I 
110TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 1891 
To promote the development of disaster plans that will protect the maximum 
number of citizens; to foster public trust, confidence, and cooperation 
with these plans; and to encourage greater public participation in home-
land security by allowing the American people to have a direct and 
influential role in developing and modifying community disaster prepared-
ness, response, recovery, and mitigation plans in collaboration with gov-
ernment officials, emergency managers, health authorities, and profes-
sional responders, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
APRIL 17, 2007 
Mr. KENNEDY (for himself, Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi, Mr. LANGEVIN, 
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas, Mr. BLUMENAUER, Mr. GRIJALVA, Ms. ZOE 
LOFGREN of California, Mr. GONZALEZ, and Mr. COHEN) introduced the 
following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Transportation 
and Infrastructure, and in addition to the Committees on Energy and 
Commerce and Homeland Security, for a period to be subsequently deter-
mined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions 
as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned 
A BILL 
To promote the development of disaster plans that will pro-
tect the maximum number of citizens; to foster public 
trust, confidence, and cooperation with these plans; and 
to encourage greater public participation in homeland 
security by allowing the American people to have a direct 
and influential role in developing and modifying commu-
nity disaster preparedness, response, recovery, and miti-
gation plans in collaboration with government officials, 
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emergency managers, health authorities, and professional 
responders, and for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Ready, Willing, and 
Able Act’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
The Congress finds as follows: 
(1) Research indicates that effective responses 
to emergencies, particularly terrorist attacks, require 
the United States to adopt a new paradigm for de-
veloping disaster plans. The current emergency man-
agement approach mistakenly assumes the general 
public to easily be prone to panic and social chaos 
and expects citizens to comply with disaster plans 
they had little or no direct influence in developing. 
Keeping the general public away from participating 
in the actual development of disaster plans, and fail-
ing to incorporate their ‘‘common-sense’’ knowledge, 
has alienated many citizens and jeopardized the abil-
ity of the United States to respond effectively to do-
mestic emergencies: 
(A) According to the New York Academy 
of Medicine’s report, ‘‘Redefining Readiness: 
Terrorism Planning Through the Eyes of the 
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Public’’, despite this Nation’s investment in 
working out logistics and purchasing technology 
for responding to terrorist attacks and other 
disasters, current emergency response plans will 
ultimately fall significantly short of expectations 
because they were developed without the direct 
involvement of the public and therefore fail to 
account for all of the risks citizens would face 
in a disaster. Because current plans do not pro-
tect the millions of Americans who would be at 
risk of developing complications from the small-
pox vaccine, 60 percent of citizens surveyed 
said they would not go to a public vaccination 
site in a smallpox outbreak. Because schools 
and workplaces have not been prepared to func-
tion as safe havens, 40 percent of citizens sur-
veyed said they would not shelter in place for 
as long as told in a dirty bomb explosion. Only 
20 percent of people believe disaster planners 
know very much about their concerns and needs 
in the event of a disaster; only 50 percent are 
confident that they would receive the help they 
might require in the wake of a disaster; and 
only 30 percent believe the public can have a lot 
of influence on disaster plans being developed. 
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Nonetheless, even in communities that have 
never experienced a terrorist attack, over one- 
third of the population has a very strong inter-
est in personally helping government agencies 
and community organizations develop disaster 
plans. 
(B) According to the Heritage Foundation 
Executive Memorandum, ‘‘Beyond Duct Tape: 
The Federal Government’s Role in Public Pre-
paredness’’, community public safety measures 
and disaster response activities will succeed 
only if they are community-based. Every com-
munity is unique and local preparedness plan-
ning must account for local conditions of cul-
ture, geography, language, infrastructure, poli-
tics, and numerous other factors. Programs are 
much more effective when members of the com-
munity are engaged in preparedness planning, 
sharing their concerns and ideas with emer-
gency officials. 
(C) Direct, participatory disaster planning, 
unlike the current approach, is a fail-safe 
against developing unrealistic emergency plans. 
It benefits lawmakers, government officials, and 
professional responders by identifying the full 
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range of risks that the public would face in dis-
aster situations, by instructing what is feasible 
and not feasible in terms of crisis management, 
and by facilitating closer relations with leaders 
from different communities, which in turn fos-
ters greater public trust and confidence. This is 
particularly important, as some communities 
may be less resilient to the consequences of dis-
asters than others. For example, different com-
munities have different degrees of access to 
health care, use languages other than English, 
and have variable levels of trust in traditional 
news sources, the medical community, and gov-
ernment officials. 
(2) According to ‘‘Clinical Infectious Diseases: 
Confronting Biological Weapons’’, in June 2001, the 
simulated bioterrorism exercise, Dark Winter, was 
conducted to examine the challenges senior-level pol-
icymakers would face if confronted with a bioter-
rorist attack that initiated outbreaks of a contagious 
disease. The exercise was intended to increase 
awareness of the scope and character of the threat 
posed by biological weapons among senior national 
security experts and to bring about actions that 
would improve prevention and response strategies. 
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One of the important lessons learned was that indi-
vidual actions of United States citizens will be crit-
ical in ending the spread of a contagious disease, 
and leaders must gain the cooperation of the Amer-
ican people. Dark Winter participants concluded— 
(A) it is not possible to forcibly vaccinate 
the public or impose travel restrictions on large 
groups of the population without their coopera-
tion; 
(B) to gain cooperation, the public must 
believe there is fairness in the distribution of 
vaccines and other vital resources; and 
(C) the public must be convinced that dis-
ease-containment measures are for the general 
good of society and that all possible measures 
are being taken to prevent the further spread of 
the disease. 
(3) Decades of social scientific research un-
equivocally demonstrate that people are often at 
their finest during crises, contrary to the widely held 
belief that disasters easily lead to panic and a break-
down in social order: 
(A) Rather than panicking, members of the 
public typically converge en masse to help when 
disasters strike. Numerous studies document 
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the fact that individuals and groups in the im-
mediate impact area of a disaster help manage 
evacuations, perform rescues, locate and dig out 
victims who are trapped, transport them to 
emergency care providers, and repeatedly put 
themselves in danger to ensure that others are 
safe. For example, in the immediate wake of 
the World Trade Center’s collapse, numerous 
ordinary citizens acted swiftly and collectively in 
supporting search and rescue activities despite 
the obvious hazards and uncertainty about ad-
ditional attacks. 
(B) During disasters, people rarely panic, 
turn against their neighbors, or suddenly forget 
personal ties and moral commitments. Instead, 
the more consistent pattern is for people in dis-
asters to bind and work together to help one 
another. For example, on September 11th, peo-
ple successfully evacuated from lower Manhat-
tan in one of the largest waterborne evacuations 
in history. Barges, fishing boats, ferries, and 
pleasure boats spontaneously and collectively 
supported the Coast Guard and harbor pilots in 
moving hundreds of thousands of people away 
from danger, as well as transporting emergency 
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personnel 
and 
equipment 
to 
docks 
near 
‘‘Ground Zero’’. 
(C) Despite the fact that people may feel 
terrified in disaster situations, even to the point 
of feeling that their own lives are in imminent 
danger, individualistic, competitive behavior is 
rare. Instead, social bonds remain intact, and 
the sense of responsibility to family members, 
friends, fellow workers, neighbors, and even 
total strangers remains strong. For example, 
there are numerous accounts of healthy office 
workers delaying their evacuation in order to 
help injured and disabled colleagues down the 
stairwells of the World Trade Center. 
(D) Highly adaptive and pro-social behav-
ior by the public is common in various types of 
crises, including public health crises. For exam-
ple, when the greater Toronto area faced an 
outbreak of SARS in 2003 that sickened a dis-
proportionate number of health care workers, 
hundreds of American physicians volunteered to 
aid their Canadian colleagues despite the fact 
that SARS was a potentially lethal disease. 
(E) Often, people focused on the manage-
rial and technical challenges of crisis manage-
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ment misinterpret the general public as panic- 
stricken and chaotic when they are, in fact, en-
gaging in rational behavior. Such behaviors in-
clude seeking more information, questioning au-
thorities, and undertaking precautionary meas-
ures even if authorities believe these measures 
are unwarranted. 
(F) While there always exists a possibility 
for a breakdown in the social order during a 
crisis, numerous disaster experts agree that the 
most effective ways for government officials to 
counter any potential for panic and to facilitate 
recovery are— 
(i) to provide the public with the most 
accurate and timely information possible 
during a crisis and not withhold vital infor-
mation; 
(ii) to make provisions for the ethical 
and rational distribution of vital resources 
that could have a direct impact on health; 
and 
(iii) to include community residents in 
disaster preparedness efforts before a crisis 
occurs to ensure that response plans are 
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realistic and address the full range of risks 
that the public would face. 
(4) Civil-society organizations, those organiza-
tions created to bring people together for common 
pro-social purposes, such as professional societies, 
business groups, labor unions, service organizations, 
neighborhood associations, and faith-based groups, 
have assumed critical roles in responding to disas-
ters. In the wake of the attacks on the World Trade 
Center and the Pentagon, civil-society organizations 
and their members organized themselves to aid the 
search-and-rescue efforts and the longer-term recov-
ery process. Unions, tenant associations, professional 
societies, businesses, churches, and other groups gal-
vanized existing social ties, leadership structures, 
and communication links to channel crucial aid: 
(A) The American Medical Association 
contacted State and local medical societies and 
specialty organizations to request volunteers. 
More than 1,700 medical personnel responded 
to requests for critical-care specialists. 
(B) Building trades and labor unions im-
mediately gathered crews of engineers, iron-
workers, laborers, Teamsters, and others to set 
up equipment and to look for architectural 
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