to fail before the next level kicks in, but we do believe 

we have to be a team and that team means, everybody comes into 

the game so play as a team, not depend upon only one part of the 

government to make sure that we can meet those needs when disaster strikes. 

Ms. NORTON. I just have a few more questions. 

About every couple of months, the national press—all over the 

United States, you see a story on, let us call them the last, most 

vulnerable victims of Katrina who are still in trailers. Would you 

give us a status report on where we are with placing these last victims? 

Before you came into office, HUD testified that they had housing 

for each and every one of the victims of Katrina. Neither HUD nor 

FEMA had broken down who we were talking about—how close 

they were, whether they were disabled people, whether they were 

people waiting to build their homes, just who they were in the first 

place. And so they have them all lumped together by the press. 

How many are there? How many are left? 

Your predecessor, just before leaving office, promised this Committee nobody would be put out in the street, but of course eviction 

notices might go out. The Committee does not object to that. We 

are not saying that you should violate the Stafford Act and keep 

people receiving Federal funds in perpetuity, but we would like to 

30 

wipe the slate clean of the last victims of Katrina, knowing that 

they are someplace that is appropriate for them. 

Mr. FUGATE. Right now, there are approximately—a little under 

2,400 families that are still in FEMA housing. We have been working aggressively—— 

Ms. NORTON. Most of these are trailers? 

Mr. FUGATE. Some are trailers, some are mobile homes. 

-- but again, working to do case work. We were working with the 

State of Louisiana. We were able to enlist one of the other partners. They told me that they would like to do this as part of the 

team to help in the transition. 

But I think your point is well taken. There is an end to these 

programs. The FEMA program for shelter programs, they were not 

designed to be long term. So we have to actually make sure that 

we are doing the case work to identify that the resources are 

matched up with the needs of those families. But we also have to 

bring conclusion to that process. 

I faced this in Florida where, again, many of those challenges 

had to be worked, one on one. And in some cases, it literally took 

the final notice that there was no longer going to be Federal assistance for people to make the decision to move on versus those people who did not have that option and needed to be moved into other 

programs to provide that long-term housing solution. 

So part of doing that case work is there is not one size fits all; 

it has to be based on where that family is. Are they going to get 

back in their home? Are they going to need other options? 

But there is a point where you have to have closure to what the 

options will be; and at some point where people have said, I refuse 

that assistance, we have to be able to close that program. 

Ms. NORTON. You don’t have a right under the Stafford Act to 

be where you were before, to be close to work. All of that brings 

hardship, but not hardships sufficient to keep you on with Federal 

funding forever. 

I understand from staff that you have submitted a breakdown, 

and we will look at that breakdown and continue to work with you. 

This large question that I pose for you—in light of your deep experience, we felt that we could pose this question to you about a 

catastrophe or catastrophic disaster. And I want to ask this question because we need to know whether the Stafford Act, that we 

have relied on since 1988—is it 20 years of reliance on one statute, 

very broadly framed, which seemed to encompass almost everything you can think of—whether or not in light of the experience 

after Katrina, in light of the experience after 9/11—terribly catastrophic even though it involved relatively less area and even fewer 

people when you consider Hurricane Katrina—in light of that experience you, Administrator Fugate, you are a deep thinker in this 

area. 

We don’t want to be caught with the notion that nobody knows 

what a catastrophe is—and maybe we do under the statute; we 

have no opinion at this point. But we don’t want people running 

to us and saying, see, we have a whole lot of people, too; let us 

count them for you. We need to get all of that extra help that you 

gave to Louisiana and Mississippi, and they will do it. 

31 

You heard perhaps Representative Loebsack, gave us a whole 

new standard based on the budget of the city or, for that matter, 

the State. That is going to happen when people see what, in fact, 

we had to do in Katrina. We had to pass a post-Katrina act; we 

even had to pass a bill that never got through the Senate— which 

makes me think we may be violating the Stafford Act—to try to 

give some additional assistance to Louisiana and Mississippi. 

I think ultimately we did give them—and, of course, that happened through statute; we waived the State match. But the other 

parts of it that were in this act that didn’t get passed came as a 

result of testimony from people from the area. And the testimony 

was given on the basis that we are talking about one-time-only 

Katrina stuff where you find that the residents or the State or the 

city cannot move, cannot act, because FEMA isn’t sure what it is 

authorized to give in this kind of situation. 

So we want to ask you, should Congress begin to look toward describing what a catastrophe is, by definition, some kind of definition or guidance, whether this is warranted? Should we look toward the kinds of consequences and objective benchmarks that 

would guide all concerned? Does the President need authority that 

would send from the top the notion that this is an extraordinary 

event? 

Have you given any thought to that, or do you think we should 

be giving thought to it at this time? 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chair, usually when I hear these discussions, having been in this for a long time, I break it into two 

things. Am I looking at cost share as to what that threshold should 

be when we go to 100 percent. 

Ms. NORTON. That would only be one of the things. 

Mr. FUGATE. That would be one way to look at it. 

The other way to look at it is, if we look at our system, we don’t 

reward States that do more. Our cost share starts at 25 percent 

State and local, no less than 75 percent Federal share, and we have 

the option to go up to 100 percent. Those authorities are vested 

under the Stafford Act; it is what triggers the next level. We use 

a per capita impact to go to 90/10. 

Obviously, Katrina was off the scale. It made sense. 

But oftentimes I find that we don’t look at it from the standpoint 

of not only the consequence but, how much more is the State doing 

with their own money that is offsetting the cost to the Federal Government. Yet they are only going to see their cost share go up when 

it reaches a certain per capita, or in a very tight, narrow part of 

that disaster. 

So I am looking at, how do we look at cost share not only when 

it warrants it because of the size of the disaster, but how do you 

use it as a capability of encouraging State and local governments 

to do a better job of managing disasters? 

I got asked this question a long time ago by a very wise man, 

the late Lacy Suiter, he was one of the associate directors of 

FEMA. He asked me, Craig, is there anything Florida couldn’t do 

if FEMA reimbursed the State for it? 

And I said, not much. So that is part one. 

The second part is, do we wish to have only one program to administer in a catastrophic disaster, to take care of everything, in 

32 

which case you need to expand the Stafford Act dramatically? Or 

do we want to look at the existing Federal programs that are already there, such as Community Block Development Grant dollars, 

and look at how we build a system that takes greater advantage 

of existing structures and existing authorities, and make a better 

plan to integrate Stafford Act and other Federal organizations—including, in many cases, USDA from the programs they have in the 

rural States and rural parts of States—so that rather than create 

new structures and new mechanisms in a disaster, we will look at 

what we already have. 

Ms. NORTON. Would those be for, not the temporary assistance, 

but ongoing assistance? 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes, ma’am. Let us take the HUD example. 

Most of what you see with the FEMA programs is very short 

term to buy us time. Yet if there is not going to be housing at the 

end of the FEMA programs, we are unable to get out of a temporary program. So you need to recognize early in a disaster that 

the housing that will be available at the end of the FEMA programs would not be sufficient to provide a long-term solution. 

Ms. NORTON. So we hand off responsibility past the temporary to 

another Federal agency to decide what role and what funds are appropriate; is that what you are advocating? 

Mr. FUGATE. Yes. If you approach it from the standpoint that you 

want Stafford Act to be all of these things, that program needs to 

grow, and you will create structures that usually won’t be implemented until a disaster. 

Ms. NORTON. Consider this. Suppose an administrator of FEMA 

could decide that on his own and say, at this point the Agriculture 

Department should be responsible for this or HUD should be responsible. Do you think we need authority within FEMA so there 

is no doubt, no bickering or exchanges about who really should now 

take over among agencies? 

Mr. FUGATE. Madam Chair, before I commit that FEMA would 

be the most logical place, I think you are correct in looking at, in 

those programs that go beyond Stafford Act, that go across a variety of Federal agencies, should there be vested a coordinating role 

and who would be best to do that. 

When you look at what we have been charged with at FEMA in 

the long-term recovery components and doing those plans, one of 

the things that I am trying to drive is not only what does that look 

like—and I have used a very simplistic definition to make my 

point, restore the tax base to what it was or greater than within 

a 5-year period—so we start driving a process that looks at not just 

trying to get somewhere by throwing all of these programs and 

pieces together, but to define where we are going in such a way 

that local officials understand and can start looking at how we 

drive programs to reestablish a tax base. 

If we rebuild a fire station under the Stafford Act, but there is 

no tax base to support the operation of a department, have we 

changed the outcome? 

So it goes back to, I cannot get there if I don’t have long-term 

housing solutions, which is not what the Stafford Act does. I can’t 

get there if we haven’t been able to rebuild a job base. And if we 

are in a transitional economy where the jobs that were there may 

33 

not be the jobs that will be there at the end of the recovery, I again 

have not changed that outcome. 

Hurricane Andrew is a perfect example of what happened in 

Florida City and Homestead. We spent millions of dollars down 

there in recovery, trying to rebuild an economy that truly did not 

recover until the building boom pushed down to that part of the 

county. Many of those communities did not recover. The jobs from 

the Air Force base did not come back. That economy 10 years later 

had not made a significant recovery until the county growth caught 

up with that infrastructure. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Fugate, in light of this kind of futuristic look 

we are giving, we are seeing Stafford Act and non-Stafford Act scenarios. Of course, the Stafford Act assumes a huge something 

called a ′′disaster′′ has occurred. 

But I give you—and this is why the President may need to get 

into this—the swine flu occurred very early in the administration. 

Now I don’t know for the life of me who bureaucratically should be 

in charge, but I know this much. They put the CDC up there because nobody wanted to hear from anybody else except somebody 

who had some expertise in flu. 

Now, your scenario might apply—logistics, who does what and so 

forth. That is one of the reasons we are looking at not only the 

Stafford Act, but for that matter, the Homeland Security Act. Remember, CDC comes under HHS. 

Now, technically, if it were a Stafford Act matter, FEMA has a 

huge coordinating role. But when you get into subsections, or whole 

Cabinet agencies, that is when you get into who should be stepping 

up to do something. If you get enough confusion, you can go up to 

the man in the White House and he will straighten it out. 

We would like to have someone, Stafford Act or not, depending 

on—going to your notion of function, what is happening, who the 

public will have confidence in, then let others come in to play their 

often very critical supportive roles. But somebody needs to step up. 

What happened in the swine flu episode, because the White 

House had the good sense to say, you know, swine flu, we have no 

vaccine, we have potential panic. Several agencies could be involved. To her credit, the Secretary stood up and restored confidence because she was one of the few Cabinet officers who had 

been appointed. 

But to show you how sanguine the administration was, as it saw 

how the matter was developing, it realized that notwithstanding 

the enormous credibility of the Secretary, they had to have somebody who understood about flu stand up. 

And then, because it was so early in the administration, they 

were still getting people through, they had to call upon a Bush administration official, as I recall, from the CDC, who did a superb 

job. He was a professional, and he spoke in ways that people could 

understand. That is awfully important. And he spoke with the 

background and expertise. The Secretary handed it off to him and 

everything went smoothly. 

We would expect something like that to develop perhaps with 

some sort of further guidance. 

I thank you, Mr. Fugate. We have put before you some of the ultimate questions facing us. We have been very pleased to hear how 

34 

deeply you think about these matters. We think that it requires 

deep and new thinking. 

I suspect that when it comes to this cross-agency coordination, 

we probably ought to have somebody look at it beyond our particular agencies; and that is something that we want to give some 

thought to following this hearing, to hear what your thoughts 

might be on that notion to say that lead agency shall be X. 

There might be a point where even a Stafford Act matter—look 

at what happened in Hurricane Katrina; in order to have anybody 

speak credibly, given how few resources were in place, the Commander of the Coast Guard had to stand up and speak out. 

And it may change at various points. We don’t care who is in 

charge; we just care that everybody understands who is in charge, 

that there is no bickering about it, no duplication, and we continue 

to move forward. I see that kind of clean thinking from you and 

appreciate your testimony, and I look forward to hearing from you 

again. 

I will call the next panel: 

Jane Bullock, former FEMA Chief of Staff, now with Bullock & 

Haddow; Francis X. McCarthy, Federalism, Federal Elections and 

Emergency Management Section, Congressional Research Service; 

Mitchell Moss, Henry Hart Rice Professor of Urban Policy and 

Planning at NYU; Donald Dunbar, Adjutant General, State of Wisconsin, who is testifying today on behalf of the National Governors 

Association; David Maxwell, Vice President of the National Emergency Management Association; Russ Decker, President of the 

International Association of Emergency Managers; Joe Becker, 

Senior Vice President, Disaster Services, of American Red Cross. 

TESTIMONY OF JANE BULLOCK, PRINCIPAL, BULLOCK & 

HADDOW, LLC, FORMER FEMA CHIEF OF STAFF; FRANCIS X. 

McCARTHY, ANALYST, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE; MITCHELL MOSS, HENRY HART RICE PROFESSOR OF 

URBAN POLICY AND PLANNING, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY; 

DONALD P. DUNBAR, ADJUTANT GENERAL, STATE OF WISCONSIN, TESTIFYING TODAY ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL 

GOVERNORS ASSOCIATION; DAVID MAXWELL, VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION; 

RUSS DECKER, PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION 

OF EMERGENCY MANAGERS; AND JOE BECKER, SENIOR 

VICE PRESIDENT, DISASTER SERVICES, AMERICAN RED 

CROSS 

Ms. NORTON. I am going to just go across as I indicated, starting 

with Ms. Jane Bullock, who was the former Chief of Staff, the Clinton administration. 

Ms. BULLOCK. Madam Chair, Ranking Member, my testimony 

today is based on my 22-year career at the Federal Emergency 

Management Agency, culminating as Chief of Staff to James Lee 

Witt during the Clinton administration; and also drawing on the 

past 8 years, where I have worked with communities and nonprofits in disaster management. 

Throughout the 1990s, we worked with communities to respond 

and recover from over 300 Presidential disasters. Although we had 

many significant disasters, none of them became catastrophes. 

35 

The geographic scope and level of damage of these disaster could 

have made them catastrophes. For example, there was more infrastructure damage from the Northridge earthquake than there was 

in Hurricane Katrina. There was more geographic impact from 

Hurricane Floyd than there was in Hurricane Katrina. They were 

not catastrophes because, one, we built a strong partnership with 

State and local emergency managers; two, we had a Federal response plan that was agreed to by each Federal agency, including 

DOD, and executed under the direction of the FEMA Director; and 

three, we had leadership, from the President on down, committed 

to cutting red tape, being innovative, and not worrying about the 

price tag. It is within this context that I would like to provide some 

thoughts and suggestions. 

In the immediate aftermath of any disaster, what individuals 

and communities want the most is to get back to normal. This return to normalcy often impedes the community’s opportunity to rebuild better, safer, and more environmentally and economically 

sound. Furthermore, inflexibility in regulations on the part of the 

Federal Government programs tend to reinforce returning a community to its predisaster state. 

It is in the government’s best economic and social interest to support expeditious recovery and rebuilding of safer communities. But 

how do we do this? 

First, I would suggest that the President should have the flexibility to request Congress’s authority to waive certain regulations 

and statutory requirements in the aftermath of a catastrophic disaster, such as allowing for innovation in application, scope and cost 

of the Community Disaster Loan program. The CDL is an essential 

lifeline for communities to continue their administrative and legal 

functions after a disaster when their tax base has been lost. 

I would also suggest allowing for waiving of match requirements 

for other programs, the assistance to individuals and household 

grants, and the hazard mitigation grant programs. This is obvious, 

as impacted States will not have the funds. 

In the context of mitigation, community leaders and the public 

are most likely to embrace mitigation in the aftermath of a disaster. To take advantage of the public willingness, the Federal Government can provide the incentive by waiving the cost share. In 

Katrina, this was not done. 

Ms. BULLOCK. And we all see the problems that people in communities are having in doing elevations of housing. 

Rapid recovery of a community’s infrastructure is critical to economic recovery. The current public assistance program is cumbersome and highly bureaucratic. After the Northridge earthquake 

we expedited funding of public infrastructure to jump-start the recovery. A similar approach or a block grant approach that removes 

the issues of pre-existing conditions, as we talked about earlier, 

will be absolutely necessary after a catastrophic disaster. 

Second, Federal support for long-term recovery is confusing and 

scattered. Congress should request a Federal roadmap for communities as to what the Federal Government can do to help them recover. 

Third, I would suggest establishing a pilot program that would 

allow certain high-risk, disaster-prone communities to receive fundVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:36 Mar 15, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\51326 JASON
36 

ing to do pre-disaster recovery plans and strategies, which will significantly enhance approval of projects and hasten an economic recovery. 

The private sector is a key to recovery. We need to break through 

the red tape to allow businesses greater access after a disaster, to 

make co-funding of projects and assets possible, and to provide 

more support to small businesses. 

We need to re-look at the approach to disaster housing. The 

DHAP program shows promise, but will it work? We don’t know. 

Why not use disaster housing resources to foster innovation? Modular green building? Why not take advantage of successful nonprofit programs like Socialserve, which has State databases of 

available housing units in real time? And perhaps HUD and FEMA 

could work together to do an inventory of substandard housing in 

high-risk areas before the disaster. 

Finally, I continue to be very concerned about FEMA being a 

part of the Department of Homeland Security. I firmly believe that 

this organizational circumstance will impede its ability to not only 

respond but certainly support long-term recovery. 

I commend the Obama administration for appointing incredibly 

qualified individuals into FEMA, such as Administrator Fugate, 

Jason McNamara, Bill Carwile, Tim Manning, and Beth Zimmerman, and I know they will serve well. But their presence doesn’t 

negate the bureaucratic issues that remain with FEMA and DHS. 

DHS is a law enforcement agency with a Federal top-down approach. FEMA, on the other hand, works in partnership with State 

and local governments and the private sector to help individuals, 

institutions, and communities become socially and economically 

stronger through effective programs of mitigation, preparedness, 

and recovery. These very divergent missions require a different set 

of capabilities and, certainly, a different mindset. 

The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act was intended to strengthen FEMA, put a fence around its authorities, resources, and missions. However, as has already been mentioned, 

very shortly after passage, the DHS Office of Operations Coordination was created and given functions that duplicate that of 

FEMA’s. I would encourage the Committee to request that DHS explain how the DHS Office of Operations Coordination will function 

in a catastrophic disaster versus the FEMA operations center. 

Another area that is of concern is that there were numerous incidents of the DHS general counsel overruling decisions made by the 

FEMA general counsel in spite of the fact that the rulings were 

made by experienced lawyers and were based on FEMA laws and 

disaster precedent. 

Since DHS has centralized the general counsel function, there 

have been many concerns that, should a catastrophic disaster 

occur, interpretations of the law based on disaster precedent and 

the innate flexibility of the Stafford Act will be overruled by lessinformed DHS lawyers. Consideration should be given to allowing 

the FEMA Administrator to have his or her own independent counsel. 

We already discussed the issue about the principal Federal official. I don’t think that this is an issue that has been closed. I still 

believe that there is intent to use the PFO. And I think the ComVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:36 Mar 15, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\51326 JASON
37 

mittee should continue to look to questions relative to that, as the 

issue of Katrina was who is in charge. 

Frankly, if we really want to address the issue of reducing bureaucracy for response and recovery in the next catastrophic disaster, the answer is to remove FEMA, make it an independent 

agency, re-establish a Federal response plan, not a framework, and 

create a national recovery plan. 

Hurricane Katrina was a failure of leadership at all levels, but 

in spite of that failure, FEMA’s staff would have made decisions 

and taken certain actions to correct the problems, but they couldn’t 

because the decision approval process was at DHS. 

While I recognize the Obama administration is very different 

from the previous administration and is committed to providing 

service to the American public, I still wonder and I am still concerned that very few things have changed and whether the process 

will work more smoothly as long as FEMA has to answer to the 

Department of Homeland Security and as long as the FEMA Administrator is no longer in a peer-to-peer situation with other Cabinet Secretaries. And this could be extremely important when requesting needed resources from other agencies. 

Thank you for this opportunity. I will be happy to answer any 

questions. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much Ms. Bullock. 

Francis McCarthy, Congressional Research Service, the section of 

Federalism, Federal Elections, and Emergency Management. Mr. 

McCarthy? 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon. It is 

an honor to appear before you today. 

My work at CRS over the last 3 years and my previous 25 years 

at FEMA have been in areas that are directly related to the issues 

we are discussing today. 

Several fundamental issues arise in considering how to cut the 

red tape and accelerate Federal assistance. Maybe the first question is the respective roles of the executive and legislative 

branches. Traditionally, both have played a key role. 

Obviously, the executive branch, particularly FEMA,is administered on behalf of the President under the Stafford Act. Congress 

has authorized that statute, particularly this Subcommittee, and 

has amended it through the years. Also, Congress has, both 

through annual and supplemental appropriations, funded those 

FEMA Stafford Act response and recovery programs and, in addition, has also provided funds through other departments and agencies to meet specific post-disaster needs. 

Oftentimes, this process has been an effective and complementary inter-branch partnership to address the complicated problems 

following a large disaster event that overwhelms a States or several States. 

Within the context of the discussion, some have suggested that, 

for catastrophic events, the FEMA Administrator could be provided 

through legislation the discretionary authority to create lump sum 

or block grant payments as needed and other additional authorities, such as cost share waivers, to speed up the recovery process. 

Some have also argued that, while discretion to designate a disaster a catastrophic event could be exercised by the President, it 

38 

might be a more reliable approach to have a catastrophic trigger 

based on the amount of estimated damage. 

The creation of a threshold dollar amount to trigger increased 

cost shares and other exceptional procedures may be a critical part 

of this debate. Current cost share thresholds are clear, but these 

standards are under pressure from States seeking a waiver of 

costs. As this Chair has pointed out, many States consider their 

disaster catastrophic at the time it is occurring. So, for that reason, 

perhaps having an actual trigger would help to distinguish when 

we are in the realm of a catastrophic disaster. 

An additional consideration might be that when the threshold for 

expanded assistance has been reached it could also trigger the 

President’s notification to Congress of the use of catastrophic authorities, similar to the procedures currently for emergency spending. The notification could also serve as the vehicle to engage the 

Congress with potential funding requirements and suggested legislation that could move the response and recovery along. 

I have discussed some of the alternative funding proposals for 

public assistance in my written testimony. One question of implementation regarding block grants, for example, would be how to determine and ensure that the amount of block grants meets the 

needs of the affected area. 

It is important to note at this point that, while assistance to families and individuals and also for hazard mitigation grants are 

capped, there is no cap on the amount that may be spent for eligible PA projects. So, while the block grant is appealing, particularly 

for speed and clarity, it would also likely be an amount certain, 

while the PA amounts under section 406 can change and steadily 

accrue based on the actual repair or replacement work. 

One option might be to use the initial block grant as an incremental downpayment on public disaster costs. Following the initial 

block grant, the regular section 406 process could then be used to 

assure eligibility and to complete the funding. 

One other consideration I note is that all the ideas for upfront 

funding underline the need for quality damage assessments that 

can give a clear indication of the scope and extent of the damage. 

In discussion of alternative approaches for PA, the proposals generally assume that such options would be available under a catastrophic or mega-disaster. By investing these authorities in the executive branch beforehand, it arguably would permit the swiftest, 

most flexible action without the necessity of new authorities being 

legislated as the disaster event unfolds. However, providing such 

discretion to leadership might only provide the possibility of effective action. 

Let me just briefly summarize some of the options that I have 

mentioned in my testimony. 

Number one, provide discretion to the President within the Stafford Act to invoke authorities, including block granting of funds to 

State and localities to provide a more rapid and comprehensive recovery. 

Two, install in law a trigger that, if reached, would set in motion 

a catastrophic annex or tier of increased and more flexible assistance and also trigger a notification to Congress of potential needs 

in resources and authorities. 

39 

Three, place in law a listing of Stafford Act program changes 

that would take effect for a catastrophic event, including cost 

shares for specific programs such as PA but also others such as 

other needs assistance and hazard mitigation assistance. Clearly 

define FEMA’s role and that of other agencies and departments in 

State and local governments in long-term recovery planning and 

work. 

Four, direct FEMA to create a national recovery framework similar to the National Response Framework but with an emphasis on 

long-term recovery program needs. This framework could also include alternative housing scenarios when large numbers of residents are displaced and define the FEMA-HUD relationship in disaster housing. 

Consider other Department or Agency authorities that should 

also be triggered by a catastrophic event, such as the Community 

Development Block Grant program the Administrator mentioned. 

Continue to have Congress create a legislative recovery package 

across the government to address the unique needs of particular 

catastrophic events. 

And, finally, consider establishing in law a reporting framework 

so that all disaster spending, including but not limited to the Disaster Relief Fund, is captured and summarized for congressional 

review, particularly for catastrophic events. 

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today and 

would welcome any questions you might have. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. McCarthy. 

Dr. Moss, Henry Hart Rice professor of urban policy and planning at New York University. 

Mr. MOSS. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I want to thank you 

for inviting me to speak today. 

I also would like to go back to the questions you posed at the outset of this hearing concerning the need to reconceptualize what a 

catastrophe is and whether we have defined it too narrowly and 

how we can rethink it. And I also would like to address some of 

the remarks that I have heard earlier this afternoon from the Administrator of FEMA. 

Let me first say that the kinds of disasters that have been the 

basis for the Stafford Act, as you point out, originally, were natural 

disasters. And the history of disaster relief in this country is, in 

fact, focused on the capacity of the Federal Government to assist, 

as you point out, provide supplemental assistance to States and localities. 

But the country today faces very different risks than those we 

faced when the Stafford Act was first signed in November 23, 1988, 

which, if you may remember, was over two decades ago. 

Globalization has changed the way in which we are linked to other 

countries, to other events, so that a financial collapse in Asia really 

could disrupt our own financial markets; problems in the harvesting of tilapia in China could impose enormous consequences on 

what we eat in the America. And, in fact, we have seen that our 

pharmaceutical and our nutrition is increasingly dependent upon 

food flowing from other places. In fact, over a third of all the apple 

juice products in this country come from China. 

40 

I think we have to be aware, in fact, that disasters are no longer 

rooted in our local environment but can come from other places. If 

we didn’t learn this this year with the swine flu, we will never 

learn it. 

The second point I want to make is that advances in information 

technologies have made us more dependent—and I think we heard 

this in your questioning about the risk from solar episodes earlier—we are more dependent upon advanced computer systems, 

thereby increasing our vulnerability to breakdowns in our energy 

systems, transportation and infrastructure, and communications 

systems. 

I want to point out that, in 2002, when a power failure occurred 

in the Northeast, it was due to a tree in Ohio which interrupted 

the power supply outside Cleveland. So the failure to maintain 

power systems in Ohio led to disruptions along the entire Northeast. 

Simply put, we have to understand that more and more of our 

public and private life is organized around global integrated digital 

systems. A small breakdown in one component can have serious 

and widespread consequences on the entire Nation. 

And let me point out that this is in substantial disagreement 

with the speaker from FEMA, who basically talked about disasters 

only within the context of communities. And let me quote his remarks. He said that, ′′While the impact of catastrophes will certainly be felt at the Federal and State level, the impacts have the 

potential to be most devastating at the community level.′′ And he 

pointed out then, ′′Therefore, our catastrophic response strategy 

must be designed to quickly stabilize communities and calibrate it 

to support their timely recovery and return to municipal self-sufficiency.′′ This a terrific point of view, but it may not be appropriate 

for the 21st century. 

And, as you may remember, he then said, ′′The key challenge is 

to return to normalcy.′′ I want to point out this is one of the greatest myths of disaster recovery. There is no return to normalcy. We 

have learned from towns like Johnstown, with its flooding; we have 

learned from September 11th; we have learned from Katrina, there 

is no return to being normal. There is a new normal, but it is not 

the old normal. 

And people who live in communities which have experienced disasters can tell you that it is different afterwards. They have experienced a catastrophe; it becomes part of the community, and it is 

different. So I think the goal of returning to normalcy is one that 

is desirable but unrealistic. 

Now, let me just point out something—two other comments in 

the time I have remaining. 

We need to recognize the changing scale of catastrophes. We 

have a lot of experience with natural disasters that disrupt a community, a city, a county, but we must consider the way catastrophic 

disasters threaten our national economy and capacity to function. 

In such cases, the Federal Government’s role must go far beyond 

the concept of supplemental assistance and simply returning to 

normalcy. Clearly, we have to recognize the possibility that catastrophic disasters require much more than the Federal Government 

just bringing back a community to where it was beforehand. 

41 

And I want to end with one final point here. There has been a 

great deal of attention to housing, and I do believe, as you point 

out, that the housing problems from Katrina still remain with us. 

But after a disaster, quality of the water supply is far more important than housing, because if there isn’t adequate water for sewage 

or for drinking, then it doesn’t matter how many good housing 

units you have. The same thing goes with energy and communications. 

So I think that the focus on HUD is a somewhat exaggerated one 

based on the Katrina experience, but not necessarily appropriate 

when you look at the way in which disasters can disrupt the fundamental infrastructure of a community. 

Thank you very much. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Dr. Moss. 

Adjutant General Donald Dunbar, State of Wisconsin. He is testifying, however, for the National Governors Association. 

Yes, sir, go ahead. 

General DUNBAR. Thank you, Chairwoman Norton, Ranking 

Member Diaz-Balart, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you 

today on these important issues of catastrophic planning and disaster preparedness. 

As the adjutant general for the State of Wisconsin, I serve as the 

commanding general for the Wisconsin Army and Air National 

Guard, with responsibility for both Federal and State missions. I 

also serve as Governor Doyle’s homeland security advisor, Chair of 

the Wisconsin Homeland Security Council, and have responsibility 

for emergency management. 

I appear before you today in uniform, and I am a federally recognized officer. However, I appear today as a State official, not on 

Federal military orders, and am representing the State of Wisconsin and the National Governors Association. 

I would like to start by thanking the Committee Members for 

their leadership and support of the first responder and emergency 

management communities. I work closely with Wisconsin’s first responder and emergency management communities and know that 

your support continues to improve our overall readiness at the 

State, tribal, and local level. 

My testimony today will briefly touch on three areas critical to 

enhancing the Nation’s preparedness for a catastrophic incident: 

first, the Federal-State partnership and the need to clarify the role 

of the military; two, the role of Federal preparedness guidelines; 

and, three, the need to better target grant investments toward 

achieving and sustaining capabilities. 

Since becoming the adjutant general in Wisconsin, we have experienced many emergencies, three of which led to a Federal disaster 

declaration. I am proud of the response from our first responders 

and our emergency managers, who, under difficult conditions, 

served the people of Wisconsin very well. These are truly heroes 

who are committed to something larger than themselves. 

I am also proud to report that the Wisconsin National Guard was 

able to assist in these emergencies. As you know, the National 

Guard is not a first responder, but it is a first military responder 

42 

for emergencies that exceed the capacity of local jurisdictions and 

require State support for the incident commander. 

In keeping with our national and State guidelines, when the National Guard is called to support civil authorities, we respond 

through the emergency management framework and we support 

the incident commander. 

Several times in the past few years, the Department of Defense 

has attempted to amend existing law to allow for mobilization of 

Federal Reserve forces in support of domestic emergencies. Each 

time, including most recently this year’s defense authorization deliberation, the Nation’s Governors and their adjutants general have 

opposed this legislative change. The opposition is centered on the 

issue of tactical control of military forces when responding to an 

emergency under Governor control. 

The National Governors Association and the Adjutants General 

Association of the United States believe that tactical control should 

remain under the Governor and support the incident commander. 

This should occur unless and until the emergency is so severe that 

the Federal Government must take control. We believe these situations exist but are at the extremely severe end of the emergency 

continuum. We believe that this is necessary to ensure unity of effort and is consistent with national guidance issued by the Federal 

Government. 

Secondly, turning to the Federal preparedness guidelines, I can 

share with you that Wisconsin finds them critical in guiding our 

overall preparedness planning. Wisconsin recently updated our 

homeland security strategy, which represents a collaborative interagency effort. It is our vision to foster a culture of preparedness 

and continually improve our capabilities to ensure resiliency at 

every level in the event of an emergency, with ′′resiliency′′ being 

the ability of citizens, family, and communities to successfully cope 

with and recover from an emergency, whether natural or manmade. 

Our strategy specifies nine priorities with many goals and 

subgoals, to which we apply an analytical framework which seeks 

to measure our continual progress. Our strategy, based in part on 

Federal guidelines, will guide our investment of State appropriations and Federal grant allocations. This will allow Wisconsin to 

vertically integrate its homeland security efforts, measure improvement, and prioritize our investment justification in what is sure to 

be a continuing difficult fiscal environment. 

Lastly, Wisconsin is developing metrics to support our strategy 

and measure our progress. For this, we rely on the Federal Government to define and articulate the target capabilities list to guide 

our analytics. It is our belief that these national capabilities, developed at the local, tribal, and State level, will greatly aid national 

and regional preparedness. It will also help identify gaps in local 

and State capability that, if needed, will require regional and Federal assistance. 

The Department of Homeland Security has signaled that future 

Federal grant awards may consider existing capabilities and capability-based planning in the investment justification. If so, this may 

significantly increase preparedness if clearly understood and executed consistently. In my view, to be successful, grant guidance 

43 

must focus on capabilities but allow for full development and 

sustainment. Too often in the past, guidance has changed from 

year to year and thwarted efforts to develop capability fully. 

Thank you again for this opportunity, and I look forward to your 

questions. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, General Dunbar. And may 

I thank you for your service, as well. 

David Maxwell, vice president of the National Emergency Management Association. 

Mr. MAXWELL. Thank you, Chairwoman Norton, Ranking Member Diaz-Balart, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, 

for inviting me to appear before you today. 

I am David Maxwell, director and homeland security advisor 

with the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management. I am 

testifying today on behalf of the National Emergency Management 

Association. 

The definition of ′′catastrophic disaster′′ is an issue that NEMA 

has been discussing since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf 

Coast in 2005. The challenge lies in the fact that what constitutes 

a catastrophic disaster in one State or community may not be catastrophic in another. 

There is no question that Hurricane Katrina was a catastrophic 

disaster for those States and communities that experienced it. 

Similarly, should an earthquake occur on the New Madrid Fault 

Zone, it be would catastrophic for an entire region, perhaps the entire Nation. These types of events are of such scale and complexity 

that they require additional response and recovery efforts than we 

have seen in the past. 

The Stafford Act was written broadly so as to allow presidential 

discretion and flexibility. NEMA believes that unnecessarily strict 

and narrow interpretations of the law are more problematic than 

the law itself. FEMA policies and regulations are overly restrictive 

and don’t reflect the original intent of the Stafford Act. 

Further, decisions by FEMA personnel in the field are often inconsistent between States and regions. As field personnel changes, 

previous decisions are frequently overturned. 

The FEMA appeals process takes months and sometimes years. 

These problems are due to subjective interpretations of the Stafford 

Act, which end up costing State and local governments precious 

time and resources for community restoration. The opinions of attorneys and auditors seem to take precedent over the intended discretion and flexibility that Congress provided through the Stafford 

Act. 

All of these issues combined serve to create a Federal bureaucracy that can paralyze large-scale disaster response and recovery. 

NEMA recently established a working group to consider if 

changes are needed to the Stafford Act or whether issues can be 

addressed through regulation or policy. Our work has just begun 

so I am not in a position to share specific recommendations with 

you today, but we commit to sharing our work with you in the near 

future. 

I am confident in stating that NEMA strongly believes that the 

Federal Government is not fully utilizing the power of the Stafford 

Act. In the words of one of my colleagues, if it is legal, moral, ethVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:36 Mar 15, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\51326 JASON
44 

ical, and the right thing to do to help disaster victims, we should 

do it. 

Arkansas has benefited from the FEMA Catastrophic Planning 

Initiative as we prepare for the possibility of a New Madrid earthquake. The challenge in catastrophic planning is that there is little 

experience to draw from, certainly with regard to a New Madrid 

earthquake. In Arkansas, we think we know how the roads, 

bridges, and other infrastructure will perform in a New Madrid 

event, but we are not 100 percent certain, so our plans have to remain flexible. 

Despite these limitations, and perhaps because of them, I would 

encourage Congress to continue to support and fund FEMA’s Catastrophic Planning Initiative. The national-level exercise in 2011 

will be focused on a New Madrid earthquake and will be the first 

natural disaster scenario in the history of the national-level exercises. 

NEMA is extremely supportive of the new leadership at FEMA. 

This team, led by Administrator Fugate, is made up of experienced, 

professional emergency managers who are innovators and have a 

vision for a world-class emergency management system. 

Now is the time to redefine the outcome we want in large-scale 

disaster response and recovery and to align legislation and policy 

to support that outcome. We must also do a better job of leveraging 

all of the resources available to us in catastrophic disaster response 

and recovery, including the public and private sector. Government 

can’t be solely responsible for recovery, nor should it be. 

In most situations, government does a very good job at disaster 

response, but the current approach to long-term disaster recovery 

is ad hoc at best. While each disaster is unique, it would be extremely helpful for State and local officials to know in advance the 

types of assistance that may be available to them for long-term recovery. In addition, having a Federal counterpart that would help 

them access and leverage the various Federal programs would be 

helpful. This is an ideal role for FEMA. NEMA would recommend 

the development of a full-spectrum disaster response and restoration capability, and I have included several suggestions in my written testimony. 

The main point I would like to make today is that we need not 

be confined to outdated systems and approaches to disaster response and recovery, particularly for large-scale events. We should 

define the outcomes that we want, build and resource the system 

that supports that outcome, build the team that can manage the 

event, and provide leaders with the discretion and flexibility to ensure a successful outcome. 

Thank you for the opportunity to present testimony before the 

Subcommittee, and thank you for your strong support for emergency management. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you so much, Mr. Maxwell. 

Russ Decker, president of the International Association of Emergency Managers. 

Mr. Decker? 

Mr. DECKER. Thank you, Madam Chair and Ranking Member. I 

am Russ Decker, the Director of Emergency Management and 

Homeland Security for Allen County, Ohio. 

45 

I am currently the president of the U.S. Council of the International Association of Emergency Managers. I have 19 years of 

emergency management experience, with the last 11 as a local director. IAEM’s membership of over 4,000 State, local, tribal, military, college, private and nonprofit sector members makes IAEM 

the Nation’s largest association of emergency management professionals. 

The basic question asked by this hearing is what needs to be 

done to reduce the bureaucracy and ensure rapid response to catastrophes? We were also asked to review current authorities and suggest necessary changes to the Federal Government’s response and 

recovery efforts to a disaster. 

Defining a ′′catastrophe′′ by a specific numerical trigger is very 

difficult. In a large event, the rapid mobilization of Federal assets 

is imperative, but those same resources must respect the civilian 

chain of command in the jurisdictions in which they are mobilized. 

Given the difficulty of defining a catastrophe, we believe that 

caution is in order when considering modifications to laws, policies, 

and authorities. We would urge caution in making statutory 

changes which enhance the role of the Federal Government, including the military, at the expense of the authority and responsibility 

of State and local governments, even in what some would describe 

as a catastrophic event. 

IAEM consistently stresses the key to effective management of 

any major event is the rebuilding of the essential emergency management system within the United States. This system rebuilding 

must include the restoration of resources, personnel, and authorities of emergency management agencies at all levels of government. 

Without such a collaborative, coordinated, and comprehensive system, we will not have the ability to act decisively and with sufficient flexibility to deal with any crisis. 

The stronger the State and local emergency management programs are, the less assistance that we will need from the Federal 

Government. We ask that the current FEMA administration be 

given the authority and the resources to do their job. And we urge 

that the upcoming FEMA regional administrator appointments consider experienced State and local emergency managers as candidates for those jobs. 

What is needed most in any disaster, and especially in a catastrophic event, is flexibility of action and speed in decision-making. 

We do not need duplication of responsibilities and confusion over 

the chain of command. 

The activities of the Office of Operations Coordination, currently 

in DHS, need to be examined, as they currently duplicate functions 

rightfully performed by FEMA as assigned, by the Post-Katrina 

Emergency Management Reform Act. And we continue to remain 

opposed to the appointment of a Principal Federal Official and 

strongly support and applaud the prohibition included by the 

House in the fiscal year 2010 appropriations bill. 

We recommend that this Committee task FEMA to perform a 

study of their workforce to ensure that they have the necessary 

human capital to perform their assigned responsibilities. And we 

think FEMA should undertake an immediate review of their policies and procedures with an eye toward eliminating any bureauVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:36 Mar 15, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00057 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\51326 JASON
46 

cratic hurdles. After that review, there should be a discussion of 

what additional legislative authority may be needed. 

If changes in authority are needed, we recommend that they be 

placed within the existing Stafford Act to maintain vital continuity 

of existing efforts. Some possible legislative suggestions would be 

to allow a change or waiver of the statutory 25 percent cost share 

for the FEMA Individual Assistance Program for needs other than 

housing, and the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, and increasing 

the $5 million cap on the Community Disaster Loan Program. 

On the policy front, the project worksheet system of the public 

assistance program is too cumbersome. Having checkers check the 

checkers over and over again and then having a new official say 

it needs to be redone is simply frustrating to our members. Perhaps 

FEMA needs to take another look at estimating and providing 

block grants. 

Host areas need to be treated differently than they are now. In 

fact, the Dallas County, Texas, emergency manager advised me 

that Dallas and other jurisdictions have not yet received full reimbursement for their expenses in hosting other communities during 

Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. The ability to host future evacuees 

might be impacted by this lack of timely reimbursement. 

We join FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate in recognizing the 

importance of personal preparedness, and we want to create a nation of disaster survivors, not disaster victims. In addition to people 

helping people, the recovery of small businesses is also vital to the 

recovery of a community, and they, too, need to plan. 

We thank you for this opportunity, and we look forward to your 

questions. 

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

Finally, Joe Becker, senior vice president, Disaster Services, 

American Red Cross. 

Welcome, Mr. Becker. 

Mr. BECKER. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. Thank 

you for holding this hearing on this important matter, and I appreciate your inviting our participation. 

There has been a lot of discussion this afternoon about the certainty of the next catastrophic event. I thought it might be helpful 

to quantify some of the human need that would result from what 

we have imagined can happen. 

Not even counting manmade events, just within the earthquake 

and hurricane scenarios, we know of scenarios in this country that 

would be four times the size of Katrina, five times the size of 

Katrina, and possibly larger. That is based on the human need that 

earthquake and hurricane scenarios would present to us. Clearly, 

as a country, we are not ready for scales of this size of an event. 

We have had a lot of conversation this afternoon about the types 

of issues or the range of issues. I would like to confine my comments to what the rest of the panel has not discussed, and that is 

to go back to the housing and human service side. We are the Red 

Cross. We care for people, we feed people, we shelter people. I will 

confine my comments to those areas. 

We are discussing particularly the long-range recovery housing 

issues, not the immediate sheltering issues, even though that is 

what the Red Cross typically focuses on early in a disaster. 

47 

There has been a lot of conversation about quantifying or coming 

up with a definition of a catastrophe. I would suggest that, for a 

practitioner who works with government but isn’t part of government, as scale of disaster increases, you typically layer on more: 

You open up more shelters, you clear more roads, you increase your 

supply chains by a certain magnitude. A catastrophe is a disaster 

in which more of the same doesn’t get you where you need to go. 

A catastrophe is a disaster where the scale is such that the normal 

business methods won’t work. And that is what we have experienced a couple of times now, and what we have seen, and what we 

have learned from. 

Starting with housing, we all know the scenario: You have people 

who leave the affected area and have no options for housing back 

in the affected area. The result is they evacuate over great distances and they can’t come home. They can’t come back to their 

jobs. They can’t come back to their communities. They are evacuated and end up becoming residents of other areas for much longer 

than anyone had imagined. 

And I have heard a lot of questions this afternoon about, what 

is the answer to that? And I would suggest, please, to this panel 

or this Subcommittee: There is no one answer to that. 

We need the infrastructure, obviously the utilities, and then we 

need a range of housing options within the affected area, not just 

more mobile homes. Yes, the addition of HUD housing stock has 

helped in the recent disasters; the additional use of rental assistance has been very helpful. But if you do the math, the sum of all 

of the options that we have in our toolkit today is not big enough. 

No one option is the answer. The answer is to maximize each of 

the options, to develop new options. And a great deal of work is 

being done in the States and local governments in this regard. 

Maximizing options, develop new options—and then housing isn’t 

something that FEMA should do without the cooperation of a State 

or a community. Housing decisions are best made locally from the 

range of options that is developed with and by FEMA. We need the 

research work done. We need prototypes developed. We need contracts let. 

And then we need to let State and local Governments, with their 

housing task forces that need to be stood up, work with FEMA’s 

housing task force to arrive at the right local solutions. And, as you 

know, the urban solutions, where land is scarce, are very different 

from the rural solutions, where distances matter greatly. I would 

suggest that the National Disaster Housing Task Force that has 

been stood up to be the local focal point of this work needs your 

support and needs to be energized and needs to move more quickly. 

Also—and I think we heard the Administrator speak to this—we 

are not constructing a response community and then dealing with 

the exceptions, the exceptions being the frail elderly or children or 

people with disabilities or people with medical needs or people with 

pets. Those are most of the people that we are dealing with in a 

lot of these disasters. They are not the exception to the model that 

we build; they are the model that we are building. And I think that 

work needs to continue. 

Then, lastly, in housing, we focus a lot on the buildings. Are the 

utilities in place, and are the structures in place? And we don’t alVerDate Aug 31 2005 11:36 Mar 15, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00059 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\51326 JASON
48 

ways recognize that, when we have moved people hundreds of 

miles from what used to be home, the social services haven’t followed and government services haven’t necessarily followed. The 

medical care, the daycare, the elder care, the wide range of needs 

that people have pre-disaster, when we relocate them great distances, are exacerbated. So we have to bring the services to the 

people. And that is where integrated case management really matters. And we have great case management pilots led by a variety 

of Federal agencies, but we don’t have an integrated solution to 

that yet, and that is needed. 

I am not here today to give a laundry list of what FEMA needs 

to do. This is what our country needs to do. These are what the 

Federal agencies, the nonprofits, the for-profits, State and local and 

tribal governments need to do. I ask you to support this approach 

in this important work. And I thank you for your hearing today to 

make that happen. 

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

Just to lay some of the framework for the rather large questions 

we ask, I think the general public would be amazed to learn—you 

discuss it, General Dunbar, in your testimony; some of the others 

of you may have alluded to it—that the scenario of focusing on a 

manmade event by engaging in a realtime exercise for the first 

time involving a natural disaster will occur. 

Perhaps some of you who have been in emergency management 

who are also at the table, Mr. Maxwell or others, can make us understand how, after decades of FEMA, decades beyond that a natural disaster, catch-as-catch-can, only, I take it, after 9/11 did it 

occur to anybody that the kind of disasters we have to prepare for 

every year require some realtime exercises. I mean, why did this 

not occur before? 

We think this question will help us to understand whether or not 

any change in the statute is necessary, since we certainly don’t 

think that FEMA or the Federal Government lacked the ability to 

do some kind of national-level exercise, that somebody has to say, 

′′You hereby have authority to do such an exercise with respect to 

tornadoes or, actually, all hazards.′′ 

Why, in your judgment—what are we, 7 years after 9/11 even? 

Why is this occurring now and not before? I mean, if it is as clear 

as the nose on your face after 9/11 that such exercises should be 

done to prevent terrorists attacks, why, given the scale of disaster 

even before Katrina, was this not done, in your view? 

Mr. Maxwell or any of you? 

Mr. MAXWELL. Madam Chair, I will take a stab at it. 

I think part of this, the national-level exercise series developed 

out of the TOPOFF series that was done—— 

Ms. NORTON. The what? 

Mr. MAXWELL. The Top Officials exercises that were done that 

involved Cabinet-level officials, as do the national-level exercises. 

For a long time, the States and regions have practiced natural 

disasters, and I think we were playing catchup—— 

Ms. NORTON. At the direction of the Federal Government or on 

their own? 

Mr. MAXWELL. Both on their own and, to some degree, with the 

Federal Government, as well. 

49 

Ms. NORTON. So perhaps, you know, the terrorist attack is not 

likely to be some kind of bomb that incinerates the United States, 

yet we had national exercises there. I still am—— 

Mr. MAXWELL. I think, to some degree, we were playing catchup 

on not having practiced that terrorist event. So we went through 

several scenarios on that, and now we are getting back to the need 

to do those high-level officials exercises with natural disasters, as 

well. 

Ms. NORTON. It makes one question whether—so you agree that 

it wasn’t a lack of authority? 

Mr. MAXWELL. No, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. And I think it is you, Mr. Decker, that cautions the 

notion that statutory changes may be necessary. We did look at the 

statute. And, you know, Congress also writes statutes very broadly. 

If you are go at dealing with something major, don’t nitpick the authorizing statute. Give the agency what it needs to proceed. 

And you look at that Stafford Act, and you see as broad a mandate as you are going to find anywhere. And yet, over and over 

again, FEMA said, ′′Well, we don’t think we have the authority to 

do X, Y, or Z,′′ and exasperated the patience of the people on the 

ground. 

Are you suggesting, Mr. Decker, that changes may not be necessary to cope with a true catastrophic disaster, given what you 

have seen, how you saw the timidity you saw in FEMA, especially 

when you seem to somehow relate this authority, quote, ′′at the expense of the authority and responsibility of State and local governments,′′ even in what some would describe as catastrophic events? 

Well, we are certainly not. We are suggesting, if anything, that our 

role is supplemental, we mean it to be supplemental, no matter 

what you call it. But you can call it supplemental all you want to 

when it comes to Katrina, but you heard us question $3.4 billion. 

We are not about to authorize for anybody else to do anything in 

any disaster we have seen before. 

So we are left with the agency trying to figure out how to resolve 

disputes between the two agencies, Federal and local, precisely because we never put anything in the statute to say what to do. So 

they are sitting there with their, you know, thumb in their mouths, 

although, under this present Administrator, apparently making 

some progress, or so he testified. But people on the ground are literally tearing their hair out. 

Now, let’s assume that off the table is moving out what State 

and local government would be doing, Mr. Decker. Remember, Administrator Fugate testified that he told the Administrator recently 

while he was on the ground in FEMA, ′′Stop sending stuff to us we 

don’t need.′′ The Administrator said, ′′Yes, sir. Yes, sir.′′ So, you 

know, he had the backbone to stand up and say, ′′Don’t do that. 

You are being wasteful.′′ But we saw FEMA just pour ice on the 

second hurricane down there, with people laughing at the Agency 

all over the place for fighting the last war with too much ice. 

So, assuming that we are not trying to do anything at the expense of local and national government and still regard the role of 

FEMA as supplemental, even in a catastrophic disaster, except for 

you are going to tell me what, would you or any of you believe that 

clarification of statutory authority is necessary? Or, given the 

50 

broad language of the statute, should FEMA just hunker down and 

do what the statute says and it will all take care of itself, understanding that you have on-the-ground experience from which to 

draw from now? 

Mr. DECKER. Madam Chairwoman, I will take a stab at that one. 

I think what our members were trying to stress is that we view 

the Federal role as supplemental, and we want to make sure that 

the locals and the State don’t lose that command and control function. 

Ms. NORTON. But how would that happen? You know, do you 

really think we are just aching to throw money at States and localities? 

Mr. DECKER. If there are going to be changes, they need to be 

within Stafford, because we believe that as long as it is a Stafford 

Act event and we have an FCO coordinating the activity—— 

Ms. NORTON. And not two people coordinating it. 

Mr. DECKER. —and not this confusion about is it the PFO or the 

FCO, then I think you find the locals are much more likely to accept that, because that is a system we are familiar with and it is 

a system that we trust. And we believe the Stafford Act is broad 

enough that it would cover a lot of those events if the FCO were 

simply given the authority to do his or her job without worrying 

will a PFO be coming in and overtaking them. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, if there was a huge catastrophe that struck 

Los Angeles, are you confident that we would be able to categorize 

it as a disaster or as a Katrina-like catastrophic disaster? Are you 

satisfied that that would happen instantly or in a timely fashion? 

Because we haven’t seen anything like that, in our lifetime at least, 

on the West Coast, but everybody tells us it is coming. 

Mr. DECKER. I think defining ‘‘catastrophe’’ is going to be the 

toughest part of this. What is catastrophic, I mean, if you take out 

the entire State of Ohio, it is certainly catastrophic to us, but the 

impact on the rest of the country is going to be what I think defines it as whether or not it is a catastrophe or a national disaster. 

Ms. NORTON. Do you think you could take out the State of Ohio 

and not have an effect on—— 

Mr. DECKER. Well, my Governor probably wouldn’t like that. But 

I am saying I think that the definition of ′′catastrophe′′ has to be 

what has a major impact on our Nation and not just one State or 

one region or one community. 

Ms. NORTON. Dr. Moss? 

Mr. MOSS. I just want to point out that there is a legislative 

mandate already—and Mr. McCarthy pointed this out in his testimony—to create a national recovery framework. And I think FEMA 

has done this with a planning framework but not with a recovery 

framework. 

Ms. NORTON. And you think there needs to be a recovery framework? 

Mr. MOSS. No, I think the legislation already exists to require 

that, but it hasn’t been done yet. That has already been mandated. 

I think you might want to direct them to do it. 

Ms. NORTON. And if that happened, then what? 

Mr. MOSS. Well, I think you would start thinking about how the 

recovery process—and we heard, I think, very open testimony 

51 

about the importance of flexibility, of speed. But I think the fact 

that—— 

Ms. NORTON. That would help define? 

Mr. MOSS. It would certainly—there was an issue raised here, 

from the Red Cross I think, about the question of housing and of 

social services. But understanding what is involved in recovery has 

been one of the many flaws—— 

Ms. NORTON. By the numbers or by what? 

Mr. MOSS. About the elements of a recovery, what it would take 

to have a recovery. And I think the point I—we have heard a lot 

of discussion about housing, but I think we also heard about social 

services and the problems you have when you decide to move people more than a hundred miles from their location. Things get 

much worse, in terms of what is required for recovery. And I think 

that asking FEMA to carry out what you have already asked them 

to do might be a good start. 

Ms. NORTON. Might be the place to start. 

Ms. Bullock? 

Ms. BULLOCK. I would like to make two points. 

Number one, I think that the legislature, the beauty of the Stafford Act, throughout my experiences at FEMA, was that it did give 

the Agency the latitude to think outside the box and to do innovative programs. And we can talk about innovations that we engaged 

in, in use of the Stafford, at some later point. So I don’t think there 

is necessarily a need to increase the authority in Stafford. 

I think the problem exists in, in terms of what Administrator 

Fugate said, narrow interpretation of regulations on the part of the 

Agency. And I think that, if they are going to work on that, that 

is something I think Congress should look at very carefully, because people—— 

Ms. NORTON. The narrow regulations, you are saying. 

Ms. BULLOCK. Yes, and narrow interpretation of those regulations. 

Ms. NORTON. Yeah. And, you know, I want to question you on 

that, in particular. You know, at bottom, this is a judgment call. 

Let me tell you how Federal officials operate. They are afraid, with 

good reason, of the GAO. They are afraid of our Committees. And 

there are, excuse me, ′′cover your butt′′ notions. It is takes a very 

independent, intent-upon-doing-his-job, strong administrator. 

And I have to tell you, as a Member of the Homeland Security 

Committee and a Member of this Committee, I think what we have 

seen in Federal bureaucrats does not give me comfort to believe 

that, regardless of the bureaucrat, the person will understand ′′go 

ahead.′′ That is why we even are looking at the President. Somebody has to signal that it is all right, so that when the fingers 

begin to point, responsibility, we know where it lays. 

For example, when Mr. Fugate said, ′′Don’t send anything else 

here,′′ if more was needed, he would have had to step up and say, 

′′I asked the Secretary not to send more resources at a time when 

I did not think they were necessary,′′ even if it turns out he was 

wrong. We have to be risk being wrong sometimes. 

But I tell you, the reason I said to Mr. Decker ′′in light of existing experience,′′ even after Katrina, we passed the Post-Katrina 

Act because—and even after the Post-Katrina Act, the timidity of 

52 

the Federal bureaucrat was on display every time we had a hearing, no matter what the mandate and the rest. That makes us 

tremble a little bit, to say, who is going to call the shots? For example, did you speak about waiver? When you say, ask for a waiver, 

well, you know, we sometimes give the President authority to do 

things and then report to Congress. 

It is Dr. Moss who cites a perfect example, incident of national 

significance, that somehow they had to waive to DHS. What did 

DHS have to do with it? Nobody at DHS had any experience; only 

FEMA did. But it is generally understood that, yes, this incident 

of national significance had to be, ′′You got to do that first.′′ Whereas before, Ms. Bullock, you know, FEMA used all of its expertise, 

said to the President, ′′This is X,′′ he acted, and FEMA was out like 

lightning. 

We have gotten rid of this incident of national significance. We 

still do not have confidence that we will see the kind of instant action if a catastrophe, something we have never seen before, something of the kind Mr. Fugate talked about, the incoming of the sun 

or, yeah, Ohio—is Ohio like Louisiana? They don’t have any oil in 

Ohio. 

You know, somebody has to make the call. And so, my answer 

is, if somebody has to make the call, does the statute have to say 

who should make the call? Or is there plenty in the statute and 

all you need is some backbone, which you are guaranteed to have, 

on who should make the call? We have to make a judgment one 

way or the other. 

Ms. BULLOCK. Well, I would argue that the statute provides the 

authority. But I think, Madam Chair, you are exactly right. It all 

comes down to leadership at the top, in the Agency, within—if it 

is going to stay in DHS—within DHS. I think we are naive to think 

that if we have a majority catastrophe, DHS and Secretary 

Napolitano is not going to want to play a major role in that disaster. I think we are just being naive if we don’t look at it that 

way. Therefore, the Stafford statute maybe has to be made stronger 

to clearly say that the FEMA Administrator is in charge and 

maybe is a PFO. 

The other thing, just to go back to the recovery issue, if Congress 

doesn’t put somebody in charge of recovery, it is never going to be 

organized. Because the agencies—during the 1990s, we used to 

bring all the agencies together after a major disaster, like 

Northridge or any disaster. We would sit them in a room, and we 

would come up with an ad hoc report that would talk about what 

each Federal agency is going to do to support that community in 

the aftermath of the disaster. 

We did that because the President wanted FEMA, James Lee 

Witt and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to take that 

coordinating role. That is not in statute anywhere. It is not in Stafford. I think that is something—especially in the aftermath of a 

major catastrophe, somebody has to give the authority to an agency. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, you might—you know, a Cabinet-level agency. 

FEMA—now, here we get into real bureaucracy, friends—FEMA is 

not a Cabinet-level agency. It is not like it was when it was independent. I gave, as an example, the swine flu. So somebody has to 

53 

say—and the President said it, because, clearly, they put the CDC 

up front. 

Now, if, you know, there were to be an attack involving biological 

weapons, I am not sure who in the world would do that. But somebody would have to make that call. And, you know, for us to be 

fooling around with whoever is the lead agency, and FEMA—you 

know, you are not going to tell the Secretary of the XYZ what to 

do—you know, presents problems. That is how bureaucrats behave. 

That is why we are looking to see how far should we go, mindful 

of what Mr. Decker said. We are very, very reluctant to broaden 

an already broad statute or, for that matter, to pull it in. We just 

don’t want to be sitting here when the next one occurred and nobody jumps up and acts like he knows what he is talking about. 

Like, for that matter, General Dunbar really complicates matters 

for us, but rightly so. Because you point out that if you—now, if 

we are dealing with the National Guard, that is already under the 

Governor. But you point out that the Defense Department wanted 

authority to call up the Reserve forces, under some circumstances, 

to assist. I don’t know what you do with posse comitatus, but let’s 

go down scenario. I guess, if we enact a statute, we enact a statute, 

so it happens. 

Because you are concerned, in something parallel to our PFO or 

CFO, whatever these officers are, you are concerned with the establishment of dual chains of command being created by having the 

Armed Forces in there. But, of course, we have a separation-of-powers government. And it is kind of awkward to think about putting 

the Reserve forces under a Governor. Or is there precedent? Could 

this occur? Should it occur? How should it be done, if we absolutely 

need the Reserves because the people on the ground need them, the 

National Guard isn’t enough? 

Remember, we might not get there, because we can call in National Guard from all over the country. They are trained better 

than the Reserves. But if these Reserves would have some kind of 

law-enforcement-type authority of any kind and somebody would 

need to do something statutorily given existing law, don’t you 

think. 

General DUNBAR. Yes, ma’am, I do. And I think that the best 

place to start is probably to comply with the law from fiscal year 

2009, which mandated a Council of Governors to tackle this issue. 

When Congress issued their rejection of the request, they suggested 

that we could best solve this issue of tactical control by forming 

this council of Governors and working with DOD to resolve it. 

I think that, from a doctrinal point of view, it could be accomplished. NORTHCOM, in their relations with Canada and Mexico— 

and I realize we are talking sovereign nations versus States-- but 

if we send forces to Canada, it is possible that we would put tactical control of those forces under a Canadian commander. If Canada sent forces to the United States, it is possible that they would 

put those forces under tactical control of a U.S. commander. It 

doesn’t mean you have given up all authority. You could always recall those forces. And higher levels of control, operational control, 

and higher levels of control continue to exist. 

You mentioned the National Guard. When we deploy National 

Guard forces to other States, which is a similar parallel—I have 

54 

done this this year alone from Wisconsin to both North Dakota for 

the floods and Kentucky for the ice storm—I give tactical control 

of those guardsmen, who, in fact, become State assets for the 

States to which we deploy them. And I certainly reserve the right, 

or Governor Doyle reserves the right, to recall them if needed. 

General DUNBAR. But I think from a unity-of-command, unity-ofeffort point of view, the best thing to do, unless and until the Federal Government needs to take command because the emergency is 

so drastic, so severe-- in which case we would all get behind the 

President-- I think the best thing is to stick with both the State 

and Federal guidance, which is the lowest level up. 

And, from that perspective, we probably wouldn’t be talking lots 

of Federal troops. We might be talking about a company of engineers or a small capability that could easily fit into our joint force 

headquarters in Wisconsin, or another State’s joint force headquarters, and we would then provide those forces to the State Coordinating Officer, which is lined up perfectly under the Stafford 

Act. 

Ms. NORTON. I am going to ask staff and I am going to ask any 

of you to look at what happens here at the inauguration. The 

State-to-State, the Guard-to-Guard does not present a separationof-powers problem. It is State-to-State, and we lend across State 

lines all the time. But the armed forces of the United States constitutionally is under the Commander in Chief, and that constitutional barrier is of some interest to us. There are certain things you 

can’t waive very easily. 

General DUNBAR. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. During the inauguration—and here I may not have 

all of the facts in mind, but since I represent the District, I was 

concerned that the inauguration was so big this time that there 

was, at first, the notion that the Reserves should be under some 

dual command. Apparently, it has always been under the D.C. National Guard, the commander of the D.C. National Guard. And 

there was some kind of swearing in—I am not sure what it was— 

but there was some kind of swearing in of everybody else who came 

in, so they were either sworn in by the National Guard or—it occurred, even though these were National Guard. 

Now, the D.C. National Guard is a little different because we are 

not a State, and therefore—but these were Reserve people. They 

were on the ground at the inauguration. And my recollection is 

that, although the D.C. National Guard is technically under the 

President, that the commander of the D.C. National Guard swore 

in these troops as something other than Reserve troops for purposes here that may suggest there is some parallel there to avoid 

any constitutional issue arising. Because I do think that if we are 

truly preparing for the next one, we better assume—assume—that 

you will need to go beyond the National Guard. 

Now, the National Guard is best trained to do this, no question 

about it, from across the country. And there are a whole lot of 

Guards. It is not that I think we would need more troops. I agree 

with you. But what we may need is specialized training of the 

kind—for example, I don’t know if anyone has seen this movie that 

I saw over the weekend called ′′Hurt Locker.′′ 

55 

This is the movie, so far, from the Iraq war. And ′′Hurt Locker′′ 

is about a whole lot more than the kinds of capabilities that our 

bomb defusers have. These people are setting off bombs designed 

to blow up entire cities and all of the people with them. And I could 

see a ′′Hurt Locker′′ situation where you would want some of those 

DOD guys—what does the general ask him? ′′How many bombs 

have you defused?′′ ′′842, sir′′—those kind of guys to help you with 

one of those massive explosives designed to go off, for example, in 

a subway, where you might say you need a little more than the 

very important and now upgraded capability of even the best of our 

bomb folks here in the country. 

So, yes, we want to look and we want to continue to receive your 

views on this, as well, because—— 

General DUNBAR. And, ma’am, if I could just make one—— 

Ms. NORTON. Please do. 

General DUNBAR. I would just like to state for the record, state 

that the Reserves are, in my opinion, even though I am a National 

Guard commander, just as professionally well-trained as the National Guard and do a phenomenal job for the country. 

You are right about the distinction, and you mentioned the dualhat command. I think that is worth discussing just for a second, 

because—— 

Ms. NORTON. The what? 

General DUNBAR. Dual-hat command. Under the law, the President and the Governor can agree on one National Guard officer, out 

of a total of 32, under Title 10 command authority at the same 

time. That would allow, in effect, both of those chains of command 

to end at the same commander in the State response. This would 

avoid the separation of powers that you are talking about and 

allow us to function under the Governor’s control through the State 

coordinating officer in accordance with the Stafford Act, if that 

was, in fact, what was going on. 

So that part of law already exists and was designed for that very 

outcome. 

Ms. NORTON. Uh-huh. 

Mr. McCarthy, have you looked at this serious problem? This is 

the problem we have yet to confront, that it may be right up the 

line. Because we know how to deal with, you know—or we are beginning, finally, to deal with mass transit and the rest, particularly 

concerned with underground. We have dealt, we think, at least to 

a large extent, with planes. 

So the next disaster, if terrorists are to prove as prescient as 

they have thus far, may well not be like anything we have seen before, and could be so serious—it could be an actual terrorist attack 

of some kind—as to make us look, first and foremost, to people who 

have experience in that kind of work. 

Have you done any of the work, in all of the work you have done 

on this issue? 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Madam Chair, I haven’t, myself, because I have 

mostly concentrated on the Stafford Act recovery programs. But 

some of my colleagues at CRS have been working in this area, and 

I could refer some of their work to you and put them in contact 

with the Committee. 

56 

Ms. NORTON. We would be most pleased to receive that. This is 

truly virgin territory. 

Finally, Mr. Becker, you have spoken about housing in particular, which has been the bane—really, we have had such concerns. Although I think Dr. Moss says, you know, there are other 

areas that are of greater importance, if you think about the disaster itself. The fact is that, in this country, we always focus on 

the person. And so, you know, if they have 10 people in trailers, 

those are the people the press will focus on and, frankly, that the 

average American is focusing on. Even if your computer stuff is 

out, they want to know what you are doing to this family or this 

disabled person or this person who cannot find housing or is still 

in a trailer and the rest of it. 

The administration, after entreaty after entreaty from this Committee, did issue a final national disaster plan. This was the 

evening of the last business day of the last administration. In light 

of your concern with housing, do you believe that this plan is adequate for addressing the needs of a catastrophe or, for that matter, 

of a disaster? 

Mr. BECKER. Madam Chairwoman, I would suggest that the details of the plan empower a task force to solve what hasn’t been 

solved so far. And by that I mean, I don’t think you are going to 

see specifics of a plan that would satisfy a county emergency manager or a State emergency manager to understand the framework 

and understand how it needs to proceed. 

What we need to do is—if the Administrator wants to continue 

with the Disaster Housing Task Force that the plan calls for, that 

needs to be staffed. It is yet to have a permanent head, and it has 

been in existence for over a year now. It needs to be supported, it 

needs to be a multi-agency, resourced body. It needs to have State, 

local, and tribal and nonprofit representation, although the Red 

Cross is on it. 

But from that, the most important body of work that that task 

force can do is to create a menu of options. It is not any one option 

that is going to be the magic bullet in a catastrophe; we need a 

menu of options. 

Joe Bruno, Commissioner Bruno in New York has done some 

great work to look at what the urban housing needs would be in 

a catastrophe hitting New York City. That is very different than 

travel trailers and mobile homes on big vacant lots. You need to 

have menus of options for him. You need to have a menu of options 

for Arkansas that might be very different from that. 

And so, this work is moving too slowly. And this task force needs 

to be resourced, it needs to be headed by a permanent leader, and 

it needs to get moving. 

Ms. NORTON. Yes, because—I am going to ask Mr. McCarthy, 

who has been working on these areas. 

When we got this so-called housing plan, it looked like a plan in 

order to plan. And we were expecting a plan. And, yes, the differences you are talking about were not even approached. I don’t 

know where FEMA is on it, but it is very scary, given the issue 

that perhaps received the highest visibility in recovery in Louisiana 

and Mississippi was housing, to think that we still don’t have a 

plan. 

57 

Mr. McCarthy? 

Mr. MCCARTHY. I just want to mention, I think what Mr. Becker 

is saying is correct. At this point, what you really need is—it was 

a plan for a plan. And it is my understanding that the task force 

now is working on a concept of operations of actually applying the 

plan and starting the—— 

Ms. NORTON. Applying what plan, sir? 

Mr. MCCARTHY. The disaster housing plan, to start having specifics for it, of how it would work—— 

Ms. NORTON. To make it into a plan? 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Yes, to make it into a plan. 

And one other point I want to point out, though: The PKEMRA 

Act did quite a few good things. And I think one of the best things 

it did was to authorize case management. And it had a few other 

things. It took the caps away from within housing, where you could 

spend the amount you needed to on repairing your home within the 

overall cap. It provided all that freedom. The one thing it wasn’t, 

though, is it wasn’t retroactive to the population affected by 

Katrina. And so, in some ways, I think that those tools would have 

been helpful—— 

Ms. NORTON. Why wasn’t it? And should it have been? 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Well, I can’t speak to why—— 

Ms. NORTON. Well, a disaster, you know, you only know after the 

fact. We, after the fact, waived the State match. We never would 

have done that before the fact. Some of these things—you know, 

you are not clairvoyant. 

On the other hand—who was it that suggested among you, 

maybe it was Mr. Fugate, some kind of reward incentive for mitigation? When I think of the way we have done mitigation, this whole 

Committee is a huge fan—Subcommittee and Committee—of mitigation, yet we put tiny resources into it. I know that is not going 

to be anymore. We were doing that long before the—those little resources long before. I don’t know if States wait for mitigation resources from us. That is really waiting for Godot. 

Now, Mr. Fugate indicated some kind of reward or incentive system. I don’t know if you looked at that. 

Mr. MCCARTHY. And you have done some of that. The Disaster 

Mitigation Act of 2000, one of the things it did was provide FEMA 

with authority to do cost estimates and pay on that, which hasn’t 

been implemented yet after 8 years. But the other main thing—— 

Ms. NORTON. We are just trying to help people recover from the 

disaster, so that if somehow—was it in the earthquake, Ms. Bullock, that you spoke of that there was actual criticism because the 

rebuilding took account of the fact that there might be another 

earthquake? 

Ms. BULLOCK. Yes. 

Ms. NORTON. And who criticized that, for goodness’ sake? 

Ms. BULLOCK. Well, actually, it was the FEMA IG. It was an internal criticism. 

But what we did there and what certainly after a catastrophic 

disaster has to be considered—building codes, which have been 

mentioned, and the Committee is very supportive, are only for a 

life safety protection. In other words, that way the building won’t 

fall down. What we did after Northridge was we worked with the 

58 

hospitals, specifically the UCLA hospital system, to rebuild those 

hospital buildings for a continuity of operations, so if there was another earthquake, those building not only would still not collapse, 

they would be able to be fully functional. And, obviously, hospitals 

are things you need, absolutely critical, after any sort of disaster 

but particularly an earthquake. And it is those kinds of innovations 

that we took and ran with. 

And, you know, what Fran has talked about and what we have 

talked about with mitigation, unfortunately, State and local governments are so strapped post-disaster that they cannot meet that 

match. It is the last priority when it actually should be the first 

priority, because we have all sorts of evidence that shows that, 

when we do do mitigation, for every $1 invested in mitigation, the 

Federal Government saves $4 in future disaster costs. 

And the Congressman who talked about the flooding in Iowa, I 

would bet that the buyout program that FEMA participated in 

after the 1993 floods and then again in 1995 with the repeat flood 

probably kept so many of his homes and his constituents’ homes 

from being flooded. 

We have to make an emphasis on mitigation. And it is unfortunate—— 

Ms. NORTON. But FEMA approved of the rebuilding, reinforced 

rebuilding, I take it? 

Ms. BULLOCK. Yes. 

Ms. NORTON. You see what this does, the IG—and this is very 

interesting, because certainly—what was this, the early 1990s? By 

that time, everybody was afraid of earthquakes in California. Was 

the IG looking only at cost? 

Ms. BULLOCK. The IG was looking at cost, and the IG was also 

looking at the regulations and that perhaps we exceeded our application of our own regulations. That was really the issue. 

The problem is, if we don’t take those steps now, we are just 

going to keep putting money out over and over again. And I think 

this is a serious issue because there is a lot of strain on the San 

Andreas Fault right now. There has been a lot of geological work 

done recently, that we may be looking at a major earthquake in 

that area. And California is way ahead of the rest of the country 

relative to applying building codes and retrofitting, but there are 

still going to be huge problems. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, I would like to think that today nobody would 

criticize anybody for reinforcing housing. I am not sure about that, 

but—— 

Ms. BULLOCK. Well, the criticism didn’t come from the Congress. 

And the issue is, it all comes down to money. I mean, the fact 

that—— 

Ms. NORTON. Well, but FEMA, you say, had approved it. 

Ms. BULLOCK. Yeah, FEMA had—but the fact that they didn’t 

waive the hazard mitigation cost share after Katrina, when those 

homes could have been rebuilt in a much safer way—— 

Ms. NORTON. Yeah. And much faster. 

Ms. BULLOCK. —and FEMA never asked you to waive it. 

Ms. NORTON. Never asked to waive. Now, this is very important. 

FEMA could protect itself by simply coming to the Congress and 

then we take the rap. I can think of no instance where FEMA 

59 

asked us for congressional authority or authority even from the 

Committee, which we then would have had counsel investigate and 

say, you now have the—I can think of no instance when they asked 

for it. And I don’t even know what would keep a bureaucrat from 

asking for it. If that doesn’t protect them, what else could? 

Let me finally ask you, given what Mr. Becker has seen and 

what certainly those of you in emergency management have seen, 

where you would stand, given your studies, of implementing public 

assistance on the basis of estimates, whether that would speed recovery, whether you think FEMA would act more quickly, whether 

that would be viable in terms of the IG and all of that stuff that 

is important to keep in place? 

Mr. MCCARTHY. Madam Chair, I think it would be very helpful. 

That authority, as I mentioned, was passed in 2000. FEMA, as 

they were told in legislation, assembled an expert panel in 2002 

and set up, kind of, industry standards for estimates. But nothing 

further occurred. And that authority was partly meant to accelerate the process—— 

Ms. NORTON. So here I am putting it before you. You are pointing out very specific authority that we gave. 

Mr. Maxwell wants to say—— 

Mr. MAXWELL. Yeah, I just want to express one concern with 

that. It has to be done in conjunction with a complete review of all 

of the policies within PA and how they are administered. Because 

the last thing we, as a State, want to have happen is get an award 

that is based on an estimate and then have to pay money back and 

collect money back from a sub-grantee, that local government, to 

turn money back. So we would want a very careful review of the 

policies. 

Ms. BULLOCK. I would just like to add—— 

Ms. NORTON. Ms. Bullock, yes? 

Ms. BULLOCK. —in the Northridge earthquake, once again, because of the scope of that disaster, we did do some upfront funding. 

You know, if a project came in and the State or the local government said it was going to be $2 million, we wouldn’t give them the 

$2 million, but we would give them a portion so they could at least 

get the work started. And then we could do the more comprehensive—— 

Ms. NORTON. Wouldn’t that take care of it, Mr. Maxwell? We are 

not going to throw any money out of here very quickly, but when 

people are waiting just to get started—Dr. Moss, do you see a problem there? 

Mr. MOSS. No, I think the—I thought that there is a provision 

in housing for it to be rebuilt to higher standards. But in other 

parts of FEMA, I think the aid is to rebuild it to what it was. Am 

I correct? I think that we—some of our rebuilding standards mean 

that we cannot rebuild to what would be, you know, 21st-century 

standards. I think that is a very big problem, in my view, because—— 

Ms. NORTON. A huge problem. 

Mr. MOSS. —if a building is 100 years old, we are going to rebuild a 100-year-old building? No. 

Ms. BULLOCK. But FEMA covered themselves. And that—— 

Ms. NORTON. You mean in the earthquake? 

60 

Ms. BULLOCK. Yeah, in the earthquake. Actually, not in the 

earthquake. In any disaster after that, FEMA then would say, 

′′Yes, okay, if the code takes you to this point, you can have additional mitigation money to take it to this other point.′′ But, once 

again, there was not adequate funds to handle all of that. If you 

are redoing a whole school system in the city of the Chicago after 

a massive tornado, there never would be enough funding to use 

that formula. 

And that is why working with communities on building codes 

and updating building codes is so critical. 

Ms. NORTON. And this is going to get to be real touchy, because 

climate change and energy conservation is a top priority for this 

Subcommittee, this Committee, and the Congress of the United 

States. Now, we have figured out, because industry helps us to figure out, we have real-time figures now about the payback. Now, 

that is going to confront us in Louisiana. If you are rebuilding, you 

know, Mercy Hospital, what kind of energy systems are you putting in? They are going to cost more. 

I can tell you this much, we are going to build a Department of 

Homeland Security over in Ward 8. It is going to be a LEED building. It may not be platinum, but it is going to be as close to that 

as we can, because we know it is going to be there forever, in this 

case, because it is a Cabinet agency. That should be pretty easy to 

figure out. 

I don’t know what the life of a school is. But I do know today 

what I did not know 5 years ago, what the payback on many energy systems is. I don’t know if we have confronted this. Certainly, 

it has not come to the Committee’s attention. But this is the kind 

of thing that we have got to be prepared for. It would save the Federal Government money. It would save the State money. It costs 

some money in advance beyond what we would have paid 10 years 

ago. And whether that gets factored in or not will be an explosive 

question for some of us for whom energy conservation is a major 

issue today. 

Ms. BULLOCK. I would certainly love to see the Committee ask 

that of FEMA. Because there are huge dollars that have been spent 

rebuilding buildings that—— 

Ms. NORTON. We will certainly ask that of, you know, Mercy Hospital, would you dare, for example—that is going to be a healthy 

part of that $3 billion, to simply build it back to how it was, if you 

could ever figure that out. Given what we now know about energy 

conservation, that is the hottest spot on the map of the United 

States. It is a hospital; you are going to have electricity systems 

running, or need them running, in the event of an earthquake. It 

is going to have to override anything else you can think of. You are 

not going to move all of those people out again just like that. You 

didn’t move them out just like that before. All of that now is experience that we have. 

Did any of the rest of you before—as you can see, when we put 

a big question like that, it helps us to have before us a full array 

of experts so that you can cross-pollinate one another, and I will 

let you pollinate us. Is there anything you want to say before we 

call this hearing to a close? 

61 

Let me thank each and every one of you for very fruitful, very 

productive, and very stimulating testimony that is going to help us. 

We are going to do something. The question now before us, given 

the kind of information we are getting from experts at your level, 

what is the most we can do with the least possible harm? 

I say that with some meaning. We mean to do no harm. We have 

found that FEMA, left to its own devices, may do harm by doing 

nothing. And thus, we are going to need to try to be wise and not 

to simply throw down the gauntlet and offer a new statute to what 

we think was a very well-written statute in the first place. 

Thank you very much for coming to advise the Committee. 

The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 5:40 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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Æ 


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