FEMA Role Clarification and Katrina Performance Assessment: The Congressional Hearings September 27, 2005; Part 2.

The following opening statement of Michael D. Brown, former undersecretary of emergency preparedness and response, Department of Homeland Security, was transcribed by Margaret O’Leary on October 1, 2005 from a C-SPAN recording of the House Select Bipartisan Committee on Capitol Hill investigating the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina held on September 27, 2005.

Mr. Brown’s opening statement followed immediately after the introductory remarks of Chairman Tom Davis, Chairman, House Select Bipartisan Committee, available in the previous Biot, #270, available at: http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_270.html.

The video of the testimony is available online until mid-October 2005 at: http://www.cspan.org/search/basic.asp?ResultStart=1&ResultCount=10&BasicQueryText=michael+brown. Paragraphing and insertion of headings below is by the transcriber. To learn more about Mr. Brown, please visit: http://www.fema.gov/about/bios/brown.shtm or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Brown.

Michael D. Brown: “Thank you Mr. Chairman. I want to start out by saying that no longer being on the hot seat of FEMA, it is indeed a pleasure to be here. I want to say also that I agree with you completely regarding the premise of these hearings. Lessons can be learned and should be learned. That was always my philosophy at FEMA. It was what we called a RAMP [Remedial Action Management Program, see http://www.fema.gov/preparedness/ramp.shtm] program where we always looked after every disaster, every incident, remedial actions of what we could do to improve things. I admire the efforts of many members of this committee, including you Mr. Chairman, to actually get outside of Washington, DC, and see what is going on the field. The more you do that, the better information that you will get and the better you will understand what took place not only in Hurricane Katrina but what goes into disasters all over this country.

“The response of the government at all levels to Hurricane Katrina has come under some criticism. Some of it is valid and some of it is not valid. FEMA must be understood in the context of what we do and how we do it before we decide to start Monday-morning quarterbacking what took place. It’s really important to understand what the role of FEMA is and what we do.

“Likewise, there have been criticisms leveled against me personally. I would like to take time later in this statement to address those. As everyone on this committee certainly understands that you can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers or everything you see on television.

Emergency Management as the Disaster Cycle

“To understand the role of FEMA under Hurricane Katrina and all the other disasters that we have successfully handled throughout my tenure and the tenure of others. It is important to remember the basics of emergency management. At its most basic level, emergency management can best be described as a cycle. You first prepare for a disaster. You then respond to the disaster. You recover from the disaster. And finally you start mitigating against future disasters based on what you have learned. This cycle is the standard throughout the world. It doesn’t vary anywhere in the world. These four pillars—prepare, respond, recover, and mitigate—to have any effective emergency management organization, agency, directorate, must be organized to be effective and to help citizens during times of emergencies.

The Role of Local, State, and Federal Government in EM

“Emergency management begins at the local level. Municipal and county governments are best suited to understand the needs and capabilities of their locales. Mayors, city councilmen, county commissioners, county administrators, parish presidents—all of these people are in a unique position to understand both the capabilities of their communities and the vulnerabilities of their communities. Local governments develop the operations plans by which their community is going to respond to disasters, either natural or manmade.

“State governments have a role. They develop emergency operation plans for disasters, they provide liaisons to the local government, and they administer the mitigation programs that the federal government supports at the state and local level.

“The reason why this primary responsibility, this first response is at the local level, is that inherently impractical, totally impractical, for the federal government to respond every disaster of whatever size in every community across this country. It breaks my heart to think about the disasters we respond to as FEMA and think about the disasters we don’t respond to—the small town in Wyoming that has a tornado that wipes out five homes. We don’t respond to that, yet those people suffered as much as any other people that we might respond to.

“The role of the federal government is not, and should not ever be that of a first responder. The role of the federal government in a disaster is that of a coordinator and a supporter. The federal government develops national policies to assist the states and locals.

Concept of Federalism

“The concept of federalism in this country has long provided the basis by which all levels of government interact. Those principals of federalism should not be lost in the short-term desire to react to a natural disaster of catastrophic proportions. It is my contention is that if we lose that concept of federalism, we will have a break down in the local, state, and national emergency management systems. You will inherently drive decision making to the federal level. You will inherently create a system whereby communities become dependent on the federal government to respond to all disasters. That’s just not right or workable.

“These roles are also fully supported by the basic concept of federalism recognizing that the sovereign states have the primary responsibility for emergency preparedness and response in their jurisdictions. For example, governors had control over the National Guard. Law enforcement is primarily a local responsibility. I think if you ask any of your constituents, any of the citizens in this country, they understand that fire protection, police protection, emergency medical care, are clearly a local responsibility. They may be surprised to learn that FEMA is not a first responder. They may be surprised to learn that FEMA does not own fire trucks, ambulances, search and rescue equipment. In fact the only emergency equipment we own is a very small [cadre? Garbled] to protect some property we own around the country. FEMA is a coordinating agency. We are not a law enforcement agency.

All-Hazards Approach

“It has always been my contention that the all-hazards approach is the approach that the government should take toward emergency management. By that I mean if we adopt a cycle of preparing, training, exercising, planning, we respond to disasters with those we have trained with and exercised and worked with. We recover through building and reconstruction. We mitigate by enforcing and helping to develop building codes, standard protocols retrofit. If we do all those things using an all-hazards approach, that means we can respond to any disaster anywhere regardless of what causes that disaster, whether it is manmade, natural, or a terrorist event.

“I want to emphasize that if we break that cycle, if we break that concept of federalism, we minimize our effectiveness and maximize our potential for failure. At every level of government, there is a role to play, including individuals. Individuals must take personal responsibility for being prepared. First responders may not be able to get to them quickly. In fact, in speeches I give all over the country in speeches I give about preparedness, I also ask individuals this: “Do you want to be the person who causes a first responder to either lose their life or become injured because you didn’t take the basic steps yourself as an individual to be prepared?” Individuals have a responsibility in this system of emergency management to be prepared.

“Local governments must be prepared to respond as well. As simple as it may seem, disasters always occur in local communities. Locals are the first responders. They have the primary responsibility to respond on behalf of their communities.

“The emergency management cycle that I have described does not exist in FEMA today because it’s wishful thinking. It exists because we realize that it is only through our partnerships with state and local governments can we be effective. And only through those partnerships can we actually respond and come in and help coordinate and assist them when disaster strikes in their community.

“FEMA cannot come in and be the first responder. But we can come in and help them train and exercise and learn how to do their job and be prepared to do their job in any kind of disaster.

“People in the country may be very surprised to learn that FEMA is a very small agency. They hear that FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Homeland Security has over 180,000 employees and a budget of some $42 billion. FEMA has less than 3,000 employees and if you take away the Disaster Relief Fund, we have an annual operating budget of less than a $1 billion. We are a very small organization within a very large organization.

“Despite that contradiction in the size, I believe that FEMA is an honest broker, they can effectively bring to the bear the resources of the federal government to help the state and local governments in responding to disasters.

Unified Command Structure

“What happens when we do that? When FEMA responds we become a partner with the state. We establish a unified command structure, a unified command structure that has worked well throughout 150+ disasters that I have overseen since being at FEMA. This unified command structure allows the federal, state, and local governments to work hand in hand, recognizing the strengths and weaknesses at each level, distributing the resources and assets according to how they can best be utilized and recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of the federal, state, and local governments, so that we can best respond to help our citizens. And it is only through such a unified command structure, coupled with an incident management system within that unified command structure—and actually incident command structure has been recognized by the fire department, the forest service, and other agencies for decades in this country—it is only through that unified command structure that we can be successful when we respond to a disaster.

“That’s FEMA. It’s not a first responder. It’s a coordinator. It’s an honest broker.

Role of FEMA in Hurricane Katrina

“What was FEMA’s role in Hurricane Katrina? FEMA began monitoring Tropical Depression 12 long before it became a hurricane, almost a full week before it made landfall in Louisiana. FEMA prepositioned supplies, equipment, and manpower in areas where they were out of harm’s way so that equipment and that manpower would not itself become a victim of Hurricane Katrina. We prepositioned those assets so that we can move them in rapidly when it’s safe to do so. FEMA conducted daily video teleconferences to learn states’ needs, to find out what we could do to best help them coordinate their response and to respond to any requests that the states would have made of us that needed in being prepared.

“The hurricane liaison teams worked closely with the National Hurricane Center—FEMA people actually in the National Hurricane Center to provide us the most updated information so that we could know what we could tell the states what the states needed to know. We established several mobilization centers throughout the Gulf States, again these mobilization centers weren’t in downtown New Orleans, they weren‘t in Pascagoula. They were located out of harm’s way so that they themselves would not become victims and we could move in after the hurricane landed.

“FEMA activated and deployed the National Disaster Medical teams. We activated and deployed the Urban Search and Rescue teams. We activated and deployed the Rapid Needs Assessment teams. We activated and deployed the Emergency Response teams to all of the potentially affected states. We sent federal coordinating officers, our eyes and ears on the ground, to each of the state emergency operation centers in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana, prior to landfall so that we could know everything the state needed to know that they could convey back to us.

“The American Red Cross, one of our partners, established shelters and feeding stations in each of the affected areas. The National Emergency Assistance Compact, EMAC, was activated so that other states, in partnership with FEMA and the affected states, could move supplies and resources in. I want this committee to know that FEMA pushed forward with everything that it had, every team, every asset we had in order to help what we saw as being a potentially catastrophic disaster. FEMA was prepared to fulfill its role as a partner in responding.

“The way that FEMA works with state and local officials is well established and it has worked well. FEMA designates the federal coordinating officer to go to the emergency operations center so that from that moment on, from the moment our FCO lands in an emergency operations center, he or she is hooked up with the state coordinating officers so that we can have a unified command structure and we can know what the states need and we can start reacting to that before the disaster occurs, before the hurricane makes landfall. These two persons in the ideal condition work in the same room. They sit at conference tables like this. They know what they need to do. They work as a team. They feed the requests into the emergency support function such as transportation, mass care, energy, so that we know what they need so that we can respond and get them the assets they need.

“When needs are identified, the coordinators assess that so that we know where best to utilize those resources and where to send them. This is exactly the approach that FEMA used in 2004 to the historic four hurricanes that struck Florida. This is exactly the approach that FEMA used during the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster that stretched all the way from Texas, to New Mexico, Arizona, and California. This is exactly the system that FEMA used in the historic outbreak of tornadoes in the Midwest where small communities were obliterated. And this is the exact system that FEMA used in the outbreak of wildfires in California in 2003.

Louisiana

“I emphasize that because it is also the same unified command structure that FEMA used in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida this year when we responded to Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, this is the approach that FEMA had great difficulty getting established in Louisiana. This exact approach worked well in Mississippi, Florida, and Alabama. I had my best, most competent coordinators in those states, in all the states, to do everything we could to assist them.

“In retrospect, I was very glad—I was Sunday morning on the news shows talking and I was pushing my staff to find out if the governor of Louisiana—has the governor ordered a mandatory evacuation? We could not get the definitive answer that they had or they were going to. I was on the news shows Sunday morning, and I said uncharacteristically of me, that I don’t care what the governors are saying and I don’t care what the mayors are saying, if you live in New Orleans, evacuate and get out of that city now.

“I assume today that some of you are going to ask me if I did all that I could and whether I would have done anything differently. The answer yes, of course, and I want to talk about that because we can always improve how we respond to disasters. There are couple of specific mistakes that I want to put on the table right now. I failed to set up a series of regular briefings to the media about what FEMA was doing throughout the Gulf Coast region. Instead I became tied to the news shows, going to the news shows in the morning and the night. That was a mistake. We should have been feeding that information to the press and in a manner and time that we wanted to, instead of letting the press drive us. Second I very strongly personally regret that I was unable to persuade Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, deal with their differences and work together. I just couldn’t pull that off.

Personal Charges

“I want to spend just a few minutes to discuss the personal charges that have been leveled against me. While FEMA was trying to respond to probably the largest disaster in this country’s history, a catastrophic disaster covering the area of Great Britain—I’ve heard 90,000 square miles. Unless you’ve been there and seen it you don’t realize exactly how bad and how big it was. In the middle of trying to respond to that, FEMA’s press office became bombarded with requests to respond immediately to false statements about my resume and my background. Ironically, it started with an organization called horsesass.com that published a false and defamatory statement that the media continued to repeat over and over. Next, one national magazine defamed not only me but my alma mater the Oakland University School of Law, in one sentence alone, leveling six false charges.

“But that was just a prelude of what was to come. Time Magazine then called the press office while I was in Baton Rouge trying to coordinate the response and was told that I supposedly had embellished my resume and was given 45 minutes to respond to their story. The story wasn’t true but apparently that doesn’t matter. For almost 20 years, you see, I’ve worked in state, local, and federal government. I started out as an intern when I was in undergraduate school in the City of Edmund, Oklahoma, which, at the time, was the fastest growing city in Oklahoma. We issued sometimes upwards of 1,000 building permits per month. That’s a lot of growth. I started out as an intern in the planning office. I then became an assistant to the city manager. I was a liaison to the emergency services division, the police and fire departments. I ended up drafting the emergency operations plan. I ended up putting together with the committee the emergency operations center. I worked closely with the emergency, fire, and police departments. I went on the runs and I know what it is like to see a family’s house burn to the ground, because they weren’t ready. They had a Christmas tree whose lights were faulty. I know what it’s like to see men and women and fire and police departments put their lives the line. I’ve represented cops throughout my legal career. I’ve represented police departments. I guess I did a good enough job negotiating on behalf of the City of Edmund during their labor relations that later the unions came and asked me to negotiate on their behalf.

“You see, I get it when it comes to incident command systems. I get it when it comes to emergency management. I know what it’s all about. But if that’s not enough, I came to FEMA as general counsel. As general counsel, I had to learn about all the programs of FEMA. I had to learn about what this whole emergency management cycle at the federal level was all about.

“I was then asked by the President after September 11, 2001, and running operations from FEMA headquarters on September 11, 2001, to become the deputy director. I’ve overseen over 150 Presidentially-declared disasters. I know what I’m doing and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it. The media even claimed that I was never an adjunct professor. I find that funny because a gentleman is with me here today that I asked to represent me on many occasions that I asked to come in and fill in for me one time, come in to speak to my class that I was teaching. So maybe we’re both hallucinating about teaching that class, but I did teach law school and in fact, I taught legislation and  I taught state and local government law. I know how municipal governments work.

“Interestingly, Time Magazine then quoted one of my first employers after law school who said I’d done a lousy job. I guess that in the middle of a disaster, they wanted me to run back to Virginia, dig through my papers to find the personnel papers that talk about the outstanding job that I’ve done. But I guess it’s the media’s job. But I don’t like it. I think it’s false. It came at the wrong time and I think it led potentially to my being pulled out of Louisiana because it made me somewhat ineffective.

“My experience in FEMA has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. The men and women of FEMA, every single one of them, are dedicated to the mission of saving lives, sustaining lives, of building and keeping this robust emergency management system working as well as it can. FEMA has faced some trying times. If you think that it is difficult to merge Compaq and IBM [sic], ask Carly [Fiorina?] about that, try to merge FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security and then try to reorganize that again from having been an independent agency. The people of FEMA are tired of being beat up and they don’t deserve it. The men and women of FEMA, the career civil servants, the people that I work with, are dedicated to doing the absolute best they can to help communities because they chose to come to work at FEMA and they deserve better than what they are getting.

“Mr. Chairman, it’s my belief that FEMA did a good job in the Gulf States. We could do things better. We could have improved things. I hope that through these hearings that we can not only find ways to improve FEMA and make it better, but that we can strengthen the emergency management system in this country. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to answer any questions.”

Please go to SEMP Biot 272 at: http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_272.html for Part 3 of “FEMA Role Clarification and Katrina Performance Assessment: The Congressional Hearings September 27, 2005.”