Emergency Preparedness and Response: Some Issues and Challenges Associated with Major Emergency Incidents
Published: 2006-02-23T00:00:00

Fast Facts:

Highlights:
section_title: Why GAO Did This Study
paragraphs: This testimony discusses the challenges of effective emergency preparedness for, response to, and recovery from major emergencies, including catastrophic incidents.
section_title: What GAO Found
paragraphs: Effective emergency preparedness and response for major events requires the coordinated planning and actions of multiple players from multiple first responder disciplines, jurisdictions, and levels of government as well as nongovernmental entities. Effective emergency preparedness and response requires putting aside parochialism and working together prior to and after an emergency incident. September 11, 2001 fundamentally changed the context of emergency management preparedness in the United States, including federal involvement in preparedness and response. The biggest challenge in emergency preparedness is getting effective cooperation in planning, exercises, and capability assessment and building across first responder disciplines and intergovernmental lines. DHS has developed several policy documents designed to define the federal government's role in supporting state and local first responders in emergencies, implement a uniform incident command structure across the nation, and identify performance standards that can be used in assessing state and local first responder capabilities. Realistic exercises are a key component of testing and assessing emergency plans and first responder capabilities, and the Hurricane PAM planning exercise demonstrated their value. With regard to the status of emergency preparedness across the nation, we know relatively little about how states and localities (1) finance their efforts in this area, (2) have used their federal funds, and (3) are assessing the effectiveness with which they spend those funds. Katrina has raised a host of questions about the nation's readiness to respond effectively to catastrophic emergencies. Effective emergency preparedness is a task that is never done, but requires continuing commitment and leadership because circumstances change and continuing trade-offs because we will never have the funds to do everything we might like to do.

section_title: Letter
paragraphs: I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to discuss the challenges of  effective emergency preparedness for, response to, and recovery from  major emergencies, including catastrophic events. Effective emergency  preparedness and response for major events requires the coordinated  planning and actions of multiple players from multiple first responder  disciplines, jurisdictions, and levels of government as well as  nongovernmental entities. Effective emergency preparedness and  response requires putting aside parochialism and working together prior  to and after an emergency event. As one participant in responding to  Katrina put it, the aftermath of a major disaster is no time to be  exchanging business cards.
September 11, 2001 fundamentally changed the context of emergency  management preparedness in the United States, including federal  involvement in preparedness and response.  The biggest challenge in  emergency preparedness is getting effective cooperation in planning,  exercises, and capability assessment and building across first responder  disciplines and intergovernmental lines.  DHS has developed several policy  documents designed to define the federal government’s role in supporting  state and local first responders in emergencies, implement a uniform  incident command structure across the nation, and identify performance  standards that can be used in assessing state and local first responder  capabilities.  Realistic exercises are a key component of testing and  assessing emergency plans and first responder capabilities, and the  Hurricane PAM planning exercise demonstrated their value.  With regard  to the status of emergency preparedness across the nation, we know  relatively little about how states and localities (1) finance their efforts in  this area, (2) have used their federal funds, and (3) are assessing the  effectiveness with which they spend those funds. Katrina has raised a host  of questions about the nation’s readiness to respond effectively to  catastrophic emergencies.  Effective emergency preparedness is a task  that is never done, but requires continuing commitment and leadership  because circumstances change and continuing trade-offs because we will  never have the funds to do everything we might like to do.
subsections: section_title: September 11, 2001 Changed the Context of Emergency Preparedness
paragraphs: Prior to September 11, 2001, emergency preparedness and response had  primarily been the responsibility of state and local governments and had  focused principally on emergencies resulting from nature, such as fires,  floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes, or accidental acts of man, not acts of  terrorism. The federal government’s role in supporting emergency  preparedness and management prior to September 11 was limited  primarily to providing resources before large-scale disasters like floods,  hurricanes, and earthquakes, and response and recovery assistance after  such disasters. However, after September 11 and the concern it  engendered about the need to be prepared to prevent, mitigate, and  respond to acts of terrorism, the extent of the federal government’s  financial support for state and local government emergency preparedness  and response grew enormously, with about $11 billion in grants distributed  from fiscal years 2002 through 2005. At the same time the federal  government has been developing guidance and standards for state and  local first responders in the areas of incident management and capabilities  and tying certain requirements to the award of grants.
The nation’s emergency managers and first responders have lead  responsibilities for carrying out emergency management efforts. First  responders have traditionally been thought of as police, fire fighters,  emergency medical personnel, and others who are among the first on the  scene of an emergency. However, since September 11, 2001, the definition  of first responder has been broadened to include those, such as public  health and hospital personnel, who may not be on the scene, but are  essential in supporting effective response and recovery operations. The  role of first responders is to prevent where possible, protect against,  respond to, and assist in the recovery from emergency events. First  responders are trained and equipped to arrive at the scene of an  emergency and take immediate action. Examples include entering the  scene of the event and assessing the situation, setting up a command  center, establishing safe and secure perimeters around the event site,  evacuating those within or near the site, tending to the injured and dead,  transporting them to medical care centers or morgues, rerouting traffic,  helping to restore public utilities, and clearing debris.
Last year, GAO issued a special report on 21st Century Challenges,  examining the federal government’s long-term fiscal outlook, the nation’s  ability to respond to emerging forces reshaping American Society, and the  future role of the federal government. Among the issues discussed was  homeland security. In our report we identified the following illustrative  challenges and questions for examining emergency preparedness and  response in the nation:    Defining an acceptable, achievable (within budget constraints) level of  risk. The nation can never be completely safe; total security is an  unachievable goal. Therefore, the issue becomes what is an acceptable  level of risk to guide homeland security strategies and investments,  particularly federal funding? What criteria should be used to target federal  and state funding for homeland security in order to maximize results and  mitigate risk within available resource levels?
What should be the role of federal, state, and local governments in  identifying risks—from nature or man—in individual states and localities  and establishing standards for the equipment, skills, and capacities that  first responders need?
Are existing incentives sufficient to support private sector protection of  critical infrastructure the private sector owns, and what changes might be  necessary?
What is the most viable way to approach homeland security results  management and accountability? What are the appropriate goals and who  is accountable for the many components of homeland security when many  partners and functions and disciplines are involved? How can these actors  be held accountable and by whom?
What costs should be borne by federal, state, and local governments or the  private sector in preparing for, responding to, and recovery from disasters  large and small—whether the acts of nature or the deliberate or accidental  acts of man?
To what extent and how should the federal government encourage and  foster a role for regional or multistate entities in emergency planning and  response?
These issues are enormously complex and represent a major challenge for  all levels of government.  But the experience of Hurricane Katrina  illustrated why it is important to tackle these difficult issues.  Katrina was  a catastrophe of historic proportions in both its geographic scope—about  90,000 square miles—and its destruction. Its impact on individuals and  communities was horrific.  Katrina highlighted the limitations of our  current capacity to respond effectively to catastrophic events—those of  unusual severity that almost immediately overwhelm state and local  response capacities.  Katrina gives us an opportunity to learn from what  went well and what did not go so well and improve our ability to respond  to future catastrophic disasters.
It is generally accepted that emergency preparedness and response should  be characterized by measurable goals and effective efforts to identify key  gaps between those goals and current capabilities, with a clear plan for  closing those gaps and, once achieved, sustaining desired levels of  preparedness and response capabilities and performance. The basic goal  of emergency preparedness for a major emergency is that first responders  should be able to respond swiftly with well-planned, well-coordinated, and  effective actions that save lives and property, mitigate the effects of the  disaster, and set the stage for a quick, effective recovery. In a major event,  coordinated, effective actions are required among responders from  different local jurisdictions, levels of government, and nongovernmental  entities, such as the Red Cross.
Essentially, all levels of government are still struggling to define and act on  the answers to four basic, but hardly simple, questions with regard to  emergency preparedness and response:  1.  What is important (that is, what are our priorities)?  2.  How do we know what is important (e.g., risk assessments,  performance standards)?  3.  How do we measure, attain, and sustain success?  4.  On what basis do we make necessary trade-offs, given finite resources?
There are no simple, easy answers to these questions, and the data  available for answering them are incomplete and imperfect. We have  better information and a sense of what needs to be done for some types of  major emergency events than others. For some natural disasters, such as  regional wildfires and flooding, there is more experience and therefore a  better basis on which to assess preparation and response efforts and  identify gaps that need to be addressed. California has experience with  earthquakes, and Florida has experience with hurricanes. However, no  one in the nation has experience with such potential catastrophes as a  dirty bomb detonated in a major city. Nor is there any recent experience  with a pandemic that spreads to thousands of people rapidly across the  nation, although both the AIDS epidemic and SARS provide some related  experience.
Planning and assistance has largely been focused on single jurisdictions  and their immediately adjacent neighbors.  However, well-documented  problems with first responders from multiple jurisdictions to communicate  at the site of an incident and the potential for large scale natural and  terrorist disasters have generated a debate on the extent to which first  responders should be focusing their planning and preparation on a  regional and multi-governmental basis.
The area of interoperable communications is illustrative of the general  challenge of identifying requirements, current gaps in the ability to meet  those requirements and assess success in closing those gaps, and doing  this on a multi-jurisdictional basis. We identified three principal challenges  to improving interoperable communications for first responders:    clearly identifying and defining the problem;    establishing national interoperability performance goals and standards  that balance nationwide standards with the flexibility to address  differences in state, regional, and local needs and conditions; and   defining the roles of federal, state, and local governments and other  entities in addressing interoperable needs.
The first, and most formidable, challenge in establishing effective  interoperable communications is defining the problem and establishing  interoperability requirements. This requires addressing the following  questions: Who needs to communicate what (voice and/or data) with  whom, when, for what purpose, under what conditions? Public safety  officials generally recognize that effective interoperable communications  is the ability to talk with whom you want, when you want, when  authorized, but not the ability to talk with everyone all of the time. Various  reports, including ours, have identified a number of barriers to achieving  interoperable public safety wire communications, including incompatible  and aging equipment, limited equipment standards, and fragmented  planning and collaboration. However, perhaps the fundamental barrier has  been and is the lack of effective, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and  intergovernmental planning. The needed technology flows from a clear  statement of communications needs and plans that cross jurisdictional  lines. No one first responder group or governmental agency can  successfully “fix” the interoperable communications problems that face  our nation.
The capabilities needed vary with the severity and scope of the event. In a  “normal” daily event, such as a freeway accident, the first responders who  need to communicate may be limited to those in a single jurisdiction or  immediately adjacent jurisdictions. However, in a catastrophic event,  effective interoperable communications among responders is vastly more  complicated because the response involves responders from the federal  government—civilian and military—and, as happened after Katrina,  responders from various state and local governments who arrived to  provide help under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact  (EMAC) among states. These responders generally bring their own  communications technology that may or may not be compatible with those  of the responders in the affected area. Even if the technology were  compatible, it may be difficult to know because responders from different  jurisdictions may use different names for the same communications  frequencies. To address this issue, we recommended that a nationwide  database of all interoperable communications frequencies, and a common  nomenclature for those frequencies, be established.
Katrina reminded us that in a catastrophic event, most forms of  communication may be severely limited or simply destroyed—land lines,  cell phone towers, satellite phone lines (which quickly became saturated).  So even if all responders had had the technology to communicate with one  another, they would have found it difficult to do so because transmission  towers and other key supporting infrastructure were not functioning. The  more comprehensive the interoperable communications capabilities we  seek to build, the more difficult it is to reach agreement among the many  players on how to do so and the more expensive it is to buy and deploy the  needed technology. And an always contentious issue is who will pay for  the technology—purchase, training, maintenance, and updating.
section_title: DHS Activities to Identify What Needs to Be Done to Promote Emergency Preparedness Capabilities of First Responders
paragraphs: Effective preparation and response requires clear planning, a clear  understanding of expected roles and responsibilities, and performance  standards that can be used to measure the gap between what is and what  should be. It also requires identifying the essential capabilities whose  development should be a priority, and capabilities that are useful, but not  as critical to successful response and mitigation in a major emergency.  What is critical may cut across different types of events (e.g., incident  command and communications) or may be unique to a specific type of  event (e.g., defusing an explosive device).
DHS has undertaken three major policy initiatives to promote the further  development of the all-hazards emergency preparedness capabilities of  first responders. These include the development of the (1) National  Response Plan (what needs to be done to manage a nationally significant  incident, focusing on the role of federal agencies); (2) National Incident  Management System (NIMS), a command and management process to be  used with the National Response Plan during an emergency event (how to  do what needs to be done); and (3) National Preparedness Goal (NPG),  which identifies critical tasks and capabilities (how well it should be  done).
The National Response Plan’s (NRP) stated purpose is to “establish a  comprehensive, national, all-hazards approach to domestic incident  management across a spectrum of activities including prevention,  preparedness, response, and recovery.” It is designed to provide the  framework for federal interaction with state, local, and tribal governments;  the private sector; and nongovernmental organizations. The Robert T.
Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, as amended,  established the process for states to request a presidential disaster  declaration in order to respond to and recover from events that exceed state  and local capabilities and resources. Under the NRP and the Stafford Act, the  role of the federal government is principally to support state and local  response activities. A key organizational principle of the NRP is that  “incidents are typically managed at the lowest possible geographic,  organizational, and jurisdictional level.” An “incident of national  significance” triggers federal support under the NRP; a second “catastrophic  incident” trigger allows for accelerated federal support.  All catastrophic  incidents are incidents of national significance, but not vice-versa. The  basic assumption of the federal government as supplement to state and  local first responders was challenged by Katrina, which (1) destroyed key  communications infrastructure; (2) overwhelmed state and local response  capacity, in many cases crippling their ability to perform their anticipated  roles as initial on-site responders; and (3) destroyed the homes and  affected the families of first responders, reducing their capacity to  respond. Katrina almost completely destroyed the basic structure and  operations of some local governments as well as their business and  economic bases. “any natural or manmade incident, including terrorism, that results in extraordinary levels  of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure,  environment, economy, national morale, and/or government functions. A catastrophic  incident could result in sustained national impacts over a prolonged period of time; almost  immediately exceeds resources normally available to State, local, tribal, and private-sector  authorities in the impacted area; and significantly interrupts governmental operations and  emergency services to such an extent that national security could be threatened. All  catastrophic incidents are Incidents of National Significance. These factors drive the  urgency for coordinated national planning to ensure accelerated Federal/national  assistance.”
Exactly what this means for federal, state, and local response has been the  subject of recent congressional hearings on Katrina and the recently  issued report by the Select Bipartisan Committee  to Investigate the  Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina.
Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 required the adoption of NIMS  by all federal departments and agencies and that federal preparedness  grants be dependent upon NIMS compliance by the recipients. NIMS is  designed as the nation’s incident management system. The intent of NIMS  is to establish a core set of concepts, principles, terminology, and  organizational processes to enable effective, efficient, and collaborative  emergency event management at all levels. The idea is that if state and  local firsts responders implement NIMS in their daily response activities,  they will have a common terminology and understanding of incident  management that will foster a swift and effective response when  emergency responders from a variety of levels of government and  locations must come together to respond to a major incident. As we noted  in our report on interoperable communications, such communications are  but one important component of an effective incident command planning  and operations structure.
Homeland Security Presidential Directive 8 required DHS to coordinate  the development of a national domestic all-hazards preparedness goal “to  establish measurable readiness priorities and targets that appropriately  balance the potential threat and magnitude of terrorist attacks and large- scale natural or accidental disasters with the resources required to  prevent, respond to, and recover from them.” The goal was also to include  readiness metrics and standards for preparedness assessments and  strategies and a system for assessing the nation’s overall preparedness to  respond to major events. To implement the directive, DHS developed the  National Preparedness Goal using 15 emergency event scenarios, 12 of  which were terrorist related, whose purpose was to form the basis for  identifying the capabilities needed to respond to a wide range of  emergency events. Some state and local officials and experts have  questioned whether the scenarios were appropriate inputs for  preparedness planning, particularly in terms of their plausibility and the  emphasis on terrorist scenarios (12 of 15). The scenarios focused on the  consequences that first responders would have to address.  According to  DHS’s National Preparedness Guidance, the planning scenarios are  intended to illustrate the scope and magnitude of large-scale, catastrophic  emergency events for which the nation needs to be prepared. Using the  scenarios, and in consultation with federal, state, and local emergency  response stakeholders, DHS developed a list of over 1,600 discrete tasks,  of which 300 were identified as critical tasks. DHS then identified 36 target  capabilities to provide guidance to federal, state, and local first responders  on the capabilities they need to develop and maintain.  That list has since  been refined, and DHS released a revised draft list of 37 capabilities in  December 2005 (see appendix I). Because no single jurisdiction or agency  would be expected to perform every task, possession of a target capability  could involve enhancing and maintaining local resources, ensuring access  to regional and federal resources, or some combination of the two.  However, DHS is still in the process of developing goals, requirements, and  metrics for these capabilities; and DHS is reassessing both the National  Response Plan and the National Preparedness Goal in light of the  Hurricane Katrina experience. Prior to Katrina, DHS had established seven  priorities for enhancing national first responder preparedness:  implementation of NRP and NIMS;  implementation of the Interim National Infrastructure Protection Plan;    expanding regional cooperation;    strengthening capabilities in interoperable communications;    strengthening capabilities in information sharing and collaboration;    strengthening capabilities in medical surge and mass prophylaxis; and    strengthening capabilities in detection and response for chemical,  biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive weapons.
Those seven priorities are incorporated into DHS’s fiscal year 2006  homeland security grant guidance. The guidance also adds an eighth  priority that emphasizes emergency operations and catastrophic planning.
section_title: The Critical Importance of Realistic Exercises and After-Action Reports
paragraphs: With almost any skill and capability, experience and practice enhance  proficiency. For first responders, exercises—particularly for the type or  magnitude of events for which there is little actual experience—are  essential for developing skills and identifying what works well and what  needs further improvement. Major emergency incidents, particularly  catastrophic incidents, by definition require the coordinated actions of  personnel from many first responder disciplines and all levels of  government, plus nonprofit organizations and the private sector. It is  difficult to overemphasize the importance of effective interdisciplinary,  intergovernmental planning, training, and exercises in developing the  coordination and skills needed for effective response.
Following are some illustrative tasks needed to prepare for and respond to  a major emergency incident that could be tested with realistic exercises:    assessing potential needs, marshalling key resources, and moving property  and people out of harm’s way prior to the actual event (where predictable  or where there is forewarning),   obtaining and communicating accurate situational data for evaluating and  coordinating appropriate response during and after the event;  leadership: effectively blending (1) active involvement of top leadership in  unified incident command and control with (2) decentralized decision  making authority that encourages innovative approaches to effective  response;    clearly understood roles and responsibilities prior to and in response to    effective communication and coordination; and  the ability to identify, draw on, and effectively deploy resources from  other governmental, nonprofit, and private entities for effective response  For exercises to be effective in identifying both strengths and areas  needing attention, it is important that they be realistic, designed to test and  stress the system, involve all key persons who would be involved in  responding to an actual event, and be followed by honest and realistic  assessments that result in action plans that are implemented. In addition  to relevant first responders, exercise participants should include,  depending upon the scope and nature of the exercise, mayors, governors,  and state and local emergency managers who would be responsible for  such things as determining if and when to declare a mandatory evacuation  or ask for federal assistance. The Hurricane PAM exercise of 2004 was  essentially a detailed planning exercise that was highly realistic and  involved a wide variety of federal, state, and local first responders and  officials. Although action plans based on this exercise were still being  developed and implemented when Katrina hit, the exercise proved to be  remarkably prescient in identifying the challenges presented if a major  hurricane hit New Orleans and resulted in flooding the city.
The importance of post-exercise assessments is illustrated by a November  2005 report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector  General on the April 2005 Top Officials 3 Exercise (TOPOFF3) which  noted that the exercise highlighted at all levels of government a  fundamental lack of understanding regarding the principles and protocols  set forth in the NRP and NIMS. For example, the report cited confusion  over the different roles and responsibilities performed by the Principal  Federal Officer (PFO) and the Federal Coordinating Officer (FCO). The  PFO is designated by the DHS Secretary to act as the Secretary’s local  representative in overseeing and executing the incident management  responsibilities under HSPD-5 for incidents of national significance.  The  PFO does not direct or replace the incident command system and  structure, and does not have direct authority over the senior law  enforcement officials, the FCO, or other federal and state officials.  The  FCO is designated by the President and manages federal resources and  support activities in response to disasters and emergencies declared by the  President. The FCO is responsible for coordinating the timely delivery of  federal disaster assistance and programs to the affected state, the private  sector, and individual victims. The FCO also has authority under the  Stafford Act to request and direct federal departments and agencies to use  their authorities and resources in support of state and local response and  recovery efforts.
In addition to confusion over the respective roles and authority of the PFO  and FCO, the report noted that the exercise highlighted problems  regarding the designation of a PFO and the lack of guidance on training  and certification standards for PFO support personnel.  The report  recommended that DHS continue to train and exercise the NRP and NIMS  at all levels of government and develop operating procedures that clearly  define individual and organizational roles and responsibilities under the  NRP.
section_title: Our Knowledge of State and Local Efforts to Improve Their Capabilities Is Limited
paragraphs: In the last several years, the federal government has awarded some   $11 billion in grants to federal, state, and local authorities to improve  emergency preparedness, response, and recovery capabilities. What is  remarkable about the whole area of emergency preparedness and  homeland security is how little we know about how states and localities  (1) finance their efforts in this area, (2) have used their federal funds, and  (3) are assessing the effectiveness with which they spend those funds.
The National Capital Region (NCR) is the only area in the nation that has a  statutorily designated regional coordinator. In our review of emergency  preparedness in the NCR, we noted that a coordinated, targeted, and  complementary use of federal homeland security grant funds was  important in the NCR—as it is in all areas of the nation. The findings from  our work on the NCR are relevant to all multiagency, multijurisdictional  efforts to assess and improve emergency preparedness and response  capabilities.
In May 2004, we reported that the NCR faced three interrelated challenges:  the lack of (1) preparedness standards (which the National Preparedness  Goal was designed to address); (2) a coordinated regionwide plan for  establishing first responder performance goals, needs, and priorities, and  assessing the benefits of expenditures in enhancing first responder  capabilities; and (3) a readily available, reliable source of data on the  funds available to first responders in the NCR and their use. Without the  standards, a regionwide plan, and data on spending, we noted, it is  extremely difficult to determine whether NCR first responders have the  ability to respond to threats and emergencies with well-planned, well- coordinated, and effective efforts that involve a variety of first responder  disciplines from NCR jurisdictions. To the extent that the NCR had  coordinated the use of federal grant funds, it had focused on funds  available through the Urban Area Security Initiative grants. We noted that  it was important to have information on all grant funds available to NCR  jurisdictions and their use if the NCR was to effectively leverage regional  funds and avoid unnecessary duplication. As we observed, the fragmented  nature of the multiple federal grants available to first responders—some  awarded to states, some to localities, some directly to first responder  agencies—may make it more difficult to collect and maintain regionwide  data on the grant funds received and the use of those funds. Our previous  work suggests that this fragmentation in federal grants may reinforce state  and local fragmentation and can also make it more difficult to coordinate  and use those multiple sources of funds to achieve specific objectives.
A new feature in the fiscal year 2006 DHS homeland security grant  guidance for the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grants is that  eligible recipients must provide an “investment justification” with their  grant application. States must use this justification to outline the  implementation approaches for specific investments that will be used to  achieve the initiatives outlined in their state Program and Capability  Enhancement Plan. These plans are multiyear global program  management plans for the entire state homeland security program that  look beyond federal homeland security grant programs and funding. The  justifications must justify all funding requested through the DHS homeland  security grant program, including all UASI funding, any base formula  allocations for the State Homeland Security Program and the Law  Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program, and all formula allocations  under the Metropolitan Medical Response System and Citizen Corps  Program. In the guidance DHS notes that it will use a peer review process  to evaluate grant applications on the basis of the effectiveness of a state’s  plan to address the priorities it has outlined and thereby reduce its overall  risk.
section_title: Catastrophic Events
paragraphs: On February 1, 206, GAO issued its preliminary observations regarding the  preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina.  Catastrophic events  are different in the severity of the damage, number of persons affected,  and the scale of preparation and response required.  They quickly  overwhelm or incapacitate local and/or state response capabilities, thus  requiring coordinated assistance from outside the affected area.  Thus, the  response and recovery capabilities needed during a catastrophic event  differ significantly from those required to respond to and recover from a  “normal disaster.”  Key capabilities such as emergency communications,  continuity of essential government services, and logistics and distribution  systems underpin citizen safety and security and may be severely affected.   Katrina basically destroyed state and local communications capabilities,  severely affecting timely, accurate damage assessments in the wake of  Katrina.
Whether the catastrophic event comes without warning or there is some  prior notice, such as a hurricane, it is essential that the leadership roles,  responsibilities, and lines of authority for responding to such an event be  clearly defined and effectively communicated in order to facilitate rapid  and effective decision making, especially in preparing for and in the early  hours and days after the event.  Streamlining, simplifying, and expediting  decision making must quickly replace “business as usual.”  Yet at the same  time, uncoordinated initiatives by well-meaning persons or groups can  actually hinder effective response, as was the case following Katrina.
Katrina raised a number of questions about the nation’s ability to respond  effectively to catastrophic events—even one with several days warning.  GAO has underway work on a number of issues related to the preparation,  response, recovery, and reconstruction efforts related to Hurricanes  Katrina and Rita.  We are examining what went well and why and what did  not go well and why, and what our findings suggest for any specific  changes that may be needed.
section_title: Concluding Observations
paragraphs: Assessing, developing, attaining, and sustaining needed emergency  preparedness, response, and recovery capabilities is a difficult task that  requires sustained leadership, the coordinated efforts of many  stakeholders from a variety of first responder disciplines, levels of  government, and nongovernmental entities. There is a no “silver bullet,” no  easy formula. It is also a task that is never done, but requires continuing  commitment and leadership and trade-offs because circumstances change  and we will never have the funds to do everything we might like to do.
The basic steps are easy to state but extremely difficult to complete:    develop a strategic plan with clear goals, objectives, and milestones;    develop performance goals that can be used to set desired performance    collect and analyze relevant and reliable data;    assess the results of analyzing those data against performance goals to  guide priority setting;  take action based on those results; and    monitor the effectiveness of actions taken to achieve the designated  performance goals.
It is important to identify the specific types of capabilities, such as  incident command and control, with broad application across emergencies  arising from “all-hazards,” and those that are unique to particular types of  emergency events. The priority to be given to the development of specific,  “unique” capabilities should be tied to an assessment of the risk that those  capabilities will be needed. In California, for example, it is not a question  of if, but when, a major earthquake will strike the state. There is general  consensus that the nation is at risk of an infectious pandemic at some  point, and California has just issued a draft plan for preparing and  responding to such an event. On the other hand, assessing specific  terrorist risks is more difficult.
As the nation assesses the lessons of Katrina, we must incorporate those  lessons in assessing state and local emergency management plans, amend  those plans as appropriate, and reflect those changes in planned  expenditures and exercises. This effort requires clear priorities, hard  choices, and objective assessments of current plans and capabilities.  Failure to address these difficult tasks directly and effectively will result in  preparedness and response efforts that are less effective than they should  and can be.
That concludes my statement, and I would be pleased to respond to any  questions the Commission Members may have.
section_title: Appendix I: DHS’s Target Capabilities List 2.0 (Draft) as of December 2005
subsections: section_title: Common Target Capabilities
section_title: Prevent Mission Area
section_title: Protect Mission Area
section_title: Respond Mission Area
section_title: Recover Mission Area
paragraphs: This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the  United States. It may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety without further  permission from GAO. However, because this work may contain copyrighted images or  other material, permission from the copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to  reproduce this material separately.